What are my prospects to get a Postdoc position with just 1 publication from PhD? I am a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. I have already completed my 5 years, am writing my thesis and will be submitting my thesis in 4 months. I have published 1 paper till now. That was 2 years ago. Till then, I have completed 3 more manuscripts, but my supervisor does not have the time to go through them and approve them. As a result, I have manuscripts around 2 years old waiting to get submitted and published.

My supervisor is great with meetings, guidance and advice, but she is frustrating me with her lethargy in correcting my manuscripts. This has made me very anxious about my future. My work is quite different than what is being published at the moment in my field. So, I think my manuscripts would still find a place in a reputed journal in my area of research. However, I can't be very sure of that until I actually submit the drafts. Also, I can't just go behind her back and submit the manuscripts as I don't want to sour my relationship with her.

I am not able to apply for a postdoc position as I am sure that I won't get any response without having any published works. I will be submitting my thesis by end of June. I will defend this fall. But, I don't know what I will do next.

I have applied to various industry positions and have got rejections. I don't think that I will land any position soon.

My question is, what are my career prospects at the moment? And what would the best course of action for me at the moment?

I am almost 30, been in school for Masters and PhD for the past decade. I am feeling quite hopeless. Ideally, I would like to stay in academia as I love doing research and teaching. But, I find that future dissolving away in uncertainty.

Except for the difficulties in getting your advisor to respond to you, nothing you say seems unusual. Even that is too common, though. But your age, etc. is pretty typical, or at least not far outside the norm.

But I think that if you can unblock the block that you will be in good shape career wise. Your difficulties with industry could be a lot of unrelated things, and you haven't really tested yourself yet in the academic marketplace.

If you want a career in academia, I suggest you start a search, either as a post-doc or a regular position. You have a lot of work-in-progress to point to which is a point in your favor. I wouldn't wait until you get the block cleared and then something submitted and accepted. It will take to long, but, I suspect, not be judged fundamentally differently than work in progress.

The only issue I see is your "out of the mainstream" research interests. You will need to find a way to present that as an advantage, not a disadvantage. As Apple used to say, Think Different.

There is, I think, no reason to do the two things sequentially: advisor, job-search. Work on both in parallel.

On the advisor front, however, you might want to make it more incremental. Rather than "all these papers", focus on getting just one out the door and then repeat as needed.

You can list the papers as "in preparation" on a pub list.  Not perfect but something.

You need to get those other two papers out.

One, write the version you would submit without any editorial input from your professor.  You should do this regardless.  Always do your best job first, before someone else.  You need to become independent.  Do not just make some graphs and some junky text and expect the professor to rewrite it.  Do the paper you would submit directly to the journal if you were the PI.  Proof the heck out of it.  Read the notice to authors and make a checklist from it.  Etc.

Two, provide the papers are "good to go" (in your estimation), than bust them out.  Tell the advisor you think they are good to go (as is) and you want to submit them. Argue.  Beat on the table.  If needed, get other people involved (but have a tete a tete first).


How can I join a university class conducted online as a non-matriculating student during COVID-19? I'd like to join a class at a university, as a non-matriculated student, that I can participate in online, due to COVID-19.  I already have a PhD (in a technical field), and am looking to take a class outside of a technical field, with the goal purely being personal intellectual enrichment.  Many universities are moving classes online due to COVID-19, which makes this practical.
I'm not sure how to go about doing this.  It's easy for me to find classes in the field of interest (Middle Eastern history) in various university catalogs, and it's easy for me to see if the university is holding it online or in person.  But I haven't been able to find out which universities will allow me to participate without being a degree seeking student.  I'm not tied down to any one university or any one particular class, but rather any class in my general area of interest that I can fully participate in.  I know that the application deadline for the upcoming semester is very soon (for cases where it hasn't passed).  Can you give me guidance on:

What types of schools will allow such participation?
What is the application process like?
How do I find these?
How do I go about doing this?

Note that I know there are a lot of open classes, MOOCs, Coursera, etc., but that's not what I'm looking for.  I'm looking for the full structure and engagement of a full university class, with papers that will be graded, and the like.

To clarify:

non-matriculated means here "not seeking a degree", only (full) participation in a class
I am happy to pay tuition for this class
I'm located in the US

What types of schools will allow non-matriculated participation?

I'll skip this part, because honestly it was news to me that there are universities that don't do this.  Usually the emphasis is on job-related courses.

What is the application process like?

Very simple, if you can pay.  They want your money.

How do I find these?

Look for a "school of continuing education," "university extension" or similar.  If you do not want something job-related, you might look at programs marketed to retirees.  In some places, such as those with a shortage of classrooms during teaching periods, this may be easier if you look for summer courses.  Availability of classrooms is not, of course, relevant for online courses.

I'm looking for the full structure and engagement of a full university class, with papers that will be graded, and the like.

That is a big part of the work that goes into teaching. So the time you take up cannot be spent on "real" students. That would not be fair without some way in which you compenste for the effort. Setting up, administering, and enforcing such payment system is work, i.e. costs money. You can see that what you want is not that easy. MOOCs are an attempt to give something like what you want, but is still viable from the university perspective.


What is a correct way of evaluating the effectiveness of criteria for admissions? Most colleges and universities in the US base their admissions on high school grades plus a standardized test (SAT or ACT). To decide whether a particular piece of data X is a good admissions criterion, people seem to focus on how well X correlates with college grades. (This may be freshman grades or total college GPA. Some people think  success in getting a degree would be more appropriate. For the purposes of this question, I don't think these distinctions are relevant.)

Isn't this correlation a completely incorrect way of evaluating X as a tool for admissions?

It seems like an apples-to-oranges comparison. A student who has low X is admitted to a nonselective school, where standards are low and they compete with other low-X students. Grades at this school measure how well they did based on the low standards prevailing there. Students who have high X are admitted to a selective school. A "B" grade at Berkeley is not the same as a "B" grade at Cal State Dominguez Hills. A high-X student goes to Berkeley and gets a "B" in calculus. A low-X student goes to CSDH and gets a "B" in calculus. This shows up in the statistics as a lack of correlation between X and grades, since the students differed in X but got the same grade. But isn't that misleading, since the grades mean different things at the two schools?

Is there some more logically justifiable statistic to use in evaluating whether X is a good admissions criterion?

Define "effectiveness of criteria for admission". Collect data on the potentially relevant independent variables. Do statistical analysis on the resulting data set.

Be careful, you'll probably be considering just the people who were admitted, so the results will be skewed.

A more meaningful study might ignore college grades, which as you point out depend on the type of institution, and focus on downstream accomplishments. It isn't just local and community colleges that distort the picture; several highly ranked Universities have A-no credit policies, so that everyone graduate with a 4.0. Many education schools are effectively A-no credit, with overall GPA's of ~3.9.
I'd like to know how many university professors had low grades or SAT scores, how many NAS members had low grades or SAT scores, and what the profile of CEOs, successful writers, lawyers, engineers etc. was. The purpose of college is not the production of am impressive transcript.


Help! Professor/Advisor Refuses to Publish Any of His Students' Research I'll be finishing a PhD in physics in about five weeks.  I've worked hard, have done a lot of research, and have written 3 papers for publication.  But my professor refuses to take any action towards publishing anything I have written, and he has not published any of his grad students' papers in more than three years.  He keeps telling me that he'll give me feedback on my work and that he will submit the papers, and we set a deadline to get everything submitted , but then the deadline comes and goes with no progress on his part, and when I ask him about it he says he was too busy to look at the papers and doesn't have time to talk about it right now.

It is seeming more clear to me that he has no intention of publishing my work, and that he's hoping to shoo me out the door with my degree and hope that I will forget about the papers and stop bothering him about publishing.  The best that I can get from him is that he is obsessed with his reputation among his academic peers, and he seems to not want his name associated with any publications that do not fit a certain image or reputation.  I think that my papers are good and certainly publishable, but he will not even give me feedback nor will he do anything to improve my papers to meet his standards, whatever those standards are.

My blood is really boiling and I'm going to be very upset if my professor continues to fight my efforts to get my work published.  I really would like to see my work published.

What is my recourse here?  Should I use some negotiation tactics to find out why he doesn't want to publish anything new from any students?  Should I suggest that I go ahead and publish without his name on the papers so he doesn't have his "sterling reputation" tarnished?  I have already spoken to the university ombudsman and the grad student counselor and there is not much else they can do.

First, this is not an unusual situation.  What is unusual here is your interpretation of the situation.

When you have a problem with someone's behavior, it is wise to look for incompetence instead of malice.  It's highly likely the professor intended to keep his promises but failed to do so.  You have given us no evidence otherwise.  Professors commonly break promises to submit papers.  Some of them do so over and over without realizing there is a pattern.

Your best strategy here is to politely remind the professor of the missed deadline and press for a new deadline.  Repeat this process as many times as is needed.

Send it out yourself, tell your advisor on what transpires. I doubt they'd ask to retract the paper, in the worst case you can delete their name and aknowledge on a footnote.


How to politely ask a co-author to remove his/her name from my manuscript? Just found one of my very old written manuscript in my backup folder and interested to submit it to some journal.

I had written a Manuscript with 7 co-authors in 2008 just 10 years before. The entire work was dealt with observation datasets until 2008. Although I had conducted all the works independently and wrote the manuscript alone, but my supervisor had given 7 authors's name due to their little helps like suggestions to improve the manuscript, English check etc. However, I counts their contribution to some extent. But one of the co-author (say X) took 5 years to check the manuscript due to perhaps his busy schedule. So finally the manuscript was submitted to a journal in 2013. The reviewers appreciated the work and strongly recommended to update the results with recent datasets i.e. until 2013. It somehow irritated me because I had left the institute long before and was working in different field. Anyway, I updated the results until 2013 and modified the manuscript accordingly.

But all gone waste again, because the same X-author couldn't check the manuscript in the given time-line even within 1 year. So the editor rejected the manuscript. Now it is already 5 years, the same X-author could not send back his revision. I have also stopped sending reminders 2 years before (last reminded in April 2016). Probably I need to update the results again i.e. until 2018 now.

But I would like to remove this X-author's name from my manuscript first and then submit it as quick as possible. Now I am wondering proper sentences to ask the X-author to remove his/her name from our manuscript.

When a manuscript is ready to go, the way to deal with a lot of authors is to send an email along the following lines:

  Find enclosed the latest version of the manuscript. I plan to submit this version on xx/xx. If you have any comments send them by then, otherwise I will assume everyone is fine with its present form.

I have decided to answer because it is particularly easy. Simply remove X and submit as fast as possible.

For possible cons. You are in the academy since long time.  I do not think you have to be afraid. Five authors will be aware of the story, just in case X decide to spread rumours out.


Is someone who solely contributes negative feedback to a paper considered an author? Say person A and person B are collaborating on a mathematics paper. It goes like this: person A repeatedly suggests proofs, and person B repeatedly finds flaws in them. Over time, this process culminates in a correct proof.

Does person B deserve to be an author on this paper? One might argue that the final paper would not have existed without B, so they deserve authorship. On the other hand, they did not actually contribute anything in the final work - each successive proof was generated by A alone.

Wikipedia says that the development of RSA went something like this: "Rivest and Shamir, as computer scientists, proposed many potential functions while Adleman, as a mathematician, was responsible for finding their weaknesses," until Rivest hit on the final answer. But that might be overly reductive, and I don't know of any other examples.

(As a final note, I'm not A or B in this scenario - I'm just curious.)

To moderate Yemon Choi's comment:  yes.  Your first assertion is that A and B are collaborating, which means they should be co-authors, unless one actively backs out.

For a mathematical project, it's easy to have lots of ideas but not enough time to pursue them all to see which (if any) work.  If someone can shoot down ideas and tell you they definitely (or with high likelihood) won't work, this can help put you on the right track.  So in your situation I would say B was instrumental in finding a correct solution.

(In a somewhat different abstract scenario where B dismisses some approaches to a problem that A suggests, and B does not otherwise actively work on the project, it may depends on the situation and they should have a discussion about whether B is a co-author or not.  And some people will have different opinions about the same situation, e.g. RS versus A in the RSA example.)

In general in a mathematical collaboration, if there's one key idea it's unlikely that both collaborators arrive at it together.  Maybe through discussion they enhance each other's understanding of the problem, and then one will have the key idea and the other will encourage/validate it.  That doesn't mean was the other person was unnecessary, even if you can't
pinpoint parts of the final paper as being "their contribution."

(And if collaborations became competitive to the point of dropping co-authors just because the didn't see the final solution first, who would want to collaborate?)

Your question is quite interesting. However, I don't think the case of RSA is a good example for your question.

Suppose a scenario: X finds a proof, and submits it to a journal, where the reviewer finds the flaw and rejects it. He then improves the proof and submitted it again. Does X need to include this reviewer as a co-author? I think not.

What if X repeats this process until he has a correct proof? Does he need to add all reviewers as co-authors, or he only needs to do so when all reviewers happen to be the same person?

The case of RSA is very different. Rivest and Shamir proposed many potential one-way functions. These were not proof, they could be viewed as conjectures as best. By finding the weaknesses of those functions, Adleman actually provided the proofs (by counter-example???) that those functions were not one-way. Saying he just falsified the proof trivializes his contribution.


Parents attending thesis defense? My wife is defending her thesis soon, and in her department, defenses are open to the public. I will be there along with several of her friends/colleagues. Her mom also wants to come to the defense. In terms of her committee's perception, I could see this being viewed as weird or maybe unprofessional. Then again, it could be harmless, and her mom really wants to come. I also happen to be in the business of trying to keep my mother-in-law happy :)

How would this look from the perspective of her committee? Do parents ever come to defenses? I haven't really heard of this before. I want my wife to have the best chance at passing her defense, but I also don't want to come across as a grouchy husband that appears to be saying, "Your mom can't be here."

This is a Nutritional Sciences department in the United States. It is a somewhat unique situation in that students typically start a dietetic internship a week or so after defending the thesis. The internship takes months to plan for the student since it involves organization with preceptors at multiple locations.

At our university, there are three possible results from a defense: passing, passing with modifications, or failing. Passing with heavy modifications could result in a delay (of a month or more) in starting the internship. This recently happened to another student.

My wife asked me to ask this question here as she wants to focus on getting prepared for the defense. She initially asked for my gut feeling on her mother attending, and I had never heard of this before, nor had she. The defense is coming up very soon ;) and she did not feel comfortable asking her advisor a question like this so late. Also her advisor is not the most responsive to email so she might not even hear in time (I know that this will probably invoke statements that she should get over it or that she should not have picked this advisor, but this is not the point of the question). For the record, I would never tell my wife who she could or could not have at her defense. I'm just trying to be helpful :) It's encouraging to hear from the comments that parent attendance at a defense is fairly common place, so it will probably be no big deal.

Open to the public means ... open to the public (presuming they can sit quietly in a room for 2 hours or however long your wife's defense is).

Moreover, (edit though I thought I was clear), it's very common in the US for family including parents and spouses to attend PhD defenses.

My wife and parents came to my defense (philosophy PhD USA). As did a friend of ours who was a foreigner living in America with no connection to philosophy. A philosophy PhD defense at least at my institution is them drilling you with every objection and reason that they think you're wrong for two solid hours.

While I assume a nutrition science PhD has a different format, I hope that neither the committee nor the person defending the dissertation has much time to look around and see who came and to think odd thoughts about the professionalism of the candidate based on who came to their defense.

Edit: The question has now been edited to clarify that your wife did specifically ask you for advice on this, so the concerns I expressed in this answer aren't operative in your case. I'm glad to hear it!

I'll leave the answer up since the underlying issues will apply to other situations.

This is none of your business.

Your wife is a professional and she is responsible for her own career. There is no reason that you should try to interpose yourself, even to encourage her towards a path that you feel will help her chances.

One of you has spent many years in this department and seen other students graduate, and one of you has not; your question makes clear that you do not have personal knowledge about this situation. She is an expert in this situation compared to you. So you are proposing to interfere with a situation that you do not understand from a position of ignorance, just because you have an uninformed feeling that this "could be viewed as weird". (At least you had the sense to ask here first, I suppose.)

Even if you did have extensive experience with the conventions of her specific field and knew that this could be an issue, it's not your place to butt in unasked and try to control her professional life. (Your comment that you don't want to be the grouchy husband that appears to be saying 'Your mom can't be here' makes clear that your involvement was not asked for.)

It's admirable that you want to support your wife. You should do so by providing in her private life the support she needs to excel in her professional life; not by inviting yourself to concern yourself with the details of her career development.


I communicate a conjecture and a colleague/professor proves it; are we both authors? Context: I have a (IMO, very interesting, and rather significant) mathematical conjecture. I communicated this conjecture to a professor at my university; he is a respected expert in the topic. He says he has not seen something like my conjecture before, that it is very interesting, and that he would like to share it with his close colleagues. I tell him yes, and that I have some related conjectures.

Now I'm shifting nervously on my couch wondering what will happen.

In the past, even single theorems on this topic (partitions) have been published in journals as high-roller as the Annals. My question: In the event that my conjecture is proven true (by my professor, or one of his colleagues which he sent the result to) and is sent to a journal, even if I did not majorly assist in the proof (I am a first-year undergrad student, I can only do so much!) is it reasonable to request I be listed as an author, since the conjecture is mine and I am the one who shared it?

Discovering a new and very interesting conjecture is a cool achievement and not an easy thing to do. Congratulations!

About your question, it’s quite possible that your having come up with the conjecture would warrant coauthorship. But it’s possible that it wouldn’t - it’s impossible to say until the conjecture actually gets proved. The issue is that for some mathematical discoveries, the mere statement of the theorem is the more difficult and substantial part of the discovery, in the sense that once the statement is known, finding the proof is not terribly difficult; whereas for other discoveries, it is finding the actual proof that is the difficult part that’s considered more impressive and worthy of recognition.

And sometimes it’s both: for some conjectures, both the people who discovered it and the people who proved it became quite famous for their respective achievements. One such example that comes to mind is the alternating sign matrix conjecture.

So, for example, if the professor and his colleagues spend the next five years working on a proof of your conjecture and come up with an amazingly complicated 100-page proof, I’d say your claim for being a coauthor is weak to nonexistent (although you should of course be credited for discovering the conjecture). But if your conjecture results in a relatively easy proof of a few pages, you can reasonably ask to be made a coauthor of the paper (or more likely than not you won’t need to ask, they’ll just offer you coauthorship as it would likely be seen as an obvious thing to do). A rather similar situation happened recently with a conjecture in linear algebra that was discovered by three physicists. They communicated their discovery to Terry Tao, and this ended with a joint publication by the four authors that was posted less than two weeks later. See this recent article from Quanta magazine.

I think that's basically what Fermat did. I assume, given that you seem to be an advanced mathematician, that you've heard of Fermat's Last Theorem. Many of Fermat's conjectures, including Fermat's Last Theorem, were proven by someone else. So, in my opinion, it would be reasonable to expect both that conjecture would be named after you and that you would be named a co-author.

Fingers crossed that your conjecture is true!

P.S. I'm also super interested in pure math research!


What license to choose for a model which we will freely distribute? My research team has developed a model, analyzed data, and generated results. We are currently in the process of publishing the results -- the article is in review -- and we are preparing to make our model available (we're talking with the publisher about whether to include it as a supplementary material with the journal).

Regardless, we will retain rights to distribute the model on our own websites. We believe in the principle of free software and want to make this model generally and freely available but request that those who use it cite the paper in which we introduce the model.

Our question is which license -- I know of GNU and Creative Commons, among others -- is best suited to this goal? Is there a answer to this question?

The site http://choosealicense.com/ will probably be helpful to you. The front page of the site offers a simple choice in fairly plain language:

I want it simple and permissive. The MIT License is a permissive license that is short and to the point. It lets people do anything they want with your code as long as they provide attribution back to you and don’t hold you liable. jQuery and Rails use the MIT License.

I’m concerned about patents. The Apache License is a permissive license similar to the MIT License, but also provides an express grant of patent rights from contributors to users. Apache, SVN, and NuGet use the Apache License.

I care about sharing improvements. The GPL (V2 or V3) is a copyleft license that requires anyone who distributes your code or a derivative work to make the source available under the same terms. V3 is similar to V2, but further restricts use in hardware that forbids software alterations. Linux, Git, and WordPress use the GPL.

The site also has a more in-depth page giving more choices, and more detail about the differences between licenses.
I would strongly advise that you don't use a Creative Commons license for your code. Creative Commons themselves caution against this:

We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative.

More detail in their FAQ.
Personally I use the GPL (version 3) for most of the code I release. For very small programs -- roughly speaking, anything shorter than the license text of the GPL itself -- I tend to use the MIT license. This is partly because I'm less concerned about the fate of such small code snippets, and partly because it feels a little silly to have more license than code in a release.
As a side note -- although you haven't mentioned this possibility -- please resist any temptation to invent a new license, unless you have a really compelling reason. License proliferation is a big problem, and your code will be less useful if people have to pay a lawyer to determine whether your license is legally compatible with some other software they're trying to use in conjunction with yours. In general, I would suggest picking one of the "big three" mentioned above unless you have specific reasons against this.
Edit: I just saw your comment about the appropriateness of using a GNU license for Matlab code. There is no problem here: there is no concept of "contamination" between the license of your code and the license of the language it's written in. In fact, it would be hard to implement such a restriction, because languages as such don't have licenses: only their implementations do. Many programming languages have both closed-source and open-source implementations -- this includes Matlab, although Octave, the GPL implementation of the language, is not 100% compatible with the original version. However, for Matlab specifically, you might want to consider the BSD license, because it's the only one permitted on MATLAB central. (If you never intend to share your code on MATLAB central, this is less of a problem.)

Since I'm not a lawyer I won't try to advise you... but I'll observe that at least one large corporation seems pretty happy with Apache's version of a by-attribution license. And it's hard to beat the creative commons licenses for brevity and clarity, though I can't vouch for strength


Can college professors alter their grading scale to pass students? How often does this happen? I have recently completed a Multivariable Calculus class. I struggle a lot with math, and failed the first and second midterms and I feel that I failed the final exam as well. The first midterm was worth 25% of my grade, the second was worth 30% and and the final was 35%. I am absolutely convinced that I failed the final, yet I passed the course with a C, although homework was worth 10% and I maintained a 96% on it.

My question is, how often do professors alter their grading scale such that they don't fail someone? My professor did mention that if we do very poorly on the final exam, he would just give us a 'C'. How often does this happen?

Teaching is hard, and writing exams is hard.  Anyone who thinks they can set the exact criteria in advance is probably being arrogant.  At Chicago (at least in the 1980s) every single course is graded on a curve so essentially every course had its criteria set by the performance of the students.  On the one hand this compensates for mistakes in teaching or in writing an exam, on the other hand your performance is partly determined by how good your classmates happen to be.

One of the professors at MIT I tutored under was very angry that students had demanded (so the Institute regulated) that the percentages given to the various midterms and exams were set out in advance, because before that "innovation" he'd been able to adjust the percentages if he'd written an exam not up to his own standards, something you can often only find out after you've given it.

In the UK, these sorts of practices are banned.  Every student is supposed to be marked to criteria set up when the course was approved.  To make this work, UK universities require the exam to be written very early in the term, checked by a colleague, and then checked again by an external examiner.  Then at the end of the year there is something called an exam board, where a panel decides if something went wrong in a course and moves all the marks for the whole course up or down in response.  This is better than marking on a curve because the students can help each other learn without hurting themselves, but in other ways it's worse in that the professors cannot innovate and it can be very difficult to update material.

How often does this happen? I have a feeling this happens quite frequently based upon my one personal experience/data-point that I have. This took place at a very well known, high-rep, American university. Most of the students in the class were probably engineering students.

I was taking a junior/senior level probability class. The class averages on the exams we utterly horrendous. We're talking in the 25%, 35% range. The averages showed the entire class to be in a state of utter failure. The professor was almost universally considered to be terrible...with the exception of one student who kept obliterating the exam averages by getting in the 90s each time. I knew that student personally. She was superb.

According to the class averages, I was in the "C" range. If a student had an "A" going into the final exam, they weren't required to take the final. Unfortunately, I had to take the final exam. I bashed my brains in preparation for that final.

Would you believe I ended up with an "A" for my final grade? It is the most undeserved "A" I ever received. You should have seen the totally confused look on my face when I found out! That "A" still stands out on my transcript as a diamond amongst coal.


Should I mention in an email to a professor that they are referred by another one? I emails professor A about a chance to study with him, and he answers that he's on leave next academic year so not accepting new students, and I might want to check professor B. Should I mention to B that A refers her to me?

More specifically, I think that A is best suited for me. Should I be honest in saying that I have email A first? I think being honest upfront will set a better expectation from him, thus saving time for both.

Below is my intended draft:

  Dear Prof. B,

  To introduce myself, my name is X, from country Z. I'm writing this letter to ask you if you are planning to accept new students this year. I have asked prof A about studying with him, but he has kindly refer you to me since he's on leave next year.

  From reading your profile, I can see that our interests align in many aspects. My interests can be divided into two main categories, which mirror yours:

  The cognitivism in Daoism and Buddhism's epistemology
  The physicalism in Daoism and Buddhism's metaphysics/cosmology

  In case you are interested, here is a proposal I crafted for your reference.

  Do you think the program could be a good fit for me? Would there be an opportunity for me to work with you as a grad student?

  Best wishes and regards,

Both A and B are in the same school in Canada.

The letter is fine, but I'd actually suggest that you replace this:

  I have asked prof A about studying with him, but he has kindly refer you to me since he's on leave next year.

with something like the following:

  Prof A has referred me to you as being a good fit for my research interests.

There is no real need for the rest of it, and might be inferred without saying it directly.

But, your original is fine, also. Good luck.

Chances are, the referee has told/will tell anyway. Just be upfront about it.


Including cartoons in lecture notes? I would like to include some cartoons in my lecture notes, just to spice up things a bit and relax the atmosphere before moving to serious stuff. However, I am not sure if there is any issue with doing this (in terms of intellectual property) or if I can include any cartoon with the corresponding reference?

I am thinking of simple stuff like xkcd, phdcomics, and other nerdy jokes (nothing like the death of Superman or the first comic of Batman).

As an undergraduate, I always appreciated when profs did stuff like this. It made it look like they actually put some effort into their notes, and a laugh was always appreciated in the middle of a frustrating and hard lecture.

Yes, properly referenced.
Had language teachers that would base a class around a cartoon story - use of vocab etc.
Also, a cartoon short can highlight the current topic: water use & shortage for example, there was a Giles cartoon from the 70’s written when there was a garden water hose ban : people were having baths and saving the water to put on the plants... I used that.


I realize I made a huge mistake in my thesis and am not sure what to do. I'm defending very soon (days away). What should I do? I realize there is a somewhat similar question posted, but my question is different in that I found a pretty big mistake in my thesis. It's such a big problem, it changes my results. I almost wish I hadn't noticed, and been so careful to go back and check every thing, because I really don't know what to do about it except fix the errors/interpretation errors and discussion (today). I defend very soon (in days). It's possible that my committee won't notice it, but I feel like the guilt might drive me insane. I'm worried that my chair noticed it in the past, but they didn't correct me because they feel I'm incompetent (which I feel in ways I am when it comes to stats). Should I re-write it and let my chair know and ask what to do? I need to defend soon in any case. I wonder if I could just present as though I'd already corrected it and e-mail the revised manuscript beforehand. I'm just not sure how they would perceive someone who overlooked such a obvious mistake. Any advice would be appreciated.

The thesis and thesis defense is less about having the results you wanted to have, and more about demonstrating that you know how to do good quality research and can work on that somewhat independently.  It's about figuring out what questions to ask and what methods can be used to find the answers, and then applying those methods to come up with answers.  What the answers actually are is not as important [for the purposes of passing a thesis] as the process you took to get those answers.  Your discovering this issue and taking prompt action to fix it shows attention to important details and integrity in the knowledge-discovery process.  Sure, it would've been better if you'd caught that earlier, but you've caught it now, before your defense, and you're rewriting the discussion and conclusions to reflect your best analysis of the data.

In my opinion, your having found this and your efforts now to promptly fix it say more [positively] about what a thesis is supposed to evaluate than most completed theses.

Don't panic.  Talk to your supervisor and committee.  Tell them what you found.  Revise your document to reflect the new understanding.  Maybe you'll have to delay the defense a bit, but more likely you'll present at the same time and talk about what you found; the committee might require you to deliver a revised document [some weeks after the presentation] reflecting that before they sign off.  That might take you some time to do but it should be OK, and will leave you with work you can feel is more solid.

Kudos to you for finding the issue and having the integrity to stand up for it.  This should help you in the long run and the core evaluation at issue here, at the cost of some extra work to revise and maybe some scrambling to re-practice your revised presentation.

Edit: Congratulations on passing!

Are you (1) a life scientist and (2) worried about the stats?
I worked as a statistical advisor for several high-profile journals in the life sciences. Your hunch that your stats is wrong is probably right. Your hunch that the examiners may not have noticed is probably also... well, I should not say too much.
Be frank about your misgivings. If you are able to make coherent arguments during your defence, that will in itself be a positive thing.
And learn stats properly, for crying out loud.


Conference vs Congress vs Symposium vs Meeting What is the distinction between the following scientific events:

conference,
congress,
symposium,
meeting?

While I have some idea about differences (e.g. congress - large and serious, meeting - by a certain organization, ...) I have an impression that sometimes the terms are used interchangeably.

Is it safe to assume that the three later are variants of a scientific conference?

There are certain (informal) nuances I believe:

Symposium - Prestigious conferences, generally leading venues in their respective fields. Example: Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, European Test Symposium, Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) etc
Conference - Regular venues for publications, may range from established venues to the archaic. I understand the bulk of publications of most researchers are in one conference or other, as symposiums tend to have a very low acceptance rate.
Meeting - I'm not so sure there are many of these, but I understand that it is more of a forum for interaction/surveys/posters than for publication of full papers. (I based my answer on the description for SIAM Annual Meeting 2012, which describes itself as providing "a broad view of the state of the art in applied mathematics, computational science, and their applications through invited presentation, prize lectures, minisymposia, and contributed papers and posters".)
Congress - This would typically be held once a year per discipline, highlighting the achievements, notable results in that field. These are typically attended by leaders in that field, and feature a series of invited talks (for example, look at Mathematical Congress of the Americas 2013).

Congress- Conference- Colloquium- Symposium- Seminar- Workshop;
have the following differences if one proceeds from Congress to workshop:

Informality decreases
Number of participants decreases
One theme and many sub-themes with a large scope to one narrow theme, scope narrows down
A number of papers and key note addresses to limited number of papers and key note addresses.
Informal discussion to hands on job training
Colloquium is limited to a group of researchers concerned with  a few themes mostly to review progress.
workshop means something job training, do it yourself.


What topics should one master if one wants to pursue a Master's degree in mathematics at a top university? This fall I am starting the 3rd year of my bachelor's degree and I intend to continue my studies with a Master's degree and possibly a PhD. The university I study at is a respected institution in my country but not particularly focused on my area of interest (algebra). I had a first contact, at a summer school, with students from top universities in Europe and I realised I am under prepared for a Master's at one of these universities.

I have a good academic record and did some undergraduate research but there are topics I know nothing about. For example in algebra I had only 2 undergraduate courses (vector spaces, groups and rings- basic definition, properties, isomorphism theorems), no linear algebra aside from the matrix of a linear transformation.

So my question is: what courses are essential to someone who wants to go to graduate school in algebra at a good university and what should I study to bridge the gap?

Edit: I already took all the undergraduate and graduate level classes available in my field,at my university, but all those were still under the level of preparation of my peers from other universities. So I was asking for subjects I should know in order to study by myself.

The simple answer is that if you're interested in a subject and expect to continue on to a master's or PhD (or even if you're not expecting to go for an advanced degree, you simply expect to pursue it as a career), you should take as many classes in that subject as you can.  Pick the best or most interesting to you from whatever is offered by your department to fill out your electives and do your best.

Take a look at these oral exams, taken by 1st/2nd year grad students at Princeton:

http://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/


How to respond to "When are you graduating" when I'm behind I'm a 5th year Ph.D. student. I've worked on several different projects in the last couple years, some of them not related to my dissertation topic, so I don't yet have enough results to say for sure when I will defend. I'm working solely on my dissertation project now, and I'm working as quickly as I can.

We have group meetings once in a while. Another faculty member and his student also attends because they collaborate with my advisor. In the past several meetings, my advisor has been too busy to attend, and the other researcher, who is not too familiar with my research activities, has been asking me things like:
Are you writing any papers?
Have you formed your committee?
How many years have you been here again?
When are you going to graduate?

When I say "no" "I don't know" etc., he has an expression of concern (or maybe pity). I am really annoyed by this. It's like someone keeps on asking me about my fish when it died recently. I'm already under enough stress trying to do research. The last thing I need is someone reminding me I'm behind schedule - it's demotivating. Not to mention this makes me look bad in front of my group mates.

What should I do? Tell him bluntly "it's none of his business"? Stop attending group meetings?

While it's unfortunate that my graduation is delayed, taking into account my own abilities and changes in research topics, I'm happy about where I am, working on something I'm interested in. I would much rather do some meaningful and quality work than slap together something half-baked for my dissertation. (Of course, I know I could be making more money by getting a real job sooner, but these are the best years of my life and I would rather spend it doing something I love.)

It is well known that "When are you graduating?" or even "How is your research going?" can be touchy questions among graduate students.  But this is well known in part because they get asked these questions constantly, including by each other.  And even if they can be unpleasant to answer, they are still fair questions.  I'm not sure that the problem lies where you think it does.

  I'm working solely on my dissertation project now, and I'm working as quickly as I can.

That's a pretty defensive thing to say straight out of the gate.  Basically you sound like you want to ward off in advance any thought of optimizing or improving your path to the PhD.  An academic who sees no room for improvement is setting the bar pretty low.  I am a tenured faculty member, and if you came to me saying, "I think you could work faster / more efficiently / with greater output if..." then believe me, you would have my attention.

  We have group meetings once in a while. Another faculty member and his student also attends because they collaborate with my advisor. In the past several meetings, my advisor has been too busy to attend.

Forgive my prying, but I have already seen something that to me looks more serious than some other faculty member asking you some questions you don't like.  Your advisor is too busy to attend your group meetings?  You know, I think you might work more quickly if....

  When I say "no" "I don't know" etc., he has an expression of concern (or maybe pity).

Both concern and pity are positive emotions.  This guy sounds like he is -- you got it -- concerned about you.  The fact that he is showing up at several consecutive meetings while your advisor is not makes me think that he is indicating a desire to help you out.

  I am really annoyed by this. It's like someone keeps on asking me about my fish when it died recently.

I find your simile to be pretty strange, but I'll try to play along: isn't it like he's asking about your living fish who has looked a bit less than healthy recently?  Maybe I'm not getting the picture: who or what has died in your recent life, metaphorically speaking?

  I'm already under enough stress trying to do research.

Yes, you sound like you are very stressed out.  People who are too stressed out are not doing things in the best possible way, or even in a healthy way.  Most commonly there is some kind of disconnect between their future hopes and their present actions.  Talking through that kind of dissonance, and adjusting either or both, could be very helpful.

  The last thing I need is someone reminding me I'm behind schedule - it's demotivating.

If being reminded that you're behind schedule is demotivating, then something seems off-kilter.  Being reminded that you're behind schedule should be motivating, unless the schedule is not reasonable, in which case that should be directly addressed with your advisor.  If it has been, then the problem seems to be that you haven't been honest enough about your situation.  If he expects you to graduate next semester because you're an Nth year student, and you and your advisor have decided that you're not going to graduate until the following semester, just say so.

  Not to mention this makes me look bad in front of my group mates.

Your group mates should know your situation better than someone who has been sitting in for a few weeks, so I don't really understand why this makes you look bad.  Unless they don't understand your situation and these questions are revealing it....which is not the visiting professor's fault.

  What should I do? Tell him bluntly "it's none of his business"? Stop attending group meetings?

Stop attending group meetings?!?  Presumably the group meetings are an important part of your own research and progress [although with your advisor absent, I have to wonder...], in which case not going would be a terrible overreaction.  (If they are really not valuable, then okay, don't go.  You'll work more quickly without having that waste of time.  But tell your advisor about it: why is he having you go to meetings that are a waste of your time?)

I think the bottom line is that this faculty member is trying to be helpful, but if you have fallen into an interaction with him that from your perspective is only getting you down, then you should talk to him directly about that.  I would suggest making an appointment with him privately and at that appointment have the conversation that he wants to have all at once.  Tell him about your situation.  You can tell him that you think he might be concerned about you but that now that he knows Extra Information X, you hope that he can see that you are now firmly on track.  If he disagrees, then he can share his opinion with you privately and perhaps even give you some actual help.  At any rate, one can only ask questions like "Have you formed your committee yet?" "How many years have you been here?" so many times.  If you give him the chance to spend as much time as he wants asking those questions, then with any luck he won't ask them again at your group meetings, and if he does you can say, justly, "We discussed this thoroughly last week, so I don't want to take up everyone else's time revisiting it now.  We can talk later if you like."

Anyway, please don't dismiss the idea that this faculty member could help you out.  Good luck.

Since you probably don't want to confront him in front of others, I see two options:

Let your advisor know what's going on and let him or her deal with
the problem; or
Assert yourself directly with the collaborating faculty member outside the meeting.  You can say, for example (calm tone throughout -- that's important), "I appreciate the concern for my progress that you've expressed in recent group meetings, but I can assure you that I'm in good hands with Prof. So-and-So.  You don't need to worry."  If he doesn't get the hint, and starts in on you again during this conversation, then you can step it up a notch: "I mean this with no lack of respect, Prof. So-and-So: I am already being well advised."  Stop there, and look him squarely in the eye for a moment (just long enough for him to hear the unstated Butt out), and then calmly leave, thanking him for his time.  If after that he still says things that make you uncomfortable in the group meeting, the next step up is to stand up to him in front of the others: "I don't think it's appropriate for you to ask me these questions.  As I already told you, Prof. So-and-So is my advisor, and I have full confidence in his/her guidance of my studies."

I would go for option 1 if possible.


How do I respond to "how do you like your program" if I completely hate it? I hate my PhD program. I absolutely despise the program and many people in it. Sometimes at conferences, with new faculty, etc. I get asked what I think of my program. The real answer is "it's horrible, I despise it and I  totally regret going. Please stay far away".

I don't want to lie and many people seem genuinely curious especially new grad students/faculty etc.

When I say things like this, the conversation either turns really awkward or they start asking questions. I really just want to keep my head down, do my job, and finish. I don't want to complain. I don't want to cause problems. I just want to do my job.

Many people seem genuinely interested like new faculty etc. I hate lying. And I especially would hate saying anything good about the program after being burned. I felt like when I was choosing grad programs people lied to me about this one and I'm super resentful. I never want to do that to someone.

I also don't really want to elaborate because some things are sensitive. Say, a professor is a jerk and is screwing me over somehow. I don't really want word to get out that I'm talking about that person.

I've found answers like "Well, I'm working on a cool project right now" or other deflecting responses sometimes work but some people keep pushing and really want to know.

  How to I respond to this question without lying?

"My experience hasn't been great" is a clean way to indicate the problem without criticizing anyone. You may want to couple this with something honestly positive -- such as "I really like my research topic, but overall, my experience in the program hasn't been great."

If they follow up -- and they probably will -- you can say something like: "I've had a number of issues with the faculty. I probably shouldn't go into all the details though." In this way, you give a reasonable answer to their question without inviting further discussion. You can then redirect the conversation to something you're more positive about -- for example, your research or graduation plans.

The real question is not how you should be responding to others, but how you should be responding to yourself. Your dislike for all of it is a message to you, that whatsoever you are doing is not for you. There is nothing wrong in this. You will need to gather the courage to live according to your own feeling of things, not according to the feelings others have about what you are preoccupied with.

We have this one brief life. Forget your response to others. Live in response to your own feelings.


No response to after PhD interview, Germany I had a face-to-face interview in a research institute for a PhD in BW, Germany (Don't want to mention city and institute for confidentiality) on the 16th of September 2019. The interview itself went quiet well, but I told them I could start from December onwards. I wrote to the Professor in November that I am available and the Prof. just responded "thanks for your patience". I wrote them (the Prof. and their secretariat) again a couple of weeks ago for an update on the application status and whether if I am still a candidate for the position (P.S. In very smart and polite way). I haven't received any response yet. Should I consider this a rejection? It has been almost 3 months since the interview and almost one year since my MSc graduation.

I was a candidate in an application process at a university in Bavaria a few years ago. After the interview, more than a year went by without me hearing anything from them. I wrote them a letter formally withdrawing my candidacy, since in this time I had already found a good job elsewhere.

I later learned through the grapevine that someone else was ranked first in the process, but negotiations between them and the university took forever. Once negotiations were finished, the official job offer still had to wait until the faculty council approved the offer, and this council met only every second month. Thereafter, the offer had to be sent out, and the offer had to be accepted. All this bureaucracy made things take forever.

"Thanks for your patience" tells me that you are still on the reserve list as a suitable candidate; you're not (yet) rejected. However, it's quite likely that someone else is the preferred candidate. Negotiations with this candidate are ongoing, and unless they don't manage to work it out, the job will not be yours. I would start looking elsewhere.

This is German bureaucracy! Hiring someone is a very long drawn-out process, as there are many (at times conflicting) rules to follow and many people who must sign off on the process.

They are generally not allowed to correspond with you by email or snail mail during the selection process (as that could be used in court by someone not getting the job and starting a Konkurrentenklage. So the advice to give them a telephone call is excellent (although I think all German universites are now closed until Jan. 6 or 7).

Do explore other options, as competition for PhD positions (especially in "rich" states like Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg) is high. If you goal is a PhD at all costs, try some of the less popular universities.


Citing unofficial translations One of the references I use in my text is paper A.
However, I've actually read an unofficial, unpublished translation B which can be found online.
The translation uses more modern definitions/terms and corrects some errors.
How should I properly reflect the usage of the translation in my bibliography?
Currently, I use the original reference together with a note in the bibliography which explains the situation:

[reference A entry] Translated unofficially by translator as title
B, year B. Translation available online at url B.

Note that the original author did not give permission to publish the translation.
From the Translator's preface:

[author] has asked that all republication of any of his works (in original or translation) be ended.
He has not actually invoked copyright (which, as stated above, he does not believe in), but asked this as some sort of personal privilege.

Citing both, as you currently have, is fine and provides good a good indication to readers who are unfamiliar with this paper.
With regards to the fact that the translation was not permitted by the author, that is strictly not your problem. Copyright doesn't apply to people who are viewing or otherwise using the copied content, but to its distributor (i.e. the translator in this case). This would be no different to me simply sharing the URL of an unofficial stream of a football match (where the official source is a payed TV channel) with a friend --  I would never get into trouble for this, only the website hosting the stream could.

Let me recommend, just to protect your own reputation, that you cite only official sources of the document, even if it is in a language you don't read.
However, if the translation is either of an out of copyright work, or authorized by the copyright holder, as seems not to be the case here, then the translation can be properly published and you can cite it. If it is visible on the internet then it has, in effect been published, even if it is infringing.
If you honestly found the translation on the web then there isn't any issue in your reading it to understand the original. You can't unsee things, after all. But, as a professional, you don't want to contribute to copyright infringement.
But the issue goes beyond the minimal requirements of copyright. The author, according to comments made here, has expressed a clear preference that translations not be made and yet. Even if they "don't believe" in copyright, they still hold it until they give a license or release it to the public domain. I would respect the clearly stated wishes of the originator. At some point in your future you will be thankful if others respect your copyrights and other clearly stated wishes.
My only additional worry is that, if you can't read the original, that you need to be assured of the accuracy of the translation.

See this for a discussion of copyright of translations (in the US, anyway).

There is, however, one additional consideration, though I'm pretty sure it doesn't apply here. It is possible for an extension to a paper be written in a different language. The structure of that extension would be very different from a translation, however, even if it had to give fairly extensive explanations of what is said in the original. In that case, the original would have frequent citations to statements, not just an overall statement of the origin. Moreover, the extension would need sufficient creative content to be considered a copyrightable work in its own right.


Should first introductory paragraph explicitly state the subject of the paper? I am trying to write an introduction for a scientific paper. I am not sure, when I am announcing my subject, should I write that this is the subject, or just mention it without announcing it outright?

This is very confusing so here's an example.

a. Man was always interested by aliens. This paper discusses the possibility of alien life.

b.Man was always interested by aliens. Currently, scientific discoveries are shedding light on whether it exists.

Which phrasing is better? Is the first one too blunt?

The purpose of the introduction is to focus in on the specific, and likely more narrow, topic of your research from a larger perspective. the "larger perspective" is the larger scientific problem to which your study is tied. Therefore you can start the introduction by briefly explaining the larger perspective followed by identifying the existing gaps in knowledge and gradually work towards your own question.

Many books on scientific writing compare the introduction to a funnel where the wider question is focused to the appropriate width of your research question. the main point is to set your study in a wider perspective so that you can tie your results into the gaps of the larger perspective. This helps readers to get a good perspective of your research and evaluate the results vis-à-vis existing knowledge.

Hence, your scenarios a and b look like a way to describe the writing strategy where in reality the two or three sentences usually requires one or a few paragraphs of text.

The best model for an essay is "get attention and state idea, explain explain explain, restate idea." However, every essay is different and there are countless strategies.

The best idea is to start the essay with something that captures attention and at least hints at the topic. Then at the end of the first paragraph state your claim. You want to snag the attention of the reader, and tell them the thesis statement. Keep the "hook" relevant though. A good idea is to start with a shocking fact or tell a quick story, unless its a scientific essay.

The middle is for explaining everything, and maybe a good idea is to use a paragraph to discuss the stuff from the hook paragraph. Then the end is pretty much an inverse of the first one: Restate your claim and tie up loose ends.


Is it my responsibility as an undergrad student to figure out if my thesis is affordable? I have an undergrad thesis idea that involves transformers. I am trying to take the lead on the idea before I contact a professor about it - i.e. figuring out exactly how I'd make it happen, and if it is realistic. The problem is that because of covid, the largest research funding I can get from my university as an UG is $500. I read a paper about a type of transformer, and I would like to apply that to an area it hasn't been applied before (my interest area). However, it seems like transformer based research is expensive.
I am worried about two things:

I don't want the professor to think I am idiot for suggesting an idea that might be big in scope / too expensive, but I truly do not know how to determine if it is too expensive / out of scope
I do want to publish first author. If this idea is too expensive, am I allowed to ask if he has any other projects for me (I can also provide him with my other interests).

Is it my responsibility as an undergrad student to figure out if my thesis is affordable?

Usually, no.  This is an example of where your faculty advisor should help you.
Do take a few minutes to research costs before discussing it with your advisor.
There might be exceptions if, based on your area of study, you were expected to know about costs already.

Maybe your best approach is to contact manufacturers who would have an interest in commercialisation and see what advice and resources you can get from them


Do I need to sit for TOEFL or SAT? I'm actually an United States citizen who has been living and being educated in Malaysia.  So currently my family decided to send me back to the States to continue my future studies.  Some people told me that I need TOEFL/SAT results to prove my English but some of them said that I don't need it because I'm a citizen.  I'm kinda lost now...
What should I do to prepare myself before going there?

As Nate Eldredge already mentions in a comment, there will be a statement somewhere on the application page that specifies who needs to provide language scores as part of their application and who doesn't. Since schools receive large numbers of applications, there isn't really any leeway for special cases: Just follow the letter of the application requirements. If this requires that you to take the TOEFL or SAT, then that's what it is -- whether you think that's fair or necessary or required is a question that's entirely unimportant.

If you are a native speaker, don't bother.  If you are not, do.

It is possible to not be a citizen and be a native speaker.  And vice versa.  Consider babies moved at 5 months.


How precisely should I implement algorithms from other papers? When I write a paper comparing my algorithm to someone else's, how should I make sure that the results are not skewed because I implemented the other algorithm poorly? Is it acceptable to write that the other algorithm was implemented to my best knowledge?

It is usually sufficient to say that you tried to optimize both your algorithm and the baseline(s) as much as you could (provided you actually did so).

Before writing your own implementations though, you should first check that the authors of the baseline(s) haven't published their source code. You may even write to them. I've heard all kinds of replies to such requests: from people sending me the code within minutes, to people telling me their code was lost in an old laptop long ago (the paper was 2 years old...). If they don't have the code, you can ask them how they would/did implement their algorithm.

It would be good practice and very beneficial for the community if you then publish both the code for your algorithm AND (if you implemented them) the code for the baselines.

You could compare the computational complexity of each algorithm, without considering any implementation. (Of course, comparisons between implementations are interesting, but there are many barriers to conducting such comparisons, e.g., comparisons aren't skewed because of coding issues.)


What is the proposed penalty for students that paid an essaywriting service to complete their papers for them? I had noticed a sudden change in the quality of the essays submitted two of my students. When I confronted them, they were quite frank and admitted that due to lack of time, they had assigned their papers to be written by an outside source, an essaywriting service (a booming business that must be).

What is the proposed penalty?

If I take this on an administrative level, they face a pause of educational activities for 6 months to 1 year. But since this is the first incident, I do want them to learn their lesson, but at the same time taking into account that they were honest with me, not being punished too hard.

What do you propose? Is there something I can do to keep this from an administrative level and at the same time punish them?

The official punishment already has a fork, being the first time and honest can help them to get a suspension closer to 6 months than to a full year. Also, you can help them get a speedy process, so the penalty starts counting as soon as possible.

It is important that there is an official record of this event, so they can't pull the "it is the first time, I promise" again. They now have a record, and they know it.

This said, I can't believe they didn't know they were doing something wrong, so I don't think one should be very forgiving.

Offer a ceiling grade -- perhaps a maximum possible course grade of B.

They were honest; this would be fair.


How is it in my best interest not to submit a paper to two journals simultaneously? The two journals I am considering for my paper each demand that the paper be submitted exclusively to their journal for consideration.

What do I win if I don’t keep this rule?

If I get rejected by both, I will have found out earlier that the paper is not worthy of publication.
If I get accepted by one of the journals, this is very good. I will have found out faster which of the two journals is willing to publish me.
If I get accepted by both, this is really a dream. I should probably find a reason (excuse) to withdraw the publication from one of them.

In any case how can submitting to two journals negatively impact my reputation more than the gain by being actually accepted? (More so considering I will probably leave academia after my PhD dissertation.)

What can I lose if I don’t adhere to this rule? What sanctions, if any, can I expect?

It is quite likely that there is an overlap in who gets asked to referee the two submissions, which would lead to the double submission being detected.
Double submission of papers is sufficient ground for retraction - even after the paper has been accepted for publication. As some journals publish submission dates with published papers, it is conceivable that your double submission is uncovered after publication - and that you end up with a retraction, ie no published paper.
Academic misconduct (and double submission is such) typically is sufficient for dismissal from a PhD program.

It certainly is in your best interest, otherwise there would be no need to prevent you from doing so. As far as I can tell, it seems like an edict against simultaneous publication somehow turned into an axiom that simultaneous submission is deeply unethical. It is not. (If others have more insight into this history, I'd love to know more!) It is not unethical for you to have your work under consideration at more than one journal, and it's certainly not "a crime." Arguments to the contrary tend to hinge on one of two things:

That it raises the cost of the journal. I do not work work in a field that pays its reviewers. If you do, perhaps this argument has more merit. In most disciplines, however, review is volunteer work. It does not raise the cost of the journal.

If it doesn't raise the cost of the journal, then the argument is that you are wasting people's time. You are not. If I receive an article I have seen before, I can submit the same review and be done with peer review for the day. Copy-paste is there, and it does not waste my time.

My personal belief is that it is unethical to prevent simultaneous submission. People are precariously employed. Others are on a 5-year tenure clock. It is deeply wrong to waste their time sitting on an article for months before telling them you are not interested. Sure. If your reviewers suggested minor revisions and you really want to publish the piece, you can ask the author to withdraw it from consideration elsewhere. But, at the very least, the initial outset should allow simultaneous submission.
I am not surprised that law reviews tend to operate this way. Those journals are obviously interested in ethics and legal considerations (it's one of their fields!), and their conclusion is that simultaneous submissions should be allowed. I agree. Unfortunately, you will risk offending people and possibly being "blacklisted." Then again, I have to wonder if this is an urban myth. I have heard about people being punished for simultaneous submissions, but I have never actually seen it happen...


Somebody made comments and suggestions on my drafts – can I be reasonably accused of plagiarism? I am a bachelor student. I have been working with a PhD on an article. So the article was supposed to be co-authored; however, he was mainly going to edit  my draft so it can be published. This is, the content of the article was actually my work, while the edition was going to be his part. I have e-mails with all the drafts I have sent to him until the final draft of the article. In these e-mails, one can see that he mainly suggested me to clarify some ideas or was trying to understand the ideas I was pointing out.

On the other hand, we have stopped working together. Thereby I sent him an e-mail, by recommendation of a professor, asking him if he had any inconvenience if I used my drafts for my bachelor thesis (in my country one first obtains the bachelor degree and then one must present the thesis). He answered that my drafts remain my work and that because of this I am free to use them.

The question which I would like to ask is if there would be any inconvenience if I wanted to publish this draft in a journal as long as it is actually my work. People have told me that as long as I have this e-mail where he is recognizing that my drafts remain my work, I would have no inconvenience, however, I wonder if this is enough for I did not ask him about using my drafts for publishing but just for my bachelor thesis.

I am wondering if he could accuse me of plagiarism if I would publish my work. I think that he could not do so because he has written to me that my drafts are my work and thereby I am free to use them. Besides this I have all the e-mails wherewith I could prove that the drafts are totally my production and that his contribution was mainly motivation and making me some suggestions or comments so that I can better clarify myself. Would that be enough in order I can publish my work without any fear of being accused of plagiarism?

Sending him an e-mail asking him directly is not really an option, for the relationship of work has gone deadly bad.

Based on what you said I have the impression that you are the main contributor to this work and he only had some editorial comments. Therefore, you publishing this work, cannot be classified as plagiarism. (If you think his contribution was sufficient for him to expect you to give him some credit (e.g. second author) then you have to be careful because it may cause further complications between you and him. Besides, it is your responsibility to make sure he gets the credit he deserves)

Most of the times people won't actually act against each other in situations like this. I remember a few years ago, I was stuck in a situation where someone decided to publish a team work with his name as the first author, while it was clear to everybody that he was not the major contributor. My adviser sat me down and told me to let it go (and I accepted because he had good reasons). What I'm trying to say is that in cases like this your supervisor would usually mediate and smooths things out before it gets serious.

However, I think the chances of him even trying to accuse you of plagiarism are very slim. But even so, if you publish this work before him, he needs to have enough evidence that he had major contribution to the work. I assume that this is not the case and it is clear from the emails that were sent to you.

I suggest you to simply let your adviser know that you will try to publish this work and don't worry about the PhD student.

It is irrelevant whether you have any emails from anyone permitting you to use text. If you publish your bachelor's thesis and a journal article and there is text overlap between the two, someone may notice and may publish a review -- either in a journal or online -- noting that this can be construed to be plagiarism. One must strive for the utmost transparency in scientific writing. You could either publish the paper first, and then include it as part of the thesis, or you submit the thesis first and refer to it in the journal article. In that case you do not want there to be text identity. You are summarizing in your journal article.

Do make sure that you are not publishing with a predatory publisher that does not do rigorous peer review but only takes money for putting an article online.

The PhD you mentioned is not an author, and should not be listed as such, if they are only editing. You thank them in the acknowledgements, but only those who did the research and the writing should be listed as authors (see the Vancouver protocol).


Are programmers usually included as co-authors in psychology? I work as a programmer supporting a psychology lab.

Most of my work is translating some paper-based or physical assessment into a computer-based equivalent or I create programs for novel assessments along with associated databases and support programs for data retrieval and basic cleaning.

Recently, a colleague included me as a co-author on a paper.

Are they are being overly nice or should I be a co-author on other papers?

In general, only researchers are included as authors. In some cases, the person doing the programming makes a critical intellectual contribution and becomes a researcher. In Psychology, specialist help is often brought in for programming, statistics, modelling, animal care, data acquisition, drug administration, and subject treatment. These support staff are often just turning a "crank". The crank is not necessarily easy to turn and the project would not be completed without it being turned, but turning the crank is not research.

Support staff tend to be mentioned in the acknowledgements. Programmers tend to get the short end of the stick in that they get acknowledge only the first time the software is used while other support staff get mention on every paper they are involved with. Support staff only become authors if they do something novel (for example, develop novel testing software). In these cases, they would be an author on the paper (often a methods paper) describing that novel contribution.

An author should be involved in many stages of the study; from involvement in design of the study, to involvement in analysis and writing. Someone who is merely programming is not an author, although this is a valuable contribution


As a PhD student, can my name be included in a research grant to protect my ideas? My ex-colleague (let's call her C) in the Lab is now a faculty member at a university. We have collaborated before in our work. Our works are similar in the methodology but different in the topic. In other words, in her dissertation, she used method X to solve a problem in topic Y. In my work, I will use a variation of X to solve topic Z.

C is now planning to write a research grant proposal about my topic and she asked me to help her in preparing for the proposal. C and my advisor (her ex-advisor) will be the PIs in the proposal. I asked C to include my name (as PI or any other way) because this is my work and I have already a published paper about it but C said that only faculty members can be included. But I feel that if I'm not included in the proposal in any way, my work will be stolen because C tries to get her students in her university to work on my idea.

If the funding is approved, I am afraid that they might hire someone else to work on my idea and then probably I won't be the first author anymore or maybe not included in the publication at all because both of them know my idea very well.

I'm new to the funding stuff so please help me. I might be overthinking about it.

While it depends on your region as well as the specific grant to which your colleagues are applying, I think you are approaching this issue the wrong way.

It is true that after working very hard on a certain field, subject or method, we may become overly attached to the ideas that we generate. However, if you are not willing to accept (and even embrace the fact) that other people are so interested in your work that they are using it and, more importantly, submitting grants on it, why are you even concerned about publishing what you do?

More importantly, they should (and likely already have, given that they are asking for your help to write the proposal) realize that you are possibly one of the most capable persons to work alongside with them on the topic, given that it was you who initially proposed the idea. You can benefit from their grant by collaborating with them -- perhaps by providing guidance to the students who they are willing to hire to work on something you value important!

As someone who collaborates with many other people who work on ideas that I initially generated, here's how I would approach the issue. Tell them which particular research directions you would like to work on yourself (perhaps as a part of their grant, trusting that they will fund you if the grant is funded), and offer your expertise to them on additional directions that they can have other people working on. On those latter papers perhaps you won't be the first author, but you may collect papers as second, third, etc, as well as see your ideas grow into a fruitful research.

Honestly, ideas are cheap. Most students and faculty have a dozen a week. Execution is expensive, and that's the part they are willing to do. I don't see a reason why you shouldn't help them.

You should only collaborate on proposals with people you trust. I don't know a definite way of protecting an idea in realities of academia, apart of some engineering disciplines, maybe. So you are right that after the proposal is written and submitted, only PI's will have control on how the project will be executed.

I never heard of people asking their PhD students to help them work on their proposals, unless these PhD students were then included as postdocs on the project. Otherwise, I can't see, what's in it for you. It is not your contractual obligation or academic duty as PhD student to help your professor write their applications. The same is true for your ex-colleagues and other members of academia.

You could politely ask your colleague to clarify in which role are you invited to collaborate on the proposal.


Why do some professors not recommend any text books for a course? I took a semester where a professor was teaching Statistics. He gave out no lecture materials nor the name of any text books.

When I asked him for a text book name, he gave me a name of a 900+ pages' book.
I could not find anything relevant in the text book which matches his lectures.
Finally, I quit the course.

The same thing happened whilst undertaking my Numerical Analysis course.

See this YouTube video named Introduction to Computer Graphics at 16:31. This is okay may be for 3D computer graphics. But, I guess, not good for math.

Why don't some professors recommend a text book for a course?

Reasons why I do not use textbooks:

Most textbooks in my experience are bad.
Most students do not read them (probably because they are bad).
They are expensive.
They do not align with how I want to teach the course.
I can provide the relevant subset of content myself.

I can't see a reason to use a textbook in my courses other than for supplemental material (even then, I would much rather point them to some free PDFs/slides from various faculty that are online).

I think it is the idea that they want to design the exact content (topics covered).

I disagree with this stance because I think that many different courses can have benefit and that the biggest issue is not the exact topic list but how well you learn.  And I think textbooks are an excellent pedagogical aid (and also helpful for future reference, since you studied THAT book). I think almost all courses would be better off picking a text and sticking closely to it.  But obviously some people disagree with me.


Should I include having taken free online courses without credit or certificate in an application for a master's programme? I just finished my Bachelor in Psychology and the master's programmes I am interested in pursuing require some experience with at least one programming language. Of course, at no point in my studies was there a course related to programming and I am considering taking free online courses. Since there have been some questions on MOOCs with certificates, I want to make a question about MOOCs without enrollment, credit and certificate of completion.

Does one gain anything by mentioning attendance at such courses or will a reviewer of an application dismiss it as an unverifiable claim (since there is no proof that one has actually attended the course)?

There are many masters programs where programming is not formally required, but still very helpful. Beginning programming is definitely not a masters level skill (nor is it final year bachelors). From that perspective the most interesting questions from an admissions point of view is first of all: do you have affinity with programming (many people, even computer science students) hate programming.

To know that you did additional work shows that you know what programming is and that you are willing to invest some effort into your studies. If you fake this will make you miserable on the course.

The course will however not be relevant in assessing your intellectual abilities (your bsc will) as not only is it hard to verify, it was not designed to test them in the first place.

You may be interested in taking a MOOC on http://www.coursera.org . Coursera offers several beginning classes in programming. There is one starting this Febuary entitled "Programming for Everybody" offered by the University of Michigan that teaches python which is a relatively easy programming language to learn. You will receive a certificate of achievement signed by the instructor for the free version.For some courses there is also a verified certificate available if you are willing to pay a little extra. A verified certificate is a method of proving that you and only you did the work for the course which is good for putting on your resume.Your coursera profile will show which classes that you have taken and allow visitors to see how well you have done. You can mention on your resume that you have some experience in python from this class providing a link to your coursera profile just like you would provide the address to your own website if you have one. You will need to make sure that you make your profile visible to the general public though.

 I would say that taking a MOOC class will help in showing that you have some experience in a given programming language so it will count for something, but it won't count for nearly as much as an accredited course from your university. That said if you combine it with examples of programs you wrote using the language you learned on the class on github this would be in my opinion enough to lend credibility to your claim. You may not be familiar with  www.github.com  it is a website where you can host your source code and make it visible to the public. Making an account is free. Here is a website with some  resources for learning github . Similarly to coursera to include it in your resume provide the url for your account on your resume.


Should I cite a paper for its literature review? Let's say I'm writing a report about sociological consideration of Aurora borealis in hipster communities. I want to support the value of my paper by showing that the way in which people consider Aurora borealis is a major and recurrent question.

I have found a paper saying in its literature review: "Aurora borealis have been written about for at least 4000 years, starting with Chronicles of a Minoan watching the sky by Ithurts Myneck (~ 2100BC)". So this is a perfect example of an information I want to report in my paper.

However, this paper turns out to deal with the physics of charged particles in solar wind - that means neither the scope of this paper, nor the scientific discipline it belongs to are related to my topic. Moreover, the reality of the book Chronicles of a Minoan watching the sky is evidenced by other means (i.e. this paper is not the only one that is talking about the book). But I cannot access the book to read it.

Question: I want to write in my report that Aurora borealis has been a concern for a long time, and prove this assertion by giving the example of the Chronicles of a Minoan watching the sky. Should I credit (i.e. cite) the paper where I found this information, even if it is not related to the core/added of the paper?

I want to give credit for the information I found, however, it is sometimes said: "When you cite a paper, you will be citing from [result] section. If you find yourself citing a paper based on something in the Intro [= literature review?] , you're just citing another citation."

There is more controversy on this topic than I expected, so I've done some further digging. The results of this surprised me!
Institution, Program, and Journal requirements
The rules of your neighborhood may differ, so you'll want to follow whatever more specific rules are given to you in your program. For example, Columbia College demands secondary source citation:

Indebtedness
You must cite any text you read that helped you think about your paper
even if you do not reference it directly in the text of your paper.

However, the OWL APA style reference gives differing advice:

Work Discussed in a Secondary Source
NOTE: Give the secondary source in the references list; in the text,
name the original work, and give a citation for the secondary source.
For example, if Seidenberg and McClelland's work is cited in Coltheart
et al. and you did not read the original work [emphasis mine], list the Coltheart
et al. reference in the References. In the text, use the following
citation...

So if you merely were directed to the original work, but then attained the original work and read it, there is not necessarily any need to cite the secondary source - but the guide doesn't prohibit it.
However, the IEEE has a stance as strong as Columbia, but in the opposite direction! As noted by York University in their IEEE style guide (page 5 of the pdf):

Should I use secondary references?
A secondary reference is given when
you are referring to a source which you have not read yourself, but
have read about in another source, for example referring to Jones’
work that you have read about in Smith. You should avoid using
secondary references and locate the original source and reference
that.

Murdoch University has an even stronger interpretation:

• IEEE style does not allow for the use of  secondary source.
• Locate the original source of information which is cited in a work
which you have read.
• If an original source cannot be located, it should not be cited.

Jeeze, no wonder there are so many different answers!
So it would seem there cannot be a one-size fits all answer - it depends. What is required in one field and style is forbidden in another, and optional in a third (and apparently even then people differ).

I'd cite it, noting that this paper on a different subject mentions in passing that...


How to gain strength for an exam I have been studying for 2.5 years which is only 15 days away? I have been preparing for a very important exam for 2.5-3 years. And now I am completely exhausted, the exam was scheduled to happen in May, but due to COVID-19 it got delayed to September end. This delay and uncertainty did break my motivation a bit but I still kept on pushing, and now I'm completely exhausted. I don't have the strength to go and take the exam. I have prepared well for the exam, and have been putting about 7-8 hours each day with very little breaks in between, so acing this exam does mean a lot to me and my future also depends on it. But I just don't feel like taking the exam. Even my preparation has been suffering due to this for a week or two.
The exam is just 14 days away, so I don't want to take a break as this time is very crucial to revise the material, but obviously I'm unable to focus on it, which is worsening the situation and acting like a negative feedback loop.
It's like in the saying "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe", now I have worked hard to actually get a sharp axe, but no energy to actually use it. Please help me, what can I do to get out of this situation.
With the amount of effort I have already put in preparing for the exam, and with my future depending on it, I really don't want to mess this one up.

Take a two week vacation. Do things you enjoy. Relax. Exercise. Watch TV. Sleep.
The gain from any studying you can do in two weeks will be minimal, compared to the previous three years. The gain from going into the exam rested, relaxed, and with energy will be immense.

Two weeks is plenty of time to recover your physical well-being.  Fixing that will prevent the "worst case" scenario of an incomplete test.  You have already prepared for the best-case scenario of a perfect score with two years of study, there is nothing more to do there.
Step one, is to set a fixed time at night for going to bed, and time for waking up in the morning.  Set fixed times for meals, and make sure the calories are not too low or too high.  Ask your family to help you support these times for your exam preparation.  Use your favorite type of regular exercise too, it is good for the brain.  Instead of more studying, which is causing you anxiety, read your favorite fiction.  If you really don't like fiction, catch up on movies you have missed while studying so much.
Take a practice exam one week before the exam.  This should give you an idea if your recovery is on track.  If you feel that the health strategy is working, keep doing it for the last week!


Should I simply ignore it if authors assume that I'm male in their response to my review of their article? I received a response about a manuscript I reviewed earlier, and the authors write about the reviewer (i.e., me) and his concerns.  As a woman, I'm not so keen on this.

Obviously this isn't intentionally insulting or anything like that---it's a minor blip.  Nevertheless, it's a bit irksome, and the feminist in me is thinking that's not right; it's a microaggression (one of the everyday reminders that you don't belong here).

I could simply ignore it, but...

Question: Should I simply ignore it if authors assume that I'm male in their response to my review of their article?

There's no issues inside the manuscript: they thank the reviewers without using pronouns.

I'm particularly interested in if an editor would typically just groan and consider me a troublemaker for saying anything.  And probably not pass the message on to the authors anyway.

As a reviewer, you are supposed to comment on academic value and scientific correctness of the manuscript.

As a woman, you feel unhappy about authors not guessing a correct pronoun for you and not using an appropriate gender-neutral pronoun.

It seems that the issue has nothing to do with the manuscript and hence you are not reacting with your reviewer hat on. You are considering your response based on your role as woman/feminist/activist — but not as a reviewer. You are not reviewing the paper, you are reviewing author's communicative behaviour.

As long as you make it clear that you are not commenting as as reviewer of a manuscript, I think you can make this remark to the editor.

If the answer to the reviewer was restricted in length (based on characters), my suggestion is to ignore it.

In that case, "he" is simply one of the shortest pronouns available in English, and in length-limited texts, every character may count when struggling for including another statement relevant to the content of the paper or of the review.

That doesn't mean there are no better choices available, such as using "R" to refer to the reviewer (or "R1", "R2", ..., in the case of multiple reviewers) in a stylistically clumsy (based on current preferences, where repeated mentions of the same object are typically substituted with pronouns - this may be changing, of course), but short and gender-agnostic way.


Creating a research questionnaire with repeating sections I am preparing the questionnaire for my Doctor of Business Administration research; for the purposes of this question (on Academia SE), I am investigating techniques used in customising cars. It is conceivable that a respondent has used several techniques, so I envisage repeating the same questions, each time for a a different car or technique.

I imagine that the same repeating structure would be needed in a medical exam, where the respondent can give data about several complaints.

Is there a name for this technique? Does it have a canonical source?

I appreciate that this question might not be within the scope of this site.

This is a form of branching (I guess "conditional branching" based on a screening question).

A good model for this is the Bureau of Justic Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey. In that survey, respondents are asked screening questions that identify incidents of crime victimization (e.g., respondent was attacked). Respondents are then asked to complete an "incident report", which asks an extensive number of questions about the episode of victimization. Here's an example of such an incident report for the 2012 survey. Respondents may complete zero of these incident reports or they complete up to ten.

Another, simpler, model is the U.S. Census (or most household surveys) that ask for basic details about household members. For example, the 2010 Census Form asked for details of up to 12 household members. In a telephone or online context, of course, respondents would not see the questions relating to household members beyond the number they initially list.

It is usually referred to as a "checklist". This term also implies that multiple answers are allowed, while "multiple choice" may mean either single or multiple answers.

Depends you how you structure it, the name can change as well. For instance if you line up all the customizing techniques in columns and all the cars in rows, the questionnaire then can be called a "checklist matrix".

Regardless what you end up calling it, people are usually not very good at identifying the names of all these questionnaire formats. So, I will suggest attaching a non-technical description (like your question's wording) and/or an actual sample question in your document to avoid misunderstanding.