How to decide if a paper should be accepted? Different conferences have different standards of accepting papers. A paper rejected at a conference A might be best paper at a conference B (in a lower rank).

I'm reviewing a paper for a conference, that is not really related to my narrow field, that I don't know its ranking, that I haven't read any paper from previous series.

The paper is so so, not too strong, not too weak. It would be a straight reject in some top-tier conferences, but might be accepted/weak accepted at some other lower rank conferences. How do I make a decision about this paper for this particular conference?

An obvious solutions is to read a couple of papers from previous series to have a sense, but given it is not very related to my narrow field, it will take me a lot of time, and I'm having several other deadlines.

UPDATE: to answer Pete L. Clark's comments.

  So I think your first task must be to decide whether to referee the
  paper at all

I have never submitted to a journal before, but I think one of the main difference between journals and conferences is that: in a conference, the chairs can't always select the right reviewers for a paper.

In a conference, there is a fixed set of PC members. After the deadline for abstractions, the PC members start bidding for the papers they want/don't want to review. The PC chairs then have a painful task: assigns papers to PC members (there are tool supported, but mostly useless). Obviously, there is never the case that everybody is satisfied, it's very rare that you get the papers that you want to review, and it's not uncommon that you get the papers that you don't want to review. When you are a PC member, you can't refuse to review the papers assigned to you.

If the conference adopts double-blinded review, you are not allowed to assign external reviewers either. In the case you can ask external reviewers to do reviewing for you, since those external reviewers do the reviewing without any credit (at least PC members have their names in the conference's web site), in most of the cases you can only assign to your postdocs/PhD students. So now you understand why I have to review this paper, and that refusing to review papers is not an option (my boss is the unlucky PC member).

First let me say that I work in a field (pure math) that is closely related intellectually but for which approximately zero percent of papers are published in conferences.  In this case I don't see how it matters that it is a conference rather than a journal except possibly to reduce the timeline until the decision (though some journals in my field are starting to ask for reports within a few weeks!), so I will answer based on my own experience.

The main problem here is that your expert opinion has been called for on something that you do not feel like a fully fledged expert and that (as is most often the case!) it is not practical for you to fix this by substantially increasing your expertise.

So I think your first task must be to decide whether to referee the paper at all.  If you for instance you didn't understand the paper at all then certainly you should not be a referee.  If you've already agreed to do it, that makes backing out of it more socially awkward, but it could still be the right decision, as it may take some reading of the paper to find the stuff you don't understand.  If you vaguely understand it but really not enough to evaluate it in any meaningful way, again I think you should not referee it.  If you like, you can explicitly offer to referee something else instead, and I'll bet the chances are good that a different paper could be found.

If you feel that you can or must referee the paper but really feel shaky about evaluating it, then you can write a report in such a way that your evaluation will be minimized, e.g. by explicitly writing something like

  I was asked to review this paper, and so I will.  But I want to be clear that it lies outside of my core area of expertise, so my recommendations about its suitability for the conference are tentative.  I hope that more weight will be put on the other recommendations.

And then you can give a "weak" recommendation, which should then be drowned out by the others.

However, your question suggests that you are sufficiently qualified to referee the paper that the first alternative is not appropriate and the second one may not be either: you write

  The paper is so so, not too strong, not too weak. It would be a straight reject in some top-tier conferences, but might be accepted/weak accepted at some other lower rank conferences. How do I make a decision about this paper for this particular conference?

[Point of order: a paper can't be "weak accepted" by a conference.  It must either be accepted or rejected.  So here you are doing a bit of what other people have brought up: conflating the referee's recommendation with the editor's decision.]

Rather importantly, you don't say why the paper would be a clear reject at top conferences.  (Not the assertion is surprising: presumably the vast majority of submitted papers in your field fall into this category.)  Knowing that means that you have some information and insight about the paper (and more than you've told us).  In fact it might be helpful for you to tell us how you came to this conclusion.

Probably I don't need to tell you that if the paper does not contain any correct, novel work that is of interest to someone, it should not be published anywhere.  Conversely, if it does meet these requirements it should be published somewhere.  If you don't know enough about the standards of this particular conference, you can work around that by explaining you would recommend rejection in venue A but recommend acceptance in venue B (this is rather common information in referee reports, at least in my field).  Then the editor can decide where the conference lies with respect to the data points you've provided.

If you feel qualified enough, then at a certain point you do have to impose whatever standard you feel is most reasonable.  If you don't know the field very well and the paper is not interesting to you, then [assuming you've decided to go ahead with the referee job] you should recommend it for rejection: what else?  On the other hand, if you find the paper to be at least somewhat interesting you should act so as to leave the door open for the paper to be accepted, in particular by writing that you would recommend it for acceptance at journal or conference X.   Ultimately you're leaving a decision to the editorial board that they would have anyway: among papers that are publishable in absolute terms, do they want to publish these papers or those papers?  If they get a whole bunch of reports of the form "The paper is okay; it could be published somewhere in between heaven and hell; I don't really have strong feelings about it" then they're going to have a problem....but who is to blame for the problem?  Them, of course: they did not find the right referees and were not clear enough in their standards.

Let me end by saying that I have found myself in similar situations more than once: namely, I get asked to referee a paper by a journal I've never heard of, in a subfield of mathematics different from any of the ones I've thought deeply about.  And in fact I have usually done more or less the above: sometimes I turn it down (and I have learned to be decisive about this; if I gave some choice to the editor, it always turns out that they want me to do it anyway), but if I can do it I often take the job.  A paper should certainly look novel to the relative outsider if it will look so to the expert, and in some cases I have rejected the paper for not making clear progress over (even) its own citations.  More often the papers have been a bit interesting. Sometimes I have found significant mistakes: I can't remember a situation where the mistake was so bad that I outright recommended rejection, but there have been situations in which revisions have been necessary in order for the principal results to look correct.  (I don't know how this plays out for the shorter timeframe of a conference: presumably outright rejection becomes more likely.)  In fact the most common outcome is that I understand the paper well enough and think it's somewhat interesting and novel, though certainly not the kind of breakthrough to be published in a higher tier journal.  In these cases I have recommended the paper for acceptance and included in my referee report an honest depiction of the situation: e.g. if I am unfamiliar with the journal, I say so.  I believe in every such case the paper has been accepted.  This has been fine for me, since having been an author many times and an editor never, fundamentally I am more sympathetic to the situation of a solid paper being rejected than to the plight of a journal that publishes a good paper rather than a great one.  "A tie goes to the author," I feel.  Given the number of papers I've refereed, this attitude seems to be okay with the editors, who do in fact once in a (great) while cheerfully reverse my recommendations.

As I understood, your confusion is this: There is a paper X which has been submitted to conf-A and you have to review it and give the recommendation. Fact is that rank(A) < rank(top-tier). I am a CS guy and can answer this with my somewhat philosophical way.

I have reviewed many works till now, and in my experience, I never incorporate the rank (or, popularity) of the venue (say it journal/conference) into my review quality i.e. the recommendation.

We all are doing scientific duty, we are laborers of Science. We just have to work on our assigned duty. It would be really wise to do that duty with right commitment and without compromising on the quality of the outcome.

IMHO, it would be better if you could review the paper just as a scientific work, rather than focusing on the venue ranking etc. Give your best review and let the conference committee take the final call.

The computer science research has degraded recently because of some miscreant venues such as bogus journals and conferences. So, it is high time that all researchers do their duty (work, review, edits etc.) honestly and with high quality.


My manager wants to be the lead author for a paper which I have done all the work for. What ethical reasoning should I use to dispute this? I work as a research scientist, and I am about to write up the work I've been doing for the past year. I have done all of the big data formatting, set up, edited and run a complex ecosystem model, wrote analysis code, calculated the statistics, produced graphs and map outputs. My manager wants me to pass the final graphs, maps and statistics to him so that he can write up the paper. I have sufficient post graduate research experience and analysis skills to analyse the final data myself and do the write up.

My manager has a good scientific overview of the work but doesn't have the technical skills to run the model or do any of the coding/ statistical work himself. I feel like he should encourage his staff to write up their own work, but he said he needs more papers as first author.

Do you have any suggestions for the points I can raise when I discuss with him that I'd like to be first author?

I want to stay on good terms with him as far as possible, while also asserting my belief that I should be first author. A former colleague done some of the base work for this project, and I think his name should also come before that of my manager's. My manager's supervision of the project has been minimal (a 5 minute rushed catch up conversation every month or so).

I feel confident in my answer because, although norms differ between fields, you are in exactly my field.

You are absolutely correct that it is not ethical for your manager to ask for first authorship on this paper. From the work you describe, this is your paper. He may need more first authorships, but so do you, and even aside from the ethics of relative contributions, his role should be to help you to progress your career.

Managing this situation is going to be very tricky for you. This happened to me during my PhD -- my PhD advisor was first author on all my publications -- and I did not confront him over it. Obviously, this wasn't good for my career. It wasn't great for his career either, because it meant I was unwilling to work with him after I finished my PhD and so he lost the opportunity to be a coauthor on several more papers that followed on from my PhD work.

On the other hand, having a blow-out with your boss that puts your ongoing work in jeopardy or results in your work not getting published at all is also not going to be great for your career.

I suggest you do try to change his mind, but keep it very polite and civil. Mention the benefits to him of having you do well: it will boost his reputation as a successful PI and mentor, it will increase the likely success of future collaborative work with you, and it will reduce the amount of work he has to do on the paper himself so that he can concentrate on getting more of his own work published. If this fails, it may be worth involving a third party -- in the first instance someone you mutually like and respect, if possible, and not his boss -- to facilitate a discussion about setting some more formal guidelines around how authorship order should be determined.

If all else fails, you could appeal to authority - his boss or the journal editor - but be warned that WILL get messy and bitter.

You'll learn from this experience. It's a good idea to discuss authorship at the outset of a project, and perhaps again throughout the process. Generally, the person who writes the paper receives first authorship, followed in order by amount of intellectual contribution, with the last author (in some disciplines) being the main PI/lab head. If your superior now insists he/she must write the paper, he/she is probably entitled first authorship. If you can't come to an agreement, you might ask that it be noted that 'the first two authors contributed equally'. That is somewhat common.


Bad relationship with PhD supervisors, should I have them as my recommenders in job applications? I am about to submit my thesis. At the moment, I am looking for jobs, but my relationship with both of my Ph.D. supervisors is not good. Now I am facing another complication where I have to find a recommender for a job. I am too scared to get them to be my recommender, yet I will probably have a reason as to why not them.

My supervisors have shown many reactions which indicates that they dislike me, for example, scolding, ignoring emails, blaming, and talking behind my back. Nevertheless, I always act nice to them and say that I agree with them that it was all my fault.

I did not change the supervisors because of my stupidity in thinking that nobody will accept me as my research field is tiny. These results in me feeling as if they all tried to dish me off from this program, but I was too stubborn.

Edit: To give a note that I risked using one of them which turns out not as bad as I thought. Sometimes, the HR just wants someone to provide an honest feedback, and sometimes, the sup may just want an alumni

Not having the recommendation of the PhD supervisor is going to raise some flags, especially in academia. However, you can get recommendations from other senior people you collaborated with on research papers if you published any. Those people should be able to write decent recommendation letters for you. If you apply for non-academic jobs, you could also ask for a recommendation letter your boss from a previous job if you had one, or your diploma/masters thesis advisers.

Also, if you only have your supervisers to write you recommendation letters, you could still ask one of them who seems nicer. Even if they don't like you and think you're incapable, they would like it even less to have an alumnus flipping burgers. So, they might write you a reasonable recommendation for a non-academic job even though they might not be willing to give you a good letter for an academic one.

You really need them to recommend you for a job so for me you need to have a dialogue with them and ask them to recommend you, tell them how sorry you are . Good luck


Is the English-version of a paper previously published in a different language considered an "original contribution"? I am an academic in a Portuguese-speaking country, so there is some incentive for me to write in Portuguese. However, much of the literature I deal with is in English, so I would like to publish in journals from anglophone countries.
Given this state of affairs, and given that no matter how many translations are made of a work, the research leading up to it remains one research, I had the idea of maximising my audience by publishing in both in English (abroad) and Portuguese (in my country). That is, I'd like to publish a paper first in a Portuguese-language journal, and then later submit it to an English-language journal, or vice-versa.
However, as we know, originality is typically a requirement in academic journals. But are translations of papers previously published in foreign languages considered "original work"?
At face value, I think the answer might be "no": the work, as a research, has been published elsewhere, so it isn't quite "original". But that would mean that no research published in Portuguese can ever find itself as a translation in an English-language journal, which also sounds a bit exaggerated. If that is the case, what is the appropriate venue for translations?
I'm aware some journals have a policy giving editors discretion to consider exceptions to the originality rule on a case-by-case basis (see e.g. [1]). Still, I was unable to find information on how situations like this are typically treated. Obviously, as a matter of ethics, the original work would be properly referenced in the translation, which would be flagged as such.
So, paraphrasing: is the (original) translation of an academic article previously published in a foreign language considered "original work" for the purposes of publication?
P.S.: I imagine this may differ from field to field. I do research in the fields of law, Social science, and philosophy.

No.  A translation is not considered an original work in the context of submission to an academic journal whose stated policy is that submissions must be original work that is not published elsewhere.*
You can still send an email to the editor explaining your idea and asking if they’d make an exception to the policy. Some journals, in some circumstances, might consider it.
You can also translate your paper anyway and make the translation available via a paper repository such as arXiv. It will undoubtedly increase the exposure and impact of your work.
*Translation is of course a creative activity requiring skill and expertise, and in other contexts would certainly be considered a kind of original work.

Many journals and universities would consider it plagiarism to publish the same paper in two different languages. If the papers are similar enough that one would be considered plagiarised (or not publishable as not enough novelty) if they were in the same language, then putting one in another language does not change its status.
What are your goals with the Portuguese version? I can understand that some of your legal issues papers may be most appropriate in Portuguese if you want to perhaps have them read by legal practitioners as well as scholars. But you state that much of the material (and therefore the intellectual debate) is in English. If you want to contribute to that discussion, then you presumably need to publish in English.
One approach might be to publish in English but have a blog or other less formal outlet where you summarise and promote the paper (in Portuguese).


Disseminating math results in an interdisciplinary journal I'm a mathematician with physics background.  We recently obtained some results that, in my opinion, has interesting physics interpretations and thus deserve an interdisciplinary attention.

We already wrote a manuscript meant for a math journal.  It is super technical and not friendly at all to general audience.  I find that a pity, and want to write a kind of "short communication" (actually not sure about the format), in which I would avoid all the mathematical reasonings and only present the interesting interpretations that are relevant for material scientists and soft matter physicists.  The purpose is to disseminate our result to a more general audience, and invite interdisciplinary collaborations.

I have no experience of such manuscript.  My colleagues suggest that I should try top journals Nature or Science.  But I have the concern that such a manuscript has no "original result", which seems to be required by these top journals.  Then my colleagues argue that "interpretations" are original results.  But I fear that most of my "interpretations" are just personal opinions and won't count as solid result.

By the way, I do see people publish "long version" then "accompanied short version", which sometimes raises the concern of dual publication.  My planned "communication" won't be a short version, but a completely different paper with no overlap.

My question:  What should I do in this situation?  What journals welcome such manuscript (Nature and Science seems very unfriendly towards mathematics)?  How do people usually disseminate technical results?

There are journals in physics that encourage interdisciplinary work and also mathematical physics journals.  I have seen (and written) Physical Review Letters that have many pages of mathematics in a supplement.  See, for example:

Colbrook, Matthew J., Bogdan Roman, and Anders C. Hansen. "How to compute spectra with error control." Physical review letters 122.25 (2019): 250201.

You might do well adding an introduction that addresses the physics and then sending to a mathematical physics journal.

Do not be afraid of covering the same material twice, however.  Perhaps you write the paper as a math paper, and then a separate paper that covers in different words the same material from a physics viewpoint.  You can always call it a review or guide if that makes you feel more honest.  I recently employed that strategy and I hope Referee B feels this is alright.

Nature and Science will want an original result.  Physical Review (B) or PRL are likely too high ranked as well.  Put it in some place like J. Appl. Physics or Chemistry of Materials or J Chem Phys or Materials Theory or the like.  (I don't know the specifics...of course if it involves ceramics those journals are a good fit; if it involves bio, those are good.)

I would encourage you to get it into a real journal (not Arxive).  Something like a specialty APS or ACS journal.  The archival is superior...ends up being put on acid-free paper and retained for hundreds of years in Harvard library.  Digital storage and version control are not as good as dead trees.  In addition going through peer review and a copy editor ends up almost all the time pushing a more professional product with lesser typos and the like.

I wouldn't underestimate the difficulty involved in doing what you are trying to do.  For one thing the materials journal has to a bit take on faith the math efficacy (or repeat the review of that).  But it's not impossible.

Also, try to show some example system and some charts versus temperature or instrument resolution or the like (even if no experiments, just "drawing spaghetti" (band diagrams).  Connect it to something.


Is it fair to give zeros to students who missed early assignments because they added the class late? Last semester, I was teaching a class where
there is a small assignment (~2% of the total course assessment)
that students need to submit every week.
Unfortunately, some of the students joined the class late,
due to add/drop forms that needed to be signed manually,
or for other unknown reasons.

Is it fair to give zeros to students who missed early assignments
because they added the class late?
There were a few students who may have missed 3 or 4 weeks of assignments.

Response to comment

Q: Were the students not able to physically be present?
Were the students not able to predict that they would take your class?

They were physically able to be present.
Some students may not have been able to predict
that they were able to take my class.
For example, one student had to add the class after the add date deadline,
because he was admitted late to the university.

Edit

After thinking things through,
I checked that the last date for adding the course is the Monday of week 2,
and the first weekly assignment is also assigned and due in week 2.
I found in the data that there were several students
who did not attend in week 1,
but all of these students attended and submitted
the weekly assignment in week 2.

Consequently, all of the students in the course
were registered by week 2,
and would have been able to submit all the weekly assignments.
Thus any students who did not submit a weekly assignment
deserve to get zero for that assignment,
unless they have a reason to be excused.

At most institutions, the last day to add a course is set up by the institution, not the professor.  We have an obligation to honor that, which means allowing students to enroll, with full full privileges, up to the last day they're allowed to.

Giving 0's for assignments they've missed is inconsistent with that.  I prefer to simply ignore previous assignments of the sort you're describing - if their score for that part of the class would have been based on 13 weekly assignments, now it's based out of 11.  (Sadly, this can be a little hard to administer depending how you calculate grades.)  Alternatively, they can be asked to make up the work; it is the responsibility of students to keep up with the courses they've enrolled in, either by auditing them while deciding or making up what they missed, so it's reasonable to ask them to do the assignment on a reasonably short time scale (I usually like two weeks, which should be enough time to avoid excessive overlap with any other commitments, but one week would be appropriate if the assignments are short and it's not an exam-laden week).

It's not fair to allow new students to add a class but then penalize their grades; you need to give late adds a reasonable chance to make up the work that they have missed. (In addition, this will let them catch up on learning that they have missed.)

Another answer suggested that students should do the work speculatively while waiting to be formally added to the class, but this may not be feasible:  if I'm on the waiting list for 9 different classes I'm not going to do 9 different assignments just in case. (This is especially problematical if I'm on the wait list for multiple classes in the same time slot -- I can't even sit in on all of them.)

If there is critical work that students will have missed if they add the class at the deadline then ask the university for an exception to the late add policy, and be prepared to have your request denied.


Why do universities require international students to show language proficiency? For example, Let's say an American person wants to attend a French university F. F explicitly states that French is the main language of instruction. Why would they require the student to take a language proficiency test for admission? Any prospective student should be aware that he or she has to know French in order to follow the lectures or when taking oral/written exams. Why don't they simply trust the student? And when he or she thinks to attend even without knowing one single French word, then it's his or her own fault. (And it doesn't even matter if it is undergraduate or graduate school)

There are 4 spoken languages in Switzerland (mainly German, French and Italian) and all Swiss students can take an exchange semester at another Swiss university. Swiss universities don't require for example a French-speaking person to show German language proficiency, if he or she wants to attend a German-speaking university. They explicitly state that it's in a student's own responsibility to know German (in this case)

The short answer is that when people want something, they often experience cognitive distortions that prevents entirely accurate assessments. Dunning-Kruger is a good example of one of these effects, where a student thinks, "Oh, I'd love to study in Paris - and lots of people speak French, so I'm sure I could pick it up!" Learning a new language to a college-level of proficiency in reading, writing, and speaking is incredibly challenging, yet some people inevitably misjudge this.

Sure, the student would eventually figure this out and face the consequences, but in the mean time there are lots of reasons the institution wants no part in such a situation. For one, it's sad - a student will struggle, feel isolated, and most people end up blaming others for their situation and don't take complete responsibility ("why did they let me in if they knew it wouldn't work?!"), so it can be really unpleasant. I saw a student from China try to make it in English-only classes, and I couldn't make out if he even understood more than a few words in English - he only ever nodded, looked confused, and looked back down at his paper. It was just sad to see, and I can't imagine how this was helpful to him - the only way he could succeed was to have an interpreter (he didn't have one), or cheat, and that's just a terrible situation to be in.

Most institutions also have various statistics like drop-out and graduation rates, as compiled by an office like Institutional Research, often reported to the government (for "public" institutions, and others who take government money). Institutions have a lot to lose for regularly taking on students they have a very good reason to think will fail in their program, or will require disproportionately high resources to support. So they want to try to avoid such situations, when possible. Finally, positions in a class/program/institution are often limited, and accepting one student can mean necessarily rejecting some other student, which makes administrators even more keen to be careful of offering a spot to a student unlikely to succeed.

This is speculative and would of course vary from country to country.

If you are not a US citizen or legal permanent resident (i.e., green card colder) and you want to study at a US university, then you will need a student visa.  The same is true for most other countries.

When you go to the embassy to get your visa you will probably have to show language proficiency.

I suspect the reason universities require international students show language proficiency is because of student visas.


Are universities run more and more like businesses? What are the consequences? I watched an episode of "Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj" called "Is College Still Worth It?"
In there the point was made, with ample evidence, that universities are increasingly resembling businesses with dire consequences for the professors. The amount of tenure-track professors is steadily declining while the amount of low-paid, adjunct professors, who are seemingly abused by the institution, is increasing.
I am a graduate student in mathematics and I am getting close to finishing my degree. It was always my dream and intention to go into academia and contribute original research to the fields I am interested in: Differential Geometry and Mathematical Physics.
After watching this episode and witnessing for myself what being in academia is like, I am actually considering other options. Now, my question is, how many other academics have seen and are upset by the way academia is going in terms of being run like a business? How are you handling it? Or do you think it's not really a big deal? Any advice for someone who wants to do pure math research for a living but doesn't want to be tied to a university? Or are my options rather limited?
As brought up in a comment, this show and my experience are referring to US universities but I am interested in hearing anyone's perspective on it. I can imagine similar situations might be faced by academics in other countries.
I would like to emphasize what I see as the important parts of this question. People are mainly addressing the title, which is only part of the story. How are you handling this situation? How is effecting your work/life? Are you okay with this, as a professor/instructor/person in academia?
Here is an article that nicely describes what I am talking about with a good amount of evidence. I am sure there are counter-viewpoints. I am posting this to clarify that I am not talking about universities simply covering their costs: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156375

I'm not going to answer your career questions, but just the title whether universities are run like businesses:
Over the past 20 years (with longer roots), universities have largely been stripped of the substantial state contributions that have financed operations before then. It used to be the fact that states funded the majority of university expenditures because (i) that provided an education for the young people of the state at a small cost, and (ii) the research done at universities translated into state-of-the-art knowledge in the state that led to highly educated students, start-up companies, companies that want to have offices in the state because they needed that knowledge, etc. In return for these state contributions, universities were run in a manner that had the welfare of the state as its top concern -- which includes a focus on education and research. Both provided great flexibility to faculty as long as they reasonably looked towards the bigger goals.
But states no longer provide that money for a variety of mostly political reasons: For example, my own university now receives less than 10% of its budget from the state of Colorado. This comes with consequences:

We rely on student tuition for much more substantial part of our revenue, and so keeping students happy is an important consideration (whether they deserve it or not).
We rely on out-of-state student tuition to a much larger degree because the out-of-state tuition rate is not subject to political pressure that universities are still subject to despite the fact that the state no longer provides a substantial part of the budget. To attract out-of-state students, they need to be treated like the customers of a business.
We rely on Federal and private research dollars much more than we used to. There is substantially greater pressure on faculty to bring in these research dollars than there used to be.

So when people say "universities are run like businesses today", what they really mean in some sense is that there is greater pressure on paying attention to students ("customers") and to go after research grants than there used to be. One can complain about that all day long, but the reality is that that is in large parts a function of how the income sources of universities have shifted, and what the expectations of those who provide this income are today (students, research funders: wanting to get a good education/research product for their money) in comparison to what they were 20 years ago (states: wanting to benefit the welfare of the state's population). The issue that professors complain about is that the expectations that come with these new sources of revenue are not aligned with what faculty like to do: research and teach.
All of this is not to say that there aren't other issues that also fall under the "operate like a business" category and that are much less driven by external factors. Among these are administrator salaries, for example, and I think that for that there really is no good reason why they should be as high as they are.

Universities in the U.S.A. routinely encourage vast numbers of students to take calculus, while knowing that the students lack the prerequisite knowledge. Specifically, typical students in first-year calculus have never suspected that mathematics is a subject in which, while learning it, every day one works on understanding why things are as they are, rather than just memorizing dogmas. Never suspected. That is the central lesson of the prerequisite courses. Students have merely learned algorithms and don't suspect there's anything to math besides that. This includes those who have perfect grades in the prerequisites.
Professors teaching such courses are as naive as the students: They explain students deficiencies by saying they are deficiencies of natural ability rather than that the incentive structure is set up in a way that makes that outcome predictable. Teaching that kind of material to students whose reason for being there is not that they want to understand the material, but rather than they either want to get good grades to impress employers or that they want to put requirements behind them, must inevitably have that effect. Far from creating a more enlightened populace, such teaching spreads gross falsehoods.
 Why is this done? Because it brings in tuition money.  Some administrators encourage this practice only for that reason. They are prostitutes. It's amazing how oblivious math professors are to these facts. Professors and students endowed with high degrees of intelligence become stupid in order to game the system. Profoundly so.
One of the worst things about this is that there is an immense amount one could teach such students about mathematics instead of spending all this time, effort, and money on such phony courses.


Does showcasing pet projects on my personal blog compensate for not having references? If you have been working on projects independently and not under a professor, does compiling your work on a personal website/blog also serve as a good reference for an admission committee looking to select a graduate student for a Master of Science program? Or should a professor always vouch for the work you do? Thank you.

No, realistically a list of external projects will not make up for not having letters.

Letters are typically not, or not primarily, used as a description of projects you have done, but as a subjective evaluation of your potential as a PhD graduate student. Letters may include a discussion of undergraduate research, but will also include a discussion of your personality, especially your strengths and weaknesses as a researcher. It is evident that this cannot be learned from a description of projects alone, especially given that this list is curated by yourself.

Incidentally, this is also the reason why senior professors are considered the "best" references - admission committees assume that the best judge of prospective grad students are those you have seen many grad students succeed and fail, i.e., senior professors.

Edit: as jvb correctly notes, the question is about master rather than PhD applications, but at least for a master by research, this does not change the spirit of my answer. For masters by coursework, I think most universities don't really employ a competitive selection procedure anyway (at least the ones I know don't).

Depends :) If your pet project is gcc or some part of the Linux kernel (to give a computer science example), or something else which is well-known and actually in use somewhere, or a successful commercial product, it might serve this purpose well. And of course it's interesting to get to know the candidate a little bit.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be overly impressed by most un-reviewed work. (Incidentally, this includes work of professors and workgroups, too.)


How good is phrase in letter of recommendation describing my smart but unorthodox solutions? I have a LOR from my previous employer and I want to use it for the MSc application I'm preparing. However, there is a certain sentence in this LOR that even though I understand its meaning (based on facts I know of course), I don't know if it will be good for my application.

"Major characteristics of his job were the clean, well commented code and the smart, yet often unorthodox solutions."

How bad can it be for my application?

If I were reading this statement, I'd take it as quite positive.

Clean, well-commented code is a very good thing, especially in a young programmer
Smart solutions are good
Unorthodox could be good or bad, but going into an academic context it's probably more good than bad.

I know I'm going against the grain, but I wouldn't hire you and I think the one who wrote the sentence was trying to warn future employers without writing down something obviously negative and actionable.

I interpret the sentence, especially the ‘unorthodox’ bit, as saying that you don't play well with others, don't really function in a team, and don't always deliver what was asked of you or what the situation demanded.


What does this professor mean by saying "I do not have time to respond" I am an undergraduate in CS and engineering.  Approximately a week ago, I sent an email to a professor whose research really interests me.  I sent him couple of my questions and confusions rooted from reading his recent papers, but I did not get any response.  Consequently, I sent a short followup email to him indicating that email was sent a week ago, but he sent a short reply saying that "Sorry, I do not have time to respond."

Does it mean that he wants me to go away and never bother him again?  Does he not like me (we had some previous but positive communications) or not want to be bothered by undergraduates?  Should I perhaps send a followup email a month later?

Keep in mind a very simple rule: Professors are human beings

Many of the questions on this site seem to assume from the outset that faculty are strange, mysterious and mercurial creatures, whose motives are entirely opaque and whose every word must be subjected to an intense amount of kremlinology.

"Sorry, I do not have time to respond." means that he doesn't have time to respond.

There could be many reasons for this. He might be particularly busy at the moment - lots of conferences take place in the summer, and many academics also use it to catch up on work not done during the academic year. If he is, as you say, approaching emeritus status he may be occupied with wrapping up things he's intending to walk away from. He might be dealing with other things in his life.

You should take that message at face value, and try not to impute any sort of hidden motive onto it - you simply don't know enough to know. Try following up in a month or two with a simple question as to whether or not his schedule has freed up and he might have some time. If the answer is still no, let it go.

Isn't "I don't have time to respond" an oxymoron?

I have read in an answer that professors are also human beings. Exactly, and decent human beings don't leave others so anxious and lost with a response to the point that they have to go ask in a public forum. Also, talking about human beings, the professor would never give this answer to a peer or someone ranked higher than him.

I don't find that response appropriate or excusable. It would have taken literally 30 seconds to add to that response what the next step is. For example "I will get back to you in 2 months", "I am sorry but currently I am not accepting more students", or "meet me in my office in 2 weeks".

So, no one really knows what your professor means, but if I had to bet, I would bet he is not interested in you at the moment but he does not want to appear impolite or inconsiderate, so he thinks this is a better answer than answering honestly. And this is like in relationships. Please, don't insist and beg, or he will smell your desperation and will either feel annoyed/stalked or get you and exploit you. If he is interested he'll get back to you. In the meantime, look for someone else who can spend 10 seconds writing a proper answer.

Regarding being busy and what "I don't have time" means, I recommend you read this article, because it's answered there: http://scottberkun.com/2010/the-cult-of-busy/

I will quote directly here, for those busy people who don't have time but are reading Academia StackExchange anyway :)

  The phrase “I don’t have time for” should never be said. We all get the same amount of time every day. If you can’t do something it’s not about the quantity of time. It’s really about how important the task is to you. I’m sure if you were having a heart attack, you’d magically find time to go to the hospital. That time would come from something else you’d planned to do, but now seems less important. This is how time works all the time. What people really mean when they say “I don’t have time” is this thing is not important enough to earn my time. It’s a polite way to tell people they’re not worth your time.


Citing a secondary (indirect) quotation in the epigraph In my thesis I want to use the following quotation in the epigraph of a chapter:

  It is very difficult to predict — especially the future.

There are many variations of this quote, and the authorship is attributed to many different people. Very often it is assigned to Niels Bohr, and one of the oldest secondary sources I have found dates back to 1971.

How should I cite this secondary quotation in my epigraph?

Something like the following? —Niels Bohr (Mencher, 1971)

For something like this it is unlikely that you would be expected to cite the original source. Cite what you have found.

An exception would be in research directly related to studies of sourcing and such, but I doubt that is your need here.

Some things are lost in the mists of time, of course, and others are apocryphal.


How to set the threshold below which students get a failing grade in a university-level course? What criteria (in light of the best practices or teaching experience) should one consider when deciding the passing percentage of the course?  (By the passing percentage I mean the grade threshold below which the student will receive an F)

How should the threshold below which students get a failing grade depend qualitatively on these criteria?

My classes are typically curved to the median.  To grade, I first set what I think should be the median grade, based on my assessment of the class as a whole.  Then one half of a standard deviation away from the median is one half-letter grade (e.g. if the standard deviation is 10 raw points out of 100, then 5 points would move an A- to a B+).

Using this scale, an F is simply someone who is a certain number of standard deviations below the median.

Several points:

I explain my general scheme to students on the first day of class,
    so that expectations are clear up front. There is some wriggle room
    at the letter grade borders.
I typically look for clean breaks
    between student performers (i.e. if one cluster is 2 points above
    another cluster, then it makes sense to separate their grades).

I've honestly never understood the letter system for scoring. Is not intuitive and is open to so many interpretations.

Once I had to use letters, and at least for the case of failing the student it was quite straight forward.

Tests, homework, and every piece of work was graded in a scale from 1 to 10, at the end I just did a weighted average for the different elements.

So I ended up with a number between 1 and 10, I consider someone who has passed the class as someone who has at least more of half of the knowledge imparted in the class, so that would be having more than a round 5.

So the threshold was set at 5.1, I would fail those that got less than 5.1 and just prorate the rest of the letter upwards.


Is this plagiarism or just a bad practice? When I first began applying correct citations and referencing, I followed methods such as placing a citation at the end of the paragraph if I am paraphrasing for one person and not following a citation for each sentence. For example:

  One can use this website to write about various activities and interests such as music, art, science, etc... and one can also get in touch with the founder. However, to use the website, a person has to register and pay a fee. The website founder is known for his IT expertise. More people are joining nowadays than ever (Smith 2010, pp. 1-2) and those people can be great contributors to the website. Contribution is an important aspect of online communities (John 2014, p. 5).

Now I am reading about how each one complete sentence should be cited instead, and by using lead-ins to help the readers. In my above example, I want my readers to understand that the first 4 lines are Smith's ideas and the last 2 lines (from 'and those people') are John's ones. Now I realize that such a practice is a poor one as it may confuse the readers.

It should be something like (using lead-ins or ibid. for more readability, of course):

  One can use this website to write about various activities and interests such as music, art, science, etc... and one can also get in touch with the founder (Smith 2010, pp. 1-2). However, to use the website, a person has to register and pay a fee (Smith 2010, pp. 1-2). The website founder is known for his IT expertise (Smith 2010, pp. 1-2). More people are joining nowadays than ever (Smith 2010, pp. 1-2) and those people can be great contributors to the website (John 2014, p. 5). Contribution is an important aspect of online communities (John 2014, p. 5).

My question: Can what I did in the past be considered as plagiarism (as in not making it clear whose ideas are for whom (like readers may think that unreferenced sentences are mine) crediting wrong persons, etc...) or just a bad style of writing? (Field is business and using, obviously, author-date system)

Referencing your source, but in a somewhat ambiguous way, does not open you to charges of plagiarism.

It's good to want to get this right, and the first example you give is slightly less clear than it could be.  However, given that you have referenced your source right in that paragraph, no one is going to think you are plagiarising.  This is an minor issue of style and clarity; it comes nowhere near academic misconduct.

The repeated references in your second example remove the ambiguity, but they are rather annoying and distracting to the reader (though it is less of a problem in more concise style conventions).

To cite a source for a whole paragraph or section of text, add an introductory sentence and then put the reference there.

This will make it clear that the source was used for the whole discussion, without needing to repeat yourself.  It also tends to be clearer, better writing in general. For example:

  The blah blah blah website is one example that illustrates this phenomenon (Smith 2010, p. 1-2)  One can use this website to write about various activities and interests such as music, art, science, etc... and one can also get in touch with the founder. However, to use the website, a person has to register and pay a fee. The website founder is known for his IT expertise. More people are joining nowadays than ever...

Or something like.

  Smith et. al. provide a description of the website functionality (Smith 2010, p. 1-2).  One can use this website to write about various activities and interests such as music, art, science, etc... and one can also get in touch with the founder. However, to use the website, a person has to register and pay a fee. The website founder is known for his IT expertise. More people are joining nowadays than ever...

Not once did I ever downgrade a student's paper for over-citation. Conversely, quite a few failed assignments for shorting citations. With more severe cases I submitted them to the academic review board for disciplinary action for plagiarism.

Citations are easier to keep track and manage now with software like Endnote and there are tools built into modern word processors. Get into a habit of citing all the time and you'll do yourself huge favors.

My rule in class was always, if it has quotes around it -- cite it. If it doesn't have quotes and the thought did not originate entirely within the confines of your brain, cite it. Everything else I will expect is your own work and analysis.

If one citation source effectively leads to additional citations within that source, but those are cited in the same source by the author and point to secondary or tertiary sources (other/older books and articles by the same or new author) -- my preference is that you track down these additional sources and get the original author's context. Thus, you would ideally cite deepest sources whenever appropriate. I'll refer to this idea as deep-source-citation.


Junior professorship (W1) in Germany without full German proficiency I am a Computer Science PhD student aiming for an Academic career. One of the options I am considering after I receive the degree is to apply for a W1 professor position in Germany (Junior professor).

My question is very specific to Germany. Is there a chance I can become a Junior professor without being fluent in German? Most of the job postings I come across are actually written in German. Some of them do not mention German knowledge as a requirement, but it could be that it goes without saying.

I know that many courses, particularly in master programs, are taught in English. So I am sure there is a capacity to teach in English. But I am wondering if there is a culture of preferring and only accepting German speakers. Because if that's the case, I should start putting back up options.

Obviously I could work on my German. But my question is assuming I did not reach the required level of German until the time I start applying for Junior professorship.

You can certainly apply. I don't think German language proficiency will have a major impact on your chances, as long as your research record/profile is good and you are able to at least understand some German in case a student asks in German. Computer science students usually need to be able understand at least some English...

I disagree with earlier posts that you would be "expected to give undergraduate-level lectures". On the contrary, they would usually prefer you to give smaller (=specialized) classes until you have some more experience... Sometimes, you can find this in the advertisement.

However, German academia is very competitive!

We do not have a lot of professor positions, and it appears quite common to take 6-12 months to fill a position (make that 12-24 months for full professor positions)... according to Times Higher Education, Germany has the worst student-to-professors ratio (source). You may say, the German system is very efficient. We have few professors, yet we have a very high output of very educated people!

As far as I can tell, you need to:

be the best match for their plan
have had some third-party funding
have a strong track record (papers in top venues, awards, 100+ citations)
have been at different universities
have some teaching experience
convince them in person

So don't be surprised if you don't hear anything back (not even an invitation to present) on your first applications. Maybe you will get a negative reply after a year or two, when the new professor has arrived at his position. Maybe not even that. So, do not wait for an answer when you apply. Continue sending applications and making backup plans.

There is a reason why Postdocs ("Mittelbau") complain a lot in Germany (according to a recent study, even 50% of Junior Professors consider quitting academia because of the lack of perspective - most junior professor positions are currently not tenure-track). They do a lot of the work (both in research and teaching) and usually have only up to three years of work contract.

It depends on the position, but in general full German proficiency is not required for German professorships.


Pursuing research before applying to grad schools I graduated last year (Bachelors in Computer Science) and am currently working in the industry. I am thinking of applying to grad schools next year but don't have any research experience under my belt (did not pursue any research-oriented project during my undergrad, regret it now).

Therefore I was thinking of pursuing research under a professor before applying for masters (to get a good LoR, as well as get in a publication, if possible). In what circumstances do professors take up requests such as mine, and how should I approach him/her? Currently I am shortlisting the ongoing research projects relevant to my field of interest in prospective universities.

EXACTLY   HOW do to define " research  experience"?
 You may have  more  research  experience  than  you  thin,k. Bow many  term papers Din;t  you do ANY LIBRARY RESEARCH  for term  papers  during  middle  school,  high school  or  college,  no matter   what  your  major  was  in  college?  Library  research IS RESEARCH. I learned  how  to  write   term papers  with  footnotes   and  reference  lists  in  7th  and  8th  grade  more  than  50  years ago.   There  was  section  of  "how  to  use  the  library  in  English class in  both  grade  school   and  the  (th  grade.  That  i went  to private  college  prepatory  schools  in  the  United  states  is  NOT  that  unique,  "how  to use'  the  library  was  also   taught  in public  schools.  in  the  USA.
Apparently  how  to use   a  search  engine  is  not  being  taught  at  all.  I've  been using  Google  since  1993  or  1994,  but  i went  to  back  to  college  in 1992  just  as  the  internet  was  taking  off    in higher  education.

"...Undergraduate research experiences help students understand a particular topic or phenomenon in a field while simultaneously strengthening their comprehension of research and research methods. Undergraduate research is inquiry-based learning that involves practicing a discipline, not just being told about it...."
https://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/studentresearch/What.html

You probably DO  have  research  experience  and  do not  realize  because  your  haven't  bothered   to look up   the  definition   of  "research  experience."  I LOVE  doing  library  research,   but  i know  most  people   think  library  research  is  waste  of  time    and  is  boring  and  tedious  until  they  get  stuck   and HAVE  to  review  the professional  literature   and KEEP UP   with  it    g  for the  REQUIREMENTS  for  specific  college  degree   and  have  to  either  numerous  term papers  or  senior  thesis  which  requires   library  research,  possible  lab   research  compiling  data.   and  even  Field  work   to  father  more  data  or  field  truthingt  and  verification like  i   did  for  my  master's  thsis,  that  what  is  in  ssatellite  image  and  geological  maps  really IS  there  on  the  ground   and  is  real  and  is  accurate..

Part of  the point  of    going  to  college  these  days  is  to    teach you HOW TO THINK  critically , logically,  analytically  and  objectively  AND     so you   acquire  the  research  skills  to KEEP  doing your  own  research  AND   contribute  original knowledge  to  society.

You probably DO have   research   experience.

I  am  still  getting  used  to how  stack  exchanges  work  too. I  am  AMAZED  at  how much research i  can  do  online    these   without  having  to  get  anywhere  near  a  brick  and  mortar  library.

I am actually in a similar situation to the asker and would very much like to see other answers to this question. Please keep that in mind when considering this answer:

Given your background in Computer Science, my recommendation is to investigate the IETF

https://www.ietf.org/

This is an organization which hosts protocols and other infrastructure documents related mostly to how the internet functions. It has a list of topics which it is interested in advancing, it provides resources for contacting and joining work groups and it hosts RFCs. The mission of the organization is not research per-say, but it is penetrable for someone who is non-academic but competent in Computer Science and RFCs are structurally similar to computer science research papers, with similar requirements required in terms of the validation and novelty expected of them. Even if you are not interested in working directly with the IETF, you will likely be able to find academics who could help you with your ultimate goal through it.


what are my options if the degree i want is not available on my country? Hello this is the first time i post something here:

I live in Argentina and I'm 18. Currently, I'm giving my evaluation exams to enter UTN university (It's one of the best universities in Argentina, it's public).

I wanted to study software engineering but that is a rare degree in Argentina, however i found a private university (Not as good as the public ones) but i don't have any reference of it. So i don't know if it is going to be worthy studying 5 or more years there at all.

The actual problem is that in UTN i'm studying systems engineering, is the closest degree i know it's going to be worthy but i don't want a systems engineering job in the future. (Although i know people who has a Systems E degree and works as a software E instead).

So i don't know what to do. I wouldn't mind move to another country, the problem is i really have no idea of what to do then, i can't move to another country but not knowing for sure if i was accepted by the university or not!
Also i don't know another's country's universities.

I only speak Spanish and English, but does anybody have an idea of a country exchange or something that asures me i that i have been accepted in university, so then i can move to that country to study?.

From your question, it seems like there is a misunderstanding about the process of studying abroad:

If you want to study abroad, you first apply for admission (and possibly scholarships). Only if you are accepted (and you accept the offer), you start your preparations to move to the place of study. There is no need to move before having been accepted.

You also don't need an exchange program between countries in order to do that. You just apply to a university that you are interested in, using the documentation of your previous studies that you have (e.g., high school degree). Applications from abroad are quite normal in many institutions.

On a related note: for most countries in the world, in order to study there, you need a proper visa. You will only be able to get a visa that allows you to study there after you have been accepted for a program.

As to finding out where you should apply to: this is the more difficult question, as this is quite subjective. There are university rankings that give you an idea of what very good universities are out there. Note that these rankings have their own problems, but they are often a start. Then, you can search for research papers in some sub-area of software engineering that you find interesting. If you find very strong research groups in that area, you may want to find out about the courses of study being offered at their institution.

Pick a software engineering program at a U.S. university and carefully examine the degree program (i.e. what courses are required, which courses are prerequisites for which other courses).  Then carefully read the course descriptions.  Preview online the textbooks required for each course.
Now compare all that with the degree program for systems engineering at UTN to find out how much overlap there is.

Interview a couple of people in your area who work in software engineering.  Find out what coursework and training they found most helpful.

It is often easier to seek admission abroad after finishing a Bachelor's degree.


Code in a conference paper: should I put license terms there? I am currently writing a conference paper (an IEEE conf, if that matters) in which I include a piece of code. Pertaining to the license of the code, should I, at the beginning of the code, write something like
-- Author: Ton Ami, 2021.
-- License: MIT License. ------> this
--  Below is code to help you make a better world
...

Or should I just put the code without any license terms?
In any case, what would the license of the code be?
Related questions:
License of code accompanying a published article
Is there a default license for code libraries that accompany scientific research papers
Include code snippet which is licensed under the MIT License in a paper

If you publish something and don't give an explicit license (US, anyway), the default is "all rights reserved". You can provide the license elsewhere if you like, as long as you still hold copyright. But if you transfer copyright to someone else, and it doesn't already have an explicit license, then they own copyright and you can no longer provide a license.
If you do provide a license before copyright transfer then, for most such licenses, the license is "sticky" and can't be withdrawn, even by the new copyright holder. If you do that without informing the new copyright owner then you can be in some trouble, since you can no longer transfer "all rights", but only the limited rights you still hold.
Some publishers, including conferences, will be fine with this. Others not and you could wind up having a paper rejected/withdrawn. I suspect IEEE might be lenient here, but they need to be informed of any prior license to anything they publish. Putting it in the paper itself makes it obvious, of course.
However, it isn't where you provide the license terms (in the paper or elsewhere), but when you detail the license terms, assuming that you can, at all.

Ask your university's lawyers. They'll need to check whether the publisher's copyright agreement attempts to overreach, perhaps resulting in the inadvertent transfer of rights to the publisher.
Alternatively, include code extracts under fair use, attributing yourself as the programmer (rather than the author), removing any claim that the code is a contribution, and mentioning somewhere that the code is under MIT License. (Strictly speaking, university lawyers should still check whether you've complied with fair use and not violated the MIT license.)

I assume code was written by the OP.


Hesitation about writing a paper The situation maybe a little bit unusual, and I am asking for your opinion.

I have taught an undergraduate course on differential geometry of curves and surfaces last Fall semester. One of the students in my class, whom I think is really bright, told me that he found the proof of a certain well known theorem is a little bit hard to understand. We had some discussion on it, but I was quite busy so I wasn't paying too much attention on it, so we didn't get any good conclusion.

Recently I was revising my lecture notes and I was reminded of his question. Then he and I found that no fewer than three books (two textbooks and a research monograph) give wrong proofs of that theorem. We are quite satisfied with what we found, and his question was settled. Then he asked whether we should write a paper on this issue and submit it to some undergraduate research journal, like Involve. At first I didn't think it was a good idea because finding a mistake of a proof of a theorem in three books isn't really a big deal, and I told him we could send an email to the authors of those books about the mistakes. But then I think his idea might not be as bad as it seems to be because, essentially, when an undergrad can find some mistakes in well-known textbooks that (it seems to me that) nobody can find, it means something to me. My concern is I don't know even if we are talking about an undergraduate research journal, do the editors think it's certainly not worth a try or the opposite?

On the math side of that theorem, those three books use the same techniques but with different assumptions (or you may want to call simplifications). However, the proof in each of those books have different mathematical mistakes (i.e., not just some simple typos). So far we only found one textbook which gives a correct proof. The other books which contain a correct proof of this theorem are either too sketchy/wordy or those books are research monographs.

Since I have no experience on writing a paper based on the "discovery" of this nature, any comment is welcome. On one hand I think it's something to an undergrad student and on the other hand, I am not sure about what the editors think.

Thank you.

Given that a correct and satisfactory proof exists in the literature, you would not be providing "research results" per se, so a full research article probably is not worth writing at this stage, unless you can devise a more elegant or straightforward or otherwise "improved" proof.

If you are unable to provide that, it would certainly be appropriate to comment on the difficulty of correctly proving the theorem, and do a "comparative" study in the form of a letter to indicate the challenges and make them known to a wider audience.

But, as you said, it's certainly a matter worth talking about—it really is a question about the appropriate "form" of writing your results up.

Generally, writing a paper about some kind of a discovery is not a bad idea.

However, are you sure (as in: really, really sure) that:

the proofs in question are wrong;
you have a correct proof?

Pointing "they are wrong" with a finger is not the best behaviour, even less so if you have little credibility (i.e., you are a student). If you can produce a fail-safe proof of that theorem, then why not. I have seen some papers with titles "A bla bli blup proof of foo biz baz theorem".

It might be that your course professor is the best person to approach first. (And I also highly recommend to do so.) It takes some experience to judge if an idea is valid and fruitful or not. Said professor might also be able to discern that you all are wrong and book authors are correct with little to no image damage to you.

Update: If you think your discovery is fail-proof, then aim for the publication by any means (with or without) the professor.

Don't fear being an undergrad.

Kolmogorov (you'd heard this name, I am sure) had at some time a hypothesis that multiplication of two n-sized inputs in on Big-Omega of n^2, i.e. that it is impossible to multiply faster than O(n^2). He mentioned it in a seminar. He was a world-known name then already. A week later an undergrad student showed him a proof that it is possible to do so faster.

While the actual story of the publication is also quite fun and breath-taking, you can research it yourself. I'd just mention, that we all know this student by this method, the Karatsuba multiplication.


Why are women even less represented in engineering than in other STEM? We know that women in much of the developed countries are less represented in STEM studies. However, such a statement hides the fact that women are approx. half of the students in biology, chemistry and maths (check e.g. here ) but barely 20% in engineering. It is often stated that women tend to choose careers where they feel more useful towards society but that is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the share of women in Chemistry is 50% but only 35% in Chemical Engineering, here. I have tried to find sources that would address this difference but in general the topic treated is STEM as a whole.

Are there studies focusing particularly in this difference in gender representation, engineering vs sciences?

I suspect that this is yet another example of the fractal nature of the gender binary. STEM may be coded masculine in general, but within STEM different fields are coded "more masculine" than others.

I'm very familiar with this in my own field: IT in general is masculine, but UI/frontend is more feminine than backend, on the backend system stuff is more masculine than application stuff, writing it in C is more masculine than writing it in ruby, ... This is sometimes even explicitly expressed as "your beard has to be this long to write/understand this code"

I've never found a good explanation for most of these associations, they seem fairly random to me (and apparently change between cultures as well).

"We know that women in much of the developed countries are less represented in STEM studies."

I don't know why academics of all people say this, when there doesn't seem to exist any consensus as to what "STEM" even means.  Does psychology count as a science?  Does sociology?  Does nursing count as a technological field?  And the list of such areas goes on and on.

As to why "why are women even less represented in engineering than in other STEM fields?"

There could be any number of reasons to this, and any analysis should probably get treated as rather partial.

That said though, something may get revealed by looking at engineering jobs themselves and what men and women believe about them.  How much travel do engineering jobs involve?  How many hours of work do those jobs demand?  What sorts of on the job risks exists, such as an engineer who works in a mine?  How do the sexes compare when talking about willingness to work long hours?  How do they compare when talking about willingness to travel extensively for jobs?  How do they compare when considering working in jobs where serious injury may be a significant risk?


Would it be OK to ask a professor who recommended me to take a specific PhD program to write recommendation letter for another PhD program? A professor recommended me to take PhD program A. However, I want to take PhD program B. Would it be still OK to ask this professor to write a recommendation letter for this PhD program B despite he recommended me to take PhD program A?

He would be an ideal professor to write recommendation for me.

(I am in Germany.)

Yes.
And any sane person would not hold this against you. It is also reality that people often have to apply to multiple places.
 (Also note that if you apply within Europe, you probably might upload the refeence letter yourself and can still decide to find another reference if the professor is insane.)

It could be different if the professor explicitly tells you not to apply to program B (but this does not seem to be the case from your question).

Of course you can ask, normally the worst the person can say is "no" and that'll be the end of it. No normal person would hold it against you to go take another career path than what they recommend.

That being said, I think there might be more to this story than you let on. Just from the top of my head I can come up with multiple relevant questions:

Does the prof even know about alternative B?
Did you find both A and B yourself and ask the profs opinion, or did the prof suggest you to apply for A out of the blue?
Did you ask why the prof recommends A?
Did you ask the prof how alternative B compares to A, in his/her own view?
How complicated is the application process, does it imply too much work for the prof to write two letters (if for example the fields are very different, or one program requires the letter to be submitted by the prof rather than you uploading/emailing it)
Why do you not want to take option A? Is there something in the profs logic, in recommending this program, that you don't agree with?
Why don't you apply to both and see if you actually get an offer from both programs?

In any case, despite the answers to the above question, I still stand by my answer: unless the prof is really old school and would make it a matter of pride, I don't see why anyone would even care which program you choose.

But pondering on these questions might make it a bit more clear for you, both about your own intentions and motivations, and how others (i.e. the prof) might see things.


If I have a low GPA in undergrad, and want to get into top PhD programs, should I do an MS degree or redo my undergrad degree? I want to get into specifically top schools (in materials science and engineering) because I want to have a decent shot at being a professor.

I am aware that quite a few people have successfully done an MS and went on to top PhD programs, but my concern is that because the MS GPA is so inflated, it won't help me in my case. I already have a first author publication soon to be submitted, so my research experiences have been covered well, and my uGPA of 3.1 is my only weakness. Remember, I am trying to get into top schools, where they get so many applications that they are seeking any reason to throw them out.

Because undergrad GPAs are less inflated, I was thinking that doing a whole another undergrad might be more helpful in letting me demonstrate an improvement academically. In addition, some schools require specifically an undergrad GPA limit, apparently without regards to whether the applicant has an MS degree or not. But at the same time, since I would be repeating the same thing, they might not see it as that much of an improvement.

What do you think?

As others have said, getting a second undergrad degree is a waste of time.  Don't bother.

The unfortunate truth is that your undergrad GPA may keep you out of top PhD programs even if you have a Master's degree with a perfect GPA and multiple journal publications.

Top engineering graduate programs receive hundreds or even thousands of applicants every year.  Despite what others may tell you, they're not looking for an excuse to reject applicants because it keeps their US News rating high.  They're looking for excuses to reject because there are far too many applications to judge each one on its merits, and far too many highly qualified applicants to admit them all, and the committee members are faculty who have many other demands on their time and who want sleep occasionally.  In some departments, applications are filtered by GPA even before the first human committee member reads them.

By far the best way over that hurdle is to cultivate a champion -- a faculty member who is active and visible in their research community, who will write you glowing letters describing your strong potential for independent research (in personal, technical, and credible detail), and who will call up their colleagues in other departments to tell them to watch for your application.  The goal here is to interest someone in your target department enough to rescue your application from knee-jerk rejection and evaluate it on its own merits.

And then your application needs to shine on its own merits.  It must provide compelling evidence of your strong potential for independent research.  Yes, your graduate GPA is a (small) part of this, but you need to sell yourself primarily as a future researcher, if not a current researcher, not just someone who excels at classes.  Moreover, this evidence needs to be stronger than for other applicants with higher undergraduate GPAs.  Do not assume that one first-author publication is enough.

All that said... Focusing on research and finding a champion will improve your chances of being admitted to a top program, but they will not guarantee anything.  In particular, even with a strong research record and vocal champions, you may still be rejected because of your undergrad GPA.  Admissions is best considered a random process; the most you (or anyone) can do is improve your odds.

Incidentally, the same advice goes for your longer-term goal of getting a faculty position.  Yes, having a degree from a non-top-10 department makes it harder to get an academic position, but you can work against that disadvantage by developing a killer research portfolio and multiple champions (not just your advisor).  Conversely, a PhD from a top-10 department will not guarantee you success on the faculty job market; you also need a killer research portfolio and multiple champions (not just your advisor).  Start developing that now.

I have an answer for you, but you and other people might not like it.

In my opinion, you would look exceedingly foolish and naïve to re-do your undergraduate program or do another undergraduate program.

Understand, I'm almost 50 years old. Nobody is going to give a damn about your 3.1 GPA if you excel at your master level work. If you get a 3.9 or higher in your master level work, that will look very good. But if you create a phenomenal master paper on top of that, you'll be good-to-go. Don't worry about "the top school". Instead, worry about whether or not it's accredited.

Long ago, one of my professors told me that students are way too worried about their GPAs. This professor was highly respected in the structural engineering field and had written his own textbook on structural analysis.

In my opinion, if you re-do your undergraduate program or complete another undergraduate degree, I'd say you're not exhibiting mature, adult judgment. It would look very amateurish and inexperienced in life.


Are colleges prepared to offer a PhD position to one who already has a PhD I am a PhD holder in Analytical Chemistry from Iran and now, I am very interested in applying for a PhD program in a somewhat different field like Nanotechnology in the US and Canada. I have invested much time and effort on preparing for taking GRE and TOEFL exams and I have a strong research background, but now I heard recently from one of my professors that most institutions are not prepared to offer a PhD position to one who already has one PhD. Could you say more about this issue? Is this true?

Certainly, it happens. I am currently pursuing a second PhD myself, in a field very different from my first. I just learned that one of my fellow graduate students in our department also has an earlier PhD, and hers is from a field very close to our department's.

As the thread linked by ff524 notes, there are many people who wish to earn a second PhD for all the wrong reasons. But you didn't ask whether it was a good idea to earn a second PhD, you asked whether Universities would admit you. The answer is that many will, but they certainly may be wary of this aspect of your application. As commenters have pointed out below, some universities flatly will not consider your application. Amongst those that will consider your application, some admissions committees will not like your previous degree, and others will not care. In my case, I felt the admissions committee did not really care about my earlier degree; they cared about my ability to demonstrate potential in my new field.

Furthermore, before applying to my current institution, I emailed roughly eight departments asking whether an application someone such as myself would be welcomed. Every single one of them replied to me to say that yes, it would; and several were encouraging about my prospects if I did apply.

Nonetheless you should be prepared to accept that some admissions committees will not like your previous degree, and you should be prepared to explain to them your good reasons for pursuing a second PhD.

It depends. For example, in CS, some top schools don't allow this, like stanford MIT berkeley, etc. You should look carefully at the websites.


Has it ever happened that one paper's findings were contradicted by another? Since reviewers don't check the experimental results by trying to reproduce the experiment, is it possible for someone to submit a paper which basically says "Method X was proposed in paper Y and according to them it improved performance by 15% as compared to baseline. However when we tried it, it didn't work so well (only 2% improvement). Hence we propose its modification which actually achieves 14% improvement as compared to baseline on the same train/test data."?

Make sure the difference comes from the experimentation not from the
adopted technique/method.
Make sure you have the same settings as the other paper. Sometimes
people make assumptions for the sake of simplicity in
experimentations. For example, I remember I did experimentation
assuming acyclic graph exists.
Do you have some kind of randomness (i.e. generating random
instances of the problem)? If yes, revise
its output. Sometimes you examine easy instances while others base
their experimentations on hard instances of the problem.
In some areas, there are benchmarks and robust solvers for particular
problems/structures. If your field have benchmarks, try to compare your method against it.

Either way, I am sure you have important parameters to control the experimentation (i.e. number of variables..etc). check their role.

Most importantly, you need to theoretically justify why your method will save 14% while other method saves only 2% in practice.

It is completely commonplace, particularly in finance publications, to fabricate results.

A previous thesis adviser of mine actively encouraged not reporting results which did not support the story he was trying to tell, and to completely change test design and the statistical tests performed when it was possible to get results which did support the story.

It should come as no surprise that papers report results which contradict each other.


Can I work alone on an extension of a paper that had multiple authors? Is it permissible for one of the authors of a paper to work alone for the extension of that paper?

There is nothing illegal about this, nor is this publicly frowned upon.  After all, it's very possible for some of the original co-authors to simply not be interested in the extension.

However, your co-authors might see this as impolite, to say the least.  If you offer to include them in working on the extension and they decline, then everything is fine.  If you don't make such an offer to them, they might not want to work with you ever again.

Are you (writing the papers) under someone's employ or as part of a contract with someone? Then supposedly you would be expected to make sure your employer / contractor is OK with whatever direction you go. If you are not, then you simply have no such obligations anymore.


At a loss after enrolling into PhD programme I am currently into my first semester into my PhD program and at this point I am just at a loss. At universities like mine, we can enroll into PhD programs after graduating with a Bachelors and bypass obtaining of Masters first. The advice that I got from several seniors and professors were that the content will just be more advanced than the Bachelors program, apart from the >10 hours of research per day. I was used to looking at screens for 14-18 hours at a stretch so I thought I would be fine going into it.

My motivation for going into PhD was to research on what I liked, which was cryptography and cybersecurity, and to hopefully have something of impact to society. The other reason was to dream of wearing the gown in 4 years.

Now I am into my eighth week and I have 3 coursework projects, 3 research projects, 2 courses that I have to teach. I feel that I do not have enough time to do any work and I do not even have the mood or motivation to do any work nowadays. I know that most of the time people will just tell each other to walk around and breathe in some air, but I feel that the method of reliving myself has long expired.

I hate to say this but I am quite stubborn at times with my decision and think that I will be able to persevere through, as I did during my undergraduate years but I believe that I cannot hold on to this any longer. Other friends of mine who also enrolled into PhD (albeit different courses in the same university) have told me that I look more mentally drained than usual during our lunches. My parents also are quite sad at the sight of me staring into screens the whole day not knowing what I'm supposed to do next. Passing on family outings have also taken a toll on me since I do regret not spending enough time with them during the final year of my undergraduate study and do not want it to be commonplace. I have seriously been contemplating this thought of withdrawal for about 2 weeks now and recently teared up while bringing this topic up with my mum. I feel that my mental state has been shattered and cannot see anything ahead.

I've talked with my family and they will support my decision if I do withdraw from the program. I am currently on scholarship so my estimated cost will be upwards of $10k that I will have to pay back to the university. My parents don't mind this and encourage me to borrow from the bank in the meantime while I work full-time.

My workplace I would say is far from ideal but in my country, in our local university, I don't really feel home at all. Our lab has a capacity of 100+ people but 95% of our office are non-locals and you can imagine where most of them are from, I don't want to speculate things about them here. My professor is somewhat decent but he has close to 60 PhD students under him in my office alone, and it becomes very difficult to talk about issues like this. My professor wants me to be in the lab every weekday but I don't see myself doing any constructive work. In fact, I am more tired at my desk than if I work from home. Hence, you could infer that I suffer in silence in the lab.

The constant stress and worry from all these factors is weighing me down and I think that I am starting to have a recurrence of panic attacks again from the time before I started my undergraduate studies. I have just made an appointment to see the councilor but I'm really afraid for myself and to bring this up to my professor. I would really appreciate some advice from the community on how to approach this and move on.

Well.. WELCOME TO A PHD!

Sadly all that work is normal and it's only getting worse. Doing 4 essays overnight is not uncommon, research will be tossed away by professors, you wont have time for friends or family, and your health will deteriorate and you will loss/gain weight. All unless you can somehow automate things (a dictation software helps A LOT), or you can externalize the homework, which is not ethical and might not even be legal.

Oh! and your research and enthusiasm is meaningless. You could have the cure for all types of cancers but if your references are not in proper APA it all has no value. Thats academia. You are not there to research, you are there to document properly a research. (Im already expecting this answer to be downvoted a lot as it touches many sensible fibers)

In my PHD I ended up with a horrible lower-back damage that send me to the orthopedist-traumatologist, a friend got facial paralysis, around 30% of those who entered dropped, and the ones who managed to  take  it lightly was because they didnt have much responsibilities, work in bureaucracy and had people to do their HW for them, or similar.

A PHD is a big commitment that frankly isn't worth for many people, but a lot of people realize it only after enrolling. But hey, if you are stubborn then you already have the proper character trait for it, you just need to accept the cost of opportunity, which is that you have to set aside basically all else besides work.

If you are ready to drop, perhaps you should enter an MBA instead, the workload is almost just as bad but at least you don't have to worry about research and it's not so academically oriented, which might be more motivating. Also speak with your professor and negotiate sending your HW by mail as being in the lab is an impossibility for you, or at least negotiate only going  a couple days and the rest work at a distance.


COVID-19 anxiety's impact to my output: any strategies for mitigation? In the COVID-19 pandemic I am dealing with anxiety for the first time, and professionally floundering.
I'm usually good at prioritization, but the state of the world means emergencies, and anxiety magnifies the perception that I am the only person who can deal with them. Sometimes I am: I have high-risk family, have lost care for them, and my university is not making safety-centered decisions very well. I am joined by other new-anxious in not being able to buy safe help: parents of young children, colleagues with disabilities, and anyone who has family sick with COVID, many of whom are wondering where precisely the buck stops, except with themselves... My normal support circles are broken or only available over Zoom, which is less helpful than in-person access. Sleep, for many reasons, is now hard for me, yet vital zoom meetings happen at every hour. Compounding this, large projects I committed to in January are now much more difficult to finish, and past due.
Deadlines are deadlines, students get helped or they don't, grants forgone today add uncertainty to an already complex tomorrow. The law provides protections, but won't help with tenure cases, or provide funds to keep students fed. My field and academe in general are trending more competitive, not less. I am usually quite productive, publishing multiple papers a year, writing grants, etc. I am doing the 'right things': I exercise daily, have a therapist, am exploring meds, and have taken up meditation. I am lucky to be in the hands of good care, but that care is often stymied by the culture of academe. "No one you can delegate that to?" asks my therapist.
It does not help that those above me in the chain of command are largely uncomfortable with the idea of mental health, full stop. Advice to 'pull together, 'buck up', and 'chill out' has come, along with signaling that mental health is outside the preview of academe. This is even as they show their own symptoms of great stress. While industry settings often have clear ways to handle mental health situations, my institution has no such resources for faculty and staff. Academic settings also have less 'chain of authority' to directly assist individuals. "Talk to your boss" is not necessarily sound advice. 'HR' is not a useful resource either.
I am specifically looking for academe-focused strategies to cope and potentially even better succeed, with this anxiety. I am Jr. Faculty in one role, Staff in another, highly autonomous in both, at the same institution. Most of my commitments are to individuals outside of my department. I do not see this all 'ending' soon.
Those with anxiety pre-pandemic: do you have strategies I might try? How does one prioritize and strategize when everything is on fire? Can anxiety in fact be a superpower when applied correctly in academe?
Everyone: are there there things I should do to minimize impact on my academic career? I need to stay competitive with individuals who are younger and have less complexity than I do, as we will be evaluated equally.

I expect research output overall to be down this year into next. Surely some people will cope better than others, and different types of research are more or less directly impacted (e.g., that requiring solo work at a computer, versus that requiring access to shared facilities that may be/have been closed, versus that requiring face-to-face contact with human subjects). Others will have additional direct challenges to their time: childcare may be closed and children may be learning from home rather than school, for example.
@paulgarrett's comment is exactly what I was thinking of as an answer:

A small point: forgive yourself (as opposed to judging...) in this situation. It is crazy. To accidentally pretend that things are not crazy will obvs make you more crazy. My advice would be "cope with the bad current state, and wait to think about things later..."

...except I think this is the main point rather than a small one.
Besides that, it sounds like you're trying all the right things (eh, maybe not the booze, but if it does help you relax and if it's in moderation and not purely as medication then there's little harm).
I think the most "solvable" problem you have (or, at least, one I can provide some advice on) is this part:

Compounding all this, I accepted several large projects in January which are now past due. (...) Writing, especially, is very difficult, which puts me further behind, which leads to more anxiety.

You're probably best off doing some prioritization (from @avid's comment: "What actually needs to be done by when? Can projects be reorganised to be more achievable? Can deadlines/deliverables be re-negotiated? Try and focus on completing one task/project at a time") and scheduling. There is no way you can make up for weeks of reduced productivity in an instant. Instead of worrying about everything you need to do (a circumstance I find myself in often; not new to COVID for me), set an immediate-term schedule for yourself.
The granularity might be something you experiment with, but try to set specific, achieveable goals for the next week, the next day, or the next hour. Do your best to meet them, but don't beat yourself up if you don't. Reevaluate your progress the next time you set goals. Try to focus on what you've accomplished.
It may be helpful to tier your short-term goals into:

Things you will accomplish (today/this week) no matter what (except emergency, of course)

Things you reasonably expect to accomplish

Goals to aim for in an ideal world

Probably the things you slot into "3" might look like a normal week for you pre-pandemic, or even far less than normal, and that's fine. Focus on making bits of progress on your projects that you can feel good about. Be prepared to have days and weeks where you only accomplish the tasks under (1), then forgive yourself for not doing more, remind yourself you've at least achieved your personal minimum, and move on.
In closing, though, and echoing Paul: forgive yourself, you're under a lot of very understandable stress in a crazy time.

I would contact the disability resource center at your university. They'll need medical documentation, but once you have it, they can probably get you an extended deadline on your projects and any other accommodation(s) you may need for your anxiety. Good luck.


Software to use for creating posters for academic conferences? And how much time does it usually take? I'd like to create a poster without having to put too much time into formatting.

I would recommend Inkscape:

vector graphics
powerful
free
intuitive
cross platform

I use a combination of Adobe InDesign and Illustrator. You should use software designed for page layout, not something coopted for that purpose. Please don't use PowerPoint or Latex — PowerPoint is difficult to use with many many objects on a single slide, and really isn't designed for page layout. Latex shouldn't be used by anyone, unless you have so many equations in your document that nothing else will do.

I export figures into .AI or .SVG and use InDesign to lay out the poster. This doesn't take very long, and you can set up styles to ensure consistent formatting across the poster.