Applying same graduation school with my girlfriend, is it ethical? Me and my girlfriend are currently studying in the same university and same department. We both applied couple of master's degree programs abroad.

One of the programs is in both our interest and she already got accepted for that program. I want to apply for the same program too but there is no question regarding your spouse / girlfriend etc. Should I notify the program about this in my application?

At best, that information would be (should be) irrelevant to them. You want to be accepted on your own merits in any case and a fair evaluation will, hopefully, assure that.

But you also need to be flexible in planning your own future. For example, if there are other universities nearby, it would be good to also make application there. Then, if you don't get accepted into the same place, your relationship can still survive.

But a relationship can, if strong, still survive a couple of years of separation.

But give it your best shot. Riding someone else's coattails isn't a strong point in your favor and people are unlikely to change relative rankings of candidates for such reasons.

And yes, it is ethical to apply to the same programs, if that is your real concern.

Let me give you a worst case scenario, though it would be unethical and I doubt that any university would follow it. But suppose you tell them and they decide not to accept you and think that she, then, won't come either. They then rescind her offer and offer it to someone else. Some programs, notably in medicine, need to fill every slot since it is expensive to run a program partially populated.

I seriously doubt this could happen, but I recommend against inserting wild cards into the decision process.

Firstly, what you want to ask yourself is if you like that school that your girlfriend is going to.

You must prioritise your education before your girlfriend.

Is it in a decent city/area and easy to transport from an apartment/current home?
Have you been accepted to that school/able to go?
Is that school a high rated school?
Does that school participate in your interests (sports, programming, events etc.)?
Is the school specialised in your area of study?

These are some things you should consider. If the school is rubbish but you just want to be with your girlfriend I suggest you pick another school which is better.

However, if the school is decent/pretty good it's fine to go to the same school as your girlfriend, but don't just do it to be with her.


Is it acceptable that I plot a time-series figure with years increasing from right to left? I have a plot like this in my paper, but one of the co-authors says The x-axis is backward. I think as long as keeping all figures in the same style, it is ok. But I am not sure if there is really such a rule that years should increase from left to right? My field is environmental science.

I think readers will be strongly expecting that time increases from left to right in a graph.  It's probably not a "rule" that you'll find written down anywhere, but it's certainly the overwhelmingly common practice. Having time go from right to left will very likely confuse your readers, and I don't think it should be done unless there is a very strong reason for it.

A graph axis is a (segment of a) number line.  Numbers increase to the right on a number line.  Not all variables are numerical and therefore not all variables support axes: categorical variables are a prominent example.

The first thing readers notice about your graph (even before meaningfully looking at it) is that there is a decreasing trend.  Do you intend to convey that some quantity is decreasing?  If so, then this graph conveys your intent.

Only after carefully inspecting the horizontal axis does a reader discover that you have a non-numerical independent variable (because your labels are not in number line order).  Do you intend to treat years as non-numerical data?  If so, then this graph conveys your intent.


Are one journal editor able to see decision of other journal editor in same publisher? My manuscript rejected by the editor of Journal A (MDPI publisher). Then I submit my manuscript to Journal B (MDPI publisher), it rejected again by the editor of Journal B. My question is editor of Journal B is able to see Journal A editor`s decision? Simply different journal editors in the same publisher are able to see each other`s decision?

No. You can see the decisions of papers submitted to your journal, but not to other journals, even if they are by the same publisher. An employee of the publisher with access to both journals might be able to, but not the members of the editorial board.

If both journals are in the same publishing house then both editors have access to the same database of records so yes.

Editor B probably searched the database for your name as a first step and the result of editor A was listed...

Only a guess but possible.


How to accurately digitize plot data from figures available as vector graphics? Measurement data in publications is often provided only within figures, while the original data is not available. There are some very useful tools around to digitize such data, such as the web application WebPlotDigitizer, the app Engauge Digitizer or within the software Origin, but to my knowledge they only support raster images.
Since publications are usually available in digital form and figures therein are often embedded as vector graphics, a more accurate digitization would be desirable. Are there tools around which allow to directly digitize vector paths from figures (similar to the aforementioned methods)?
This question goes beyond precision (see further remarks below) and also addresses an efficient and semi-automated workflow.

Remarks

The achievable accuracy of course depends on the quality of the figure, or more specifically on (i) how the figure was originally produced, and (ii) how it was processed during the publication process. Since often high-quality plotting tools are used (e.g. guaranteeing proper resampling) and journals don't always mess up, figures in appropriate quality should now and then be available.

The problem goes beyond precision in terms of reading out values (which could be resolved by rastering figures in high resolution and using the aforementioned tools). In complex figures graphs could (i) cover each other up, (ii) overlap themself due to scatter and line thickness, and (iii) have varying sampling rate. Hence, rastering involves misinterpretation of data. Using a vector graphics editor for preparation before rastering (e.g. hiding individual graphs) would help, but is time-consuming and does only solve some of the problems.

At first, it should of course be checked if the original numeric data are available, as required by some journals (unfortunately not in many fields). Also, the corresponding author could be contacted, which often won't lead to success for many reasons such as unavailability (of data or author, after some time) or unwillingness.

Thanks to Martin and Massimo Ortolano, whose contributions inspired some of the remarks.

This is an amusing programming/hacking challenge, but my guess is that in 90% of cases the best solution lies in the realm of human affairs, and that’s simply
to email the authors and ask for the data.
Why? Two reasons:

When it works (and I expect it would most of the time), you’ll know with certainty that the data you have is exactly what the authors were working with rather than some approximation recovered by trying to reverse engineer an unknown sequence of human and algorithmic processes to convert the raw data into a figure. (Vector graphics may offer the illusion of lossless encoding, but that’s assuming no lossy steps were applied by the human or software at any step along the way — a dangerous assumption to make in practice.)

In the infrequent occasion when it doesn’t work because the authors refuse to share the data, you’ll still learn something useful about how trustworthy their data can be assumed to be (i.e., not at all). You can still try to revert to a technological solution, but in most cases I’d just assume the data is invalid and not worth relying on.

TL;DR. Extraction doesn't work; rather than attempting extracting, ask authors for raw data.

Since publications are usually available in digital form and figures therein are often embedded as vector graphics

Although many publications are prepared in digital form with vector graphics, such as those prepared in LaTeX, the vector graphics are lost during conversion to camera-ready format, such as PDF, wherein vector graphics...are constructed with paths (source: Wikipedia). I believe   precision is lost during conversion (but I'm uncertain). Further research provides evidence that precision is indeed lost:

what in PDF parlance is called an 'image', by definition always is a raster image. There's no such thing as a 'vector image'. Even if the original file which was converted to PDF included vector graphics, then the converter program could have decided that it includes these as raster image. If you extract this, you'll not get your vector graphics back, but a raster image. Raster graphics which are preserved inside a PDF as such cannot be extracted by pdfimages.

Thus,

Are there tools around which allow to directly digitize vector paths from figures?

Original vector graphics cannot be recovered, assuming non-lossless conversion. Partial reconstruction should nonetheless be possible, with some loss of precision.
Even if original vector graphics could be extracted, it surely wouldn't be known whether they were indeed the originals, or some partial reconstruction, which is dangerous for science.


Is it okay to cite a paper from arXiv? I have found a very good overview of a topic and I want to cite it in the introduction of my paper. The writers are very well known people in the field. Is it then okay to cite the paper that is not published and is only available in arXiv?

There is nothing wrong with citing paper, reviews, etc., which have appeared on the arxiv (and only on the arxiv). Go ahead and cite the paper.
(If your paper gets accepted at a journal, they might ask you to update in case the paper has been published in a journal in the meantime, but in the fields where the arxiv is commonly used, journals and referees will have no issues with references to the arxiv.)

You can cite everything that you want, including arXiv contributions. However, you might want to look for alternatives. In case of review/overview articles you often will be able to find some and use them instead without risking plagiarism. In academia, peer review is the standard way to make sure a paper meets the necessary quality criteria, so peer reviewed publications are more trusted sources.


Reasons for an academic to need administrator rights on work computer Questions related to this in a not specifically academic setting have been asked elsewhere, notably Should developers have administrator permissions on their PC? and Should dev be admin on their computer? My question relates to my job as an academic at a (UK) university.

I moved to using Linux at work so that I did not have to have my computer managed by my university's IT service. This is purely because they are poorly resourced/managed and so addressing small problems takes a very long time. I might, for example, have to wait several weeks for a piece of (free) software to be installed. This imposes unacceptable (to me) delays on my research. They are now changing University policy such that all PCs connected to the network are managed by IT (reasonable), backed-up (reasonable) and local admin privileges are restricted to those who can demonstrate a genuine need for them (reasonable, but I am unwilling to go back to not being able to make progress because of them).

I am confident that one way and another in the end I can persuade them of my need -- but I would like to avoid the delays, meetings, and aggravation this will involve.

What are good, unarguable reasons, that I might need local admin rights. I'm currently thinking 'compiling code written by my co-author' but I might need something more concrete. They will not know enough about my research to know what I might actually need or not.

So far, I have only come across one reason for needing something close to administrator rights on a fixed department machine: using scientific software.

When you start using a new scientific piece of software, you often have its source code, and need to build it first. Typically, there is no documentation of what exact packages in your Linux distribution are needed (as this changes over time, and there are many Linux distributions as well). So the process is:

Try to build
Identify the cause of error (installing new software, updating the compiler, ...)
Fixing the cause of error (requires administrator rights
Repeat steps 1-3 many times until done.

You can only move towards the respective next issue when one has been resolved. It is unrealistic to assume that you can give an admin a list of required packages upfront,

Without admin rights and an admin reaction time of, say, ~6 hours, this process may easily take a week. With admin rights, the process will be much faster.

BTW: When you start using scientific software professionally, there may be more packages that you need to install (LaTeX, screen, ...), so the process continues.

If you tell the IT people that this is the (unavoidable) process with most scientific software, and you will need to work with ~10 such tools during your PhD, then you should have a good point. On a technical level, there may also be the possibility for "admin light" access, namely by whitelisting your username for "sudo"ing a package installation request. Perhaps that is an option as well in your case.

Just say that you want to install Linux and that you will waive any requirements for technical support in writing to their superior and to yours, though you hope they might help if the need arises.


How much score in GRE computer science subject test is considered 'good'? I'm applying to MS / MS-PhD programs in CS this fall.

I don't have a good GPA (2.86 on a scale of 4). I have experience as a research assistant under a professor and also a couple of good projects.

Right now I'm working as a developer, so I have around 5 months of experience. I have a GRE score of 314 on 340. I'm giving subject test to improve my chances of getting into a grad school. What score can be considered 'good'? I don't have much time to prepare and I am a little rusty on some of the topics, what is the good advice for a crash course for subject test in, say a week or so?

As @davidshen's answer points out, my answer is now moot, because the GRE subject test in computer science is no longer offered.

For most applications to strong departments, there is no good score on the GRE CS subject test; there are only bad scores.  A score below the 50th percentile is a red flag, indicating significant gaps in your undergraduate CS background.  (The raw score is completely meaningless to most people, even those of us who work on admissions committees; only the percentile score matters.)  But graduate school is about research, not standardized tests, so no GRE score is good enough to get you accepted.

There are a few exceptional circumstances where a high GRE score actually gives some useful information.

As Daniel says, a score in the 90th percentile or better can partially make up for a poor GPA.  (It worked for me; my GPA was worse than yours.)  It's probably not enough on its own, though.  (It wasn't for me.)
GRE scores are useful for calibrating GPAs of students from unknown schools.

On the gripping hand, many graduate programs (like mine) don't require GREs; their admissions committee may not even think to look at your GRE score unless you point it out in your statement of purpose.

Admissions at Grad schools take many things into consideration for giving admissions.There is no good or bad GRE score. With your GRE score of 314 ,you can get admission in to a top university if you impress about your research,have good LORs from Professors ,good SOP.So admissions depend up on many criteria,not just GRE, 314 is ok score, so work on building up good SOP and good LOR'S


Writing References for a Weaker Candidate Two of my students interns have applied for graduate school and are now asking me for references. Both did well, but one did really well. The weaker student is still excellent, and will do well in grad school I’m sure, but my reference for him will not be as strong.

They are applying to some of the same programs.

How do I reflect their ranking in the letters without completely killing the weaker candidate’s chances?

How honest do I get with the weaker candidate? I think it may be better that they apply to more (and different) programs, but don’t want them to get the impression they are not good enough.

More context:

The interns worked on one project together where the weaker student was the lead (culminated in a submission to a top venue). The stronger intern had a separate project that he successfully completed, in addition to two more projects that are currently in the works.
Both are applying to top US schools.

Let me suggest a few things you might consider. The one thing you don't want to do, of course, is to explicitly compare them. Depend on the fact that an application is multi faceted and while letters are very important, so are other things.

I suggest that you first think about what would happen if it were turned around and you were receiving the letters. What would you want to know about each of them. What positive traits, especially, are you looking for and would want some assurance about. You might make a list, separately, for each candidate.

Next, I would write the two letters on different days, giving yourself a bit of time to let the first one settle out so that it isn't the freshest thing on your mind when you write the other.

Finally, I would write the letter for the "weaker", but still strong, student first. Say what you need to say about that student to best support the application. Be honest, of course, and stick to facts. What has this student done to make them a good candidate? How strongly do you feel about their future success? You don't need to send the letter yet, but set it aside.

Then after, a day (or so), think about the other student and write that letter. Don't refer to the first letter, but use the same criteria.

Ideally, the letters should be independent, but it is probably impossible to assure that completely. But give it a try. Use some technique in which you can think about each of them independently of the other. And if you would surely accept one or the other of the students, or both, into your own program, say that, but separately for each. That is the most important part of any recommendation, perhaps.

You can check this: Writing a letter of recommendation for a mediocre student

But I would advise to merely write a simple letter describing how average the student is. That is not a bad thing. Average does not mean mediocre. Mention first that he took 2 classes with you and:

Attended as per reglament/regulations
Presented his work/homework as requested each time.
Got along with other students and never got into
a fight.
Was respectful to his superiors and equals.
Kept himself orderly in class

A person does not need to stand out or be exceptional. A recommendation letter can recommend how average good is someone. Grades are not important if he did pass the course, which was the objective, and in some regards or countries, the capacity to get along with others (AKA dont get in trouble) is even more important. Some institutions will prefer a candidate that can work along people and follow orders than one that always tries to show off.


How do hiring/promotion/grant committees assess individual applicants who've authored papers with huge teams While reading this slightly-too-snarky question, I was reminded of a slightly more serious question I’ve wondered about from time to time: how does being one of the 1000+ authors on a paper like the LIGO discovery or one of the CERN collaborations influence your career?  I’m used being in a field (mathematics) where most papers have between one and three authors (I’ve written with three separate four-person teams, and people have often considered this a bit exotic), so when reading a CV, one can reasonably ascribe most of the “credit” for a paper to any of the authors.

If you’re in a situation where you have to judge the research output of a scientist (like a hiring or tenure committee), how does seeing a paper from an enormous collaboration change your thinking?  What do you if you have make a decision between candidates whose publication lists are identical (due them being in the same collaboration)?

There's generally a way of assessing your contribution to the project even if it's enormous. So even if you're 29th author, if you were the senior manager of say particle detection and analysis, that's knowable. And they'll have a letter of recommendation from the project supervisor detailing your role.

And people on the committee (especially the person's department head) if they think you're great will advocate for you, the importance of your role, and the importance of your contribution to it.

It depends a lot on what you are using papers for. A published paper can inform a committee on the relative author potential for:

Capacity for innovation
Scientific leadership
Skills in data analysis and interpretation
Skills in scientific writing and navigating scholarly communications
Team membership
Peer connections
Capacity for securing and maintaining funding

Any paper with more than 15-20 authors supports with difficulty any of the above items, as there is an evident dilution effect. For instance, when looking at a paper such as Chatrchyan et al, with 2189 authors, what can be inferred regarding the contribution of author 123rd (randomly picked...)? Only, at best, items 5, 6 and 7. Accordingly, only if such gargantuan papers are accompanied by others more reasonably authored ones, can the multi-authored ones be considered credible.


What is the minimum score for the GRE subject exam in mathematics? Unfortunately, the admission website of a university I am interested in applying to does not list the minimum score required on the GRE math subject exam.

Does anyone know the minimum score requirement for this exam when applying to graduate schools to study mathematics?

There is no definite minimum GRE score (other than the smallest possible score on the test) for any program, unless that program explicitly has adopted one. If they don't mention it on their website, you could try calling or emailing their graduate coordinator and asking them.

In all, here are the main possibilities, and the reality varies by institution:

Case A) There is no minimum, and they consider all applications.

Case B) There is a minimum, and they will tell you.

Case C) There is a minimum, but it is a secret.

Case D) There is no formal minimum, but there is a de facto minimum in that they almost never (or never) actually accept someone below a score of X, even though they technically say there is no minimum. In the end, this is the same as Case C above.

In practice, the most selective institutions will occasionally mention "averages" like 80% percentile or 90% percentile - but without a standard deviation that's not really very informative. It is also the case that many people view GRE scores differently depending on your country of origin, so it is not necessarily meaningful or helpful to know anything like averages.

In the end, the advice for the GRE is: do as well as you can without harming some other aspects of your application (don't let your grades slide just to study for the GRE), and as always try to have the best overall application packet to maximize your chances.

Let me be straightforward. If your GRE math-sub is not higher than 90%, then don't send it, because it will not give you much extra credits. Students in my undergrad usually get 95+%, the median (of students that I know) is like 96~97% (sample size: around 10). I come from a country whose students are notorious for being good at exams and math, so don't feel too frustrated if you cant get 95%. I think 90%+ is good enough.


when should I stop searching the literature? I'm seaarching the literature at the moment to write a literature review but I don't know when should I stop searching and start writing?

The facile answer is you don't stop searching the literature. Even as the review evolves, you should be including new references if they are noteworthy in addressing questions within the field. This process should continue as long as you are working in the field of the problem.

Of course, from a practical standpoint, you do need to select a cutoff. There should be a reasonable point in time in which you've set the outline of the review, and decided on the main topics and questions to be discussed. At that point, it would be fair to set aside adding more references, and stick to what's been published. However, you should continue to monitor the field, and if further revisions or updates of the text are necessary, then you should include the papers published in the interim as part of your updates.

You should develop an outline, in consultation with your advisor, of what is to be included in the literature review - this should be based on the research foci and priorities of your research.

What I do when writing a literature review, is to actually write the review at the same time as doing the research.

When should you stop?  when you have covered each of the foci and priorities to the point when you (and your advisor) are satisfied that you have synthesised the scope of each of the foci and priorities.


When changing fields, should I focus more on describing past research or connecting it to the new area in my statement of purpose? I want to change my field from molecular biophysics to theoretical ecology. While they are basically required some same basic background (physics, math, programming), the rest is quite irrelevant. In my current draft of this part, about a half is about this the problem and the result of the work, another half is for my contribution and what I've learnt. Having said that, should I focus less on describing the work and leave space for the thing that will be useful for the next research?

Below is copy from Choosing research ideas to include in a statement of purpose.

  What have you already done? What problems have you solved, or at least worked on? What independent projects have you been part of? What were your key contributions? What did you learn? What did you teach the world? How do your results compare to what was already known? What original ideas are you most proud of? Be specific, technical, credible, and confident (but not arrogant). Refer the reader to your web page for more details. Have a web page with more details: preprints, project reports, source code, videos, etc.

I am going to focus my answer on your original question statement (but without getting involved in editing the official title of your Question):

When changing fields, should my past research be written in a way that brings out the maximum relevance to the new area?
In my current draft of this part, about a half is about this the problem and the result of the work, another half is for my contribution and what I've learnt.

Good.  This is exactly what they're looking for, in that section of your essay.

Having said that, should I focus less on describing the work and leave space for the thing that will be useful for the next research?

No, you can let the "previous work" section stand alone.  That's the section where you show the committee that you have done good science, and that you can speak about it in an understandable way.
Just to make sure we're on the same page -- your essay is going to have another major section, where you get to be imaginative about what you would like to do in the new field, right?

At the very least, focus on transferable skills. These are the tools of academic and scientific research which are applicable to all fields of science (and your ones in particular). Some examples are analytical thinking and problem solving.

Sometimes these skills are further divided into 'hard' and 'soft' skills, which are more (and less, respectively) rigorous. Soft skills are important to make your audience aware that you have a well-rounded experience, and will make the transition easily (from a social standpoint, for instance). Here's a list to get you started.


Bad Relationship with Master's Supervisor: Missing Reference I'm in the situation that I'm completing my master's research degree and I'm in the process of applying to several applied mathematics / computational science programs.

Here's me complaining:
I do research for a collaboration and most of my research work has been for the calibration field of the experiment. My relationship with my supervisor has been less than good. He originally lied about the kind of research I'd be doing and because I'm in a program where you pick you supervisor before entering into the program, my impressions of him where very preliminary and not reflective of his concern in students' interests. My current impression of him is that he's a career administrative academic, his involvement in the collaboration is merely to appear involved in research despite not being in charge or overseeing any research that comes out of the collaboration itself. In the past, I've voiced my concerns with him about needing to be more clear and direct about the work he wants from me for the collaboration, only for him to be incommunicado for several months, that is until someone in the collaboration needs something he promised he'd get for them. At that point, he comes to me telling me to get something to him in the next week, saying I haven't been doing anything meaningful; over working me. The research I do do often does involve different people from different institutions, but it's never enough to be a reference for me as my involvement with other collaborations is somewhat scattered
End of complaining.

I can't switch advisors because for one, he's the assistant chair and would and would have impact on if I should be kept in the program if I request a change.   And if I did end up switching, the department would likely delay my defense, which I cannot afford. I'm stuck with my advisor and project till my thesis. Which I can deal with, it's the lack of reference in my applications that worries me. Now, I have quite a bit of research as an undergraduate where I'm getting letters of reference (all research experience). But will the lack of a letter from my thesis research screw me over?

I was in a similar situation last semester. My advisor had me join a research project, but gave me little to no information regarding said project. He told me that I would be working with honeypots, and it wasn't until my first day that I realized he meant honeypots in the cybersecurity sense and not literal honeypots. Although I was relieved to find out that I wouldn't have any bee stings from my research I could tell that I wasn't going to get any help from my advisor. In fact, he was away attending conferences for most of the semester, and rarely responded to any of my emails.

Here's what worked for me that I think will help you. You need to post up outside your advisor's office. When he finally comes in, you need to talk to him about how you're feeling and your current situation. I don't want to say confront him because I think that's too strong of a word, but he needs to know that he is not pulling his end of the bargain. Or, if you can't switch advisors, just ask him if there is anyone other resource that you can talk to, to gain more knowledge about the project (but on the low make this your "advisor").

As for the references, I would talk to the other people that you are collaborating with. See if they can help you with a reference letter. Or try to find other people who have worked with your advisor and see what they have done. I hope this helps and wish you well on your future endeavors.


How much do grad schools care about my dismissal experience in my application? I am an international student from China and currently pursuing undergraduate degree in Canada, majoring in computer sicence. My academic experience is very tortuous and I want to tell my story and ask my chance to be considered for the phd study.
This is my second undergraduate study. I got my first honor degree in ECE at University of Windsor, Canada with distinction in 2015, standing at the top 15% of graduated students with a GPA of 83/100 (It doesn't look amazing but the university gave low grade to students). Afterwards I worked for 2 years in related industry. During the work, I found what I was more interested about is computer science. However, without a single computer science course taken, I find myself lack appropriate academic training. I planned myself to pursue a master degree in US. After getting a GRE score of 324 with 4.0 in analytical writing, I fortunately got admitted by Columbia University in 2017. This turned out to be a horribly overwhelming experience possibly because I lacked the foundations of computer science, I got academically dismissed 1 year after for not being able to maintain a gpa higher than 3.0. After a thorough retrospection, I made my decision to get a second bachelor degree in computer science in Canada. Right now, I'm 1 year to graduation with a GPA of 89/100 (not sure about the rank but should be close to top 1st or 2nd). I do get involved in some research projects with professors during summer, though I got no publications. However, the experience in Columbia seems to haunt me. So here I have some questions regarding the application:

I acknowledge that I have to include the dismissal experience in my application. The question is when calculating GPA, does the grades in Columbia take into account for the overall GPA or the GPA's are seperated for each institution I've attended?

How much will admission committee care about the dismissal experience? I did perform poorly in academics during some period of my life, but I think I have recovered from that not only in terms of mentality and maturity but also improvement in my ability of study. Will this experience kill my chance to get considered?

Thanks for any comment

without a single computer science course taken, I ... got admitted by Columbia University

If Columbia admitted someone who had never taken a course in CS to their masters degree in CS, I'd say they probably made a mistake.  A surprising one.  It's clear to me that the problem was

You did not know you were enrolling in a degree that is not for CS beginners
Columbia did not realize you were a CS beginner.
You are not a CS beginner any more, so this whole situation is no longer relevant.

does the grades in Columbia take into account for the overall GPA or the GPA's are seperated for each institution I've attended?

Each institution will compute its own GPA.  It would be unreasonable to combine them, as each university has its own grading system.

How much will admission committee care about the dismissal experience?

If you explain the circumstances (not prepared for the degree program) and what you did about them (second bachelors degree with good grades) then I think most admissions committees will consider your more recent grades to be more important.
You should seriously consider if you have any use for more degrees.  You might have enough already.

Can you provide more information about where you would like to apply for a PhD? Is it in Canada you want to apply? Having this information will make it easier to answer more specifically.
A lot will depend on where you are applying. It is unfortunately true that many institutes that receive a high volume of PhD applicants will dismiss applications with rough patches in educational history. However, you might be able to circumvent this in two ways:

Add a cover letter explaining 'extenuating circumstances' and explain the rough patch in your history. Then go on to stress the impressive industry and academic track record including a switching of subject.

Correspond directly with supervisors. If you can apply for a specific PhD project or a specific research group they will often help with the application process via the university. Start by reaching out to professors and meet with them to discuss your interest in their work/research group and take the time to explain 'face-to-face'/over zoom what happened in your past. This kind of personal interaction tends to lead to less callous responses than CV review procedures. Additionally, talking to a specific supervisor is generally a good idea before applying to a PhD as finding an understanding and supportive advisor is key to a successful and satisfying PhD experience.


Is tutoring (outside university) while doing PhD a good idea? Just to ask some advice regarding tutoring students while pursuing a PhD to supplement my income.
Is this a good idea? Tutoring pays well in my country, and I am intending to teach twice a week(2 hours each), which would generate a side income equivalent to 30% of my stipend.

(Side info: I am researching Mathematics)

Thanks for your advice!

Of course, whether it is a good idea can only be known in hindsight. But many PhD students work as private tutors, so if it sounds interesting to you, you might as well try it.

Some things to consider:

It will probably take you some time to prepare for each lesson. And unless your students will come to your home or office, also account for travel time and expenses. Four hours of lessons per week may require significantly more than four hours of your time.
What will you do if your students are late to their lesson, or don't show up at all? What if they don't study for their lessons? What if they are late in paying you? What if they (or their parents) demand some different style of tutoring than you had planned? What if they demand that you just do their homework while they Facebook?
Consider the time it will take you to recruit students. Assume that they  will quit unexpectedly, requiring you  to find new students and lose income in the meantime. Do not count on your tutoring fees as steady income.
Ethical issues: if you are working as a teaching assistant or something similar, you cannot be a private tutor to students who are enrolled in your class. Check for other ethics or conflict of interest rules that your university may have. In particular, although your university office may seem like a convenient place to meet your private students, this may not be allowed.

Mostly you should try in my opinion do proper teaching to a class rather than private sessions, per hour you'll get better pay, and it could be more valuable on your resume eventually.
Unless your PhD contract has some exclusivity clause, making time for teaching should be ok, just clear it with your advisors beforehand (I need money boss !).

Don't undervalue your skills, as PhD student you can already teach up to master level to a class, and should be practicing that skill. Teaching just one or two students is not the best use of your time at this level, imho.


Being in "Reviewer invited" state for 3 months, What could it say? For a math journal, after 4 weeks of submission, the status went from "with editor" to "reviewer invited", and its been in that particular state for the past 3 months. If you have any editorial experience, I'd like to know when would this kind of state happens, and does it say anything about the manuscript content, especially why the editor is finding hard to get the reviewers accept invitation, or is it that the reviewers for the subject matter of the paper, are rare to find?

Edit : more informtion

I have enquired. The Editorial Manager assured me that the Editor is carefully following and taking good care of the review process. What I have seen in earlier communication with Editor, I have no reason to doubt his interest in the manuscript. He seemed very much interested.

Earlier communication with Editor in Chief

It means the editor(s) invited reviewers who have not accepted the invitation. If this status has remained the same for 3 months, it's not a good sign. Completing the review can take time, but agreeing to review should be much faster.

My guess is that the editor is either very busy or not very active. He/she invited reviewers and left the manuscript alone. Now would be a good time to nudge the editor and hint that they should be inviting new reviewers, since the currently-invited ones are not likely to agree to review.


I recently started my machine learning PhD and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing I started my PhD a few months ago.

Seriously, I don't know how I got accepted, but here I am. I am not a computer scientist, but come from a different STEM background. My knowledge in machine learning in general is pretty limited (for now, trying to catch up) and publishing something seems so far out of reach that it's overwhelming. I don't even know where to start. I'm reading papers on semantic segmentation and similar topics (which is the direction my topic goes in), and while I understand most of them technically, I completely lack the intuition to ask good questions about them, let alone identify some gap in which I can dive into to publish something. I read them and think "And now what?"

I don't dare to talk with my supervisor about this. She will think I am completely stupid and not suitable for the position.

Can someone suggest a pathway for me to somehow get the ball rolling and systematically work towards successfully graduating with a PhD? I'm really willing to put in work, it's just that right now I have the feeling I'm stumbling around in the dark and it's not productive at all.

Talk to your supervisor.  Your supervisor accepted you, and therefore she must think that you had something to offer her research group.  Don't phrase it like you did here.  Instead, come to her with solutions and not problems.  For instance, you need to learn to ask good questions.  That's great.  So why don't you ask her to recommend a good dataset that is common to use so that you can start exploring different methods?

Ultimately, you are in a PhD program and one of the biggest things you need to learn is how to read the literature to discover the open problems.  This requires you to read far and wide.  A big thing that will probably help you is to try to replicate results. You aren't doing this for publications, but to better understand what was done and why, and what the limitations were.  Take a recent paper and try to recreate it.  If you can't, go to a less recent paper that that one cites and so on.  Build your way up.

For what it's worth, I think that a lot of PhD students come in with a general understanding of the field but not much of a deep understanding. As an anecdote, in the beginning of my PhD I'd find a paper that was written years before I started and think "Oh no! They've solved all of the problems I thought were important!" I'd rush to my supervisor to show him the brilliant research, and he'd show me the limitations and how they were being addressed.  It seemed to me at the time that these papers solved their problems, but by spending time speaking to him I realized that that was not true - perhaps the data set was particularly simple, perhaps the researchers didn't try to expand their results too far, perhaps the domain in which the algorithm worked was so restricted that it was of no practical use.

Eventually, I learned how to do that on my own, first by looking for common obvious problems, then by thinking more subtly as I got better - and as I started doing my own research and making my own mistakes.

Maybe I don't have much to add on  top of previous commentators I am in your shoes at the moment.

I am learning how to learn.

First you have to identify an area in machine learning where you want to focus on (machine learning core or machine learning applications)

focusing on one area does not mean not reading or ignoring the other area completely, you still have to have knowledge about it.

Then get a bit deeper in that area.

read more of Survey papers ( it will help a lot ) instead of general reading.

If you have someone to ask ( like your supervisor ) that is a big advantage.

I am sure you will be ok with the time. just don't give up.


What are my obligations as an MSc holder? I hold two degrees, a BSc (2011) and an MSc (2013), from the University of Waterloo. I noticed recently that on my BSc it reads "[...] and has been granted admission to that degree with all the rights and privileges thereto appertaining.", whereas on my MSc it reads "[...] with all associated rights, privileges and obligations." I'm a bit curious about the difference. First of all, I wonder what these obligations might be. Off the top of my head I can think of a couple of rights and privileges that would apply to me as a degree holder, but nothing that I might be obligated to do occurs to me. A quick search for an explanation of the text didn't turn anything up either. I also wonder whether the association of obligations to the degree is peculiar to the MSc for some reason. Would also be curious about the ubiquity (or not) of such statements at other institutions.

Some insight can be gained from considering the Oxford degree day ceremony, which is still conducted in Latin and uses fairly traditional formulae in admitting graduands to degrees. The descriptions used indicate various rights and responsibilities (all translations from here):

Candidates for the DD, DCL, DM and MCh (all higher doctorates) swear to the following:

  Doctors (Masters or ladies/gentlemen), you shall swear
  to observe the statutes, privileges, customs and liberties
  of this University. Also when you shall have been
  admitted to the House of Congregation and to the House
  of Convocation you shall bear yourselves in them well
  and faithfully to the honour and profit of the University.
  And especially in those matters which concern Graces
  and Degrees you shall not impede the worthy or put
  forward the unworthy. Also at elections you shall record
  and nominate one only at one time and no more in each
  scrutiny, and nominate no one unless you know certainly
  or believe firmly that s/he is fit and proper.

For other higher degrees:

  You shall swear to observe the statutes, privileges, customs
  and liberties of the University, as far as they concern you.

They are then admitted to the degree by the Vice-Chancellor, with the wording (for the DD, DCL, DM and MCh):

  To the honour of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and for the profit
  of our Holy Mother Church, and of learning, I, by my
  own authority and that of the whole University, give you
  licence to incept [begin to teach] in the Faculty of Arts (or
  Faculty of Surgery, Medicine, Law or Theology) to lecture,
  to dispute and to do all the other things that pertain to
  the rank of Master (or Doctor) in the same Faculty, when
  those things have been completed which the Statutes
  require, in the name of the Lord – Father, and Son, and
  Holy Ghost.

(A non-Christian formula is available if graduands request).

Other higher degrees have a formula either conferring permission to incept (begin to teach) in the faculty, or just admitting them to the degree.

For the MA, graduands swear an oath "binding them to
be loyal, obedient and faithful to the University and its
interests, and to comport themselves circumspectly at
elections to University offices" before being admitted by the Vice-Chancellor.

Finally, BA graduands are admitted with the following formula:

  Ladies/gentlemen, I admit you to the degree of Bachelor
  of Arts: furthermore by my own authority and that of the
  whole University, I give you the power of lecturing, and of
  doing all the other things which concern the said degree.

To summarize, traditionally degrees were about membership in a Faculty of the university, and came with responsibilities to uphold the rules of the university, and participate fairly in elections. (These aren't empty words at Oxford, where they still confer 'MA status' on faculty members who do not have an Oxford MA so that they can participate in the governing bodies, and which still allows all graduates to vote on the Chancellorship and Professorship of Poetry). It may be that something similar is indicated in the University of Waterloo's ceremony or statutes, although it's also possible it's just traditional phrasing without anything formal behind it nowadays.

Obligations of a Degree-Holder

It seems reasonable that the degree-conferring institution would expect the following of those whom it grants degrees to:

Maintain or enhance the reputation of your school.
Maintain or enhance the reputation of your earned degree.
Support the education of others.
Education is privilege. A degree typically brings wealth and power to its owner. Do what others cannot do to make the world a better place.
A higher degree implies understanding, and the world holds you to a higher standard because of it. Use your understanding to bring understanding to others.

It might be worth contacting your institution to see how they would articulate these obligations. (If you do, please share!)

Useful Article

There's a thoughtful article written about this by Dr. Stephen R. Briggs, president of Berry College. You can read it here. Of course, it's written for graduates of Berry College, but it applies equally well for all of us. For those interested in this topic, it's worth a skim.

TL;DR: Degree-holders' opportunities for education were given by others. Degree-holders therefore have, in a sense, an obligation to pay it forward.

Here's an excerpt:

  On average, a college degree results in higher status, higher salaries and
  a better quality of life. As graduates accept their diplomas, I remind
  them that they have earned this distinction – but only in part. I
  appeal to them also to receive and cherish this honor as a gift,
  because others have made it possible. Others before them sacrificed to
  build America’s remarkable infrastructure – its institutions,
  political and economic systems, and freedoms. Still others built Berry
  – the financial base, facilities and programs that students today
  receive as an inheritance.

  Martha Berry stands as an exemplar in this regard. Although she never
  graduated from college herself, through a lifetime of devotion and
  determination she made it possible for thousands of others to graduate
  from college. It is important that we not take for granted her efforts
  or those of her many partners and successors. Berry students have
  always worked hard for their education, but they also have always
  benefited greatly from the foresight and generosity of others.

  For these reasons, Berry graduates have an obligation to build the systems
  and structures of the future. They need to become the pillars on which
  communities are built by serving as leaders in local agencies, schools
  and churches. They should open doors for those who need assistance and
  direction. They ought to provide a fitting return on the investment
  that others have made in them. In so doing, Berry’s graduates affirm
  that those of us who are privileged should strive all the more not to
  act privileged. Rights and privileges should advance what one gives,
  not what one gets.


Is it bad to publish a scientific paper with wrong results? I was working during the last year on developing an approach that determines human age class (young or old), but after I got exciting results I've discovered that I made a mistake when implementing some lines of code. I think that the mistake is a bit critical because I was comparing my approach and literature's ones. The mistake I made was during the classification task, where the data was entered in the right way but the experience was badly managed.

What should I do? Do I have to stay quiet or do I have to fix it? Note that the paper is not yet published nor peer reviewed.

Publishing things that you know are erroneous is a good way to get a really bad scientific reputation. Depending on how severe it is, it might go so far as to be labelled fraud and formally sanctioned, basically killing your career.

If it's important, then yes, you need to fix it.

If it's not published yet, then fix it before you publish it.  If it's published, then you will need to submit a correction or possibly even a retraction.  Good scientists do this, and it's much better to acknowledge your errors and retract than to have others expose you as a liar.

I think it is better to do so.
Because when you have results which are inaccurate or which are wrong, people who have access to that paper will surely have to redo the results and even the whole paper (study) if necessary.
By doing this, some of the missed concepts of the study may be filled up during the second study.
I had a task to come up with a term paper within a semester. Little did I know that the results were inaccurate. My lecturer instructed me to redo the paper and to my surprise I found new information which I didn't find during the first study.


Why do errors exist in peer reviewed publications? I found a mistake (not a misprint) in an article which has been published in a very good math journal. According the available data, the article was in peer-review process for more than 8 months. But I do not know why the referee(s) did not notice that. What are reasons for this kind of articles?

People make mistakes.
Manuscript authors, reviewers, and editors are people, and people are not perfect. Even if every person involved in the publication of a manuscript catches 99% of all errors, it's still possible that some errors will go unnoticed. This likelihood of course goes up  when authors/reviewers are careless, but it can never be eliminated entirely even with very meticulous review.

I would say there is another source of errors in peer-reviewed publications. The latter need to contain something new, so they are often state-of-the-art, and it is just hard both to produce and review their results, hence the errors.


How to stop hopping the learning chain and actually begin somewhere? Here is what I feel whenever I find something interesting and feel like pursuing it :

Oh so I like X (Computer Graphics), let me read up papers/books about it.
Ok let me begin with reading up Y (OpenGL)
But Y needs W (Linear Algebra)
Well reading up Z (Probability) first makes more sense.
Umm, you shouldn't jump to Z without learning U (Permutation/Combination).
And how come I forget about reading V (Number theory)
And what not..

I always end up searching and reading up "Best books to begin A/B/C/D.." instead of actually making myself begin somewhere. This consumes all my energy and I never really start.

Q. Have others faced this ? Q. How do you handle this and actually begin somewhere ?

Any help would be really appreciated.

Background : I am a working professional, with Masters in Computer Science (fascinated with Computer Graphics etc). Its been two years since my masters but I still kind of miss academia, my thesis work and other interesting stuff I did there. My current work is also pretty interesting and partially overlaps with my interest areas. However, other than work, I would really want to continue doing things related to my masters side by side (and MAY BE take up a Phd somewhere down the line). But the never ending feeling of not knowing anything takes over.

Its not that I am being forced to study any of this. Its purely for my personal interests that I want to pursue it.

Update 1 :

Thank you so much everyone for such overwhelming response. I really like several answers and points raised but haven't marked any yet because I am in the process of trying some and would update if something actually works for me. Meanwhile, I also found this talk really helpful :

https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator

Dan's answer is very good, and I want to add one more point:

Accept that on the first pass you will not be able to fully understand the topic. Appreciate that there are decades and sometimes centuries (for the math, at least) of research supporting the topic you're learning. Thinking you can "get to the bottom" of it in a few months, let alone a week or two, is not realistic. Choose a topic and try to understand that as much as possible. Keep notes on other interesting topics along the way, but don't get distracted by them; just accept them as assumptions as this point and move on. You can get back to them later.

This is meeeeee, oh, man. I'm such a dilettante. I forgive myself for it if it's hobbyist stuff and it just turns out not to be a real passion. It doesn't always feel good, though, and I get you. When I'm doing that, I also complicate matters by holding myself to the standards of what I think other people can do. For instance, I keep trying to tell myself that, if I were really interested or capable, it should be easy to make myself do it and stick with one thing. That's not true, though, so I've learned to treat it differently. Pick a very specific topic that interests you. Go ahead and do some Googling, but sit down and tell yourself, "I'm going to find a good book to learn about [that very specific thing] and buy it." Don't put it on your Amazon wish list. Go ahead and order it. Then, when it comes, make yourself a rough plan for how you want to go through the book. Come up with at least an idea of how often you want to work on it, and be conservative so it's easy to maintain. Then, dig out a bag, get yourself a clean notepad and pen or pencil, and put those and your book in the bag. That's now your school bag. Nothing else goes in it except your wallet, phone, and keys. At the times you've set out, take your bag and go to a coffee shop or library for a limited period of time (plan on an hour the first time and see how you feel, but decide the period ahead of time and stick to it).

People like us have a tendency to burn ourselves out, both in the planning and in the execution, so if you work on avoiding burnout, you'll go a long way towards being able to accomplish your goals. I'll add that I've also had a lot of success with MOOCs, because they keep me on track.


International standards relating to a professor publishing a student's thesis work without the student as co-author I am looking for international standards that speak specifically of a professor taking the thesis work of an ex-student that they had supervised and publishing a journal paper on that work (and just that work) without the student's name.

This relates to a specific case that I am aware of where the official university finding essentially admits that the aforementioned incident did indeed take place (it is largely undeniable), and quotes some generic definitions and policies regarding plagiarism, but finds that the aforementioned incident does not imply plagiarism and/or academic misconduct (due mainly to a supposition that the student did nothing more than grunt work, which I don't believe to be true at all, which contradicts the university's own expectations for the academic title obtained by the student, etc.).

The finding is an obvious attempt to sweep the case under the carpet.

However, the fact that this is clearly a case of plagiarism is sort of "folklore" to me and I cannot find something authoritative to back it up (lots of blog posts, etc., but no statement that speaks specifically to this sort of case written by an authority that an official from a well-respected university would be reluctant to explicitly discount or contradict).

Aside from my gut, my question then is: does this sort of scenario constitute plagiarism and/or academic misconduct with respect to some specific international standard?

(I would very much appreciate answers with pointers to a statement from a well-known professional organisation, reputable university, high-profile journal, etc. The specific area is Computer Science, just in case.)

There is no international standard because authorship practices vary.

COPE is the closest thing to a standards organization, but they do not publish authorship standards, or any other kind of standard.

References:

https://publicationethics.org/files/Recognise_Potential_Authorship_Problems.pdf

https://publicationethics.org/files/u7141/best_practice_for_issues_around_theses_publishing%20(1).pdf

Academia varies more than you think it does – The Movie (why there are no standards)

Publishing a student's thesis without their name is certainly unethical.

On top of getting the paper retracted by the editor as explained above,  each research institute will have his rules. Most of the time, those rules can be enforced by law.

Look at the good scientific practices document of the university. That will be the official document that a court would have to refer to. There is probably an ombudsman in charge of the first steps, ultimately a lawyer might be involved.


Travel reimbursement for interview after accepting another position I know a PhD student (X) who is soon to defend, reaching the end of his funding, and has thus been applying to PostDoc positions. He was applying to two positions in two different groups.

The first group (Y) invites him to present in person and suggests that he buy his own tickets, where expenses will be reimbursed upon arrival; he is very interested in the position and complies, buying the flight at considerable cost (15+ hours flying on two legs).

After buying the ticket, the second group (Z) requests an online talk and interview; he again is very interested in the position and complies, presenting the talk and doing the interview online. Shortly after, the second group offers him the position. Being very interested in the position and not wanting to appear unsure or ungrateful, he accepts a few hours after the offer is made, and a week before being due to travel to the first group.

Not wanting to be feel deceptive towards the first group, he tells them about accepting another position and offers to travel anyways in order to give the talk he has been preparing for their group. The first group tells him not to come and that they will not reimburse any costs.

Question: is it ethical/unethical for the first group to refuse to reimburse costs?

I'm also interested in anecdotes, similar experiences, etc., to get an idea of how common or uncommon the first group's behaviour in this situation is.

On the one hand, the original reason why the first group offered to reimburse costs is now off the table.

On the other hand, the student has acted perfectly honestly throughout (almost to a fault) but ends up out of pocket having bought tickets at the first group's request.

(Of course someone has to take a loss, but in my mind, it should be the group who takes the hit, not a PhD student soon to run out of funding, and who again was simply complying with the group's instructions to remain in their hiring process ... and is now getting screwed in the process.)

(There's a couple of related questions like this one, but I don't find a question that addresses the issue of the interviewee being out of pocket.)

Both parties are at fault for not communicating the terms of the reimbursement clearly.

It is reasonable for the university to want to reimburse only interviews that were actually attended, and to not want to bother interviewing applicants who have already declined.
It is also reasonable for the student to want to get reimbursed when they have personally expended funds in good faith.

It's a bit difficult to even say what the university's policy for such things should be:

Not paying these expenses encourages applicants to lie, go through with the interview, and waste everyone's time in addition to money.
Paying these expenses encourages people to get an interview, cancel, and then use the free tickets for a vacation (doubt this happens all that often, but it's possible, and can be a major source of scandal).

Regardless: in the real world, I think it's rather unusual for institutions to reimburse interview expenses for an interview that never happened. Given this reality, applicants are the ones that have the burden of establishing the reimbursement terms before shelling out their own money.

Yes, it is reasonable, justified and common for a university not to reimburse travel costs if

the interview was not attended; or
the interview was attended, the offer was made, and the candidate rejected the offer.

Your situation is quite similar — the candidate withdrew before attending the interview, which also, I think, makes it inappropriate for them to apply for reimbursement.

In your example, to avoid a risk of not being reimbursed, the candidate could:

Avoid making travel arrangements in advance,  and only buy a ticket when they are completely determined they will travel for the interview; or
Choose a refundable tariff for the flight; or
Buy an appropriate insurance to protect against such event; or
Do not rush accepting an offer from another university (and risk losing it, of course) to attend another interview.

Your question seems to only focus on ethics applied to University policies. However, the candidate also has made certain choices it is appropriate for them to accept their responsibility for consequences. It is a pain to lose money like this, but hopefully the position in another university is worth it.


What is a "professional student"? What is a professional student, in the context of a "Graduate and Professional Student Organization" in the United States (cf. this one)? How are they different than or similar to post-docs?

While Bill Barth's description of "professional student" as someone whose sheltering in academia and trying not to graduate is one I have heard, there's also a more formal designation for the term.

Mainly, post-graduate students who are in professional degree programs. For example, medical and dental students, law students, many students pursuing Masters of Public Health degrees, or MBAs, etc. are all pursuing degrees that are intended to be applied to a profession, rather than going further into academia. They often have somewhat different concerns than graduate students, hence the different term.

Without knowing the exact details (e.g. country, university, link to that organization's website), I would wager the following presumption:

This is an organization of those students who are more experienced, mature or advanced relative to the regular/typical undergraduate students. One category of these are graduate students, another is students who are established professionals outside academia - either due to work experience or a non-academic qualification - and are engaged in some kind of supplementary or advanced study programs.

Examples of potential such "professional students":

Electricians
Woodworkers
Mechanics
Performance artists
School teachers
Accountants
Nurses

in some countries these might fall under the "graduate student" category, but in others the qualifications for these professions are not undergraduate academic degrees.


Is it ethical to refuse enrollment of a previously dishonest student if you are the sole instructor for a required course? I am currently teaching an upper level course, and have caught a student plagiarizing this semester.  This course is required by our department for a degree.  I have strict policy on my syllabus that states plagiarism will result in failing the course, a judicial review incident report, and refusing to accept them as part of future cohorts.  Next semester however, I am the only instructor for this course, and possibly again for the following Spring.

I've been pushing my department to add more instructors, as I don't like being in a position where students who are incompatible with my teaching style are forced to take me over and over again, but they are having a difficult time finding someone.

Personally I do not want the student in my class again.  They have been nothing but trouble the entire semester.  From my interactions with the student, they don't have the required prerequisites at anywhere near a passable level, they are disruptive during class, and I had an inkling that they were trying to cheat off their neighbor during examinations.  (I had ensured that every other test was different so I didn't pursue this)

Should I just grit my teeth and waive this policy since they have no other path to graduation?

It's not up to you

It's reasonable for an instructor and syllabus to specify what happens in that course in certain circumstances. However, going beyond your particular course (including future semesters of it), any further academic punishments for plagiarism or cheating, including being restricted from taking or retaking certain courses, are up to the wider department, faculty, study program, or however your institution organizes things. There should be a universal (not made by and for a single course and instructor) policy on what are the wider consequences for certain acts of plagiarism. Perhaps that policy prescribes that being forbidden to retake that course (or some time limit) is an appropriate punishment, in which case your actions are valid. But if it does not prescribe that students will be prevented from taking future courses, then it's not up to the course syllabus or the instructor to unilaterally decide whether the student is eligible or not.

Note that I'm not saying that you should waive the policy just because it disrupts the path to graduation - there certainly can be academic dishonesty policies that may prevent students from graduating in case of plagiarism. But the question does not mention any specific wider policies, and if it eventually does come to a ad-hoc decision regarding a particular student, that still would not be your decision to make, this should be escalated to your superiors.

I have strict policy on my syllabus that states plagiarism will result in ... refusing to accept them as part of future cohorts.

The other answers seem to mostly comment on the ethics of this policy.  But my interpretation of the question is, what is the ethical thing to do assuming you have established the policy in your syllabus?  I also assume you are not breaking any other rules or laws, because I don't know where you are located.

The most common advice in recent years is that the syllabus is a contract between all the students and the instructor.  Therefore, you must follow the syllabus and refuse the student future enrollment.  The syllabus could be overridden by university policy, but not by your discretion.  We do not know that policy.  Any time you use discretion, instead of following the syllabus, it could create the appearance of discrimination or unfairness.

That said, this is a weird policy to have in your syllabus, and you should definitely discuss the situation with your chair or dean.


As someone outside academia, how can I get my math paper peer reviewed? I have written a math paper and I think/hope it is ready for peer review. I am 40+ years removed from academia and have no access to 'publications' but I have learned from my many re-writes and I have tried to follow the format of a sample "Journal.tex" from the Journal of the American Mathematical Society for my abstract, subject classification, and bibliography.
I would like to have peer review of my work. How do I begin?

Figure out what journal is appropriate. To do this, there are two aspects. One is essentially "readers interested in the articles published there are likely to also be interested in your work", the other similar level of how ground-breaking the results are. Without a subscription, you should still be able to see the abstracts of the recently published papers, and quite often you'll be able to access the content somehow (preprint on the arXiv, author's website, scihub,...).
Once you have identified the one journal you want to submit to, just look for their "instructions to authors" or similar, and follow them. This will typically be very straight-forward. They might ask you for your affiliation, but you can just respond with "Independent Researcher" there. Then patiently wait for the referee reports (expect something between 3 months and 1 year).
If you've chosen in an inappropriate journal, or if your draft appears to be very off (eg almost no references), the editor of the journal could forgo sending it out to review, and directly reject it ("desk reject"). So make sure that your draft is sufficiently polished, and that you've picked a reasonable journal. On the upside, a desk reject will typically happen much faster.

I suggest the following tasks for you:

register on all of: orcid.org, Google scholar, academia.edu, researchgate.net, mendeley.com, arXiv.org, hq.ssrn.com, publons.com, linkedin.com , so that you look like a real researcher.

upload a preprint. You'd feel bad if your paper is actually good, but some unscrupulous person tries to steal your work. I've seen this happen.

figure out some of the math professors who recently published something related to you preprint, and send a very polite friendly letter, something like:

Dear Prof. X
I got this result and I posted this preprint (URL and printout) and I noticed that you recently published Y and I would be very greatful to you for any comments or some advice on where to publish it.

You will probably hear back from some but not all of the people you contact.

if you can turn it into a good contributed paper or a poster at a joint AMS /MAA meeting or a section meeting, consider submitting your proposal and attending if it accepted. I'm not sure how soon they'll have these again because of the pandemic. There's a chance you'll talk to people interested in your work and hear some feedback.

figure out a reputable journal that doesn't mind if authors upload preprints. (You will probably receive solicitations from not so reputable journals that will publish almost anything as long as the author pays; they won't be able to get you a good peer review.) It is very likely that you will get fair and diligent reviews, even if your paper is never accepted.


My previous supervisor keeps asking me to review her papers. How to deal with this? I am currently a post-doctoral researcher at some institute. My Ph.D. supervisor, from my former institute, keeps asking me to review papers that come to her for review. I am pretty sure that this is because I am good at a particular topic which is not her expertise. She has coauthored papers on the topic but she is not an expert there.

I have two problems with this. First, since I am not her student now, she should stop doing this; I am an independent researcher now. Second, I feel that this takes away credit from me. She could tell the journal that I am a better person to be a reviewer and this will benefit me since I am still young. Currently, I use my skills, time and energy to review papers for which she earns credits and I lose a chance for the same. Should I tell her this or is it normal in academics? If I should, how should I?

No it should not be normal. It is the decision of the editor to pick a specific reviewer. As a reviewer, you are supposed to keep the manuscript confidential. While i would see that this can be argued if you ask somebody working in your organization and reporting/being supervised by you, i think giving material to somebody whom you do not have direct control over in another institution is a pretty bad violation of the usual journal policies.

There are a number of bad situation which could arise from this

You actually having a professional relation to the peroson which you review (without your former professor knowing)
You telling your new boss about this, and he/she deciding to do politics using that knowledge (delaying etc)
You plagiarizing the paper, without the editor being able to track how that ended up there (since nobody knows about it)
You asking for changes to include references to your papers (innocent, since the editor team wont catch it...)

So no, beyond you not getting credit, i think it is a pretty shady thing.

(Added after comment): There are essentially two options, which depend on the mindset of your supervisor.

You explain what I wrote and tell that this makes you uncomfortable - you don't have to tell about her taking credit for your work, so it is less personal.
You inform the editor about the incident, pass your review, and ask the editor to be confidential about it. (I would imagine that they may just remove you former supervisor from their list)

Let me be sure I understand... editors send her papers to review, she sends them to you to do the actual work, then she returns them to the editors as her work.  Is that correct?  If so,  you have two options.

You could, the next time you get such a paper, decline immediately and without making excuses.  "I'm sorry, I cannot do this, and won't be able to do so in the future."  If you're afraid of burning bridges, you might find a likely excuse, such as press of work.

The "nuclear option" is to accept the next paper, review it, and return it directly to the editor (assuming you can identify the publication and editor) with the notation that "Dr. X asked me to review this."  You absolutely will burn bridges if you do that, but you won't get any more papers from her, either. Edit: In the comment below, Dan Romik is correct that what I suggested is passive-aggressive.  However, if my summary in the first paragraph of the answer is correct, then the former supervisor is engaging in serial plagiarism.  A report to the editor is equally nuclear, equally certain to burn bridges, and likely equally effective.  (Before anyone says it's the same thing, I want to point out that responses to other current questions here take the position that reporting academic misconduct is not only appropriate, it is required.  Of course, those answers apply to students... )

Edit: It was suggested in a comment that I add what happens if one burns bridges with one's former supervisor.  That, of course, depends entirely on individual circumstances.  The best generalization I can reach is that, the further along one is in one's career, the less damaging it is likely to be.  If OP will depend on this supervisor for a recommendation following the post-doc, then it may be necessary to allow that former supervisor to continue to take advantage, or to fabricate excuses.  If, at the other extreme, OP is the star of the lab and is certain of a tenure-track position at the same institution after the post-doc, then burning that bridge has less chance for harm.


Can a college drop-out successfully re-enter academia? Obviously, the college drop-out in question is me, so allow me to supply as much detail as needed for you to answer this question as it pertains to my situation.

I come from a "disadvantaged" background; bad schools, bad home-life, the works. The high school I attended was one of those under-performing schools that undergraduate admissions romanticize as containing token diamonds in the rough. Entirely ignorant of the concept of financial aid and misinformed about college admissions, I didn't work hard enough to become one of those angels. Regardless, I did well enough to barely graduate with honors and earned a near-perfect ACT score, and I earned a scholarship to a private college.

My mental well-being imploded during that freshman year. I transferred out with a GPA of 2.9 to a local state school for my sophomore year. Unfortunately, this wound up being the worst mistake of my life.

My sights have always been set on higher education. On top of my personal issues, however, that developed into a paralyzing fear of failure and perfectionism. I spent the next five years barely keeping my head afloat, being dismissed once, re-admitted once again, and then finally leaving out of my own volition to seek out the healthcare I desperately needed from day 1. It's been about three years, but for whatever reason, The bureaucratic nightmare that is my former school still lists me as a student with a GPA below 1. Complications regarding financial aid and my change in majors make returning to finish that degree an impossibility, as I cannot pay for the rest of my degree out of pocket or through private loans.

I've worked odd jobs to save up to move out-of-state to work for a year to gain in-state tuition at a community college, and to begin a bachelor's degree that's actually relevant to my field of choice.

The choices that I would make regarding my futures studies are predicated on contingencies that I'm not familiar with. The biggest looming question in my mind is, assuming that one day I complete a bachelor's sufficiently well enough to entitle me to the prospect of graduate study, would my first attempt at a bachelor's be too big of an obstacle to overcome? What general advice would you have for me in my situation?

EDIT: My question presumes that I start and finish a bachelor's degree now with a decent-to-strong GPA and then apply for graduate admission. That's a different scenario than compensating for a low GPA earned with a completed bachelor's degree.

The biggest looming question in my mind is, assuming that one day I complete a bachelor's sufficiently well enough to entitle me to the prospect of graduate study, would my first attempt at a bachelor's be too big of an obstacle to overcome?

My experience is of course anecdotal, but for me the answer was 'yes, it is possible to overcome a poor academic record in your first bachelors program'. I will outline my story briefly and then summarize a few takeaways.

My story

I was a solid B student in high school, always doing well on exams but never taking homework very seriously. I overreached in my college applications and was rejected by five out of six schools. The one school to which I was accepted was the one I couldn't see myself attending, so I decided to enroll at the local community college instead.

I earned an associates degree with a ~3.5GPA and applied to three four-year schools, two for the linguistics major and one for the major in international agriculture. My associates degree was in social science, and I had been interested in linguistics since high school, but after working in coffee shops for a few years I was interested in the possibility of a career in the international coffee trade. I was accepted to all three programs, and chose to go to school for agriculture. My reasons for choosing that program over the linguistics programs still aren't very clear to me; in hindsight it was probably due largely to the fact that the agriculture program let me stay in my hometown while either linguistics program would have entailed a cross-country move. Regardless, I began at my new school and quickly got into academic trouble.

I didn't have the background for the courses I was enrolled in, I was still working full-time, I had an unhelpful advisor, I wasn't actually as interested in the subject as I had thought—any difficulty you name, it felt like I had to deal with it. I 'earned' a 1.0 GPA the first semester and a perfect 0.00 GPA the second semester, and withdrew voluntarily after that first year before the university could ask me to leave.

I got a full-time job and worked for two and a half years, but remained interested in linguistics and started to regret very strongly never entering a linguistics program. Finally fed up with myself, I applied to two schools: one of the two that had accepted me into the linguistics program three years prior, and one other. In spite of my poor showing in the agriculture program, I was accepted to both. I moved across the country to enroll in the program I should have enrolled in the first time they accepted me, and did very well there. I double-majored, earned my bachelors, applied to grad schools, and was accepted. I finished my masters degree this past May and am now in a PhD program.

So yes, it is possible. But...

Takeaways

I've learned a few things from my own experience. Take all of the following with a big grain of salt; they feel true to me, and they fit my experience, but they may not be generalizable:

Graduate schools are less concerned than you might think with your overall academic record and GPA. Rather, they are concerned with your ability to do graduate-level work in the program you've applied to. I had some terrible grades on my record, but they weren't in the subjects I hoped to study in graduate school. Over the entire graduate admissions process (I applied to five programs), no one asked about my poor grades from that year spent studying agriculture. It didn't come up once. That was very surprising.
I was honest about my academic record, but I didn't try to make excuses for it. I provided all of my transcripts, even the one with that perfect zero on it, to graduate admissions committees. However, beyond that, I didn't acknowledge those poor grades. There are people who will say that you should explain any poor grades in the statement of purpose you submit with your graduate application materials. I disagree. The statement of purpose provides you a maximum of two pages (in my field, at least; yours may vary) to sell yourself as a researcher. Any space you devote to an explanation of a poor academic record: 1) explicitly brings the reader's attention to a negative, and 2) leaves less space for other positives. The statement of purpose should give the impression that it's difficult to distill your research experience and potential down to two pages. If you don't even need two full pages, though, I think that's a negative.
The school in which I enrolled following that terrible year (academically speaking), from which I earned my bachelors, was one of the schools to which I had been accepted three years prior, before I had earned those low grades. I can't know for sure, but I can't help feeling like that fact worked in my favor.

  What general advice would you have for me in my situation?

Are you in school again now? If so, you've already cleared one big hurdle. Regardless, my advice is pretty simple: do everything you can to demonstrate that you can perform at the graduate level.

Take challenging courses—I was able to take a graduate course during my last semester (which took special permission from the professor and the college) and it was hugely helpful to have an idea of the expected workload.
Make sure your writing sample is the best it can be. A strong writing sample can go a long way in the admissions process.
Don't make excuses for yourself, but demonstrate through your recent work that any past poor performance doesn't reflect your real potential. In my own experience this was not as difficult as it might have been: I earned decent grades in social science, poor grades in agriculture, and then good grades in linguistics. I expect that poor grades and then good grades in the same subject might cause more concern.
Recognize that in many ways your extra lived experience (compared to your academic peers) is a strength. Many people go straight from high school to college and then straight from college to graduate school. Your experience working odd jobs and saving money for an out-of-state move might not be academic work, but it might give you a maturity and perspective lacking in other students. Compared to someone who's never taken time off from school, you might have a better idea what you want to do with your life.

("The biggest looming question in my mind is, assuming that one day I complete a bachelor's sufficiently well enough to entitle me to the prospect of graduate study, would my first attempt at a bachelor's be too big of an obstacle to overcome?")

From my own personal perspective, in addressing the above portion of what you have written in your explanation, is where I interpret your question to be. From this, what I hear you saying is that you did not complete a degree the first time you entered college due to other events and decisions in your life and now you want to complete a bachelors degree successfully in a different area of study. Assuming that this is what you are meaning, I relate to the anxiety you appear to have about possible obstacles and if it would be worth it.  I want to be clear, I cannot give you the answer you are looking for. What I can do is share with you my experience. My background is as follows; raised with a father that was mentally and physically abusive, divorced my mother when I was fifteen. By then I had already begun making poor decisions thinking the world owed me something for my pain and suffering. Was pulled out of high school and placed into a "rehabilitation" hospital, sent to live with a relative so on and so on. I received my GED  three months before my actual class had even graduated. At seventeen, I got an apartment and enrolled in college. I made it half a quarter before I quit due to other priorities I had in my life then. I spent the next three years making poor decisions, marrying an abusive husband, and having two children ten months apart. The next seven years were spent realizing my children needed better from me, divorcing, multiple trips to court and so on. I think you get the gist of where I'm coming from. Throughout a large portion of those latter years I managed to keep a job that I loved doing. I worked my way up literally from the bottom. During my annual vacation leave time I paid to take two classes to show that I was dedicated to my goal of applying to a specialized department within the same facility. It was enough to get me an interview and attain the job. From there the facility paid me to finish the rest of my classes and become state certified which took me another five years. I realize this is a long post however, my intention is to relay to you the work I put into getting where I have gotten both emotionally and productively.  After being in that facility for thirteen years, five of which were in that department I felt forced to resign the position that I was so proud of.  Due to a combination of political changes, a new supervisor with his own unethical agenda, and his initiation of hostile and retaliatory behaviors emotionally I was unable to handle it. I quickly found out that even though I am state certified with letters behind my name, I am unable to qualify for jobs in my area of study because the state passed a new requirement a year and a half ago that you must also have a bachelors degree. Upon inquiring at the only community college I would be able to afford, ironically the same one I attended at seventeen, I found out all the classes I had taken, even psychology, were unaccredited. They could not give me credit towards even an associates degree let alone a bachelors. And here is where I see myself relating to your perceived obstacle of, "is it worth it, or would I be wasting my time, effort, and resources". I looked at it this way, if I chose to give up on what I wanted for myself again, just because life threw me another unfair situation, then there would cease to be any purpose for the struggles I have fought to overcome in life. I did enroll and made the dean's list my first quarter in! But such is my life, the day after receiving my dean's list recognition I received a letter from the school notifying me that I was being placed on financial aid award warning status. After inquiring what this meant it was explained to me that because I dropped out of my college classes after the allowed drop time, while on grant and financial aid almost twenty years ago it counts against my overall completion percentage. Basically, I have sixteen credit hours of unapproved dropped classes. So, I am now in my second quarter working myself out of a negative balance in order to keep aid. I know this aspect differs somewhat from your situation. However, to sum it up, I found for myself that I love what I'm learning and may not even follow the same path I was previously set on. I can't change past decisions or consequences. My plan now is to let things, whatever they may be, happen on their own accord and view them as a guide towards finding the path I'm meant to be on. No obstacle is too big to overcome unless you allow it to overcome you. There are several grants and awards for non-traditional students such as ourselves. Even within our community college I know several students who were able to make use of alternative programs because of their background and previous failed attempts. There are several peer reviewed research studies showing that non traditional students excel when returning to academia. The research substantiates the movement towards colleges understanding that non traditional students come from a different psychological perspective than in previous attempts. If you are interested in any of these studies I will gladly post them.


Professor is upset about student comments about her lectures. What should I do? One of my former supervisors is upset about student feedback for her lectures. There are two problems:

If she provides complete slides with information, students complain that she reads from the slides.
If she doesn't provide complete slides with information, students complain that her slides are incomplete.

And

If she provides webcasts of her lectures, students don't turn up to lectures.
If she doesn't provide webcasts of her lectures, students complain she's a bad lecturer.

I know she's upset + it's directly impacting her medium-term happiness based on what she wrote on social media. However I have not talked to her about it. Should I? If so, what can I say? Both problems look generic enough that other lecturers must've dealt with them before. How?

EDIT: Thanks for the advice. Since there's little I can do, I liked her post and left it at that.

What should I do?

Honestly? I suggest that you sympathize courteously, but do nothing else:

She's a grown woman and an experienced academic, she doesn't need you to handle frustrations from student feedback.
You (likely) no longer work at the same university as her.
You're not a close personal friend of hers.
You don't have a good idea of what actually goes on in her classes these days, nor what the student body is like overall.
It is generally the case that students don't complain repeatedly and en masse about a course just for the sake of complaining and regardless of anything else. There's probably something that's wrong with the course (perhaps not even with her behavior) that you just don't know about.

An alternative to doing nothing would be: Suggest that she ask a relevant question here on  academia.stackexchange.com. We could obtain more information which you don't have rather than help her via a third party.

Assuming webcasts are something desirable, a technical solution to the latter problem may be:

Provide webcasts protected by a temporary (or better yet limited use) password
Explicitly announce that to get access to webcast, a specific student registered for class must contact the instructor and provide valid reason to need the webcast (e.g. they were sick that day in class).
Explicitly note that webcasts are limited to such use; and if someone abuses this by disseminating the password to other users (as detected via different IPs using same login/password), the webcasts would not be provided again to anyone, with offending student being publicly outed as the reason.
Offer webcasts with open access with meaningful delay (4 weeks after the lecture?), this way people can refer back to them if they need to revise material for tests; but can't use that as a crutch to help avoid attending lectures.

(a weaker form of #3 would be to protect webcasts with students' university login/password if that's an option the university systems offer - but that is likely to be abused - people even share login/password in workplaces, never mind college).


Did my former supervisor steal my research proposal? When I was a master student I worked in a PhD proposal with my master's supervisor. I applied with that proposal to obtain a scholarship from the university, however because I did not get the scholarship, and she didn't have money for paying the research expenses for the study I couldn't pursue the project.
Recently, checking the university page of my former supervisor, I saw advertised the same proposal I wrote and submitted for the scholarship application, exactly with the same words, same theoretical framework, same research questions, etc., she did not change a thing, and she is now advertising it as a "possible PhD project" for a new student that would like to apply for it (and probably get the money we needed for the research). Is that considered as stealing work? Can I report her somehow? I wrote all the proposal with constant feedback from her so I don't know if that gives her full authorship of it?

It was a proposal, not a publication. The ethics would depend at least a bit on how much she contributed to the effort. But it isn't necessary for her to leave the research undone if you have gone away and she participated. She can certainly follow up on it, even with another student. It would really only be unethical if you brought the proposal to her, relatively complete. In would have been better had she contacted you before proceeding, of course. I don't know if that was possible.

But if you are still in academia, you might be able to get back into this research, even if not as her student. You need to contact her with a request to participate, reminding her of your earlier work on the proposal. You might be able to achieve an authorship position, provided that you continue to contribute. But your past work probably won't be enough.

Note that I'm basing this on the fact that a proposal for research isn't the same as the research being completed. It is a proposal to study something. It is primarily an idea that might go somewhere.

If you can't participate, for whatever reason, you might still be able to get an acknowledgement in whatever results from the idea. You have to ask, of course.

Depends. Did the submission form say they owned the proposal you submitted? (This is common in consulting).
If you are feeling unkind, publish the proposal online someplace, RIGHT NOW, and call them out for plagiarism if/when the proposal gets used.