How should I proceed when a (famous) professor says I'm not good enough for research? I am a PhD student in a Computer Science department, doing research of a mathematical nature. Some of my research problems drifted from my advisor's area of expertise, so I reached out to a researcher from my department about it (who is a world expert in this field). This professor is well-known with many achievements in this field.
The first meetings went well, I learnt a lot, got valuable feedback and I was so happy I had the opportunity to talk to this guy. However, after a few meetings he started with "let's have a meta-talk about you". Then, he brutally attacked me: he said I am not good enough for research, that I can get better but it would never be good enough for research career, that "people are born with the ability to know if their proofs are correct" and since I made some gross mistakes in what I sent, it is clear I "don't have it" and basically I shouldn’t  expect to get as good as people with a research career.
Since then, he mentions it in every talk we have. It can be in "minor" comments (e.g. "you have to be realistic and understand you can't really do it", "if you do it alone it will be difficult for you", "it is like chess, and you just don't have it") or in bigger conversations.
As you may understand, I felt horrible after the first time (and I still do, after each of these meetings). I really appreciate him and his opinion, so I took it really bad.
How can I know if he is right? How should I proceed? His words really made me think that maybe he is right.
RE the exact words used: I actually recorded the meetings, so my quotes are accurate.

I am sorry that it happened to you. This is not a pleasant experience, and frankly it's a shame that toxic professors and supervisors are still common in academia.
Academic research is broad and multi-dimensional. Some people excel in writing proofs, others design and set up wonderful experiments, collect useful data and find beautiful dependencies within. Some people propose fantastic theorems, which take hundred years to prove, others prove or disprove them after hundred years. As a community, we do research in a variety of exciting ways, which mutually support each other.
No single researcher is equally excellent in doing all these things. We have our strong areas and our blind spots. But saying that someone is not fit for research based on a couple of shortcomings in their proof is completely unfair, unjustified, ridiculous and unkind. This is opposite what a University professor should do, in my opinion. A good supervisor would encourage a student to try different things to identify where their strength and passion are. A toxic person would identify a single error and draw far-reaching conclusions from it to undermine student's confidence and make them feel bad about themselves. This is an extremely short-sighted and unprofessional behaviour.
Please try to disregard this person's opinion. Find someone else to collaborate with. Academia is large and although toxic and self-important people are still common, there is also a plenty of kind and supportive and truly generous colleagues around. Don't hesitate to share your experience with others to prevent someone else from having the same negative experience as you just had.

Initially, Heisenberg wanted to study maths but the professor in Munich asked him about the books he already read and based on that, he told him, that he won't be able to succceed and he will not allow him to enter there (however that process went in detail, I read it in a book from Heisenberg "Physics and beyond").
And Einstein? His marks were so worse that he couldn't find a job for a while. And later, even when he worked as a patent specialist and set up special theory in his free-time, his boss couldn't believe, once he published it, that Einstein did that.
Sure, these are very special cases but it seems that even cracks are not seen as what they are.
Finally, I wouldn't worry about that jerk, even if he is a world class researcher. And even if you won't be, that doesn't matter. You don't need his opinions to continue what you wanna' do.


How can I assist other graduate students who may feel increasingly "unwelcome" due to their countries of origin? I work in a research group with a large number of international graduate students. Recent news in my country (the United States) has been deeply unsettling for some of these students, especially the ones who hail from "unwelcome" countries (see here).

As a U.S. citizen, I (personally) feel guilty and embarrassed over the current goings-on (nor do I agree with them), though I certainly do not expect other Americans to necessarily feel that way too. Many of these students in my lab know my personal feelings on the matter. But at the end of the day, there isn't much I can do right now to affect national policy, so I'm trying to think more locally.

What, if anything, can I do here in my lab/department/university to help my fellow students/peers/friends?

The best thing you can do in my opinion is to be the change you wish to see in the world. Namely, be as friendly and welcoming to the international students as you can be. This will show them that negative views towards people who hail from the countries they come from are not shared by the entire US population, but are simply the opinions of certain people who happen to hold political office these days. It will also make you a role model for other Americans in your lab and department who may be inspired by your positive example to act in similar ways.

If individual students are experiencing personal distress due to this matter, they should seek counselling or therapy; the university should provide these services. Moreover, if you see international students (or, more generally, if you see anyone) be kind and respectful to them. This is a general rule which you can never go wrong with. In this sense, your question is quite trivial; be nice, problem solved.

At a more fundamental level, though, I believe that this question has a political overtone. Implicit is that this policy decision is bad and something Americans ought to apologize for. The decision made by the Trump administration is a temporary ban on refugees from a handful of Muslim-majority countries. Its purpose is not racist or meant to demonize people based on their ethnic or national origin; it is a national security measure. We can debate its merits, but this notion that the policy constitutes a personal attack on all Muslim students is absurd.

When the university "helps" these students systemically, they are taking the normative stance that the policy is wrong and that the students' feeling of "unwelcomeness" is justified. It is not within the university's purview to take an active position on these matters.


Citing papers, that are cited within a paper? I am reading a paper which discussing the change in a specific idea in a field of science over time. I would like to basically summarize the points in the paper but in a smaller fashion by taking some quotes and explaining how they relate to my situation.

For instance, in the paper I am reading the author said "in 2002, Stanley and Miikkulainen [SM02b] argued that the topology of a neural network also affects their functionality" where the tag [SM02b] is a reference to a entry in the author's bibliography.

Is it sufficient to only cite the author of the paper, or do I need to cite both the author of the paper and the author of the paper the author cited in the paper?

This will all become much clearer if you shift your perspective away from paraphrasing and towards giving a context for your own work.  Start by pretending that the other paper doesn't exist, and asking: "What does the reader of my work need to know about this concept?"

When you know that, and you know what level of detail you want to go into, then you can look to the other paper (and other things as well, I hope!) as a source of information to help you build your discussion of the context of your work.

A useful phrase at this point is: "A thorough discussion of [subject] can be found in [review paper]."  Then you can explain your view of the material, which the reader will understand is heavily influenced by the nice review paper you've just cited. In digesting the review to produce your own explanation, you will need to choose what you think are the important points for understanding the context of your work, and the key references supporting those points will be the ones that you should cite: as these references are the ones that were important for your understanding, so too should they be for your readers.

This is an answer by Electricman in the comments.

I remember that my professor had told me not to use the citation of one paper in separate to increase your references. Also, he told me this is a plagiarism if I do so. So what I did was so simple, I read those citations and wrote the literature review based on my understating.

But I guess you want to know if you can cite only the main paper, so the answer is: of course you can. Even it is better add, you should only cite the main paper. But be aware that the main paper should be in a famous peer reviewed journal.


Does having a masters degree from a Chinese university have negative view for a PhD applicant in the United States? I love travelling and I was thinking of getting my Master’s degree in mathematics abroad (I got my bachelors in the USA). I know that I can get funding if I go to China for my master’s.

Will it be viewed negatively if I try to apply for a PhD in the United States?

I have some experience with Asian Universities, particularly Japanese.

First, take into account that having a Masters might boost a bit your application to PhD a bit, as long as you publish something over there. Also, if the profesor you are going with is unknown, it might not help you at all.

Second, many people think that studying abroad and traveling are similar things, when they are really not. You'll have to deal with the hardships of asian Academic culture, which are very different from the American ones.

You'll also have to deal with the hardships of life, be sure to know the language at least to communicate basic thoughts and deal with the fact that you might not like food there (Protip: Chinese American Food is somewhat different of real Chinese Food)

I would put more, but I would be edging on ranting, which I'm probably already are.

I think it would be good - maybe great.

Math is a universal language, so its not like you're learning American History in China.
Math is generally at a very high level in China. Take for example Secondary student's math scores in Shanghai, considered tops among the world in OECD (PISA) scores. These students will get that MA in China in Math.  Many are the geniuses who score an 800 on the SAT Math section in China without even trying.  So much better than American kids.
The university system may be not so well-developed, maybe your thesis isn't really guided, you might have like a few classes a week, you may live with 3 other slobs in a dorm bed.  But the tuition is probably really cheap, the food even cheaper and so are the calculators, because they are abacuses - some of them.
Your PhD program will see you did something great and unique. And if you come away unscathed and with a better command of Chinese and a wider worldview, you have done yourself a service.
Final reason, you learn to use an abacus, the most important reason.


Why do undergraduate admissions in the U.S take into account nonacademic criteria? College admissions in the U.S. takes into account many factors that are rarely considered in other countries and seem unrelated to academics.  For example, legacy status (children of alumni may be given preference), athletics, extracurricular activities, etc.  Why do these nonacademic criteria play a larger role in the U.S. than they do elsewhere?

As with any complicated social phenomenon, there is no simple and conclusive answer.  However, here are two important factors:

The U.S. didn't have world-class universities until the 20th century.  Even ones that are world-famous today (such as Harvard or Yale) did not particularly impress 19th century Europeans.  These universities had started out as vocational schools for pastors and gradually turned into finishing schools for the elite, but they weren't scholarly powerhouses.  In the early 20th century, there started to be more academic competition for admission.  This was very upsetting to the traditional students (largely wealthy young men from prep schools), who didn't want to be around too many Jews or other minorities or to have to compete with nerds for grades.  One tactic universities used in response was quotas for Jews, but the Nazis made that look bad.  Leading U.S. universities then moved on in the 1930's to develop other methods to ensure that they could pick whichever students they wanted.  For example, geographic diversity (you should take students from Kansas to avoid having too many New Yorkers), preferences for children of alumni, athletic recruitment (you really need a strong lacrosse team and fencing team), well roundedness (students should study hard but not be too nerdy), extracurricular activities, etc.  Jerome Karabel has documented this history in his book The Chosen.
What is Harvard's purpose in educating students?  People often imagine the goal is to educate smart people, and that corruption is the only explanation for why Harvard would deliberately admit a wealthy applicant over someone more talented but poor.  However, this is thinking about it completely wrong.  Harvard's primary goal isn't to educate smart people, but rather to have an impact on the world by educating influential people.  They want to educate the people who are going to grow up to become leaders of all sorts (social, political, commercial, academic, etc.), and while they are happy to help shape who becomes a leader, they know perfectly well that wealth and privilege play a major role.  When Harvard admits someone whose wealth exceeds his intellectual talents, it's because they want to help set the national agenda by providing this person's education.  From this perspective, all the strange admissions criteria are an excuse for Harvard to select whoever they feel has the most potential to change the world, taking into account all aspects of their talents and background.

So what about other universities?  The first axiom of higher education in the U.S. is that everybody imitates the most prestigious universities.  If Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are doing something, then everyone else will follow.  Not necessarily in exactly the same way: different universities may employ very different criteria for admission, thanks to different goals regarding who they want to educate.  But they almost all use the same basic framework for what information is relevant to their decision.

As Najib Idrissi pointed out, nonacademic criteria play a large role in the admissions process in the US, because it is a way for universities to discriminate students while keeping plausible deniability. It is a common misconception, however, that it's mostly rich White men who benefit from this:

  Perhaps the most detailed statistical research into the actual
  admissions practices of American universities has been conducted by
  Princeton sociology professor Thomas J. Espenshade and his colleagues,
  whose results were summarized in his 2009 book No Longer Separate, Not
  Yet Equal, co-authored with Alexandria Walton Radford. Their findings
  provide an empirical look at the individual factors that dramatically
  raise or lower the likelihood of acceptance into the leading American
  universities which select the next generation of our national elites.

  The research certainly supports the widespread perception that
  non-academic factors play a major role in the process, including
  athletic ability and “legacy” status. But as we saw earlier, even more
  significant are racial factors, with black ancestry being worth the
  equivalent of 310 points, Hispanics gaining 130 points, and Asian
  students being penalized by 140 points, all relative to white
  applicants on the 1600 point Math and Reading SAT scale.

  source

Here's how it typically works:

  Consider the case of Tiffany Wang, a Chinese immigrant student raised
  in the Silicon Valley area, where her father worked as an engineer.
  Although English was not her first language, her SAT scores were over
  100 points above the Wesleyan average, and she ranked as a National
  Merit Scholarship semifinalist, putting her in the top 0.5 percent of
  high school students (not the top 2 percent as Steinberg mistakenly
  claims). Nevertheless, the admissions officer rated her just so-so in
  academics, and seemed far more positively impressed by her ethnic
  activism in the local school’s Asian-American club. Ultimately, he
  stamped her with a “Reject,” but later admitted to Steinberg that she
  might have been admitted if he had been aware of the enormous time and
  effort she had spent campaigning against the death penalty, a
  political cause near and dear to his own heart. Somehow I suspect that
  a student who boasted of leadership in pro-death penalty activism
  among his extracurriculars might have fared rather worse in this
  process. And presumably for similar reasons, Tiffany was also rejected
  by all her other prestigious college choices, including Yale, Penn,
  Duke, and Wellesley, an outcome which greatly surprised and
  disappointed her immigrant father.

  There was also the case of half-Brazilian Julianna Bentes, with slight
  black ancestry, who came from a middle-class family and attended on a
  partial scholarship one of America’s most elite prep schools, whose
  annual tuition now tops $30,000; her SAT scores were somewhat higher
  than Tiffany’s, and she was an excellent dancer. The combination of
  her academic ability, dancing talent, and “multiracial” background
  ranked her as one of America’s top college recruitment prospects,
  gaining her admission and generous financial packages from Harvard,
  Yale, Stanford and every other elite university to which she applied,
  including the University of Chicago’s most prestigious academic
  scholarship award and a personal opportunity to meet Chelsea Clinton
  while visiting Stanford, which she did, before ultimately selecting
  Yale.

  Finally, there was the case of Becca Jannol, a girl from a very
  affluent Jewish family near Beverly Hills, who attended the same elite
  prep school as Julianna, but with her parents paying the full annual
  tuition. Despite her every possible advantage, including test-prep
  courses and retaking the exam, her SAT scores were some 240 points
  lower on the 1600 point scale, placing her toward the bottom of the
  Wesleyan range, while her application essay focused on the
  philosophical challenges she encountered when she was suspended for
  illegal drug use. But she was a great favorite of her prep school
  counselor, who was an old college friend of the Wesleyan admissions
  officer, and using his discretion, he stamped her “Admit.” Her dismal
  academic record then caused this initial decision to be overturned by
  a unanimous vote of the other members of the full admissions
  committee, but he refused to give up, and moved heaven and earth to
  gain her a spot, even offering to rescind the admissions of one or
  more already selected applicants to create a place for her. Eventually
  he got her shifted from the Reject category to wait-list status, after
  which he secretly moved her folder to the very top of the large
  waiting list pile.

  In the end “connections” triumphed, and she received admission to
  Wesleyan, although she turned it down in favor of an offer from more
  prestigious Cornell, which she had obtained through similar means. But
  at Cornell, she found herself “miserable,” hating the classes and
  saying she “didn’t see the usefulness of [her] being there.” However,
  her poor academic ability proved no hindrance, since the same
  administrator who had arranged her admission also wrangled her a quick
  entrance into a special “honors program” he personally ran, containing
  just 40 of the 3500 students in her year. This exempted her from all
  academic graduation requirements, apparently including classes or
  tests, thereby allowing her to spend her four college years mostly
  traveling around the world while working on a so-called “special
  project.” After graduation, she eventually took a job at her father’s
  successful law firm, thereby realizing her obvious potential as a
  member of America’s ruling Ivy League elite, or in her own words, as
  being one of “the best of the best.”

  source


Arxiv rejection of preprints Following ArXiv rules I contacted with an well-known expert in thermodynamics (he is author of a known monograph) we discussed my work during several days and finally he endorsed me. When my work was ready to appear a moderator removed it, alluding to technical problems with my submission (a embedded font problem), although more latter moderators asked me personal and even economic questions! I never answer such questions and forgot the whole issue

The paper is accessible in my page at academia.edu

I have participated in an Essay Contest with another work, and it has been selected as one of the finalists. It is cited here together other three finalist essays.

I submitted this new work to ArXiV, it has been removed and I received the next response:

  Your submission has been removed upon a notice from our moderators, who
  determined it to be inappropriate for arXiv. Please find another forum.

  For more information on our moderation policies see:

  http: //arxiv. org/help/moderation

  --
  arXiv moderation

ArXiv already archives several essays submitted to the same Essay contest, such as 1209.0023, 1209.1257, 1211.1917, 1210.3575

Therefore it is not a problem with the Contest or with the format. Notice that only one of above four has been selected as finalist.

According to the moderation policy I cannot ask to moderators about the details on their decision. The excuse is that "moderators are not referees", but this looks a bit childish, because it seems that they are accepting that moderators cannot sustain logically the decisions that they take about others' work.

Would I write to the advisory committee chair? Would I take some other action?

EDIT: Finally the first work rejected by Arxiv mods was published in the International Journal of Thermodynamics. I no longer care about ArXiv.

As said in the comments, the situation seems to be different for each of your papers. The font problem is understandable, but it's hard to see what you mean by "personal and even economic questions". However, if you didn't answer the questions, it's not surprising that your paper was not published in arXiv.

Concerning the essay, I quote from the FAQ, "arXiv accepts only submissions in the form of an article that would be refereeable by a conventional publication venue.", and in particular, " This excludes [...] papers that contain inflammatory or fictitious content, papers that use highly dramatic and mis-representative titles/abstracts/introductions". I'm in no position to scientifically judge the content of your essay, but at first glance, it seems quite provocative (assumptions that are not fundamental).

If you believe that your essay is "refereeable by a conventional publication venue", then the moderation appeal is there for this. Although the moderators do not have to motivate their decision as a reviewer would do, by bringing sufficient support that your paper meets the criteria required by arXiv (in particular by demonstrating that it doesn't fit in any of the categories listed under "inappropriate format", the fact that other essays have been published in the past is not really relevant, you would have to show the quality of your content on its own).

In general, arXiv moderators are human moderators, and it could be the case that the rejection of your paper was a mistake. However, keep in mind that publishing in arXiv is not a granted right, and that "arXiv reserves the right to reject or reclassify any submission".

If arxiv rejects your paper, go to vixra.org. You can also publish it in researchgate.net Don't get upset and try to be fast with your publication. Remember, any submission you've made is a potential leak of your idea!


Should the introduction of a thesis have figures/pictures? I'm writing my master thesis in network formation theory. I believe that a picture with network nodes in the introduction will help the readers understand what my model is and what I am trying to prove. I doubt most readers would read past the introduction anyway so if they do not understand the introduction then that would be a big problem for me.
Is that advisable or not? What if I am using the introduction as the writing sample for my PhD application?

I can't think of any reason in general that you should not do this if it makes sense in the context of the paper. If you can express the underlying concept better with a figure then it is better than to use words.
But an advisor might disagree, in the context of this paper. And an editor or reviewer of the paper might disagree. In that case, change it.
But the paper is yours. Do what you thing makes the most sense and makes the paper accessible to your audience.

Generally speaking, in scientific papers, it is best to avoid figures and tables in the introduction unless it provides an outlook to the goals and design of the study. If it is from a previous study just cite the original source. Figures and tables other than outlook are usually included in data/methods, results, or discussion, but not in abstract or intro.
For thesis, the story is different. Introduction of a thesis can sometimes be even a review paper you have published in the past, so figures, tables, videos, etc are all fine unless your school specifies otherwise.


Is it appropriate to rewrite and republish another author's useful but very badly written paper? I found an engineering-related academic paper from a number of years ago that was published in an obscure journal, likely not peer-reviewed. The English writing is very bad, like it went through three languages in google translate, and many key parts are nearly incomprehensible with awful grammar and incorrect word usage all over. Organizationally it's rather a mess too.  While it took me quite a long time to decipher it all, I recognized the value and importance in it, and I think should be more widely seen, as there is really nothing else published on this specific topic.

I was interested in potentially redoing the paper to better present and explain the ideas in it. I would want to add my own ideas of interpretation and application too.  I wrote to the original author and they responded, and I think they'd be ok with the project? I couldn't discern a clear answer from them yet.

In the sense of academic standards, what is appropriate in this situation? Is it acceptable in the first place to redo and republish someone else's full work? Do I become a new co-author, or simply an "editor", or new main author while at the start somehow noting it's a rewrite?  Or where is the threshold between plagiarism and a newly written paper if I redo it from scratch, but following and using all the original author's ideas and data, and then add my own thoughts?  I really can't maintain any of the original written content as-is, because it's just so badly done.

Personally, I would be very happy to read an abstract along the lines of

  ABC is an important problem because of XYZ. A solution to this problem was presented already by UWV et al., but is not widely known, partly because of the technical nature of their presentation. Here we give a readable presentation of UVW et al.'s ideas, showing that they can be interpreted in terms of PQR, and we give applications in the field of JKL.

If the paper is mostly a reinterpretation of existing work it might not get into a top journal, but if the problem is important and the solution is a good one, your paper will be a valuable contribution and is likely to be widely cited anyway, since most people implementing it will be working from your paper and will cite it along with the original.

There is no danger of it being seen as plagiarism if you are presenting their ideas in your own words, and state at the start that this is your goal. The other authors will likely be happy as well, because their work will become more widely known as a result of yours. There is no need to involve them directly at all, although of course this is possible as well.

Depending on the context of the paper and a new contribution you can make, I would say that you have options
- like Andrew B. Painter wrote - write the whole new paper by yourself and have this paper as a building stone and inspiration reference
- find the way to collaborate with these authors, so you could create a review paper, where all concepts and ideas of them, yours and from literature can be nicely organized, described and discussed. Maybe now they are able to add something brand-new as well.


Is there an honors system in graduate schools? Just like the Latin honors system in undergraduate programs, is there such a system for postgraduate degrees ?

At my university, you can graduate at the doctoral level "with distinction." This is the only honor we offer (aside from dissertation prizes) and it's entirely based on the dissertation, not on coursework.

We don't even calculate the GPA of our graduate students.

No, there are no such titles or honors with grad school, as you must maintain a B or higher to pass. A grade of B- or lower will result in failing or incompleting the course. Due to this standard of requiring at least a 3.0, all
students inevitably have high GPA's upon graduating. Ultimately, grad students are expected to work harder, provided harder work and obtaining a high GPA is no longer an accomplisment, but rather anticipated.


Online tool for receiving student files I'm a TA in several modules and one thing I couldn't find yet is a system to help me manage student lab submissions. Most online collaborative tools I've seen do not allow me to, or make it quite complex to receive files from students and download all of them at once.

Note that in my university, there is not such a strict discipline, in the sense that late submissions are often tolerated; if students forget to send their files, I'd like to gently remind them to do so; etc.

So far, I use e-mail for managing student submissions, but there are several limitations:

Students forget to send the e-mail, or send it to an incorrect address, or simply quit the course, but since I do not know in which case they are, I have to manually e-mail students from which no submission has been received;
Students have no guarantee I actually received the email, so I have to ACK them;
Students sometimes send an e-mail but forget the attachment, so I have to check each of them and notify the student;
Students sometimes send multiple versions, and if there is a deadline between them, it might change the grading criteria;

So far, I have to manually open each email, download the files to a separate folder, and ACK the student. This is quite boring.
Something that would help me save some time and automate things (like sending reminders, one-click download of all files, etc) would be of great help.

So far I've seen Moodle and Piazza, but none of them seem to actually help much with student file management, or I missed something. Any indications of tools for the job?

One thing to consider is do you really need student assignments to be downloaded. I say this because I used to but I recently started using TurnItIn. However, I only use this for plagiarism detection, I do not use it for marking (university policy is that I MUST mark the paper copy...yes I know the dangers there, but that's for another day).

Since you didn't mention the larger issue you are trying to solve, I'll continue just with your direct question about how to download many student assignments without a million clicks.

What I did is simply setup an email account for students to email to (not my main email account). I instruct the students to use specific filenames (StudentID_StudentName_AssignmentName.docx) and they email me. I use a standalone email client (not webmail) so it all downloads to my computer. My client has a preview pane so I simply drag-drop to my assignment folder, move to the next message, drag-drop, repeat. I do this for 200-500 students per assignment per semester and find it does not lend itself to much more automation than this.

In all, it takes me 2 clicks per student (literally) and I end up with all student assignments in one folder. It handles ACK'ing the student on the server (auto-responder) but I could also use read-receipts but those don't usually work with webmail.

If you want to email students who did not submit, that's more complicated. I handle it during the marking process (let's see the file...ooops, they forgot...time to email them...or fail them for not submitting properly). TurnItIn will tell you which students did not submit.

As for students submitting multiple versions, as long as they submit with the proper naming convention, you will overwrite the older with the newer. I'm not sure if that is what you want or not but I would assume so.

Piazza is a nice tool for this.  It's similar to blackboard but without the need to host in on school servers.  The interface is also very good.  It has built in emailing options and discussion forums.  You can have students submit homework from the page you make for the course on the website.


Department member writing reference letter for job applicant for a position in that dept The applicant has asked me for a reference letter for a position in my department. (I can give a positive recommendation.) The applicant is not related to me. Would it be appropriate for me to do so? If another applicant were to ask me for such for the same position after I've sent one for the first applicant, should I decline the 2nd person's request? (That would otherwise be a positive recommendation as well.)

I see no ethical or practical problem as long as you are not otherwise involved in the hiring decision. For your own future, I'd also advise agains any lobbying on the applicant's behalf other than the letter itself. If the applicant is rejected you don't want it to reflect back on you.

Just be honest, and otherwise keep your distance, just as if you were located in another institution.

Likewise, giving an honest appraisal of another (or again, another) applicant should be no problem as long as you have some idea of the individual capabilities of each.

And if you are later asked by your colleagues to rank the various people  you have recommended, avoid it, mentioning that it would be improper and is the job of the committee.

If I were a member of the hiring committee, I'd have to consider refusing to provide a recommendation, though there might be other solutions, such as recusal.


Do you have any paper academic calendars or planners to recommend? I wanted to ask if you have any specific paper calendars or planners which cover an academic year (October - September) and which you can recommend for PhD students? Thanks a lot!

This may not seem relevant, but it is something I've found very useful/indispensible over the years, both for studying and for teaching. I actually required some of my students to use them.

It is called a Hipster PDA, which is nothing more than a few index cards and a spring clip to hold them together. I discussed it in answer to another question at CSEducators here. See that link for a fuller description and a further link to pictures, etc.

The reason it is so valuable is that it is both simple and flexible. It is easy to carry everywhere and can be rearranged as needed. Cards can be added and discarded. Valuable cards can be saved in a card box. You can use it for class notes as well as planning. You can use it to take quick notes in meetings or to jot down email or phone numbers, etc.

One advantage of it as a note taking device is that it forces you to condense what you hear in lecture rather than to try to capture everything. This makes your brain work harder, which aids learning.

At the end of a class, for example, you can make a card listing the two or three most important ideas from that class. Review that card at the beginning of the next.

Another advantage is that you are writing the notes, not typing them. This sounds backwards until you realize that writing by hand engages the brain in a different way (and more deeply) than typing.

You can develop your own "header" system for labeling the cards (dates, classes, ...). You can use different colors of cards for different things. You can carry the most currently relevant cards with you. You can spend a few minutes of otherwise "dead" time reviewing notes.

Welcome to Academia @Stack Exchange!

From your question it is unclear, whether you are having any specific (academia-related) requirements in addition to the shifted year cycle.

If this is your only issue, you can use any planner which allows you to remove and exchange the calendar sheets. Since the new ones are coming out quite early, it's easy to build the calendar you need...


Effect of "D" grade in PhD-level course on job prospects I am a PhD student and have a D in one of my exams due to some family issues. I also have a B in 3 subjects and A in one. I am worried about my future. will the D have an impact on my job prospects even if I maintain my GPA above 3.3?

Its not the grade that you get that determines gets you the job.  It's your ability to apply what you have learned to new and challenging fields that ultimately determines your qualification for a job.  This is best measured not by grades, but by the quality (and possibly quantity) of publications.   In rare circumstances, as @aeismail suggests, employers look closely at your GPA.  I do not believe this is the norm though.  Most institutions that employ the highly educated look more highly upon strong letters of recommendation and publication history.  As long as you have that, you should not have any problems with this grade on your record.

The ultimate impact of your "D" really depends on the policy of your school.  As @BenNorris indicates, some graduate programs have a minimum performance requirement such that a low grade in a class may impact your retention in your program.  It is best to speak with your advisor, the graduate chair, and possibly even your department chair to discuss the circumstances surrounding your performance, how it will impact your retention, and if there is anything you can do about it.  Immediate dismissal is extremely rare.  Most institutions place the student on probation (and may make you repeat the course in question).

It depends on where you live. In the US, most tech companies weight GPA low (but still relevant). There's only a soft correlation between GPA and performance. That being said, it doesn't give you an excuse to slack off.

Furthermore, for PhDs most people assume that you have bad grades as you're focusing on research.

With both these facts, I hope you will not worry about it.


Can I legally omit the fact I hold a Ph.D. degree? I am about to complete a Ph.D. in Hong Kong and would like to study in the United States. I hold a first class B.Eng. degree in Electrical Engineering. I have a CGPA of 3.67 out of 4 in my current PhD studies, two journal publications (IEEE Transactions) with two more to be submitted soon. I would consider this a fairly good academic record.

For career purposes, I would like to obtain a Ph.D. degree (in a different but related field) from a top American university. There aren't post-doc openings in my current research area, which is why I am considering another PhD in a related area.

Question: Is it considered illegal to not mention that I hold a Ph.D. (hopefully) during application? I noticed some schools frown at what some would call a "professional" or "serial" student.

NB: I have read responses on this question and I am satisfied with them. But I feel there's need to make my question clearer for those who did not understand. Some universities clearly state on their websites that they will not consider applicants who already hold a Ph.D. while some others do not specify this. My question was more for the latter. But now I know that other than dealing with the university, it will require lying on visa application, as some people wrote below.

Thank you all for your contributions.

No. You cannot hide such a fact in US admissions processes. Lying about your previous academic record—whether by omission or by claiming false credentials—is sufficient reason to revoke an offer of admission if it is caught before the applicant matriculates, or grounds to expel a student if caught after enrollment. Depending on the magnitude of the fraud, you may even be asked to pay restitution for the funds spent.

As far as if it’s illegal, that’s a trickier issue. It basically comes down to money: if you received funding based on a misrepresentation or fraudulent application, then it’s far more likely that you’ll face civil or criminal penalties.

As mentioned earlier, your Application to a University, esp from a foreign country is considered a legal document as it is the very reason you get into the country in the first place. Whether you have to share this info directly with the state or country is of little relevance as your University will have to share it as a matter of obligation to obtain your VISA and/or prove your right to one.

It would certainly be illegal, because by omitting your highest qualification you stand on very thin ground with regard to explaining to any judge why, other than to subvert the system.

If you omitted your B.Eng then you may be able to argue it's relevance in the face of your PhD, but by omitting your Phd you are effectively also omitting your Degree and Masters in the subject too and at a very min. $50k of education. That's a gross misrepresentation to a judge, and when that application must be submitted to government officials, (whether through you or the University passing your data for nat. security reasons) you will have committed a crime as the provider of this data. It will certainly get your VISA revoked even if the US would have wanted you more with a PhD than not simply because it opens them to the idea that you may have a more sinister reason to hide your qualifications, not to mention you have shown dishonest character and could be hiding much more. (You could be a spy for all they know, it's a PhD! What other 5 figure secrets could you have?)

As you already stated, you believe that your Phd may be a hindrance to your application. Anyone that doesn't have a program for 'career students' may give you reasons but you should'nt care. As a Phd holder, you are far far more valuable to the right schools with proper postdoc work available. MIT for example loves it's Phd students because they do lots of postdoc and many many businesses have collaborated (to MIT's profit) with it's students and cited their publications. Win-win.


reprinting permission of an instrument image on a website I have read about reprinting other authors tables and figures, but I couldn't find anything on reprinting laboratory instrument pictures from their manufacturer websites. Can I use instrument photos that I took from manufacturer website without permission?

You almost certainly need a copyright release in the form prescribed by your book publisher.

Track down the manufacturer's public relations office; one or two phone calls should be sufficient to find the right people. They will be very happy to supply you with pictures and the necessary copyright releases.

If you use these instruments in your own lab and they are at all expensive, or you have a lot of them, there will be an account executive (i.e. sales person) assigned to your institution.  That person will likely be ecstatic to help you get what you need.

It might be legal or not, depending on where you are as well as on your purpose in reproducing them. If your purpose is something that they would object to, then you might be in trouble even if what you did is technically legal. Lawsuits, even unfair ones, filed by large companies are difficult and expensive to fight.

They probably hold copyright on the images and some companies wage war to protect both their copyright and their public image. If you think you are in this sort of situation, then I'd proceed cautiously and only with legal advice.

But if it is something that they would likely approve or find uncontroversial then asking might be the best route. For example, if you were wanting to write a user guide, they would probably think it fine.


Will declining a research award be problematic for me, or other people? I recently received an offer for a research award for early-stage scholars producing outstanding research in my field. I have verified the award and the association are genuine and I have colleagues who have won the prize previously.

The problem is two-fold.

The first problem is that I don't think I deserve the award. Not wishing to blow things out of proportion, the award is good to have but won't make you famous. Yet, having looked at past winners, some of them are professors and all of them had a higher h-index than me when they were awarded. Comparing our research, I simply think there is no comparison, my research is not as good as past winner's - although I have an upcoming paper that may have some impact (colleagues seem to think so). Some of the past winners are my colleagues and co-authors.

The second problem is that the award seems to be won by nomination, typically by colleagues, who would have forwarded the nominee's website and CV. I don't want my colleagues to look stupid by declining the award, which would, of course, be a strange thing for most people to do.

I feel that I have been misjudged (too positively) and it just would not sit right to accept the award. On the other hand, I do not want to ask colleagues what to do since they have already been quite kind in accommodating my anxiety (I think), in general, and recently they have been quite generous in other regards.

Although the award is not a big deal my question is: will rejecting it harm my colleagues or me in some way?

Minor point: I would also have the option of giving a talk, I'd rather not, but I do have some work to talk about. Wondering if declining the offer to give a talk is a problem too.

Update: Thank you for those replies that answered the question. Kimball's ("awards are not about deserving"), xleitix's, and Dan Romik's (right to decline) answers were the most illuminating. It seems like I should accept. I think perhaps I was unclear since some are replying as if I come from a position of arrogance, my main motivation is to not embarrass myself or others.

Don't give in to Imposter Syndrome!

Both your reasons are fundamentally not sound. Somebody nominated you for an award. The awards committee thinks you are deserving. You should not refuse the award simply because you think others may be more deserving. It's the task of the award committee to establish this, and their decision was you.

Rejecting the award will probably not "hurt" your colleagues, but it will probably hurt you. First, you won't have the award, and when you finally realize that your work was maybe in fact good enough to warrant decoration it will be too late to change your mind. Second, you will presumably not get nominated by the same colleagues again for something because they will assume you are not interested in awards. Third, people will look at this as strange behavior, and it is certainly possible that you get flak from your administration or senior professors for refusing what essentially amounts to free marketing for your department. Maybe you are tenured and senior enough that you don't care, but, truth be told, very few people are actually distinguished enough that they really don't need to care at all about what their university thinks about them.

  Minor point: I would also have the option of giving a talk, I'd rather not, but I do have some work to talk about. Wondering if declining the offer to give a talk is a problem too.

I think it's less of a problem to decline a talk than the award itself, but even that is prone to raise some eyebrows, mainly because giving talks is such an inherent part of being an academic that people will wonder why you do not wish to partake in it.

Yes it can be problematic.

Role models and inspiring figures are important to motivate the young. How good you as a person actually are does not matter much in this context, the important effect for any society to achieve is to have some inspirations and role models get the young to want to work hard to become great in the future. Not everyone is inspired to work by awards and glory, but many kids are very motivated by such stories, especially at a time in their development when catching their curiosity for the sciences and/or arts makes a great difference as to if they put their effort into developing their skills (or not).

So try and not focus on you as a person, but try and see it as you are doing society a favor by trying to help kids to want to work hard to become great.


Is it accepted to refer to your own published result by your own name? Assume that Jane Doe has published a paper in 2010 where she has developed a model or a theorem or a similar result, let’s say, that it relates to growth.

Now assume that Jane Doe is writing another paper in 2015, where she refers to the model/theorem from her paper in 2010.

Is it acceptable for Jane to write something like the following?

  Doe’s growth model (2010), implies that ...
  Doe’s growth theorem (2010) implies that ...
  The Doe growth model (2010) implies ...

This is, unfortunately, a case where English grammar can be tricky and exactly how you phrase things is going to matter.

It is often seen a presumptuous to name something after yourself: "Newton's Laws" and "Hawking radiation" and "Rayleigh scattering" are retrospective judgements of significance by the community.  Claiming a similar name is an assertion in advance that your work will be at a similar level of significance.

The problem, then, is that if you say "Doe's growth model", it is ambiguous whether that is intended to be a construction like "Hawking radiation" or whether it just means "the growth model that happens to have been developed by Doe."

This potential problem can be avoided by rephrasing to avoid the parallel construction: "the growth model by Doe et al (2010)", or better yet, "the growth model presented in (Doe, 2010)."  The point here is that the significant item under discussion is the growth model, not Doe, and the sentence should be phrased to make that as clear as possible.

Finally, note that these sorts of phrasings can work both for double blind review and for review where the authors' identities are known: even when the identity of the author is known, the important thing should be the relationship between the work, not the fraction of authors that are shared between two papers (unless you are specifically trying to talk about independent co-discovery).

In general no, but it could be.

a) If "Doe's growth model" has become standard nomenclature in the field, it would appear odd to keep referring to it as something else. One should at least add a note saying that this model is well known as "The so-called Doe model (referring to people calling it that)".

b) If Doe made her model along with Cane and Dower, and is now writing a paper with two other people, it would be ok to write in third person:
"The growth model introduced by Doe et al. (Doe, 2010)"


What should I do when my accepted paper is subsequently rejected? My paper was accepted for publication in a journal. I have also received an acceptance letter and even I have filled out the copyright form. The corresponding editor first told me "Your paper is published in one of the volumes of 2017" and next time said that my paper is "published in 2018", but now I have received an email that my paper is "rejected because the paper is not in the aim and scope of the journal"!!!

Really I do not know, what should I do?

Check with the journal. Especially do this if the rejection email you received looks like an auto-generated email. No rational journal would act in such a way, so my gut feeling says there was a mistake somewhere, most likely human error. It is possible that, e.g., the final status of your manuscript was accidentally set to 'reject' instead of 'accept'.

Yes, of course you should complain, and the editor and chief does owe you an explanation.

That being said, total devil's advocate (just because the other answers seemed to all have pitchforks ready)...

If there has been a change in the editorial team it is somewhat their choice what direction they take the journal. The (hypothetical) outgoing editor is partially to blame for making a commitment they couldn't keep. Taking a moment for empathy, they were just trying to help the incoming editor out by having stuff in the pipeline. The content of journals, their standards, their quality, their requirements all drift with changing editors. Maybe you caught someone new to that side of publishing... they're learning on the job and might not have really thought of this from your point of view. Try to be kind. :)


Is it ethical to use past years' final exams that the professor hasn't explicitly given, to study for a final in the same class? This happened to me in my 2nd year of grad school, in a STEM field. As many do, our professor gave the class the last year's final, to give us an idea of what areas to study and what to expect, etc, which he obviously isn't required to do and is very nice of him.

Now, the reason he gives us last year's one is because, at the end of the year, he returns your test, so he knows that most of the ones floating around are the ones from last year.

However, as many older professors (in my experience, but maybe younger ones too) do, he also reuses exams from previous years (not even concepts or the same problems with different parameters, just literal copies), since the material and curriculum of this course is very well established/so old that nothing needs to change. I don't blame him for this; if you teach the same course on and off over 20 years, coming up with good exam questions over and over again would be annoying.

Now, what my question regards is, I realized a student in my class had past tests from not just the last time the class was taught, but literally the past 5 years. I don't know how to say this part as diplomatically as possible, but this student came from a country that about nearly half our program comes from. The other half (aside a few outliers) is from the U.S. I don't mention this to demonize or stereotype anyone; I believe it's relevant because the students from this country (in my program) are almost uniformly very tight knit, and seem to often share resources between each other and across years more than is normal amongst everyone else. The relevance is that one group has resources that others don't.

So my question is, is this ethical (for the student to do, I mean) ?

Just to put some relevant ideas/arguments/details down:

Assume (and I believe it was the case) that in the scenario I've written, the rest of the students (the ones who don't have the past tests) don't know about the students that have the past tests, so they can't do something simple like ask them.
I think many will argue that if the professor didn't want this happening, he wouldn't reuse tests, or at least as exactly as he does. However, I don't think this changes the ethics of the situation: the point is, in this situation, you can get away with it, but is it right?
I imagine the professor would not approve of this (actually, recently, another professor said in regards to his final "I know there are past ones floating around, please don't look at them", so at least he disapproved), but an argument could also be made for the possibility of him approving: It's not as though having the previous tests just makes it a given that you'll ace it, it's still a lot of work to figure out all the problems such that you can reliably do them later (he doesn't give back the answers to the tests, only the tests themselves). I could imagine a professor being okay with students getting a better grade on the final if it meant they learned more and worked to get it.
This professor never actually said not to, so the student wasn't explicitly disobeying anyone.
This question really has two subquestions, but they're very similar: a) Would it be ethical if everyone had these pasts tests (that the professor did not know about/give)? And b), Is it ethical if only a subset of the class has these tests. Obviously if you say no to (a) you say no to (b), but you might feel as though the concept of using past tests isn't wrong, but some students having an unfair advantage is.

Perhaps this is a bit of a genuine ethical issue: should one use "game advantages" one might find, that one knows other "players" will not have? Of course, these questions completely ignore issues of the subject itself, learning, scholarship, etc. But, yes, there are advantages to "good test scores". That game is primarily (contrived) an adversarial one between "teacher" and "student", and any information obtained "legally" by the students is... "legal". It's a game!

In that model, other students may suffer "on the curve". Not nice, true, but, ...

I think the real answer is that, especially internet-wise, any policy that presumes secrecy of information is misguided. Sounds innocent, but, as this test case shows, there are "victims".

My sincere conclusion, and basis for my own actions for 15+ years, is that everything should be made public. If someone can assimilate good solutions to all the exams for the last 20 years, ... then why shouldn't they pass the current exam? :)

(So, the kids who cram from the last few exams are merely being rational, assuming they didn't have to break-and-enter.)

The unasked question about whether the behavior of the "teacher" is inadvertently unfair is the interesting one. That is, lacking intent, can one be unfair? Yes, it turns out, by negligence...

If they are not public, but passed by students to students, highly unethical.
Major reasons:

Yes, most of the questions are very similar from earlier years.
Professors are too busy. Even if its not, you are more efficient in practicing them than problems in textbook.
Those cannot get it are pushed to lower grades, especially if the grade is curved according to distribution.
You only pay tuition for this year's class.

Most of my classmates did that in my undergrad and PhD years. I cannot, as I cannot get it from them. I sometimes wondered why they did not even take notes in class, as they can get it from last year's students.


Academic rank equivalence between the UK and the US systems What are the US equivalent ranks to the Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader (or Associate Prof), Professor ranks of the UK system?
Is it correct that in the US system they are Assistant Prof, Associate Prof, Full Prof and Chair/Endowed Prof, respectively?
I know that in the British system, there are further sub-levels in each of these ranks whereas in the US system there is no further gradation within each rank. So I am looking for only rough equivalence.

Edit: It would be great if a formal/informal reference which compares the two is also pointed out.

From the wiki pages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_(United_States) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_in_the_United_Kingdom:

Entry level position

UK: Lecturer
USA: Assistant Professor

Mid-level

UK: Senior Lecturer
USA: Associate Professor

Upper-level

UK: Reader
USA: Professor

Highest level

UK: Professor
USA: Endowed Chair/Named Professor

Note 1. that in the USA, ranks #2 and higher are normally tenured. Tenure is handled different in the British system.

Note 2. The American rank of a named chair (aka named professorship, endowed chair) is distinct from the administrative head of a department, who is also often called the "Chair."

Information in Wikipedia is not to be taken for granted. I woould rather suggest the following according to different categorisations in different countries
Lecturer is usually someone holding an MA (at least in most of the countries I know)
Senior Lecturer usually somewhere between MA and PhD
Assistant Professor definitely with PhD
Associate Professor with habilitation
Full Professor habilitation + many publications


How to manage your advisor's jealousy over your work? Say you made a smart move in solving an important question that your advisor did not think of and all of a suddenly your advisor becomes jealous because you have made your advisor look bad. What are the best way to manage situation like this?

I'd distinguish between three scenarios:

If you have accomplished something genuinely magnificent (e.g., you just proved the Riemann hypothesis), then it may be natural for your advisor to feel a little envious, particularly if it was something your advisor had hoped to do someday.  Hopefully they'll soon switch to feeling proud of their amazing student, and in any case your career success is assured by your great accomplishment.
In less extreme circumstances, this could be a real problem.  If your advisor feels threatened by your success, then you may need a new advisor, since you certainly don't want an advisor who goes around explaining how you aren't as great as you seem.  Before you reach that point, it's worth discussing these issues.  For example, you could say "I've felt some tension recently, and you seemed upset with me at the X Symposium.  Am I doing something that's making you unhappy?"  This may be an awkward conversation, but it's worth a try.  It's possible that you are somehow making the problem worse (for example, by publicly saying things about your advisor that could be interpreted as disparaging, even if you didn't mean them that way), or that your advisor will feel a little sheepish that you noticed this behavior and will try to change.  If talking about it doesn't work, then I don't know what to suggest.  You either find a new advisor or put up with it as best you can.
It's also possible that it's all in your head.  I become suspicious whenever I hear someone attribute other people's behavior to jealousy, since it's an awfully convenient excuse.  Until you have really clear evidence, you should keep an open mind regarding other explanations.

If your supervisor is already a professor, this is highly unlikely as the difference in the competence is way too big. If such thing really happened by pure chance, just ignore and concentrate on work instead. He is a professor. He is competent. He should manage.
Such friction may only happen when, for instance, the professor assigns near finishing PhD student, young post doc or the like, to help the starting PhD student.
Such "low level supervisor" may provide a lot of useful assistance, so you need to think twice before attempting to run away from it. But if you really do not want him, and are also sure you can get without him, go to the professor and ask to remove that supervision. This usually works no problem.


In case of in-lecture quizzes, is it unreasonable to fail students who are late or absent? I am teaching a large undergraduate class this semester. One day a week (same day every week) we have a quiz. The syllabus doesn't specify at what moment of the class period the quiz will be given. It does say though that students who missed the quiz aren't allowed to make it up. So, I've had the following situation since the semester started. First and second week I gave the quiz at the end of the class. During week 3 I already had a few students coming more than 20 minutes late, but early enough not to miss the 15 min quiz, which I gave again at the end. So, this week (week 4) I gave the quiz 10 minutes after the start of the class. The actual time of the quiz wasn't announced in advance. And yes, I've had many students coming late and some came when the quiz was already over. These students couldn't have 15 minutes like others if any time at all. Now these students are claiming that I needed to tell them in advance at what time the quiz was supposed to be or emphasize that it can be at any time, or otherwise they follow the pattern.

All students who came in late were the ones who were late the previous week except one student.

I repeat that it's a big lecture hall, and I don't want to take notes when a specific student actually started his or her quiz and add 15 minutes to that time. Also, after quiz I want all of them to concentrate on the class material. And I don't want to give it at the end all the time as some students will come in late, and that disrupts the flow of a lecture, distracts other students and generally erodes class morale.

I drop quite a lot of lowest quiz grades at the end of the semester to meet those cases when students do have to be absent. So, a good student's grade won't be affected if he or she will miss a couple of quizzes.

I am currently facing lots of negative emails from students who were late and didn't get the grade they would get if they had the same time as everybody else. Do you think it's me being unreasonable? Their main argument is that it should be clearly stated when a quiz is given or emphasized that it can be given at any time, which I find unnecessary.

Do you think it's me being unreasonable?

Sadly, yes. I see two problems here:

You said in a comment that the policy of "the quiz can happen at any time" was not articulated at all. You gave the quiz near the end of the class a couple of times, and the students naturally assumed that that's when you'll always have it. Now you are trying to argue legalistically that since you didn't say when the quiz will occur, you were reserving the right to hold it at any time. However, in my opinion if you are going to argue based on legalisms, the burden is on you to dot all your i's and cross all your t's and make sure that you gave your students such amazingly clear information that they couldn't even imagine arguing with you.
The thing to keep in mind here is that you are an educator, not a prosecutor trying to entrap a criminal in court. The students deserve to have clearly articulated rules so that they can focus their time and energy on the material; in particular, if there's a quiz, they deserve to know the precise time when it will be held, or at the very least to have an explicit announcement that the quiz can be held at variable times. Overall, your approach to dealing with the students who came late as I'm understanding it from your question seems to me to place you in an adversarial, combative position relative to your students, which is not where you want to be as a teacher - it can only serve to distract from your educational objectives and provides for a poor learning environment for your students.

A second problem is that I'm getting a strong feeling from reading your question that you're trying to use the quiz as a crowd control mechanism, which feels wrong to me (and partially as a result has gotten you into the current messy situation). You've devised an elaborate strategy that consists of holding a quiz at a randomly selected time during the class as a solution to the problem of making students come to class, and come on time. The problem of students coming in late may be a very real concern, but random quizzes are simply an inappropriate and ineffective way to address it (and one that can potentially be perceived quite negatively by the students).
A quiz is a form of assessment, and is a legitimate device to use for that purpose, but let's keep things in their right place: deal with the problem of disruptive late-coming students in the appropriate way, and have your assessment in the way that makes sense from an educational standpoint, whether it be quizzes, exams, homework, or even mandatory class attendance if that's important to you and your institution's policies allow it.

Students who are late should be allowed to start late, and take the quiz at a disadvantage. (The quiz ends at a certain time but no one says that you have to start on time.)

Students who are absent should be excused if they have a reasonable excuse, such as illness or death in the family. They should fail if they have no reasonable excuse for being absent.


How to deal with a colleague who always puts you down? I am just starting out my PhD which will take 5 years to complete and I am dealing with a person in my own research group who cannot stop putting me down every chance she gets.

In our research department in neuroscience engineering I guess she would be considered a very ambitious person. She has good grades and has some papers published despite only being in the university for about three years. But she has a very bad personality and constantly attempts to put me down by comparing me to some of the other researchers in the department.

For example, she will come up and say I know so and so who is in the
same year as you are and he already has papers published, you don't.
Or I know this other person who did really well in a class and even got
the professors recommendation while you are only an average student.
She will non-stop ask me for my GPA as an undergrad, and how I am
doing in my courses. I thought she cared about me at the beginning but I am realizing that she is only exploiting my weaknesses.
She will also ask me about my research focus and tell me whatever I
am trying to do has no value or too small scale. She will openly laugh about my research plans in front of other people and say that it has no value.
Even when we first met she asked me about my background which I said
was in industrial engineering and she just kind of laughed because she
was in some sort of advanced research program which is in her
opinion more prestigious
Finally, she has no moral qualms doing all the above in front of other people. In fact she only does this to me when other people are around.

Worst of all is that she is making an assumption in almost everything. I have a few research papers published, just not at the current university so it is not listed. My GPA was dragged down during first years of undergrad but it picked up and at the end I had a 4.0. Plus she is not doing too well either, only with a few minor publications on very specific applications, and she is only known for certain speciaties and not much of a generalist and knows very little about the fields immediately outside of her research. But do you think I ever tell her this? Call her out about her lack of creativity? Or ask her about her GPA and the courses that she does bad in just so I can tell her that "Mr X is doing much better than you in that course"? Of course not because I am a decent person.

We are in the same research team. We should be working together and learning from each other, yet she behaves this way to me. I was so relieved during first few months when I started out my research because I have heard so much about these kind of people you encounter during graduate school yet I have not even encountered one and everyone is so helpful, but there she is. Since we cannot move forward in an amicable relationship, what is the best alternative for me? Am I being too sensitive?

I favor the Confusingly Positive/Neutral Response in these situations.

"So-and-so did Awesome Thing and you --" "Wow, that's great! When will it be published? I'd like to read it."
"What was your undergrad GPA?" "Uh, I don't even remember. It got me in here, though, and I love it here!"
"Bah, what you're doing is garbage." "I'm finding it a lot of fun, and learning a lot!"

When she pulls these stunts in front of others, you will look infinitely classier than she for refusing to play the game.

You can just let her win the silly game she is playing.

"For example, she will come up and say I know so and so who is in the same year as you are and he already has papers published, you don't."

Your answer: "It's even worse, I had two papers rejected and as a result I need to start over with some core elements of the research that went into it."

"Or I know this other person who did really well in a class and even got the professors recommendation while you are only an average student."

Your answer: "I wish! Unfortunately, I'm doing a lot worse than the average grad student here."

"She will non-stop ask me for my GPA as an undergrad, and how I am doing in my courses. I thought she cared about me at the beginning but I am realizing that she is only exploiting my weaknesses."

You should tell lies about how bad your GPA scores were.

"She will also ask me about my research focus and tell me whatever I am trying to do has no value or too small scale. She will openly laugh about my research plans in front of other people and say that it has no value."

Just tell her with a straight face that her judgment is correct, its quite worthless what you are doing, but due to circumstances you have little choice to pursue what you are doing. You can tell her that given how bad you were as an undergraduate, you are just glad that you have the opportunity to do any research at all, however insignificant.


Trying to volunteer as a research assistant post-Master's and not having any success so far I'm an MS in CompSci grad who wants to do a PhD someday. The one thing I don't have from my time in undergrad and MS is significant research experience. Of course, I did undergrad research but was never published in any papers. I make a lot as a professional and want to volunteer(read, free) part-time doing research for a professor or lab post-graduation, but I have no idea how to approach this or even find interest amongst professors or labs. Any ideas?

Edit: Undiagnosed disability crippled my undergraduate performance. I was unmedicated, untreated, and had no idea on how to cope. I really managed to redeem myself through my graduate performance and am basically looking for a second chance. If anyone has disability-specific resources as well, that would be great.

It's probably going to be a bit difficult to get a professor to agree to take you on as a "volunteer," because they see it (in my personal experience) as a time-sink from what they're really trying to accomplish, which is train students, teach, get grants, and publish. This is especially the case for a potential "part-time" student, since research generally requires full-time focus to make good progress.

If you really wanted to pursue that path, I would recommend using your network. Do you have someone from your MS program who might be willing to write a rec letter to a colleague they know reasonably well? With a good introduction to pave the way, you are more likely to at least get a first conversation. Another avenue would be to get involved in your local chapter of your relevant academic society like IEEE. That might take some time, but would eventually be likely to lead somewhere in terms of opening doors to local researchers.

Finally, even if you don't get accepted on your first try, it's not a waste of time to at least try applying to your program of interest. Can't you consider some of your current work experience as "research experience"? Surely your work as a MS-grad isn't purely rote data entry or something. Maybe you have some patents or other quantifiable work products that could stand in for publications? If not, would you be willing to accept an MS position at the same institution that might get your foot in the door for a later transition to PhD?

PhD by definition is a training course in research, and thus doesn't assume research experience. An experienced PhD is postdocs. You don't need to have any paper to get into PhD, because that is what PhD is for.

You had mixed things up. Volunteering for papers just to get into PhD doesn't make any sense.


Is it socially appropriate to ring up a professor whom you have corresponded with briefly by email? A couple of weeks back I sent an email to a professor in a University in my home country with whom I have never known on any personal or professional level. My intention was to seek potential collaborations with him as a recent graduate with a BSc should I return home.

He did replied and to which I responded. One of his question to me was whether I am happy to collaborate without being paid to which I replied, "Yes, I am happy but I am only able to work on any project outside of standard office hours due to foreseeable industry commitment".

Since then, I have not received any replies.

Would it be appropriate for me to ring him up?

I don't see any problems for you to call him.

If you want answers quick, this is the best way to achieve it. If you feel a bit uncomfortable calling him, then I suggest that you "ping" him with re-sending your last mail or that you ask him if he can reply from the previous message.

Teachers at my university, some have their phone number (Both private and work, though private is not mandatory) listed at the university website so that students can reach them outside of working hours if it's urgent.

So having students call them is nothing new and shouldn't be a problem.


I have stack-exchanged through my undergrad math program. Am I likely to succeed in mathematics PhD programs? I'm currently a third-year mathematics student at a top-20 private research university in the US (though mostly known for the humanities). We have a small undergraduate mathematics department, but we were offered the option to take many graduate courses. I’m always passionate about studying pure math, specifically algebra, and I’m very seriously considering pursuing a PhD degree in mathematics. Nonetheless, I’ve not been able to participate in mathematical research of any kind so far – getting undergraduate research experience is impossible due to personal status issues, and my department has no resource committed to undergraduate research.

Indeed, as of my course load, I’ve finished the three-semester algebra sequence by my second year (i.e., group/representation, ring, field/Galois, category theory, commutative algebra, and homological algebra). Though I started late, I'm also working my way through the analysis and topology/geometry sequence, taking differentiable manifold and complex analysis now. I maintained all As in the graduate courses I’ve taken.

Regarding this, I do have one important confession to make, and it is in fact the reason why I’m asking this question. Math SE is a very robust community with respect to algebra. This worked very conveniently for me as there are very few peers at my school to discuss math with. As a combined consequence I actively seek ideas on SE whenever I get stuck on homework. (Please note that I'm not in violation of any collaboration rules set by my department: I understand and then proceed to write every proof myself.) This happens in about 30% of the assignments. I have no problem with exams since they are usually much easier than assignments.

Only after having recently talked to graduate students and professors at a conference, did I realize this is a terrible approach. I vividly remember one said something like: “unless you went through a textbook and attempted to prove every theorem yourself first you won’t truly understand the subject”, which is, the exact contrary of what I’ve been doing. I’m seriously in doubt about my aptitude over these subjects, fearing that I will be subpar on the level of understanding as well as the ability to conduct research, to approach open questions when I reached graduate school. I fear I never try/explore “hard enough” to come up with proofs like others have suggested. I managed to do most just by familiarity of common methods/tricks and theorems, but those things can be forgotten over time.

So here comes some specifics of my question:

Is searching SE for homework problems common for math students?
How will doing so affect a student’s understanding of the material?
In what ways does doing so tie to one’s ability to do research?
What are some possible ways to remedy this, besides completely re-learning the material?
How much do I have to pay in the future for stack-exchanging through my courses?

Yes! In fact, I think you're well on your way to doing better than your peers! Taking longer to understand something isn't something to be proud of! There's no need to reinvent the wheel. If someone can help you understand something, you would be well-advised to make use of them. In the same way, you would be well-advised to attend the lectures, thereby getting help from the professor, instead of staying at home with the ZFC axioms and attempting to derive the whole of mathematics from scratch.

My experience asking questions on Stack Exchange also indicates that simply writing the problem in a form which others can understand is a great help in clarifying my own understanding of the problem. Indeed, I've solved some of my problems simply by beginning to write a (never asked) question.

Of course, this doesn't mean you should outsource your understanding to others. You should make it so that you can explain the concept to next year's students without help (answer some other SE questions while you're at it!). But even then you should feel free to ask for help with next year's problems.

As students read textbooks and solve exercises, but do not have access to them while writing the actual exam. So is the case with StackExchange. You don't have access to it while writing the actual exam. Whatever case you follow, as long as you did well on the exams, why should it matter?

BTW, if you do join PHD, please use mathoverflow.


Article based on thesis and co authorship I graduated 8 months ago with 7 SCI article published. Recently, I submitted another article based on my thesis work. My supervisor, who actually has no supervisory role in my thesis except for providing a monthly stipend, wants me to add him as a co-author. He argues that he supported my research,  but in fact I paid him back more than he supported me, in the form of my work on various projects (totally different than my thesis topic).

During my PhD he never took an  interest in my PhD thesis, rather he always used me for his short term industry projects. In 4.5 years we didn’t have a single discussion/meeting on my PhD thesis.

Is him asking me to add him as an author morally correct? What if I refuse his request? Can my action be consider an unethical act?

If this is the case, what he is doing is not morally correct. You can refuse his request and thank him inside the acknowledgement part of your article for helping you. An author of an article should make some major contributions to the work, even if he is not writing any part of the article. Minor contributors should be mentioned in the acknowledgement section.

If I were to publish any of my thesis works as article, I would be adding my supervisor as co-author; to avoid any future conflicts of interests. I am anyway loosing nothing by doing so. In fact, I would expect a stronger recommendation from him. The relationship between supervisor and PhD student extends beyond just the thesis and degree. So, I would not affect it in this way.


Academic integrity problem in PhD proposal to reuse ideas/ self-plagiarize? Is there any integrity/plagiarism issue if I use ideas I developed/argued in my master's essays and dissertation in the PhD proposal? Can I do this? What can I do to prevent potential problems?

Edit: none of those essays or dissertation are published, if this helps clarifying. So even that they're not published, I should cite myself as I would with published work?

You may use the ideas for your PhD proposal. Ideas, unless patented, are free and can be passed between people, projects, institutions, etc.

However, do make sure that the source of the original idea is attributed. Particularly when other people contributed to the ideas, attribution is due (from an ethical point of view).

This might be done in the following way: 'I propose to investigate the method that was developed by my supervisor , my lab partner , and myself, described in my master thesis [reference], in the following way ...'

I would certainly advise to reference your master thesis (even if it is not publicly available), since it is a perfect source where the ideas can be found in an elaborate written form.

I don't see any problem with it as long as:

Ideas in your Master's essays and dissertation are truly your ideas. If your Master's supervisor was a substantial contributor to the development of those ideas, you could run into issues.
Your Master's ideas should ideally have been substantiated by researchers outside if your group (in the form of citations or similar work).
You've asked your Master's supervisor if you can pitch expanding on your Master's work as part of your proposal.

Best to check all the angles at this stage, than deal with a very big headache later.


Is there a way to get rid of "enhanced pdf"s? It has become increasedly more common that when I try to access an article from the publisher's website I get redirected to a sort of online reader instead of a plain old pdf file to download. Elsevier calls it enhanced reader, Wiley enhanced pdf, and Springer luckily has not caught on yet.

I don't like this approach and prefer to download the 'un-enhanced' pdf file to read or save it locally (but I will spare you the soapboxing).

Is there a way to circumvent this system and automatically rewrite links to point to the true pdf file instead? I am thinking to something like a browser extension or a Greasemonkey script, if it exists. If it worked on the websites of the major publishers it would already be a time saver on the long run.

The userscript Publication Auto PDF seems to do the job.
It does not rewrite the pdf link, but downloads the pdf directly when one visits the abstract page, so it saves even one more click.
It works under a browser extension that runs userscripts (Greasemonkey / Tampermonkey / Violentmonkey / Firemonkey).

when I try to access an article from the publisher's website I get redirected to an online reader (often marketed as an "enhanced pdf" of some sort) instead of a plain old pdf file.

Is the online reader a browser plugin that is reading a pdf? If so, then modify your browser configuration to download the pdf, rather than open it with the plugin.

  Is there a way to...automatically rewrite links to point to the "true" pdf file instead?

Yes, as you've mentioned, you could write a Greasemonkey script.


Is it ethical to use someone else's research as an illustrative case? I have developed a framework for describing a phenomenon in organizations and would like to illustrate its use by referring to a case study published by another author. In other words, I would be fitting another study's descriptions to my own framework.

The paper will be published in conference proceedings.

So, is it fair game to use another person's study to illustrate my framework?

I have my own field work that I would like to use alongside the other study, so the other author's case study is complementary and... illustrative.

The entire point of publication is to get your work out there for other people to use as a basis for further work. (The whole "standing on the shoulders of giants" thing.)

If a researcher is going to be upset about someone else taking their work and using it as a basis of further work, then they shouldn't be publishing it in the first place. (E.g. many companies keep research results "trade secret", which they use internally and never publish.)

In the fields I'm familiar with, it's perfectly acceptable to take published results and re-analyze them or use them as a basis for further work.

That said, there are some caveats. Among these (but not a comprehensive list): Be sure to give appropriate citations and credit as to the origin of the work at every reasonable opportunity - avoid implying that this is your data, even by omission. Be careful about copyright - verbatim copying of text and figures without explicit permission is usually proscribed, but using the underlying data (facts, numbers, general ideas) is normally not. Be sure to conform to the particular norms in your field, if any, about re-use of datasets - in some fields there's norms about data re-use, as data collection may be laborious and researchers who spend a lot of effort making datasets don't want to be "scooped" on follow-up work by people who swoop in  with a quick re-analysis.

But generally speaking, if the data are available from a published source, you're not breaking copyright, and you're not doing anything that's going to prevent the original authors from publishing additional work, you should be able to use the published data in your paper. (With appropriate citation, of course.)

It is unethical as well as illegal in the following circumstances:

The contents (texts, figures, results) are copied verbatim from the other source.
Even though the texts are written after self interpretation, citation is missing.
If the figures are being used, the permission has not been taken. One should be extremely careful with this, as sometimes, authors are unaware of their own copyright after publication. In such a case, taking permission from only the authors would not suffice. The publisher must be asked for the same.

However, to answer your question, the case study may be presented indirectly by properly citing the original source. For e.g.

  ... We demonstrate the method of how to use case study which closely follows the case study presented in [reference]. ...


Is pasting an excerpt from Wikipedia in a paper without reference plagiarism? Assume you are reviewing a paper and discover that some general definitions therein have been copied from Wikipedia without mentioning the source. Should it be considered plagiarism or can it be considered legit because Wikipedia is freely available and anonymous?

Surely this behaviour shows poor effort in literature research because if something is on Wikipedia it surely is also in some more authoritative document. However, generic definitions of centuries old concepts should now be copyrightless and Wikipedia is as good as any textbook or giving one in your own words.

Copyright for a written work expires some years after the author's death; the length of time under copyright law varies from country to country. Wikipedia and other sites use a variety of licencing models which allow the material to be copied and the conditions that apply to the use of the material.

But regardless of whether something is still copyrighted or not, open source or not, freely available or not, if it is quoted, cited, copied or otherwise repeated in a text, if the source is not cited then yes, it is plagiarism.

When something passes into "common knowledge" then it can be written without having to find a quotable source. But there are also specific situations where something that might normally be considered "common knowledge" needs to be referenced to a source, such as student work where values, definitions, etc., are expected to be researched for accuracy and should also therefore include a reference.

There may also be the case where the value/definition is used in a way that is outside the norm, e.g. a definition that is unusual in the mainstream but is used in a specific way for a specific context, or a value that is based on some work that extends the precision beyond what is considered to be the norm.

The criteria remains, that if someone else wrote it and you copy it then not crediting the original author/source is plagiarism - academic theft.

It isn't necessarily plagiarism: The authors may have written both their manuscript and the Wikipedia article.

The authors may have avoided self-plagiarism in their manuscript by writing it first, the self-plagiarism issue on Wikipedia still remains (I'm unsure what Wikipedia's policy is).


Meaning of et al. when referring to multiple papers with the same first author I am citing some papers with the same first author but different co-authors.
For example, [1] is a paper by X, Y and Z, and [2] is a paper by X, A and B. Would X et al. [1,2] be appropriate here? because essentially et al. in [1] refers to people other than those referred to by et al. in [2].

There is a similar question about Harvard references. But I am interested in cases where only the reference number is shown in text.

Update in my field in computer science, it's common to refer to the first author and use et al. When there are multiple ones. Usually the first author is regarded as the one who did the majority of the work.

I understand this "X and others" to mean one specific set of (unnamed) people, unless they are the same bunch I'd write them separately. Just like when I was citing two papers by Chen together, but they were different Chens.
Perhaps use "X, Y et al. [203] and X, Z et al. [205]"?

If you need to mention X, et al. (et alii) would not  be appropriate, these are not the same "others". And it should generally be used for three or more authors.

"In several works X coauthored [1,2], we see that" or "In [1,2] X and his coauthors say..."

But why would you need to mention X? You can use "From [1,2], we know that..."