Is an automatic copyright transfer clause in publisher's instructions to authors typically enforced/enforceable? Some publishers have a clause like the following in their author instructions:

  Submission of a manuscript implies... that if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors agree to automatic transfer of the copyright to the publisher.

I found many instances of this among disreputable publishers. But I was surprised to also see this policy at more than one Springer journal and a handful of other, reasonably reputable, venues.

I was also surprised, because we occasionally get questions here about withdrawing a paper after acceptance. The first thing we ask them is generally, "Have you signed a copyright transfer yet?" with the implication that before signing anything, you still hold the copyright to the submitted work.

So, what exactly is the automatic transfer of copyright referred to above?

Has this been enforced, traditionally? Is it even enforceable, generally speaking?

Or is it just a clause that some sketchy publishers put in there to deceive authors into believing that they don't have the right to withdraw their paper from the journal after acceptance?

A lawyer would be best suited to answer this, but as I have had several business law classes as part of my business education, I'll hold forth based on my understanding of intellectual property and contract law in an educational context.

The answer would be yes, that it should be generally enforceable.

Laws vary by state even in the United States, but in general, qualities that can make a contract unenforceable are:

Lack of capacity of the parties (legal age, sound minds, etc.)
Fraud or misrepresentation
Violation of public policy

None of the above apply to our situation (unless, for example, we have a precocious or senile scholar).

Enforceable contracts also require:

Consideration (exchange of something of value)
Meeting of the Minds (mutual agreement of terms)
Offer and Acceptance

Now let's analyze these requirements. Is there mutual exchange of value? The journal appears to offer that in exchange for copyright, the author gets to be published in a prestigious journal. Does the author agree at the time of offer and acceptance? Then we have an enforceable contract.

So this brings to light a strategy for attempting to retain copyrights of your work. Insist by striking through such language in a contract and make a statement that you, the author, retain copyright, and put your initials by the alteration. If the contract is in electronic form, communicate this through email just prior to and just after submitting your request electronically.

If they do not object, and rather, accept your submission, I would assert that you have established that any possible claim by them to your work is either completely unenforceable (certainly, in the case of a written contract) or (in either case) liable to cost them a great deal in legal fees to pursue.

My personal opinion only here.  It is a problem that has arisen in the last few years as publishers have started to realize that nobody reads printed journals.  They want to be able to charge for access to the online versions, and seem to think the only way to do this is by taking copyright from the authors. This is an issue at, e.g., US National Labs, where the US government owns the copyright and has no intention of signing it over to a publisher (US or not).

I view it as a particularly irritating, but ultimately temporary, problem.  The moment any publisher goes after an author for hosting a copy of their own publication it will be widely known and the publisher will suffer.  But until the lawyers figure it all out we will have to fight back.


“Percent” in chart title and on axis – redundant? Consider the chart below:

When writing percent in the title, and % on the axis marks, is this redundant? Is the word amount preferable?

I haven’t seen this addressed in any style guides such as the APA guidelines.

Percentage (parts per hundred) and, more broadly, abbreviations like ppm (parts per million) or ppb (parts per billion) do not describe any quantity, they are just multipliers for dimensionless quantities.

In a graph, instead, you should accurately describe the quantity being represented. In the example given in your question, a more appropriate title would probably be: "Fraction of the widgets that are blue".

In the SI brochure, §5.3.7, the document that defines the International System of Units, it is stated that

  In mathematical expressions, the internationally recognized symbol % (percent) may be used with the SI to represent the number 0.01. Thus, it can be used to express the values of dimensionless quantities.

and, furthermore,

  Phrases such as "percentage by mass", "percentage by volume", or "percentage by amount of substance" should not be used; the extra information on the quantity should instead be conveyed in the name and symbol for the quantity.

The percent symbol can, instead, appear in the tick labels.

At least in physics, usually graphs do not have a title at all.


My PhD defense is next week and I am having negative thoughts about my work and knowledge. Any advice on how to tackle this? I am presenting my PhD thesis in front of my committee next week and I feel that I have just not done enough. My work is simple and I also feel that I have poor theoretical foundations and am going to be an embarrassment when quizzed by my committee.

I am not feeling confident about presenting my research and I am finding it extremely difficult pushing away negative thoughts like (I feel I have not done enough or I am not theoretically strong enough for doing my PhD on my research field).

I am revising theoretical stuff (related to my thesis work) that I studied in my first year of PhD, but I am not able to push out the feeling of guilt and the impending doom.

Any advice on how to tackle this?

Take a deep breath. You will be OK. You're suffering from impostor syndrome.

PhD defenses are traditional formalities. Your advisor wouldn't let you schedule yours if they didn't think you ready.

The examiners are more likely to want to know what you did than  theory from your first year you have forgotten.

When you pass your defense come back here and tell us about it.

There is so much fake research going on under the guise of PhD. It has become just like any other Masters defence. No one cares much about the results, no one is gonna check/review them. You are gonna do just fine my friend..... just go in there with a wide smile, and say everything you have done very confidently. You are gonna do amazing :-).

Also, you have worked really hard for 2/3 years now and your examiners will take that into consideration. Also consider the fact the you are gonna be part of the top 1 percent in the world. Its a really huuuuge achievement. So just go in there, and kill it with whatever you got.


Should I share my horrible software? After I had published my paper, some people asked me to share the software that I developed. At first, I was very happy that my paper attracted some attention, and I was happy to share not only the binary but also the source code, case studies etc. But looking at my software, I feel very embarrassed.

My software is just horrible: the source code is just a mess, containing several of my unsuccessful attempts; I have never used design patterns, so duplicate code is everywhere; for simplicity and quick implementation, I often prefer recursions to loops etc etc.

I'm always under pressure to produce new results, and cleaning those code would cost me significant effort.

My question is if sharing this horrible software will give people a very negative impression of me? Would it do harm to my career if the people I share are prospect collaborators, employers, as they work in the same field.

Yes, you should.

First, most scientific software is terrible. I'd be very surprised if yours is worse than average: the mere fact you know design patterns and the difference between recursion and loops suggests it's better.

Second, it's unlikely you'll have the incentive or motivation to make it better unless, or until, it's needed by someone else (or you in 6 months). Making it open gives you that incentive.

Potential upsides: possible new collaborators, bugfixes, extensions, publications.

Potential downsides: timesink (maintaining code or fixing problems for other people), getting scooped. I'll be clear: I don't take either of these downsides very seriously.

Put up a disclaimer that the code is provided "as is" with no promises of support, etc. And then share the code.

Case study: Turning a cloud of isolated points into a watertight surface is an extremely important practical problem, used everywhere from robotics to computer vision to processing data from 3D sensors like the Microsoft Kinect.

Poisson surface reconstruction is 7 years old and has long stopped being the state of the art for solving this problem. But everybody still uses it to this day. Why? Because the author released the code and it has since been incorporated into a bunch of popular geometry processing libraries. The paper now has over a thousand citations.


Is it considered plagiarism when you modify your professor's proof when solving a problem in a homework assignment? I have a homework wherein a problem is eerily similar to a theorem we have proven and discussed before in class. Since we have a policy that the only concepts and theorems that we can apply to our homeworks and quizzes are those discussed in class, I figured that if I slightly modify a set defined in the proof of a previously discussed theorem, I would be able to prove my homework (I managed to prove it following the proof of the previous theorem).
Can I do this? Is this considered plagiarism?

No, this bears no resemblance whatsoever to the concept of plagiarism. The goal of homework is to get you to review what you learned in class and demonstrate that you can apply it. That is exactly what you are doing.
Moreover, the purists who will wag their fingers at you and tell you to “cite” the earlier proof are part of why we have a generation of students who have no common sense understanding of what plagiarism is or what it means to plagiarize, and instead view the avoidance of plagiarism in terms of adherence to some mechanical set of algorithmic rules whose meaning they don’t understand (and I mean no offense to you personally, it isn’t your fault that you are being led astray in such a way by well-meaning but misguided — in my opinion — educators). The professor knows what they did in class, and know that you know it. There is no need to cite anything, just write a correct proof of the result you were asked to prove. If you want to mention that the proof is a variation of something that was done in class, that may be a nice way of showing a good level of understanding of the material, but it’s not required as some kind of plagiarism-avoidance algorithm.

NO.
Often there is only one right and or easy/short way to prove something.
I did that once on an exam in grad skl.
One direction I wrote 'obvious' for the other way I said 'clear'  which was the profs proof in class.  I got full credit which was lucky as I had not idea how to prove that theorem:)


Should I include high school details in Grad School Resume? I was wondering if I should include my high school details in the resume of my graduate school application ? It's unclear about this bit since we are not actually submitting any proof of high school records during grad school application( they only ask for undergraduate details).
But my high school final examination details are particularly good (better than my undergraduate credentials infact!)

I have to disagree slightly with the stark "No" answers.

Only when those details provide evidence of your potential for research.

Some information about your high-school experience may shed light on your research potential.  Certainly you would want to mention winning the Intel Science Talent Search or the International Olympiad in Informatics, or describe the peer-reviewed research papers you published as a high school student.

But your high school grades?  No, leave them off.

I think that someone should include an accomplishment such as "valedictorian" on a resume, if nothing else from high school.  I would especially do this if the high school was quite large.  I was the valedictorian at a large high school and I put it on my resume even though I have completed graduate school.  I have received negative feedback from a few people about it, but when I looked up their backgrounds, they didn't have any accomplishments even similar to those that I have at all... I mean, these people didn't even have a 3.0 GPA in college.  Therefore, I chalked the "stark NO" responses to jealousy.  People with similar accomplishments to mine seem to have no problem with me putting that one accomplishment from high school on my resume.


Is it unfair for paper circumstances to play a role in the review of the paper? Let me say beforehand that this question does not refer to scientific correctness and treats it as undisputed, i.e. the paper is assumed correct in the sense that it clearly states a valid purpose, has an adequate literature review, the theory and methods are scientifically sound.

After a brief introspective, it came to me that I often take into the account under what circumstances a paper was written when assessing the scope / prestige of the venue it is to be published at. This usually includes funding, if any, seniority and number of the authors.

On the one hand, I find it unfair to expect the same scale of experimental devotion from a student-mentor author pair from a developing country with no or relatively little funding as from a research group with multiple grants from a developed country. Given the relevance of the contribution, the first group shouldn't be rejected on the grounds that they don't have a comparable abundance of resources. Also, they shouldn't be discouraged as they managed to make a difference without those resources. And, after all, we do this kind of expectation management in other aspects of life, e.g. one doesn't fail a student because they wrote the assignment in a free text editor, because they can't afford MS Word.

As a concrete example, I once saw another reviewer comment that they would like to see a more significant average deviation on the graphs. This requirement would've required the authors to run tens of multi-hour simulations on a cloud cluster consisting of ~50 high-end instances, each billed by the hour, and it is also rather irrelevant to the proof or the contribution itself. The two authors received a government grant which translated to roughly $1200 for this research at an university that doesn't have subsidies with the cloud provider.

On the other hand, this is clearly a bias. Augmented additionally by the fact that it is not possible to implement during a double-blind review. Also, somewhere in there is an argument how practices to include low-cost research would result in research funding being gradually cut in some way or the other.

So, my question is the dilemma whether it is unfair to let capabilities outside of a research group's direct influence contribute to the review of their paper (again, only once the contribution is established)?

My field is computer science, so, while not strictly pen-and-paper, few resources are needed, relative to other fields, e.g. experimental physics, bio-medicine, etc., to do meaningful research.

No, your review should not change based on knowledge of the authors' circumstances. Your role is to give the editor an objective assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the author's submitted manuscript. However, you can still help less advantaged authors. Write your review to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of their work, and leave the authors to choose how they wish to address these.

To take your example: suppose that the authors have developed a new algorithm for X, which you consider to be a worthwhile contribution to the field. However, they go on to claim that their algorithm outperforms the current standard, based on only one test-case.

An unhelpful reviewer might write:
"This paper has potential, but it cannot be accepted unless the authors run more test-cases". A more helpful review would be: "The algorithm in this paper appears to be a useful contribution, and it is deserving of publication. However, I do not feel the authors currently have sufficient evidence to support their unqualified claims regarding performance, and this should be addressed before acceptance."

By doing this, you leave the authors with a choice: they can either run more experiments, or they can put caveats around their discussion of performance. (Of course, you should only do this if you feel the paper is publishable in such a form.) A wealthy research group will likely choose the former option, a less well-off one might settle for the latter. However, both have been held to the same standard of scientific correctness.

There is always some bias, but if you have an established set of criteria that you apply across the board then that seems to be fair, only my opinion though.

If all papers/submissions were double blind reviewed then, as you say, it would not be an issue.


What do I do about an unfixable F when I am applying for a graduate program? I studied three years as a History major, and I received many bad grades. So I transferred out to a different school in its computer science program.

I have completed up to third year (and a little bit more) of my CS degree in the last two years. I recently looked up the available course listing from my previous school and, once again, they are not offering the course that I received an F in.

It is a third year elective course in philosophy and they haven't offered it in the last two years. The school does not offer any course that is similar, and no one (including many advisers I spoke to at both schools) can really say that there is an alternative course that is equivalent to that course.

Basically, I can't fix it. I've retaken some courses that I did poorly in from my previous school, and gotten back positive results. My current GPA (exclusively from my current school) is close to 3.9.

But that F is really freaking me out. I'm not even hopeful that I can get into a top graduate school, but I would at least like to get into a decent one.

What can I do about this?

Computer science professors don't care what grades you got in philosophy. Even more so because this was an advanced philosophy class, not an entry-level course. And even more so because this was 3+ years ago before you started computer science, so it doesn't show an inability to reason or communicate or manage your time.

Better yet, you have a very clear narrative. When your application isn't perfect, it's nice to have a simple, clean, verifiable reason for the imperfection. In your case, it's very simple: you were terrible at philosophy, you're great at computer science. This is a great narrative, and the F only adds to it.

You should focus on computer science. Here's what's going to happen: the committee will look at your transcript and very quickly figure out that you were terrible at philosophy and good at computer science. Then they're going to want to know how good at computer science you are -- merely average? Or amazing? This is where your research, publications, letters of recommendation, advanced coursework, etc. comes in. Further, you should be very careful when writing your statement of purpose -- you'll need to address your previous major, but there's no need to make excuses for it, just say that it wasn't a good fit and then focus on your current work.

Even if you could retake that class and get rid of the F, you shouldn't bother. It just doesn't gain you anything, and there are better uses for your time.

Quit worrying about your GPA and pay attention to the GRE. That's what matters for graduate school. Why would the admissions committee care about a course you took 5 years ago in a different major?

If you are deeply concerned (and you seem to be), trying seeing if the department/professor will arrange a way in which you can re-take the class as a independent study/special seminar. It's unlikely, but possible. Changing the actual grade is very unlikley unless you experienced a personal tragedy such as the loss of a family member, or a major injury or chronic illness.


Is this a legitimate excuse for missing an exam? The class I am teaching had a quiz yesterday. A student wrote to me 2 hours after  that he missed the quiz because he suspected he had a strep throat. He would see doctor and provide me a doctor's note.  Personally I feel this particular reason is a little lame. If he decided to skip the exam because he suspected he was really sick, he would have wrote to me earlier. My question is, if in the end the doctor says he did not have strep throat, should I still give the student a chance to make up the quiz (just because he suspected it)?

Rather than having to think about what is a legitimate excuse or not, I routinely give make-ups to anyone who misses a quiz or exam. Yes, it is explicitly assumed that they are operating with knowledge of what was on the quiz or exam that was given, so the situation is somewhat different, and the nature of the make-up is consequently somewhat different. I explain this at the beginning of the course. One might worry that there'd be too many people trying to game the system, but it seemed not so.

(I think it is not reasonable to demand that people who are sick get a note from their doctor... if it's something like a severe cold, say, because the wisest and most socially reasonable thing to do is stay home in bed, not travel to a clinic... Also, I do like to cultivate the atmosphere that I am willing to believe students' excuses, rather than have the default be skepticism about their honesty.)

Just to add to the other answers. You must be careful not to get a reputation as being gullible. This may cause this type of thing to become habitual from this pupil and may even rub of on some of your previously good pupils.

The proverbial giver a person an inch and he will take a mile can very easily be true here.


What is the difference between a plenary and a keynote talk? I am organizing a workshop and have invited a featured speaker to give a synthetic talk. What is the appropriate term for this role?

They are both used (often interchangeably in my field). A plenary is a talk which does not have anything scheduled against it. A keynote is an invited talk in a conference or session.

Keynote; A theme by an authority person with credentials on topic and knoledge of participants and their reason for being here. Speaker offers challenges.
Plenary; Speaker/ Facilitator with authority remarks to stimulate input and discussion by all to come to conclusion for action.


Citation of a book chapter that was put online I am trying to cite, using the ACS format, https://www.intechopen.com/books/cancer-causing-substances/heavy-metals-and-cancer, but I don't know whether it is considered a book or ebook chapter. How am I supposed to tell them apart? The link is under "books" on the website, but seeing as it is online, wouldn't it be considered an ebook? If I cite it as a book, it'll be pretty weird for me to include a link and the date accessed, won't it?

I would cite this as a book section, including the DOI (because that's where you found it/how others will be able to find it) but not including "date accessed", because that is intended for more volatile resources like web pages. (If a reference has a DOI you can usually treat it as non-volatile.)
Sticking as precisely as you can to a reference format is important, but the most important thing is to make sure that the information is present that allows readers to (1) attribute credit appropriately and (2) re-locate the original source.

(1) Carver, A.; Gallicchio, V. S. Heavy Metals and Cancer. In Cancer Causing Substances; Atroshi, F., Ed.; 2018. https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.68247.

A book is a written work distributed by a publisher, in physical or digital form. (Books and eBooks needn't be distinguished, they contain the same content.) Book drafts are distinguished, they are distributed by authors.


How to motivate students to complete low-point homework? I teach a course consisting of about 50 assignments. These include readings, many short writing assignments, and group projects. Additionally, students complete 2 large projects as the mid-term and final, entirely covering all of the material.

I noticed many students skipped lots of homework. Some skipped 6 weeks of work completely. I assumed the workload was too high, but I surveyed those who did the work and nobody reported spending more than 2-3 hours per week. Some students had determined that each assignment had such a low value, they did not bother to complete the work. These students all did very poorly on the final.

My supervisor will not be happy to find that I am failing 25% of the students. For future terms, how can I motivate students to complete everything?

Some students had determined that each assignment had such a low
  value, they did not bother to complete the work. These students all
  did very poorly on the final.

One important way to combat this attitude is to show the actual statistics from the course you just completed.

"Here is the distribution of homework completion across last semester's course.  And here is the distribution of final course grades.  Notice that every student who completed less than XXX% of the homework failed the course."

Repeat this exercise after every midterm, showing similar statistics for the current class.  "See, here is the distribution of homework completion so far, and here is the distribution of midterm grades.  Notice that every student who completed less than XXX% of the homework failed the midterm, which is completely consistent with last semester."

In other words: "I am not bluffing."

If you want to be even more direct, you can announce in your syllabus that anyone not completing XXX% of the homework automatically fails the course, regardless of their performance on the final exam.  Be sure to read this sentence out loud in class on the first day.

Of course, you also need some carrots to go with the stick.  The homework should not only be useful, but also interesting.  The students should have access to any resources they need to master the homework material, including rapid and useful feedback.  The homework should be realistically tuned to the skill and maturity levels of the students, and you should carefully discuss your expectations with instructors of any prerequisite courses.

  My supervisor will not be happy to find that I am failing 25% of the students.

I assume you mentioned the abysmal homework completion rate to your supervisor as soon as you noticed it, which was relatively early in the semester. Right?  So how did your supervisor respond?

First of all, I'm disappointed that you used the word "fail," which is a reflexive verb, rather than "flunk," which is the correct word to use.

You didn't state what level (college, elementary, etc) you're teaching.  For very young kids, I would simply send notes home saying something like "Your child didn't complete last nite/week's assignment.  Please make sure he completes it by XX date."  For high school and above, my view is that they can dang well sink or swim on their own. If they don't understand that the point of each assignment is to learn something (not to get a grade on it), then they're lost to the world.  It shouldn't be your job to babysit them.

If you have concerns about your supervisor's opinion of your teaching methods, the appropriate thing to do is talk with him a month or so into the term, not after the finals.

And finally, a personal viewpoint, but bolstered with a lot of reports from teachers and observations from other parents:   groups projects are crap.  They've always been crap, and always will be crap.  They invariably end up with a few strong players whose efforts are not properly rewarded because the overall project's quality suffers from the slackers or incompetents in the group.  School is not military training camp (where it might be justifiable to grade the group on getting everyone safely thru the course).


Can we earn money through a research publication? Is there a way we can get money for our research paper? Do research journals pay us for a research paper? Or can we sell the research paper?

can we earn money through a research publication?

Certainly Yes.

Good publications make you a stronger candidate when apply to grants. It also help you in securing a job; if you do not have one. Also, collaborating with industry could be another way for earning money. Selling publication is something I never heard in my field (computer science). I do not even think it is possible in other fields.

If you are looking only for money then doing research is one of the bad choices you have.

Yes. Through thesis or reasearch. For example the nasa discovers a new planet. Then after that some publishing companies will buy that article regarding that and it will spread throughout the world. Sorry for the bad english


Worry about stealing of research ideas I have gotten an idea in the field of Computer Science that it can result in a research paper. The problem is that I lack the adequate background in one part needed for this research, mostly mathematical stuff. I have contacted one professor in Europe by email, and asked some mild questions about some topics that could be helpful. The doubt that I have is if I should better tell to that professor about my whole research idea, so maybe he/she would be able to help me more.

Actually I am a university lecturer and independent researcher, but in the university that I am working they do not give any salary or benefits for making research. I am doing this mostly because I like it.

Should I tell to that professor my whole idea? or maybe that person could steal it and because he/she has research funds can do it and leaving me aside?

You need to consider what role you want the math professor to take: are you looking for a co-author, a collaborator, a consultant, or a service provider.

Since you lack background in one area and are working in a place that does not prioritize publications, I would consider bring the individual on as a co-author. If that is your decision you need to provide the co-author with everything you are planning on doing so that he/she can make an informed decision. This obviously puts you at risk of being scooped. This then leads to the question of how to minimize the chances of being scooped. The first thing to remember is most researchers do not want to get into a publish first race. Scooping tends to be accidental and a result of two people independently starting the same/similar projects. You can minimize your chances by contacting an established person who is known to play "nice". The second thing you can do is to bring the research along as far as you can without the collaborator. This means they will be starting from so far back that it is unwise to enter the race.

First, I strongly suggest you to study THAT yourself.
At the end  of the day, if the "professor" collaborates with you, and if he made a mistake, you will be to blame as well.
Likely, the "professor" will tell you things like "sure I can help you" when in reality he will pass it to one of his PhD students.
You claim to have a Computer Science degree, right?
Then, you have some math background. Well, use that to study that for yourself. Get better on math. Do not think about the paper now, but about learning.
As a researcher you have learn so do it.
Then, if you further believe you want help, look for it.
(Maybe I can help you, btw)
Good luck :)


What is the purpose of women-only meetings, panels, conferences, etc. in academia? Since entering graduate school, albeit in a STEM field, I have never been exposed to such an emphasis on women-only meetings, leadership conferences, panels, etc. I have seen most, if not all of these venues, exclusive to women. Most of these meetings are hosted by the WISE (Women In Science and Engineering) organization at this university. I am sure this phenomenon is true elsewhere.

Why is it that in academe, in my experience, it is common for women to segregate themselves in the context of raising gender issues?

How does this behavior exemplify equal opportunity?

How does this behavior develop real solutions to real problems?

I actually agree with you completely. I think that the women only conference concept is very well intentioned but in practice kind of terrible. I once went to an all girl hackathon and spent 2 1/2 hours not making anything and instead watching everyone pat themselves on the back for being women. Had to sit through a ton of self congratulatory "Ted Talks" while all I wanted to do was code with some other female engineers. It was.... weird.

There are reasons for it though.

I think that the biggest threat to women is other women who view them only as competition. The women only concept removes that competition from the equation so that we can have a safe space to actually support each other.
Working in STEM, it's really unfortunate but sexism is kind of pervasive, and most women don't really feel like they have the tools to deal with it appropriately. These conferences usually provide some sort of structure to help them learn.
Women have been largely ignored by the STEM community for so long that we really do need all these outreach programs. It actually does make a difference to both the women in attendance and our level of visibility and subsequently provides opportunities for growth.
For younger women, these experiences are invaluable. It tells them that it's okay to be who they want to be, that they're not alone, and that they have people who really will rally around them and support them as they grow and come up in the world. Honestly, I wish these things existed when I was a kid.

That being said, isolationism is stupid and self defeating. I'd be much more interested in something that fostered actual dialogue between genders, or provided hands-on technical training in skills that I actually need instead of congratulatory prose about what a good little girl I was for showing up.

You're quite right in your observation of that segregation does little to exemplify equal opportunity, and is a poor venue to discuss gender inequality.

However, the purpose of these women-only panels, forums, conferences, scholarships, prizes, etc. is not for the express purpose of solving gender inequality or un-equal opportunity.

The purpose of this is three-fold:
1. There is generally funding and resources available to events such as these, therefore the funding and resources are used.
2. These events add value for the women who are able to attend simply by existing.
3. A field criticized for having poor female representation may be able to improve public opinion by holding events that are specifically for women. [sarcasm]How could a field of study possibly be gender biased when they specifically hold special events for the discriminated sex.[/sarcasm]

Items 1 and 3 are fairly straight-forward.

Item 2 above is not very clear. However, imagine you are artistically inclined and you are viewing two possible schools. One of which has listed many art clubs and provides several art forums. You don't know how good any of these forums are. The other school has fewer art clubs and forums. Which one is more appealing?

Similarly, if a field of study holds women-only events, there is a perspective that this field of study is taking steps to be extra-geared toward women. A woman who is deciding between a career field heavily populated by women and a field holding routine events specifically for women, may be swayed won by the field holding events expressly for women.

Frankly, and I realize it's not part of the question, but I don't see many of these approaches being very helpful for purposes of equality.


What steps can faculty and staff take to promote excellence in, and importance of, teaching? tl;dr

Faculty don't think teaching is as important as their other responsibilities; how do we change that?

Long version

I've been working in academia for a long time and whenever I see instructors half-assing their teaching the go to excuses are that they have no time, or that it doesn't get any respect/grants/promotion/tenure/etc. I don't doubt they're busy, and I know departments don't typically reward teaching excellence (or punish teaching mediocrity...) but the students are suffering as a result.

How can we (faculty that care about teaching and staff supporting faculty) change this situation? What can we do short-term to make faculty care about teaching now and what can we do long-term to make departments care about excellence in teaching, and not just in research?

Note: I'm aware research brings in money. Keep in mind most faculty are adjuncts who aren't doing research but still have tenured research faculty that don't care about teaching as their role models.

Putting in place a better system for evaluating teaching than today's student evaluation forms would be a good start.  Getting serious about the assessment of student learning outcomes (rather than simply assigning grades) would also be extremely helpful.

Much mention has been made of Reward for good teaching, but I would like to suggest an old fashioned and out-of-date idea: Punishment. If someone fails to deliver on their contracted responsibilities to the agreed quality and standards, then they need to face the consequences of their actions and decisions, resulting if necessary in formal disciplinary proceedings. It is not like their students are going to get another chance, so why should the teachers?

However, this means taking responsibility for setting those standards and auditing progress to ensure that they are met, which is something most facilities seem reluctant to do.


Send a second follow-up to inquire about interview success? I interviewed for a lecturer position a month and a half ago, and was told that the decision would be made about one month after my interview.  I was also told that I would be informed either way, but have yet to hear back.  A week ago I sent a follow up email, asking if a decision had been made, but didn't receive a response.  Is it appropriate to send another follow up, or should I just sit tight?  I have a feeling I didn't get the position, but I'd like to know for sure so that I can start planning other options.

You won't accomplish anything by sending another email. The department hasn't forgotten that they interviewed you.

They probably drop balls there regularly and don't want you to know that! Why can't you send a hand written note thanking them again and singing their praises? They will remember you if their pet candidate pulls out for a better offer. Their pet candidate may be stringing them along, hoping for something better. Don't appear to be in a rush or say they did not follow through. Appear eager and not stressed out. They know why you are sending a snail mail... because you want the position! There is no shame in trying everything. You are getting a taste of the disorganization of the organization you hope to join. Knock on the back door and say hello and thank you again for the honor of being interviewed by someone so prominent who has such an amazing job at such a prominent place. Was it an honor to get the interview or not?


Why would a student go to a lecture at all if everything was in the book already? Why would a student go to a lecture at all if everything was in the
  book already? The lectures make sense if and only if the lecturer
  tells more than in the book(s) and in more detail (or at least, in a
  better/more clear way). [not my comment]

Especially in light of the Internet in general, what is the added value of a lecture over a (hypertext)book?

Reasons I can think of:

spoken word might stick better, because our language is not primarily based on text,
the possibility to ask for clarification,
some material might not translate well to media

I dislike those arguments, because a huge class can neither run at a comfortable speed for all at once nor answer everyone's questions. The expectation seems to be that the students should be homogeneous and everyone nonconforming should be filtered out.

personal contact affects us on a deeper level, role models are important

Depending on the class size, even that is doubtful.

to form communities,

which would substitute or supplement the professors, but obviously at a different rate.

This is a trick question, because it depends on the style of the lecture.  In my experience the lecturer is acting as a medium and I'm watching them half the time writing on the board, or someone is asking obvious or distracting questions.

I think something mentioned in a comment is far more important than usually acknowledged: the lecture, standing at a definite time and place, plays the role of a ritual: at that time and place, the students (should) only focus on learning. This gives a rhythm, a time frame to help pace one's study.

In my experience, having very lenient rules such as long delays to turn in homework leads most student to postpone until the very end, and thus to work less than expected (to be honest scholars often do the same with e.g. grant applications). Similarly, leaving students to work with books would probably not end up well unless there are periodic incentives to have finished some chapter by some time. In fact, it seems even MOOCs tend to have a schedule, with material released periodically and only available for a given period, to force students to work it in a given time frame.

Another point is that a lecturer in fact makes small adjustments to the lecture in response to low-level signals from the students. Very concretely, it happens even in large amphitheaters that I feel that students all got a bit lost, which leads me to repeat a point or slow down.
A comparison made by Krantz in his book on mathematical lecturing struck me: when one drives a car on a mostly straight road, one still steers the wheel, even if very softly. This almost imperceptible steering makes the difference between getting to the end of the road and getting off-road pretty quickly. Letting student only study on books would be like launching a car without a driver (nor a computer driver).

Last, any given course has a precise context (background of students, future study, other parallel courses, goal of the lecture, etc.) which is always even slightly at odds with any given book. The lecturer adapts the lecture to her or his precise goals and to the context. In particular, indications of the most important points to remind of every lecture can be very useful.

All that said, lectures in front of a large number of students are not a very adequate way of teaching - it is often the best we decide to afford.

I don't know would it be of any use of you but I believe my country has an unique experience with educational systems based on both models-e.g. mandatory lectures and non-mandatory ones. About 30 years ago my country was part of the communist East European states and the lectures in the universities were mandatory. There was a special clause in the university codes requiring students to attend their lectures otherwise they could get expelled very quickly. You should know that then university education was a kind of dream for most of the people and students went to dormitories away from friends and families to study. Also, their expenses (for the most part) were covered by the state, so university student was "social position", not mere education and getting expelled could have ramifications beyond the university. Then even missing one lecture could be big deal if the professor decided to punish the student. This is why students went to lectures without caring what exactly the lecturer was saying and even what this class is all about. Our experience is that mandatory lectures always (I tell you this is for our country in particular, so I can't say it's universally true) led to lower interest in the subject, lower grades and even bribes. Yes, it was a common practice for someone to use his or hers "connections" (as we call them) to try to get some rare foreign goods for the university professor, give him/her money or even just some spirit drinks ( I have heard of such cases too, not joking) to manage to pass the exam regardless of what the student knows. Take into account the fact this was when lectures were mandatory and everyone was attending them. Can you imagine how low was the interest then to have people resorting to bribes instead of just listening to what the professor says?

Then, things changed and the system got progressively freer. Some universities tried to hold onto the "old ways" and punish students for not attending lectures but as the "exclusiveness" of university education got less and less privileges they started to understand there wasn't much effect of punishment. I still know of one university trying to impose fear on its students for not attending lectures, but the general trend is they don't care any more who goes and who doesn't. The reason is that when the borders opened many people fled the country and some started to bring foreign experience in to our (then outdated) education systems, some started to demand more rights and freedom and made the case no one should force anybody to attend anything and then some just made money but had no education and in order to get the social position of being educated, not the actual skills and knowledge they simply bought their diplomas. It was (and to some extent still is) big business in my country. But the results of these practices started showing in ever lower and lower quality of education and more and more "bought", rather than "deserved" degrees. I'm part of this generation and remember absolutely free classrooms where out of a nearly 150 students by names you had only 5 real people in the room! I think you can imagine what the attendance rate was. But universities kept their lectures (sometimes only because the professors would otherwise lose their jobs and the unemployment rate was very high so they pledged their colleagues in the administration to keep the lectures) and now the students themselves are returning to the classrooms. My country had some really rough times the last 20 years but now it seems like the people themselves, not the authorities, the social position or even the economy are forcing them back in the universities. Now the clessrooms are again getting filled because some people themselves chose it is the better way to learn, than by themselves. Now, I could say our country's education system is as free as it can be-nobody forces anybody to attend anything, the professors can chose their curriculum, anybody can read anything and hold whatever opinion he or she thinks is right. The value of higher education has greatly diminished over time and those who have money even don't want to buy their diplomas any more (not because they can't, but because they don't see the point in having an education when you have money) but the people still return to the universities and now it's the people themselves who demand lectures. Now, I can see people in their 30s and 40s going back to school and attending lectures not because anybody demands them to, but because they simply want to, because they feel the need to know more and going to lecture and having personal contact with the lecturer is their own way of getting to know the subject, too. I can see now how my generation is starting to wake up for the value of education and especially this coming from actually knowing what somebody thinks about this or that subject and how s/he can teach it. I can say now people actually start to think of universities more like places where they can go, meet somebody who has knowledge and use his or hers skills to educate themselves or get an answer to specific question they may have. And having a good lecture course becomes essential to manage to satisfy this need. Now the universities are becoming ever more social rather than mere educational institutions and anybody can open university if s/he has the cash to do it. But people don't go to universities for the diploma, they go there to know something they don't and require the professors there to have the knowledge they need or simply desire. This is what a good lecture course is about (at least in my mind-you're free to disagree).

But you may wonder why I'm telling you all this @Troway Jestman. The reason is because I believe you aren't very old (please, forgive me for the personal intrusion here) and probably because you have only your country as an example (which I believe is a western country). But this isn't the only possible example. See, my country has been through both periods when lectures were mandatory and those who attended them had a higher social status than those who didn't and periods where almost nobody went to lectures and people were thinking about actually abolishing them. But in my mind both these alternatives are wrong! And I'm not talking here from some subjective theoretical point of view-I'm talking from personal(and national) experience. When higher education was seen as some "special privilege" to the society's elite and at the same time lectures were mandatory for students and the common people were excluded from attending them, the quality was poor and people didn't learn much from them. So you can see that even when you give incentives to people learning from lectures and at the same time make them mandatory it turns against you and you actually lower the quality of education, rather than increase it. On the other hand when you make everything free, yes, the attendance rate drops and almost no one cares to come but those who come are there for a reason and the dialogue and in general the very quality of education is increased when you have a lecture course parallel to the books and/or internet video course about the subject. And it also makes the professor him/herself do better job at assessing his field, educating him/herself on the novelties there and in general providing better services for society, not just for education. I can go on and tell you many things terribly wrong with my country and its education system but from the perspective of someone who has seen both the effects of mandatory lectures and lectures with almost no attendance at all I can tell you it's better to keep the lecture courses in, rather then abolish them-it's better both for professors and students and for the society in general. And this isn't an answer based on general knowledge but on personal observations. I firmly believe good lecture courses are a must for any modern university, if not for its educational role, than for its social role. Lecture courses can "filter out" those students who really care about some field, provide the professor with the environment to shape his/her course better and improve his/hers communication skills and in general provide the ability to create an environment for learning not only for students, but for everyone interested in this particular field.

I believe this is the true complete answer of your question :)


Identifying a published error Hypothetical:

I found an error which fundamentally kills a published paper and re-opens a number of problems the paper claimed to solve.
Not only is there an error, but the results are actually wrong.  Part of another publication (by a different author) proves this.  Yes, I am 100% sure. Other experts have confirmed this in private communications with me.
I have nothing new to add, other than I can show the second paper proves the first paper is wrong.
I get no response from the first author when I let them know about the error.

What is my next step?

(A) contact editors of the journals with the incorrect results? and then what happens?

(B) post a paper to ARXIV?

(C) submit a paper to a journal?

(D) wait, do more research, and try to craft something more "substantial" for (B) or (C)

(E) do some or all of the above simultaneously? (please specify which ones)

I am not sure if my contribution thus far warrants (B) or (C), but I would like to receive some acknowledgement in print.

Something must be done because this error if unacknowledged will have a negative effect on future research.

I have nothing new to add, other than I can show the second paper proves the first paper is wrong.

If the second paper already refutes the first paper, then there is nothing to do. If you could write a brief, non-trivial paper explaining how the second paper refutes the first (and the consequences of this), that's a different matter.

(A) contact editors of the journals with the incorrect results? and then what happens?

This may be field-dependent, but in general, I think this only be appropriate if the authors acted in bad faith (and thus the paper needs to be forcibly retracted). In this case, it sounds like the authors were simply wrong, so I wouldn't get between the authors and the journal.

(B) post a paper to ARXIV?

Particularly in math and physics, all papers are posted to arXiv. It's not a bad policy for other fields as well (I post all my machine learning papers to arXiv). But it sounds like your results are significant enough that you should publish them in an actual journal or conference, not "just" the arXiv.

(C) submit a paper to a journal?
(D) wait, do more research, and try to craft something more "substantial"

If you have enough "substance" to publish now, then I would go for it (and post the paper to the arXiv while you're at it). If not, doing more research is necessary -- you shouldn't publish a bad paper, particularly one that "calls out" another paper (all the more so if the other paper is well known).

Definitely do not contact the journals who published the incorrect results. Their interest is to reject, bury or delay the wrong results' denunciation. To get a fair and professional answer from them is possible, but unlikely. And it would probably require an unreasonable amount of time and effort from you. Quoting James Heathers:

How does “originally rejected without review, appealed, then accepted after 18 months, 5 rounds of reviews, and 6 reviewers” sound? Does that sound like something that would ever happen to a paper?
Well, that’s what happens to criticism. Would it be more efficient to just upload it and get on with your life?

This leaves you with arXiv, if it is widely used in your community. (Failing that, a well-chosen website or social network could do.) Short rebuttals of papers on arXiv happen quite often.


Double blinded review but the appendix contains author's name Before submitting a review for a manuscript, I noticed the appendix possibly contains an author name, but I don't know him/her. My file explorer automatically shows files' metadata, including author name.

The review should be double blinded. Should I inform the editor?

When in doubt: yes.  Let them know when and how you found this potentially compromising information.  Especially if you think this may impact your objectivity (e.g. "I don't recognize this name, so I'm not going to trust him as much and may/will be more critical than I otherwise would"). But even if you think your evaluation will be unaltered, you should let the editor know.  They need to be the one to decide if the review process can still meet the necessary criteria, if the authors should be notified and asked to alter the file to eliminate the metadata, etc.

In your case it sounds like you did the entire review under appropriate double blinding, fully unaware of the authors while making the evaluation, and then at the very end of the process you gleaned a potential clue about the author name. If so, then the editor may accept that no actual problem has arisen, and may simply try to take steps to ensure such metadata is no longer visible to reviewers.

Things get more complicated if there are multiple reviewers for this paper: it now becomes possible that one or more of them saw this data early in the process, and it potentially compromised their review, but yet this went unacknowledged. This makes it all the more important to inform the editor.

If everyone in the chain were to follow the letter of the double-blind process, then the paper either has to be rejected, or has to be reviewed by someone else, and your review may not be taken into account. So, if you like the paper and want to see it accepted, then perhaps you don't want to escalate the situation.


When a research statement of a fixed page length is required, are references counted in the page length? On mathjobs.org, a few jobs request a research statement of no more than 3 pages. Are reference pages typically counted for such requirements in the United States?

Unlike the NSF, where references often do not count towards page limits, I would assume that references do count as part of the 3-page limit for a research statement in a job application.

At the same time, few research statements I have seen in mathematics are as thoroughly referenced as an NSF proposal. The main goal of a research statement when applying for a job is to describe your own research and to demonstrate that you will be able to meet the research expectations of the job. As such, you want to keep the research statement relatively brief.

If you really need more than 3 pages including references, you should email the chair of the search committee to find out if it is acceptable.

Generally speaking, no.  Two reasons:

Nobody reads the references.
It is unethical to penalize the author for giving credit where it is due.

That said, an HR staffer may not know about academic practices.


Is it a bad idea to get a PhD? Hope this doesn't fall into the category of personal advice, but I just have  a general question about academia today (particularly in Philosophy).
I have read many articles on the internet indicating that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find a tenure track position in a relatively highly ranked university (top 100 nationally, say) after completing a PhD in today's job market, even from a very highly ranked program. Is this true, and is it a bad idea to get a PhD if the only thing I'd be able to do with it is teach? Does the internet exaggerate how difficult the market is? Would I have to move across the country, potentially, to find a T.T. position somewhere? Thanks.

A PhD is a research degree; it’s a piece of paper that says “this person is a competent researcher”. If you want to go into a field where being a researcher is important (e.g. corporate R&D), then it’s worth your time to get one. If you’re not, it probably isn’t.

This may border as an 'opinion'...

I have built businesses since 1989 for Entrepreneurs and I found the following to be true:

There are no self-made men/women.
None of the 'super-rich' have college degrees (Asia to the U.S.A).
The 'super-rich/entrepreneurs' however do prefer to employ 'paper' holders.

Getting a PhD early  in life may limit your job opportunities. It, actually, may hinder your path to 'riches' unless you want to do politics (or a hot political topic...).


Working for one professor, want to write paper with another party I am a PhD student working for a professor as a research assistant and being paid with stipends. One of my friends in the same department asks me if I can collaborate on a project branched off his PhD research. That project is a completely different field than my current research, despite of that some of the background ideas can be used in my part.

He has done all of the theory work, and just needs someone to implement using computer programs. To me the task is not really hard at all, since he has streamlined the theories. I expect to finish the programming part without spending too much of my effort, and there is no (hard) time limit.

Now he has generously offered me a chance to be in the authors list (I believe only us two, and he's the first), as the credit of my work. I understand that working for somebody else while getting paid for my own job is not good, but the publication is really luring to me. I talked to him about the chance of my name being included only in the acknowledgement, but what a bad idea of that.

My question is what should I do? Should I ever talk to my professor? My friend is like hard to refuse since the work isn't really a burden to me.

While I wish to keep anonymous, I truly thank you all for any idea, suggestion, or criticism.

EDIT: As I mentioned before, our work isn't really very related. But it happens that at present I need to improve my own research methodology, and the techniques to be used in his project exactly fit my need. (I think this is a good lesson to me; never be "too" focused in my own research, and learn from other fields) Is it okay to talk to my advisor in this way, that while I'm helping him, I also make my own stuff better?

Ask your professor if it is okay with him.

During my PhD it was never a problem to work with other PhD's, it was actually well received and encouraged. Even collaborations that go beyond the professor's own group. Of course your own work should have priority, but spending some of your time on other projects has not been problematic.

You should definitely talk about it with your professor. There is also a good chance that your current contract has a clause stating something along the lines of "any published work will be cleared by prof. X". When your name will appear on the paper, you will have an institutional affiliation so you need your professor's OK.

If your professor is worried about the time you take away from your own project, you always have the option of working on your own time and only asking him to use the affiliation.


Is listing annexed territory listed in author details a valid reason to decline to review? I recently accepted a paper review based on an abstract.

On seeing the paper, at least one of the authors has listed their address as being within an unrecognized annexed territory, like this:

  Author, X university, /annexed territory/, /annexing state/

I am interested in the community views on whether this is reason to decline the  review. And, if so, should the reason be declared.

At the moment, I intend to decline as I do not wish to legitimize the annexation in any way. On the other hand, I also do not wish to discriminate against individual researchers.

How much should the decision depend on:

the perceived quality of work?
personal links?
time since/extent of violence during annexation?

Can anyone offer a good framework for thinking about this?

Points of clarification:

The authors do not use the term "annex", "annexed", or "annexing".
It is widely considered an illegitimate annexation (shared with a
majority of world states, UN)
The annexing state is not required for geographical location/postal
address (if anything makes it more confusing).
I do not wish to act in a way that can be perceived as "activism", or to
"create a stink"...
My argument is that adding to the record with the annexing state included
helps (albeit in a very minor way) its potential path to legitimacy.
Please do rebut...

"Annexing" might not be the correct term in this case, perhaps "occupying" is more accurate, I'm not sure - I think the general point of the question stands either way...

It might be helpful to reference what policies journals typically have on this?

Since you ask for a framework for thinking about it, I'll suggest that an action on your part that disadvantages the author, perhaps already a victim, won't bring justice. Probably better to ignore that detail and focus on what the author says, and honestly give the usual feedback.

If you want to try to deal with the unfairness of the annexation, there are other places that would be more appropriate and effective.

But your review is independent of any concept of "legitimization". You are giving a service to an author and a journal, not the occupying country.

You can decline it as you choose.  I would probably not bother to give a reason (will be seen as you making a stink.)

It's probably hard to decide where the exact boundary is to making these decisions also.  (What feels right.)  After all borders have moved around for thousands of years and usually for reasons of force.

I might lean a little towards doing the review but certainly nothing wrong with not doing it if it makes you uncomfortable.  And not just for reasons of annexation but even if you have an antipathy to the other country.


Are there Conference Proceedings that have impact factor? In Medicine, an Impact Factor of a journal is important indicator (IF) of journal quality.

Are there examples of conference proceedings that have a formal IF figure computed?

Are there examples of conference proceedings that have a formal IF figure computed?

There is nothing like the "formal IF". What you are referring to is probably the Thomson Reuter's Journal Citation Reports impact factor which is one of the most respected measures in the academic world. As such, to my best knowledge there is no such thing for conferences.

However, there are other sources which could prove useful as an estimate of conference quality:

As already Charles pointed out, there are exist cached versions of Citeseer's estimated impact factors for computer science, but this is too old to be useful.
Furthermore, Google Scholar lists ranks of top venues mixing journals and conferences in their listings. Here is an example of top publications for AI, as you might see, there are several conferences mixed in. They list h-index of the venue instead of an impact factor.
Another very useful, resource for ranking conferences is Microsoft Academic Search, where you can find profiles of conferences, such as this one for IJCAI and they also publish rankings for different categories of venues, see an example here.
Finally, you might find useful the Australian Research Council's ERA conference rankings from 2010. In 2012 they decided not to rank conferences any more, but the 2010 list is still very useful and at least somewhat authoritative. They would rank conferences into categories according to their own quality metrics, which however (at least in my area) correlate with the community's perception.

At the moment, there are 56 proceedings-journals which have an Impact Factor according to the only source of Impact factors, the Journal Citation Reports (Thompson Reuters). These journals have the word proceedings in their title, and presumably concern conference proceedings.

Later edit: This list is just a suggestion which might help to gather some additional information. The titles have not been checked they really are Conference Proceedings.

-   ALLERGY ASTHMA PROC
-   ASLIB PROC
-   J INVEST DERM SYMP P
-   MATH PROC CAMBRIDGE
-   MAYO CLIN PROC
-   P ACAD NAT SCI PHILA
-   P AM MATH SOC
-   P BIOL SOC WASH
-   P COMBUST INST
-   P EDINBURGH MATH SOC
-   P ENTOMOL SOC WASH
-   P EST ACAD SCI
-   P GEOLOGIST ASSOC
-   P I CIVIL ENG-CIV EN
-   P I CIVIL ENG-ENG SU
-   P I CIVIL ENG-GEOTEC
-   P I CIVIL ENG-MAR EN
-   P I CIVIL ENG-MUNIC
-   P I CIVIL ENG-STR B
-   P I CIVIL ENG-TRANSP
-   P I CIVIL ENG-WAT M
-   P I MECH ENG A-J POW
-   P I MECH ENG B-J ENG
-   P I MECH ENG C-J MEC
-   P I MECH ENG D-J AUT
-   P I MECH ENG E-J PRO
-   P I MECH ENG F-J RAI
-   P I MECH ENG G-J AER
-   P I MECH ENG H
-   P I MECH ENG I-J SYS
-   P I MECH ENG J-J ENG
-   P I MECH ENG K-J MUL
-   P I MECH ENG L-J MAT
-   P I MECH ENG M-J ENG
-   P I MECH ENG O-J RIS
-   P I MECH ENG P-J SPO
-   P IEEE
-   P INDIAN AS-MATH SCI
-   P JPN ACAD A-MATH
-   P JPN ACAD B-PHYS
-   P LOND MATH SOC
-   P NATL A SCI INDIA A
-   P NATL A SCI INDIA B
-   P NATL ACAD SCI USA
-   P NUTR SOC
-   P ROMANIAN ACAD A
-   P ROY SOC A-MATH PHY
-   P ROY SOC B-BIOL SCI
-   P ROY SOC EDINB A
-   P STEKLOV I MATH+
-   P YORKS GEOL SOC
-   SADHANA-ACAD P ENG S
-   TRANSPL P


What should I do if I cannot reproduce experimental published results I found a useful advice if I cannot reproduce computational published results in (What should you do if you cannot reproduce published results?). However I would like to ask the same situation with experimental results.

I am from chemistry, and it often involves synthesis of compounds. I know every lab in the world cannot be identical even if all equipment are the same, because many external factors such as climate, humidity, lab temperature, etc. may possibly interfere with the experiment.

If I have followed all the steps described in the literature, from the source and purity of chemicals to every single step described, but still I cannot reproduce the results (evidence from some characterization techniques), what can I do? Should I contact the author to give me all 'hidden' steps like the size of beaker, etc.? Or the journal reviewers think that the authors have already disclosed enough information for others to reproduce it, so the remaining job to investigate how to reproduce the results is on me? However sometimes the description is really vague, like 'drying in a vacuum oven at 50oC for 10 minutes', but what is the degree of vacuum?

(Sometimes the size of beaker may play a role, as evaporation way affects its crystal size, also the position of drying compounds in oven, etc.)

@posdef's comment is already very good.

I would definitely suggest contacting the authors and trying to get exact agreement also on the details that they didn't describe in the original paper. The original authors should be quite interested in an independent replication, so they should have an incentive to collaborate. Depending on how much they contribute, they could also hope for co-authorship on your paper.

Conversely, if they are not cooperative, that is another piece of information that should be included tactfully (!) in the paper you are putting together.

If you are lucky in your analyses, you may be able to identify the exact circumstance or unreported detail that makes the difference between reproducibility and non-reproducibility, and there you have the nucleus of an original paper all by itself.

On the other hand, if you cannot reproduce the results even with help from the original authors, this should be worth at least a correspondence. Reproductions are important, and there are far too few of them!

I part ways with @posdef's comment in that I would definitely not send a letter to the editor voicing concerns about reports and reproductions not matching. This already points towards a suspicion of scientific wrongdoing on the part of the original authors. And unless you have a lot more to go by, a simple inability to reproduce a finding should not be taken as the result of foul play. There are so many potential reasons for non-reproducibility, from the ones you mention to simple random error (aka, uncontrolled conditions), that there is really no need to even imply dishonesty. Such an implication can mess up either the original authors' or your own reputation in the field for decades, so it should not be made lightly.

Easiest solution is to invite them over and let them do the experiment. You will find what they are doing different and then you can decide together how to proceed with publishing the results.


How to write a strong introduction into a research paper? How does one write a strong (good) introduction into a research paper? Some introductions make me really curious about the rest of the paper while others do not. Although it is relatively easy to say which introductions are good and which are not, I find it difficult to distill what makes the difference. There is a previous question about writing introductions (How to write a Ph.D. thesis Introduction chapter?) but it is about Ph.D theses.

This is very area specific. I'll start with the caveat that I write papers in computer science, so YMMV.

The way I think about introductions (which is not to say they are GOOD introductions) is that they tell the story of the paper in brief. Every paper has a story to tell, starting with

Here's a fascinating question
Here's what people have tried to do (in brief: not a full related work section, but a high level assesment)
here's the key challenge preventing further progress
Voila: here's our complete/partial/intermediate/awesome solution
(additionally) and here's how it works.

The intro is typically the "hook" to read the rest of the paper, so you have to provide a birds-eye view that draws the reader in without drowning them in details.

The thing that separates a good intro from a bad one is knowing where that right level of detail is, so you're not either totally vacuous or mired in details. Getting this right is an art and depends on your field, your results, the problem, and your understanding of the target audience.

Start writing the body paragraphs then use the basic ideas of all of them and then create an introduction and concluding paragraphs!


What is a diplomatic way to tell a professor that progress hasn't been made because of their lack of communication? Here is the scenario: in a collaborative effort, our group was to work with another group/professor to write a paper on some work we had previously done. I, a grad student, am to be the main author/architect of the paper. But, and this was said explicitly by him and my own professor, I was to write it with lots of help from the collaborating professor, and under his guidance and direction.

In other words, I would talk to him, get direction like "you should focus on this topic for the paper" or "don't pursue this, it won't be interesting to reviewers", and I would do the actual work/research/writing.

However, since making this agreement, months ago, he has gone basically incommunicado. I'll send him an email and not get a reply for literally a month. I've asked to set up a short (<1hr) meeting, at basically any time of his choosing, and just no response. Several times, too.

Let me be clear about this too: I'm not really that upset about the lack of communication itself (though, I'll say this single thing about that: when he is actually in person with me, he is constantly checking/answering his email on his phone, so I know he does do it, just apparently not with me). I'm not dying to write the paper, it's not a cutting edge thing that will get scooped, and I have several other projects. It's a little annoying in general that he has been flaky, but I'm plenty busy with other stuff, so again that's not too bad.

Here's what my question is about. I both suspect, and from my short interactions with him I've had in the past few months, that he is going to ask to see what work I've done on it since he became uncommunicative, to which the answer is "minimal". The reason is that I am busy with other projects, and because he wasn't doing his part of this, I didn't know which direction to take. I could certainly speculate and choose one, but that is very risky (timewise) for me: if I spend several weeks pursuing something and it turns out he doesn't think it's a good fit for the paper, welp, I just wasted several weeks. And that has happened to some extent.

Because it seems like I wasn't clear about this initially, I'll say it explicitly here: my goal is not to attack him, or bring this up. If he seems fine with the (lack of) progress made, then I'm very happy to leave it be and just continue on. But I strongly suspect (and he seemed to say) that he expects me to have done more. For this question, assume that the professor will ask why more hasn't been done on the paper, so the subject will come up.

So, how do you say this tactfully? You can't really respond with "because you were uncommunicative, I didn't get very much done, because it very possibly could have been for naught", because that's pretty accusatory and will ultimately not help solve the problem.

Is there a good way to say this?

What is a diplomatic way to tell a professor that progress hasn't been made because of their lack of communication?

You don't.

That is, I don't think that would be very productive, diplomatic or not. I wouldn't focus on their lack of communication in the next meeting you have with them at all; I would instead focus on using that next meeting you have with the professor to come to some resolution on the things that are delaying progress on the paper/project.

As you mentioned in the comments:

  I essentially have done everything I can, within reason. I've selected and done background on directions for the paper.

So, this is what you have, and this is what you show them. Additionally, any questions about the scope/direction of the paper, etc. should also be brought up during the face-to-face meeting.

To address additional information posted by OP:

  But I strongly suspect (and he seemed to say) that he expects me to have done more. For this question, assume that the professor will ask why more hasn't been done on the paper, so the subject will come up.

We all have limitations. You were in charge of certain aspects of the paper/project, but you were not able to achieve a certain level of progress that was set. Just be upfront about that. Specifically, tell the professor what it is you are stuck on and ask them during your face-to-face meeting if they have any feedback to offer.

It seems like this project has become a confrontational affair for you?
Honestly is there a diplomatic way of communicating with anyone, even family?
Collaboration is not direction.

if the work had been documented prior to this exercise I'm guessing the point of the task was to provoke engagement in a collaboration, which is always going to initially be confronting to one degree or another.

We collaborate as equals, we put ourselves in each other's shoes.
You can always start by asking him if he is ok to brainstorm some frameworks together or with the group?

Now is a good time if you have time? An appointment would soon be made if he was not available immediately.

A month is a fair amount of time to follow up an email. A verbal follow up would be appropriate after a few days.
Of course he's going to want to see the work.

What was the nature of the project? Was the content less important than the collaborative component?

Communication can be difficult.


Access to scientific articles that cite mine after leaving academia I used to work in academia. I was lucky enough to publish important papers in peer reviewed journals that now regularly get cited by other papers in peer reviewed journals. I have left academia to work in the private sector, so every time I get a notification that my work has been cited elsewhere in a non open access journal, I can't even see how it was used. I should be able to ensure my work isn't mis-quoted or wrongly interpreted, but I can't without paying extensive fees for each and every article...

Is sci-hub my only non-option because I refuse to use illegal means?

You can write an e-mail to the authors and ask for a copy of their published paper. Almost everyone will be happy to send you one.

Before doing that, check if the paper is already published on their webpage, or if they have submitted it to a preprint server. Use of preprint servers and embargo periods vary among the various disciplines --- in some fields you are more likely to find it online earlier, in others it's almost impossible.

Im afraid I have to disagree with the accepted answer. At least in my field of academic medicine (where authors are at least likely to have funding to order reprints), most authors stopped ordering paper reprints more than a decade ago.
I used to receive many requests for reprints from eastern Europe and from parts of the far East. Those requests died out as internet access grew.

Writing a senior author these days may net you a PDF, or simply be ignored.
Your best bet is a public access library.


How to politely decline a postdoc job offer after signing the offer letter? I recently was offered 2 researcher job offers in two different countries. The first one is from the USA and the second one is in Japan. The professor in USA prepared all the documents for a J-1 Visa and after receiving them I have been issued a visa for 2 years.

I have now been offered another, more suitable job in Japan (more related to my interest and higher salary). I am also very interested in living in Japan. Although I applied to both jobs at the same time, the selection process in Japan took a month longer than the US process.

I accepted and signed the offer letter from the USA professor. This is an agreement to the professor that I will join, moving forward the professor will issue the documents for J-1 Visa. I was also asked in the interview whether I am considering any other job positions somewhere else. I replied yes, but my first preference is this one (the USA one).

How can I politely decline or inform the US professor of my changed situation? How would the professor in the USA feel after everything is done and I decline at the last moment?

Joining the other commenters: I'm not sure what you think a "commitment" is if signing an offer letter and having your employer issue a visa do not qualify!

I'm not sure why you think that your answer in the interview is relevant: it is perfectly normal for you to consider other positions until you accept one, at which point you should take yourself off the market.

I think it is very likely that the offer is not legally binding: I have seen such things happen to departments, and they have never pursued the matter legally.  What will happen though is that the people who offered you the job will feel that you reneged on them, and in particular that you broke your word.  That they have gone to the time and expense of successfully getting you a visa is likely to amplify their feelings of ill will.  (Also, it could make them be less willing to hire foreign workers needing visas in the future: please think about the implications of that for a while.)  It is possible that this could damage your academic and professional reputation in the long-term with this faculty member, at this university, and perhaps in broader circles containing them.  It is also possible that they will get over it rather quickly and hold no lasting grudge.

If you want to renege for a permanent academic job in a country that you distinctly prefer living in: in my experience, while some will call that action dishonorable, most will ultimately countenance it as something that you needed to do in order to get the happy life you want.  But if this is a temporary job for which you cannot see your way to your next job or staying in the country you want to live in: this could turn out to be a decision that you regret.  Whatever you do, I certainly urge you to get up to speed on how academic hiring works: this will stop you from making serious mistakes in the future (and may convey other advantages in your future career).

Do not listen to other respondents.  The United States is "employment at will" which means that you can resign from your post-doc at any time for any reason - even a dumb one.  The J-1 visa is not your problem.

If you feel unreasonable pressure to take this post-doc, then that is slavery which is illegal in the United States.  Call the Department of Labor and report it.


What if you can't publish in very high impact journal or top conference during your PhD? I am a year 2 PhD student doing my research in the area of time series analysis. Since year 1, I'm always aiming to publish in high impact factor journal (Impact factor >= 7) or top conferences, maybe due to the fact that my university is not a top 10 university in the world and I do not want anyone to belittle what I have done for my PhD.

Not sure if its stress, I got to the point where I'm kinda paranoid thinking if I can't publish in such top venues then my PhD is practically a fail. I want to ask if this kind of thinking is correct? How will my PhD be valued if I cannot publish in top conferences or high impact factor journal?

Sorry for any grammar mistakes, and I really appreciate any advice given.

The goal of a Ph.D. is to learn to be an effective scientific researcher.  If you accomplish that during your Ph.D., then you will have been successful.

Moreover, early in one's career, high-rank publications don't actually correlate strongly with being an effective researcher.  They're much more about happening to be in the right research group at the right time with the right guidance.

Now, if things line up for you and it happens that your Ph.D. also generates some high-rank publications during that time, it will make your next stage easier, but it is by no means necessary.

Remember:

Most post-Ph.D. careers do not require high-rank publications.  Highly focused fields, industry, teaching-centric colleges, and many other areas will care about the solidity of your work much more than its glamour.
Interesting work often takes a long time to mature, and important work often shows up in high-rank venues only after it has been incubating in multiple publications in "bread and butter" venues over the course of years.
If you do want a career that will be boosted by high-rank publications, one or more postdocs are an excellent period to obtain such. They also let you demonstrate that you are the important factor, and that it's not just that you happened to get lucky in your Ph.D. subject and advisor.

In short: stop worrying and instead just focus on doing something interesting and worthwhile with the work you're doing now.

The first question that you need to ask yourself is ‘What do I want to do with my PhD when I get it?’ In general, there are three grand schemes that you might want to fall into:

Get a PhD for prestige.

In that case, you want to make sure that you actually keep it (i.e. don’t follow the example of quite a number of German politicians); everything else doesn’t matter.
Get a PhD to enter certain industry positions.

In this case, while the contents of your PhD will matter (at least in part), the more important aspect for getting hired and salary negotiation is what you can actually do. You might have spent five years exhausting experimental options that didn’t lead to anything publishable because the hypotheses turned out wrong or unhelpful. But you still have your five years of experimentation, research, data analysis and so on.

I keep getting told that hiring departments don’t care about a publication list at all, they only care about skills, tasks and a quick description of results in your CV.
Get a PhD to pursue an academic career.

This is the only area where no publications during PhD may cause issues – if they even do. For example, a number of (if not all) postdoctoral funding programmes will require a list of publications and sometimes a set of key publications. However, a thesis is a publication by default, so that can be entered and in the absence of other publications the thesis will be evaluated accordingly.

During your postdoctoral research phase, you will most likely change group and have a chance to work on new projects that might give a better output. Or you might find that your successors in your PhD group complete a project after you left so that can be submitted as a publication with (also) your name on it after your departure. Thus, no publications during PhD does not mean you’ve lost the game – yet. If your postdoctoral period also remains low on publications it might be time to start considering alternative career paths. (It should be pointed out that the vast majority of PhD’s will never be able to successfully pursue an academic career as there are far fewer professor positions available than PhD positions.)

Disclaimer: this answer was written by someone on their second postdoc position with no publications (although a total of three from previous groups are ‘in preparation’).


University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D? What I'm trying to understand is, to what degree does the status/rank of the University (where one completes his/her Ph.D) matter while shaping his/her career after graduation? I would like to know the weight given to one's school in both the following cases:

While applying for post-docs/faculty positions in academia
While applying to industrial research labs

For instance, I've read on some forums (I can't locate the link now) that while considering prospective applications for tenure-track faculty positions, very few Universities accept a candidate who has completed his/her Ph.D from a lower ranked school having a lesser "brand" value, irrespective of the fact whether he/she has published equally original work as his/her counterpart from an Ivy league college. How much truth is in this statement? It would be really great if someone already in academia, either as a newly-accepted faculty or someone on the Faculty Hiring committee could share their experiences/statistics on this regard. I'm simply interested to know the answer, without commenting at all on whether such a practice is justifiable.

Similarly, what about recruitment to internationally acclaimed research labs (like IBM T.J.Watson lab or Microsoft research lab) - what importance do they place on the pedigree of a candidate's college, before taking into consideration what they published ?

I'm personally interested in answers related to the field of Computer Science (theory), but the question is applicable to any prospective grad student in any discipline in my opinion. Feel free to share your personal experiences post-Ph.D in detail, as that would give me (and future viewers of this question) about what its like to carve a career once you are out of school!

Let me answer as a theoretical computer scientist with former PhD students in tenure-track academic positions and many years of experience on faculty hiring committees.  (However, my understanding is that the selection process at industrial research labs like IBM T.J. Watson, Microsoft Research, Google Research, AT&T Research, etc., is really not that different from academic recruiting.)  As always, take my advice with a grain of salt; I'm as guilty of confirmation bias as any other human being.

Nobody in theoretical computer science cares where you got your degree.  Really.  We.  Do.  Not.  Care.  We only care about the quality and visibility of your results.  Publish strong papers and give brilliant talks at top conferences.  Convince well-known active researchers to write letters raving about your work.  Make a good product and get superstars to sell it for you.  Do all that, and we'll definitely want to hire you, no matter where you got your degree.  On the other hand, without a strong and visible research record, independent from your advisor, you are much less likely to get a good academic job, no matter where you got your degree.

(This is less true in more applied areas of CS, in my experience, mostly because it's significantly harder for PhD students in those areas to work independently from their advisors.)

But.  Faculty candidates are necessarily judged by people who are not experts in their field.  Without the expertise to judge whether your work is really good, those people must look at secondary data that correlate strongly with successful researchers.  One of those secondary characteristics is "pedigree".  Did you get your degree at MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, CMU, another top-10 department, or somewhere else?  (What's an "Ivy League"?)  How good/famous is your advisor?  If they're really paying attention: Where did your advisor's other PhD students get jobs, and how well are they doing now?

Fortunately, most good departments do make a serious effort to understand the quality and impact of applicants' results, instead of relying only on secondary data.  Also, secondary data matters considerably less once you actually have an interview.

And. In my experience, where you get your degree is strongly correlated with successful research.  I got my Master's degree at UC Irvine in 1992 and my PhD at UC Berkeley in 1996.  The biggest difference I saw between the two departments was the graduate-student research culture.  Every theory student at Berkeley regularly produced good results and published them at top conferences.  When the FOCS deadline rolled around each year, the question I heard in the hallways from other students was not "You know the deadline is coming up?" or "Are you submitting anything?" but "What are you submitting?", because "nothing" was the least likely answer.  Everyone simply assumed that if you were there, you were ready and able to do publishable research.  Publishing a paper wasn't exceptional, it was just what you did.  That cloud of free-floating confidence/arrogance had a huge impact on my own development as a researcher.  I've seen similar research cultures at a few other top CS departments, especially MIT, Stanford, and CMU.  (Caveat: This is an incomplete list, and there are many departments that I've never visited.)

tl;dr: Yes, getting a PhD from a top department definitely helps, but more by helping you become a better researcher than by making you look better on paper.

In my experience, when looking for a job outside of Academia it's only that first job where your school really matters. Even in that case, it's just the most recent school, or post-doc position, or fellowship, or... that makes the difference. As your career progresses after your first job your more recent activities and experience outweigh earlier schooling.


What challenges to expect for admission to Masters/PhD in computer science and engineering after chemical engineering undergrad? I am a Chemical Engineering undergrad, and interested in pursuing a Masters in Artificial Intelligence and/or Machine Learning. I have taken a few courses in the CSE department as a part of my minor curriculum plus a few other courses, and also doing some projects in the same side-by-side. Now in the past I have faced some difficulties while taking some courses in the CSE department, and not really sure if it is going to be easy (if at all possible) to switch my majors.

What challenges am I going to face in terms of application/selection, and how can I get by them?

I assume that CSE = computer science engineering?

Like Kitty said, pursuing a Master's degree in a different area/field might be easier than a PhD, at least in terms of admissions. Many PhD programs like to see applicants with background in the subject so they can tackle the more advanced courses immediately. As such, they might be more reluctant to take a chance admitting a Chemical Engineering major for a PhD in AI compared to admitting one for the Master's degree. In addition, PhD cohorts tend to be much smaller than Master's level cohorts, which means Master's level admissions might be (relatively) less competitive compared to PhD level admissions. You might also want to check out the discussion here (slightly different, but still relevant).

Personally, I switched fields from undergraduate to graduate school, and I got admitted to most programs to which I applied. I think the biggest challenge is explaining why you want to make the switch. A question that came up during my interviews was why I was trying to switch fields at the graduate level instead of the undergraduate level (i.e., answering the "if you are interested in this field so much, why did you get a Bachelor's degree in something else" question). If you have a good answer to this, I think you'll be at least moderately successful.

Reviewers of your application might also want to see that you have the necessary intellectual skills for the degree, but if you did well in your chemical engineering major, you should be fine because the math, science, and writing skills should all be transferable. You mention that you had "difficulties" in the CSE classes, which you may need to explain, depending on what exactly those difficulties were.

Other than these, I think you'll just face the same challenges as everyone else applying in terms of making sure your recommendation letters are strong, standardized test scores (if applicable) are good, et cetera.

I think pursuing a master in the major that you are interested in would be much easier than doing a PHD in similar area. To be selected and become a PHD student, applicants always got to have very good CGPA results in their Bachelor's degrees. Some of my former classmates who were doing their PHDs all graduated with CGPA higher than 3.6 something.
Hope this help!


What are the main reasons postdoc applicants get rejected? I'm applying for postdoc jobs right now (math). I was put on the short-list for one position and had an interview but the PI for that postdoc made the offer to someone else. I'm starting to get discouraged and wondering what I'm doing wrong. I showed my research statement to a few faculty members and they said it was fine. I also got a letter from one very well-known mathematician. Maybe I didn't make enough faculty contacts? Was I supposed to have a contact at each place I applied to? Maybe what I am doing is not trendy enough.

Question 1: What do I have to do to get noticed by the hiring committees?

Question 2: What are people getting postdocs doing that people who don't get postdocs aren't doing?

There are two big issues: competition and potentially poor fit. Either can knock you out. In some fields, at some times, the competition is fierce. Be happy (a bit) that you made the short list.

On the other side of the coin, it is possible that a candidate is seen as a poor fit for the position. This is more likely to happen early in the process unless it comes down to personal issues - arrogance, or indifference, or ...

Your materials can be fine and you can be fine, but someone else is just seen to be a better fit at the moment. Soldier on.

You may not need the rest of the advice, below, since you seem to be able to reach the shortlist, but for others, note that your written materials have to be positive/strong enough to move you from the "all applicants" pile into the "we should look at this person" pile. The second pile is very short and if you don't get into it at a quick reading, you are done. Once you are in the shortlist it becomes more of a personal and less of an institutional "game". If you know you are a marginal fit for a position, don't bother applying except in exceptional circumstances.

In my experience the biggest issue is eligibility to work in the UK. If you are (currently) a non eu citizen and any of the other candidates is appointable then we can not hire you, even if you are the best candidate. The situation is the same in the USA.