I (independently) solved a fellow student's research problem. I want to publish it. What should I do? A fellow student and I are part of the same graduate student research group (in applied mathematics), under the same PhD supervisor. The (relatively new) student came to the group with an idea for a thesis, and we helped him come up with a different research idea that more suits our research interests, but still ties to his original goal.

The current formulation of his research problem is mostly due to input from me and our mutual supervisor. As in the model is based on our suggestions across multiple meetings.

Being interested in this student's research problem as well (or at least my formulation of it), some months ago I offered that we collaborate on it. Not much came out of it, mostly, I think, because this student is still very inexperienced, and his mathematical maturity is not so high.

Some time ago I came up with a different partial solution for the aforementioned research problem. As part of our (failed) collaboration I asked him several times to update his simulations to consider this solution, but he seemed to be against the idea, believing that the original formulation is better. Our meetings mostly consisted of arguing about which model is better and me trying to teach him some mathematical concepts he can use to analyze his work.

A few days ago I have (independently of the student or our supervisor) come up with a solution which is better, and completely different from what the student has been trying to analyze. The solution invalidates a lot of the student's work up until now (he has been working on this problem for a few months), since it is simpler and more effective.

I want to write up this solution in a paper and publish it. I already have basically all of the results written down (except one lower bound which I am still working on), and a nearly complete first draft.

Here's the problem. Do I include this student as a co-author? I am conflicted, because this paper really is my own original work. However, it is based on the research problem which our group "handed over" to this student. I do not wish to put him in the unfortunate situation of having months' worth of work invalidated, and everyone in our group views the problem I have solved as "his" problem. However, it is also true that this paper consists entirely of my own research.

Ideally in this case I would approach the student and ask him to collaborate with me on the paper, as in, refine some of the results, or simplify some of the proofs. However, based on many conversations with him, I believe that the student is too inexperienced to do this, and is not familiar with the main mathematical tools I have used to prove the paper's result.

How should I proceed?

Some more details: I should mention that I have no personal qualms about sharing authorship. I am mostly worried about two things:

whether it is the most ethical thing to do;
I feel that if I include him as a co-author, he will want to make a contribution to the paper. But I want to have complete creative control on the paper, and feel that sharing creative control with him is going to slow me down.

There is a larger issue at hand that you seem to be missing.

Yes, I do believe that you can publish your own work, and probably independently if neither your advisor nor your colleague helped. And I understand that there are some field-dependent conventions in mathematics that would be best to discuss with your advisor.

That being said, I believe that, being a senior and more experienced student, you should not have allowed the situation to have reached this point. That is to say you should not have scooped your colleague in the first place. You offered your help to collaborate with your colleague and ended up quite literally stealing his project and are now thinking about publishing it because he was not able to work as fast or as efficiently as you (because he is inexperienced, as you said). This is something that should have been discussed with your advisor at a much earlier stage.

You should understand that this will probably not be the last time that you can benefit from collaboration, and you don't want to be known as the person who steals other people's projects. Healthy collaboration is an intrinsic part of academia (and society, in general). You are expected to be trusted to review other people's papers without scooping them, and in the future you will likely advise inexperienced students in their own projects, many of which have been suggested by you, and that you could solve with much less effort. More importantly, you will be partly responsible their success.

Speaking from your advisor's standpoint, I would consider your action harmful to the group's health. While I generally applaud collaboration between students, in my group, projects and milestones are set with the understanding that students can benefit from them, and that they can help them progress in their more ambitious goals (i.e., a dissertation). This is particularly important for inexperienced students. Should there be a major change of directions (such as a student unable to make progress and someone else benefiting from it), I would like it to be run through me (or other senior member of the lab) first so that it can be arranged for nobody to be in a losing situation. In your case, your colleague is in a losing situation, his name going in the paper or not.

The moment you noticed a solution to the problem, you should have informed your colleague (and possibly your advisor) and both of you should have worked on it, together.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest something different than the other answers: I suggest that you bury this paper. Set it aside, don't submit it, don't mention it again to your advisor or fellow student.

This was supposed to be his research project. If he didn't feel comfortable collaborating on it with you in the way that you wanted, you should have backed off. Now that you have invested in this work you have quite a dilemma: if you publish it, this student now has to find a new research project. Depending on how much he has invested in it, his response could range from being seriously irritated to never wanting to speak to you again. And honestly, you can expect the same range of possible responses from your advisor.

By submitting this, you will get a publication in exchange for burning a lot of bridges and sacrificing a lot of goodwill from people you need in order to succeed in academia. Put the paper aside. If the student changes problems then you can consider publishing.


How should I ask a potential advisor why they haven't published in the last 3 years? I'm using a throwaway account for privacy. I know professors are human beings and "I can just ask", but, as this is the start of the relationship, I don't want to seem rude - or to seem that I am interviewing them. This potential advisor has published papers in top journals before, but nothing for the last 3 years.

I know this question is related: PhD with a supervisor who has not published anymore since 2014, but this professor is quite young, so the situation is different.

I think that if I ask them about "their current research interests" they will just talk about the current project that is about to begin - without addressing the issue I'm interested in.

Instead of a question that might be insulting, you should probably ask them what they've been working on for the past few years. You need to know that in any case and their answer might give you the reason that they haven't got anything out recently. There may be a lot of work in progress but not yet ready. That sort of thing can actually be an advantage to you and knowing what it is, certainly is.

But if their answer indicates not much research, then you might want to keep looking.

By the way, this is a topic for a sit down conversation, not just an email. The latter might work, but would require more work from the prof and so you might not get as complete an answer.

Perelman practically didn't publish anything from 1995 to 2000.
Result: Proof of PC.
So maybe it's a good thing your potential advisor didn't publish in the last few years ;)


Someone cited my paper in an irrelevant manner I checking my google scholar page, when I noticed that one of my papers, of which I am a co-author, had been cited by an unknown academic. I read the article, which was on gene regulatory networks, and my paper is in computational neuroscience. The reference wording doesn't make any sense though. The only connection is the concept of an attractor network.

If I met this person at a conference, and he went about relating my paper to his work, I would call nonsense. This must happen to more well known academics all the time, so is it best just to let these things slide? I suppose if I was really famous and getting 200 citations a week it would be too hard to track every bad reference down, but I only have a few.

Well, what can you do? Not much. I can confirm that it does indeed happen… sometime people even cite a paper of yours to justify a conclusion that you have not reached in the paper, and even one that you strongly disagree with.

One option is to let it slide. You are not responsible for the content of papers that refer to yours, or the accuracy of their citations for that matter. The paper author is responsible, and to some extent, the journal’s referees. (I tend to spend quite some time checking citations  when I review papers, but that might just be me being overly sensitive to this particular issue.)

Another option is to contact the paper’s corresponding author, and ask him point blank. You have read his paper, and you are unclear as to the extent of the connection between his writing and yours. See what it gives.

Finally, in the current way academic research works, you do not really have any mean to call out their behaviour publicly. I do not believe you should, either.

Additionally to what F'x suggested, I would suggest you to discuss the details of this situation in a personal website or blog.


How to proceed when a mathematical result contradicts existing literature? An author has proven an interesting mathematical result, but notices that this result contradicts existing literature.

Does the author have to find an explicit error or counter-example to the existing literature before considering submission? Can she submit the proven result to a journal, if she cannot find an error in her own proof?

Certainly the fact that there is a contradiction with previous literature must be prominently advertised; to do otherwise would be scientific misconduct. I would not be confident in publishing such a paper unless I found the mistake in the other paper, or could give a counterexample showing they are wrong.

After having carefully worked out the other paper and my own paper, and asked any experts with whom I have an established connection, I might contact the authors of the contradicting paper (if they are still active). After their response, or lack thereof, I would consider publishing a preprint and after that submitting to a journal. The journal is the slowest and most uncertain way of finding out where the problem is.

TL/DR: Peer reviewed literature is not doctrine. That a result contradicts "accepted truth" does not mean that it should not be published. All that matters is that the result be properly checked for errors. If there are no apparent errors, then let the academic community decide why there are two seemingly correct yet conflicting results.

If you find a result that contradicts existing thought, publish it. Whether or not a result contradicts standing thought should not affect its acceptance or rejection. Only the quality of the argument should have an impact. I say "should not" because it is sadly not always the case.

If you are not certain as to whether or not your conclusion is correct, find someone with whom you could discuss the matter and see if they agree. If you can find someone prominent with whom you can co-publish, and who can add to the argument to make it more robust, then you might want to look into that.

Automatically Wrong

There seems to be a bit of a suggestion that if it contradicts existing literature, it must be wrong. Now, I suppose in mathematics, it is usually relatively "simple" to verify a proof, but even then there can be errors. Make sure you know what you're talking about. Get some feedback. But do not assume that you are wrong because the current literature is against you. If this contradiction were in science rather than mathematics, even more the reason to not assume that you must be wrong.

Much of published literature, at least in science, overrides past literature. In science, we only assume that a theory is true, until we find evidence which contradicts it (Further discussion on the nature of science). Mathematical theory can be such evidence.

Again, if your thesis is well thought out, properly explained, and an expert in the field cannot find an error with your work, there is no reason to assume that your answer is wrong. Just because an existing answer is accepted by academia should not dissuade you.

Conflict Resolution

There has been a suggestion that before publishing the paper, it should be determined which position is correct. However, that might not be possible, or neither party may have an answer. Publishing a result, so long as it is not apparently flawed, allows the community of experts to become aware of the potential alternative and work on explaining the conflict. As a professor recently said, the main way in which experts in a field communicate is through peer review. To refrain from publishing because the question of whose position is correct has not been resolved would in some ways be withholding potentially useful information from the academic community.

Doctrine

David Richerby made an interesting case. He suggested that because the other theorem has already been accepted, it should now take additional effort to overturn it. However, there is nothing that seems to be wrong with either theorem (at least according to the OP). David's suggestion means that if the OP's proof were conceived and received first, and it were the other result that was later identified, somehow the burden of proof would switch and now it would require exceptional levels of justification to get that result published. In other words, the order in which the result was produced is the only thing that is changing, and yet somehow that change takes the OP's result from requiring extraordinary proof to requiring ordinary proof and takes the currently established result and demands that now it would need extraordinary proof.

When a result carries more weight, simply because it is already established as being "true" by a group of people, that result becomes doctrine. That is not how academia works. That is not how research works. The validity of a result, and the level of justification needed, is determined only by the result. So long as there are no apparent flaws, and the result has been reasonably checked for flaws, as all results for publication need to be, then the answer is obvious: publish and let the academic community work on resolving the conflict.

Dan Fox linked to a very interesting example. "In 1991, Kapranov and Voevodsky published a proof of a now famously false result." In 1998, someone came up with a contradictory result, but could not find the error in the original proof. Ignoring what would have been the apparent consensus advice of SE Academia, the result was published anyway. It was not until 2013 that an error was found in the original proof, and it might have taken a lot longer had Simpson not pushed the issue by publishing his own result.


As an undergrad student, how should I ask a professor for an opportunity to do research with them? I was wondering what I should do in this situation as an undergraduate student:

About a month ago, I applied for and did not get into a program that allows first-year students to work on research projects that professors put forward, with the intention of introducing students to research, which included a research stipend, housing, etc.

I was very interested in the professors topic of research, and was wondering if it would be okay for me to ask the professor for the opportunity to work with him essentially as an unpaid intern, as I would really like the opportunity to learn more about the topic.

Would he view this attempt to do research under him as desperate? Or would he appreciate the opportunity to have an extra research assistant?

I know that the answer would depend on the professor himself, and on my relationship with him, but how do professors in general feel about students coming up to them and asking to be a part of their research?

Absolutely, with no qualifications, approach the researcher and ask what it would take to do research in his/her lab. As a first-year undergraduate student, it's very likely that you don't have the knowledge to contribute to the projects. So approach humbly, asking what you can do to prepare yourself. Ask for suggestions for a review paper or a few research reports that would bring you up to speed. Ask if you can attend lab meetings as a fly-on-the-wall to absorb the controversies and decisions being made day-by-day. The very worst possible case is that you're told, "no." If so, you're already there. Next worst is that you invest your time and get only an education out of it. That's not so bad. You'll be positioned very very well for next year.

Good luck!

There are basically two strategies to get a research opportunity in university. By
excellence or by motivation. For both situations, you have to find a way to show your excellence or your motivation to the professor. Working as an intern for him is a good idea. It gives the professor an opportunity to know more about you. If you are excellent enough, the professor will ask you about your plan in the future (to see if you're going to pursuit a PhD, probably with him), show his interest in you or even offer you research position in this team.


How did modern western post-secondary education become tied up with research and publications? Teaching, research and (academic) publishing are three different pursuits. Our society and its institutions, particularly most universities, enforce links between these in various ways.

People who have great teaching skills can not get teaching positions (at universities) because they aren't good in doing research, and some potentially great researchers experience setbacks in their academic career because they are horrible at teaching, and both can be penalized by failing to or poorly publishing their results.

How did this happen? Who does is benefit? How does intertwining these three requirements benefit the general knowledge and the academic community?

Ca. the 17th century, typically research, teaching, and religion were the functions of a European university. For example, when Isaac Newton wanted to become a professor at Cambridge, he asked the king for a special dispensation to be excused from taking holy orders. He was expected to teach as well as doing research, but was apparently such a bad teacher that he often lectured to an empty room.

During this period publication was not as emphasized as it is today. There were no academic journals in the modern sense. People communicated their results directly to their students, by letters to their peers, and sometimes by writing books. In some fields, such as alchemy, secrecy was the norm.

Presumably the reason that research, teaching, and religion were all linked was that the system evolved from medieval institutions, in which the literate class consisted mostly of monks. Part of their job was to preserve knowledge.

I think the more modern, liberal, and secular model is what's known as the German university model. It dates to the 19th century and was influenced by personalities like Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm von Humboldt. I think this was also the era when modern academic journals began to appear, and this was an important, positive development.

Some more modern phenomena in the US are research supported by grants from the central government; land-grant colleges; the delegation of a large amount of undergraduate teaching to part-time faculty; and the creation of community colleges, which have only teaching as their mission, not research.

We miss out on people who would make great teachers because they aren't good at doing research, and some potentially great researchers are left out of academic research because they are horrible at teaching

Dubious.  The labour market is so flooded that institutions above the barrier can for "on-going" positions select who they like within the wage's established differentials.  For bulk teaching, most Universities are reliant on casual staff who they sweat with the hope of an on-going position.  So this statement is, outside of markets with limited labour supply, junk.

As far as the oversupply of labour, the Employers have a very good reason to offer more candidatures for PhD than the required number of future jobs plus a friction load for losses to industry practice.  They're "deskilling."

They're also changing the nature of the commodity on offer (check word limits, class sizes, expectations of self-activity over a 30 year scale for undergraduates); and, of course, attempting mechanisation.  From what I've seen mechanisation isn't increasing worker productivity, but, rather is more important in breaking down work cultures.

  How did this happen?

Proletarianisation, commodification, and capitalism.  Ford & Taylor, my friends, Ford & Taylor.

You could suggest that it happened in countries without strong Academic industrial organisation (The United States, for example) due to particularism.  But actually we can see the broad effects of this universally across "varieties of captialism" to greater or lesser extents.  That it happens in undergraduate teaching and in research, with their different world markets, is indicative that it isn't just particular systems.

  Who does it benefit?

It directly benefits the bourgeoisie, as capital flight into newly commodified areas results in a period of primary accumulation, and as secondary accumulation takes off it often has a higher rate of profit.  Basically, there's superprofits in Tertiary Education.

It also benefits consumers.  Tertiary education is largely a required commodity to consume, see for example Australia's rate of tertiary education uptake.  The more important question is why consumption is over biased (given the knowable workforce demands from employers) towards Higher rather than Further or Vocational tertiary education?  Here I'd suggest that many, if not most, jobs don't require tertiary education to perform, and instead employers are getting labour discipline benefits.  Consumers still gain some measure of benefit from the enjoyment of education, and the possibility of subversively exercising education in their employment anyway.  Also, with the massification of higher education many more consumers get to enjoy this commodity in its dissipated "University" form rather than through Workers Educational Associations, Trade Union newspapers, or Party Education.  (Personally, comparing the level of discourse in 1940s TU newspapers to contemporary bits of the internet where equivalent age bands try to discuss serious matters, I'll go with the "non-traditional" education system here for superiority.)

Research culture is a side effect of the commodification of undergraduate teaching.  In 1987 when Australia commodified undergraduate education (HECS), it also began the audit of research (The "Publications" return portion of the current HERDC report).  It has taken 25 years, and changes in the control over production in departments, but effectively HERDC points act as a method of realising research activity, in a similar way that the "Effective Full Time Student Unit" realises as a commodity teaching.

As far as the teaching / research nexus: using publicly available data I'm pretty sure that even in research intensive universities, all research outside of grant funded substantive positions is done as "overtime."  Going back to the labour supply and generation of PhDs: the employer inculcates in apprentices the idea that 60 hour weeks are normal, and that the employer should have exclusive use of the employee for teaching and service for the "normal" working week.  The natural form of resistance and sabotage to this would be to not publish.  The results of not publishing is the guaranteed absence of an on-going position.

Sources: Vestes/AUR; Trade Unionism; long term wage/price series; managerialism & audit culture; Braverman on deskilling & proletarianisation


Will the PhD degree be retracted if the thesis is found to be not novel? Suppose a person got PhD degree by properly submitting his/her thesis on a particular topic. Assume that neither the student nor the doctoral review committee including supervisor knows that the proposal is not a novel.

Later at some point of time if it comes to know that the student got PhD without any novelty. Then does the PhD degree get withdrawn?

It would be very rare for such a thing to happen. However, it might depend on the circumstances behind it. If it was nothing more than a misjudgment by the candidate and the committee or some missed (but relatively obscure) information that wasn't included, probably nothing would happen. People would just say "oh well..." and let it go.

However, if some misconduct occurred, such as hiding information or plagiarizing other work, then it could result in withdrawal. But then, it wouldn't be for lack of novelty, but for the misconduct.

Novelty is a judgement call in any case. Looked at in hindsight something may appear to be not-novel when, at the time, it was. Even at the same moment, different people might judge it differently.

If you are the candidate in question, I recommend that you rest easy. Likewise if you were the advisor.

I know of a case where a person was awarded a Master's degree in math accidentally.  He didn't pass his comprehensive exams and (I think) was short some course work.  But someone in the graduate office screwed up and stamped a piece of paper with the wrong stamp.  And the guy got a diploma.  He didn't even know it until at least a year after.

But it was determined that he didn't cheat in anyway to cause this to happen, and he's got his degree.  (Even though he couldn't integrate his way out of a wet paper bag.)


A professor I know is becoming head of department, do I send congratulations or condolences? I don't know much more about the transition - only that the professor is becoming the new head effective [date], and that they have the support of the department.
Do I send congratulations (because it's a promotion) or condolences (because apparently some professors don't actually want the promotion, and only become the head of department reluctantly)?
Edit: what about the outgoing head of department? I clearly shouldn't send condolences in that case, but should I send congratulations?

That would depend on how well I knew the person. If they were a very close friend of long standing, I'd probably offer condolences, just as a joke. But that would take a special relationship.
In the general case, only congratulations are in order.

Department chair has almost double the salary and the position is rotated at my university.
There is no reason to be sad someone is getting an extra 100k.


Sex worker student offering her (lawful) services One of my students is an escort/stripper and she has offered me (and other faculty in my department) her "services". I am pretty sure my initial reaction of "thanks for letting me know, now can you answer the question about how to calculate the standard deviation", may not have been the best reaction. The offers have continued. My head of school is aware of the issue, and has asked if I want him to do anything.

Is the student doing anything wrong by offering her services to me? For what it is worth, prostitution is legal in the UK. Is this any different then a student telling me she works in a restaurant?

What is the correct response in a situation like this?

First, “thanks for letting me know” is not an unambiguous no. I suppose most people would actually get it, but she already appears to have boundary issues, so you should make it much clearer. The best thing to do would be to make it clear to her that you consider her propositions to be out of line. You can add, that while you don't think badly of her because of it, such offers have no place in the classroom (or in a student/teacher relationship).

In fact, you would probably do the same if she insisted on asking you to come have dinner at a restaurant she worked at: you'd be annoyed by it, because it is detrimental to her (and others) attention. I regularly have students who ask out-of-line questions, and I try to be firm: while I'd be happy to discuss if we were friends, we are not and my class/practicals/whatever is not the right place for that.

However, there is a distinction between talking about sex and dining: the law makes a distinction in many countries, including UK. From UCL's HR webpages (as an example):

  Sexual harassment can take the form of ridicule, sexually provocative remarks or jokes, offensive comments about dress or appearance, the display or distribution of sexually explicit material, unwelcome sexual advances or physical contact, demands for sexual favours or assault.

which clearly covers your case, whether the sexual advances are of a paid or an unpaid nature.

Finally, regarding your head of school: the student clearly has boundary issues, probably for making the offer in the first place and definitely for renewing it multiple times after you declined. So, yeah, I would suggest your head of school or a counselor having a talk with her about it.

From what you say, the student's actions are not illegal in your country. Most people, including most administrators of educational institutions, would consider this "wrong." The reason is very simple; it could constitute bribery, or a at least a conflict of interest. Apparently, this has happened to a number of people, your university is "wise," and is willing support you (and others).

The next time it happens, give her an uequivocal "no," and tell her that you don't expect to have to tell her again. You might add that you are "happily married" or "in a good relationship" if that is the case. The "second next time," you might threaten to report her to the university. In any event, whatever you do, make it clear that her behavior is inappropriate, and will not be tolerated.


What are the consequences of mistakenly publishing existing research? **I'm asking this in the context of mathematical research if that changes the answer.
I've heard stories on Quora and from my professors about instances where researchers were banned from journals and, in some cases, thrown out of their universities for plagiarizing research. It did seem that their plagiarism was blatant, but the explanations weren't too specific.
I was wondering, with the number of papers that exist today and the number of journals they can be published to, it seems almost impossible to definitively know whether research already exists.
With all the work that's been published in any one field, is it the sole responsibility of the researcher to make sure their paper does not exist in any journal? And if they're unable to find prior proof of their work, will the consequences be so severe? It seems like two people stumbling across the same idea is not an uncommon occurrence. I think the most popular instance of this is between Leibniz and Newton. So, at second glance it doesn't seem feasible to discipline every researcher who manages to mistakingly publish existing work. But I'd like to know for sure. Am I right? And what would the consequences be?

I partially disagree with the answer given by astronat, since I think it does not reflect how common it is in mathematics to rediscover existing results (and to publish them without knowing that they already exist). So here is a somewhat different perspective:
Terminology.
What the OP calls mistakingly publishing existing research is, in my experience, more commonly and with a less negative connotation, referred to as rediscovery of existing research.
Distinction from plagiarism.
This point has already been explained in astronat's answer: independently rediscovering a result (and publishing it without knowing about its former existence) is something completely different from plagiarism.
Consequences.
What will happen if you publish a result which is already in the literature but you have not been aware of?
Nothing.
The math departments of this world would be empty halls if every mathematics professor who has unconsciously published a theorem or idea that already existed in the literature was banned from the university. (See the point "Prevalence" below.)
Of course, if this happens very often to you, this might have a negative impact on your reputation; but it happens to almost everybody now and then, so there is not much reason to worry in case that it does happen to you. (Unless in very, very obvious situations - if, for instance, I claimed to be a functional analyst and then published a "novel" result which turns out to simply be the Hahn-Banach theorem, chances are that I would have a much harder time to be taken seriously from now own. But this really refers to extreme cases only.)
Prevalence.
This is one of the points where I disagree with the assessment in astronat's answer. Experience shows that results are rediscovered and re-published (without the authors knowing or citing the earlier occurrance(s) of the result) all the time.
I could write a lengthy list of examples where this happened in papers I read or to people I know or to myself. But there are much better sources for this claim than my personal experience.
Just to get an impression, see for instance these two MathOverflow posts (post 1, post 2) or this blog post by Terry Tao.
Some reasons why this happens.

In earlier days, mathematical results could not be distributed as quickly as they are now (in particular, due to the internet).

Even today, access to many results is somewhat restricted, for instance if they are published in somewhat obscure journals (or, say, proceedings of small conferences) which are hardly accessible, or if they are published in languages which are not widely spoken.

While we have the internet and search engines available nowadays, the amount of published mathematical literature has also become much larger than only a few decades ago, which makes it literally impossible to know everything that could be relevant to your work.

Moreover, search engines are only useful if you know the right key words to search (which is often not the case due to varying terminological conventions).

There a many different ways to phrase or describe a mathematical result (and every more so for a mathematical idea). So even if our idea / argument / theorem is essentially present in a paper and even if we have a close look at this paper, it can sometimes be very hard to recognize it there. Since there are numerous papers which we ought to take a look at before we publish a result, there is simply no way to read all related papers in depth, and we will probably spend more time reading those papers which are obviously very closely related to our work. So if a similar idea occurs in a related, but not closely related paper, and if it is worded quite differently from how we would phrase it, there is a considerable chance that we just miss it.

Many ideas are so fundamental that they occur in many different fields of mathematics (and in many different forms). Our knowledge of a particular mathematical field will typically depend monotonically on how close the field is to our own field. So if a similar idea or result occurs in another area, it is quite likely that we are unaware of it. (The fact that different mathematical areas often use quite different terminology and notation for the same thing doesn't make it easier.)

In my experience, people tend to publish a lot of research work, while it is less common to write expository work (to some extent, this is certainly due to incentives imposed by typical career options in academia). For instance, I can think of various mathematical topics where, in my opinion, a comphrehensive survey article or an up-to-date monograph is missing. This is part of the problem since well-written surveys and books are an excellent aid in identifying relevant earlier results.

Some points to be aware of.

While results or arguments or ideas are often re-discovered, it happens more rarely that two papers have very similar content. Quite often, while some results in a paper might already be in the literature (but unknown to the author), there will be other results or insights in the paper that are still new. This is closely related to the point about novelty that user2768 made in their answer.

Even if some results in two papers are very similar, it will sometimes (though not always) happen that their proofs are quite different.

What to do?
That's a difficult question, and the answer that any particular mathematician gives to this might depend very much on their personality. Here are a few suggestions (biased by my own point of view, of course):

Obviously, we should carefully study the literature before we publish something. Citation databases (in mathematics these are, in particular MathSciNet und zbMATH) can be very helpful for this.

The more work we put into putting our results into context, the more we help potential readers of our paper to also become familiar with earlier research and results on the topic. For instance, there is a considerable difference between merely citing papers and explaining, if only briefly, the relevance of these papers. For instance, compare the following to ways to cite relevant literature:
-- "Recently, there has bee a lot of work on this topic [1, 3, 9, 10, 12, 15, 21, 23, 24, 25, 31, 36]"
-- "Interest in the topic abc originally stems from the study of xyz spaces, because their geometric properties can be classified by abc [9, 10, 36]. Later, abc has been extended to a more abstract setting in [1, 3, 21, 23] which made it possible to also classify the geometry of xyz' spaces [24, 25]. In the present paper, we build on the so-called fgh approach to abc recently developped in [12, 15]; combining it with the, at first glance unrelated, ijk technique from operator theory published in [4], we show that all major results in abc theory are actually independent of the foo assumption. This allows us to classify the geometric properties of very large classes of xyz* spaces. In addition, we obtain recent results from [31] as special cases of our general theory."

When writing a referee's report about a paper, we should take much care to point out missing references. In particular, I strongly support the idea that, as a referee, we should point to relevant articles by different authors, and not only to our own (obviously super-important but - heaven knows why - completely underappreciated) work which might not have been cited in the paper under review.

If we have made a preprint publicly available, and - before publication - we get aware you relevant literature that we have missed, we should, of course, make a serious effort to include it in the paper before publication.

If it is too late and you get aware of relevant references after publication, don't rack your brains over it. As explained above, this happens very often. Just make sure to properly include your newly gained knowledge when you write another article on a related topic (of course, this does not only mean to cite the references you now became aware of; it also means to take these references as a starting point for yet another literature search).

It is, in my experience, very uncommon to take any formal actions (such as notifying the journal, or even submitting an erratum) if you become aware of prior relevant work after publication. (But please note that I don't make any assessment as to whether I approve or disapprove of this practice; I'm just pointing out what is common practice.)

I'm restating, in greater brevity, what other answers have expressed somewhat circuitously.

I've heard stories... where researchers were banned from journals and,
in some cases, thrown out of their universities for plagiarizing
research... It seems like two people stumbling across the same idea is
not an uncommon occurrence.

These are two distinct situations.
Plagiarism is taking the actual written words of another person and re-presenting them, fraudulently, as your own piece of writing. It is among the highest violations in academia and publishing, and well worth harsh sanctions. It's basically impossible to do by accident.
Multiple discovery is when two or more people independently discover the same principle, and separately write up different accounts of it. This is moderately common in science, and it's indeed possible without any fraud involved. It is passingly common that Nobel awards need to take this into account, possibly giving the award to multiple simultaneous discoverers.
Now, if someone re-discovers and tries to publish an idea that was first discovered and published some time ago, the person who tries to do so will look rather foolish and appear to be a poor researcher for not having found that in their literature review -- and be highly unlikely to get published. But this is not the same as plagiarism, and no further sanctions are due in this case.


Is there anything inherently wrong with publishing in a bad journal? There's a journal I read a paper in I wanted to respond to. The journal is open access, has no fee, and I have enough for a short paper (less than like 5 pages, there are no size limits). Writing this would take minimal time away from more important work. The journal is...not great. I don't think it's predatory (it's free to publish and is peer reviewed), though it might be.

I am a grad student. This response has nothing to do with my main research.

Would this come to hurt me later? Would people look down on me for having a short, goofy paper in a poor journal? What could they do that's dishonest? Even if they straight up steal what I write, I don't really care that much (though I would obviously not work with the journal again).

It probably won't hurt, but this is the sort of thing you should discuss with your adviser.  Since the journal doesn't have fees, it is unlikely that it is an outright predatory journal but that doesn't mean it is worth responding to. Is this in a field where responses are a normal thing? Other relevant questions: And what do the other papers in the journal look like? Are they absolutely awful or are they just mediocre? That should tell you something about how worthwhile it would be to respond.

I would consider doing it.  For instance I have blown off conference journals and the like (low impact factor) but I could have given them something and upped my pub count.  As long as you are not taking it out of somewhere better.

Of course if you can get it into a decent journal that is better.  I'm not sure your field, but in chemistry, the ACS subspecialty journals below JACS are "decent" (they have equivalents outside of ACS also).

I guess one consideration is why you are considering this journal.  Is it from a conference or a special edition (i.e. you were approached)?  If not, I would lean towards getting it into a subspecialty journal.

If you are honest and don't make broad claims and write clearly (follow directions to authors like a hawk), you'd be surprised how easy it is to get papers through subspecialty journals.  They aren't expecting breakthroughs like Science or Nature.  And they get a lot of papers with unreadable English or with wild unproven claims.  If you take a simple honest clear approach, often they will let you slide right through and not contest the noteworthy aspect.


In academia, does the amount of material that one has to learn diminish as time progresses? From my own point of view, the first year of a PhD is heavily packed with new information, theory, techniques, conventions, experimental abilities, etc. Let us call all these elements "material". This new material required a lot of effort which I felt as a heavy burden in comparison to my master thesis or any previous academic experience. This burden was also complemented by requirements of the PI, funding entities, bureaucracy, etc.

The second year was also heavily packed with new and deeper material. But the burden of acquiring this new material was in my opinion, lower. This perception of a lower burden can be due to better learning methods, more experience, a more relaxed view on life, due to actually less new "material" to deal with.

I felt as if I had to sustain the same first year burden for several years, I would eventually collapse. And even though the second year burden was lower, I would not be able to continually perform at a good level under such burden.

Is there any point in an academic's life where the burden diminishes? I enjoy learning new stuff, carrying out new experiments and acquiring new skills. But the rate at which I feel this is necessary during a PhD is for me too high and I would not like to have a permanent life under this burden.

Just to be clear, it is obvious that in Academia it is necessary to acquire and master new "material" continuously. My question focuses on the "rate", if it makes sense.

The first paper I read took two months to process.
Now, I can skim through two papers for breakfast. It is not that you get more material to read, but rather you get much more efficient at skipping things you know or recognize as unimportant.

It comes with practice - try reading papers and books, and think about what are the important parts. Learn to identify the 'meat' and which techniques are used. Also, you'll notice that instead of learning 'the stuff', it is about cataloging and storing meta-information about where to find 'the stuff' once you really need it.

After a while, you realize that most of the new papers you read, you only need the gist of it, in order to reference it. Comparably few papers need to be read and understood in paragraph-by-paragraph detail.

As one of my Professors once said:

  You are lucky to be young, because when you reach my age, you simply can't learn radically new things!

So, basically, there is a point when the 'burden' becomes unbearable! So, clearly at some point the burden becomes less, as this is nessecary! (at least, for my professor)

However, this is pretty late in your career. As a PhD student, you really have to learn how to organise and manage the information. (But always be clever! The greatest problem solvers (such as Leonhard Euler or Louie Pasteur (I recall reading a nice story by Hamming (yes, from the distance) about Pasteurs' skills)), can find effective solutions while knowing a lot less than experts in the field)

Clearly, being a scholar is more than hoarding information, it is about deciding what is important to remember!

So, when does it get less? When you do less research, really. When the main reason you're getting paid is because you are now a manager and reeling in the grant money.


How can I prevent students from writing answers on an assignment, then claiming I didn't see their answer? What is a good way to prevent students from writing an answer after you hand back a graded assignment (exam/homework) and claiming that you did not see their answer?

It is clear to me that this particular student even used a different pen for their answer, and I am 100% sure that the answer was not there. I would have seen it, and I even remember double checking to see whether the answer was there.

This is the second time this has happened to me in this semester (different students), and both times I am sure that they wrote the answer afterwards and are trying to gain more points.

Use placeholders

You can use

a sign or an indication that you would never use in any other circumstances (red cross, three question marks, etc.),
a short sentence ("No Answer Given", "I'm sure you knew it!", "You should have tried!"),
a sign that occupy the whole space (as suggested by Elizabeth Henning in the first place): slashes, X, Z,...

Don't try to catch the students that came back to you (supposedly) cheating, you just learned a lesson, and won't be caught again.

This is a nonsensical, non-problem.  If the student comes back and claims you didn't see the answer, you simply say "no, all unanswered questions are double-checked" and that is the end of it.

There is no argument.  The student is not a peer so does not have the option if discussing or arguing about it.

If the teacher does not have authority over the class, then the teacher's personality is not suited for the profession.  It is never the burden to persuade.


How to politely describe a situation where you have no publication because both you and the advisor are inexperienced in a new research topic? How to politely describe a situation where you have no publication because both you and the advisor are inexperienced in a new research topic?

The lab previously only did research on topic A (e.g. protein factors) and lacked the experimental conditions for conducting research on topic B (e.g. circular RNAs), which is a very hot topic recently. BTW, which word should be used? topic, subject, field or area?
The student is the first and only one that conducted the project on the new topic.
The student started from scratch and faced many difficulties. The advisor was willing to but sometimes powerless to help when the student got stuck.
However, there is no publication after several years, since both the student and the advisor lack experience in the new research topic.

I do not know how to politely describe such situation from two distinct perspectives：

From my advisor’s perspective: I requested my advisor a letter of recommendation for PhD application. He suggested that I write a draft first.
From my perspective: I need to describe it in my personal statement.

However, I do not know how to politely describe such situation and meanwhile let the reviewer understand why I have no publication on this topic. Also, I am afraid my PS and the ROL draft would make him seem inexperienced in the new field or look like that I’m blaming him, which is rude and arrogant.

I suspect the answer for this strongly depends on cultural context.  My answer is for applications to PhD programs in the US (and probably Canada also), but it may not hold for other countries.

In the US, it's not expected that every student going into a PhD program has written a paper.  (In some subjects, almost no students entering a PhD program has written a paper.)  Your advisor should simply not mention that you haven't written a paper, but explain what you have done successfully (and there are other notions of success than writing a paper!), and what positive character attributes you have that lead him to believe you will be a successful PhD student.  It will be necessary to go into details of your project, but no mention needs to be made about the lack of a paper coming out.

You should have a similar approach in your personal statement, emphasizing what you learned from your research project and your coursework and explaining what research you want to work on for your PhD.

The PhD program will be admitting you as a person, not your package of previous accomplishments (although of course your previous accomplishments will tell them something about you as a person).

You could ask your advisor for a "reference" as to why your publication was unsuccessful?
This may be sufficient evidence to support the fact that it "wasn't your fault" (for want of a better phrase), and the resources just simply weren't there.


My mum was recently diagnosed with cancer. Should I tell my supervisor? Yesterday, my mum was recently diagnosed with cancer. However, we have yet to know what stage is her cancer and whether the cancer can still be removed from her body or it has metastasized to other parts of organs. This is a major health concern and it will of course affect my health and mental being for the next several years.

I am a PhD student and I thankfully successfully submitted my thesis a few months ago. So far, I have yet to receive the news regarding my viva. Given the history of my university and accounts from other students' experiences, my department is very tardy in processing viva examinations. It can take up to six months for students to finally undergo the viva and then a few months for correction afterwards. Now I have to worry and be stressful for two things: my mum's health condition and my viva.

I want to e-mail my supervisor about the possibility of speeding up my viva process. I have been well prepared for my viva for a month. I have re-read my thesis multiple times and re-read the journals that I cited. I really hope that my department can speed up my viva so I can move on with my life (getting a good job, taking care of my mum, etc.). Delaying my viva will certainly damage my well-being. However, I don't know whether emailing my supervisor will undermine my professionalism (the art of separating personal and work).

I am in my 20s with no experience of experiencing sudden loss of my loved ones and this news will definitely affect me in the immediate future. And I don't write this post to look for sympathy or anything. This news will certainly make me appreciate life and moments that we have now.

Should I e-mail my supervisor to state my current condition and hopefully she could do something regarding my PhD limbo?

EDIT: I do have a very good relationship with my supervisor. However, I don't want to come across as someone who tries to milk this tragedy for my own gain. Therefore, I am juggling the decision whether it will be fine or not to tell my supervisor and at the same time to request viva speed up.

Many countries have rules in place that allow employees to take paid or unpaid leave to care for an ill relative. No shame or unprofessionalism should result from making a request to accommodate a need to deal with a loved one's illness.

If you have a good relationship with your advisor, then your advisor should understand.

(That said, the advisor may or may not have much control over the viva, depending on who is responsible for scheduling and organizing it, and who else must attend. But you won't lose anything by asking.)

Stay calm.

Your mother has been diagnosed with cancer and that is terrible news. But, I truly encourage you to remain optimistic.

Remain optimistic.

Cancer treatments have advanced significantly and the outlook upon diagnoisis is generally good. (You haven't provided details on the specific type of cancer, so I won't speculate further.)

(In)Action.

At this stage, I personally don't recommend taking any action with regards to academia. Look after yourself; wait for a full diagnosis. Try walking, exercise, or even working, anything that helps you get through the wait.

Viva. You've submitted your thesis. Congratulations! The hard work is already done. The viva process varies country-to-country, so it is difficult to provide specific details. But, the time-frame probably cannot be shortened by much, because time is required to evaluate your thesis (which is probably a long document). Your supervisor might be able to help speed-up the process, but the evaluation procedure is probably conducted externally, so it is unclear what speed-up can be achieved.

Once you and your mum have received her full diagnosis, you'll be able to think more clearly about the future. Perhaps ask another question then. For the moment, stay calm, remain optimistic, and look after yourself.

(Possibly) Going beyond the scope of the question, one can ask: When should I tell my supervisor about a personal issue? I personally recommend telling a supervisor when that issue has the potential to negatively impact your work over a prolonged period.


Two researchers want to work on the same extension to my paper. Who to help? I recently presented a paper in a top-tier conference in a computer engineering field. I did that work as a research assistant under a Professor but now I am working in the industry. Two different researchers, let's call them John and Sam, wish to work on an extension to this work. But both need help from me since they feel I will be able to solve their problem quickly based on my experience. John is a PhD student with whom I had worked with and was the second author of the paper. Sam is a PhD student, in another university, who I met at the conference. Since both have a request for help and both are working on the identical extension of the work, who should I help out?

Background:
I originally planned to work on my paper alone along with my advisor. After I was done with about 80% of the work, I met John (who is a Phd student under my advisor) and decided to collaborate with him because he too was working on a similar problem (he at that time was working on the extension itself). John didn't contribute directly with the work (I was sole author of all code and did all analysis with help my the advisor) but he helped me with conference selection and writing of the paper. As John was sponsored by a company, having his name as an author meant that now all the ownership of the work laid with the company, at least that was what I was told by John and the advisor. This meant they had all the rights to the code (though I never signed away my rights explicitly). My advisor is particular about legal issues and hence don't want me to make the code open-source. But since the company was not interested in using the code and I didn't want my work to go to waste, I have made the code open-source, unknown to my advisor or John.

Question: I wish to maximize the use of my work (since it is my first research work). So should I continue to help both John and Sam who are both working on the same topic? My concern is that one of them will have wasted their time if the other is successful in publishing a paper first.

I am more confident about Sam's skills (based on his past papers and John doesn't have much experience in this field) but John has indicated to me from the start that he was more interested in the extension than the work that I did in the paper.

My other option is to reveal to both of them about each other so that they can possibly collaborate. But since I have told Sam that my code is open source, Sam can possibly tell John this information which might irritate my former advisor. I would like to avoid this because I might require future favors such as a letter of recommendation should I choose to pursue PhD.

Edit: I have open-sourced the code via GitHub (changed the repository from private to public). I still haven't added any license (so legally by default it is not open-source as in free to use but anyone can browse through it) so I still retain all rights. Basically, I used the wrong terminology, the code is public (instead of open-source).
I haven't talked with any representative from the company, only my advisor and John have been in contact with them. From what John tells me, the company is no longer interested in the project and I think John's funding is also stopping because of this.

Based on the answers, I am going to ask Sam and John to work together (at least tell both of them about each other) and ask Sam not to reveal about the public code. I am still not convinced about making the code private again because this being a computer engineering field (applied field), just based on paper, it will be hard for anyone to replicate the work (the evidence is that both John and Sam need my help).

Work with both John and Sam on the same paper. You all have something to offer, so pool your efforts and work together.

You should all do a collaborative study. John and Sam should have shared first authorship or Sam first and John second, with you providing guidance and consultation on the entire project.

If you are specific about the open-source nature of the code, discuss this issue with both John and Sam. Do this, before going to your legal advisors.

  As John was sponsored by a company, having his name as an author meant
  that now all the ownership of the work laid with the company, at least
  that was what I was told by John and the advisor.

I'm sorry but this seems very shady to me and I think John is playing you for a fool or John himself is a fool. If you are the author of the code, it is your code. If the code is present on a private repository (is it?) in the cloud, it establishes that you are the creator and contributor to the codebase. The contribution by author part in the paper establishes the contribution by both You and John.

Unless you sign some sort of agreement relinquishing your rights to the code, it does not become IP belonging to a third-party. Furthermore, you may have already signed away whatever rights you had to the code when you became a student at your university. Go back and check all the papers they made you sign back then. In such a case, the code belongs to the university.

Also, it is worthwhile to check the licenses of the dependencies you may have imported and also the licenses of the language that you used to write the code. In many cases, the licenses will stipulate (check Apache) that usage of this software means that you will have to preserve and maintain the license in your codebase.

Do all this before you speak with a legal advisor.


Should I make my research students' pay contingent on completion of tasks (such as reading/summarizing papers)? I received a fund that I can use explicitly for paying graduate (master's and doctoral) students for research. These students already receive a stipend from the university, but most advisors who can afford it pay them a supplement. My colleagues just pay a fixed amount per month. However, I am inexperienced in advising students, and I fear I might end up wasting the money on students who do not do their job.
So I thought of making the payment contingent on some research-related task. I do not want to make it contingent on actual research results, since the "flow" of results (particularly in my field - theoretical computer science) is not constant, and the students need a reliable source of income. Instead, I thought of paying the students for reading and summarizing papers and books related to their research topic (up to the maximum amount I can pay per month). There are several reasons:

Reading is an important part of research.
Most fresh graduate students do not read enough - they prefer to program. They need an incentive to start reading.
Reading is a relatively "stable" activity: by putting a sufficient amount of effort, the student can guarantee a fixed income for themselves.
Summarizing research papers will help the students once they start writing their own papers.
The summaries can also be useful for me during teaching, as supplementary material for the students.

Is it reasonable to pay research students based on reading & summarizing papers, or for other activities?
Clarifications:

The basic income (before the supplement) may or may not be enough to live on. For students who come straight for undergrad, many are young and still live with their parents. During undergraduate studies they had to pay tuition, so the very fact that they now study for free (even before receiving any money) is a substantial upgrade for them. Other students are older and have children; for them, the basic income paid by the university may be insufficient.

Do not do this. At best, you will appear merely stingy; at worst, perhaps financially abusive. (I also suspect your university would not even allow it, but I think that's not as important because it should not be done anyways)
I strongly, strongly advise you to reconsider how you think about students. It seems you are thinking about them like employees you want to squeeze some work out of, with some sort of benefit that you deserve for providing funds. This thinking is wrong, and leads to many of the student horror stories here about abusive advisors.
A student should never be under threat that their financial security is subject to the whims of their supervisor on a regular basis. Any process that leads to a student getting paid less than their full salary* should be a structured process with warning and opportunity for improvement. You write that "students need a reliable source of income" - exactly, so don't make it unreliable.
Students in research are not mere employees, they are future researchers for whom you are taking on a responsibility as an advisor. You pay students so that they can focus on their research and education. You pay students who you think have good potential as researchers that are worthy of your time investment. You are not paying them to do a job, you are paying them to learn.
If you think you need to add incentive for students to focus on things like reading, do that incentivizing outside of the regular compensation structure. One option is to have regular meetings where students present papers or literature reviews of a subset of papers. Students are typically quite motivated in that setting to look good in front of their superiors and peers and they will put in the effort. You could also use a bit of peer pressure to offer some sort of group reward, like buying lunch for the whole group when a student wants to schedule a presentation over lunch to summarize what they have read (harder to do now during pandemic times, but hopefully that won't be permanent).
I'm glad you've asked about this here before implementing it, because I cannot stress enough how bad this would be.
*Exceptions: for someone who is a part-time employee, like an undergraduate student, there is nothing wrong with hourly compensation, but it should not be based on production but rather on time worked. You can decide at the end of a semester if it's worth taking that student for another semester. There could be graduate students in special circumstances that work and study part-time; they should be paid a salary relative to their part-time level of commitment.

Beside the legal and psychological perspectives, this is contrary to how an efficient labor market works. (Although in many circumstances, in reality you do get labor markets which allow for this kind of contract due to the concentration of power) You seem to want freelancers, not employees - or worse, to have somebody enter a contract which combines all the downsides of being an employee with all the downsides of being a freelancer, while you have your cake and eat it too.
In a employer-employee situation, it is the employer who bears the financial risks. The employee gets a lower payment than a freelancer, and has a secure income. They are not involved in the enterprise's losses (or success). They are being paid for turning up and doing work, no matter what the result.
In a freelancer-client situation, the freelancer functions as a one-person enterprise, and thus bears the risks of business. You contract with an enterpreneur not for a volume of their worktime, but for achieving a result, and pay for it. Accordingly, it is up to the enterpreneur to manage all financial and complexity risks connected to the project. In some countries, this is even embedded in the legal system (Arbeitsvertrag vs. Werkvertrag in Germany).
Obviously, nobody wants to bear a risk. Just the possibility of making a win if things turn out easier than expected is not sufficient to weigh up for the potential losses. It is you who wants the result, and it is your risk that somebody sitting with a paper may not produce the results you wanted. If you want somebody else to bear that risk, you have to pay for it - in practice, this functions through freelancer rates being much higher than employees'. (I am handwaving here a bit about real life complexity - in today's regulated labor markets, there are of course other factors behind freelancers' higher rates, such as health insurance rates. But you'll note they also tend to be connected to bearing a risk). So, if you want to not bear the risk of "when my instructions were followed, the result turned out to be not useful for me, or was not ready in the expected time", you have to 1) find the kind of person who is willing to bear that risk (and so appears on the labor market as a freelancer, not as an employee) and 2) pay market rates for it.
There is a second risk you want to guard against - a lazy student. The economic way to state it is that in a situation of incomplete information, Adam Smith's theory of perfectly efficient markets doesn't hold, and you are in a classic principal-agent theory. This is not something solvable by forcing result-only contracts on people who apply as employees, first because it has the side effect of transferring other, very large risks wihtout a payment, and second because of all the non-economic reasons covered in the other answers. The way it works is by trust. You first hire a student whom your instincts qualify as trustworthy, then you wait for the execution of tasks, and if you realize that the student has been taking your money without spending any time working, you fire them. If you want the theoretical perspective, this is also borne out by game theory - it roughly corresponds to the tit-for-tat strategy in multi-round prisoner's dilemma (which is an optimal strategy). Without the theory, this is how millions of employers and employees solve it every day.


How to frame early university troubles related to mental illness when applying for masters program after more recent successes at university? Years ago I had a really rough few years of college, inability to focus, tons of stress, manic episodes etc. Instead of going into the drama of it all, the bottom line here is that during those years I cheated in a few classes because I felt paralyzed and paranoid almost all the time; by the time I was able to move about without that weight I was into another manic episode trying to get things done but not finding a way out (at this point I knew something was wrong but not what it was). I was caught and in the aftermath I submitted a statement that I fully accepted the consequences instead of contesting my obvious guilt.

Later I would find out that I had type 2 bipolar syndrome that was untreated for the past decade and I was told that I was lucky that it hadn't gotten worse. Once I was on medication I tried college again at a different school and graduated recently with honors.

My question here is that I'm really interested in going to a masters program but I don't know how to explain my first attempt at college, the failures, and the mental illness or even if I should mention it at all. I don't want to hide things but I'd appreciate any advice on this

Your outstanding performance in your second attempt should be your focus. Don't let yourself downplay how much you've achieved this time around, because every candidate without your history will be singing their own praises. However, you should, briefly, discuss the previous attempt with as much specificity as you are comfortable in your personal statement. A past failure with mitigating circumstances should not be held against you provided you acknowledge it and your recent performance clearly demonstrates that you've overcome these circumstances.

Your whole story sounds like what you would go through during your graduate period. Don't worry about it much. From my experience during the last few months in a Master's Program, there is a bit of panic in the beginning but as long as you understand that failure is a part of the whole process then you should be fine. I failed a lot during my first year but still managed to pick up myself and excel during the last months.


Is it research to just combine other people’s work? I am currently a second-year undergraduate double-majoring in math and computer science. I am currently doing a joint research paper with one of the faculty in my university.

My advisor gave me research problem A. I thought about the problem for one week and managed to break problem A to sub-problems A₁, A₂, ..., An. Next, I started researching on A₁. After reading several papers, I found that an author had already solved problem A₁. I repeated this for A₂, ..., An and they have all been solved previously. Now I take the solutions for all of them, with proper citations of course, and piece them into a solution to my original problem. I write a paper and get it published.

Now here is my problem: I feel like a fraud. I have not personally solved any of the Ai. Heck, the only work I’ve done is to break down the problem, searched for solutions to the subproblems, and to combine other people’s solutions. Is this really what research is about? I really feel disheartened and want to know other people’s opinions. I feel like anybody can really do what I did.

Research is not just about inventing things. Finding out the best options to solve the sub-problems is also part of research and is also a major part of why people publish — to have their work used for a purpose.

Research can simply be anything that makes a contribution to science/knowledge/understanding (see here) which can be any of the following.

Finding novel approaches to existing problems
Formulating new problems and solutions to them
Doing an in-depth study on an established field
Making meaningful connections between the unrelated
Extending on top of existing developments
Combining the best practices to solve subproblems of a bigger problem
...

The list can go on. The main point here is as long as you have cited the existing solutions A₁, A₂, ..., An and that such a combination has not been published before, then you have no need to feel guilty of the work you did. You have done real work to search for the best solutions to each subproblem and went through the trouble of combing them to get a meaningful result — you have achieved an advancement in research.

Summarizing the comments:

A subproblem Ai may as well be ensembles/extensions of previous work.
If no-one else has published the work before, then it is not as trivial as you think it is.
The imposter syndrome; it is common for many in their research career. Overcome it.
You shed light on how problem A can be solved which might be overlooked before.

The technical term for what you did is called secondary research. Basically you collated/synthesized existing literature to address objectives/question you had in your own research. Your contribution was in combining what has already beem said in a somewhat unique way.


Advisor asked for my entire slide presentation so she could give the presentation at an international conference First, she never helped me on either my thesis or my slide presentation.
After my presentation (which she did not attend), she asked me "how to present" it to her so she could use it in the international conference.
(I don't want to do that, but I have no choice.)

Then, she asked me to send the whole presentation.
I sent it to her as a PDF file.

Later, she asked me for the "power point presentation" with the script.

I really don't want to give it to her.

What should I do?

P.S. She never gives anybody credit. (She did this before with my senior.)

Update: After reading many comments, I realize that I might be over-reacting. In academic area, it is normal that advisor could use the entire presentation of their student in the conference. (If I am lucky, she will acknowledge me)

I feel so bad about it but I need to accept the reality....

Thank you for all comments.

As an advisor, I regularly use my students’ slides when I present my current projects. This is usually done within the context of high level presentations: I’m working on important project X; Alice and I worked on X.a which resulted in such and such, and with Bob on X.b which resulted in so and so. Claire and I are working with Alice to extend to X.c. If your advisor is supportive and showcases your work, she’s increasing its visibility and helping your career.

To conclude, presenting students’ work is not necessarily a bad thing and can help them a lot.

What is more concerning is that you seem to have serious trust issues with your advisor. She may be passing off her students’ work as her own but I honestly think that this is either a misunderstanding or something else. Advisors normally want to show that their students are doing well, not that they’re being totally shepherded by the advisor. This reflects badly on the advisor which is why I think it’s unusual.

If things have gotten to the point where you’re not harboring any goodwill to her, I suggest you rethink your options. If there’s a chance of a conversation to rebuild trust, try and have one.

Look,  if she had done the same to  the senior, there's something afoot.

Personally, I am uncomfortable with the length she is forcing you to go for her -  like you've said, she wasn't present when you defended your thesis, and  now, when there's an international acclaim in the game, she wants to have your work to present.

She is your advisor, which means she is not your mentor. There's an important  difference between the two. Mentor is  usually accredited professor. Advisor is usually a senior student, usually in a capacity of helping professor manage his workload, but rarely they are professor themselves.

You haven't cleared out if she is professor or not. If she is professor, then no, you got no recourse available for you, at least not at this point.   But if she is a fellow student or just a person who specifically holds the title of 'advisor', and if there's a precedent -  a bad one - then you can complain to the board of professors, but  be aware you will have to have really good reasons and proofs at hand if things go south.  In academic sphere that kind of thing can quickly go kaboom and influence your  career later on in your life, never mind if you were right and she wrong.

So if you want to go that route, then save the emails,  all the conversations,  if you were talking over phone, write the dates down, etcetera. If it's an advanced level of research, what she is doing without asking for your input, it's an academic suicide at its finest -  for her.

I find it strange she wants to present a topic she is (presumably) not well-versed in  and you had to additionally practically dumb it down for her because she cannot be bothered to take some of her precious time and do her own note taking and research.  Well, fine, she can present your thesis, but what about the questions that come after the presentation?  If she doesn't  understand the material and its nuances, she will trip all over herself because she won't know the particulars well enough to explain this or that facet of the experiments of wording or something else.

It would've been better if you were the one to go and present the entire thing, because you know it inside and out.


How to tell my advisor I am leaving the PhD program, when he is the reason I'm leaving? I want to give up my current PhD program, which I started 5 months ago, because I really do not like my current advisor's personality and working style. He lives a relaxed life and has no enthusiasm for science after getting tenure.  He does not  have funding and never releases decent papers because he does not work hard.

But I like my current direction. So I want to give up my PhD and switch to the master's program - as I have nearly finished all the coursework, and I do not want a gap in my CV - and then apply to a new school, as there is no other professor in my school doing work in my direction.

My question is: how can I tell him that I want to leave the PhD program? I do not want to tell him the true reason, because I want him to write a recommendation for me, and I think he likes me.

Tell him why you're even more excited about the places to which you're applying.

At University X, Dr. Y is doing groundbreaking work in Z, and has published three papers in Prestigious Journal With A Latin Title in the last two years alone. Her students are also proving amazing results and speaking all over the world about them, and one of them just got a job at Top-Class University W. Every week they have a seminar where they discuss blah-blah-blah... [etc., etc.]
I'm grateful for all the opportunities you've afforded me here, and I think that X,Y, and Z would be an even better fit for me.

If you want a good reference the only thing you can really try is to tell him the subject does not suit you at all and fit your new found plan to become an x, y or z. Your supervisor may wonder why you are asking for a reference to go do some similar course if you do that after telling him you hate the subject, though...Your supervisor may try to persuade you to stay, in which case you could negotiate he stop doing whatever is annoying you or just keep firm with your decision.

What you must not do is fake family death or personal illness. You will in all likelihood, need to prove those have happened, especially if you want a reference.

Personally, I think not liking your supervisor is a terrible reason to quit your PhD. You will always have to suffer fools in life, that is just part of being an adult.


When is it acceptable to write a bad letter of recommendation? For reasons that elude me, a student I taught several semesters ago sounded me out about writing a letter of recommendation for graduate school. I won't go into it, but my recollections of this student are uniformly bad. There is no way I would want them pursuing graduate study in our department. I am torn between declining to write a letter, or taking the opportunity to quietly warn colleagues at other institutions about this person. Do I have an ethical duty to only offer to write a letter if it will reflect positively on the applicant?

Never write a bad recommendation letter. If you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all (and tell the student you can't write the letter).

As for warning other. Leaving aside the law for a moment, the only time I can see it being appropriate to warn others about a student is if you believed them to be dangerous. Examples of this might be a history of sexual harassment/assault, bullying or other abusive behaviour.

At least as an auxiliary point: in the U.S., as opposed to many other cultures, there is the idea that earlier-life failures do not necessarily terminally limit the rest of one's life. There are no uniform exam/placement systems. There are second chances... (which is generally a good thing, although it definitely complicates everything).
So, in that style, even if a student has screwed up so far, perhaps one should not communicate that screw-up forward. Don't impede the fresh start...
In particular, I would never write a damning letter of recommendation. I might decline to write any. I would not write a dishonest one.
(And, in the U.S., comments on mental health issues, or physical health issues, are more-or-less legally prohibited, so far as I understand. Yes, in my experience, many problems are based in mental health issues... Perhaps we do not have a good system to talk about such things.)
EDIT: apart from my irrelevant grammatical error ("oppose" which should have been "opposed"), I am mildly surprised that anyone would object to "second chances". (Even the possibility of my editing for grammatical perfection could be a "second chance"?)
"U.S. kids are weak/lazy..." Yes, I've heard that many times from my faculty colleagues at my R1. But what I think it really is that U.S. kids are not as desperate as kids in some less-fortunate countries, so will not so easily bow to crazy/random (often inappropriate...) requirements.
Specifically, I would hope, ... that things are not soooo tight in the world that any slight mistake is fatal. Especially... kids? Seriously?


Is it unethical of me and can I get in trouble if a professor passes me based on an oral exam without attending class? I have been experiencing anxiety based on some recent events. During my last semester of college I enrolled in a language course in a language in which I was already fluent. I did this to enable quicker graduation.

After the first two weeks of the class, it became apparent I wasn't going to benefit at all from this course. Additionally, as I was soon graduating, I had other work to perform. I asked the professor if I could stop attending classes and simply turn in the homework by the end of the semester. I did this while speaking the language that she taught. She said "yes".

I didn't attend class for a month and a half, and didn't hear from the professor again. Towards the end of the semester, I emailed the professor to inquire what she wanted me to do to pass the course. She scolded me because she wanted me to attend at least some of the classes (I had misunderstood her in our first conversation). She then told me that despite that, it was OK, she would give me a passing grade (via oral exam), as "you are fluent in the language and shouldn't come to class as it will seem unfair to the other kids."

This appeared to me as if she would pass me based on merit alone. I was VERY shook up, and called her again the same week telling her that I feel like withdrawing and holding off graduation and just taking a different course next semester before starting grad school. She reassured me I'm all set and I need not worry.

Graduation happens, however I was still uneasy as I was preparing to start grad school. I felt like I cheated the system. I contacted her again, and again she told me not to worry. After the first week of grad shool, I called her again and demanded I take the midterm and final for the course in an attempt to ease my mind and worry. Scored 99 and 96 on them without studying.

I still feel really guilty for some reason, and I'm still trying to cope with this. Its honestly affecting my performance in school. MY worse nightmare is that my undergrad will find out and take away my degree and that this will affect my grad school as I needed a bachelors to enter. The professor made it seem as if she was taking a risk by letting me do what I did. She made it seem I was doing something illegal. She told me not to tell my classmates..

As such, my question is: If what happened was found out, would my grad school have grounds to kick me out? If my undergrad found out, can they pull me degree?

Edit: Thanks for the answers, I guess why I'm soo stressed about this is because, to my understanding, she made it obvious that I and the prof. were doing something against school policies, I knew about it and didn't think much about it.

I feel like you're overthinking this. What you did seems an improvement to me over taking, say, bowling to fill a last credit, which isn't uncommon in undergrad. The professor gave you your grade and you're off to grad school. There's no reason to revisit it, with yourself or anyone else.

Also, it isn't your responsibility, as a student, to audit how a professor grades a class.  They may have even consulted with others before letting you do this; you don't know.  Don't make assumptions - you did what you did, and the professor decided it was enough to pass the class.

Put this behind you and focus on grad school.

The only thing that really matters is this: do you have a mastery of the subject you studied?  The grade you get, and the degree you are awarded, should only be a documentation of this mastery.  The purpose of an exam or a paper is to demonstrate your mastery of the subject.  The grade is just a way of keeping score and communicating your master to people outside the field.

In light of that perspective, I would argue it's entirely ethical to be awarded a grade based on a personalized study and testing plan with the professor.  As long as you are able to demonstrate your mastery of the subject matter somehow, you legitimately earned the grade, even if you didn't demonstrate that mastery the same way the other students did.  The objective of college is gaining the knowledge, not getting a grade or a diploma.  If the professor judged that you had an adequate mastery of the subject to award you the grade on the basis of an oral exam, that is his prerogative.  Legally speaking, that is defensible as a reasonable accommodation for a disability under the ADA.

Bottom line:

If you cheat your way to graduation with a 4.0 GPA but don't master the subject matter, you might be able to get hired but you'll quickly be fired for incompetence.  As a hiring manager I have to screen out these "paper tigers".  I can't tell you how many people I've interviewed who had master's degrees but couldn't perform the most basic skills in their career field.

If you don't have a degree but do have a mastery of the subject matter, it might be harder for you to get your first job, but you'll keep it and advance because you're competent.  After your first job, it's your work history that matters much more than your degree, except in licensed professions like law or medicine which have a degree as a prerequisite for licensing.  (And even then it's not cast in stone: for instance in Virginia and some other states you can sit for the Bar exam and be admitted to the bar without a law degree if you study law under an attorney or judge)


Why don't colleges make terms shorter and with fewer classes? Instead of the typical 4 classes every 10 weeks, why not 2 classes every 5 weeks?

Condensed courses usually means:

Taking less courses at the same time which makes compartmentalization for memorization easier.
You (typically) take the same course every day, thus actively refreshing the neurons on that topic.
Taking the same course every day over a shorter time makes cumulative exams much less intimidating.
You see the same students everyday. This encourages a more natural stimulation of getting to know your classmates and seems to result in more collaboration outside of class.
If you're doing poorly in a class, for whatever reason, only the last 5 weeks of your academic life are wasted (as opposed to 10).

Overall, the same material is taught to students whether it's in 5 weeks or 10. The difference in that in the 5 week plan, students take half the classes they normally would per 5-week term, and the lecture for that class is everyday of the week.

An example being instead of taking intro to biology, chemistry, calculus, and psychology over 10 weeks, you take biology and psychology during the first 5 weeks and then calculus and chem the second 5 weeks.

From an information processing perspective, it is much more beneficial to have four classes over ten weeks than two classes over five weeks. This is because the mind needs the extended time to digest the material that it is being exposed to.

The two class approach is highly beneficial in allowing students to focus. However, the reduction in exposure to the content over time makes it difficult for retention and to acquire in-depth mastery of the ideas of the curriculum.

I have worked at several institutions that offer "intensive" courses for working graduate students. The students will take one class over the course of one week (about 8 hours a day). In such an intense format the students remember very little and demonstrate limited mastery of the content. This is due to the rushed nature of the course. Even though the students were able to focus, the average individual just cannot digest that much content so fast.

Sadly, there is more to learning than just seat time. Students need time to discuss and apply the knowledge they are exposed to in a course. This only becomes more challenging as the number of weeks a course lasts is reduced, even if the number of hours stays the same.

Lots of great answers here already, just want to chime in with a point I'm surprised no one has mentioned.

Not all students are full time, or capable of taking a full courseload. Many students working part-time, or even full-time, need the ability to take a much lighter courseload. The closer you get to taking one intense class per quarter, the less that students (and faculty!) have the ability to control their schedule.


What is a typical dress code for campus interviews on west coast state schools? The question says it all.

I am shortlisted for a campus interview at a state school in California. I was wondering about the dress code? Should I wear a suit or would it be too much?

EDIT: It's for CSU math position in Northern California.

I'm honestly just guessing here, but I'd think something along the lines of Business Casual or Smart Casual. Both of those are ambiguous, of course, but I think you'd stand out in a suit.

Of course San Francisco is more formal than LA or Berkeley, but academics in most fields are pretty laid back. If the interview will be long and includes evening events, you might want to have a suit available.

I believe the only correct answer is that you should call the admissions office of whatever program you're applying to and ask. Everything else is just guessing.


confused after accepting PhD offer? Your experience or advice is very much appreciated! I have recently accepted a PhD offer. The subject is very close to what I was working on during my Master's years. I really worked hard back then and fortunately managed to publish high-quality papers.
I had several offers at the time and it was really difficult for me to choose between them since they were all good universities. I finally chose the university that I felt better about it and I was happy by my choice at that time. The factors that I liked about the place I chose were that:

•   Their field is very close to what I have done during my Master's years and therefore I can easily proceed during my PhD.

•   The supervisor is a well-known person with a good resume and lots of connections in academia.

•   The chemistry seemed right and the supervisor seemed supportive and was very eager to have me as a PhD student.

The problem is, after some time passed, I started to develop lots of negative thoughts and now, some issues that were not important to me back then, are freaking me out right now.

I am thinking I decided too quickly and I should have applied to some better universities that I didn’t consider at that time.

First of all, The PhD offer that I have accepted is in a non-English speaking country. Although at first I was very eager and excited to learn a new language, it now freaks me out to live in a place where people don't speak my language.

Also, now I am thinking maybe my current field of research is not something worth pursuing. I was really passionate about this topic during my Master's years but now I am thinking maybe it is not a worthy topic and it will be too restricting when applying for a postdoc.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to decline my offer since I think it would really annoy the professor. And considering the fact that she has lots of connections in academia and that the academia is a very small world, I think it would be very bad for my reputation. But I just can't get rid of these negative thoughts.

I was wondering if anyone has been in this situation before and if this is common between students.

I appreciate any advice on this situation. Your thoughts and experiences will be a great help to me.
Thanks a lot in advance. 

UPDATE:
Hi every one. Thanks for all the answers. It has been 6 months from when I posted this and I just wanted to share my experience, I hope it might help someone.
I talked to the professor and asked for some extra time to decide. I was really lucky since the professor understood my situation and didn't pressure me. I ended up finding a much better offer and accepted the new one and I am totally happy about it.
Here is my advice to help others not to make the same mistake:
Never ever accept a PhD offer too quickly. Even if it sounds very good. Take as much time as you can and consider every option you have. Do talk to your classmates and previous professors. Their opinions might be very helpful to you when choosing an offer.
Hope that helps :)

Some doubts are pretty natural. While the bird in the hand may be worth two in the bush, those others look pretty sweet from a distance. I don't think any of the issues you raise should cause you to really want to switch except, possibly, the language issue. However, you should note that academics nearly everywhere are English speakers even if imperfectly. If the other country is, for example, in Western Europe, you will find that nearly every working age adult (and all kids) speak English very well. The issue will be in group situations in which they might prefer their native language over English. Then it would depend on their willingness to accommodate. If you are in a field in which large groups of people much interact it might be an issue. For daily life you can get along pretty well nearly everywhere.

I've not been in your situation but have colleagues all over the world and language has seldom been an issue.

For everything else, I'd just suggest you relax.

I am sorry, but they're not real concerns, maybe being in a non-anglophone country seems annoying, but this isn't the main concern as long as you can interact with people with different cultures and learn their language and I think it is interesting. You have mentioned two contradictory points that your selected topic of research could no longer interesting, how you made a conclusion, of course, this a very important point you have to consider as I have been in the same situation and figuring out after one year that this topic is flaw in the community which is you don't want to be in. The best thing you can do is to consider making meticulous research again and asking anonymously about the potential research point and for sure you must have a call with your potential supervisor about your concerns in a reasonable way. My advice is to be neutral in your thinking and don't take any decision unless you can sort things out and good luck.