What is the point of listing 1000 authors for a single scientific paper? I arrived at the printer room this afternoon to collect my printing and I happened to notice that someone was yet to collect a printout of the gravitational waves paper that has been all over the scientific news the last few days/weeks. Of course, I was curious, so I had a peek.

It struck me that there was only one author... until I saw the asterisk indicating a full list of authors could be found at the end of the article.

There I found three full pages of authors. I have no intention of counting the exact number, but a quick estimate by word count suggests there are over 1000 authors from 133 institutions.

You always need to give credit where credit is due, that is a given. But to put it in context, there are at most 7 words of article per author. In fact, I can think of a number of problems coming from so many authors (like who do you contact if you have a question - the list is alphabetical and there doesn't appear to be a designated contact person).

What is the value of listing so many authors and why should (or shouldn't) it happen?

Update:
Thanks everyone for the thoughtful answers. As much as I want to choose an answer, I honestly cannot decide between the two most upvoted, so I'm going to abstain from choosing one.

The "point" of 1000 authors is to recognize that 1000 people contributed to the paper at a level sufficient to be considered authors, according to the standards of that particular field.

In some fields (including high-energy physics), large numbers of authors are not unusual. See e.g. the 2015 paper estimating the mass of the Higgs boson with 5,154 authors. This kind of research often involves very large teams spanning multiple institutions. Typically papers published as a result of a collaboration are credited to all members of the team.

For more information see Report by the Working Group on Authorship in Large Scientific Collaborations in Experimental High Energy Physics.

This paper is unusually important and comes from an unusual project.  Wikipedia reports LIGO is the largest and most ambitious project ever funded by the NSF (see references there).

Seeking the Higgs particle at CERN, for example, allowed many side experiments finding other kinds of results.  The LIGO project really had just one goal since 1992.  Chris Mueller mentions many papers on progress in designing instruments, and that is true,  but they were not exactly partial results.  The desired result was to observe gravity waves,and that took over 30 years to do.

So when the thrilling result did come in, it is natural they wanted to credit a lot of people who had invested time and effort in a project which many skeptics had doubted would find anything.


Where to publish helpful, but informal papers? I have written an informal article 9 pages long, that covers some general, lightly technical material.  I wrote it because this material is not covered elsewhere, and I am knowledgeable in the field.  The material is light in the sense that it is not highly innovative, or even highly useful, but it is "good to know".  The subject matter is information security, with respect to radio systems.

I have posted the article on my personal webpage.  Should I bother to submit it somewhere for 'proper' publication?  It is not technical or innovative enough for IEEE or ACM journals (or even letters).  Or should I just keep it on my page for people with search engine inquiries related to the subject matter to possibly stumble across?

If you don't know where to publish something, but nonetheless it is of an appropriate standard and you consider it worth sharing, why not posting it to arXiv? You won't get prestige just for submitting, but:

people can find it,
you can easily point to it,
it is timestamped.

I wouldn't bother with further publication.  You've pretty much nailed the issue:  search engines work quite well to "winnow the chaff" (to quote Rivest) when the right questioner comes along, and good security through the Petabytes of obscurity when they don't.


What does "communicated" mean in a CV? I often see in a CV that certain papers are labelled as ‘communicated’. What does that mean? (Not ‘communicated by’.)

E.g. this document which is a list of papers including entries like:

  "On complicated things and related stuff" (with A. B. Coauthor) (communicated).

"Communicated" means the manuscript is submitted to a journal and is currently under review.


Is it possible to start a PhD at 36 without taking a huge hit financially? I'm currently working as a Senior Engineer (Mechanical) for a large company. However, I am increasingly finding the work to be dull and lacking in challenge. I don't think I can bear to spend the next 20-30 years like this - I feel that I am not making use of my true abilities and I yearn to be doing something more novel and breaking new ground.

I live in the US (Boston area) and I have been looking around at what other opportunities are available; however, it seems that many of the more interesting-looking positions (which are more research-based) require a PhD. I majored in fluid dynamics and have some experience in CFD, so I am looking at positions that lean towards that area.

So, I am considering whether I should do a PhD, which seems to be a logical choice if I want to be doing more intellectually-challenging work. However, right now I am earning a good salary; I have a big mortgage to pay and a 3 year old kid to support. Doing a PhD seems like it would be a very difficult path to take, from a financial standpoint: not only would I have to give up my healthy salary, but I would also most likely have to pay a lot in tuition fees, in which case I would go from earning ++$ to -$, which would be very difficult to manage.

So, my question is: is it possible to do a PhD at my stage in life, whilst also paying the mortgage and supporting my family? What is the best way to balance this?

I should probably also mention that I have a Masters Degree in Aerospace Engineering from a top UK university (I moved to the US from the UK a few years ago).

I did my PhD in computer science in the Boston area. Through an RA and a bit of TA, I had my tuition, health insurance, and conference travel expenses covered, plus a stipend which has since risen to $36,800 before tax per year. (With a bit of googling you can look up what financial support various PhD programs offer, as well as health insurance costs for dependents -- for a large family, this might be $10,000.) That was enough for a modest but comfortable single person's lifestyle in expensive Boston, but I would struggle to support a child or mortgage with that. PhD stipends will vary by field (i.e., how much funding professors have) and by university (i.e., local cost of living).

You will know your financial situation and it's up to you to judge whether you can cut your expenses and/or dip into your savings to make that work. PhDs are getting longer, so keep in mind that you probably need to do this for about six years.

There are a few other options to make it better financially:

Ideally you can work something out with an employer where they will pay you while you do your PhD, probably in exchange for some part time work or a promise that you will continue working for them afterwards. Such an arrangement is more common for shorter programs like an MBA.

It's also possible to spend some time during the PhD working in a company that is somehow related to your studies. For example, a lot of computer science PhD students will do internships at companies like Google or Microsoft. A 10-week summer internship could give your annual income a >$10k boost.

If it all gets too much financially, you can take a year or two off your PhD to work and then come back to finish. That's not ideal, because it interrupts your work. However, it's better than needing to drop out entirely.

Overall, however, I think it's unavoidable that a PhD will entail a financial hit. A PhD is almost never a good financial decision, but if you are passionate about research it's definitely worth it.

Basics:

You find your current position unchallenging
You think R&D is where all the fortune and glory is and the path to R&D is a PhD, but...
You don't think you want to take the financial hit because of payments
for a house you can't afford and having to support your child

To me, it sounds like you want someone else to handle all of your risk - you've even gone so far as to ask other people to do the thinking for you.

Try this: START YOUR OWN BUSINESS.

You've got untapped abilities?  Prove it.  That takes research.  Think you've found an underserved market?  Develop a solution for it, end-to-end.

You're going to take a financial hit either way.  But, at least this way, your happiness is yours.  Your mistakes are yours.  If you find yourself bored, you won't have your employer to blame.  You'll also relieve yourself of that terrible fat check you currently get.  So, be an engineer: downsize, simplify your life.

If you fail, great!  You've learned something: maybe you're not what you thought you were.  And - added bonus - when you DO decide to go back to work for someone, you'll have a deeper appreciation of what it takes to get you that fat check you find so unattractive today.

If you succeed, you'll have accomplished more than most PhDs.  Oh... and you won't have the PhD debt load, after.  So, there's that.


Should I accept this unfunded offer from my dream school or wait for funded offers? I just finished the grad school application process, and I'm getting my first letters of acceptance. I got one letter from one of my bottom three schools, one from a "middle of the pack" school, and one from a dream school. And, at the risk of humble bragging, this is a great school with a great reputation and true luminaries in my specific research interest amongst its faculty. I literally screamed when I got the letter. However, it is not funded.
They sent me the letter of acceptance only three weeks after I submitted my application. As I understand it, that's a very quick turn-around time, especially for a prominent research institution. I assume that's a very positive thing.
I'm not sure whether to just accept the offer right away, or wait to see if some of the other dream schools respond. At least one of the other dream schools will have funding for me from the get-go if I'm accepted. I know "non-funded for any amount of time" is a big red-flag, but I feel the pedigree of the school that I got accepted to trumps that. Having good recommendations from any of the professors I would work under would be worth more than gold. I feel like, in this situation, you just bite the bullet and go for it.
But I also feel that if you might have basically the exact same opportunity, except with funding, at another institution or two, it might be worth waiting/holding out a bit to see how things play out.
I feel left with a few questions:

Is it stupid of me to hold out at all, given the high level of the institution I received the letter of acceptance from? I worry my ego might have got too inflated, and it's wrong to  hope that another dream school (with or without available funding) will come knocking at my door.

If I do accept the offer, but then receive an offer from another dream institution that could offer me funding, would it be bad form to pull out of my agreement of acceptance? I wouldn't want bad blood.

How long is too long to wait on accepting the offer? Will they fill the open position if I take too long to respond? I don't want to miss out on what could be the opportunity of a lifetime because I sat on my hands.

Unless you are independently wealthy, you should never take an unfunded offer for graduate school in mathematics.
Even before the pandemic, some people with a dozen good papers after two successful postdocs - a well above average publication rate - were failing to find jobs.
When I was last broadly applying for academic jobs 10 years ago, the general advice was to send 80-100 applications to jobs you were competitive for in order to have reasonable certainty of getting at least one offer.  Even before the pandemic, there weren't that many jobs in total to apply for, and each job gets more applicants than they did 10 years ago.  (This year is brutal; the only people getting research-oriented jobs will be AMS Sectional plenary lecture candidates (there are roughly 40 per year, total - that's less than the number of Berkeley+Stanford PhDs per year) or better.)
There are even fewer jobs in industry for which a math PhD is a better qualification than several years of experience.
For a more teaching-oriented academic job, the funded position at a lower-ranked graduate school is actually better preparation, because you will be teaching for your funding, and because the undergraduate population at a lower-ranked school is generally more similar to the undergraduate population at most universities than the undergraduate population at a highly-ranked school.
If you borrow money for graduate school, you could end up in a situation where you are unemployed with no means of paying back your loans.  Don't forget education loans cannot be discharged via bankruptcy.
Going to graduate school in math with funding is already a costly decision from the financial point of view, though it's fine if getting to spend a few years doing math is worth it for you (as it was for me).  Going to graduate school in math unfunded is potentially ruinous.

Accept the offer. If you receive a better offer down the line, politely back out.
This may not be easy for you, but it's not personal, it's business.
What can happen is that you decline the offer, the others say no... and you're left high and dry with nothing.


Accepting an Assistant Professor position at a low ranked university I recently completed a postdoc at a prestigious R1 university, in a high profile lab. My publication record is not prolific, but those that I have published as first author are well respected journals, and a handful of middle author publications in top journals as well. I have a consistent teaching record throughout my graduate and postdoc training as well.

I applied to faculty positions at ~30 schools over the past two years, including several that I was not very excited about, but were in my target location and had open positions, so I applied. In total, I've had two on campus interviews and have been offered a faculty position at a low ranking liberal arts university (awards Master's but not PhDs) that seems like somewhat of a good fit for me personally in terms of the teaching I would do and the research interests of the other faculty, but lacks the prestige and resources of larger/more research intensive schools.

Would it be wise to take this position in the hopes that several years of faculty experience will allow me to jump to a different college/university that is a better fit for my professional goals (i.e., more research, higher caliber students, more resources for faculty)? Does this happen often, where someone takes a "starter" appointment and moves to a more fitting situation when it arises, somewhat like a Visiting Assistant Professor position?

The chances of successfully "moving on to bigger and better things" depend on one's discipline, and also what topic one studies within that discipline. Some topics look much more attractive than others to departments/faculties seeking to boost their standing; note that this is, erm, less than perfectly correlated with the actual depth/worth of those topics.

  Would it be wise to take this position in the hopes that several years of faculty experience will allow me to jump to a different college/university that is a better fit for my professional goals (i.e., more research, higher caliber students, more resources for faculty)?

This strikes me as risky, if you feel those professional goals are essential to your job satisfaction within the next 4–7 years. It's also the case, at least in my discipline, that people hiring in smaller places are not keen on applicants who give the impression — rightly or wrongly — that they are using such places as stepping stones.

Moreover, it may not be as easy for you to move on to "better things" as you might hope; you'll be up against younger people applying for similar jobs, and your rate of publication — if that is important in your discipline — will almost certainly be lower than those people, especially if you start work somewhere that has fewer resources than the place you did your PhD.

  Does this happen often, where someone takes a "starter" appointment and moves to a more fitting situation when it arises, somewhat like a Visiting Assistant Professor position?

I'm afraid I don't have anything more than anecdotes and a very partial sample based on my own discipline.

My own experience, which may differ from yours, is that permanent positions in my sub-discipline were hard to come by in my home country. Consequently, I ended up taking a job in North America which, although not in a liberal arts college, was not too far from the situation you describe as

  somewhat of a good fit for me personally in terms of the teaching I would do and the research interests of the other faculty, but lacks the prestige and resources of larger/more research intensive schools.

At the time I did not do so with the intention of moving on, but it was always a possibility I kept in mind, and subsequently I did indeed quit that job to take up a new one elsewhere, which unexpectedly arose. So I guess you could view this story as some evidence to support your initial idea — start somewhere and then move on — but I'd also counsel caution.

You describe the resources as likely insufficient to garner the publications that will fuel the leap up.

Academia abounds with professors who were generally useless at a top lab for a few years and then got hired lower down the food chain in the mistaken hope that some of the magic would have rubbed off on them.

There are not so many people who jumped up because they did something remarkable at a low-prestige uni. One reason is the lack of resources as noted. Another one is that the top places will not hesitate to copy your work without acknowledging you. (Yes, Kevin, this happens, and it happens a lot, and there exists no effective recourse.)

The jump "upwards" is very much easier from industry, especially if you manage to be sitting on funding or acces to (or knowledge of) some new instrument.

Another warning: low prestige places are often run by people who are - how to put this politely - mediocre prima donnas. Your experience at a much better place may inspire some unpleasantness on the part of your new colleagues.


Can a professor force students to pay a subscription fee for a different site in order to take classes? I have a friend whose has a professor who is forcing students to sign up for a website (that requires them to pay a monthly subscription fee) where they will be posting lectures, notes, assignments, etc. The professor did not inform them of this until a few days before the first class would be starting, meaning students who could not afford to pay it right away essentially couldn't attend class on the first day. We've had departments use different websites before, but this is the first time I'm hearing about someone using one that students have to pay out of pocket for. From what I know it functions the same way as Blackboard, but it isn't covered by the school. They are also expected to pay a lab fee and buy the textbook so it just seems like overkill, but I don't know if it's something that can be brought up as an issue to higher ups.

This started as a comment but I decided to give an opposing view from the one in Anonymus Physicist's answer.
As you might have guessed, the answer to this question is location dependant.
In my University in the UK, this is explicitly forbidden. It is, in fact, forbidden to ask students to register to any website or service in order to follow the course materials, even if the registration is free. There is a (fairly short) list of approved services, for which the University has ensured that they follow the (now local, but still based on GDPR) Privacy Laws, which students may be asked to use. This list is updated yearly, and I believe the process is substantially more complex than sending somebody an email saying "I want to use X in my classes next year".
As this is done to ensure compliance with Privacy Laws, I am fairly certain that all British Universities have the same clause. As the current Privacy Laws are still based on GDPR, originally passed as European Union legislation, I would guess that something similar is in effect through EU Universities as well.
(However, note that since UK Universities are ran much more like companies than public education institutions, as is common on the Continent, they are also much much more careful about any legal liability their actions might cause. So it might be less enforced outside of the UK.)

This is typically permitted or at least not forbidden.
It is much more common that you pay in one payment at the start of the course, as opposed to monthly, but it's essentially the same as a textbook rental, which is common and often digital.
If you think the price is too high, you can certainly complain.


Why has the time spent studying declined so sharply in the United States over the the past few decades? I read on https://www.aei.org/publication/leisure-college-usa/ :

Study time for full-time students at four-year colleges in the United States fell from twenty-four hours per week in 1961 to fourteen hours per week in 2003.

The authors give some inconclusive statement regarding the reasons behind the trend:

The decline is not explained by changes over time in student work status, parental education, major choice, or the type of institution students attended.
Evidence that declines in study time result from improvements in education technology is slim. A more plausible explanation is that achievement standards have fallen.

I wonder why the time spent studying has declined so sharply in the United States over the the past few decades. I am only looking for data-supported answers (or pointers to them).

First, it is important to deploy your scientific skepticism in assessing this claim.  The source, after all, is the American Enterprise Institute, which is a political "think tank" that is explicitly dedicated to pushing a particular point of view.  Other key elements of its scientific record including taking tobacco company money to produce pro-smoking studies the 1980s and recent attacks on global warming.

There does, however, seem to be at least some difference there, and a deeper analysis of both the data and possible causes found that a major transition happened across the 1970s:

Expansion of the student population to include many more people who are working to support themselves, parenting, commuting long distances, etc., which means they cannot devote as much time, and
A shift in faculty requirements away from teaching and toward research, with a concomitant decrease in the amount of work that faculty are able to support asking from students.

From the early 1980s to today, however, the situation appears to have been more stable.

The source article is not very clear on the definition of "study time", and it appears to be inconsistent with federal law.

In order to be eligible for federal student aid, a student must be enrolled in a full time course of study. 14 hours per week of study time do not qualify as full time studying. For financial aid purposes, full time is 12 credit hours for undergraduates, or 9 credit hours for graduate students.

http://financialaid.gmu.edu/federal-stafford-student-loan/

At the school where I teach, this usually translates to taking three classes of 4 or 4.5 credit hours per quarter. Each class requires about 4-5 hours of classroom time, plus another 8-10 hours of prep/homework time, for a total just shy of 40 hours.

This article claims a "study time" of 14 hours in 2003. My best guess is that they are only referring to classroom time. If that is the case, the statistics may simply indicate a shift from classroom time to homework from 1961 to 2003.

There are other possible explanations.

What is needed is a more rigorous definition of what this study was actually looking at.


Can a project be "too good" for a Master's? Pretty straight forward. I am starting to apply to grad school and I was discussing possible projects with some (grad student) friends of mine. When I mentioned something in particular one of them said "that might even be too good for a Master's, sounds more like a PhD..." Then he also went on to say that I could use part of a project like that for a Master's and then use the rest to finish it off with a PhD. For some time I thought about this, then I decided to ask it here.
So is there such a thing as a project that is too good for a Master's? And if so, should my future advisor generally know where this "boiling point" is?
Note: if you need more info about my major of study or the specific sub-field, leave a comment and I can make an edit.

From my reading of the conversation between the two of you, he meant 'too good' in one of two ways:

"Too Good" as in the topic will yield many high-quality results, potentially many publications, and opportunities for continued/extended research.
"Too Good" as in requiring too much time to complete in the typical Master's degree time period, and actually should be understood as "Too advanced" or "Too in-depth".

In answer to your second question 'will future advisor know the boiling point?' Yes. That is what they are there for, to help guide the scope of your project to a Master's level.

I don't see a problem here.

If the project is too good, then

(a) you will not be able to finish it in the timeframe of a Masters, in which case you can continue working on it for your PhD, OR

(b) you will finish it for your Masters, in which case you have a great Masters thesis, and then you can tackle something else for your PhD.

You should not kill yourself to achieve case (b).  If you find that the problem is too difficult, just do case (a).

Finally, be aware that other graduate students may not be able to gauge the difficulty very well.  Only you will know once you have begun working on it.


Is it common in any other first world countries besides the US to work while attending university? I have an old family friend in Japan (born and raised). We were recently talking about academics as he is in his 2nd year of Uni and I have 1 B.S and soon to have another with the goal of moving on to a Masters this fall.

While talking he asked if I "Work or study" as he knew I completed my first degree but was unaware I started my second. When I mentioned that I both go to Uni and work a corporate job in my industry he was, no joke, speechless.

He couldn't believe someone could both attend a Uni and work at the same time without failing classes. He told me that people only work part time jobs very sparingly during school semesters and then work more during the summer but can't even begin to believe working in a corporate job while still studying.

I don't know too many people that attend my Uni and don't either have 2 part-time jobs or a full time jobs (except for those with free rides or very generous parents).

Many people I know from other countries (I try to culture myself) ask me the same question "Do you work or study?" and they get very confused when I tell them "both" and explain my situation.

Is this only common in the US? I've talked to people from Singapore, Japan, Canada, Greece, and the UK and they all can't believe working and going to Uni at the same time.

In Germany, at least one survey reports that 47 percent of students work during the semester, and 63 percent work during the holidays between semester.

Most of these students earn less than 500 Euros a month, but 6 percent earn more than 1000€ after taxes. Over 60 percent that have jobs have one to finance their studies/living expenses. For 7 percent of students, their job is their only source of income.

According to the Sozialerhebung 2012 (a large survey by a federal agency)  figure 9.10, 13 percent of students studying towards their first degree  worked more than 20 hours a week on average in 2012. Whether that's "common" is a matter of interpretation.

The part on financing reports a median income of 300€ from working, with 63 percent of students doing some kind of work. Figure 6.5 shows that 2 percent of students only finance through studies through work, with an average income of 960 Euro, and 13 percent mainly finance their life through working, with an average income of 660 Euros.

(All sources in German)

I am from Germany, and here you are not even allowed to have a fultime-job while being a student

The reasoning is that you cannot work fultime and study fultime, so are only allowed to work 20 hours/week on average (fultime being 40 hours).

If you want or need to work more, you have to either find illegal work (as the word says, illegal) or enroll as a part-time student (at least with respect to some social security issues and such, which is mandatory in Germany)(which has all kinds of unwanted consequences on the level of taxes, social fees and so on).

Probably even more extreme then in Japan :D


How to start an official email to a professor I want to send an email to a professor to inform him that I want to accept the offer of PhD admission and Research assistantship. But I do not know how to start email. Is the following good? if not, would you please recommend better phrase.

  Dear Professor,

  I hope you are keeping well ....

Congratulations on finding a PhD position :) When sending an acceptance e-mail to a professor, I would say the "general" rules of communicating with professors via e-mail apply.

Be polite, and extend thanks when appropriate, but don't overdo the social pleasantries.

The polite part basically holds for any e-mail and live correspondence.

I would say that "I hope you are keeping well" would be a bit unnecessary.
Be short and to the point. Respect the professors time.

Professors receive many e-mails a day, and are usually very busy. Saying what you want to say clearly not only shows respect for their time, but also makes it more likely that everything written will be carefully read.
Do at least a basic spellcheck.

Especially in the beginning of a communication. It doesn't cost much time and effort, but could leave a bad impression.
Do not attach big files unless explicitly asked for.

Anything larger than a few MB should not be sent unless asked for (e.g. sending all your credentials / application papers when first contacting somebody is bad), and especially not to somebody who you are not collaborating with at the moment.

Beyond this, there is not much else. I already feel like it's hard to call any of these rules, they're just guides based on common sense. Just say what you need to say. I put and extended the comment by @user11259 here as an example:

  Hello Dr./Prof. Brain,

  I gratefully accept your offer of admission and research assistantship, and I look forward to working with you.

  (Please let me know about the next steps in the admission process I need to take.)

  Sincerely,

  user11259

Almost everyone who interviews attempts to present themselves, their accomplishments, and their personal objectives politely and submissively to the interviewer.

Dear Professor,
I hope you are keeping well ....

Hello Dr./Prof. Brain,
I gratefully accept your offer of admission and research assistantship, and I look forward to working with you.

When you write "I hope you are keeping well" or "I gratefully accept," you are subordinating yourself to your "superior."

This attitude is not "academic," it is playing power politics or submitting to colonialism.

The first thing you must do is read everything you can get your hands on your professor has published. Then select any aspect of the professor's writing that jumps up at you. Find something Professor Brain has written, and ask her one or more questions about her assertions. SHE MUST RESPOND--SHE CANNOT HELP BUT RESPOND BECAUSE YOU ARE ACTIVATING THE KEYS TO HER PSYCHE.

When Professor Brain responds, find a term or concept she mentions; and ask Professor Brain to elaborate.

After you have had a continuing conversation with Professor Brain for several e-mail messages back and forth, you can discuss any procedural issues you like. But at that point in the discussion, you will have established where you stand, who you are, and how much you care. Do it properly, and YOU WILL BECOME THE SUPERIOR.


How can I avoid inadvertently offending my female peers and getting into trouble for it? Attention has been drawn recently to an incident that occurred at a scientific conference and its sequelae described in this article:

The fuss started when [Prof. X] and [Prof. Y] ended up in the same crowded elevator during a conference at a Hilton in San Francisco last month. [Prof. Y] said she offered to press the floor buttons for people in the elevator, whom she described as mostly conference attendees and all, except one other woman, white middle-aged men. Instead of saying a floor, [Prof. X] smiled and asked for the women’s lingerie department "and all his buddies laughed," [Prof. Y] wrote in a complaint, the details of which [Prof. X] disputed.
[Prof. Y] [...] then wrote to the association’s executive director, who forwarded the complaint to the group’s Committee on Professional Rights and Responsibilities, which determined that [Prof. X] had violated the conduct code.
[Prof. X] insists it never should have gotten to that point because he tried to resolve the problem informally, as the association’s conduct code recommends. After being informed that his conduct was under investigation, [Prof. X] wrote [Prof. Y] an email assuring her that "I certainly had no desire to insult women or to make you feel uncomfortable." He suggested that [Prof. Y], who was born in Romania and raised in Israel, might have misinterpreted his remark. When he was young, in the 1950s, he said, it was a "standard gag line" to ask the elevator operator for the hardware or lingerie floor as though one were in a department store.
"Like you, I am strongly opposed to the exploitation, coercion, or humiliation of women," [Prof. X] wrote. "As such evils continue, it seems to me to make sense to direct our attention to real offenses, not those that are imagined or marginal. By making a complaint to ISA that I consider frivolous — and I expect, will be judged this way by the ethics committee — you may be directing time and effort away from the real offenses that trouble us both."
[Prof. X] was told to write an "unequivocal apology" to [Prof. Y] and submit a written copy by May 15 to the association’s executive committee. The apology should focus on [Prof. X's] actions, rather than [Prof. Y's] perceptions of them, it said, adding that if he failed to comply, the executive committee would consider appropriate sanctions.

As a male member of academe, I am worried.  I feel bewildered and fear that I might also offend someone some day.
How can I avoid committing an equivalent faux pas in an academic environment, such as an international conference?

When I step on someone's foot in a crowded subway, I apologize, even if I didn't do it on purpose. I don't refuse to say I'm sorry, I don't imply in a sarcastic way that the other person should have gotten their foot out of the way, I don't suggest that it cannot have hurt all that much, and I don't tell them they should relax, it's just a prank.

If you read the full story, you will see that Prof X's problems really started when he reached out to Prof Y to tell her she was wrong and had no right to complain, and even further refused to formally apologize when asked to. When you read the organization's reasoning, you see that they also consider that it is not so much the intent of the actions that matters, but rather the consequences and hurt they caused.

So I would suggest apologizing if someone tells you that your actions hurt them, instead of telling them that they had no right to feel hurt. Showing that you are a human being capable of empathy helps, usually. I have never witnessed an attempt at going down the second route that worked out well.

Every time you say something, there is a risk. Topics that are especially risky are sex/sexuality, race, class, and the like. When it comes to these topics, it is always wise to make sure you're absolutely confident that the individuals in your current vicinity are okay with your conversation, or especially humor. Oh, and on humor, my opinion is that humor (even beyond the discussion about offending someone), should be for the other person. When your are making a joke, are you making sure that the other person you are saying it to will laugh? Or are you just trying to make yourself laugh? Whenever there is some issue of someone making an offensive joke and then going "aw come on it was just a joke," it always seems to stem from the person making fun and then expecting that everyone else be amused by what they think is funny. When you tell a joke for someone else, like to cheering them up or just lighten a moment, make sure the joke is actually for them, since this will help you consider what their actual sense of humor is. Keep in mind also that people have vastly different experiences. Individuals such as women currently face many issues, and it's not that these are new by any means. We are just in a society where they are more empowered than ever to talk about oppression they've been dealing with since written history.


At which level (D or E) should I apply for an advertised faculty position in Australia? I am putting together an application for an academic position that has been advertised as either level D or E at an Australian university (equivalent to full professor or chair professor in the US). The selection criteria are slightly different, depending on the level at which I apply, and I need to specify which level I am applying for in my application. I would happily accept the role if offered at level D, but would also be a credible candidate at level E.

My publication record and h-index are comfortably on par with existing level E professors in the department, my grants and funding record is good, and I would also bring the industry experience and leadership skills that they are looking for. On the other hand, I am not a shoe-in for the role, even at level D: my research interests are only just within scope for the department and I have limited teaching experience. It's a ("Group of Eight") research-focused university, so teaching is likely to be secondary to research, but it is still a factor.

I am guessing that they would not consider me at level D if I apply at level E, or vice-versa. Australia has less of a culture of salary negotiation than the US. I have thought about addressing both sets of selection criteria and leaving it up to them, but worry that might simply be annoying.

What is your advice?

It is my understanding that when a position is advertised so broadly, i.e. D or E, they are likely looking for someone really big. That being said, I think they are likely looking for someone at the level E, but would consider a strong candidate at level D.

If it were me, I would evaluate my qualifications and fit with both D and E positions honestly, and then put all my effort into whichever feels like the best fit.

If the only motivation to try for E is salary, and you probably fit better for D, then you are likely risking both.

The level is mostly about your salary floor.  It sounds like level D is sufficient money to satisfy you.  I don't see why you would increase your risk by applying for level E.


Taking a course on Pass / No Pass Basis for Grad School For a PhD application: assuming a student has a good technical GPA (whatever that means from your point of view) and took some challenging technical classes and some grad courses; what would you think if he has taking some "challenging" courses for unrelated topics on Pass/Not Pass basis. My university lets me take one third of my whole units for P/NP basis. For example, as a math major, what if instead of taking easy humanity courses, I take hard humanity courses; but not for letter grade. How would this affect a grad school application?

I have been to Ph.D. admissions committees both as a grad student and as a faculty member. Generally speaking, if those courses are not very relevant to your major and your intended area of research, I wouldn't pay much attention to "Pass" grades (whereas low letter grades would probably stand out) We get plenty of domestic and foreign applicants with very diverse backgrounds and there are much more important things to look at in their application package.

I assume that the genesis of your position is that you want to be challenged in class, but not at the expense of risking a bad grade staining your otherwise impressive transcript in a subject that probably won't define your career. While this is certainly not the only approach, it seems sound thinking to me.

If they do affect your GPA in a negative way, however, I would consider a bit more carefully--perhaps not in a binary way, but in regards to how many courses to do this with.

By the way, remember that as a Ph.D. student you can also take courses outside your major you feel curious about. I certainly did that.

Short answer, yes it could affect your grad school application. If the school is looking at those non-major classes.

What you should do is check with the admissions councilors at the schools you are interested in. Each school may look at this differently, but be prepared to give an explanation as to why you took those classes, in case they ask.

The best way that you can do this is in your personal statement or any other essays that might be included in your application. Within that paper, I suggest that you talk about the areas of study that you wish to grow your knowledge, even if it is a "basic class". If you word it right, you can show how you enjoy learning new and challenging topics, which is why you chose to take certain classes at a harder, but pass/fail, level even though they did not apply to your major.

Edit: I only suggest that you add this into your statement if the councilors state that those classes will be taken into consideration. If they deem otherwise, then there is no need to worry about those classes.


How can a proof question be asked online? Let us consider a quiz question whose answer is a proof. For instance, a question in mathematics, such as prove that for every natural number $n$ the quantity $n^3-n$ is even.

How could such a question be implemented in a computer interface so that the computer can check the proof for correctness?

A simple, yet unreasonable way would be to have a multiple choice format for the question, where every choice was one way of proving the relationship, but I guess the shortcomings of this are obvious...

I have experimented with a system that provides students with a collection of phrases/formulae from which they can drag and drop a selection to construct a proof.  I think that this is a promising approach but there are still a large number of different ways in which students can get the answer wrong, and an even larger number of ways that they can construct an answer that cannot be parsed as something meaningful.  If you simply reject such answers without comprehensible feedback then you will just make the students hate you.  So you have to write a large amount of code that tries to analyse all possible answers and explain what (if anything) is wrong with them.  The logic is quite complex and I am not sure how well the students would understand the explanations.  I hope to return to these experiments at some point but at the moment I am not teaching anything for which they would be useful.

Checking proofs automatically from free-text is not something that is solved.
Even if you impose very strict rules on how to type stuff, you cannot expect a program to check it.

Here is why: if your student were asked to type a computer program to solve a specific task, you cannot expect a computer program to check with 100% certainty that the algorithm is correct, in general.
This is not due to technical limitations; it has been proved that there is no computer program that can guarantee that the program it checks terminate (thus is not in an infinite loop, a common error in computer science).

Hence, I suspect there will never be a generic solution to your question either.

Maybe a better from of evaluating the students is to maybe give fragments of a proof, and ask them to order these in a way that makes sense.
Or even better, give the full proof, but instead ask questions about the details, with multiple-choice or simple free-form that only has a finite number of correct answers.


Can I be a good scientist if I only work in working hours? I am doing postdoc in developmental biology. Recently I started to leave work at the lab, meaning that I don't work at home anymore. Before I spent many hours at night (at home) analyzing my data; now I spent that time on my side project not related to science.
I would like to ask if that kind of schedule is sustainable? Can I be a good scientist if I only work in working hours (now and later when I have a long term position)? Other scientists seem to work both at the lab and at home.

It is possible. For the last eleven years (from the seventh month of my PhD trajectory onwards) I have worked the standard 40-hour work week: Monday through Friday, from nine to five. I don't work weekends, and I don't work evenings. Last Summer I got tenure.
Even though it is possible, it is not necessarily easy. You will need to be very efficient within those 40 hours a week, and you will need to have the support of those around you. If your university has the culture that faculty are available for work at all times, it's going to be hard to break through that culture on your own. Even if your university supports you in fighting for a reasonable work/life balance, you still may need to manage the expectations of those around you; I have made my colleagues aware that they shouldn't expect, for instance, email replies from my side on the weekends.
It is also entirely possible that in the long run, my 40-hour policy will reduce my chances for promotion: if full professorships open up, I may lose against those people that have worked 80-hour weeks. I'm not convinced that this will necessarily be the case: by regularly taking time to relax, I ensure that my mind is very sharp during the working week, and that makes me more productive in those 40 hours than others can be in 50, 60, or even more. But even if my policy will cost me an eventual promotion to full professor, I will not regret my choices: by working 40-hour working weeks, I get to spend lots of time with my family, which is simply more important to me.

Limiting yourself to only work at fixed times will on the long run not work out well. If you work from 9 to 5 every day, you'll tend to plan your work more tightly than if you allow yourself more flexibility. The constraint on work time in combinations with deadlines that you have to meet, will end up steering your work routine toward a "getting things done" mode, where "getting things done" is visible progress after one working day, like progress made writing an article, finish work on a conference talk etc.
You'll then end up performing quite well on getting routine tasks finished on time and also performing quite well on such tasks. However, you'll end up falling short on obtaining spectacular new results. The main difference between ordinary work for industry and science is that you need to also explore ideas that in your judgment are unlikely to yield good results.
If you always bin ideas that according to your preliminary analysis, are unlikely to work well, you'll end up working on things that will end up yielding results but not really spectacular new results. The reason is that anything that's easily visible as potential spectacular result has likely already been investigated, so the new spectacular results are usually hiding as things that look like bad ideas not worthy of investigating.
It's then your 9 to 5 work routine that biases you to not go all out on far-out ideas. If it's Friday and you look at your watch an you see that it is 3 pm and you can work for two hours to finish writing part of an article and also work on your conference talk for next week, you are unlikely to opt for spending the next two hours on, say, writing software needed to investigate some far-out idea. Your colleague who does not mind working in the weekend could more easily make that choice, as he/she can decide to do work on the article and the conference talk in the weekend.


Becoming a professor at a liberal arts college with H1B visa I am an international student on an F-1 visa in the United States and planning to pursue a PhD in mathematics. I've been looking into career options after graduation, and lots of people from my current undergraduate program who have gone on to complete PhD's (especially in pure math) have become professors at liberal arts colleges after graduation, with fewer of them doing postdocs or becoming R1/R2 university professors.
Considering my visa situation, would it be possible to become a professor in the future at a liberal arts college? Do they sponsor H1B visas or is this very uncommon? Could you work as a professor at a liberal arts college on an OPT or extended OPT?

H1B visas in the United States are intended for specialty workers and are appropriate for individuals with PhDs using those skills to teach students. H1B visas are awarded through a lottery system. Fortunately, non-profit organizations, including universities, are exempt from this lottery and can obtain H1B visas much easier. This visa is the most typical visa for someone in your situation. Reputable US institutions interested in hiring you should be willing to and have the infrastructure to apply for an H1B on your behalf. H1B visas are valid for 3 years and may be extended for an additional 3 years for a total of 6 years.
Optional practical training (OPT) following an F1 visa is required to be directly related to the student's area of study. Teaching in the field of your PhD would fulfill this requirement. As an individual in a STEM field, you would be eligible for a STEM OPT extension for up to a total of 24 months. A benefit of this approach is that the application cost is lower ($410 versus up to $4500 at the time of this answer not including legal fees). Your employer may file a petition on your behalf to change status from F1 OPT to H1B.
Beware of J1 visas, as they are intended for "exchange visitors". These visas typically trigger a two year home country physical presence requirement after completion of your stay before you are again able to apply for other visas including H1B and permanent residency.
Caveat: My experience is exclusively at R1 institutions, and thus may not be fully applicable to "liberal arts colleges"

Many colleges will not sponsor visas because it is inconvenient and there is a risk the visa will not be awarded.  Some colleges will sponsor visas.  So yes, it is possible, but not likely.


Are there any trustworthy Mathematics fee-based open access journals? Some open access journals, like Integers for example, don't charge the author any fee for publishing their article. Other open access journals do charge the author a fee and the author has to pay the fee so that their work can be posted online. Are there any trustworthy fee-based open access journals?

I'll try to link to pages which describe the open-access policy of the respective journals.

Both Proceedings of the AMS and Transactions of the AMS allow the author to pay a fee to make their article freely available electronically from the journal.  If the author chooses not to pay the fee then the article is not freely available from the journal (but the author may post the final preprint on the arXiv or their personal website).

The (few) Elsevier journals I have looked at have a similar fee for publishing open-access.  One example of which is the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications.  You might try their Journal Finder, which has a checkbox to only search for journals with open-access options.

Springer offers a similar program for some of its subscription-based journals which they call Open Choice.  Not all of its journals have this option (e.g. Acta Mathematica doesn't).

We also note that Elsevier and Springer both publish a number of purely open-access journals, but I can't comment on their "trustworthiness".

Research in the Mathematical Sciences is very reputable, if new. The editor in chief is Ken Ono.


Using initials to promote gender neutrality when publishing as a female? As I work my way through my academic career (second-year PhD student), I am confronted with many stats and instances of gender bias in the publishing process (see references below). Of course for double-blind peer reviews, this is not an issue, but for others it may be. I’ve also seen stats that indicate that female first-authored papers receive fewer citations, even after taking into account the historical gender lag of fewer female publications.

So the question I’ve been pondering is: Should I use my initials (first and middle) when submitting papers as an attempt to introduce gender neutrality into my work? I am lucky that I have a relatively unique last name (nothing like Smith) so I’m not very worried about identity.

Is this a good idea? Are there any further pros and cons I may not have considered?

References

Michał Krawczyk and Magdalena Smyk – Author׳s gender affects rating of academic articles: Evidence from an incentivized, deception-free laboratory experiment
Erin Hengel – Publishing while Female. Are women held to higher standards? Evidence from peer review
Rachael Pells – Understanding the Extent of Gender Gap in Citations

If you feel at risk in your profession for such things, then, certainly, establish a professional persona for yourself that will help assure fairness. Whether it is necessary or not, or backed up by statistics, is irrelevant. If you feel at risk, do what you think is best.

I would also suggest that you get some advice from a female mentor or professor about this. What have their experiences been? I'd guess their advice would be pretty good.

But I'll add, that you should think about making that a permanent persona that won't change in the future. You want your complete history to be traceable through a single name, even as your life changes. You can be A professionally, and B personally, as long as no fraud is intended.

I once should have changed my name, but didn't. Things would have been better for me had I done so at the time. The issue was completely different, but it had consequences.

Even if there is an impact, I suspect it is very minor.  And then you are giving up some of the benefits of having your name out there to begin with (harder to search).  Given your statements, it seems like cites and thus notability is a motivation for you.  So I think it is counterproductive to cloak your name.

My guess is gender is immaterial or if anything a positive.  (IOW, I don't buy that a stats difference must be the result of discrimination.  Of course we would have to do really controlled experiments to see that...blind/unblind, not just factor controls).  I suspect that biased judgment stemming from prestige of university is much stronger.  Even ethnic bias is, I suspect stronger than sex bias. Both of these of course are much harder to cloak.

But in any case, I believe your mindshare is better spent on the work and doing it as well as possible and promoting it as well as possible versus contemplating injustices.


How to overcome feeling that published articles lack public interest? I am a MSc graduate student, still trying to get a PhD position, but with no success at all. During and after my graduation I struggle to publish some articles (right now I got 6, mostly published in IEEE conferences or indexed in Scopus), but I do not feel happy at all.

The problem is that I see my publications as having a lack of public interest. I would like to publish more interesting, formal and mathematical stuff (I am in the field of Computer Science), but the problem that I have is that in my current place of work almost all my time is dedicated to lecturing. Also, and because I am working in a university of applied sciences; the research made here is highly applicable and less theoretical. All this things has put me in a state of deep depression.

What should I do to start looking to my research and my made publications with a different attitude? Should I seek for medical counselling?

Thanks

What should I do to start looking to my research and my made publications with a different attitude?

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that your problem isn't that you are working in applied sciences vs. theory. Further, I am not sure if your problems are of medical nature (but this can of course not be ruled out from what you wrote). Let me recap some things you wrote and provide some interpretation. I am not sure to what extend this will answer your question, but I hope my ramblings will provide input and perspective anyways. Maybe somebody else will provide a more direct answer to the question.

You are a master student who published 6 papers during his masters at a university of applied sciences. All of the papers have been in IEEE/Scopus venues. Yet you still can't get a PhD position.

First of, IEEE conferences or indexed in Scopus isn't the quality label you maybe hope it is. There are terrible venues for which both of these things are true. The fact that you say you have very little time for research, and still wrote 6 of those things indicates that the quality of your papers may be not all that super. If this is the case, the problem that prevents your papers from having impact isn't that they are applied, it is that they may simply not be very good.

This may also be the issue with your PhD applications. For me, and many others, papers below a certain (subjective) quality standard count for next to nothing. Really bad papers may actively work against you. Again, "IEEE conferences or indexed in Scopus" does not rule out either of these cases, so try to evaluate your publications independently of these labels. For instance, pick a few PhD student papers from the group that you are applying to. Try to neutrally evaluate whether your papers play in the same league as those. If all papers of PhD students of the prof. or lab you are applying to are much better, and/or have appeared in much better venues than your papers, I am uncertain how much your publications will help your case.

You worry that your papers do not have a strong impact.

I think this point warrants some additional explanation. One of the sad realities of research is that most papers in all but the very top venues of your field (think ICSE or CHI for applied computer science) have very little to zero impact on the research community - and even the papers in the top venues often have close to zero impact on anybody outside your research community. Papers that really get the attention of your fellow researchers are few and far between. I have written papers that I personally consider good to great, which remain pretty much uncited (and, presumably, almost unread) to this day.

You want to progress as a researcher, but you work almost exclusively as a lecturer.

Try to see your situation as it is. Similarly to above, your problem isn't so much that you are working in a university of applied sciences - your problem is that your current position is incompatible with your career goals. You want to do research, but your job is teaching. Your situation would be none the better if you worked as a pure lecturer in a research institution (maybe this would in fact be even more frustrating for you). What you need to do is either (a) find a job or stipend that allows you to do what you want to do, or (b) accept that you are currently not on a research track.

I was always thinking about the visibility issues and finally I come up with a reasonable strategy, I also hope that these steps can improve the data dissemination of your research.

I may suggest using arXiv preprint server for your works and of course you should have a web page and googlescholar account.
If you developed a simulator for your work, try to improve it a bit and make it opensource (upload it to github or something similar).
Prepare a walk-through for your simulator and upload to youtube.
Prepare a presentation for your paper and prepare a video of your presentation and just the sound via a video editing tool. Uploading this presentation to youtube also improves the visibility and dissemination of your findings.

P.S. You should start with the work that you are most satisfied :)


How do employers verify that job applicants have the degree(s) they claim? Let's say someone is named John Smith applied for a job claiming that he was graduated from University X. How would an employer confirm that the applicant is John Smith, who also has the degree from University X? Wouldn't it be incredibly common for someone else to have the same name from the same department?

Most of the time, employers trust that potential applicants have the degrees that they claim they have. When applicants apply for jobs, they are frequently asked to attest to the fact that everything they are submitting is truthful. There can be enormous legal and reputational consequences to lying.

If it emerges later, for any reason, that an employee lies about a degree, they run a very strong risk of being fired and having their reputation and credibility destroyed. In some case, fraud can lead to criminal changes. Because the consequences can be enormous, most people will not lie about something like the conferral of a degree.

In situations where employees needs to verify a degree, there are many options. Employers might request a copy of a diploma or a transcript from applicants (I was asked to do this by an Academic HR department at my current university to finalize my appointment). In some cases (e.g., when applying to graduate schools) it's routine for the degreeholder to request signed and sealed copies of academic transcripts that are sent directly from the registrars to potential schools or employers. Some universities and fields have automated systems that employers can use to verify that an applicant has the degree they claim.

Although it's possible that a university or department might have multiple students with the same name, you won't have two students with exactly the same experience. Two identically-named students will not likely have started in the same department at the same and ended at the same time (information that would normally be on a CV). Registrars will often have systems in place to ensure that they only individual students can grant access to their transcripts (e.g., by requiring less public information like a password, birthday or, government-issued ID number) which acts as another form of evidence.

If an employer was incredibly skeptical, they could just ask an applicant basic things about their experience in school. Who did they take classes with? Which professor did they have the best relationship with? Then send an email or call and see if things check out.

Every University has a degree verification phone number that employers can call and it only takes about 5 minutes. Just type the name of the university, degree verification into Google and the number will come up.

I just put the degree verification on my resume beside each degree. This way the hiring person can see that it is legit and they can call to verify.


What can I do about undergraduate students cheating? So I lecture at a university on the department of mathematics and statistics, and this year I am teaching calculus for future mathematicians. One good thing about the mathematics course is that very seldom I have seen students cheating, since people who choose the academic path are more bound to be interested in learning the subject rather than just trying to obtain a diploma.

Well... At least until now.

There is this small group of students who sometimes whisper during the tests. The other times their class had tests I thought they were asking for an eraser or something like that. But this time they were whispering more than usual and they started stopping after I glared at them. I thought it was suspicious so I waited until the end of the test and went to check their sheets and ditto. They all wrote the exact same thing. (For those familiar with maths they didn't copy a thing or two, but two actual entire theorem proofs.)

Now next time we have tests I could try separating those guys, asking them to sit on other chairs, staying behind the class in order to make it difficult for the students to cheat and stuff like that, but in all seriousness... Those measures make it look like I'm dealing with kids. I'm not a teacher. I'm a professor. I shouldn't be dealing with kids.

Basically I want to do something about this but I don't want to start making the class look like a high school. Those guys are future math teachers/professors and I'll be damned if I have to organize the class preventing future professors from cheating like this was a normal occurrence.

So what should a professor do in this situation? Are there any things you fellow professors have done and worked? Thanks in advance.

Unless you have very weird exam regulations or are allowing people to take exams in groups, no one should be talking to anyone else except via the proctors. I would view this as an infraction of the exam regulations and stop them from proceeding with the exam, and file for the appropriate sanctions.

I suppose there is a rule "Thou shalt not plagiarise” and your case is a form of plagiarism - one claims the other's work as their own and vice versa.

Show the papers to your colleague, the professor, who grants the lecture or dept head, if you both assess the tests same then when returning graded papers to your students show anyone publicly the tests and prove them same. Therefore plagiarised. And mark their works as unattended.

At the time of the test, when you catch anyone whispering, you can ask them to finish their discussion, which is obviously more important to them than the test is, in the caffeteria and leave their unimportant tests on the table as is.

Be consistent in your decisions and show them you are not an boring robot but a human who was young as well as them.

If you are really annoyed by their behaviour, you can show your displeasure less conveniently, yet acceptably in your region. You can staple their tests together and ask them to close the door from the other side. You can make a rubber stamp with large letters "DQ", "Disqualified", "plagiarised" or any other cheater-mocking text and stamp it on their papers. You can throw their student IDs through the window (be sure there is no pond they can sink in or there are no workers mowing the grass, etc.) and order them to follow. The point is to show the cheaters you are definite in your decision and show possible future cheaters that the attempt to cheating is a big no-no.


Points to remember when having to write recommendation letter yourself While it is an unethical academic practice, it is a fact that most recommendation letters for MS degrees in US and Europe from countries like India and China are written by students themselves. Students apply en masse; the faculty strength in departments in many universities is small; the few professors hardly get the time to write recommendations for all applying students. Moreover a 4-year engineering degree is dominated by coursework and professors are unlikely to get to know students outside the classroom.

Let us set aside the question of whom to blame for this practice and look at the question that comes up on most applicants' minds:

"In the event that I have to write a recommendation letter on my own, what are the points I need to bear in mind?"

I have the following points:

Ensuring similarity of language among all letters from a particular professor
maturity of presentation and avoidance of blandishment
Creating tonal differences among different recommendation letters.

Could someone elaborate on these points? The third one is oft-quoted but is found to be very tough to execute in practice.

The ethics of the question is moot here; this practice is widespread, and the questioner is asking for a solution to his problem, not for an ethical reform of the international academic community.

The guidelines for such a letter would be identical to writing any other letter of recommendation. If you must write your own and have a professor sign off on it, read up on how to write a good letter of recommendation and follow any tips you may come across. You probably have little to no experience writing letters such as this one; there are many subtle nuances, both in what you say and in what you don't say. Take the time to write it correctly. If you find yourself completely stuck, ask someone else with experience to write it.

If you're having difficulty writing a letter about yourself, imagine you're writing about a colleague who has done all the things you have done. It may make the task easier.

Regarding trying to mimic the professor's style, if he asked you to write your own letter, then he likely asked all his other students to write their own letters. There will be no consistent style, and that will be a reality of this individual's letter. If the department/faculty member receiving the letter has received letters from this professor in the past, this likely will count against you, and you should consider that when asking this person for a recommendation.

There is a larger question at hand:

Why have you people been historically trusting a signed piece of paper?

There is never any good proof the person who wrote the text has been honest, even if this person holds a professor position at some university.

Letters of recommendations is the historic absurd which make no sense whatsoever.

Me too I had my letters of recommendations written not by professors but by other people who knew me (I'm from Russia). Why? Because when I approached professors only one really took the time and effort to write one, while others honestly said they didn't know how to write something like that and they didn't know me well enough to be a judge to my character. They told me to get the text written any way I liked it and they would sign it. That was it. So I asked other people if they would be kind enough to write a few words about me and they were.

There hasn't been a history of writing letters of recommendations in my country, then what do you expect people to do if they wish to apply to a Western university? They do fake letters and they will continue to do so for as long as this stupid practice exists.

The best advice I can give here is to ask somebody else who knows you well and knows your subject area well to write a letter for you. If you attempt to write about yourself it may eventually suck.

One other thought: in some countries (notably Germany) there is a practice of putting watermarks in this sort of papers (sequencing of words, particular wording and other tricks) to convey hidden information about the person. Sometimes it would make sense to put a notice into the letter stating that this text has been written by e.g a Chinese professor who is not familiar with hidden language ubiquitous in e.g Germany. Should such things be discovered this should be attributed to mere coincidence and should be discarded as such, the text written should be understood as it is written with no "alternative" interpretation.

With regard to the hidden language of reference letters:

The keywords to google for are "Geheimsprache", "Geheimcodes", "Zeugnissprache". There are tons of pages. Just a few to provide an overview:

Geheimcodes

Der Arbeitszeugnis-Code


Non-confidential student suppport letter for a teaching award My home faculty announced a call of nominations for a teaching award. I am confident that my teaching contributions has been substantial and wish to be recognized. So I contacted the selection committee and ask them if I, as a nominee, can contact my (staff and faculty) colleagues and students to solicit their letters of support.

And the answer is that I can do this to prepare the nomination package myself for submission, as long as nominators are given the option to send their letters to the committee directly if they wish to keep them confidential.

So far, many of my students who responded took the option of sending their letters directly to me. I wonder if their letters, compared with those sent confidentially, will be in any way treated with less weight/value (given that I did get a green light by the selection committee)?

I can't see into the minds of the judges responsible for the award, but such letters might well be discounted. The problem is the possibility that the students were actually writing to solicit favors from you in the future - trying to "get on your good side". Actually, it is the perception that they might be trying to get some future favor.

You might suggest to the writers that they send letters directly.

In any case, the direct answer to whether confidential letters might hold more weight is yes, they might.

But if there are a combination of letters sent confidentially and not and they are consistent, then I doubt it would be a problem.

But IANAMR (I am nor a mind reader).


Intellectual Property Rights When Moving University I am considering moving institutions (from a one UK University to another), but I am concerned about what Intellectual Property (IP) rights my current institution may retain. Some of my PhD students, one of whom has been funded by my university directly, would move with me, or at least I would like them to. I am also unclear about the rights they/I would have to the research they have already done. Their projects would naturally remain similar, but I see no obvious commercial potential, and have no intention of trying to find some.

My questions are:

The University's policy is clear that they own all Intellectual Property I produce during my employment. I assume this can't apply to projects that have not got to the point of being protectable/tradeable but where one project begins and another ends is not always clear. Many of these projects naturally build on work I have published, or is in the process of being published. How can I tell/establish what exactly they have rights to?
How do I 'leave' them with what they own so that I can make a clean break.

In general you should be fine:

Your research is published, so everyone (including you) can build upon it.
You do not have any patents (which would remain at the university)

The only thing might be software written at your institution or hardware built during your work. Those remain at the university as long as you do not agree on otherwise. But usually, one becomes smarter over time so this might be a good point in time to re-implement some stuff...

On the other hand, your work might be worthless for your university when you are not there - e.g. no one will digg into foreign research code... So you should have a good position for negotiations.


notification e-mail and invitation letter I submitted a manuscript to an international conference. Later I'm told to download the invitation letter and attend the conference. The question is I have not recieved a formal e-mail notification, presumably titled Acceptance or Rejection Notification, of the paper. So what do you think of this? Are there any international conference that notifies authors by the provision of only a downloadable invitation letter but with no formal e-mail notification?
Thanks!

I don't want to presume, but a quick look through the conference website makes me suspect that it may not be the top of the line for its field. Take a look at the program committee, are they reputable people that you know? If you're a student, can your advisor comment on the conference's value? Can some expert comment on the conference's quality?

Did you receive any reviews?

Were you asked to pay a lot of money to attend?

If any of the above hold, this raises some red flags.

If it's indeed a disreputable venue, I would avoid publishing there. Retract the submission and thank them. There are some places where you wouldn't want your work published.

Again, I'm really not from the field, but not getting reviews, the general look and feel of the conference website (conferences that go out of their way to tell you that they're indexed by all of these libraries is not a good sign) etc. would make me think twice.

As my own advisor wisely said: there are some conferences with a negative impact factor...

EDIT:

This conference is sponsored by WASET, which is almost certainly a predatory publisher. Do NOT publish there.

See here. It is also listed on Beall's list - see here.

It's normal even for some very top/good conferences to just want you to go to the conference and to not hold you hostage with the conf. paper review.  Even if your paper is rejected for the proceedings (very unlikely, they need papers!), you still can do the conference.  Also, some conferences do the reviews on site, using participants.  So it is not unusual to not have a pre-reviewed proceedings paper.

They want you to go.  If you like the trip pay the money and go.


Admission to graduate school for physics I am a dual major (Math+Physics) student from one of the reputed Indian University. I want to peruse PhD in physics (mainly theoretical/High Energy Physics). I have CGPA 9.6/10 in Physics but overall (Math+Physics) CGPA is 8/10.
How do I improve my CV to get into good grad school in US/Germany etc?
Any helpful comments/answer are welcome and thanks for that.

I cannot tell you what to do, but it might be worth observing that your written documents at most give an initial impression of "who you are", and that the graduate program will be able to reflect on that initial impression if they are so fortunate as to meet you in person.  Presumably you will have reflected on what information you believe is most relevant to the admissions committee.  To some extent, this might include your perspective on physics (or science more generally), mathematics, the position or role of academia in society, and/or what sort of behavior or personal growth you believe you could sustain over the course of your graduate career, and as much evidence (or more typically a 'clue' to where evidence can be found) is needed to support your claims.  If you are familiar with the basic rules of bridge, it might help to think of your academic goals or dreams as the bid, the admissions committee as your partner, and the limits of your permanent record, ease or effectiveness of respectful collaboration, and/or extempore knowledge (that you might also have an opportunity to share, gracefully, during a visit or interview) as your "opponent".  If you want the strongest possible cross section with the interest of teleologically relevant programs, try to pack as much teleologically relevant and easily verifiable information about yourself as possible.


Reference letter from third world country I hold a 5 years "specialist degree" from a university in Belarus and I'm going to apply to a Ph. D. program in engineering in US. I have several problems regarding my reference letters.

The professor who was my Engineering Project adviser and who taught several important courses in my group for two years can give me strong a reference because my project was the best in the department. However:

He doesn't know English.
He is currently retired.
Professors in Belarus seldom have personal e-mail addressed and neither does he.
He doesn't have publications in English.

Any ideas how to solve these problems? Translate the reference, put it into an envelope and then ask the professor to sign envelope as required? Will the reference be even opened and taken into account?

First, contrary to the optimism of some of the other answers, you should not expect that the university you're applying-to will translate a letter sent to them. At my university in the U.S., the traditional requirement was that a "certified translation" be made-and-paid-for by the student.

At the same time, the tradition in applications in the U.S. for many years is that the student does not send the letters of recommendation (and/or translations) themself, but has either the faculty send them, or some secretarial staff. If you send paper mail and include such letters, they will most likely be considered "compromised" and invalid...

Your recommender's having an email account is not so important, as perhaps having internet access to upload an electronic file (scanned letter and translation and certification-of-translation, or PDF letter and others directly electronically), since the default process is more-and-more purely electronic.

Some application systems seem to default to sending an email to the recommenders, asking for an upload, and additionally asking for other information. I shudder to think how these systems could be made to cope with cases not fitting neatly into the designers' (often ill-informed) design choices.

(Indeed, the most recent "upgrade" to my university's over-arching software system makes certain things essentially impossible, ...)

The degree of complication will vary from university to university, and you'll need to be very pro-active to make sure that the certification of translation is adequate, and that paper-mail really arrives, if your recommender cannot manage to send email.

If he writes the recommendation in his native language, the school can probably find someone to translate it. Not sure re the other issues.


How much background detail should go in the introduction section in a paper? I have been trying to write a paper. Reading the introduction part I am getting different behaviours from different papers.

Some papers cover themselves more than 50% with introduction content as if they are the only source of information present anywhere while some give it very briefly expecting user to be well aware.

As a reader I never expected to learn the concept from paper intro part itself but from books and then read papers. I rather think that introduction section shall be used to provide very brief intro and references for further understanding. Repeating an algorithm that's present in 500 books makes no sense.

I need some tips on writing introduction part that its just about enough or is it mandatory to repeat info to make it somewhat complete in itself ?

How much detail to provide in the introduction depends on the circumstances.  The minimum requirement is to give enough context and references that a diligent reader could fill in any missing background, at the cost of some extra work.  However, that's a pretty undemanding requirement; a few papers fail to do this, but they generally fail by not even trying.  It's often valuable to do more to make life easier for the reader.  How much more depends on who you expect will read the paper, and on what you believe they want or need from the introduction.  (Some papers are read only by impatient experts, while others attract a broad audience.)  What's considered appropriate may vary between fields or even subfields, but here are a few general principles:

Targeting an audience for your papers can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.  If you aim at a very specialized audience, it becomes much less likely that anyone else will read your papers.  Attracting a broader audience is on the whole a good thing, both for scientific progress and for your own career, so it's best not to limit your audience unnecessarily.  If modest changes will make your writing much more accessible, then they are probably a good idea.
It's easy to overestimate how much readers really know.  In an ideal world, every researcher would remember all the details of everything they ever studied, but life doesn't work that way.  Of course you can't re-teach things from scratch (and shouldn't even try), but sometimes a brief reminder can be really helpful.  This is particularly true when the details matter: if the reader really needs to know exactly how a certain algorithm works to understand your paper, then restating the algorithm can be worthwhile even if you suspect most readers will already be somewhat familiar with it.  Those who already know the details can easily skim just enough to convince themselves that their version is the same as yours, while those who don't can read more carefully.
The introduction plays a crucial role in describing the context and explaining why you did these things and what the consequences are.  It may not be the part of the paper that most excites you, but it will almost certainly be the most-read section (not counting the abstract).  The purpose of your paper is to communicate your discoveries, and making the introduction more accessible is sometimes the best way to achieve this.

As Grace Fleming wrote on about.com:

The introductory paragraph of any paper, long or short, should start with a sentence that piques the interest of your readers.
...that first sentence will lead into three or four sentences that provide details about the subject or your process you will address in the body of your essay. These sentences should also set the stage for your thesis statement.
The thesis statement is the subject of much instruction and training. The entirety of your paper hangs on that sentence, which is generally the last sentence of your introductory paragraph.
In summary, your introductory paragraph should contain the following:

an attention-grabbing first sentence
informative sentences that build to your thesis
the thesis statement, which makes a claim or states a view that you will support or build upon.

You can check this link for more about each section of the paper.
http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWsections.html#introduction


Is it appropriate to send an email to a professor at the end of the semester thanking them for their teaching? I'm aware of very similar questions previously asked - all with good answers. These usually pertain to following up with a professor after a recommendation. My question is specifically about sending a thank you letter to a professor at the end of a semester.

My current semester is ending in three weeks and it has been my favorite semester by far. My professors taught their material really well and I was engaged non stop from the beginning of the semester. Among my professors, some assigned great homework questions, or lectured really well, or were very accessible during office hours. Overall, I had a great learning experience this semester and I want to express my appreciation because I haven't had a semester like this in the three years I've attended school.

I understand it may seem silly to question what is just a polite and appreciative gesture (I think it's silly myself), but I'm a little intimidated about the impression it will leave on my professors. I want to avoid the stigma of "teachers pet." For this reason, I've considered writing anonymous notes, but that seems creepy.

Kind of a light dilemma but I'd like some input because after thinking about it for a while I think it's an interesting topic. Thank you!

In the academic culture I am familiar with, this is a perfectly appropriate and appreciated thing to do after grades have been released. (A letter at the end of the semester but before grades are finalized can look like an attempt to influence the grading process.)

I have received some emails like this, and I was very happy to receive them. They left me with the impression that the student is a mature, appreciative, and thoughtful person, not that he/she is somehow trying to be a "teacher's pet."

I just today received a very nice set of chocolates for the teaching I did this year. Small tokens of gratitude really go along way in fostering good teacher student relationships and as Maslowe would tell you being appreciated makes you feel good.


Should I do anything if I am cited for something that wasn't in my paper? I’ve just read a paper in which a previous paper of mine has been cited.  The line in which the citation happens is something like:

  It has been shown that technique X is successful in this problem [citation for my paper].

However, in my paper, I never mention technique X.

Should I do anything?  The paper that cites mine is otherwise fine and really doesn’t need a reference for their use of technique X, since they spend a lot of time developing it anyway.

Since you never mention their technique, it is quite likely it's a "typo" (they accidentally cited a different paper than they meant, which, at least, in my field happens more than 0% of the time), or they just misunderstood your paper (or you misunderstood your paper).  I agree with @aeismail that there's nothing you need to do, but if you want to get to the bottom of this, you could contact the authors, saying something like:

I noticed you cited my paper in ... about X.  However, that paper didn't consider X.  Did you mean to refer to another paper?  If so, I'd be interested in knowing which paper.

You have a number of options. Beginning with writing the editor, author, or publisher.  If they refuse to redact or recall or issue or public correction, what you can do is come out publicly to scorn the misuse of your work. This is especially true for scientific works that are being deliberately misrepresented, or maliciously used to advance some agenda.  You have a duty to call out false reasoning in all contexts, but even more so when your own work is being used to do it. At worst, your work will advance bad science or social ideologies, depending on the work. At best, if it goes unchecked and unnoticed, it could tarnish your own reputation because people may not verify what your work actually says.


How to review a revised paper I have already rejected? I reviewed a manuscript submitted to a high-impact journal. The quality was low and I believed it could not reach the journal’s standards even by revision. I clearly recommended rejection.

Now I received the revised version for review. Two of three reviewers (myself included) had suggested to reject the original paper. The third reviewer suggested a major revision. Nonetheless, the editor had asked the authors to revise the manuscript (I never experienced this before).

Clearly, the editor is in favor of publishing this paper (for personal or professional reasons; I cannot judge). What should I do? I publish 80% of my works in this journal, and it is very important for me to avoid any conflict with the editor.

When you recommended rejection, you presumably listed a series of issues that made it unacceptable.  On the revision, you go back and repeat the list of issues and simply say for each one, "The revision has/has not corrected this problem".  If you reach the end of your list and all the issues have been corrected and no new issues have been introduced in the revision, then you say the paper is now suitable for publication. If the issues have not all been corrected, then you say "The paper is still not suitable for publication because the issues I noted previously have not been corrected."

Treat the manuscript as if you've never seen it before. Re-evaluate the paper like you normally would and in the future avoid invitations from that editor, if at all possible.