Is it plagiarism to submit the same work in a course after withdrawing from the course on a previous occasion? I took a course a couple years ago and was doing well until I could not attend any longer and abruptly had to stop. I am currently retaking the course and wanted to hand in the work I submitted years ago since I worked hard on it and did well. Is this plagiarism or against some academic code?

Whether or not this is a problem probably depends more on the goal of the assignment for the purpose of this course rather than plagiarism as a general academic concept, because in both cases the work is your own sole work for a course assignment (the same course even), and is not owned by anyone else, published, etc.

The only thing you can do is to ask your instructor for guidance. Depending on their goals for the assignment, they may be okay with a re-submission of the previous work or they may want you to complete a new assignment; they may even want you to pick a new topic if the assignment allows for a broader interpretation.

Both the question (plagiarism) and the current answers (yes / no / ask your instructor) are not in line with what a typical teacher would expect: the purpose of the class is that you learn something.

Unfortunately a past achievement is not necessarily the same as something you can still do now. So the question you should ask yourself, and also what your teacher wants to see is: are you capable of completing this assignment TODAY.

In other words: you are not in university to pass exams. You are there to learn something. So the solution is simple: do the assignment again.

If you already know how to do it you will get it done quickly.
If there are details you forgot, you will learn something which is the purpose of attending the course in the first place.

Good luck!


Any ethical problems with dating a former student? Assume the student

recently graduated but works nearby;
has not been my student for over 1 year;
has never expressed any interest in dating until very recently;
has a father who is a coworker at my institution (different department).

I don't see any inherent ethical problems here: the key word is former student, so there is no present power dynamic, conflict of interest or anything like that.

However, you should be prepared for those in your department to find out that you are dating a former student, which could create a certain amount of push back.  For instance:

The one year gap between the student being in your course and your romantic relationship will not be apparent to all who know about the relationship.  Even if you tell them, they may not believe it.  Even if neither of you expressed an interest in dating until recently, people may still suspect that you had romantic feelings for one of your students while they were your student.
There is presumably some age differential.  If it is small enough, people will probably ignore it.  If it is large enough, a lot of people will try to figure out "Why is s/he dating him/her?" This will motivate them to find out that your romantic partner is your former student.
If you date more than one former student, people may view you as using your classroom as a hunting ground for future romance.  If this sentiment is held widely, it could make your future students uncomfortable.

I hasten to add that none of these point to any clear ethical lapse or mistake on your part.  In particular, the idea that it is disturbing for a much older (adult) to date a much younger (adult) may be more of a societal taboo/hangup than anything that can be rationally justified.  It is also true that most romantic relationships come with a certain amount of push back, and some kinds of romantic relationships still get a lot of push back for things that many/most of us feel strongly are absolutely unproblematic: e.g. inter-racial relationships, same sex relationships.  (In fact, I am very sorry to say that if your relationship is not inter-racial or same sex, any push back you get will probably be mild compared to that, and if it is, that will increase the push back considerably.)  I recommend weighing the possible costs of such a relationship against the possible benefits.

I guess it shouldn't be a problem, a famous example can be found here and here :). Both are highly respected in their field.


How to deal with students who lose their digital work? In my courses, students work on large, on-going projects, but submit some parts each week, showing their progress. All of the work is done on a computer or table.

Mid-semester, I always get reports from students of technical failures, e.g.:

Deleted entire project folder.
Reformatted hard drive or upgraded system without backup.
Sent computer to be repaired, cannot work on project until it returns.
USB not unmounted, files broken.
Device containing project folder lost or stolen.

I want to create a policy which is not so harsh as to turn all of these students away. At the same time, I worry if I am a little lenient, students will start claiming problems every time they forget to do their homework. What is a good policy that is not too harsh, recognizing that technical problems do happen, yet which cannot be too easily abused?

You should deal with them in the same way that you deal with students who claim to have lost non-digital work.  Here are two reasons:

This is not really any different from when students complained that "the dog ate my homework."  Both paper and digital formats are susceptible to being damaged, lost, or destroyed.

They will not get any special exceptions from their boss when they lose important digital documents in a real job.

My students do most of their work in digital formats and I've never made special exceptions.  I suppose I would do so in some unusual circumstances (say, a university server where they were told to store their work had been hacked).
If you want to help them develop better digital work habits, introduce them to backups, Dropbox and/or version control.  But I don't think that is your job.

From the sound of it, the assignment is being submitted little by little, over many weeks. In that case, students can retain their previous weekly grades, but lose credit for the most recent iteration.
Say it's a matter of 10% a week for ten weeks. The student has successfully made five submissions, earning up to 50% for those weeks. In week 6, the files get lost. The student gets a 0 (out of 10) for week 6.
Hopefully, the file will have been recreated by week 7. If not, then another 0 for week 7, etc. until the end of the course.
Basically, the student gets credit on an ongoing basis for successful early submissions and loses credit for each week of "failure."


How to deal with animosity between different "factions" in a certain field? In academia, there are sometimes sort of "feuds" between different researchers. For example, one such situation is described here: https://www.quora.com/Mathematicians-What-is-the-story-behind-the-feud-between-Shing-Tung-Yau-and-Gang-Tian?share=1
Lately, something like this has affected me. People I work with will bad-mouth other researchers in our field, or other researchers will bad-mouth people I work with. Sometimes, they will say that so-and-so's results are trivial or that they stole the results from someone else, or that they got a lot of help from a different mathematician and aren't actually very talented. The bad-mouthing seems to happen on both sides and seems to be born out of a kind of vicious competitiveness. Here are some of the ways this has disrupted my PhD:

I am really paranoid about people's intentions and even though it seems like, from the outside, that my PhD is going very well (going into my third year I have one publication already and am making good progress on other projects), I am certain some people in my own university even, have the impression I am not a very good mathematician because they think my advisor is a fraud.
I have recently had the opportunity to work with someone from the "other side" of this conflict and have not yet told my advisor about that. I am afraid she will be very angry with me if/when I do. To complicate things, my advisor has told me some of her research ideas in the past and is extremely secretive about them. I just don't have the same sense of secrecy about my own research ideas. Luckily I don't work on what my advisor works on but she still might be quite upset that I've been "talking to the enemy" so to speak.
Although no one has directly been "mean" to me the ways in which I have seen people try to tear each other down has contributed to my total disillusionment with academia and made my field seem like a place where people compete for reputation rather than trying to do real work motivated by curiosity rather than ambition. It's just very depressing and stressful to imagine having to deal with this kind of thing.

As a young PhD student, I am shocked by the way the "adults" in my academic life behave. My instinct is to pretend this doesn't exist and focus on my math. I do not make any judgments about who is right and generally shut my ears whenever these topics come up. To some extent, it seems very inappropriate to me that my professors and collaborators discuss these kinds of things with me at all. Furthermore, I think one reason I have been successful as a PhD student is because I am very friendly and open to people. This has allowed me to learn a lot and collaborate with a lot of people despite having little to no contact with my advisor most of the time (we are on good terms, she just doesn't really make time for me).
These conflicts seem to have been started long before I was even in college so from my perspective, it has nothing to do with me, it's not really my business, and I don't even pretend to know all the details of who did what and why. And yet people I respect a lot gossip to me like school girls as if they are trying to convince me of a particular position.
Question: Has any of you had to deal with this kind of mean-spirited competitive research environment? How did you handle it? Should I avoid working with people "across the aisle" in order to stay out of conflict with them? Am I being naive to try to be friends with everyone and not hide what I'm working on like it's a secret recipe?

The same happened to me. I stayed friendly towards everybody and participated in both groups. I think it worked for me. It leaves all doors open. I think a key point is never agreeing with any bad-mouthing, ever. Sometimes this is socially difficult. I would play dumb and say "Oh" or "I understand", but never "You're right" or "Yes, totally".

What you are describing is a situation where by analogy you are stuck at home and mommy and daddy (the ‘adults’) are arguing a lot. You are afraid that mommy will be angry with you and you describe yourself as being paranoid about other people’s intentions. In other words there are, as you perceive the situation, at least two causes for your getting anxious, upset, even depressed.
Some contributors have recommended experiential avoidance which is not ideal but if you choose to do this you still have to confront why this situation is making you feel so anxious.  According to much traditional philosophy and modern knowledge of psychology (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in particular) it is easier to change your perspective on things than the things themselves. When you do this you find the problem is not in the situation or in what other people are doing and saying but in your distorted way of looking at what they say and do. What are you telling yourself that is making you so anxious?
It is likely you are engaged in mind-reading (other people’s intentions) which is not evidence-based or that you are catastrophizing which is a kind of fortune telling and again not based on evidence. You have to put some of your assumptions about yourself to the test and you also might want to get your feet wet by talking to your supervisor and geting that relationship on to an honest footing instead of second guessing what each other is thinking. Phd research is both an outer and an inner journey of discovery and I do not believe many young researchers realise this until later on in life. I recommend ‘The Feeling Good [about Yourself] Handbook’ by Dr David Burns Phd which requires some more homework on your part including completing Mood Logs on a daily basis until you have thrashed out your own ‘invisible’ contribution to the problem.  This will put you back in the control seat and enable you to sit with the adults in the room as another respected adult, possibly also as a friend to some.


Is it plagiarism if someone else came up with something before you did? Say you come up with an idea, but X already has written about it before, even though you don't know about this.

Is it plagiarism to then publish the idea, even if during publishing you still are not aware that X came up with this idea first?

That is, can you accidentally commit plagiarism in this way?

If you publish an idea that turns out to have been previously known, but you were unaware of the prior work before you published it, then it's not plagiarism.  Depending on the circumstances, it could be considered poor scholarship, or even negligence if you really should have found the reference.  However, it's not a form of academic dishonesty if you truly didn't know.

If you come up with an idea on your own, learn that it was previously known, and subsequently publish it as original work without disclosing the prior source, then it's definitely academic dishonesty.  I wouldn't use the word "plagiarism" if you came up with the idea independently, but it's still misconduct to act like you're unaware of the idea's history.

The trickiest case is if you may have been aware of the idea in the past, but forgotten about it.  That's a horrible mess, since the rest of the world has no way of knowing whether you genuinely forgot or are being dishonest.  (You really don't want to have to argue that you aren't a thief, but rather massively screwed up.)  This is the only case in which I think accidental plagiarism is really plausible.

This is not at all common, but it can happen more easily than you might hope, so it's best to be careful to keep track of what you've heard about.  The worrisome scenario is the following: you hear Smith give a talk, but you don't really understand it or care very much, so you basically forget about it.  Some years later, you are faced with a similar problem and come up with more or less the same idea to solve it.  You don't realize how similar it is to Smith's talk, but you may have been influenced by subconscious memories, so you haven't really discovered it independently.  When you publish your idea, Smith writes to you to say "How dare you use my idea without giving me any credit!  I know you were at my talk, since we chatted afterwards, and your colleague X confirms that he remembers you there as well.  Did you really think you could get away with this?"

Real plagiarism involves deliberately copying someone else's work. I saw this when editing a paper for a PhD candidate who was worried about his English. Parts of the paper were badly constructed, but other parts were letter perfect. So I used Google to check for some of the unique phrases in the well-written section. Bingo! Wikipedia!

I did not tell him what I found. Instead I fixed the most glaring of his errors in English, gave him a note that Wikipedia was not an acceptable source, and hoped that his advisor and his examination committee would discover his malfeasance. They needed to hang him by his thumbs.

Generally if you find that you have inadvertently used someone else's idea without attribution it is good if you can later publish something that corrects the situation. It's better to do it that way than to have someone else point you out as a possible thief.


How badly does failing a core class and retaking it hurt your chances at grad school programs? I'm sorry if this is in the wrong place.
I'm an undergraduate majoring in biology. I think, this semester, I'll fail a class on Statistics (the class is titled "Statistics for Life Sciences"). While I have the option this semester to use "Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory" and protect my GPA, this is nonetheless a failure that will show up on my transcript.
I know I messed up and I feel really bad... I could have taken an introductory Math class (an option available to those with only an AS Level in Mathematics) before taking this Statistics class and I stupidly chose not to (officially, an AS Level meets the prerequisite for this Statistics class, though most students taking it have a full A Level in Mathematics). But this is no excuse (it's officially allowed, and plenty of AS Math students succeed in this class) and I think in fact reflects worse on my judgement.  :(
I fully intend to retake this course (I can't not take it anyway; it's a core class, plus Statistics is important in Biology) and do much better in it.
How badly does this hurt my chances at a graduate school program in biology? Assuming my other biology-related classes are okay (A grades). I don't know how I'm going to explain it. I was hoping to take a research Master's, then a PhD. Am I screwed?
Thanks for any input and and have a nice day.

At any stage in your career, people who will evaluate whether to give you an opportunity will (or at least should) be looking at multiple aspects of your CV. For each "weak" aspect there should be a "strong" aspect that offsets it. Provided this is true, you should become eligible for consideration. After that, it is often a matter of luck and the competitive nature of the opportunity.
Having said, that, there are places and systems which I personally know of that will automatically reject applications that have a single blemish. These places and systems are making a mistake (in my opinion). In any case, perhaps you would not want to be in a place that does not believe in giving people a second chance.
In summary, I think there are a number of good places which would give you the opportunity if you can counter this particular failure by something---which could even be a good grade in the same course on your second attempt.


Is it normal to feel impatient in lectures when a lecturer explains material that could be obtained from textbooks? I am a senior PhD student who greatly appreciates learning about allied fields. I had been a huge fan of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and I believe some of them steered the course of my life towards grad school. However, I am more and more getting impatient in lectures. I am a Mathematician but I like to study Economics and Computer Science for fun. My university pays for any courses I would ever want to take as a PhD student so I try to enroll but I am losing my patience. I feel the instructor is taking up too much time explaining things that I could grab off the textbook in much lesser time and in the process, form the connections better. Is this normal?

As someone who has had 20 years of schooling since kindergarten, is it normal to get impatient and want to do things by myself. I know I am implicitly making the assumption that one is motivated enough to stick by routines but that's fine.

You have to take into account that many of the courses you attend are not made for you. They are probably made for people that have a lot less experience. Even though you might not have a lot of knowledge yet regarding the topic you are attending a course in, you have much more general knowledge and acquired learning skills throughout your PhD.

If you want to learn these new things through courses, I think you just have to suck it up as the focus of these courses is probably on less experienced people. Alternatively, you could pick up some text books and start learning like that.

You are impatient in lectures because they are fundamentally not a good way to teach.  If universities were about teaching then lectures would already be nearly obsolete - MOOCs are orders of magnitude more efficient.  But, for students, universities are about certification and MOOCs aren't trusted enough in that capacity.

This has nothing to do with your being a PhD student - the vast majority of lectures add nothing beyond what can be found in the textbook.  Well, perhaps a little, as a PhD student I would assume you actually read the textbook, and therefore have no need for the lecture.

This is not a popular point of view among those who must give lectures, but it is far more widespread among those who must attend them.  And, really, who are you going to believe?


Why do publishers allow distributing preprints? I recently wanted to read one conference paper and one journal article. The conference paper is named Division by invariant integers using multiplication. By clicking on the "All 9 versions" link on Google Scholar, I found the full paper on gmplib.org.

The journal article is named improved division by invariant integers. It is also available at several sources as PDF.

Why do publishers allow such redistribution of papers / preprints? I mean, if everyone is doing the same as I'm doing, the main revenue source of publishers will go away. Is it because publishers obtain their main revenue from university libraries? If I can't find a PDF preprint of an article, the next thing I'm going to do is to try to find the article through my university library.

Although this is speculation since I don't work for a publisher, there are a couple of reasons I can think of:

Due to pressure from funders, who want the research they funded to be publicly available.
To take away the focus from gold open access. Publishing preprints is known as green open access, and means that authors are allowed to post their work elsewhere. Often, however, this is with restrictions: only the non-peer reviewed version is allowed, and only after a certain period. This discourages academic libraries from cancelling their subscriptions, and appeases the funders who might otherwise call for the published version to be publicly available immediately. (Note: I think this was mainly a motivation before the publishers figured out they could heavily charge funders for the latter requirements.)
Because it might be hard to argue in a legal case for publishers to restrict access to research that they haven't been involved with at all (i.e. not yet been peer reviewed, layout done by the researcher themself, etc.). Yes, they often coerce authors in transferring copyrights to the publishers, but they might rather not test the strength of that argument in court.
As a courtesy, to maintain goodwill. It's clear now that it doesn't really threaten their business model (no subscriptions appear to have been cancelled in response to preprints being available), so they can easily do this.

It's a sign of goodwill, mostly.

Publishers, librarians and academics all rely on one another, and none of them can function without the other two. It's true that by allowing preprints, publishers are risking subscription revenue. University libraries are the main source of subscriptions, and they are highly incentivized not to subscribe if everything is available via Google Scholar! However prohibiting the author from uploading preprints will also generate hostility among academics, who might refuse to submit to the publisher (or worse - see The Cost of Knowledge boycott). It's a balancing act which most publishers err on the side of not prohibiting preprints.

Here's something related: can a university library completely discontinue journal subscriptions and ask its academics to use resources like Google Scholar or Sci-Hub? Yes and no. The library can do it and probably save some money instantly, but in the long run, the publishers will shut down and the journals too, and there'd be no one to handle peer review. Like it or not, all three of publishers, librarians and academics are stuck with one another.


How often academic inventions have already been invented in private companies? Is there any research/study/survey that looked at how often academic inventions have already been in private companies (or public but secretive organizations, e.g. the RSA cryptosystem was first discovered UK intelligence agency GCHQ)?

I am most interested in the field of computer science.

I expect that such a study cannot, in fact, be effectively done.

The reason is that academic re-invention of a closely held secret will be virtually impossible to reliably document except in particular anecdotal high-profile cases, such as RSA.

Most secret information probably does not become public at all: I suspect that most obsolete trade secrets in companies eventually simply end up in the trash or shredder, because why would anybody bother doing anything else?
For any secret that does become publicly available, there generally will be a long delay before that occurs.  At that point, the relationship between two independently invented decades-old technologies will be difficult to detect by anybody not specifically motivated, since they likely would have very different terminology and specifics.

As such, I would expect that it is impossible to do any general study on the frequency with which academic research is a re-invention of secret work elsewhere.

There are plenty of documented instances of excellent computer science research done in private industrial research organizations. For instance, IBM Research is the largest R&D organisation in the world in the general area of computer science .

In particular, some of these are:

Fast Fourier Transform
Fractals
Relational Databases

It happens and has happened often, historically.


Why do lecturers not just assume all students have read the book? One thing I don't understand about lectures is why the lecturer covers the material that is already presented in the book and assigned as reading material to the students.

Is the assumption that some students are actually incapable of reading? If not, what then is the point of covering the same stuff in the lecture? Imagine that reading the book is a lecture itself: what then is the point of giving two identical lectures?

I understand that some students may not understand the book, and a spoken lecture makes it possible to answer questions and provide clarifications on unclear statements from the book, or just to add more detail/intuition to a certain topic.

But, truth be told, those parts of a lecture make up a small, small minority. Most of the lecture is indeed spent on just repeating what the book said - except of course with much less detail, since you can't cram 30 pages of written words in a 1 hour lecture.

So would it not be much more efficient to do it differently? Here's one example for a 1 hour lecture, but you can think of your own:

Spend the first 15 minutes on recitation of the book material. It gets everyone on board, sets the tone, refreshes everyone's mind. During these 15 minutes, certain added remarks can be made if the lecturer feels them necessary.
Spend the next 10 minutes answering questions by confused students.
You now have 35 minutes left to cover extra material not presented in the book. This could be in-depth examples or intuition of the topic just covered, advanced extensions, or just some extra topic that you wouldn't have time to otherwise cover in your course.

This way you are both more efficient since you are not wasting time repeating stuff, and you also take care of students' questions and get some time to add clarifying remarks. You get the best of both worlds.

The answer may depend on what type of course we are talking about, here I'll focus on STEM.

The most obvious answer would be "because it would be a false assumption". Many students don't read the books. But then you get to the question: why don't the students read the books?

I'm an engineering student, and here's my perspective: in STEM courses it's quite often the case that the lectures are quite simply a boiled-down version of the books; they present the same theorems as the books, in the same order, often using the same examples, but without all the "fluff". Students don't read the books because we go to the lectures, take notes, and get all the necessary material in a document we wrote ourselves. Writing it ourselves helps us learn the material, and since it's a boiled-down version it's much less material to read through when preparing for exams.

As for professors, if they assume that the books have been read and understood, they wouldn't have much to talk about since what they planned to present was the book's material. They could use lectures for Q&A sessions and practice problems but attendance would be quite low in that case and students would complain about paying for simply being told what book to read instead of being presented the material. Besides, (at least in the case of my university) Q&As and practice problem sessions are typically done by the TAs on a regular basis anyway.

I imagine this may not hold for other types of classes such as history or literature in which documents are assigned to be read and then discussed and analyzed in class, but I have little to no experiences with those so I can't give an informed answer.

P.S: "Imagine that reading the book is a lecture itself". Fun fact: the word lecture is french for reading.

Because not everyone is exactly like you and not everyone learns by reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles


Is it true, that there are/can be associate professors, full professors and University provosts without doctorate in the Western Continental Europe? There is legislative proposal in our small country (Republic of Latvia, Baltic Country, European Union) that proposes to allow elected associate professors, full professors and provosts of the research universities to be without doctorate (e.g. PhD or MD or other doctorate). The authors of proposal are saying that anglo-saxon and Western European countries have tradition (even Stanford University) to have such positions filled with persons not having doctorate.
I can not believe this. Doctorate degree is so common in academia, I can understand that only junior lecturers and assistant professors can be without doctorate (with mandatory master degree). But starting from associate professors - degree should be a must in science and medical studies.
Is there clarification available under which circumstances the Continental Western European research universities allow associate, full professors and provosts to be without doctorate (e.g. PhD or MD) (I mean specifically doctorate in medicine, and no just the professional qualification).
My question applies specifically to the Continental Western Europe starting from Germany and Austria and going to the West. My question applies to the research and technical universities, not the Tertiary Art education (in which it is fair to have professional degrees). The previous version of this question applied to Anglo-Saxon countries as well but I was reminded about similar US specific question, as well as there were comments about distinct UK traditions. So - there are a lot of information on Academia site about US and UK, so, I narrowed this question to the laws and practices of Continental Western Europe.
I edited question once more - I replaced wording "PhD/MD" with "doctorate". Of course, my question is about doctorate generally, not about particular type of doctorate as PhD or MD.
If this question gathers enough proof that such legislative proposal is contrary to the traditions of the Western Universities, then I can bring this proof to the authors of the proposed legislation to question their true intentions.

It's pretty rare, but it looks like the University of Cambridge recently appointed someone without a doctorate to the Rouse Ball Professorship of English Law, and I've seen advertisements for associate-professor level vacancies in Engineering (in the UK) that call for either a Ph.D. or Chartered Engineer status, but not necessarily both.
The "Order of seniority of graduates" of the University of Cambridge (which primarily decides who's at the front and who's at the back in ceremonial processions) contains a special category for Professors who are not Doctors, which kind of implies that such people must exist.
ETA: I see the question has now been edited in such a way that this is no longer an answer to it.

Academia has turned into a meat grinder and generally people who have a PhD will try to keep people without a PhD out purely because they didn't go through the same process.
There continues to be an inflation of qualifications for every area, classically a PhD was not needed not valued- Newton didn't have a doctorate nor did many important scientists in the past that worked at universities.


How important is it to have publications to get a math postdoc? The applications often ask for a publication list. If the only publication on the list is a thesis in preparation/preprint, would the candidate's application be rejected because of that? Is it necessary to have more than a thesis to be competitive/considered?

I ask this because one mathematician told me that he doesn't care about the number of publications, but about the quality of the work. Then again, 5 high-quality publications is better than 4...

[The following answer is from the point of view of a tenured professor of theoretical mathematics at an American university.  I believe that most of what I say applies in many places outside of the United States, but not everywhere, and I will not try to say exactly where I think it applies.]

A generation ago the publication culture within mathematics was quite different from other STEM fields.  Students leaving their PhDs were not expected to have any publications at all, and I believe the majority of them did not.  This phenomenon was pretty extreme, to the extent that for many eminent mathematicians you can see that their first publication is work done at an REU when they were an undergraduate, often followed by a gap of about five years, then their "real" publications begin only after their thesis.  A postdoctoral job was awarded mostly based on the relatively brief description of the thesis work provided by the student and (more importantly, I think) the student's thesis advisor.

[In my case, I graduated with a math PhD from Harvard in 2003 and my first paper wasn't until 2005.  To make sure I wasn't overextrapolating from my own experience, I went back to look at my classmates at Harvard.  I found a few cases in which a paper from their thesis appeared slightly before they graduated, but in most cases their first paper appears 1-2 years after graduation.]

Nowadays, a few graduating PhDs can still function on the above model, but only under really ideal conditions: top program, advisor with enormous pull who says great things about you in the letter.  To get personal again:

1) I am about to graduate my fifth PhD student at UGA.  All of these students had at least a submitted paper by the time they graduate; in most cases they had one or more accepted papers.

2) Part of the application for postdoc positions at UGA [of which there are several kinds, but this is a common feature] is a publication list.  I have been responsible for making offers to postdocs for a while now, and I am struggling to remember making an offer to someone who didn't at least have a publicly available submitted preprint.  Sometimes we have had candidates who were otherwise of interest but it's hard to pull the trigger based on seeing none of their work when there are so many other applicants who have multiple papers.

And to get less personal:

3) Whereas 15 years ago good students from top departments didn't need and most often didn't have any preprints, nowadays it is more common for good students from top departments to exit with several papers.

I do however want to add an important caveat: more mathematics done is better than less mathematics done.  [As is not so surprising!]  However, more papers are not better than fewer papers if the more papers don't create the impression of having done more work of significance.  In particular, the cultural of theoretical mathematics very much works against the LPU model espoused in another answer: writing too many papers on the same topic "without new ideas" creates a poor impression.  If two mathematical journals differ by one tier, than having one paper in the better journal is better than having at least two papers in the worse journal.  If the journals differ by more than one tier, having one paper in the better journal is probably better than having any number of papers in the worse journal.  The top journals in mathematics want to publish important, substantial, difficult, breakthrough work: if you split one such 40 page paper up into four ten page papers, then you have four papers that each do very partial things and are not going to be published in nearly as good venues.  Moreover you will get the reputation as having "more papers than theorems," which is not good.

I would say that the following is a good publication model for a new math PhD: have a portion of your thesis already submitted to a good journal and have one other reasonable paper [possibly on a different topic] published elsewhere.  More papers than that is not necessarily helpful: the quality of your thesis work still matters more.

I think it is extremely important.   At a minimum, try to figure out how the thesis can be broken into LPUs* and published.

People want production.  Papers are production.  Don't let anyone bleating about the purity of science tell you otherwise.  I'm here to give you the sitting-in-the-bar truth.  People who pat you on the shoulder and say "it's fine" are not doing you a favor by being nicey-nice and not sharing the real skinny.

Note, LPUs are not as sleazy as they sound.  People very rarely read/cite Ph.D. theses.  You need to get your work into journals so that people can benefit from it.  A tree falling in the forest, not getting heard, does nobody any benefit.  Even if the work is imperfect or incomplete, figure out how to wrap it up into publishable units.  LPUs are easy to read, process, review, etc.

The same thing will apply in the work world (especially in industry or government, but also academia) if you lose funding on an initiative.  PUBLISH your work.  Of course, you want perfection.  But there is a chronic issue of partial or even completed work never being written up (much of it funded by tax dollars).  That the work is not complete or perfect is immaterial (although I admire the drive for perfection).  At a certain point, you just have to wrap up.  So figure it out, how to do so.  There is a famous line in The Hot Zone where a scientist criticizes someone for not publishing a single medical case (i.e. sample size 1!) of airborne ebola in a monkey.

Ideally you will BOTH do good work AND publish it.  But if you do good work and don't publish, you are useless.  If I say a record with no journal publications, I assume either you didn't accomplish anything OR you are bad at writing things up.  Of course the latter is "less bad".  But it's still bad.  Postdocs should be producers.  And you demonstrate this during your Ph.D., especially towards the end.  You show that you are a producer; get things done; stand on your own; etc.  It's one of the reasons why you are ready to leave.

You can, right now, at least chop your thesis, into a few separate computer files (of planned papers), put a title on each paper.  Now you have some "in preparation" papers.  Ideally, I would get some of them out the door, so you can put "submitted, J. Subspec. Math," on your pub list.  But at least several "in preps".

*Least Publishable Unit


How to deal with unnecessary stress introduced by the supervisor? I am doing my PhD in a high prestige UK university.
I am finishing my second year and I have funding for three years in total.
I have already two papers finished (pending to be published) and working on two more.

I like research and I like being pushed to achieve the best I can. What I don't like however is introducing unnecessary stress into my daily life. With this I mean the following:

I think that it is totally acceptable and expected of me to work overtime when nearing a deadline. Usually the month before a deadline I work 12 hours per day, 6-7 days a week. This is totally fine and to some extent I enjoy it.

My supervisor is a brilliant researcher. Young and successful in his field with many publications in high prestige venues. However, he's also the classic stereotype of the super-workaholic academic who works 7 days a week, from early in the morning until late at night.

It's common for him to send messages or emails at 23.00 or during weekends asking for something. This could range from asking to complete a certain task or a simple "What is the status of X?".

I find this exhausting. To work hard during the week I need to have a "safe space" where I know that I can relax without worrying about work. Otherwise I feel demotivated to work hard. Due to this behavior I have anxiety issues. Recently, after a very stressful period mostly due to work, my hair started falling. This was identified by my GP as "Telogen effluvium". It can happen after very stressful periods. Thankfully it stopped but it's a clear sign that I've been stressing too much.

Ignoring my emails and messages is not an option for me. The reason is that I know that he genuinely cares about my PhD and many times his messages may be about the changes he has done on my paper. Ignoring this makes me feel ungrateful.

My most important problem is that, looking back, 70% of the stress introduced by supervisor could have been totally avoided if he could relax a bit. He's micromanaging me and wants to know everything. And many times we could have taken a month more on a project instead of rushing things.

Moreover, because he's always pressuring me to do as many things as possible as fast as possible, I feel that I cannot do any quality work. I prefer quality for quantity. He's the opposite.

I have tried to convey my feelings to him multiple times already. He does not seem to get it. Or he may back off for 2-3 weeks and then resumes his previous behavior. In a recent confrontation I mentioned the words "unnecessary stress" and he didn't take it very well.

Many colleagues have told me that I should be thankful because he's actively working on my PhD while other supervisors are totally absent. I find this unfair. None of the two should be OK.

Overall I feel burned-out and demotivated. This saddens me because I really like my PhD and research in general.

However, I don't think I can take this for one more year.

Question: How to deal with a workaholic supervisor who is introducing unnecessary stress into my daily life?

p.s. It's important to mention that my supervisor probably suffers from anxiety as well. This is somewhat known by his PhD students and he has implied it one or two times.

It is not unreasonable for a supervisor to write emails in the middle of the night. I do it myself, and frequently at that (sometimes because I am honestly just working late, sometimes because I am in a different time zone). However, it is unreasonable to expect immediate response when you do so (more accurately, it is unreasonable to expect immediate response for basically any email, as the medium is fundamentally asynchronous and nobody should expect you to have your email open all the time).

That said, a significant part of the problem also appears to be your own mindset. You can't realistically change when your supervisor sends you work, but you can definitely change when you read it, and when and how you react to it. Just not reading emails in the night is a big start. Many people do it, and you do not need to have a bad conscience when you do it as well. A second part of this is also to not interpret every email as implicitly highest-priority. Try to assess what a realistic timeline for any given work task is - if your supervisor does not specify you don't need to assume it needs to be done next thing in the morning.

One problem that you may face is that you have by now trained your supervisor that you read and react to every email at any point in time. Even if it's unreasonable, it is somewhat understandable that this is by now how your supervisor thinks you work. The most pragmatic way is to change things gradually over time, combined with a non-accusory one-on-one talk with your supervisor that you are unable to deal with your current work mode. Don't use the words "you are stressing me out" or anything else that puts the token and blame on him. Say that you are stressed out and need to change how you work. The goal is not to elicit a different behavior from him (although this may also come out of the meeting as a sideeffect), but to communicate to him how you plan to address your stress-related issues going forward.

Set a vacation message that says you will respond at certain times.

Before you do this, tell your advisor you need to normalize your sleep patterns, on the orders of your doctor, in order to work more effectively (you did see the doctor about this, yes?).


Is there anything wrong with faculty socializing with grad students? I was a little bit surprised to read this comment thread on the Chronicle of Higher Education, which suggests (among other things) that faculty shouldn't fraternize with grad students. I think this site has a different slant than CHE, so I thought I would bring up the question here. Is there anything wrong with faculty socializing with grad students?

I agree that professors should definitely avoid getting romantically involved with grad students, or getting drunk with them. Moreover, I agree that a heightened sense of boundaries is important.

But is there any reason for a professor, who would otherwise be interested, to decline offers to attend parties thrown by grad students, or to go hiking with them, or to play soccer with them, or to go to bar trivia with them? I've observed this to be common in math departments, and appreciated by faculty and students alike.

I suppose it depends on whether one views grad students as hoi polloi who need to be kept on the other side of a "class boundary" (as the CHE comment put it), or whether one views them as colleagues who just happen to not be as far along on their academic journeys.  I prefer to see them as colleagues.

For what it's worth, when I was a grad student my advisor often had us (his research group) over to his house for dinners and drinks, and I'd often play racquetball with one of my dissertation committee members.  This made us feel appreciated and made it much more palatable to put in crazy hours when needed to meet a proposal or paper submission deadline.  And now, as a tenured faculty member, I take my students out to lunches and dinners and beers and hiking trips (alas, I'm too old for racquetball now).  I enjoy getting to know my students as whole individuals, and find that the socialization engenders a sense of community that makes things more pleasant for everyone.

Socializing with students is very different from being "buddies" with them: the relationship between a professor and an advisee is very different than that between friends.  But IMHO this is no different than any other professional relationship with any other colleague: there are some things that are fine to share and others that are best left unexplored.

There might be a problem here. Now this is somewhat related to what happens in corporate . If the student is a brown -noser then that is ok. He might be doing this(socializing ,which often leads to doing personal favors for adviser) to further his career. But if he is a backstabber ,he might get away with that crap , because he is close to that adviser and adviser completely trusts him.

I have personally seen cases where the grad student would go to an adviser's home ,babysit her kids , do her some personal chores and then speak crap about other students .And since the adviser thought this student was sincere, she would believe in whatever he said sans verification.

It is always better to have a friendly relationship with peers but with an Adviser you should be  a friendly acquaintance ,but not a friend . A manager (in this case an adviser or mostly lab supervisor) should always keep his distance from his student.


What to teach first: theory or practice? The educational system in which I have studied focuses on teaching the theory/abstract theoretical courses before the applications.

For example, I spent the first 1-2 years of a 5-year engineering program only studying Mathematics, Physics and other basic courses before even getting any hint what the applied problems we will eventually try to solve are. In terms of tools, I first learned and programmed the individual methods and then I used "real-life" software for the first time.

Now, having seen applications, I look back to my basic courses and I think "that abstract topic was actually much simpler than I originally thought!".
It feels like I was just stupid to not be able to fully understand or get interested enough into the abstract topics.

I would feel much better if my university has made me first work on some easy applications, trying to understand the context, the difficulties and the possibilities, then dive into theory and then have the advanced applications that require advanced theory. A kind of "iterative model". I understand that this would probably take more time.

However, I see that university education keeps being like this in the universities I have studied into (Greece and Germany). Strong theory first, applications later. Traditional, "sequential" model.

Does my "iterative model" observation, as a student, make sense from a teaching perspective? What is the current situation and trend in more "progressive" educational systems? If it is not already applied, why not?

It isn't really a question of either or in terms of theory and practice. Instead, what is needed is theory and practice happening simultaneously in the classroom. The students learn a concept and then they used it immediately in some sort of authentic assessment. To have to what 1-2 years to use any sort of new knowledge is difficult for the average young adult learner and nearly impossible for a mature adult learner. Knowledge retention is most effect through teaching it to others and followed next by the application of it.

Within education, there is a big emphasis on learning by doing or being an active learning. This can take many forms such as the use of projects, problem-solving, presentations, etc. The point is that the students need to learn through actually doing or producing something through some sort of authentic real-world application. The real-world application creates the relevancy that most students need in order to process whatever it is that they are learning. This is particularly true for inexperienced students who have zero practical knowledge.

A major exception to this is the experienced student who returns to gain theoretical insights into their career. For example, if a teacher returns to school for a master's in education, they often experiences many "aha" moments when they see a connection between a theoretically concept and something that happened when they were teaching. Since these people already possess practical knowledge they are even better able to appreciate theoretical knowledge and create a bridge between the two.

I highly recommend to teach practice first.
You can derive understanding for the theory easier from the practice instead of doin it the other way round.

I give you an example from my bachelor programme:
We had a course about data modelling and one lecture was about relational algebra. It was downright confusing for the majority of the class although we had courses in formal models before. The next lecture was about SQL and after that lecture and inlcuding SQL homework the topic of relational algebra was much clearer to the course participants. Hence it would have been wiser to put SQL first and relational algebra afterwards.


Is it rude to call a professor by their last name with no prefix in a non-academic setting? I always address my professors as "Professor [Last Name]" in an academic setting. However, in an non-academic setting such as running into them out and about, would it be considered rude to say "Hi [Last Name]!" to greet them?

Would it be better to address them by their first name even if you have never used it before, or always prefix their last name with Professor?

I wouldn’t find it rude, but I would find it weird.  I can’t think of any situation where you wouldn’t be better off using a first name instead of a last name without a title.  If you’re going to be formal do it right, and if you’re going to be informal use first name.  We’re not on a football team or in the military.

(It’s of course totally fine and normal students talking to each other without the professor present, to just use last name and no title.)

I'm at a community college in California, and once in a while I do get a student addressing me as "Crowell." I've never asked why, because I didn't want to make it seem like I was getting uptight about my status.

My guess is that it's based on confusion and uncertainty on the student's part. At a community college, some professors have PhD's and some don't. Therefore the student may think that the options are "Hi, Mr. Crowell" (as in high school) or "Hi, Dr. Crowell." They don't know whether I have a PhD, so they don't know which is appropriate. It doesn't occur to them that "Hi, Professor Crowell" would be a safe alternative.

As a test of my hypothesis, we could see if others who have experienced this are at community colleges.

Community college students are often the first in their family to go to college, so they may lack any experience to serve as a point of reference on something like this.

Another possibility is that these are just students who object to titles and roles of authority on principle.


What do you do if your PhD advisor tells to publish your work alone without his name? I am working with an advisor, but I don’t really understand him. He replies to my questions and suggests things. He also provides documents to help me in my research.

However, when it comes to publishing (which is important), he excludes me from his papers. I feel like my name is a shame if appeared next to his name. Last time he clearly said: “Try to publish by yourself.” What does this mean? How to handle such a situation? All I want is to take my degree and end this struggle.

Edited:
Thanks all for your answers. As many asked if I did contribute something and my advisor took the work without mentioning my name? No, this did not happen. But, I have done research work by myself and came up with conclusions supported with experiments/simulations/derivations ... etc and I feel like they are publishable. I am, I compare my work to recently published papers in the same area and I see that, sometimes I have better quality. But, my advisor is a perfectionist and it takes him years to write something which is absolutely unusual in my area of study. Plus, he doesn't have enough funds.
So, I have two scenarios in my mind: 1: He is afraid to perish his name with me 2:He doesn't have money to pay for publication fees/charges
Both scenarios are bad. Again, I can't clearly ask questions. The advisor is impulsive person with everyday mood. Not friendly at all.

Consider the possibility that you are seeing things emotionally rather than rationally. Additionally, you should critically reflect whether your expectations of the operational principles of doing a PhD are realistic. Based on the little information you provide, it appears that your supervisor is doing a fairly good job. He is answering questions and helping you out in your work. In a nutshell, this is the kind of support you should expect.

It is per se not your supervisor's job to "include you in his papers". This has almost certainly nothing to do with him being "ashamed" of you. Authorship in papers is not a courtesy that is, or should not, be granted based on friendship, but due to intellectual contributions. If you are not contributing to these papers, why would your supervisor add you to the author list?

Of course you could ask the question why your supervisor is not inviting you to help with his papers. This may be because your expertise is not necessary for the papers (which is not the same as that he does not respect you!), or maybe the papers have developed from a longer ongoing collaboration. You should not fault your supervisor for not warping his projects just so that you can fit in them somehow.

  What does this mean? How to handle such a situation?

It means that he wants you to be an independent researcher, as you should be. Why do you think there is something to handle, other than to heed his advice and look into publishing your own papers?

In many disciplines, it is fairly common that PhD students are expected to publish their own research without their supervisors. Have you actually attempted to do so? Have you talked to your supervisor in what capacity (helping with experiments and arguments, structuring and presentation, reviewing drafts?) he would be willing and able to help should you go ahead and publish your own work?

It is not clear what was meant when the PhD student states, "he excludes me from his papers... All I want is to take my degree and end this struggle". I am not certain, but from former experience I suspect the concern is that the PhD student did a considerable amount of research or time spent gathering data/articles and/or performed research that was used in the professor's publication(s). And therefore, felt that he (the PhD student) should get credit (as a co-author) for his contribution.

Unfortunately, It is common practice for Professors to use Graduate-Student(s), PhD-student(s), as low-paid clerical labor to do much or all of the grunt work. And consider the graduate-student's efforts as merely that of a contract-laborer. Accordingly, It is common practice to not give the Graduate-student/PhD-student any credit in the professor's publications.

Professors frequently regard themselves as the brains behind the project/publication. And, therefore he/she justifies taking all the credit for him/herself... whether right or wrong.

The professor is clearly in a position of power over the PhD student which can be, and is often, abused. My father was in this situation, while working toward his PhD degree. My father had an advisory professor at UCSD who had a multi-year Department of Defense (DOD) contract awarded to him (worth several hundred thousand dollars) to do certain research.

The professor wasted most the time and money doing little or nothing to fulfill the contract obligations. In comes my father (a Graduate-student/PhD-student) at the time, who was told to perform all the research work and complete the contract requirements.

My father had to set aside his PhD work, for several years, and perform all or nearly-all the work necessary to complete the contract. Upon it's completion, The professor took all the credit and my father (who did all the work) got none.

Meanwhile, my father was no further ahead in the completion of his PhD degree... putting him further behind in Life and further in debt with more money to repay his ever-increasing student loans.

Hence, the author's comment..."he excludes me from [from co-authorship in] his papers [while I do much of the research/work]... All I want is to take my degree and end this struggle".


How can I provide proof that my paper has been proofread by a native speaker? I have submitted my manuscript to a journal. After several weeks the editor sent me the comments of two reviewers. The editor said that "the authors should provide proof that the paper has been proofread by a native English speaker".

So how can I provide the proof? Should I send the proofreading certificate which I recieved after using the service from a proofreading company?

And if I only ask a native speaker for proofreading without any certificates, how should i provide the proof?

This seems like an unreasonable request. Frankly, it does not matter if you paper has been proof-read by a native speaker or not. If, after revision, your English presentation is still bad, the editor won't accept it even if you include proof that it was read by a native speaker.

I would personally be prone to just ignore this request, make sure that the English language is as good as it can be, and resubmit the paper.

This sounds like a strange request. Not all native english speakers are good writers. This should not be about who proofread the paper rather than the quality of the submitted work.


Is it unethical/unscientific to omit outlier data in a publication when they are in FAVOR of your argument? I have a scatter(log-)plot with some 10,000 data points that plots the running time of some algorithm against the input on random instances of some problem.

I have a lot of these plots, and due to space constraints I can't exactly dedicate a large amount of space to them. The plots are 1-2 inches tall. The trouble is that a handful (maybe 5 or so) of these samples have taken a ridiculously short amount of time to complete (say, a few milliseconds), whereas pretty much all of the other data points have taken 2-3 orders of magnitude longer.

I'm trying to show that my algorithm is fast, so I figure it shouldn't hurt to just omit these handful of data points and generate more samples, right?

I feel like mentioning anything would unnecessarily confuse the reader, and keeping them would annoy the reader since the plot would have a large amount of blank space. And obviously it's not like I'm trying to suppress evidence against my research or something---the discarded data is only in favor of my algorithm.

Would I be violating some ethical code here if I just discard those samples without mentioning anything so that my plots look nicer? Is it unscientific? And if so would anyone actually care?

Science aims at revelation and insight.  Before you can even consider dropping these samples, you need to understand why they exist.

The reason is that unexpectedly "good" data can be just as much a sign of problems with your theory as unexpectedly bad data.  Are these data points telling you that you've got a bug in your algorithm?  Are they saying that the instrumentation you were using for timing was unreliable or not calibrated properly?  Or is it just that under certain circumstances your random problems happen to be exceedingly easy to solve?  There may be other possibilities as well.

If you can't determine why the outliers exist, then you must include them, in order to help the reader evaluate your work.  If you determine they exist for a problematic reason, then, well, you're not ready to publish yet.  If you determine they exist for a benign reason, then you can drop them from the figure, but you must explain exactly what you've done in the text and why, or else you risk misleading the reader.

At the end of the day, the data you got is the data you got, and you need to deal with it honestly.

If you understand the reason for the outliers, and they represent a defect in your measurement methodology, then correct the error, and do the experiment again with improved instrumentation. You don't need to publish details of all the blind alleys you went down. If you don't understand the reason for the outliers, then ignoring them is unethical, though I'm sure it is very frequently done. If you do understand the reason, e.g. sometimes the algorithm just gets lucky, then you need to mention them, but they don't need to appear on the same chart as all the other measurements if that would make the chart unreadable.


Is it ethical to invite a student to apply for a job through my spouse? In my field, computer science, employers offer referral bonuses of a few thousand dollars to employees who refer successful job candidates who go on to work at that company. My spouse works at a company that an alumnus would like to apply to. So do several alumnae and a former professor who has taught that student. I used to work there too.

Is it ethical for me to tell the student (truthfully) that, if he applies through my spouse and gets hired, we will donate the bonus to the college? I would also tell him (truthfully) that I would submit an equally enthusiastic recommendation letter and help him prepare for interviews no matter who he chooses to refer him.

My ethical concern is that the student might feel pressured by my implying I would like him to apply through my husband and fear that I would not help him as much if he did not. I could partly alleviate that concern by writing the recommendation letter first and giving it to the former professor at the company to submit after anyone has referred the candidate. Is that enough?

Update

I asked an alumna at the company (rather than my husband) to refer the student and donate any referral bonus. She cheerfully agreed and coached him on interviewing. The candidate had no problem with being referred by an alumna (or by my spouse) and appreciated the coaching, although he ended up working for another company.

I think going through someone other than my spouse reduced the appearance of a conflict of interest all around (including to the company, to which I would have submitted a letter of reference).

(Disclosure: I'm not a professor.)

I don't personally see any ethical concerns SO LONG AS you indicate clearly (as you said you would do) that the recommendation letter will be equally strong regardless of whether or not the student applies through your spouse. Under those circumstances, I'd call this "networking," not "bribery" or "coercion".

The idea you proposed of writing the letter first and then informing the student seems like a nice way of ensuring that the student knows you've written a strong letter. There is the possibility that the student will still feel pressured, of course -- "if I don't say yes, then my professor will send a second contradictory letter" -- but assuming you have a positive relationship with the student, that seems unlikely.

Disclaimer: this is not legal advice. This is just a personal opinion. I might be somewhat though in comparison with most.

This is a borderline case. In general however I would stay away from this unless you are very sure the alumni would like this job. Although I am utterly convinced of your good intention, even if you say there will be no consequences the alumni might not believe you. That sounds like it is not your problem but you have an authority position and so you don't have a relationship of equals. This means that you must be much more careful. And in this case the doubt might, completely independent of you, be somewhat justified, because you might not intentionally write a worse recommendation letter. But unintentionally you might. At least I could see that as a legitimate worry.

First writing the letter might be a good guarantee like @tonysdg pointed out. However I still think this is not optimal since then you might write an overly positive recommendation letter because you want the student to be hired for your personal gain (reputation within the college can also be gain) or it might at least be perceived that way.
This might be immoral to the company or towards other students (since they get comparatively less positive recommendation letters).

I can see this working in a morally acceptable way but I think there is alot to be carfull about. In general I would be at the very least cautious when having a monetary/reputational (outside your reputation as teacher) incentive in dealing with students outside of the money adn reputation you get from the university.


Inadmissible theorems in research One of my engineering friends told me how e once had to take a make-up calculus I exam due to being hospitalised and so self-studied a lot of the missed topics. For the make-up exam, e used L'Hôpital's rule, although we weren't taught that until 1 or 2 exams later. My friend told me that the professor wrote

'You are not yet allowed to use L'Hôpital's rule.'

So, I like to say that L'Hôpital's rule was inadmissible in that exam.
Now, it absolutely makes sense that if you're the student that you're not allowed to use propositions, theorems, etc from future topics, all the more for future classes and especially for something as basic as calculus I. It also makes sense to adjust for majors: Certainly maths majors shouldn't be allowed to use topics in discrete mathematics or linear algebra to have an edge over their business, environmental science or engineering (who take linear algebra later than maths majors in my university) classmates in calculus I or II.
But after bachelor's and master's and maths PhD coursework, you're the researcher and not merely the student (this is supposed to link to a star wars video): Say, you're doing your maths PhD dissertation or even after you've finished the PhD.
Does maths research have anything inadmissible?
I can't imagine you have something to prove and then you find some paper that helps you prove something and then you go to your advisor who would then tell you, 'You are not yet allowed to use Poincaré theorem' or for something proven true more than 12 years ago: 'You are not yet allowed to use Cauchy's differentiation formula'.
Actually what about outside maths, say, physics or computer science?

Does maths research have anything inadmissible?

No, but trying to prove X without using Y is still a very useful concept even in research, because it can lead to interesting generalizations, or new proof techniques that can be applied to a larger set of problems.

For instance, in some sense the Lebesgue integral is "just" trying to prove the properties of integrals without using the continuity of f, or the theory of matroids is "just" trying to prove the properties of linearly independent vectors without using a lot of properties from the vector space structure.

So this is far from being a pointless exercise, if that's what you had in mind.

In research you would use the most applicable method (that you know) to demonstrate a solution, and would possibly also be in situations where you are asked about or offered alternative approaches to your solution (and then you learn a new method).

In the example where L'Hôpital's rule was "not permitted", it could be that the question could have been worded better as it sounds like a "solve this" question, assuming that only the methods taught in the course are known to students and therefore only the methods taught in the course will be used in the exam.


Should I get a letter of recommendation from my mother, who is a famous researcher in my field? My mother is a quite famous researcher (she has a PhD) on the field I want to do a PhD in. She works on the industry (not academia). I helped her on successful projects. She knows more about my work than my professors since we have worked much longer together.

Is it a good idea to ask for a recommendation letter from her? Since our personalities are very similar she can point out the high probability that I will be successful like her?

I would say no, this is a very very bad idea. Your mother going on about how likely you are to succeed will probably not carry much weight. What else would your mother say? If you were unlikely to be successful, would she say that? (even if she would, the perception of the people reading the letter will be that she would not)

She can write a letter of recommendation, but not because she is your mother.

If you have worked with her, and you were her report, then she can write a letter of recommendation as your supervisor, not as your mother.

If you have never worked with her in the relevant field of research, the letter has no meaning.


Moving from a University to a National Research Institution, career implications? Because of Brexit issues with my large grant, I'm considering a move from a permanent research+teaching post at a university to one of Europe's large research institutions. I'm not particularly familiar with these entities and I'm finding it difficult to gauge the long term implications of this move. Can anyone tell me:

What are the key differences between basing research at a university and basing research at a (large, European) research institution?

What might the long-term effects on one's career be due to making the switch, e.g. from not teaching or supervising phds?

For the record I'm not STEM, I'm a social scientist who does a lot of humanities/arts work.

I don't think that a generic answer would be valid for every European continental country as University careers are already quite different from country to country.
As you are mentioning CSIC I am going to focus in Spain.

Short answer: Making your career at CSIC or any other Spanish research institution means that you have the opportunity of focusing on your research in a high quality institution. It also means that the possibility of changing to a University (again in Spain) decrease the longer you stay there, virtually becoming zero after some five years

Explanation: Spanish academia requires that you go through a system of pre-qualification (acreditación) for any of the four current faculty positions. Other countries such as France (Qualification) and Italy also have a similar system but I believe that the particularity of the Spanish case is that you need to fulfil a lot of different requirements in teaching, research, knowledge transfer, etc. You can check the requirements in this link (sorry, no English version). Being able to fulfil these requirements is relatively straight-forward for the first faculty position (profesor ayudante doctor) but it becomes increasingly difficult for the next ones if you are not employed at a University. It has been often quoted that a Nobel prize not previously employed at University would not be able to become tenured in Spain regardless of the quality of their research.

As you mention being currently in a research + teaching position at the UK, your previous teaching + supervising experience might allow you to become qualified (acreditado) for faculty positions. But both Spanish universities and the organism that evaluates research (ANECA) are extremely picky with the certificates that you need to bring from your home university. It is possible that some are deemed not valid because they are not signed and stamped by the right person, etc.

What are the key differences between...research at a university and...research at a...research institution?

At a university, researchers may have teaching duties (as in the OP's case), whereas researchers may not have such duties at a research institute (albeit, institutes may vary), hence, a research institution (without teaching) provides a more focused researched environment, compared with a university (with teaching).

  What might the long-term effects on one's career be due to making the switch, e.g. from not teaching or supervising phds?

As above, not teaching facilitates a research focus. (Moving to a teaching-focused institute later might be more difficult. (Moving to an institute with teaching less so, assuming they focus on your research results, rather than your teaching.))

As discussed in comments, you can supervise PhD students.


Is the conference "ICCTCEEC" a scam? I submitted a paper about 20-25 days ago in this conference http://ctceec.org/ knowing about IEEE involvement here.

Today I have got an acceptance email for my paper, The astonishing thing to me is, I knew at least 1-2 month is required to review this type of conference paper.

The conference date is 8 September, 2017 which is very near. Is there anyone who can assure me that this conference is not scam?

The website has a button that says "IEEE proof", whatever that is supposed to mean, which seems like the equivalent of a folder on your computer named "definitely not porn". Understand: they're trying suspiciously hard to use their (alleged) IEEE affiliation as a marker of legitimacy and quality.

Follow that link and enjoy that delightful prose:

  "We believe education is our motherhood and research is our motto. Our intention is to collaborate innovative brains at one place. So, here we are with "International Conference on Current Trends in Computer, Electrical, Electronics and Communication" (ICCTCEEC) platform to share, learn and discuss. We guarantee your pleasure because our city itself mean you what are we."

Let's say the intentions of the people who committed that website are not fraudulent that's still incredibly sloppy and careless not to have it proofread. Seeing this, I would doubt that anything else about that conference can be worth your time and money.

By the way, IEEE affiliation, even if legit, doesn't mean the conference is good or not spam.

The usual advice in these cases: consult with your supervisor and colleagues. There is typically a rather small number (~5) of conferences worthy of attending per field and any half-serious researcher knows which these are.

Scam = ripping your money off: Probably not.

Scientifically worthwhile to attend: Probably neither. Just check the submission format, which is M$ Word 07 instead of LaTeX/PDF; that usually answers the question.

Touristically cool: Decide for yourself.

List of accepted papers consists of Indian authors, afai can see 100% (which is not necessarily bad, they invented zero and got Primes is in P, amongst a lot more).


I don't have the theoretical background in my PhD topic. I can't justify getting the degree I did my PhD in computational materials science. I used molecular dynamics simulations and finite element method to carry out my research investigations. I have published several publications and about to defend my thesis next month.

But, I did not take any classes on finite element analysis or molecular dynamics during my undergraduate or graduate school. Whatever theory I know about them is through self study and through work experience. I understand the concepts of the methods, but I never got a chance to have a formal course with exams and assignments on the subjects. So, my self study hasn't been very meticulous.

Now, I feel like a charlatan, and don't feel like I deserve a PhD degree. I am also feeling lost and like a loser. Saddest thing is that, I passed all my qualifiers, proposals and no one questioned my abilities.

I don't know what can I do to feel confident again. I am 31 years old. I always thought that by the end of PhD I will be a confident researcher.

First, learn something about Imposter Syndrome. This sounds like a classic case of it. You have been a success already. Your advisor, I assume, had no doubts about your ability. So try to just ignore the "feelings" and keep on doing what you do.

Success comes from hard work, not from feeling like you are capable of it. Your feelings might well change as you produce more in your field. But even if they don't, you can still be a success.

But I suggest, also, that you build up a circle of collaborators that you can interact with. You will learn from them, but you may also learn from them that you have all the necessary qualifications.

Moreover, your education needn't end when you finish your degree. Books and papers can help you fill in the formal bits you think you lack. Your advisor has, I hope, given you feedback. The same will be true of reviewers of papers you submit. If they don't notice and lack, then you probably aren't lacking in fact. At least not by a lot. Everyone can learn at every stage of life.

Something that I didn't see anyone else mention, and it is REALLY important for you to understand.

A PhD is not so much about mastering what is already known about some topic, as it is in venturing out into the unknown, and becoming QUITE LITERALLY the world's FIRST (and, necesssarily, foremost) authority on what was previously unexplored territory.  You are doing something that NOBODY has done before.  You are researching something that NOBODY has researched before, or (at best or worst, take your pick) the previous researchers failed to do what you successfully did - or are setting out to do.

You did that.

Master's Degrees are for learning a lot about what is already known.  Doctorates are for doing something NEW.  You did that.


Is it right to be put as the last author although I have done the bulk of the work? I am doing my PhD at a research institute, where we have just finished the draft of a 8-hands long paper to be published as a short book with a major editor. I have done the bulk of the work, i.e. at least 80% of the total. However, my coordinator sent me the draft back with the authors reordered by seniority, and I now figure as the last author although my contribution was the largest. I should mention this would be my first publication. Shall I react?

The order of authors is often problematic and thus I guess this question will be closed as duplicate soon.

Anyway, you should discuss this with your coordinator and ask him why he prefers this order. My colleague is working in a similar area than yours and he is usually the first author, but there might be other reasons in your situation.

Even if you are not able (or not willing to) insist on your preferred order, there are other options to emphasize your contribution. For example you could add an "Authors Contribution" section where you can explain in detail who did which part of the work. Footnotes at the author names are a common alternative (e.g. "* These authors contributed equally as main authors" or "¹ AB developed the model ² CD wrote the manuscript").

This is not only a question of fairness, but there might also be a formal requirement for your PhD or later research positions like "You have to publish two papers as main author." If that is the case, you should ask your supervisor how to address this issue.

As a junior partner who is yet to earn a PhD, the ethics of it are of less concern to you than that you successfully complete your degree and find suitable employment. Yes, you are probably being abused here, but getting powerful people mad at you will have negative consequences - all on you.

I hate to see these situations develop and would (as a more senior person) have harsh words to say to your supervisor, but I can only do that as they have no power over me.

Hopefully this is only your first, not your only, publication. Hopefully you won't have people like this in your future. But you have to take a somewhat cautious route to that future.

It may even be, depending on the reputations of the others, that you will benefit from a visible association with them.

In other answers on this site I've suggested that ethical violations be reported to authorities, but anonymously. That doesn't seem to be one of your options here, I think.


My research area has very few research positions, would it still be possible for me to stay in academia? I am a PhD student in mathematics.  I felt quite lucky that I got into this program.  My research is also going ok, and I got some confirmation from my advisor that I should be able to graduate in a year or two if I keep up with my work.  So things were mostly good.  But a recent conversation with my advisor completely changed my view about my situation.

We just finished one of our projects and naturally got to the question of when I should graduate.  Then We start to discuss my plans after graduation.  He asked me whether I want to find a job in industry or stay in academia.  I said I want to remain in academia, find a postdoc, then a tenure-track position, etc.  He then told me that there are very few places that have postdocs in my area, and indicated maybe I should look for schools that majorly focus on teaching.

I was very shocked.  I always wanted to stay in academia and thought about going to good research schools.  In fact we talked about this when I first asked to be his student.  But for some reason, he kept asking me the same question every once in a while.

I went home and start search on mathjobs.org for positions in my area, which I probably should have done three years ago.  There were almost nothing.  There are two postdoc positions, both are from not very well-known schools, I don't quite have interests in applying to either one of them.

I am quite lost.  On one hand, I wish I knew this much earlier on.  I wish my advisor would have told me before he helped me pick this area.  I also should've done some research on that myself.  Now I just have so much regrets in my heart.

On the other hand, I think it's time to be realistic and rethink my plans.  I wonder if it is still be possible for me to get a postdoc (possibly in one of the two places) and later go to a top-ranking school for tenure-track positions?  If a school don't have anyone in your area, would they hire you as a tenure-track AP?  I am not quite fond of teaching, I can bear it if it's part of my job being a researcher, but I would not want to do this as my sole job.

If that is not possible, what kind of job can a math PhD get?  I had some experience in industry before as well, but I don't quite like that job.  Are there research-type positions in companies that would appreciate a math major?  If so, what kind of knowledge/skills should I pick up now?

I wonder if it is still be possible for me to get a postdoc (possibly in one of the two places) and later go to a top-ranking school for tenure-track positions?

Yes, this is possible. But, unless you are making definitive progress on famous open problems which are well-known to everyone in your field.... then it is very unlikely and you should not count on it. (And perhaps even if you are.)

Most academic jobs involve both research and teaching. For example, I work at a research university with a Ph.D. program and a 2-2 teaching load. I definitely have time for research, but teaching is a big component of the job, and if I didn't enjoy teaching I would not want to do this job. (Moreover, if I wasn't good at teaching, then the hiring committee probably would have picked up on this and not offered me the job in the first place. Most people who are good at teaching, enjoy it.)

I think you are wise to investigate your other options. I've known people who decided not to pursue (or continue with) academic careers, and for the most part they were able to find good jobs. Software companies like to hire mathematicians, and you might learn programming if you don't know it already. Some mathematicians successfully go into finance (and make boatloads of money doing it.) Actuarial work is another possibility. In any case, these sorts of jobs don't generally just "happen"; you have to proactively think about what you do like and look for opportunities.

Good luck to you!

Although it didn't strictly answer the question, this answer offer an overview on the possibilities offered by the industry. There exists some positions in industry which are related strictly to mathematics. To be honest, anyone can learn a programming language in a couple of weeks(Java, C, C++, Php, C#,...). Mathematics, on the other hand requires years of work, which not always get into top publications. Nowadays, from my experience there are few positions in industry which requires mathematics, and someone which has a background in mathematics and also is very good at programming is hunted by the companies in industry - mostly, the companies which are performing business in aeronautics and space. I give a few examples: GMV Innovating Solutions, Thales, Deimos, Assystem. I know of these because I was offered a position into some of these companies, which I refused. The basic programming language required is Matlab and/or Mathematica.


How much is an average time of waiting to receive a reply from Professional co-author? I have sent my manuscript to a professor of math about one month ago. This manuscript was written according to his encouragement for a joint research work. He told me that send him what I have done from my side, and then he will add additional materials from his own side. I want to send a tracking email about the status of that. Should I do that or I must wait for his reply?

"I want to send an email email asking him for an update about the
status of that. Should I do that or I must wait for his reply?"

Absolutely. Why? Because it has been 1 month and you have not received any communication from him yet. Usually after waiting a full 7 days, it is not inappropriate to send a follow-up email.

"How much is an average time of waiting to recieve a reply from
Professional co-author?"

It varies. Some people reply the same day, some the same hour, but it's also not uncommon for people to take a month or two to reply.
Usually it is not inappropriate to ask for an update 7 days after the first email. Another one after another 7 days can also often be considered okay. It's when you send more than 2 follow-up emails, or when you do not wait ~7 days between them, that it might start to be seen as "nagging", but even then that's not always the case. Please send him a follow-up email and ask us what to do if you still have problems after that. My guess is that he'll reply (since he asked you for the manuscript).

When communication becomes difficult, when human sensitivity comes into play, don't write mail after mail: call your collaborator by phone. Maybe on phone you can get them to make a credible promise; maybe they will make you understand how overburdened they are right now; maybe they will enjoy a little chat with you; hopefully, your relation with them will grow through direct conversation.


I refused adding a gift author to my paper and my advisor threatened me that he won't let me graduate I am a phd student and I am writing a paper with my advisor, which is also part of my thesis. When we were going to submit it for publication, he asked me out of the blue to include in the paper the name of another phd student, who had just started a phd with him. This person had not done any work for my paper in any way. Once I refused, he threated me that he won't let me graduate, but I didn't cave in. Then, he started saying that this paper was no good and had to be removed from my thesis, otherwise I won't be able to graduate. If I comply and I exclude this from my thesis, can he steal it and publish it without my name? On the other hand, if this paper remains in my thesis, and my thesis is officially submitted, would he be able to steal it?
Update: Thank you all very much for your answers! The paper is completed, there isn't anything the new PhD can do to contribute. What I would like to know is if my advisor can take my paper and publish it without my name. Can he do that if my paper is included in my thesis?

It would be serious ethical misconduct for your advisor to try to publish your work under his own name. If you find that it has been done, a note to the journal editor or conference chair would have serious repercussions for his career. You could also, then, file a claim with the university, perhaps resulting in his getting reprimanded or fired. It is serious enough that few would be willing to risk the harm it would cause themselves.
However, that doesn't help you a lot at this moment. I've written in answer to many other questions here that it is very seldom profitable to fight with your advisor, even when they are clearly wrong, as here. In the end, you might have to yield on this in order to graduate and get on with your career. He holds an inordinate amount of power over you at the moment.
Let me suggest, however, that you might be able to defuse the situation if you can find allies among the students or other faculty to intervene in this on your behalf. It is hard to fight against powerful people alone. Even if someone else knows of your situation, a faculty member, it would, perhaps, make retaliation against you more dangerous for the advisor. In reality, they should let you publish with proper authorship and graduate based on qualifications. If they do anything else, then it would be appropriate to bring an action against them.
But, I suggest that you don't make a formal complaint based only on threats of bad action. Choose as you think best about the advisor's demand, and if he then takes action against you in any way, complain to whatever authorities are open to you.
You might be able, also, to find some middle ground, such as offering to help this other student in some other way than giving them authorship that isn't proper.
No one can promise that anything but submission will result in a successful outcome for you. Having a paper with a phony author is still having a paper, which is a good thing. It won't be your last paper. It likely, over your career, won't be your best paper. Don't let the short term considerations negatively affect your long term career goals, even if you have to submit to an unethical advisor. Get done. Get gone.

I appreciate that you did not cave. But, I would consider, just saying consider, including some useful work done by the new PhD student so you can both enrich your own work and give them co-authorship legitimately. You could do that by using just a few of their paragraphs.


How can I cite interviews for radio and TV on CV? I have many contributions related to interviews in radio, TV, web magazines and print magazines, and would like to know the different ways it might be "cited" in a scientific CV. I was thinking about adding them at the end of my CV is some section called "dissemination of research results" or something like that.

"Media Appearances" sounds better to me. Then I think I'd cite each appearance as if it were a conference talk:

  "How to Solve the Problem of Evil," WFUV Radio, 29 February 1904.

or

  "Why I am So Clever," The Today Show, National Broadcasting Corporation, 9 August 1999.

Maybe insert some descriptive language if the citation is unclear.

I advice you use this citing tool at http://www.calvin.edu/library/knightcite/

If it shows an error search for knightcite in their search bar...the tool helps you cite your work properly


How should I break-up with a second author? My advisors told me he wants to help me publish the theoretical section of my dissertation. He offered it! I have written my part, but he hasn't done his section. It's been a year. I have reminded him a few times, but he doesn't keep his promise. I know I have to move on and publish this piece on my own. I just don't know how to tell him! Is this common? I know he helps others, so I feel ignored.

Has he offered a timeline when he might be able to do his part? Have you had any communication regarding this? If not, you should reach out in advance and offer your timeline, giving him a reasonable timeframe to complete his work.

If you've had such communication before, and he hasn't been able to stick to agreed upon dates, I think you should talk to your advisor and explain the situation. Then, you could write a very polite email to him, including your advisor and any other stakeholders, explaining that you need to submit this work soon. At this point you could ask him if he still has time and would be able to complete his section, say within one month. Mention that you understand he is busy and has multiple priorities to juggle, and that if there isn't time, you'd just like to concentrate on your part and submit it. If, at a later stage, you both have time, you'll be willing to work together if he'd like to submit the theoretical section separately, with him as the first author.

I think this will sound pretty reasonable and you'll be able to publish without antagonizing or destroying working relationships with anyone.

There's surely a lot of politics involved. You have to take these into account in deciding the best way out of this. Also weigh in what are your short-term plans. First of all, make sure your slow co-author isn't actually a good one but just lazy or with poor communication skills. Towards this goal you'll rely a lot on diplomacy and intuition for probing the person. When doing that, find out politically where he stands.
I will discuss a few potential scenarios below.

Your 2nd author is a younger student of a friend of your advisors'. In such case this person has booby-trapped you into providing him a gift authorship. Problem is, if you don't he'll start moaning to his advisor who will complain to yours, and then you get scolded and/or sabotaged in the backlash. In such a case, I suggest you diplomatically push and probe your co-author in the presence of advisors, directly asking this person whether he's no longer interested in the project so that you can move on.
Second author is a senior academician who's actively seeking to intrude in as many papers as possible for a glossy record at career start. This is a common situation. These guys go around fishing for "collaborations" when all they want is their name on another piece of paper. In this case you should evaluate how close & dear is this person to your advisor, and to you. If you're likely to rely on his signature in the near future, perhaps you should start digesting the fact that you'll write everything on your own and just add his name. If this person is still fresh in the department and not holding any influence towards you, just politely tell him you'll be moving on. Expect some veiled threat and/or yelling. If you find yourself forced to swallow him, at least try to get him to pay for publication fees and get the paper into a better journal somehow.
Your lazy coauthor works in the same lab. Regardless of position, in such case you should consider either taking this person in for free or stalling until the moment you leave the group. If you leave, just brush him aside. In either case, start writing his section immediately.

Whatever you decide, do it as diplomatically and clean as possible. You're likely impulsive and inexperienced at this stage, and any escalation of this situation may easily become a career burden or even a permanent stain.

Judge wisely, and good luck!