Journal rejects my conference-to-journal extension, saying it's copied from previous publication. What should I do? My understanding of short conference papers being extended to journals was that I should have at least 30% fresh results and content (read that in answers to this question here). I had a short 4-page paper published and presented as a poster at a conference in the past year. I had extended the work, had plenty of fresh results with me, and decided to send it to a journal. I would say I had at least 70-80% fresh content and results.

I was surprised to receive a reply from the Editor that my manuscript was been rejected without review. The reason given by an editorial board member is

  A non-negligible part of this manuscript (~1000 words) has been copied by a previous publication of these authors.

And, thus, he suggested that the manuscript be rejected without review.

I agree that some basic data pre-processing modules are same in both papers (coz why would they differ!). Some introduction and related work part is also the same. Rest, the manuscript is fresh. My manuscript is easily 9000-10000 words. 1000 words just makes 10% of that. Keeping in mind that "30% fresh content" rule, I thought I was playing pretty safe. But this response has disappointed me :(

My  questions:

Should I bother to write to the Editor, asking for a clarification? Maybe I can just ask whether the editor bothered to read my cover letter (where I had clearly mentioned about the previous paper, and the overlaps with this paper).
If yes, how does one usually contact the Editor? The emails sent by the journal do not come from a personal account. Will it be wise to write to him directly?
After this rejection, I may submit it elsewhere. But what if it gets rejected on same grounds. Should I consider re-writing my manuscript and making it completely different from the previous paper?

So you wrote in the cover letter that the work is an extended version of a conference paper that accompanied a poster presentation.

Apparently, this information got missing somewhere. Also this information should actually be in the paper, as Maarten van Wesel already wrote, as the later reader should be also be made aware of this.

So, judging from your post, the only thing that you did wrong was not to note this in the paper itself (please add a comment to this post if this assumption is wrong). What then went wrong in the journal's workflow is that the paper was rejected due to copying rather than asking you to add such a note in the paper. A possible explanation is that checking for plagiarism is done by the publisher's office beforehand, and they actually never saw (or read) the cover letter.

I think that it is fair to write a letter to the editor, mentioning that (1) you already wrote in the cover letter that you submitted extended work, and (2) you are of course happy to add a note that this is an extended work of [Previous work].

On a related note, there may be a small copyright problem. You may have already given an exclusive licence to distribute your work to one publisher with your earlier paper. If you now copy a good part of that work, the new publisher may see this as problematic. While many publishing agreements nowadays explicitly allow reuse of the work in extended versions, not all of them do, so the new publisher's office may suspect that this is not the case for your earlier paper. Coincidentally, many extended versions of papers are actually completely rewritten, which circumvents this problem altogether. Whether an extended version should be a full rewrite is yet another discussion, which we probably don't want to pursue in this thread.

No, do not argue with the editor that rejected the paper.  Yes, send it to another journal.  (Of course reference the "poster paper" and explain the differences.  This benefits no only the journal you submit to, but also potential readers who have already seen the previous poster paper.)


Is increasing the DPI of a low resolution image a good idea? Today after a paper of mine got accepted I received this from the publisher (Elsevier):

  We have received the above article for publication, unfortunately
  figures x1, x2 and x3 are of low resolution and of insufficient quality
  to reproduce well.

  The minimum resolution requirements are 1200 dpi for black and white
  figures and 300 dpi for colour figures. If you are converting your
  figures to TIFF files, please ensure that the resolution is correct
  before scanning them.

The figures are digital 512×512 gray-scale images in the PNG format. The source of the images is not me. I had converted them to EPS files using Inkscape. The source of some of the images is: https://github.com/cszn/DnCNN/tree/master/testsets/Set12.

How do I resolve the issue? Should I just save the same images using 1200 DPI in EPS format and send it to the publisher?

The comment you received is aimed at obtaining images of higher quality for publication.
Processing the files you sent them will not solve this issue.
If it did, the typesetters would already have done this themselves – this is what “insufficient quality to reproduce well” hints at.

In your specific case, the images seem to be digitalisations of historic photographs.
Thus, the only way to improve the quality is to obtain higher-resolution digitalisations of these photographs.
If you cannot do this, write exactly this to the publisher; they are most likely going to accept this.
Also note that if those images are test cases for some image-processing algorithm or similar, they should be printed exactly as they are, and this is what you should write the publisher.

The entire remark about the resolution probably doesn’t apply to you but was made for illustrations, plots, and similar.
These are almost always best provided in a vector format (which has infinite resolution, if you so wish) and even if using a pixel format, they can be produced at arbitrary resolution.
The resolution requirements are aimed at those researchers who insist on working with pixels in this case.

From a technical standpoint it makes no sense. The publisher could do a better job in resampling the image because they know in detail the technical capabilities of their printing machines (if it is a printed journal) and the processing pipeline.

But by enforing a higher resolution, the risk of misprints is given back to the author so you can not complain if something is not visible.

Therefore: Just resample it...


What is the preferable way to share data? Suppose there is data that you as an author of a journal article wants to share with the readership of the article (e.g. raw experimental data, code, gold standard / ground truth data).

What would be the best way to do this? Possibilities include:

Add a footnote that data is available upon request by e-mail.
Make the data available for download on an institutional webpage.
Make the data available for download on your personal webpage.
Make the data available through the article's publisher.
Something else...

The most common and sustainable thing to do is to deposit the data in a research data repository. Depending on which one you choose, the data will get a persistent identifier, e.g. a DOI, can be cited properly in publications, might be reused by other researchers, ...

You can find a list of available data repositories at re3data, the registry of research data repositories. The number of repositories is still growing. Even your institution/university might offer an institutional data repository.

Almost everybody can consume EXCEL (CSV) files, so host on google drive. Share links with emails you want to be with. No hassle of 3rd party servers or data service and universally acceptable CSV format will be here. For very large data split into files.


Should you include your main supervisor as a co-author? I'm currently close to finishing my first paper in a PhD degree (applied maths). I have a supervisory team of 4 academics, 1 of which is the designated main supervisor.

My problem is that in reality, all of my work for this paper has been in collaboration with only one of the supervisors (not the main) who works in a different department. As well as this, they also gave the advice for the direction of the PhD and is also the only person I have meetings with. It seems to be a culture within my environment that all the supervisors are included as co-authors. I'm not comfortable with the idea of other people getting credit for something I have worked hard on or the ethics of it; but at the same time of course I don't want to ostracise myself from the group or harm my future prospects. They did after all get the funding for my position and I have no problem with working with just one supervisor.

Unfortunately I didn't have any conversations about co-authorship before I started the program. Any advise?

ASK THEM.
Academia is a very 'political' and 'incestuous' environment.  If it is common to do that, then in order for you to succeed there, you might should do what they do.
  si fueris Rōmae, Rōmānō vīvitō mōre; si fueris alibī, vīvitō sicut ibi (“if you should be in Rome, live in the Roman manner; if you should be elsewhere, live as they do there”); which is attributed to St Ambrose.

If you don't, and they expect it, then you might just piss them off.  They may never mention it, but they might take it out on you in ways you could never prove. Retaliation likely won't be something you even see - not getting that scholarship, journal, presentation, etc.

TL;DR - Ask them what to do, then do it.

The honest and most practiced answer to say is that you have to put their names. They might not have worked directly but as you said arranged funds for you.

But personally i dont like adding people with no contribuion to work, but believe me they made me suffer and my masters degree was at risk, just for this small mistake.

So for now and for phd, just add them, keep them happy. As they will most probably save your day at the end. How ever keep in mind your future, and as far as you are the main author the gurus in journals and conferences know who has worked and who not.


What should be the order of the authors in a paper? Should the first author be the one that worked the most? And then by the amount of work order (descending), but the last one the most-senior researcher?

Are there other ways? Which ones?

Does it vary from field to field? I've heard some areas or even some conferences always ask for alphabetical order. But then there are evaluation committees that count for how many first-author or last-author publications does a researcher have. Can someone provide exhaustive insight into how this is done across many fields?

Ask a hundred academics and get one hundred differing answers. Disciplines do differ.

Some base in on who did the most work.
Some base it on who developed the idea.
Some base it on a hierarchy  (my lab me first).
Some do alphabetical.
Some do "equal author contributions."
Some horse-trade, I get first on this as you got first on last. Many types of horse-trade exist and some move outside the domain of the research.
Some do it based on need. I need to be first to keep my job but you do not. I need it for tenure and you are tenured.
Some do it based on who wrote most of the paper.
Some do it on random numbers or similar.
Some decide in advance before the process starts.
Some give it to the person who made the big breakthrough.
Some give it to the organizer who pushed everyone and harassed everyone to get it done.
Some people just do not care so give it to the person who asks first.
Some give it to the person who got the funding.

My process is that you essentially know by the end of a research process and writing of a paper who should be the lead author and then the horse-trading begins. I have fun with it and I really dislike teams who spend more time on discussing this than the research.

Usually first author = writer, grad student, main worker.

second = other grad student who did some work

Third = advisor

(This assumes single group work.)

If two (plus groups), it will usually be something like:

worker1, helper1, advisor1, worker2, helper2, advisor2

With 2 being another group, for instance the measurement group as opposed to the synthesis group).  You can use your brain to extrapolate to more than two groups or to situations where there is more than one worker/helper/advisor or some roles are missing.


Is it possible to get into an elite physcis grad school for theory without having already taken graduate level courses? I'm about to embark on improving my PGRE score for the fall test (didn't do so hot the first time) and I'm wondering if it will even be worth the year-long effort. Also, I'm taking a couple years off to get research experience/pay off my student debts.

I come from a small/medium school with no physics graduate program (wasn't interested in physics when I started, so I went with the place that gave me the most money), so I didn't have the chance to take any grad classes. I've also only had one semester of junior/senior level E&M, QM, and mechanics (all that was offered).

I've been reading different GRE forums and it always seems like the people who apply to (condensed matter) theory at elite schools like UChicago and get rejected still have a >90% PGRE and a number of graduate classes that they did well in.

I got all A's in the classes I did have and there is a decent chance I'll have 3 publications (one or two as first author) from national labs, but frankly, after reading about others' failures, I think there is a serious possibility that all of this effort will be in vain.

Yes.  Graduate admissions committees at good universities are looking to recruit students who will publish a lot of high quality papers.  The best predictor of future publications is past publications.  By comparison, coursework is less important.  The Physics GRE is a very poor predictor of your ability to write good research papers.

You should still pursue a good physics GRE score because it is a good measure of the student's ability to plan ahead.

I don't think the couple years off to get research experience will help you.  Really they are looking for raw brains.  How were your SATs?  Or your math grades?

Theoretical physics has huge numerical odds against you in terms of jobs just based on numbers.  Going into the field when you are below average is an especially bad idea.


Is it ethical to use another university's journal subscription if yours doesn't have access? As a graduate student, sometimes I really could use access to journals or databases of tables that for some reason my university doesn't subscribe to.  I have friends at other Universities that do subscribe to these journals and it would be very helpful to have the data.  Is it acceptable to ask them to retrieve the data?  I don't really want to start this if it's going to run me afoul of the rules.

Is it against the law? Probably.

It it scientific misconduct? A breach of ethics? Hardly.

It is acceptable? It's your decision to make based on risk analysis. If you don't do it on a large scale (i.e. someone supplying many people with papers), it's probably okay. It is common practice.

Also, be aware that many journal articles can now be found either in pre-print or post-print form online (though this depends widely on your field), either on institutional repositories or on the authors' webpages. If you're merely missing access every once in a while, you can also nicely ask the corresponding author.

Wouldnt your profs be aware of the data and speculate where u got it from given they couldn't access it and you didn't pay a lot to have access to it?
Perhaps you could ask whoever may share their opinions or any official info concerning the said journals; your professors, whoever allows the permission for the journals you can access (your library), the journals themselves, and certainly permission from the other universities whose service you'd access. Not your friends- otherwise if you believe it can be interpreted as theft- then maybe it is , as they are not getting any business from you. You'll never know the reason why your university was excluded in particular until you do your homework and choose the all clear approach. Perhaps it was in fact intentionally excluded and then in that case then obviously it could be unethical and illegal!

Surely your only helping your self out but journals are in the business of making money and i believe the ethical choice would be to know beyond a doubt.


Is there any journal in which I can publish educational articles not a research article? I want to publish an educational article about some non-standard approach to Lagrangian Mechanics, but the problem is that I have written it in my country language (not in English) so I want to know if there is any journal which accepts academical papers, I shall surely convert it into English if there exist one. I want to mention that I have no background in research, I'm a lecturer at one of the state Universities.

One example would be the American Journal of Physics published by the American Association of Physics Teachers. Quoting from their Audience and Mission statement (at the link above):

The mission of the American Journal of Physics (AJP) is to publish articles on the educational and cultural aspects of physics that are useful, interesting, and accessible to a diverse audience of physics students, educators, and researchers. Our audience generally reads outside their specialties to broaden their understanding of physics and to expand and enhance their pedagogical toolkits at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

They have quite a broad range of articles, many of which are of broad interest.

Yes: Some journals publish tutorials. Just add "tutorial" to your search terms and you should find something appropriate.


Language certificates when applying to positions in the USA I am non-US citizen and I want to apply for an academic position in the USA.

At which point do I need to show up a language certificate? For example, together with the job application, or together with the visa application?

Normally TOEFL is required for admissions in USA. However, you must check the requirements that are required by the University first to secure admission that may or may not include TOEFL beside other tests such as GRE, GRE subject, GAT etc.

Second is the visa requirements, make sure if the TOEFL is required or not for the visa, as in that case, you may get admission but denied visa or vice versa. so get eligibility criteria from different universities, compare them and find out what are the common requirements for all the universities, and then check the visa requirements.

Time of showing language certificate depend on the university, they can ask in advance or later.

Generally, you will never be asked for a language certificate.  The people hiring you will determine if your English is good enough by looking at the application materials you submit and by the interviews they conduct with you.
The immigration officer will also talk to you and might be suspicious about your claim to have received a job offer from a university if you can't string together a coherent sentence in English.

As a general cultural matter, the US is comfortable leaving many matters to subjective judgment rather than relying on official bureaucracy and formal rules.


Students not answering emails about plagiarism I am a PhD student in the US and teaching a lab this semester. The labs have become online and students are provided with data and submit their reports. All communications take place through email. There is also online office hours but relatively few students attend.
Recently I found two groups submitting the exact same drawing in one of their lab reports (this was a significant part of their work for the report). So I emailed them separately and asked whether this report was completely their own work. Or was it created by one of them and shared for others, and if not, where was it taken from. One of them did not reply at all. The other did, offering apologies but saying that we did not plagiarize. But they also didn't reply to my next email in which I told them exactly which part has been found in another group's work. Basically, they didn't say anything in the face of clear evidence.
I should mention that I did have email communications with the same students before and I'm sure they have read my emails.
If it was an in-person class I could just talk to them in the next session to clarify things. But now, they're just ignoring my emails. This has left me with my own speculations. The most probable scenario is that both have used material from the previous semester, and since they neither denied, clarified, or apologized for this, I have lost confidence in their other reports too.
This is making it difficult for me to make an appropriate (proportionate) decision and honestly, I don't know what to make out of this. Are they too stressed/ashamed to reply or are they so relaxed about this that don't even bother to do so?
How should I proceed from here? Is it OK for students to ignore the instructor's emails on such an important issue? And should I continue grading their reports? As I said, I can't trust their works anymore even though I don't have evidence of further plagiarism elsewhere. Would it be appropriate or too much to give a failing grade because of a single verified incidence of plagiarism?

First, some important caveats:

It is certainly worth checking their other work to see if you find any further evidence of plagiarism. In the absence of such evidence, you must proceed under the assumption that the only case of plagiarism is the one you have evidence for.
You should check your university's regulations; you may be required to proceed in a certain way (e.g., to advise the students of their rights, or to turn this over to a committee rather than handling it yourself).
Since you are a PhD student, speaking with a more experienced professor is probably also a very good idea. In particular, if you are not listed as the "instructor of record," you should speak with the instructor of record before proceeding (different universities will have different policies about whether the grad student who does the "actual work" will be formally listed as the instructor of record).

Still, let us assume for the sake of this question that you can and must handle this yourself. In this case, my advice would be to send an e-mail along the following lines:

Dear Student: it has been over a week, and I have received no response to my below inquiry. If I do not receive a response by Friday, I will assume that your report was indeed plagiarized and will accordingly assign [some appropriate but relatively harsh penalty]. If you believe you are not guilty, or if you have mitigating factors you would like me to consider, please let me know, either by e-mail or by scheduling a virtual meeting. Regards,

As for what penalty would be appropriate, I reiterate my advice to discuss this with someone locally; campus cultures vary, and your department probably faces issues like this with some regularity. Still, my experience is that for something like this, a proportionate response would be to (1) give a zero on the lab report in question, which should cost them about a letter grade overall, and (2) file a report with the college so that they cannot have a new "first offense" in a different class.

Turn it over to the "module convener" "course leader" or whatever it is called at your institution.


Applying for postdocs / lectureships - sorting bad advice from good (UK, mathematics) Long story short: I got my PhD a few years ago, and am currently in a temporary job. Anticipating future job applications, I found myself an experienced, senior local mentor. My time in this job is now almost at an end, and I've been submitting dozens of job applications, including to jobs far "below" the one I'm in now. These applications have so far all ended in rejection without interview. So I quietly reached out to some other experienced members of the faculty for their advice.

What I'm experiencing now is a case of too many mentors spoiling the broth. I have been told variously that, in order to get a job, my main, most urgent priority should be:

writing higher-quality papers to publish in top journals
polishing and publishing my older preprints, even if they're not so high-quality
speaking at conferences/seminars on the wider international stage
organising conferences / similar community admin
applying for more grants

etc. etc. I've also been given a list as long as my arm of things that are not my most urgent priority, but are still important. They're all great pieces of advice individually, but I'm finding the lack of coherent prioritisation overwhelming given the few months I have remaining, and I'm struggling to imagine how I could achieve some of these things even if I had a year or more left.

How should I be prioritising my time in the remaining few months? (For the purpose of this question, my goal is to end up not being forced out of UK academia without another job lined up.)
How should I prioritise my time in my next temporary job, if I manage to find one? (For this question, my goal is to end up with a permanent research/teaching contract in the UK within the next few years.)

Edited to add extra background information on request:

I'm in pure mathematics.
I've written several papers that have been published in good-to-very-good, well-known journals, though nothing nearing e.g. Inventiones. The preprints that I haven't yet submitted are likely to be similar. Of course, I'm working on more and better, but I am worried that I'll be forced out of academia long before any of it is finalised, much less published.
I have spoken at conferences and seminars internationally, a couple of times. I'm on the lookout for more opportunities.
I have never organised a conference or done any big admin work like that: my living situation is far too precarious to allow it, because of the lack of stable job.
The amount of smaller admin work (e.g. peer review, session chair) I've done is very limited. I'm on the lookout for opportunities, but not finding anything.
I've applied for a couple of small awards, and I'm in the process of applying for my first grant. Most of them I'm not eligible for, because they don't replace your salary, and need to be co-signed by an employer willing to pay your salary (which I don't have).
I'm aware that postdocs and fixed-term lectureships are different jobs. I include them because their job descriptions are almost identical and because I am applying for both. If you can only answer on one, or have to answer separately for each, please do.

My advice would be:

write more applications

Academic job hunt is a gamble. Boosting your CV does improve your chances, but it is still a gamble. There is no security in this game and no guaranteed strategies. Places which seem to be a 100% match can reject you without an interview, and places where you barely meet the role specification can shortlist you. There are often more criteria than are written in the job specification and there are often several competing agendas each Department wants to fulfil.

A few months is not enough to publish your  best piece (review process may take years). Speaking at conferences may help, but realistically even if a professor will love your work and would like to hire you, they may not be able to do it immediately, unless they have funds to spare (very rare and unlikely situation in the UK). Organising a conference takes more than a year.

tl;dr:  polish your CV and application pack, submit more job applications and (if you have time) prepare a Fellowship application, e.g. to EPSRC

All advice is good. All advice is bad. Every candidate is different. Nearly every post doc position is different, at least at the hiring stage.

The important lesson is that every candidate will have to make her/his own case for the job. You will need to extract from your background all of the things you have done, as well as your basic work ethic, that makes you the best candidate for the job.

The next most important lesson, perhaps, is that you will likely face a lot of competition. But everyone in the pool will represent trade-offs. You will be (seen as) better than some on some measures, and not as good on others.

Your past is your past. You can't change it. You probably can't add enough in the short term to make much of a difference. So, just make your best case and good luck.

One thing you can do, proactively, is to make your case on paper and then have a trusted colleague give you feedback on it. Not just advice on whether it is "good enough", but what specific things might be added/dropped/changed to strengthen it.


If I don't know whether a staff member has a PhD, should I address her as Dr. in my emails? There have been a few circumstances where I've had to email an authority at my school and didn't know whether they had a PhD (e.g. An instructor of mine who I knew had been a PhD candidate a few years earlier, but perhaps graduated since then). In these cases, should I address the person as Dr.?

I always use Dr. ______  whenever I am e-mailing someone at a university and do not know if they have a doctorate.

If they do have a doctorate, I haven't insulted them.
If they don't, they chuckle and are pleased.

No, just put Mr. if a man or Ms. if a woman.
Phd are not doctors.
Phd is a research degree and its not a professional title to call them doctors.
Only doctors to be called doctors.


Lecture material of another professor Is it ethical if I use lecture slides of another professor and modify only 15-20% for my lecture and provide an acknowledgment at the end of lecture slides that lecture material was taken from Prof. XYZ Course ABC? In the given condition do I still need to send a personal email to professor to inform that I am using his/her lecture material or acknowledgement is enough?

The question is: why wouldn't you send an e-mail? Consider you send him/her an email for permission to use the lectures, he/she may:

(most likely) Accept your request providing you reference him/her. He/she might even point some possible errors in the slides.
Deny your request. In that case you just avoided an awkard situation, would he/she ever find you plagiarized (if you modifications don't change the style).

If he/she denies, should you still use his/her slides as a guideline (assuming you do the slides yourself)? Yes you can. And if you wish you can also reference him/her as a reference, in the same way you reference books.

Dear Professor,

  For the assignment for your module we were asked to produce an essay
  of 5000 words. Here's my submission. I used the essay of another
  student and modified 15-20% of words in it. You can find the name of
  the student on the last page of my assignment. He produces a very good
  piece of writing and it would be a shame not to re-use it for my
  assignment.
  It also saved me a lot of time, which I used for other things I enjoy doing more than working on your module.

  I hope it's fine with you.

  Best regards, your student

If you want to encourage such response from your students, then of course, go for it. If not, be an example and do your own preparation for your teaching.


Can I negotiate an acceptance to print delay, post acceptance? Update: My withdrawal request was accepted and I was also offered to be published in the immediate issue of the Journal. I took back my withdrawal request.

Edit : Mentioning Journal

I have an accepted paper. But it is slated to appear in 2021. And both print and online versions appear around same time. I was hoping online would appear much faster than that, but its not the case. According to copyright I cannot host it on my website also for an embargo period of 12 months. So it's not even sharable, let alone citable. I have a followup paper already being written, and more ideas in pipeline that are built on top of this. This publication wait period defeats my whole purpose of publishing as I cannot share it with others and I cannot cite in furthur works. I cannot use it for advancing my career too. I also have plans to seek research positions or phd fellowships. I am kind of stuck. I cannot withdraw it now as it is already accepted. Is there anyway I can negotiate to get it out much before than the slated time?

Edit:

An excerpt from the copyright.

    Retention of Rights

  The Author/Editor may deposit an Author-created version of the Article
  on Author’s/Editor’s funder’s or funder’s designated repository at the
  funder’s request or as a result of a legal obligation, provided it is
  not made publicly available until 12 months after official
  publication. Author/Editor may not use the Publisher’s PDF version,
  which is posted on www.publisher.com, for the purpose of that deposit.
  Additionally, the Author/Editor may deposit the Publisher’s PDF
  version of the Article on Author’s/Editor’s own website or
  Author’s/Editor’s institute’s designated repository, provided it is
  not made publicly available until 12 months after official
  publication. Furthermore, the Author/Editor may only post the Article
  provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of
  publication and a link is inserted to the published Article on
  Publisher’s website. The link must be accompanied by the following
  text: “The final publication is available at www.publisher.com”. The
  Author/Editor is requested to use the appropriate DOI for the Article.

Update : I have made a gentle and polite withdrawal request citing delay as reason, to which I got a one line reply, "Thank you for your message". I don't know how to interpret this one line  reply. Does it mean that they will get back to me on this? or I should assume that it's been withdrawn?

It's hard to tell from the outside why they aren't posting online versions of your accepted paper now. If the publisher is the root cause, you could conceivably change their mind by negotiation. I would not be hopeful because they're likely to keep to the status quo purely out of inertia, but your objection would probably be filed away as a data point for when they finally decide to modernize.

On the other hand if the editor-in-chief is the root cause, the publisher is not likely to overrule the editor-in-chief, and you'll have to convince the EiC. Chances are the EiC has entrenched views of this (as opposed to the publisher who's more likely to simply be doing what they've always been doing), which makes convincing him/her harder. Still, you could try. Be sure to mention you have follow-up work already lined up.

It's unlikely that there'll be negative consequences for trying and failing. Your paper's already accepted; they're not going to rescind it for non-academic reasons.

One thing I would definitely check is whether you are permitted to upload preprints. You mention there's an embargo, but quite often the embargo is only on the accepted manuscript. You can still post preprints. Some publishers (e.g. Elsevier) allow you to post the accepted manuscript as well, on a non-commercial personal homepage or blog.

Edit: based on that paragraph, negotiation is the only way out, because they're preventing you from making anything else publicly available. If you have transferred your copyright then they can actually publish without your consent now (still, they might let you withdraw anyway as a gesture of goodwill). You say you haven't signed any copyright transfer, but that's not sufficient; the journal might have policies that say the copyright is automatically transferred upon acceptance or even upon submission. You'll have to check. If you haven't transferred the copyright, then you could withdraw and submit elsewhere. It's a decision you'll have to make.

Talk to your university’s legal department about how much you need to change to post a “preprint” copy elsewhere.
This sounds like the sort of question that you’d need to talk to an IP lawyer about, with the text of any relevant contracts in hand. Fortunately, universities generally have legal departments that address these sorts of issues as their job. I’d recommend talking to the team at your institution.


Is doing two PhDs a good path? I am studying a combined bachelor of engineering (electrical) and bachelor of mathematics; I just started this year and will graduate in 2018. The reason why I am doing double degrees and not a single degree is because I love both electrical engineering and mathematics and I could not ignore any of them. So with this in mind, I am thinking of doing two PhDs when I graduate (one in electrical engineering and one in mathematics). Is this a good path or I should concentrate on only one of them?

I suspect that most people who ask about the possibility of doing multiple PhDs are missing something fundamental in what a PhD is and what it's for.  This is an understandable misperception because the general populace knows little about what PhD programs are all about, to the extent that even most people who enroll in a PhD program think they know what they're getting into and then find out that what they had in mind is an approximation to the truth (sometimes a good approximation and sometimes not).

In the various fictive media (novels, comic books, television, film...) having multiple PhDs -- often in confluence with a very youthful persona or explicitly pointed out that they were attained at an early age -- is a standard trope for a certain type of characterization: depending upon the genre it can signal super-genius types, intellectuals, or nerdy/socially awkward types.  For instance, Professor Charles Xavier graduated from Harvard at the age of 16, and he holds PhDs in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology, and Anthropology as well as an MD in Psychiatry.  This is obviously meant to be a real-world grounding for his vast mental powers.  On the TV show House, the youthful medical student Martha Masters has previously attained PhDs in applied mathematics and art history, and the characterization is less positive: they are not trying to suggest that she's a genius per se -- House is the genius! -- but rather that she has an extremely overachieving personality type.

Of course, Charles Xavier and Martha Masters are fictional characters.  Moreover I imagine they were written by people who are not so familiar with PhD programs.  In real life, having PhDs in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology and Anthropology is not the hallmark of a super-genius: rather it would mean that the person is pathologically obsessed with graduate study.  PhD's are not merit badges -- more of them is not better.  Rather a PhD is the necessary and grueling training for a specific type of professional career.

If you are interested in a subject then you read and learn about it.  You get a PhD in a subject because you want that subject to be an essential part of your career (which of course ought to imply that you are very interested in the subject).  Moreover, although the PhD provides specific technical training in a certain subject, it does not provide exhaustive training: in most cases people spend the rest of their careers continuing to train in these areas.  Rather the point of a PhD is to give you enough specific training so that you can henceforth direct your own training and learning.  Otherwise put, a lot of what you do in a PhD is learning how to learn.  But learning how to learn is actually a rather robust and subject-independent skill.  If you learn how to learn genetics, then if later on your interests turn to psychology or biophysics you will be in a much different and better position to train yourself in these areas.  In some ways, doing a PhD in one of these subjects and then turning around and doing another is like becoming an internet millionaire who wakes up one day and decides that she wants to sell electronics...so she shuts down her website, gives all her money away, and starts the business out of her parents' basement.  (Or maybe it is like what happens in some of my dreams: I am doing high school all over again, and somehow it is not going as well as it did the first time around.)  Why are you starting over from scratch?!?

It is true that "academic transfer" makes better sense between some fields than others.  If Martha Masters got a PhD in art history and then decided that she wanted to do applied mathematics instead then she would not have been able to "segue" from one field to the other: she would indeed have had to go back to school.  But that makes her story a bit sad: getting a PhD is very difficult and very time consuming, but it is not really a feat of strength, and getting two PhDs in two unrelated areas does not show how much of a super genius you are; it shows that you really changed your mind considerably about what you wanted to do with your life and maybe wasted a lot of your time.  No matter how smart you are, I don't see how you can get a PhD in art history and then one in applied mathematics without spending at least eight years.  You can't just skip to the end and pass the thesis defense by virtue of your preternatural brilliance: there is coursework, residence requirements, and various other mandatory things which necessarily take time.  Her character is comic-booky: it is not really plausible that she could have these two degrees and have gone on to be a medical student while still being in her 20's, no matter how brilliant.  [Well, "no matter how brilliant" is a little too strong: if she had graduated college at age 16, then the math works out okay...] Moreover, for someone who is that brilliant it would really be sad that she can't seem to figure out anything else to do besides infinite schooling.

Electrical engineering and mathematics are rather closely allied fields.  For sure do a PhD in one or the other.  While doing a PhD in either one you can choose the amount of involvement you have in the other field, i.e., you can do a very mathematical electrical engineering PhD or a math PhD on a mathematical topic with important applications in electrical networks.  Then after you get your PhD you can continue to learn and train in one or both fields as you see fit.  It is entirely plausible that you could land an academic job in one department while having gotten your PhD in the other department.  This is an ambitious goal, but any academic job is an ambitious goal.  Getting the second PhD is unlikely to be directly helpful once you have it, let alone worth the sacrifice of 4-6 years of your life!

Added: By the way, when you mention "mathematics" and "electrical engineering": I think of Raoul Bott, a brilliant and beloved professor whose long career at Harvard ended while I was studying there.  I think that his story will be inspirational for many people with this confluence of interests.  Check out his bio: he balanced his early interest in these two fields nicely...and only needed one PhD.

First of all, in your case, it should be obvious that it is way, way too soon to even think about a PhD of any kind.  In many ways even one PhD is too much these days - given the employment market today, opportunities for PhDs are slim to none.  Best advice? Keep in mind that having a PhD often closes more doors than it opens.


Is there a problem with citing the original source instead of the source where the information was first found? I'm writing a Bachelor's Thesis.

I found a seemingly convenient way of making my research paper successful, but I'm not sure if it counts as plagiarism.

This is mainly concerned with the methods section.

I have gathered many research papers that use the same methodology but discuss different topics (it is not about the literature review). I read the method section and take notes of how the author presented the information, the discussion raised, the sections included.

If it is relevant to my research paper, I follow the same ideas. I take the information cited by the researcher; I mean good information from experts. I do further research on good quotes that are in the research papers I read, use them in my research paper, and cite the original source of the quote, which I also read, but I do not cite the research paper where I was first introduced to the information.

Is this plagiarism?

I don't cite the research paper where I found the quote because it is irrelevant to my topic. It only uses the same methodology. Moreover, I do further research on the information and usually cite the original source or a source on research methodology.

You are correctly citing the original source of the idea/quote (which you looked up and read in context, as you should).

You don't (usually) have to cite the paper that exposed you to that original source. The purpose of a citation is to

give credit to the originator of an idea/quote
tell readers where to look to verify your claims about that idea/quote

In this case, citing the original source satisfies both purposes and is sufficient.

An exception is a review paper, which doesn't add new research, but collects and comments on relevant sources on a subject. In this case, the curation of materials is the novel idea contributed by the review paper. If you then go on to use the collection of sources you found via that paper, it's often appropriate to cite the review paper also.

Similarly, if you use the interpretation of the original source found in the secondary source, you should also cite the secondary source.

Plagiarism is lack of attribution. You always need to cite your sources, period. If you are only paraphrasing or summarizing what someone else said, you only need to cite the relevant book/article/thesis/whatever. If you are citing someone verbatim, you also need to indicate the page numbers. If you do not do this, you are going to get in trouble.

That said, you are not obliged to cite everybody who has said something relevant, especially when  working on popular topics where everybody and their mother have said something. You can always write something like "see Smith 2000 and Thompson 2001, among others", or if you prefer the original source, "see Smith 2000 et seq".


What are the benefits of an MBA to someone with a Computer Science degree? I know this is relative to a person's unique situation or career objectives, but generally speaking, what can a Master's in Business administration do for a computer scientist?
The reason I ask is because I have a bachelor's in CS and I jumped right into a semester of my MBA, having it a third of the way finished. But now I am retracted because I'm not exactly sure what will come of this degree.
Will it propel me in my career (opportunity and/or salary) or will it just be a complete waste?
I guess my initial thinking was that an MBA would allow me to be able to manage some software/IT projects being well versed in development as well as the business side of things that stimulate ideas. But now I am wondering if this would even be the best way to achieve that. I'm stuck at a crossroad and would appreciate some feedback, preferably from someone who has experience in these career fields.

I remember asking this question 5 months ago. Fast forward 5 months later and I've accepted a position as an entry level developer! The sweet thing: I got a salary increase because of my MBA! I start in June, which is a month after I'm supposed to graduate. The other nice thing is that the MBA program only cost me about 16k in total, which isn't too bad if you ask me.
In terms of the education itself, I don't regret it one bit because it steered me in the direction of finding financial literacy, which is huge in these times. I was taught all sorts of CS topics, but never the importance of financial literacy. I believe my CS degree taught me how to make money, but my MBA taught me how to manage and KEEP money.
I thank everyone who shared their responses because I remember back then how stressed I was. Everything is pretty smooth sailing now

what can a Master's in Business administration do for a computer scientist?

An MBA would allow a computer scientist to complement their technical skills with business skills.

Will it propel me in my career (opportunity and/or salary) or will it just be a complete waste?

A business-technical skillset is surely a competitive advantage.


Do I have to include my pronouns in a course outline? I am a TA in a US school and my professor told me to include my pronouns in the course outline. I personally would rather not for social and religious reasons.
Her argument was that I will confuse students because they do not know what my pronouns are. I find this argument not convincing since it is very obvious what my pronouns are from the way I look. We ended up having a heated discussion and she was very upset with my opinion. We had a great professional relationship, but once she found that I am on the opposite spectrum of her social/political opinions I can feel that the interactions between us are not "good" compared with our interactions before this argument. In the end, she wants to escalate this situation to a higher level.
Am I legally obligated to do so? If not, will this affect my academic career?
Responses to comments:

I tried to avoid my view about the gender issue but since people are asking me to put it here, I will do so: If a student asked me to call him/her/...etc by a specific pronoun, I will do so (actually, I use names to overcome this issue, it is easy to do). I am here to teach them the material X, and I will make sure they all get the same opportunity. This includes trans and non-binary people. Even though I am not convinced; I do not support non-binary genders and I do not think it is possible that a one can change his/her sexual identity.
If I start putting my pronoun on my cv, it will contradict my beliefs since it implicitly says that I am ok with that movement. I do respect people's choices but I do not like to be involved in it. I am talking about myself and what to do with my "pronoun".
Some of the answers suggested to find an alternative and I did: I suggested to use my name instead! For instance: poman's stuff, poman said, I deliver it to poman. That is how we keep mutual respect. I always do this. I call people by their names, and I will ask about their names if I don't know.

Instead of the legal aspects, I would like to address the professional and ethical aspects of the pronouns trend.
In my opinion, the purpose of announcing your pronouns is to indicate that you will address other people with respect.  The message that is sent is: since I told you my pronouns, you know that if you tell me how you want to be addressed I will not disrespect that preference.
There is a secondary purpose.  People whose pronouns are not obvious may feel stress because they are the only ones who have to announce their pronouns.  If you announce your pronouns, you are reducing that stress.
Therefore, the professional way to behave is to announce your pronouns.  It's respectful.
Requiring people to announce their pronouns is, however, unethical.  Some people are not sure how they wish to be addressed.  Other people may not feel safe discussing their preferences.  Requiring these people to announce their pronouns is abusive.  Not announcing your pronouns is not necessarily wrong or disrespectful.

I can't comment on the legality.  However...
Will it affect my career?
Your career depends on working with people.  Sometimes you have to do things which seem like a waste of time to you, but which help other people.
You may think that stating pronouns only relate to trans people.  This is not correct.  "Hilary" used to be a man's name, and you still occasionally find men called that.  (We have a male politician in the UK called Hilary Benn.)  There are various spellings of Lesley/Leslie, and they do not always correspond to gender.  Jean could be a female name, or a male French name.  And that's before we get to less well-known names, which of course hits its peak with the African-American tradition of inventing names where a name could be genuinely unique.
If you've met the person, you know whether to say "he" or "she".  (Or perhaps something else.)  If you've only ever corresponded with them on email, you have no idea.  So knowing what to call them makes life easier for everyone.  Maybe it doesn't apply to you so much, but it certainly will apply to other people.
If you're unable to put yourself in other people's shoes for this, and see the benefits of applying this across the board, then it certainly will affect your career.  Not specifically for this, but from the point-of-view of you being unable to understand how a large organisation is administered and being able to work with other people who have slightly different requirements to you.  You have also created significantly more work in fighting this than it would have taken just to do it, and you've affected your relationship with your superior.  You have started creating a reputation for yourself as being inflexible and unreasonable about things which have little or no practical cost to you.  As a TA, your natural progression is into teaching at the same university, and if people don't want to work with you then they won't hire you, whatever your other skills may be.
Beyond that, your statement about a religious objection suggests that you may have issues working with gay or trans colleagues or students.  There is a difference between having an opinion where people can agree to differ, and an opinion where you believe certain groups of people should not be allowed to exist.  The latter case would affect your ability to do your job, and employers would then be entitled to fire you or to refuse to hire you in the first place.  If your superior is concerned enough to escalate this, it seems likely that you are in this situation.  In that case you should not just be concerned about having an academic career but concerned about ever being employed by anyone down to sweeping floors at Target.


Is it appropriate to apply for assistant professor positions a few months before obtaining my PhD? I am finishing my PhD at a famous research institution located in Europe. I am quite delayed due to COVID-related disruptions, which forced us to devote most lab equipment to vaccine development and trial assessment instead of doing some experiments I needed to validate my hypotheses.
Nonetheless, I will obtain my degree within the next few months. My thesis has already gone through a mandatory internal assessment process, which is similar to peer review. And my advisor has already appointed examiners.
I have some interesting publications in good journals (Nature Comms and equivalent ones), but a big part of my thesis is only published as a preprint in medRxiv. My findings are very novel and, in the words of my supervisor (who is a big name in the field), it's a major breakthrough. We've contacted other big names in the field, who are also really interested in this new approach, and they are helping to validate things. We already have enough for submitting to a top journal, which is good.
My advisor and his peers are writing grant applications and preparing clinical trials based on my findings. I am interested in continuing with this line of research, but I will need to find a different host institution once I graduate. I would like to continue as soon as possible in order not to loose a head start on my own ideas.
I am a bit confused with research-oriented Assistant Professor openings. Is it appropriate to apply at this stage? I have contacted one US professor behind an open position, and he encouraged me to apply. However, is this the norm for most American and European positions?

In most biology/biological sciences departments in the US and Canada it would be unusual for someone to be hired into a tenure-track assistant professorship immediately following their PhD; most candidates would have at least a year or two of postdoctoral experience. (This may be different in biomedical and/or clinically oriented programs). If you have a spectacular research record that could make you an exception.
Postdoctoral experience is less expected in math (although 1-2 years is probably still the median), and even less in statistics; this is probably also the case in other fields such as engineering where people with a fresh PhD can get well-paying jobs in industry.
It doesn't hurt to apply for such positions, but I would say if would be safer to at least consider a few post-doctoral positions as a backup plan.
Finally, as with most questions like this, you will get the most relevant advice from your supervisor and colleagues in your lab/program; they know the most about the norms of your particular sub-field and geographic region. Unless you have some particular reason not to, you should probably ask them.

Here is some data from a reasonably recent survey of (mostly North American) ecologists (note, this paper was contentious because of the way it handled gender and informed consent of respondents):

Recently hired TT assistant professors of ecology typically were about 4 years post-Ph.D. at the time of hiring (mean 4.2 years, median 4). 69% had anywhere from 2 to 6 years of post-Ph.D. experience, with a range from 0 to 11 years of post-Ph.D. experience. The majority of ecology faculty job seekers also are 2–6 years post-Ph.D.

These data are consistent with a job market in which most hiring institutions prefer applicants with at least a year or two of post-Ph.D. experience. But once you have a few years of post-Ph.D. experience, the marginal value of additional post-Ph.D. experience appears to be low at best, though it's hard to say precisely based on the available data.

Fox, Jeremy. “A Data-Based Guide to the North American Ecology Faculty Job Market.” The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 101, no. 2 (2020): e01624. https://doi.org/10.1002/bes2.1624.

Yes it is appropriate to apply now, at least in the US. Don't wait. The competition is fierce for jobs in many fields. Consider a post doc as a backup strategy. But now is the time to start applying.
The process will take a while and you don't really want to have a gap in your career if you can manage it.


Do any British universities still offer degree registration from afar to those who study alone, without tuition? Forty years ago, London University was still offering degree registration to "external" students, who might be living anywhere in the world. To prepare themselves for the London exams, many studied at local institutions; but it was also acceptable for external students not to study at any institution but to study "privately". Some of these "private" students had private tutors, while others studied wholly on their own, without any tuition, and after being registered for the required period of time they presented themselves in a London or London-accredited examination room and sat the exam papers. Fees were paid both for registration and examination. For many decades, the availability of degree examinations to private students was considered one of the special features of London University.

I am not asking for recommendations, but are there any British universities nowadays that register and examine students who study wholly on their own?

Note that I am not asking about degrees by "distance learning" in which coursework is required and tuition bought from and given by the degree-awarding institution, or by an institution accredited by it, although it is possible that the kind of degree registration I am asking about might be considered a sub-category of distance learning.

The University of London still offers self study courses for international students. The list of courses includes both undergraduate and post graduate degrees in a range of subjects. While these courses are self study and do not include tuition, they are not cheap. For example, the fees for the Accounting and Finance (BSc) are:

  Academic year 2016-2017

  Application fee (non-refundable)  £ 84

  Initial registration fee  £ 760

  Examination entry fee (per full course)   £ 224

  Examination entry fee (per half course)   £ 112

  Continuing registration fee   £ 380

  Total for BSc degree  £ 4,292

  Other fees (as applicable)

  Additional registration fee for students taking law courses (per course)  £ 51

  Application fee for consideration of accreditation of prior learning (per full course)    £ 89

The fees are a little confusing since they are using course in two different ways. I think £224 fee is for a full year module.

At a total cost of £4,292, this is considerably cheaper than the £9,000 per year (£27,000 per for a degree) that most UK universities are charging. That said while program includes study materials, it does not include teaching.

Considering how cash-strapped and/or financially savvy British higher education institutions tend to be nowadays, you are extremely unlikely to find such a programme set available anywhere in the British isles.

In the days of online distance learning and MOOCs (massive open online courses), there is probably no valid reason for an institution to grant degrees for free.

The rationale for charging fees for distance learning is that registering with a degree programme, you precisely do not 'study wholly on your own', but you benefit from a wide range of resources, not the least digital, to have access to the latest scholarship, in addition to the expertise the local staff 'holds' themselves.

If you are based outside the UK, your natural first port of call to find an answer for a question of this nature would be the British Council; they are the experts to advise globally about UK educational and cultural opportunities.


Can I contact a professor who works on my same work During my PhD I worked on a specific topic. My thesis is published at my university website. This has been done one year ago. Today, I found that one professor (not my supervisor and not from the same institute. I do not know them personally) give a presentation on a conference about the same idea as mine. Even their future work are the same a my other PhD chapter. They expressed their idea as a novel one. Do I need to contact them? If so, what should I tell them?
I do not know if they know about my thesis or not. Also, my work was built up on existing work. They even do not cite any existing works. I do not know why, but may be they do not know about these works. So I do not suggest any bad thing about them. Just would like to know what should do for this situation.
I respect the professor so much. So again no bad suggestion about her or any one of her group. She may at the beginning of the research and did not update her literature review yet.

You do not "need" to contact them. The fact that your work was on a university website does not mean that anyone has seen it.
Unless there are subtler clues that they just copied your work, you should treat that work as completely independent of yours.
If you email them, do not express any doubts about their honesty, etc. This would in-any-case terminally alienate them. Rather, say that you have similar interests, as visible in your thesis, which actually obtains some similar results.
Do NOT make any remarks about how your thesis was on-line for a year, and "should have been cited", etc. Things don't really work that way.
Again, most often it's not that people are cheating, but that they have similar ideas, due to similar contexts...

Sure you can (and should) contact the professor. But you should not accuse them of any misconduct (yet) since, based on your question, it sounds very plausible that they haven't seen your Ph.D. thesis and came up with the same ideas independently (great minds think alike).
You should contact them to make them aware of your thesis. Do not make any specific requests (e.g., that they revise the conference slides to give you credit for prior work, or that they revise any articles in their pipeline to cite your thesis).
Perhaps you may want to look up their university's Dean of Research, or someone with a similar title, and cc them. I wouldn't do it on the first e-mail, but I might cc the department chair, especially if I knew them.

Dear Prof. X,
I became aware of the presentation you gave at a conference X and was surprised by the similarities between your work and my 2019 Ph.D. thesis posted at URL.
Your slide X says X, while my thesis (section X, page X) says X.

Cite all the similarities, omit none, no "etc's", and be as detailed and specific as posisble, and quote the text from your thesis, do not paraphrase or summarize.

You describe idea X as novel, but it is found my thesis (section X, page X, saying X).

I trust that you have found my thesis to be of interest. I hope we can correspond more about X.

Then you wait for their response (or the lack thereof) and proceed accordingly.


What type of books to read to improve Academic English? Are novels good type for that purpose?

The best book is one you will actually read. Your English won't improve by looking guiltily at that tome gathering dust on your nightstand because it's a slog to get through. So yes, novels (in your favorite genre) are excellent for that purpose.

Academic English isn't that different from regular English. Once you have a firm command of English, picking up the academic style is just a matter of reading a few papers in your area.

This may be better on the English stack, but good novels yes, others probably not ie anything containing profanity as that is not used in professional reports.


Can a PhD student apply for another PhD program in some other university? Would it make a negative impact on my PhD application if they get to know that I am already enrolled in PhD and now applying for another program in their University?

Yes, you can apply, just as anyone else. But yes, it is possible that people in your current program would take it as a negative. And, yes again, that the other university or program might rank you a bit lower if you already have a "suitable" position in a doctoral program. But I doubt that the last would be a large factor in most cases.

But there are a lot of reasons to switch. Some of them are very important. If you have a serious need to switch, either for personal or academic reasons, don't hesitate to explore your options and follow up on good ones. This is especially true if you don't think  you have a good path to success where you are now.

People understand that others change their minds and their directions. They understand the need to move locations and situations. They understand that some qualified students are in a bad situation.

Not really. There are people doing more than 2 degrees at the same time. That is relatively common for people that want to end up at the same time with extra certifications and there are universities that offer a discount on the second degree's payments. However, it is understood such is extremely demanding.

If what you are planning is a switch on PHD and you care what others may think, then there shouldn't be a problem either, but I advise you to say (and only if you are asked) exactly that, that you wish to pursue 2 PHD's simultaneously, and then, when you are on the other you can say that it was indeed too demanding and need to drop 1 to be able to finish the other. Otherwise, you are the paying client of the university (most PHD's around the world are paid for by the student and only so few are by scholarships), so if you want to switch then there shouldn't be a problem. And in the rare case its not a paid PHD (whihc can be the case for some european PHD's) , then just check your universities regulations to see if there is any type of penalty.


Should I simplify my writing in a foreign country? As a native English speaker studying in the Netherlands, I often find myself writing (not published) English papers for a Dutch audience, and I worry I'm alienating my superiors with my writing.

I put a sample of text from a letter I wrote for an admissions committee through an array of readability tests, with Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, SMOG Index, Automated Readability Index, Gunning Fog, and Linsear Write all  assigning it "college graduate" level. For comparison, the King James Bible averages around a fifth grade reading level, and New York Times articles typically produce a reading level around the tenth grade on the same tests.

At first glance, this is exactly how it should be. A university student submitting university documents should be writing at a university level. And yet, despite the truly incredible level of skill widely demonstrated by the Dutch people in the English language, I can't help feeling that I'm disadvantaging myself through use of constructions and vocabulary that no reasonable non-native English speaker could ever be expected to know.

Is there some merit to this? Rather than optimizing my writing for descriptiveness and articulacy, should I instead aim to be more readable by a foreign audience, at the cost of expressiveness?

Thou shalt not dumb down thy writing, but don't make it a vain exercise of style

I'm a non-native English speaker, and let me put it straight: I may write in simple English, because limited are my English writing skills, but I don't want to read simple English because I want to enrich my vocabulary and grammatical constructions.

But whether you write for a native English speaker or not, write clearly, avoiding unnecessary verbosity just to show off your eloquence.

(And, honestly, stop wasting time using those readability tests)

Food for thought, to help you decide for yourself.

Style and substance go hand in hand. In a creative piece, style is more important and calls for that certain flair vocabulary helps us to achieve. On the other hand in a scientific journal, clarity is key. Where does your writing lie in that spectrum?

The point of communicating is to connect with your audience. Don't look at it as dumbing down your language; look to it as using 'appropriate' language.

The intention behind the writing is pretty important too. For example, if you are writing a literature thesis for university it would be reasonable to expect your reader to have an advanced grasp of the language.

Finally, this doesn't need to be viewed as an either or, there may be ways to communicate complexity through simplicity.

My personal opinion: complex vocabulary is overrated if the message can be achieved with simplicity- including in creative pieces. As the Bard once said: Brevity is the soul of wit.


Error in master's thesis, I do not know what to do I successfully defended my master's thesis last December.
 I had 18/20 and it went well. However, my adviser invited me to carry out research in the area, which I accepted.

When I was writing the first paper, I noticed a big error in the data analysis. This does not affect the conclusions and the values of the estimates are very similar (with and without the error) the question is what do I do now? I'm afraid to tell my advisor and they cancel my master's degree. What do you think? My ethics does not allow me to write the paper again with the error, but if correct my advisor will find ..

Any suggestions? I'm sure no one will notice the error, but I do not know.
I´m very afraid of this
Thank You

Revoking an earned degree is exceedingly rare and would probably be appropriate only for serious and intentional errors such as fraud. I think you can rest easy on that.

Talk to your advisor and lay it all out. It is better that you find and reveal the errors than if someone else does. Going forward you can still publish, but it will need to be based on correct data, analysis, and interpretations.

It is common in research for errors to appear in old work. It is certainly not a unique occurrence. Attempting to conceal it would be the worst path of all.

It is not all on you. You defended your thesis -- presumably in front of experts who know the subject matter and an advisor who read the thesis. It is unlikely that the mistake is as egregious as you fear. Otherwise, those in charge would likely have noticed. They gave an endorsement of the fundamental quality of your research efforts, and no subsequent rethinking of that research can negate that endorsement (unless you are guilty of some blatant dishonesty, which doesn't seem to be the case).


What do I do if I cannot give a good reference to my PhD student? I've seen several questions from students about bad supervisor references but this is on the other side.
I have a PhD student whose priority during their PhD was family (had two children in 3 years) and social life. They are smart but simply did the minimum for the PhD. We had a talk some time ago and they were clear that their target was the minimum requirements set by the school and nothing more. Which is fine by me, since that what they want.
They've now asked me to write a reference letter for a very prestigious ECR fellowship. I personally know many members of the committee. The reference guidelines ask me to address the candidate's ability to work well under pressure, attract funding, take initiative, work independently, etc.
I am conflicted. My options as I see are:

I write a statement of facts. Worked in the group from X to Y, published N papers, etc. However, this will basically signal that I cannot support their candidacy since I don't address the specific guidelines.
I tell the student I cannot give a support letter. However, given they haven't worked with any other professor or group, it will leave them in bad place.

Any other options?
Update: Some more information based on questions/comments below.

The student was clear after the first year of their PhD (pre-COVID) that they want to do the minimum. For example, the requirement set by the university is to have "publishable" work and not to have published. So, the student did not want to go through the publication process except for "easy" conferences (2). All of my other PhDs until now have had 1 journal accepted and at least 1 submitted by the submission date.
The fact that they focus on family is the positive aspect for me. E.g., if they did the minimum because they were lazy, I wouldn't have problem to say I don't provide a reference letter. I don't know how many hours they actually put since I don't keep monitor (also, last 9 months have been remotely due to COVID).
I don't believe I can truthfully say that they comply with what I'm asked to comment on. E.g., good organizational skills: they have missed multiple deadlines, missed meetings, missed report submissions for their own funding which has a fixed yearly date (!). The excuse is always family or technical problems, but for the 3 years of joint work, I cannot truthfully say they have good organizational skills. I'll not extend to other aspects, but similar picture.

A student who did the minimum during their PhD has very little chance of getting a prestigious fellowship.  In the sciences, you must have publications to get prestigious fellowships; a student who did the minimum will not.  Your role as a mentor is to guide students to attempt things they might succeed in.  Tell the student they will not succeed in this application.  Tell them to compare their record to past successful applicants.
You should not write the letter.  It will not help the student and it can hurt your reputation.  But you should have told the student that they would not get a letter for prestigious fellowships when you discussed their goals for completing their PhD.

You had a talk with the candidate when the candidate clearly stated about their desire to meet the bare minimum. You can have a similar talk now along the lines - ‘The bare minimum doers cannot be recommended by me for this scholarship since it has a very high bar.’
The fact that the candidate may not get a good recommendation from you is not really a matter of discussion today. It got implicitly decided long back when you had the first discussion where the candidate decided to meet the bare minimum.

Caveat:
It is possible that while the scholarship sets a very high bar but does not really follow up with it. In that case there may be people who have also done bare minimum just like your student but they will get the scholarship because their guide is not as strict about the rules. If that’s the situation, then it is up to you to decide whether you want to conform to common standards or you want to stick to your guns.


Visualising connections between scientific papers So i just began to write my literature review and have a big bunch of research papers saved in a folder.

Is there a tool that would help me visualize the references between those papers saved in my folder?

I.e. for example paper A mentioned paper B in its bibliography, and B referenced C, C referenced D and E, A referenced E.

Not sure if there is a good way to visualize the connection between the references that I am aware of. However, a good way to manage and organize references is using the free tool called Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/) where you can create tags, directories and subdirectories. So, may be using these you can group similar references into one category. It also has plugins for all the popular browsers and also a standalone version, so you can pretty quickly import references and build your library and it also supports all the popular formats for bibliography. There is also an online account that you can create to manage your library over the cloud.


Should I ask my online PhD interview panel whether my partner can sit in? I have an online interview for a PhD program via Skype. I want to ask the panel if my girlfriend can join in the interview. She will turn off her microphone and camera, so there will no interrupting sound from her. She will only hear our conversation and see our faces (if they turn on the camera). She is there just to share with my experience, not my stress. I can do the interview alone. I also don't need to impress her.

This looks odd and unprofessional, I admit. But from what I read from the book of the professor that I follow, he is very open. He always use first person point of view. Even when at the time I contacted there was no funding for me, he managed to find one and asked me to do the interview. The professor who introduce me to contact him described him as "cool", though it is an informal conversation. Based on those observation, I want to take a little safety risk (just a little, and safety).

I think the asking question is not the important thing; just pretend they are human and ask simply:

  My girlfriend wants to observe the interview. She won't make any interruption. Should I let her in?

Q: However, should I ask this question? If there is no problem, there are some more things to consider:

Should I ask this via email or when we begin to talk?
It can have technical troubles, such as lagging. Of course the interview is more important, and if the connection keeps unstable, she shouldn't take part anymore. If this happens, would this leaves a bad impression on the professors?

One more thing: seriously, I don't need her that badly for just one hour. Yes, this is not a Nobel prize, it's just a normal interview. I just think that it's nice to have, and until I can't find a good reason to not to do that, I'll take a try. If everyone is scare of making a mistake, when they can't point out what that mistake is, then there is no development in this world. I seriously don't think that "unprofessional" or "childish" is a good reason, especially when the person I'm talking with is open-minded.

I would find this odd and unprofessional. I recommend against this.

Also, I want to be able to talk freely and openly with you in an interview, and have you respond in kind, and I would be worried about how having your girlfriend on the line will affect this dynamic. (For example: I might worry that you would be distracted by thinking about how she is perceiving the interview, or trying to impress her.)

I might also be concerned that needing moral support for an interview this badly does not say much about your ability to handle the stresses of graduate school.

I don't see why you need to ask permission or even tell them.  Just do it.  Some panels might hold it against you, but would you really want to work with them?

Remember you are interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing you.

I would recommend codemonkeyliketab's recent answer over mine.  It has all the positives of my answer with none of the negatives.  It is perfect.


How can I recover professionally from being a crank? Three years ago I got kicked out of graduate school in physics. I was suffering from mental illness, which led me to believe I made a huge discovery in physics. But my advisor kept saying that what I was doing is nonsense and that I should focus on something else. I just ignored him and kept working on huge discovery, convinced I was going to win a Nobel prize.
I started sending many emails to many physics people (I had a list of thousand email addresses I found online) hoping someone would realize my amazing discovery. I got kicked from school which made me send more emails (almost one a day near the end), and when I got negative responses I sent an email to everyone on the list insulting them and saying I deserved to be in their place.
I got psychiatric help, and eventually doctors found a brain tumor, which they removed. I am now taking drugs, and doing much better. I now realize how insane my behavior was.
I want to re-apply to grad school, but I’m scared people will recognize my name or contact my university. My undergraduate grades were very good. Should I mention my illness (with proof) when applying? Should I send apology emails to the people I’ve contacted?

A few suggestions:

If it were me, I would be very forthcoming about the illness. Of course, no one is entitled to your private medical information, so you will have to decide what you're comfortable with. But "an undiagnosed brain tumor caused me to act erratically" is a very convincing explanation, and does not reflect poorly on you.
Consider reaching out to your previous advisors / colleagues. Even those who were furious at your previous behavior would probably accept that an undiagnosed brain tumor caused you to exhibit poor judgment. It's a "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" situation.
Along similar lines, consider contacting the university, and the specific school within the university, to discuss whether the expulsion can be expunged or converted to some other classification. Most universities are really understanding if you speak to the right people.
When you apply, I would absolutely explain what happened. I would give a shorter version of what you wrote above -- even if they don't recognize your name, they will see that you were expelled, so it's better to tell your story. And you did a good job telling the story above, so I trust that you can write an explanation that is similarly clear and compelling.
There will likely be no need to provide medical proof. You could (perhaps even should) offer to provide proof, but I suspect most admissions committees would not request it. Among other reasons, it will likely be clear from your tone that you have recovered.
I don't think it's necessary to send an apology to your entire mailing list. But I don't think doing so would be inappropriate either. If you do so, be concise: no need for more than a sentence or two.

Nobody on this site should be advising on your recovery from illness.  Discuss that with a professional who has examined you personally.
If you apply for a new PhD, you will be required to give a record of your previous studies.  This will show you were "kicked out."  To convince an admissions committee you should be readmitted, you will need to tell them your expulsion was related to an untreated illness and you will need to inform the committee of the degree to which you have recovered from the illness and probability of recurrence (ask your medical professional).  You do not need to provide proof of the illness, or even say what it was.  You should explicitly state that the illness caused behavior which lead to expulsion.
Any educated person who read your emails would have realized you were ill.  Apologizing would be a matter of personal preference.
Based on the limited information you provided, I do not see any reason why you could not get a PhD.


Can I write the same text in method section in two different project? I am working on two projects now and both of them have similar methods. What if I write the same text in the method part? Will it be count as plagiarism? I am almost finished working on them and both of them will be submitted in a different journal(one already accepted; under review, another one will be submitted soon)

Reusing the text from a previous paper in a new paper is a form of "self-plagiarism" that publishers are increasingly unwilling to accept.  It's true that this was a relatively common practice in the past, but the advent of plagiarism detection software has made this practice visible and publishers are starting to crack down on it.

One reason for this is that publishers want to publish "original" content and not repeat previously published material.  Another reason for this is that publishers want to avoid violating copyrights owned by other publishers- the publisher of the first paper could easily sue the publisher of the second paper for copyright violation.

The way things now, chances are that when you submit the later paper you'll have it sent back to you with instructions to remove the self-plagiarism before the journal will review the paper.

I have repeated the experimental method text a lot.

Sometimes you can just cite another paper (samples prepared as described in X) but that can be inconvenient for various reasons.  The method may not be very long so it is inconvenient to send reader to another paper.  Or sometimes both papers are simultaneous submissions.  I don't mind a citation to an "in press" or "in review" paper when you really need to--but in this case, you could and maybe should just share the details.  Another case is when only small details are different.  And, yes, sometimes you can say "as described in X with variations Y" but this can also become a real dog's breakfast and mystery hunt, requiring a lot of back and forth to the X paper while reading current paper.

If you want to really CYA, you could do something like, "the chemical synthesis is similar to that used in other study(ies) [citation].  And then go ahead and give the whole method.

But really, I don't think anyone will question same author recycling method text or even some intro background text.  For the people who follow the area well, they are going to concentrate more on the results, regardless, and be able to skim past stuff they have seen before.  For others who haven't read the whole set of papers, it can be convenient to have the methods there instead of some dog's breakfast of back forth citations.

Really...I would emphasize what you think serves the reader best.  If a cite to another paper works better use that.  If having the info there works better use that.  I think you generally can have a hunch on this.


Methodology as a Body of Methods? I'm currently having a hard time understanding if authors are using the word methodology correctly, or if their papers should be classified as BS. Hence, I set out to get a better feeling for the correct use of the word, but now I'm even more confused than before:

First I had a look at wikipedia which states:

  Methodology is the systematic, theoretical analysis of the methods applied to a field of study, or the theoretical analysis of the body of methods and principles associated with a branch of knowledge.

This sentence is followed by a second sentence with reference to a paper from S.I. Irny, which as far as I could see, states something very contracting:

  Methodology is generally a guideline for solving a problem, with
  specific components such as phases, tasks, methods, techniques and
  tools [two sources are given]

Even though I think the wikipedia description is identical with my understanding of the term, the reference is confusion. I then asked Merriam & Webster for help. Here it says:

  1:  a body of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline : a particular procedure or set of procedures
      2:  the analysis of the principles or procedures of inquiry in a particular field

Oxford says a discipline is branch of knowledge, which I would interpret as things like math, sociology, computer science and psychology, but not things like UML modeling, crossword solving, methods for solving a problem, or even sticking together methods to solve a problem. This does not match the discipline : a particular procedure or a set of procedures part of the definition.

And then again they give a weird example:

  «for solving crossword puzzles my usual methodology is to begin by
      filling in all of the answers I'm reasonably sure of»

Maybe the « and » brackets indicate that they chose a poor example, or they consider crosswords a discipline (case 1). It obviously doesn't qualify for case 2, as the example does not analyse methods used in the crossword domain.

Sadly, Oxford defines the term as:

  a system of methods used in a particular area of study or activity: a
  methodology for investigating the concept of focal points

Which again is used as a method/solution for a problem and not the theorecial study of methods in that field. Only the "Methodology as a buzzword" section on wikipedia seems to back up my understanding of the term:

  Many recent uses of the word methodology mistakenly treat it a synonym
  for method or body of methods. Doing this shifts it away from its true
  epistemological meaning and reduces it to being the procedure itself,
  the set of tools or the instruments that should have been its outcome.
  A methodology is the design process for carrying out research or the
  development of a procedure and is not in itself an instrument for
  doing those things. Using it as a synonym for method or set of
  methods, leads to misinterpretation and undermines the proper analysis
  that should go into designing research.

Question 1: Is my understanding that a methodology is, as the name suggests it, a logic behind methods, and consequently must not deal with the topic per se, but address some meta level of the used methods, wrong?

Question 2: For my particular academic problem in CS: Is the combination of general priciples and rules as part of a standard for creating a particular type of operating system a methodology (e.g. as used in AUTOSAR)? Such principles and rules govern and describe communication mechanisms, memory access methods, scheduling and the like. I would call this a body of methods, hence this must be a buzzword?

Additional fact: My Sixth edition Oxford from 1976 says:

  Science of method; body of methods used in a particular branch of
  activity;

So in the current version they dumped the actual meaning and only used that weird body of method definition.

I'm happy about any source bringing some clarity into this mess. Don't worry if you can't answer the CS specific question, a general purpose answer may well be just as good.

Words don't have a fixed meaning, and dictionaries only follow usage here. That is what is happening here.

The “classical” meaning of methodology is (my own words): a branch of epistemology that studies scientific methods, i.e. the systematic, theoretical analysis of the methods applied in science. (Epistemology, in turn, is a branch of philosophy dealing with knowledge).

This classical meaning is what the eponym Wikipedia article discusses (WP being an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, it doesn't have to list all meanings of a given word). It's also what one of the Merriam-Webster definitions says:

  the analysis of the principles or procedures of inquiry in a particular field

Now, language evolves, and in addition to this “classical” meaning of methodology (which is, in that sense, a mass noun), a second meaning is developing. This new meaning is “a collection of methods used in conjunction”, as you noted.

Now, as with every language evolution, some people complain about it (and the Wikipedia article on Methodology is clearly written from this point of view; see “Methodology as a buzzword” section). The Wiktionary article goes on to say:

  Etymologically, methodology refers to the study of methods. Thus the use of methodology as a synonym for methods (or other simple terms such as means, technique, or procedure) is proscribed as both inaccurate and pretentious.

Well, sod them to Hades! It is clear that this newer meaning is abundantly used in the academic literature these days, and can thus be considered acceptable.

(If you've never seen it, this wonderful tirade by Stephen Fry should cure you of prescriptivism. It is delightful to hear… “They're no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.”)

Maybe it's my strictness for definitions. Maybe it's that I have some friends who speak Greek. But I've always understood "log" as part, and the "-y" as just a declension. So methodology would be in regards to the parts of methods. Given that when discussing methodologys, writers go into great detail, this definition seems to fit.

Part of why I treat "log" as a synonym for part has to do with how it's used, independently, in English. Consider logs from a tree, the tree has been sliced, with each slice being a part or log. A timelog or datalog is essentially just a bunch of separate entries in a single document.

You can find a lot of similar use here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Log

Some thoughts: I think a lot of the more recent use of "methodology" stems from it being a "bigger word" and therefore sounding more sophisticated or intellectual.


May a man attend a workshop entitled “Young women in [domain]”? The Max Planck Institute for Mathematics at the University of Bonn hosts workshops such as 'Young Women in Harmonic Analysis', 'Young Women in Geometry' and 'Young Women in Mathematical Physics' biannually, I think.

I am very interested in attending such a workshop as they are seldom found within the topics I am interested in. However, the title of the workshop begins with "Young Women". Moreover, the description on their page states that "the workshop provides a platform for female graduate students and postdocs in mathematical physics..."

Now, before you lambast me for even considering it, note that they also write "everybody is welcome to attend the workshop. We encourage all participants - male and female".

My worry is that male participants are technically permitted so that they do not break any discrimination laws and that if I were to attend such a workshop, I may find myself in the awkward situation of being the only male there facing the scowling looks of my female contemporaries.

Thus, my question is: can I apply (from a common sense, ethical, moral, situational point of view...because technically, I obviously can)?

Yes, you should attend if you want to.

From their site, the point of the workshops is giving women a "platform...to present their research".

In other words, the point is that the speakers are women, not that everyone present is female.  I would expect there to be plenty of men in the audience (And if the point is to empower women, surely they are more empowered when they can share their work with everyone, not just other women).

Not allowing men to attend would be sexist.

As they explicitly state that "everybody is welcome to attend the workshop" and that they "encourage all participants - male and female", they already explicitly give men permission to join the workshop, even though it may be directed towards women.

Nevertheless, it may indeed be awkward if you decide to join the course if you're the only man present. I'd be inclined to discuss this with one of the organizers and base my decision on her (I assume it's a she) input.


Should I be concerned that my (successful) application to grad school only barely survived the first cut? I am starting my PhD in a few days. One of the faculty told one of his students that me and another incoming PhD student just made it in terms of the initial admission ranking, i.e. we were in the bottom of the pile among those who made the cut. The reason that we got in was because the top candidates they sent offers to didn't come and there were professors asking for us specifically.
I know I could report this professor for his behavior but I'm not gonna do that. However, I am wondering if initial admission ranking means anything in terms of actual PhD performances. My field is statistics.

we were in the bottom of the pile.

Not really! You were in the very top of the pile. Many departments get more PhD applications than they can accept. Typical acceptance rates are about 10%, although I don't know about statistics specifically.
So if they offered eight spots, you were applicants #9 and #10. That's good. Unfortunately, when it comes down to choosing eight people out of the top 20 or so, it comes down basically chance. There is no objective way of measuring how good a candidate might be. So there is likely no real difference between #9 and #10, or more critically, between #8 -- the cutoff -- and #9. That a professor was asking for you specifically means a lot more than the overall ranking come up with by a committee.
Because "ranking" in the top 10% or so is meaningless, it doesn't really correlate with performance. Likely, you and you cohort study different enough things that it's hard to compare anyway.
It is quite inappropriate for a professor to reveal students' "rankings," especially to other people, though.

It depends on the field, for engineering as long as you have a degree you will benefit. For areas of pure science or mathematics I would be worried, mainly because the jobs just aren't there - even generic teaching jobs.
I guess this is independent of the issue of degree completion but on a practical basis I wouldn't suggest theoretical physics or mathematics to anyone who isn't at the top, top of the field because you're going to end up doing something else after graduation.