Is my doctorate good enough? I received a doctorate from an online school Walden University. I have not had any luck finding a full time college teaching position. Should I pursue another Ph D from another reputable college? Can I use any of the coursework I already have to defray the expense?

There are many people who attend far more reputable institutions than Walden and accomplish significant amounts during their PhD program and still have problems finding meaningful teaching positions. It's unfortunate that you went through the entire program without realizing this.

Unfortunately, a lot of people think the process goes like:

Get PhD (in 3-4 years!)
Apply to a few great teaching jobs
Have to decide between multiple great offers

But the reality is often more like:

Get PhD... eventually
Apply to many jobs
Have a few interviews if you're lucky
Get rejected from most desirable positions
Decide to do a post-doc to get more teaching/research experience
Repeat while applying for post-doc positions

The academic job market is fairly saturated in many fields and so even if your degree was from an accredited and reputable institution, you may not have a simple case for getting a teaching job at a college. Particularly if your PhD experience did not lead to any teaching experience or publications.

I would recommend looking into local community colleges. It sounds like you did this online, which means you may have been working fulltime during your study - community colleges often have courses you can teach which you may be able to combine your academic study and work experience to be a desirable candidate.

Walden is an accredited university, some of the Psychology programs may not be fully accredited, but they also have a number of other specific accreditations.

I was a doctoral student in a brick and mortar university a few years back before transferring to Walden as I was not happy with the program at that more traditional university. I found the online school to offer much more of a well-rounded education than what I was experiencing in the traditional school and I also found it to be equally if not more robust and demanding than my first school. The school from which I transferred, was not Ivy League. I do however, have experience with other schools, professionally and as a student, including the Ivy League schools. I have found that reputable online schools such as Walden do provide researchers and would be PhD's experience and education that is equivalent to traditional in-person programs. While the Ivy League schools do provide a good education, it is not to the exclusion of any other school.

While there is definitely a prejudice among some (and this is decreasing quickly) employers as to the pedigree of your degree, functionally I would argue that good programs are good programs and that as a holder of such a degree, that success should not be ruled out simply because there is a prejudice among certain people. I personally doubt the qualifications of someone who would judge my work based on where it is from without looking at the substance of it. I mean if this is the status quo, how different is that from not hiring someone because you think they may be of a certain race, religion, gender, etc.? Somehow that is not acceptable so why would discrimination based on the name of the school be acceptable, particularly when none of these people ever take the time to validate their claims. Online schools are not all degree mills. They often differ in the fact that they give an opportunity to most who apply, however, you still must succeed based on your own work.

Your PhD is valuable and respected. If you had one from Princeton there would still be detractors saying that Yale was better, to a lesser degree, but there would still be those who would find some reason to look down on it. The bottom line is what you do with your research and education.

I was where you were for a while, but I found that networking is key. People meet you, they see your work that is what they hire you for. How many people have good jobs and don't have a doctorate? Having a doctorate is not something that you should allow to discourage you even if it seems as though things are stacked against you. I suspect that your concern with the name on the degree is influencing how you present yourself. That is not to say that there is not real discrimination out there, but let those simple people live their own lives. Their small mindedness will be their own burden.

Education is more than just a one time brand name accomplishment. It is what you make of it. I know a lot of people with Ivy League degrees that finished school thinking the world would fall at their feet. That was not the case. One of the advantages of the lesser known programs and schools is that you really have to work hard all of the way through and for that you are in a better place.

Again, not to detract from Ivy League schools, just want to address the perception that they are the only places to get a good education.


Second Masters in maths after master's in physics: how does it help getting into PhD in Europe? How does it help doing a second master's in mathematics after doing first master's in Physics for getting a PhD in theoretical Physics in Europe?

Will it be helpful to compensate for a low GPA in Masters in Physics?

Does the reputation of the university (master's degree) really matters for the PhD admissions if one has got enough project experiences in the field from top institutions?

Nothing compensates your low GPA in Physics. I think you have to learn to live with that. But there are several ways to improve your competency for the PhD application in theoretical physics. First let me share my experience with the application procedure in Europe.

In France, from my experience, there is a well structured process for PhD intake. Your application will undergo an initial screening using various criteria, one among them is the GPA, other is the masters thesis. Next step is the interview(expect several rounds). I had a completely different experience in Germany. I was offered a project associate position for 6 months as an entrance to the PhD, predominantly on the basis of my current work(master thesis) and the recommendation from my adviser. I know several others who had similar experience. I recommend you the following.

Find a shot term internship in the field of your liking. If you do really well such that you may get a publication or at least if the supervisor could give a good recommendation for your application, then you have good chances of getting admitted.
Have you considered the US? A great deal of research is going on there. Appear for GRE if your GPA meets the minimum requirements. I cannot say for sure a good GRE score alone can get you a position, guess someone from US could say more about that.
If the above options seem impractical, try applying for a MS in theoretical physics. There are some specialized MS offerings like astrophysics, photonics etc.
Do an independent research in the field of your taste. There is always a possibility for collaboration with others in the field if you could convince them you have the potential to be a researcher.

Bottom line

IMO, doing a masters in mathematics for the sole purpose to be a potential candidate for PhD in theoretical physics because you think you can't be one due to your low GPA is not a good idea. There are other options to consider. If you are really motivated to do math, nothing stops you.

Usually, crucial point for applying to PhD in europe is to find appropriate and willing advisor to take you as a student. Second Master will not give you any significant chance over others students ( and applicants) however, knowing research interest of professor,lab, department, program where you want to apply and having strong motivation for that field can be advantageous,
Unfortunately, if you want me to be more specific I guess you should share name of your program and uni ( according to SE rules not allowed)
but I am guessing that you are applying for PhD that are free and financially covered, in most of these application, good communication with advisor and program coordinator is crucial.


Collaboration on a suggested project - problem with a colleague I would like to ask you for an opinion on how to act in the following scenario.

A year ago, some colleague PhD of me has suggested an open problem to me. This problem was already published in his paper, which is on arXiv.

He suggested that problem to me and invited me to collaborate on it.
However, he is not very hard-working and I personally suspect that he is just waiting for me to prove it.
He is working in that way quite often.

I, somewhat blindly, agreed to work on it. However, I do not like the way he
“collaborates” and I would like to work on that problem on my own since he is not helping at all and only waits till the problem is solved so he can write it as a result to his grant.

We are very far from being published. Actually, not much work was done yet. I want to work and solve this problem on my own.

How should I proceed?

Simply ignore him (he didn’t speak about problem for months) and publish the results?
Tell him about my opinion, quit, and publish the results?
Proceed and publish the results with him as a co-author.
Do something else.

I will come at from the other direction. I will assume that your summary is correct, and that this person truly did nothing other than point you to a question that had already been posed in published work. In this case, you are under no obligation to work with him. You must be careful to cite his work appropriately, and probably acknowledge him in the acknowledgment section as having suggested this line of research, but I don't think he has a legitimate case for co-authorship.
That said, he could still create a messy, public confrontation. So, I would send a note like this:

John,
Some time ago, we discussed collaborating on an effort to prove [blah] as an extension of your work in [blah]. So far I don't think either of us has made much progress, so I wanted to reach out with you about resurrecting this work.
At this point, I think it would be best if I tackled this on my own. If successful, I will write up a paper that cites your paper, and will acknowledge you in the acknowledgments. What do you think?*
-Name

Depending on whether you are willing to consider working with this guy, you could also replace the last sentence with:

If you would prefer to collaborate on this paper as a co-author, we can discuss, but I am hoping to publish in the next ~6 months, so we should meet ASAP to discuss what you will contribute and when it will be ready.

Then there are a few possible outcomes:

If he ignores you, or says "good", then all is okay.
If he claims to be interested in collaborating with you, you will have to discuss this with him.

You may need to be fairly aggressive in telling him that you don't think collaborating will be feasible, but better to have this argument now and in private, rather than after publishing without him.
If you are willing to give him a chance, you can try to define his contributions and the deadlines now, and let him know that if doesn't have satisfactory material by the deadline, you will publish your results without him. If he is serious about working with you, then this is reasonable; if he is lazy as you say, he may withdraw his objections.

If you cannot come to terms, or if he reacts very poorly, then you can decide whether you want to risk a nasty, public fight over authorship, or whether you want to drop the line of research.

It seems he wants to take your findings as his own. There are numerous laws against it. Consulting a lawyer might be helpful.

Scientists record everything, It's easy to record data about your findings to prove it was you who actually completed them.

Plagiarism is considered one of the worst in the scientific community.
Here's a good article from Berkley:
If you get caught, they banish you.

http://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/ethics/documents/redan08.pdf


Transitioning from engineering to research as an undergraduate RA I'm an undergraduate about to finish my first year of undergraduate research in CS. This past year has been mostly engineering-based as I learned how things worked in terms of implementation.

I'm looking to move from engineering / implementation of others' ideas into creating my own novel ideas and research, but I'm not sure how to best bridge this gap. I'm going to be attending a conference in my field soon, but I'm sure there are other things that I can do to help me along this transition.

I'd imagine its beneficial to read papers, but one of the issues that I am facing is that I'm not really sure what problems I want to work on, and thus don't know what area of research publications to focus on. Additionally, I'm finding it difficult to find the "core papers" of a problem, e.g. papers that present significant advances and are quite important. How would you make the transition between a more research engineer role to that of a research scientist?

You make it sound like engineering and research are two contradicting things, but I think this view is falling short. Of course there are shallow implementation and verification jobs, but there are also plenty of engineering jobs about R&D fiddling and finding clever designs and solutions, and then there are also (purely) academic jobs in engineering fields. Note that the boundaries between all of these are very much blurred and there is a variety of people in engineering ranging from hands-on tinkerers to purist mathematicians with completely different mindsets. Therefore, people in engineering hardly ever agree on whether some job or result is just derivative craft lacking conceptual contribution, useful high-level research, or disconnected theoretical work with pretentious notation but possibly useless and not much behind it. Also, implementation jobs can require a lot of clever thinking too, e.g. in analog electronics or large system integration.

Since you're at the undergraduate level still, I'd say it's totally normal to learn and follow preexisting ideas before engaging in great abstraction and developing your own branches. It's hard to make strong and novel conceptual contributions to your field if you don't know its basics. Do not underestimate the work put in by many, many very intelligent people before you (one tends to forget about this at times, e.g. when reading a bad introductory book) and rather try to gather their insights and grow from them.

About your problem at hand: I guess the best thing you could do, as far as that is possible in your environment, is trying to steer your next career choices in the direction of institutions and companies that value conceptual thinking and smart solutions and not only dull implementation workforce. Aim for courses, texts, project topics, internships, and contacts that push you more and more in this direction.

I think the most important thing is to ask for help.

Which, I guess by asking this question, you did.

However, ask people for help that know about your field and know about YOU. They will be the the most helpful.


Is my adviser supposed to be assigning me my research? I have just finished my bachelor's degree in computer engineering. I am doing an REU with the professor who will be my adviser this fall when I enter grad school.
Currently my future Adviser has me working on research that involves image processing. I was hoping to head in other directions in embedded computing and security.

From our weekly research meetings it seems like my adviser will be assigning me research topics through out my grad school career. Is this normal that an adviser would insist on determining the research topic of the PhD students under them. I have not pushed back on this yet but I am not prepared to go in depth in image processing. I am not a math major or CS major and that field gives me little interest.

--ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BELOW--

As far as funding goes I am currently funded by and REU(research experience for undergraduates) and am unsure of where this funding comes from(NSF, department, professor). Here in 2 weeks though I will be funded by a Distinguished Academic Fellowship(DAF) that my university graduate school awarded me.

In order to get my DAF I had to write a research proposal. I proposed research into microprocessor, GPU, FPGA unification. As I understood it from those within my department I am not required to carry out that research as the proposal is more a way for the DAF committee to see that I can write a coherent proposal for later on in my academic career.

Concerning the union of my professors research interest and mine: He focuses on embedded system design for single specific applications. It just happens that in the current path of research he is onto it involves cameras. This then introduces the field of image processing into the project.

It seems that all his grad students are doing peripheral work on UAVs that will be coalesced into a UAV platform of some sort.

This depends very much on:

How much interests and your advisor's interests align
Where your funding comes from

First, interest alignment: Starting a grad program, you find an advisor with interests that overlap with your own, do the foundational things that need to get done, then expand on it with your own ideas.  Later, when you are pitching grants, very much the same thing but with program officers: you have a great idea, and you find a way to dovetail it with their calls for proposals.  Finding the common ground between your research and others' research is a fundamental academic skill.

Second, money: if you are funded through a grant that needs image processing research done, do you think that your advisor or the funding sponsor will give you a big thumbs up when you say, "Actually, I have some great ideas for embedded security devices I would rather work on."  Nope.  If you were in their shoes, shelling out $30-60k on a student for a year, wouldn't you expect them to help get the grant completed successfully?  If you want full control over your research, become independently wealthy first.

Successfully doing your own research in academia, in grad school and beyond, involves a lot of meeting in the middle.  Given the huge disparity of research topics you mentioned (image processing versus security), I genuinely wonder about the overlap of interests.  If there really isn't much overlap, it might be worth looking for a different advisor.  You won't become an expert in one field by being mentored by a guy in another field, even if your advisor lets you run wild with any idea that comes into your head.

Update

Since more info was added about the funding and interest overlap, I can note a bit more here.  It sounds like your funding is relatively portable and not tied to a project.  In that case, you should have pretty strong control over what you want to do.  You should not be using this control to just pitch ideas and run with them.  The benefit of a PhD program (as opposed to learning how to research while living in a shack) is to apprentice with people who are experts in what you want to do.

However, having your own "batteries included" funding means you should be able to match with the best advisor for your interests. It sounds like you need to discuss the issue of overlapping interests with your current advisor.  If you don't want to go in the same direction as the lab, maybe they can suggest another group who does something that is a better fit.  Alternatively, maybe they will hit topics that you find more interesting during other phases of projects. It's not uncommon to switch advisors in the first year: I knew a professor in undergrad who actually recommended avoiding even starting in a given lab, so you could just meet with professors to find the best match.

The answer is YES, sadly. If you do not like it, you got to talk to him/her, or get another advisor if no agreement can be reached.


Is it reasonable to request an exemption from certain degree requirements? I am a physics student at a small North American university. As part of the requirements for my degree, the current policy dictates that all students must take 6 humanities courses before graduation.

I believe I understand the benefit of this requirement: it ensures that students are well-rounded. However, this requirement is making it difficult for me to take two extra math courses that are relevant to my future and my degree.

My goal is to continue my education further after graduating. I have asked two of my professors and they have told me that these two math courses would probably be relevant to my graduate studies. Moreover, I am very keen to take them because they are interesting and challenging. The reason these courses are not in the current curriculum is just due to the large number of physics courses required for the degree; they simply do not fit in the usual honours degree pattern.

As a student, is it reasonable for me to ask for this exemption? If so, what should I say to the department chair to increase the likelihood of getting the exemption?

For context: I am a physics major and the courses I want to take are Discrete Mathematics and Real Analysis.

As a former Humanities Professor and Dean, my answer is "nope."  We heard so many times from the Engineering College that they wished their students would have more Humanities, that there's no way I can say okay, go ahead without it.  So many students would rather give it a pass, but I can say (besides my being on the Humanities bandwagon just in general), that my father worked for a professional organization of engineers, and the thing they wanted most at their professional conferences was work on writing and communications.  And that's what you learn in the Humanities.

It's a very reasonable request.  You should get the education that'll better prepare you for the future, and it sounds like these Math courses would do just that.

Arguments in favor:

Additional technical competencies are usually worth more than additional writing or presenting skills.  Sure it's great if you're a better writer/presenter, but it's usually not worth the loss of talent you'd have by diverting focus away from your core skill set.
Writing and presenting skills taught in the Humanities are not the same as those required in STEM environments.  I'd go so far as to say that, in a significant number of cases, it'd have been better for undergrads to have not had Humanities classes that taught them bad habits.
Technical courses often do require writing.  These writing assignments are better for technical students since they're the right kind of assignments.  Why prepare to write Physics journal articles in a Creative Writing class when you could instead take a Physics class that includes writing assignments?
You're more likely to learn if you're enjoying the course work.

Personally I got exemptions from my Foreign Language requirements in undergrad to pursue my four Science and Engineering majors.  This worked out very well for me.  It's painfully absurd to think that some folks would've argued that I needed a few semesters of Spanish more than the extra Math major.

I would recommend being polite yet persistent in pursuing the course exemption.  It took me a lot of office visits to get my forms signed, but in the end it was very much worth it.


Why do academics frequently write very short email replies? Why do many academics write short replies to emails?

For example, I write Professor MK some polite email with salutation, etc., just polite and decent email.  MK then responds like this:

  OK, MK

Is MK so busy that they have no time to write, for example, this:

  Hello,

  It is fine. This is the correct approach.

  Best regards,MK

I do not understand this.

Beyond a certain point in their careers, academics (in particular tenured professors) are essentially a subspecies of managers.

And managers literally receive hundreds of emails per day. Some of these indeed require a more formal response, or a lot of work before you can even compose an answer. If you get 20 emails that each require half an hour of work, 50 more that only require a yes/no answer, and another 100 that are just FYI, you don't spend a lot of time on crafting replies to the yes/no mails... because the first category alone already is more than you can handle in a normal day, given all your other responsibilities.

In the age of written letters, email once was meant for short messages, and used by very few people. When I was younger, it was not (always) considered offensive to write something in the "Subject field" only ("back in my office in 5min"). Mail was meant to inform, shortly.

A friend of mine had a PhD advsisor (before 2000) who, when my friend had sent a "too long" mail, answered in 6 letters: "PLSSPK", meaning "please speak": come to my office, explain in spoken language. Mail is not efficient for everything (try humor, 2nd degree without emoticons).

Now, nobody writes letters anymore, mail is widespread, and some use it for control, to keep track. Some use it to avoid direct contact. Good reasons. The problem is people using mail do not have the same standard.

From "PLSSPK" in the subject, to "Good morning, or good evening if you read my mail at your own timezone" followed by tens of lines, there are worlds. It is about habits, responsiveness, context switching, all good reasons.

Nowadays, I have surendered to long emails because most of my colleagues expect me to do that. They would feel offended if I don't. But on occasion, face to face, I suggest we both could write shorter emails, and ask if the other would feel offended. Very often, not.

It's like shaking hands: some don't like to do that, feel obliged to (and it is not healthy, smile). If you ask her/him how they'd like to be salutated, they'd say: "just say hello, or nod". It is a manner of personal trend, and social conventions.

My suggestion: if you cannot see or talk to the person, accept that he/she has answered you, not the way you would have, but in her/his way. And stick to your own way of answering. If you can talk to the person, ask (politely) about these habits, find a common ground. Say something like "You answer quite shortly. I am not used to that (express you feelings, important). Where did this habit come from. Do you mind if I still write long emails, or would you prefer shorter ones?".

People act differently, this does not mean they are SO different.


Does any university require reporting of misconduct at other universities? Some universities have ethics codes that require (whatever that might mean) members to report misconduct within the community.

Are there universities where such a requirement extends to reporting misconduct within the "larger academic community"?  For example, if someone at school X learned that someone at school Y had falsified laboratory data, the X person would be required to report the person at Y.

The example of falsified data is imperfect as it may be covered under legal and contractual rubrics not local to a university, such as a government grant agency requiring recipients to report any known misuse of government funds.   A better example is plagiarism in student papers, that usually does not violate any legal codes (unless additional scholarship money is earned through the plagiarism), and is treated as a reportable crime only within universities' internal ethics codes.  The question is whether any of those codes purport to protect the integrity of other institutions.

I'm asking only about reporting of academic or institutional misconduct, especially the kind where the only effective means of reporting is to the other university.

in case of publications and falsified data you are first and
foremost responsible to report it to the publication. They need to
first approve or review the technicality of the matter which can
become material for the ethics committee.
The Honor Committees of universities keep a record of students and
faculties, and when students or professors apply to other
universities they are generally being asked about the previously
notable issues with ethics in the previous institution. Lying in
those form can by itself be lying to the second institution even if
the matter can not be investigated with the first institute. That
being said Honor committees in university X might have a threshold
and limit before noting an offense or violation on the record
subject to citations and referral for future. In some cases in
universities, some mandatory 6 session therapy is being recommended
as a way to remove an item from someones active record.Those
therapies are subect to confidentiality and therfore can not be
cited by university Y.

I have to believe that at least one school's ethics policy says to report without specifying that misbehavior should only be challenged on their own campus. Indeed, professional ethics suggest you should do so no matter where it arises.

But it seems you are looking for specific examples. In that case, I really believe you are going to have to do some research to get a solid answer. Should be easy to send out a bunch of letters to various schools saying your investigating differences between written ethics statements and you'd appreciate it if they could send you a copy of theirs. Heck, these days many are probably available via the schools'websites...


Are there any known Universities that refuse to pay for paywall access to academic journals? Are there any known Universities that refuse to pay for paywall access (for moral, intellectual, inability to pay, or other reasons) to academic journal articles?

No University has enough funding to spend on subscription fees for all existing paywalled research articles (e.g., Harvard University says it can't afford journal publishers' prices). As a result, some of their faculty and student resort to free alternatives SciHub/LibGen/emailing colleagues/etc.

Many universities located in developing countries cannot afford paying for paywalls.

If you need a particular University name, here are some:

University of Sierra Leone:

  When he needs new books to teach one of his courses, Professor Ibrahim Abdullah orders at least two from abroad: one for himself, one to give to the university library. If he needs scholarly articles, he writes to his friends overseas and asks them to send copies, since the university cannot afford journal subscriptions.

All public universities, research institutes and state agencies in Peru (translated by Google):

  Bad news for research and technological innovation come from Peru. The
  National Council for Science, Technology and Technological Innovation
  (Concytec), a government agency, will no longer offer free access to
  the ScienceDirect and Scorpus databases by the end of the year. The
  lack of funding from the central government has been the cause of the
  closure of these platforms for Peruvians.

  Access had been enabled for public universities, research institutes
  and state agencies. ScienceDirect (Freedom Collection) gathers more
  than 1,800 titles in full text scientific journals in 24 thematic
  areas and Scopus meets "relevant sources for basic research, applied
  research and technological innovation and is a tool for bibliometric
  studies" according to the portal Concytec .

  Access was open since 2014 and during that time 3.7 million full-text
  documents were downloaded. The downloads, according to Concytec, would
  have cost US $ 131 million if they had been isolated. While
  subscribing to these services for three years cost the agency only US
  $ 10 million.

A few other places:

Dutch universities start their Elsevier boycott plan
Germany-wide consortium of research libraries announce boycott of Elsevier journals over open access
Taiwan Tech to Discontinue Subscription to Elsevier ScienceDirect Starting 2017

Some interesting maps showing the location of Sci-Hub users (at least the location of the machine that makes the final request):

Universities in the US do not refuse paywall access to journals for moral or intellectual reasons.  However, budget limitations may mean that subscriptions that are deemed less important may be canceled.


Should considerations be made if half of a project group drops the course? I am a student who is completing a course where the major assessment is a Project where you work in a team of four to complete it in different deadlines (Draft and Final).

However we have been informed that two of our group members have dropped the course and no considerations will be made. We are expected to work as a team of two when everyone else has a team of four (with some that I know of experience one person drop outs).

Would it not be ethical to make some sort of consideration? Maybe splitting my two person group and placing us in other groups that have had one member drop out?

The Lecturers reasoning is that "If someone is sick on your team you are still expected to make deadlines". However I know that if I had a deadline for a project and half of my team was off the entire time with some sickness then some sort of consideration would be made.

Is this ethical or am I looking at this wrong?

Thanks.

EDIT: The students are NOT COMING BACK

EDIT:
I just got back talking to him. He does not plan to change anything, stating that some people only have one person in their group now.

I said I would be happy to take them into our team but he said that was not an option. I emailed my unit coordinator as I believe this is unfair but I doubt anything will come of it.

At this stage we are just pushing on ahead but I am keeping my emails in case we fail and need to apply for a review.

I've seen this happen before. What ended up happening was that Mr. Doe ended up being allowed to do an individual assignment on par with the level of effort as a member the group assignment.

Losing members does not change deadlines. The same result is expected, i.e. a paper is due on a deadline. That shouldn't change, even though your group has changed. Half a group doesn't mean you can get twice as long to work on it, mostly because deadlines rarely move as a result of group changes, and practically because the schedule won't account for it.

What has changed is the amount of work you can realistically accomplish. Instead of having four person-units to work with, you have two person-units to work with. You will not be able to make the same effort as four people, but I highly doubt the professor will expect you to be able to meet that level of effort, simply because asking a human to fill in as two humans rarely ever works in the real world, at least not for long before that human breaks down.

Do not expect to change your deadline. Expect to change how much work you will complete by that deadline. Talk with your professor about how much effort the two of you will need to apply to meet his expectations, as opposed to whether or not you will meet his deadlines. Does he expect you to perform as much work as four students will do, or just meet the same timeline?

If he also wants you to do twice as much work as other students, then I'd have issue, but if he only wants you to meet deadlines, and will take into account that you're short 50% of a normal group, then I wouldn't find any real merit to saying the deadline is unreasonable.

You have right to be worried about the future, but the lecturer's reaction might stem from such matters of which you're not aware. For example, the sick students have probably announced him that their sickness is something trivial and they will be back soon to be involved in the process again. You say that the project is the major item for the final assessment so those absent students are, probably, thinking to get back not only for their commitment to work with you on a shared project, but their own survival from a potential failed score!

I believe that you better talk to the lecturer again and reasonably posit that the project's workload was planned to be shared between 4 persons but their absence is overshadowing the project's progression, dramatically. It will hopefully drive the lecturer to initiate a plan B for you.

If she is still ignorant about your reasoning, you can reflect the problem to your coordinator and announce that this kind of treatment is not only unfair and decreasing your passion to continue but may lead to dissension between you and her. They are experienced to handle just situations.


Is it ethical to profit by having my students buy my textbook? This question was suggested to me by How can I sell my text book to my students in e-book format? which asked about the practicalities, but attracted many comments about the ethics.  So this question is to ask about the ethics directly.

Suppose I have written and published a textbook, and I want to use it as the text for a course I am teaching.  I receive royalties from each copy of my book that is sold, so if my students are required to buy my textbook for the course, I will make some money.  Is it ethical to do so?

Well-reasoned opinions would be useful answers, but even more useful would be pointers to institutional policies, professional codes of ethics, etc, that address this issue.

Of course, there are many ways to avoid profiting from the sale of my book to my students.  If my contract with my publisher allows it, I could distribute PDFs to my students, or have the university bookstore print out copies and sell them at cost.  Another approach I've heard of is to compute how much I earn in royalties on each copy, and refund that amount from my pocket to each student who buys a copy.  Or, use my royalty earnings to buy pizza for the class.  Certainly these are nice gestures, but I would like opinions on whether they are ethically required.

Edit: To address some questions that have arisen in the comments:

This question is hypothetical.  I haven't published any textbooks myself and have no immediate plans to do so.  In any case, my personal preference would be to make the book available to students for free, if at all possible.  So I've phrased this question in the first person for rhetorical convenience only.
I had intended the question to be only about the potential financial conflict of interest that could arise if I make money by assigning my own book.  Some of the answers feel that it is improper for me to assign my own textbook at all, whether I make money or not, but I don't think this point of view is prevalent within the academic community.  If it happens that my book (as a pithy but now-deleted comment put it) "blows", I think most would agree that my decision to assign it is pedagogically unfortunate, but not unethical.
I don't literally mean that students would be required to buy the book, only that they'd be expected to have it.  I might assign readings or homework problems from the book, so that the student needs access to the book in order to do them, but they could certainly achieve this by getting a used copy or borrowing from a friend.  But probably most students would buy new copies anyway, since that is the most convenient way.

This comes down to potentially conflicting principles.  Academic freedom requires that professors should be able to choose the most appropriate references for their courses, and of course the professor's own book will often be a perfect fit for the course that inspired it.  On the other hand, it's important to avoid even the appearance of assigning one's own book in order to make a profit: that would be offensive at any university, and often illegal at public universities (violating conflict of interest laws for government employees).  The American Association of University Professors statement on this subject elaborates on both of these issues, but doesn't find a good way of resolving the tension.

University policies are often more specific.  In many cases assigning one's own book either requires administrative permission or giving any royalties earned to the university.  See, for example, this report for a survey of the policies at eighteen public universities in the U.S.  My impression is that private universities are more likely to be flexible about this issue, but that's not based on a lot of data.

In practice, I doubt anyone cares very much unless the textbook is particularly expensive or the class is large, but in those cases I would strongly recommend donating the royalties to the department even if it is not required.  After all, you're then no worse off than you would have been if you had assigned someone else's book.  If you're not willing to do this, then it suggests that the royalties are attractive after all and may have played some role in the choice of text.

One special case is when you have self-published the book (or own the publishing company).  That looks terrible, because there you have full control over pricing and may be earning far more than typical royalties.  This is one of the few cases where I believe a strict rule is appropriate: if you are legally authorized to offer free or at-cost copies of your book to your students, then you should do so.  Anything less is clearly taking advantage of your students.

Yes,

It is not only completely ethical but should be mandatory. Your ultimate goal is to pass on your knowledge to your students, and what better way to do that than by using the textbook you wrote just for that specific purpose.

There must have been a reason why you wrote it in the first place - something was missing, or was glossed over, or poorly explained so you decided that you can contribute something to create a better product for students to use.

The student benefits twice as much since if there are questions or something isn't clear, bamm, here is the author in front of them to clarify some point. You also get valuable feedback so that your next edition will be of even greater use to the student.

Clearup:

It would only be unethical if the professor asks the students to buy directly from them , or force the student to purchase from a specific website using an affiliate code. As long as the student is given freedom of choice as to where the textbook is purchased new or used, it would be ethical to force students to buy a textbook written by the professor teaching the class.

It would only be unethical for a professor who strongly believes in some derivative of the teachings of Socialism. If the walls in the professor's office are adored with autographed photos of every former member of the politburo or they spend half the class defending the economic theories of Karl Marx (even though the subject they teach is Chemistry), then it would be unethical for them to charge their students for a textbook while preaching the spirit of camaraderie and international brotherhood of the proletariat.

Otherwise its perfectly ethical for a professor to profit from a textbook they created for the benefit of both the professor and the student.


should I include offer letter from a different institution in my application for a faculty position I have a offer letter from a very well-known group in my field for a postdoc position. The proposed starting date would be early next year.
However, I am currently also applying for a faculty (assistant professor) position at a different institution.

Should I mention this offer in my application for the faculty position (on cv or cover letter) and/or include the official offer letter?

update:

there is another sublety for one application. One faculty position I consider requires experience abroad (i.e. not in the same country) of at least 1 year. I only have 6 months but the postdoc offer would be abroad giving me the 1 year total if I take it before starting the faculty position. Should I then mention the offer?

my field is health and medical sciences

I think that it would be unwise to include a copy of an offer in another application.

But whether you inform them of the existence of an offer is a bit more subtle. I doubt that anyone will rush to hire you just because you have another offer. They will evaluate you on other things as usual. So, at best, mentioning the offer initially gets you nothing.

However, later in the process if you need a decision and they are delaying making it, you can let them know that you have a deadline. Whether that helps or hurts is also subtle. Whether it is wise, or not depends on the nature of any relationship you have been able to build with them. In the absence of any relationship, it might hurt more than help. It is easy to just cross you off the list unless they are very interested and have few other interesting applicants.

You do not show a letter addressed to you personally to other people without the sender`s (explicit or implicit) consent.
Never, if you have any doubt, unless you get a formal court order to do so.


Do you have to cite your own pre-print? I am writing a paper that is based on previous work I have done that I have published as a pre-print. I am submitting it to a conference. However it is significantly improved and different. The submission process is double-blind do I have to cite the pre-print? The idea and contribution is mostly the same.
I am in Machine Learning / Deep Learning field of research.

Across most of the social sciences, the answer would be: No, the published manuscript should not cite its own pre-print.
The pre-print is rather considered a draft version that happens to have circulated prior to its acceptance at a journal, where it transforms into its final version.
This seems to be grounded in the paradox of the published preprint being regarded as a preliminary, non-refereed and thus fictitiously unpublished paper (e.g., a Google search for "preprints are unpublished" yields enough pages with confusing semantics of that kind).

Yes. Otherwise, you could keep writing the same paper over and over again.


Why do strict designs of theses exist? Why do many universities require strict format on theses, when the most important thing in them is the content? A beautiful design will make a good thesis better, and a bad one worse. The work can be creative and practical at the same time, and as long as the latter is guaranteed, why restrict the former? If academia is a place for creativity and logicality, then where are the creativity and logicality in strict designs?

Note, it is practical to have a nice design.

Related: Is beautifying a dissertation looked upon unfavourably by the examiners?

Why do many universities require strict format on theses,

Actually, sometimes the requirement is not as strict as you would think, and they do accept some variety. Also, if they provide a template for you to use, that's not the same as not accepting anything that diverges from it.

  when the most important thing in them is the content?

That's the most important thing to you, or to academics interested in the content. It's not the most important thing for, say, the librarians, or the secretaries who have to process the theses.

  A beautiful design will make a good thesis better, and a bad one worse. As long as the content is guaranteed by the writer, why restrict their desire to make their work, at the very least, clearer?

Your question comes off as being rather self-centered. The university is (or may be) trying to make a collection of theses beautiful, not a single one. Don't publishers have series of books or journals with uniform design? Don't streets have rows of buildings with uniform or uniformly-changing design? ... and those streets in which every person built their own house, according to their own means, with different architects who have no sense of context and are wrapped up in their own ego (or with no architect and just some construction company just putting up whatever is currently cheap and fashionable) - are these the beautiful streets? Rarely.

  If academia is a place for creativity and logicality

Logicality? Ok, my friend, you are clearly not ready to graduate if that's your view of academia. You need to "bake" in there for a while longer and lose some of this naivete of yours...

  where are the creativity and logicality in strict designs?

I think I've suggested a reasonable argument as to why a university might want a uniform design. Well, it's either that or some administrator deciding on that arbitrarily, the same way the government has a bunch of standard forms. Which is it? Who knows.

We didn't have strict format requirements at my university... in fact, we didn't have any format requirements, so I ended up downloading a LaTeX template I personally liked from some famous place (Harvard/Stanford/Princeton/Something like that).

And then every f-k on the pre-screening committee  suddenly had their very important opinion on some font sizing or line spacing.

And then some bureaucrats at the office started requiring this and that all of a sudden (yes, only then, even though I had tried getting the formatting requirements out of them before, to no avail). Change the first page according to this... completely replace the second page according to that... the table of content should be like whatever... etc. etc. "Why didn't you tell me there are such requirements if there are such requirements?? - Well, they are not requirements, just common sense and logic, of course you have to do this and that!"

Some changes (like font changes) were trivial to make, others not so much - in any case, had to abandon whatever I was doing and spend time hacking at the LaTeX template. Occasionally after the changes were made I had to print out several copies of that 100+ pages monstrosity of mine and distribute among the committee (yes, again, yes, for the n-th time, yes, for stylistic reasons only).

Does the above really look more appealing than having strict requirements in advance?


Increasing the chance of being accepted by keeping a Ph.D. Co-Author As a final year student (B.Sc.) I wrote a paper, but didn't keep my supervisor as co-author since he hadn't contributed at all (in research and paper-writing). I am about to submit my paper to a journal(single-blind peer review).

Does the chance of being accepted a paper to a journal increase if one of the Co-Author is Ph.D./Professor ?

Should one keep his thesis supervisor as co-author for above?

I mean, is there a chance that the reviewer will consider my paper a bit differently/lightly/neglectfully ?

Does the chance of being accepted a paper to a journal increase if one of the Co-Author is Ph.D./Professor ?

No, not under normal circumstances. Some reviewers may like a paper just because one of the authors is a great guy, or the paper is coming from a great institute - and a reviewer might suggest to accept a paper even if he doesn't understand it - but this should not be the rule.

  Should one keep his thesis supervisor as co-author for above?

No, one should only keep authors that deserve authorship. There are likely reasons why you should have your supervisor as co-author on the paper. He might have helped you in other ways, and this way, made a significant contribution to your work (discussions for example). However, you should not add someone as author to please them, to make a better impression, or anything else.

  I mean, is there a chance that the reviewer will consider my paper a bit differently/lightly/neglectfully ?

No (except in cases described under the first question). However, it is not unlikely that you - as bachelor student - don't have the experience and overview of the field, the methods, and the art of paper-writing, to create a publishable paper on your own. If you do - congrats.

I would suggest you

think carefully about if your supervisor didn't contribute after all, and
discuss the matter with your supervisor.

He might not even want to be on your paper (because he didn't contribute, or because he thinks it's not good enough). If he does want to be on your paper, but you don't agree with his arguments, you might want to come back here and check other, related questions, for example this one: Should you include your main supervisor as a co-author?

I don't know the policy of your University. But I know mostly in universities, a PhD student can not conduct any independent work beyond his thesis. So if the work is under your PhD thesis, then you must have to keep your supervisor as a co-author. Not only that, but you must need to discuss with your supervisor before writing the paper. So please be confirm your university policies before submitting this as a single author.

If your university allows to do such kind of independent research during work time or after office hours or weekends, then you can submit it as a single author. Keeping your supervisor as a co-author will definitely increase the chance of acceptance if he is a well known person to your research community. Moreover, he may change the structure and write ups in your manuscript because he is experienced, so definitely it will increase the acceptance. On the other hand, if you thing neither he is well known nor he will improve the structure of the manuscript, then go ahead as a single author. By the way, single author papers have high values than the papers with co-authors.


My professor is rigging data and plagiarizing. What can I do? My department head is manipulating data in his research papers and skillfully alters plagiarized text to avoid detection. I found this out while working with him on a journal article. I politely confronted him but he did not concede and I backed off from that paper. Later other professors confirmed that most of his papers are bogus and results are fabricated.

He mentioned once that the reason for choosing nanotechnology (which he is not familiar with) is that there is very little literature available and few experts to review the paper. He gets through the review process by using a plethora of statistical analysis results (with fabricated data) to support his claim and gets through (some) editors by using fancy terms like neural network and fuzzy logic. The irony is that he does not even know the underlying theory of whatever analysis he is doing. How do I know this? I uttered a few doubts and the responses were extremely poor. He uses Minitab and Matlab tools to get things done. He once jokingly told me that he gets a paper ready overnight. Maybe it was not a joke after all.

Reporting to the management is useless as they won’t listen to me. I cannot challenge his paper, because I barely know anything in nanotechnology (neither does he). Editors won’t take me seriously since he has considerable reputation due to articles in high impact journals. So what should I do? I could not tolerate his insanity and literature pollution.

[Edit 1] More info: I am about to graduate and leave the department for good. The paper in which I was involved was shelved because sometime later I pointed out to him that the hypothesis is fundamentally wrong. I still have the original manuscript he mailed to me from his unofficial mail id. Institutional routes are closed, I tried complaining about his poor lecture quality once (anonymously) and it backfired for the entire class. He has 15 years of experience, 20+ journal article and numerous conference papers. I don't stand a chance against him.

Update I will try to report this issue to retraction watch or through any other means possible. Still it is not possible to disprove his claims without repeating the experiment. Will update here, if there is any progress on this issue.

Your backing off reaction is the appropriate one: cease any form of association with him right away.

The description of your first-hand witnessing of him fabricating data is more than enough to ascertain his academic dishonesty. You don't need to know about nanotechnology to know that manually modifying data to make it pass a statistical test is idiotic and fraudulent. Also, experts in that field will assume the data are real when conducting peer review, so it's not something they can easily detect without repeating the (alleged) experiments.

His 'results' are unwanted. By publishing bogus science he makes people lose time and money, he's robbing legitimate researchers of their funding, he is adding noise that masks the signal. If you can afford to report his behavior please, do it. Depending on where this story takes place, you might lose a variable number of feathers in his striking back, but at the end of the day he is the one who is wrong.

Taking direct action to publicly expose his fraudulent behavior is risky for you, especially since he is your hierarchical superior. But, when he will get caught (because he will), if it is apparent that you were aware of his wrongdoings and still accepted co-authorship or credit for his publications, his bad reputation is going to stain your career. If you fail to prove your claim, it's your career that will be at risk. So, proceed with caution. Note that it is ethically perfectly fine to report scientific wrongdoings anonymously.

Make sure that all institutional reporting routes are inefficient before bringing the issue to another level. It is not clear in your post if you actually tried or if you just assume 'they won't listen to you'.
Since you provided the content of at least one paper, and know about its fake nature, if he submits the paper despite your protests, notifying the editor is a thing you could do. Editors will take you very seriously in reputable journals.
You can also take part (anonymously if relevant) in a post-publication comment on his papers, on websites like pubpeer.com or retractionwatch.com.

Publish an attempted replication of his work that demonstrates that his analyses and data are not reliable.

If you can show definitively that the work is bogus by providing reproducible analyses and release your data publicly for others to verify, your work will trump his, and you can launch a career off of this.


What to do when a thesis adviser refuses to recommend me? After I completed my PhD program, during which I published one refereed paper, I applied for several academic positions.
For a while, my two main thesis advisers agreed to write letters of recommendation, but after a few couple of years, one of them told me he would no longer recommend me because I had not published enough. He even admitted that it was not his job to judge my publication record -- potential employers could do that -- but until I published again, he wouldn't recommend me.

I do admit that I should have published more during my PhD program, but I was always under the impression that my publishing would begin after I had got a relevant job. During the period between graduation and being refused a recommendation, I'd been a consultant, a college teacher and unemployed. I could have published on my own but, after the delay, I felt hindered by being unemployed and rather "burned out" after the thesis writing process. Catch-22? Even more ironic is the fact that I had asked my thesis advisers if I could submit my thesis in the form of a series of published papers (this was allowed under the rules), instead of as an unpublished monograph, and both said no!

Don't thesis advisers have a duty to both encourage candidates to publish and to recommend them for academic positions? At the same time, is it right that universities expect job applicants to already have publications before they arrive? What could I have done, other than publish as an independent after the fact? It is hard not to feel very bitter about the whole PhD process.

Addendum
Since it was not yet listed, I add How to handle not having my PhD advisor as a reference? is a related question.

This is a tricky situation, and it's hard to interpret it without more information.  Thesis advisors certainly have an obligation to help their former students within reason and to recommend them for appropriate positions.  An advisor who gives up too quickly on a student is an unsupportive jerk at best (and it's easy to think of much worse descriptions).  On the other hand, nobody has an obligation to recommend a candidate they cannot honestly support.  Telling someone that is really awkward, especially when it's their own student, but the alternatives are writing a dishonest letter or writing a letter that undermines the candidate's chances, neither of which is any better.

Based on what you've written, there's no way of telling whether your advisor is a jerk or the two of you are just caught in an awkward situation.  I'd recommend asking your advisor some key questions:

Are there other positions you could apply for that might be a better fit for your background and accomplishments so far?
Based on your unpublished work, how could you prepare a good paper as quickly and efficiently as possible?

Hopefully you'll get encouraging and useful answers.  If you and your advisor can work out a plan that satisfies both of you, then that's great.  If not, you may have to give up on your advisor and apply with letters from other people.  That's far from ideal (the first thing everyone will ask is why your advisor didn't write a letter), but it can work if you get strong enough letters.

Of course publishing would help with getting strong letters.  Ultimately, I'd bet that publishing another paper or two is in your best interests, regardless of the situation with your advisor.  I can understand that it's upsetting to feel forced into publishing on your own, with no job in your field and no guarantee of getting one in the future.  However, it's probably a worthwhile investment of your time, and it's a valuable contribution to the academic community in any case (so regardless of what happens, it's something you can be proud of).

That a thesis advisor refuses to recommend a former student exposes the underlying tensions inherent during the supervisory process, or differences in what constitutes the core research question. The tensions are not exposed until after the student graduates. In my case, my supervisor used me as an "unpaid research assistant for three years" and sent my twenty texts to translate from a Southeast Asian language to English without even acknowledging my contribution to the research. He even stymied my PhD thesis submission by saying that my progress was marginal, even though I had finished 84% of the thesis six months before submission. I later realised that my supervisor was stymying my attempts to establish my credentials as a TA, soon after I would submit my thesis. He kept egging me to go back to India (he is incidentally Australian) and my thesis was undertaken in Australia.

Three weeks before I graduated my supervisor told me not to keep my hopes too high in the job market. I smelt that something was fishy and requested him to write a general letter of recommendation. My hair stood still on both ends when he commented adversely ion my social skills. I then decided not to solicit letters of recommendation from my primary supervisor. I instead, request letters from academics who are well-disposed to me. Of course, my supervisor's adversarial stance has affected my fortunes so far but I will never give up.


Do I have to tip the bartenders and hotel staff, when a U.S. University hosts an event for researchers? Prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, I attended a generously-funded research meeting that included a hotel stay, free dinners and bar drinks.  There was a dedicated bar section just for us.

I always wondered: At these funded events, should I tip the bartenders and hotel staff, or can I assume that the University takes care of not only the bill but also the gratuity that is expected by the service staff?

I landed up tipping on most times, but the few times that I did not, it felt a bit awkward -- walking away with a beer without tipping the bartender seemed rude

It is typical for catering contracts to include some sort of 'service fee' that serves like a 'tip', and you can assume that the staff are paid a better base wage than tip-supported employees typically are. Even regular restaurants often have a non-optional 'tip' added on for larger parties (thresholds vary but "8 or more" seems common).

That said, employees in these businesses are not high-income earners, and probably make less total take-home pay per hour than their tipped equivalents (bartending, especially, can be a relatively lucrative position in the service industry at the right venue).

If you appreciate their service, if they do something above and beyond, if you're in a generous mood, or if the cost makes you feel less awkward, feel free to tip; it won't seem like you are throwing money around or anything negative like that.

If you don't have cash and especially if you aren't asking for anything special, you can have a clean conscience that you haven't committed a faux pas by not tipping in this circumstance.

In the end, you are asking whether you should pay out of your own pocket for work. No. You should not have to pay out of your own pocket anything in order to perform your work duties; and despite what some would say, this kind social events are very much part of work (see elsewhere on this site). Either the organizers should step up, or you should get reimbursed by your employer, like for any travel-related expense.

Now, you might very well be in the situation where the organizers and your employer have both failed. You should first realize that this is their failure, not yours. And if you do tip despite all that, you should recognize that you are going above and beyond what is required of you to help other workers (the hotel/bar staff) who are criminally underpaid make it to the end of the month. But this is an act of charity, not something that is expected of you professionally.


Personal web page vs Academia.edu vs ResearchGate I will soon finish my PhD and start searching for a post-doc position and I was wondering which web-based solution is the best suited to present myself and my work (I work in plant biology).

I see two main options: social network type, such as Academia.edu or ResearchGate or a personal page (using  for instance Wordpress).

My concern is that social networking solution does not offer a lot of flexibility (attaching documents, presenting my current research more in depth), but I do not want to seem too pretentious by having my own webpage while I am just a PhD student.

My question is then:

  Isn't it too soon to have a personal web page at this stage of my career (I am still a PhD student) to present my work or is the pre-made solution more adequate?

As soon as you have even a single preprint, people will begin searching online to find out who you are and what else you have done, so you must have a web page.  It doesn't have to be elaborate, and it's enough to start with a few lines of professional contact information and a list of links to papers, but you have to have something.

I think a generic web page looks more professional than one created using a social networking site, but perhaps that's because I'm old.  However, there is one absolutely critical issue: the page must allow visitors to download any content without logging in.  At least one of the social sites lets visitors view papers on the site, but insists that you create an account if you want to download anything.  This is terrible!  In my experience, nobody's going to create an account unless they really, really want that paper, and either way they are going to be unhappy at the imposition.  Offering access to papers and then harassing anyone who tries to download them leaves a very bad impression.

The more platforms you use to present yourself the better. So the right question is not use 1 or 2 or 3 but use 1 and 2 and 3. It depends on a particular discipline but I would suggest to have profiles on the following resources:

Google Scholar: very useful for others to quickly evaluate your imprint (#papers and #citations)
ResearchGate: some sort of social network for researchers; saw lots of activities have been happening there for last year or so
Mendeley: a great organizer of research publications (typically in PDF format); it also positions itself as a social network for researchers; imo, as a research social network and activities on it Mendeley is rather declining
Academia: a competitor to ResearchGate; didn't use it so cannot comment on whether is growing or declining
Linkedin: while it is not focused on researchers, a lot of them are there; your profile there can be really advanced and even serve as a proper CV

Lastly, having a web page(-s) describing yourself and your projects is a must. As a very minimum, it might be just one (simple, non-fancy looking is ok) page with your contact information and links to your profiles on platforms mentioned above. Usually, one's department/organization/lab provides an easy way to create/edit such a page. Besides, it is very easy (with no special technical skills) to create your pages (in form of a blog) on some free blog platform. In fact, I would really advocate that PhD students would be pushed to write a blog post about each published work of theirs where the content/ideas/discussion/etc of a publication is described in nutshell.


Should I tutor a student who I know has cheated on their homework? I am a Ph.D. student and I do private tutoring on the side for extra income. Recently a new student contacted me for help with a class, and I met them for one session, which went well overall. They told me they liked my tutoring and want to meet again. This student admitted that they are behind on the course material and are trying to catch up before the final (which is just about two weeks away). However, I recently realized that this same student is in another class which I am TA'ing, and I was grading the homework today and realized they copied the solutions for the last assignment. I had suspected they may have copied solutions to the previous assignment as well but was unsure. This time the copying is blatant, word for word from the solutions from a past year. At this point I have no choice but to bring this to the course instructor (who is also my advisor), who I know will report this student for plagiarism. My question is, should I still meet this student and tutor them in other classes?

A few thoughts that come to mind:

I now know this student is in the course I am TA'ing. I feel tutoring them for this course would be a conflict of interest, and I would have to clear it with my advisor. Is it also a conflict of interest to tutor them for a different course, knowing I will be grading their exam/homework for this one?
I enjoy tutoring because I enjoy helping students learn, and I do like to help people succeed. In our previous session this student seemed interested in actually learning, but clearly has shown that they are willing to blatantly plagiarise homework solutions. While I do rely on my extra tutoring income, it feels unethical to tutor someone who cheats. At the same time, I would like them to be able to understand what they are doing so they don't feel any need to cheat. But this student also said they have not attended class in recent weeks (for what reason I do not know).
If I meet this student again, I will have to tell them that I have reported them for academic dishonesty. This isn't exactly an issue though, they can decide what they want to do from there.

Whether their cheating should impact your role as a tutor is not the primary issue here, so I'll set it aside.

You should not be tutoring a student for additional money when you are also grading that student as a TA, even if the grading and tutoring are for separate courses. That sets up a financial relationship between a grader and a student. That's a big problem.

I certainly don't believe you've done anything unethical here, but you should most likely report the inadvertent conflict and stop tutoring this student immediately (I'd also offer to your superiors that you return any payment for the one session, or just do it yourself anyways). It's not a big deal that you did this accidentally not realizing the connection. It could be a problem if you continued with it now that you know.

I don't believe you have an ethical issue in tutoring them. In fact, there may be issues if you don't (because you may need to accuse them to justify it). But otherwise, you seem to be doing the correct thing in communicating with the professor and telling the student about what you have done. It won't make you popular, of course since no one likes being "ratted out".

But, if you can help them learn and, more important, learn how to learn, maybe they won't be as inclined to cut corners.

I also doubt that tutoring them in one course is in conflict with TA-ing them in another. Your professor, again, might have a different opinion, so you should ask. I don't think it is an especially difficult matter to keep the two relationships separate in a case like this.

In fact, while some commenters to this answer seem to think that accepting money to teach someone while also evaluating/grading them is a "clear conflict of interest" it is exactly what every professor does every day. If you can't handle that you are in the wrong profession.

Note that you haven't given the evidence that they copied in the other course. I hope you have considered other explanations as well. Two identical papers is cause for an investigation, but not necessarily charges. Publishing answers to questions and later claiming that "using the published answer, when the question is given again, is dishonesty" is malfeasance.


How should I interpret "English is poor" review when I used a language check service before submission? Recently I submitted a manuscript to an international journal. It was accepted with a minor revision, but I am worried about the reviewers’ comments. The first reviewer commented that the paper is well written but it still needs some English improvements. The second reviewer also commented that English improvements are required.

I have gotten similar comments regarding English in my earlier publications, but in those times I used to submit manuscripts without making an English native check. (However, I always do an English native check after getting comments about English.)

This time, I submitted my manuscript after making an English native check by a reputed company (who had worked for my earlier publications). The only modifications I made after this check were those suggested by the language check service: for example, where they said to add a "the" in a sentence. I added a "the". I didn't make any modifications other than those I was directed to make by the language check service.

Still, I got a similar suggestion to improve the English.

So what should I think about the reviews? Is it a frequent feedback that all reviewers give?

There are several possibilities here, although generally they all have the same solution.

The English is poor or incorrect and the company did not check it well

It is possible that the company that checked your article did a bad job. This happens. Maybe the service did not have a native English speaker check your article. Maybe they had a bad day. Maybe they don't provide good service, and you just got lucky on previous times. It's hard to say.

The English is grammatical, but not idiomatic

It is possible that the company that checked your article fixed all the grammatical mistakes, but that there are still some phrasings which are not idiomatic or particularly natural. This is essentially a function of how detailed the corrections were. For example, here is the first paragraph of your post:

  Recently I had submitted a Manuscript to an International Journal. Though it is accepted as a Minor revision, but I am worried about the reviewer's comment. First reviewer has commented that the Paper is well written, still needs some English improvements. Second reviewer has also commented that English improvements is required.

There are some small grammatical errors, and I can correct them as follows (in bold):

  Recently I had submitted a manuscript to an international journal. Though it is was accepted as a minor revision, but I am worried about the reviewer's comment. The first reviewer has commented that the paper is well written, but still needs some English improvements. The second reviewer has also commented that English improvements is are required.

While this paragraph is now grammatically correct, it still does not feel like it was written by a native speaker, and the way some words are used is a little odd. (E.g. using though and but in the second sentence; you really only need one of them.) So, a more thorough checking would suggest edits like the following:

  Recently I had submitted a manuscript to an international journal. Though it is was accepted as a Minor revision pending minor revisions, but I am worried about the reviewers's comments. The first reviewer has commented that the paper is well written, but still needs some English improvements. The second reviewer has also commented that English improvements is are required.

The checking service could have done the first step (making it grammatically correct) without following through on the second step (making it idiomatic). The second step is much harder, of course, as it requires knowledge of what style is appropriate for your field (and for the journal you are writing for), and, to some extent, it requires technical knowledge of whatever you're writing about.

The English is fine, the reviewer is just being picky

Academic articles are complex and often involve detailed theoretical or technical discussion. At times, they can be hard to follow. Sometimes this complexity is interpreted as poor language skills, and reviewers complain. I know more than one native English speaker who has received reviews asking them to check their article with a native speaker. In essence, this criticism relates to how the content is presented rather than linguistic concerns like grammaticality or phrasing.

The solution

It is not easily possible for you to determine right now which of the above scenarios has happened. However, a big help would be for you to show the manuscript to a trusted colleague who is a native speaker of English, and ask them how it reads. If the English is really atrocious, then you know you have a problem with the checking service; if there are some unusual phrases but it's otherwise fine, then you know the problem is that it's occasionally un-idiomatic; and if there are no obvious problems, then it's probably just an issue of reviewer interpretation.

The other step you should take is to re-read your manuscript and attempt to make complex exposition more clear. (This is a step I advise everyone to do at basically every stage of the writing process...) This will help your article in the case that the English was fine but the reviewer was just confused.

Finally, breathe and relax. Your article was accepted, congratulations! Clearly the reviewers and the editor thought that the scientific content was sufficient to merit publication.

You shouldn't take it so hard. You are probably a great scientist.
Anyway, it matters that your paper follows a logical progression of words to the main observations and conclusions. That comes with experience. However, the English language does not make a lot of sense. For example, a pineapple isn't any kind of apple. Similarly, "heads up" does not mean to lift your head up. It means to get down on the ground to dodge something. Of course, this isn't scientific lingo.

What I suggest that you do is that you ask one of your department colleagues, who has a general understanding of the subject matter, such as bioinformatics, to review your paper in a personal matter sharing some coffee. I'm sure a fellow researcher would be glad to help you because if your research publication gets high marks, then the institution gets higher marks.


How do I email my professor about assigning me to a group? I have a class project coming up, the professor asked us to form groups of 6. Everyone in class seems to know each other and have already started forming groups. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone in that class. I would like to know how can I email my professor about assigning me to a group? I am an international student so I am not really sure how to address this.

Keep it simple:

  Dear Prof. X,

  I'm Hannah Y (ID n. 12345), an international student in your class
  XYZ. Since I don't know anyone in the class, could you please assign
  me to one of the project groups?

  Thank you,

  Hannah

I have international students in my classes and such emails are not uncommon. The important thing is to provide all the pieces of information needed to identify you and the course (professors usually have several).

how can I email my professor about assigning me to a group?

Don't seek complicated solutions for a simple problem.

Find the professor's e-mail address online.
Open your e-mail client and write the letter to him/her along the following lines: "Dear Prof. XXX,  I could not get into a group myself; please assign me to a group. Sincerely yours, Hannah ____"
Press the "send" button.


When do I use a footnote in a thesis and when do I use parenthesis for extra information? I have one question for my masters thesis. If I have A, which is also known as B or C, can I write:

  A (also known as B or C)

(or similar) or can I use a foonote like this:

  A¹

  ¹ Also known as B or C

Or more in general: When do I add extra information (like synonyms) between parenthesis, and when do I add them as footnote?

This is mostly about the reader's flow. Something that is parenthesized is something you expect the reader to actively read, but you're signalling that it's secondary information. The main drawback to parentheses is that if the text in them becomes too long, the reader has to work very hard to remember the main point you're making. You're essentially talking about a lot of unimportant stuff while you have an unfinished, important sentence going. So make sure you put only short, simple things in parentheses.

If you put something in a footnote, you're signalling that the reader should skip it on first reading and they should only investigate if something is unclear, or if it's a second reading and they need all the details. The drawback to footnotes is that they are often more tantalising than they should be. While the reader should ignore them, they are too curious, and break their concentration to look up the footnote. This pulls them out of the text for something they were supposed to ignore.

On the whole, try to avoid both as much as you can. In your example, ie. this method is also known as X, parentheses should be fine and a footnote is probably overkill. However, you could also consider finishing your main point first, and moving the parenthesized statement to the end of the paragraph as a full sentence. That way the reader can finish absorbing the primary information unencumbered by details, and gloss over the aka's once the hard work is finished.

That depends mainly on the citation style required by your publisher, or requested by your supervisor. Some of them are parenthetic (Smith, 2015) some are footnotes (1: Smith, 2015)

On a more particular note, generally Citations refer to the source from which you take your assertion [i.e.: "This is cool" (Smith, 2015)] whereas footnotes just expand a concept without referring to a source [i.e.: "This is cool"1 1: "The term cool varies, but we use it here in its more common meaning"]

Your example is quite vague though, so my answer aims to be general but might not fit to your case.


Should I list on my CV research assistantship positions under grants&awards? Background of person is: first year Phd student, no publications, no research grants, but I have received a fellowship for my first semester that paid my stipend and tuition, so should I list the total amount with stipend and tuition?

Also during my MS I was hired as an RA and received stipend+tuition? Can I list that as a total amount per year, or total amount for the two years, or should I separate the different amounts (tuition/stipend). Isn't this a fellowship/scholarship/grant of some sort since rarely do master students get this kind of RAship?

edit: while RA's are common in the US and the fact that they pay stipend/tuition is well known, in other countries people might think that if I list it only as a job they might not realize it also paid my tuition, which for foreign students in the US can be quite high. I want to convey the importance of this achievement and monetary importance to a crowd outside the USA.

Although merit is certainly a factor in the hiring of research assistants,   most people don't consider assistantships as "grants or awards". They are jobs. List them under "Positions Held" or "Academic Appointments" or the equivalent heading on your CV. Do not list your salary or the amount of your stipend - that's not anybody's business except you and your department.

Some fellowships might be considered awards. They would usually be explicitly competitive in nature, and given by outside agencies. "Named" fellowships from endowed funds might also count, even if awarded by your department. But a research assistantship is not a fellowship.

I disagree with the other answers. At least in fields where a substantial number of students self fund their PhD, having any funding is a big deal. I think you should put the fellowships and their amounts, under "grants and awards", although it might be reasonable to change the title to something like "funding" or "fellowships, grants, and awards".

While a departmental fellowship (or funding from someone else's grant) is not particularly prestigious, it is important. For example, a student with guaranteed money from his/her department or advisor has little incentive to apply for external money (and in many cases might even be ineligible). In evaluating students as potential post docs, I look at students who have had to self fund their studies very differently from those who have had funding. That said, it is important that you do not make too much of a departmental fellowship as it is generally the least prestigious type of funding you can get.


Talking to supervisor about PhD projects I am an international PhD student, in the last lap of my PhD, and have a little more than a year to defend my thesis. My work is in theory, and our simulations take a lot of computing time. As we are working on wrapping up my first paper now, I want to only focus on projects which will lead to publications since our Faculty requires 4 papers(published and/or submitted to journals) to be able to defend one's thesis. I have tried to talk to my supervisor about this, but he only spared 13 minutes listening to the project ideas I have had and did not get involved with ideas or give any input.
I am guessing there is a bias how he handles my involvement in his projects since a relatively new PhD student(who is a local and have been in the department since his Bachelor's) receive a lot of his attention. It is not about that my supervisor should be more involved in my prospects, but at least he should give it as much attention as any other. He also holds many other positions, one of them being department head and trying to solve a serious work-environment issue in the department in a different group. So he remains quite busy in meetings since the last few months.
So, what should be my way of communicating my career prospects in the year to come with him and my team so that we can work towards achieving them in a specific time frame? I do lack the field-insights which my team has and in that respect, they can help me a lot to plan efficiently.

These 13 minutes of which you speak, was that a meeting that you planned in advance? Or did you happen to meet him at a random moment? If it was a planned meeting, you should insist on another planned meeting of at least an hour to discuss this point and only this point. If it was a random moment, your supervisor might already be late for another urgent appointment.

You have less than a year to defend your thesis. You haven't published anything and need four publications before you can defend. Publishing four papers in a year is problematic: You have to write the papers, submit them, and wait for reviews. Can you manage that four times in the time you have? If so, great, go do it. Otherwise, speak to your supervisor about an extension.
Discussing new project ideas with less than a year surely isn't a viable way to finish on time. You need to focus on work that's nearly complete. If you don't have such work, speak to your supervisor about an extension.
I don't agree that your supervisor should give you as much time as other students. All students deserve a certain level of supervision. This level will vary as a student progresses: New students need more attention than older students. A supervisor may go above-and-beyond for some students at their discretion, likely benefiting better students, who significantly further the supervisor's interests.


To stay or leave PhD after having completed 4 years I apologize if this is too long a post, but I could really do with a few
pointers about my current situation.

I am 25 years old and I will complete 4 years of my PhD in a computational applied mathematics  program in the US in August 2013.

My bachelors was in pure mathematics.  I had gotten interested in numerical analysis in that time and so I had applied to my current PhD program. I have been under my adviser for 3 years now (the first year at my university is spent in coursework).  A PhD at my university is usually 5 years long.

Right now, I have almost nothing to report in the way of research, and consequently no publications , no conference submissions. I am getting increasingly nervous and frustrated about whether or not I will make it, even if I give myself an extra year by funding myself.

My adviser has consistently been making me work on uninteresting stuff, where most of the work involved is purely technical like writing brain-dead code, with almost zero chance for innovation.

BREAKDOWN OF MY PHD

After monkeying around reading research papers, in the first year under my adviser,  he got very confident about getting an industrial project and got me working on that, in anticipation that the contract would go through. At the end of the year we found out that we did not get the project.

In the second year, he said he wanted to get into GPU parallel computing
and to implement a few fluid dynamics algorithms. I slogged over many manuals, spent months and months writing and debugging code, all the time thinking that
this would be used to do some simulations he was interested in and get them published. But at the end of the second year my professor completely lost interest in these numerical techniques he was making my implement.

Seeing his capricious attitude, I almost wanted to quit then and there itself. But I decided to just stick it out, thinking it might be 'just a phase'.  Due to funding issues, he once more got me working in the third year on another project which essentially involved writing a lot of stupid code, and running endless benchmark tests.

I have basically ended up trying to do a PhD in mathematics without any mathematics in this PhD.

Finally, a couple of weeks back, I told him that I had had enough, and to give me some actual
problems/material to work with. After about an hour of discussion, and informing him that I was ready to fund my self if required, he finally gave me a couple of possible starting points for what I hope would actually turn out to be worthwhile research.

MY QUESTIONS

I do realize it was extremely foolish waiting for so long before putting my foot down, and not having the courage to speak up before. My adviser is well-regarded by colleagues in his field, and maybe I was subconsciously scared of
contradicting his handling of my PhD for pissing him off.

But even though he has now suggested problems which do seem interesting, after having had so many negative experiences  I am very skeptical about the future. How should I proceed, and what are the factors I should consider ?

Frankly, I am feeling very burned out.  In the way of future plans, I have been toying with the idea of dropping out,  getting a break for a few months and then sitting for some entrance exams for a Masters in Economics in some good universities back in my home country. I always found economics very interesting through my undergrad and more so these past few-months while studying it has a hobby.
Continuing would require me to stay on for an extra year till August 2015,
which leaves me about 17 months tops from now, before I start hunting in academic job market. This includes about 2-3 months I will have to spend doing literature review on the proposed topics and learning the requisite mathematical tools.

So if I decide to stay on, how should I re-structure my study/research time and the relationship with my adviser in these 17 months so that I can make some head-way.

Maybe 17 months is too short a time? Any suggestions would be really helpful !!

Firstly, no apology needed, your question is thorough and easy to read and understand.  It sounds like you are in quite an unpleasant situation.

Don't take any advice I may give as gospel, but in answer to your questions:

You are most certainly not foolish to wait until now to stand up to your advisor, you have had several leads and have given many chances for the project to kick into gear. You have every right and reason to feel skeptical about the current promises and project direction.

Ultimately, how you proceed is up to you (you're probably understandably sick of hearing that), but look at the following considerations (no doubt many other members will add to this):

The new direction could well be a winner, leading to papers, conferences and most of all, fulfillment.  It could also be a good one as now, you have made your feelings clear to your supervisor.
Could this be just another academic 'false positive'?

Perhaps outline a couple of potential papers and present them to your advisor (this is something I do).  This could be an ongoing thing, alongside your research - outline potential papers.

As for the timeframe, 17 months - I would not be too worried about that - I have been able to get three papers published in less than ten months, with a 4th on the way and the 5th planned (I finish my Ph.D. at the end of the year).

I hope this helps, and I hope it all gets sorted out for you.

I had far more worse situations in my life than leaving a Ph.D, all were hard decisions. When something does not work, it is like trying to support a building severely hit by earthquake using temporary solutions. The problem is that you can never build a skyscraper and will always got stuck with a few floor tall building all over your life.

If you demolish your useless building, in the future you can build a strong skyscraper. Off course you will be homeless for some time, but you are still very young with many options. So if you can get a Master's degree instead of Ph.D definitely leave it. I think your advisor will also look this favoroubly. Even he can write good recommendation letters for you.


Reviewers had questions about why my supervisor wasn't on manuscript I completed my MS by research under a supervisor. There was considerable delay in completing because my supervisor suddenly lost interest in research midway through my program. I had sent him a research paper for his comments but even after several reminders, he did not show interest in looking at the paper. After graduating from the program, I decided to send it to a journal myself. I sought permission from my supervisor and he was ok with it. Since he had not reviewed it, he said he could send it without including his name as one of the authors. So, I had acknowledged his guidance in the paper in the acknowledgement section. I had sent the paper and now, in the reviewer comments, one of the reviewers has asked about not adding the supervisor's name in the author list (it was listed under minor comments). I'm not sure how to respond to this question. Right now, I'm not exactly on speaking terms with my supervisor. Can anyone please help me?

Just reply with the facts: Explain that your supervisor was offered coauthorship, but has chosen not to be a coauthor of the paper.  (If you feel you want to elabore why - e.g. since he felt he did not contribute sufficiently to the paper, or the like - feel free to do so.)
Especially if this is listed under minor comments, take it as such.
In any case, it is generally not up to the referee to judge who should be a coauthor of a paper. What can be demanded is that you offer coauthorships to anyone who made a significant enough contribution to the paper. As long as you did that, you are fine.

Could the wording of your 'acknowledgement' be misunderstood as implying your supervisor's contribution to be commensurate with that of a co-author?
You should take a 2nd look at your acknowledgements section, where you have "acknowledged his guidance". It is possible that the reviewer got the impression, from reading this 'acknowledgement', that your supervisor may have made an author-level contribution.
Without seeing the actual text of your 'acknowledgement', I cannot comment on whether it is clear enough. However, if you have not already done so, you may wish to clarify the 'acknowledgement', for example by saying something like:

"Although Prof. X was not involved in writing this paper, his/her general guidance helped inspire my research into ..."
"Whilst Prof. X was not involved directly in the research presented in this paper, he/she played an important role in my development as a researcher in this field."
"Unfortunately, we could not find the time to collaborate on this research, but I am very grateful to Prof. X for his/her guidance during my Master's studies, which enabled me to pursue this research independently."
"This paper is inspired by, but separate from, research I had conducted under Prof. X, whose guidance at that time gave great impetus to my development as a researcher. Regrettably, Prof. X was unavailable to collaborate on the research presented in this paper."

[sections in bold denote the sections that clarify Prof. X is not an author; these are illustrative examples, designed to demonstrate that Prof. X's involvement was limited, but presenting his/her guidance in a positive light; before using/adapting any of these examples, please consider carefully whether they describe your situation accurately]