When is it okay to update other search committees? I'm on the academic job market this season for a position in a STEM field. I've had one on-campus interview and may receive an offer from this school within the next week or so. I've also had Skype interviews with a few other schools, but haven't received any on-campus invites from them. (The Skype interviews occurred about 3 weeks ago.)

At this point, should I let these schools know that I've had an on-campus interview? Or is it safe to assume that I've been rejected by them if I haven't received a campus invite already?

Don't make assumptions. Nearly everywhere will let you know when you are no longer under consideration. You may or may not be high on their list. You could be high and they are just dithering. But they would rather make it definite, just to avoid fruitless communication.

But it is probably a mistake to tell them you've had an interview, as it may confuse them about your interest. Wait until you have an acceptable offer before you notify them.

Trying to "nudge" them in your favor could work either way, if it has any effect at all. It is a risky thing to do. Nudging might be worthwhile if you are juggling multiple offers.

A general advice in any job search (academia or civilian world or NFL) is to let the other parties know when things have become competitive. It doesn't guarantee you get something done with the other parties.  But it will often move things along.  Especially if you are a good candidate and are likely to come off the market.

Be gracious about it (just wanted to let you know that I am moving down the path with X...would love to interview with you, T.)  But don't hide your light under a bushel.  At the end of the day, both sides are seeking to create an auction.  Make sure you do the small things you can to make an auction for you.

Edit:  Just looked at Buffy's comment.  Yes, an offer is much more powerful and deserving of a nudge.  I would still consider if you can do the nudge (gently) with less than an offer.  In particular, if you think things will move fast with the other party and you won't have a lot of time to shop an offer.  Judgment call, but my gut feel is power for the people.


For those who study in the humanities, have I made a mistake in doing my Master's abroad? I'm an American student currently earning a Master's in American cultural studies in Germany. Why study American culture in Germany? Firstly, I wouldn't have been able to afford a U.S. Master's in this field, and secondly I'd like to learn/improve my German with the ultimate goal of (possibly) pursuing a PhD in comparative literature.

However, since classes have started here, I'm beginning to regret my decision for the following reasons:

A) classes are incredibly large, direct contact with professors is scant, and so, among the obvious academic disadvantages, I'm ultimately worried I won't be able to get good letters of rec.

B) even at the graduate level, many students don't take their studies seriously (probably because there isn't the pressure of student loans and because education is quite open here [a good thing])

C) classes are not as rigorous as they were in my B.A. literature program, and so I don't feel like I can grow as a researcher/scholar, which is my goal

Does anyone have a similar experience applying to American PhD programs after doing a Master's abroad? Should I just stick it out and try my best to befriend some professors and make the best of my time here?

At this point, I regret not applying directly to American PhD programs sans Master's degree since my undergraduate grades and professors were quite good.
Thanks in advance!

You may have made a mistake, but it isn't a fatal one. You need a path forward.

First, your undergraduate professors can still have credence in writing recommendations, but you need to keep in contact with them so you aren't forgotten. They can probably give you advice now on your current situation.

I assume that you are early in your European studies. Abandoning and starting over in a US doctoral program might be an option, though perhaps as last resort.

The B) issue can, perhaps, help you with the A) issue. Professors might be a bit tired of lazy students and could possibly appreciate an approach from a student who wants to do more, both helping with the letters of recommendation issue and your C) problem.

But, it won't work if you are passive. You need to take charge. If one of your current professors does something interesting, you could make an approach and offer to help in some way. This solves all the problems. But don't just "stick it out". Take charge.

A) ... I won't be able to get good letters of rec

Are you required to write a dissertation or conduct a large project or similar? If so, then the supervisor of that work will be well positioned to write a letter of recommendation.

  B) ... many students don't take their studies seriously

So what?

  probably because there isn't the pressure of student loans

Isn't there? How do students fund their studies?

  because education is quite open here

What does that mean?

  C) classes are not as rigorous as they were in my B.A. literature program

Was your previous university more prestigious? That may explain (B) and (C).


Leave out the last chapter as it anyway should be addressed in second edition? I am an amateur (not affiliated with an academy) mathematician.

I have written a research monograph (see my site).

The current status of the book is that it is well written and is reasonably checked for errors. However there are serious errors in the last chapter. I may remove the last chapter and try to publish the rest of the book without it.

I sent my book (not yet including the last chapter) to several publishers. They all say either that my book is too original and rough for book form and should be published as articles first, or that my research is unmotivated. (I disagree and consider my work fully motivated.)

And now my book is in consideration of a publisher. After I sent my book to the aforementioned (last) publisher, I realized that before writing second volume of my book I need first create second edition of the first volume (which is in consideration now). I had two ideas how to rewrite it when it was already in publisher's review.

I doubt what to do with the last chapter (which as I've said above is currently erroneous). The simplest thing is just to remove it now, because it anyway should be rewritten in the second edition (and the rewrite is rather massive).

Should I for now remove the last chapter and leave this work to the stage when I will write the second edition of the first volume?

Or maybe should I stop any publishing attempts until I finish writing the second edition? (I'm afraid that if I happen to die, my work may be lost unpublished.)

I disagree and consider my work fully motivated.

This is a key point.  The issue isn't whether there exists compelling motivation, and you may be right that there is.  Rather, the issue is whether you have successfully communicated this motivation to readers who have spent far less time thinking about the topic than you have and who lack the perspective that comes from developing a subject from scratch.  You'll have to work extra hard to articulate the motivation and communicate it successfully.  If the readers still don't understand why are you doing something, then that itself amounts to a communication failure (regardless of whether you feel they ought to have understood).  You don't need to communicate successfully with everyone, but you need to do so with a large enough audience.

I'd strongly recommend trying harder to address this before publishing the book.  You can consider the editors who have looked over your submissions as a random sample of readers.  Many of them fail to understand the motivation behind your work, which suggests that many readers would find it unmotivated even if someone agreed to publish it.  Ultimately, the goal should be not just to get the book published, but to get it read and understood.  The feedback from publishers is helping you identify what you need to work on to attract readers.

  Or maybe should I stop any publishing attempts until I finish writing the second edition?

Are you proposing to publish the first edition while you are already working on a second edition, or to submit the first edition as a draft while telling the publisher that you are working on serious revisions?  The latter could make sense, while publishers are unlikely to agree to the former.  (Publishing a book takes time, effort and money, and nobody wants to commit these resources to a mathematics book that will quickly be out of date.)

But the fact that you already have large-scale changes in mind suggests that the book might not be ready to submit for publication.  You don't need to have completed all possible revisions before approaching publishers, but your chances of acceptance go down if you aren't presenting approximately your best work.

  Should I for now remove the last chapter and leave this work to the stage when I will write the second edition of the first volume?

What's the alternative to removing it?  If you have in mind fixing the mistakes now, then I can't advise you on which approach is better (since I haven't read the book).  If you mean keeping the incorrect chapter in the manuscript and not dealing with the mistakes until later, then that sounds like a bad idea.

  I'm afraid that if I happen to die, my work may be lost unpublished.

I can understand that this is a depressing possibility, but I wouldn't worry about it now (assuming you are no likelier to die soon than other people your age).  If it makes you feel safer, you could always ask a friend or family member to try to get your work archived somewhere if you died unexpectedly.  I can't say they would necessarily succeed, but it couldn't hurt to try.

By the way, the publishers who suggest publishing research papers first have an important point.  The mathematics publishing system is set up to work that way, and it is not particularly well adapted to publishing large chunks of unfamiliar research in book form.  It's certainly possible to publish research monographs, but you may be making things unnecessarily hard for yourself.  Unless you have a very strong reason to prefer a book, I'd recommend trying articles instead.

I would say you must keep trying and get it published, even if you end up paying for that because this is your hard work and should not be wasted or lost.

the best way is to go and talk to publishers and ask them what can be added or subtracted to meet their requirements and standards.

You can also convert the book into an e-book and upload it on paid libraries


What to do if I have seen an exam before I have taken it? Today I saw a photograph of an upcoming exam at my university. At first I thought it was last year's exam; so I took a closer look at it as I think it is okay to see last year's exams even if they aren’t officially published.
Anyway, later someone revealed to me that it was the upcoming exam which we’ll take in about three weeks.
It was taken by another student in my course, who took it while the teacher was on a break outside the room.

I feel bad and unethical about seeing it, as it seems to be cheating for me, and even more I’m worried about my further career if this ever comes out.
On one hand I don’t want to harm the other student who took the photo, on the other hand I don’t want to risk my career.

It is a semi difficult exam; I would say you should pass it quite well if you learned for it.
So what should I do? If I tell the university I’d probably have to reveal the identity of the person who took it, which I don’t want to do under any circumstances.

There have been some questions on how the pic was made: the prof brought the exam to a lesson to give a rough guideline on what to learn or not. During the break he went outside (as I and many others as well) to get a coffee and that's how the pic was made. I know for sure that it is the upcoming exam as it had a big heading with our course name and year.

For those who say it is also cheating to look at old exams:
I think you agree on that seeing an actual exam before you are going to take it is another dimension than seeing a year-old one.
Also this is very common where I study. It´s not like we are using really illegal copies, it is just that we often see pics of post-exam reviews. It is allowed to make them and there is no NDA on it (at least I never had to sign one), the exams just aren't published officially. I also bet every prof knows that this is going on here and tolerates it (some said so explicitly).

Also some said I should "rat" the guy who took it: I don't know the punishment for taking a photo of an exam, but I doubt it is modest, considering the - in my eyes negligent - prof. Also I don't want to be responsible for "destroying" the career of another, very young, student. Also it would probably come out who "ratted" him out, and I doubt that I would have much fun in the next two years then (I think you can say that in our course it is considered worse to "rat" somebody than to do to reveal something unethical, but I really doubt that this differs anywhere in the world).

Anyways: Today I have created a new Mail-Address and send the Prof a letter, including one question I remember as a proof, where I told him that the exam probably has been leaked. I asked him to keep the matter as private as possible and I also asked him not to write back to me what he decided to do or to ask any person-specific questions as I don't know any thing more than I told him already. For me the matter is therefore hopefully closed.

In a situation in which you would suffer no matter what you do, you can also work to protect yourself.

An anonymous note to the professor that the exam has been compromised and that there are photographs of it circulating comes close to resolving the issue. The person who took the photo likely deserves punishment, of course, so this solution doesn't resolve that. But at least academic integrity is preserved. The professor will need to provide a new exam, of course.

The professor may also announce to the class that there is a problem and ask that whoever sent the anonymous note inform him of their identity. You may have to deal with that.

Also, you may not be the only student struggling with this.

If you are friends with the person who took the photo, you could also confront him/her with a suggestion that they step forward. If they do this before an accusation is made, I would think any punishment would be less than otherwise.

As Buffy already suggested, write an anonymous note, but with an additional twist.

Suggest that the professor stays completely silent and informs the class before the (now revised) exam that the exam he "coincidentally left" was a honeytrap.

Advantages:

What before could have been interpreted as neglience on the professor's part is now quite fiendish.
The students will be punished to learn entirely for a honeypot.
The students are not angry that someone was ratting them out, now they are angry for themselves not learning.
The students won't try to cheat this way ever again.

Everyone feels fine. You have done your task of informing the professor, the professor is now not an idiot, but a devilish antagonist and the students are punished for cheating.

The nice thing is that some professors actually are that fiendish, so even if the students cheating read all the answers here in SE, in contrast to the others they cannot identify that someone told the professor.


How can I motivate the teaching assistants to grade more strictly? I am a lecturer in charge of a course with over 250 students and several TAs. The TAs are partly responsible for grading the homework assignments.  Since these are assignments in programming, no two submissions are identical, so it is impossible to cover all possible cases in the grading guidelines, and the grading has some subjective element.
I noticed that one TA is consistently stricter than the others. For example, if the guidelines say that "code efficiency" is worth 20 points, then this TA would deduct 15 points when the code is inefficient, while the other TAs would deduct only 5 points for a similar issue.
A potential problem here is that it might be unfair to the students in the strict TA's class, but this can be solved by allocating the assignment task "horizontally" (each TA grades all 250 submissions in some of the assignments) rather than "vertically".
But I have a different question: I noticed that students who are graded more harshly, take the feedback comments more seriously, and tend to become better programmers. So, rather than just being "fair", I would like all TAs to grade in a stricter way - for the sake of the students. The problem is, most TAs are not motivated to grade strictly - they gain nothing from it; all they get is having to  handle students' complaints and appeals, and risking lower marks in the students' feedback (since the students do not understand that it is in their favor until after they graduate).
The TAs are not lazy - they do put a lot of effort in teaching and helping students; they just don't like to be the "bad guys" who give low grades. How can I motivate them to give stricter grades?

You have a bigger problem than encouraging stricter grading. You need to provide consistent grading. Otherwise your scheme is fundamentally unfair.
For starters you don't have an option to fail to provide a proper rubric. If you aren't doing that, then you are failing the students. If it is a lot of work to do it, then you have a large task, but a required one.
You can make the rubric as strict as you like (though I don't really like the concept of narrow interpretations), but it has to be clear to your TAs and it has to be reasonable to your students.
One way to assure some consistency is to have more than one TA involved with each student's work. They need to agree with each other or appeal to you for a judgement. If they enter student grades into a spreadsheet you can easily see the differences and can also use it for further TA training as needed, such as, for example when one TA is consistently "too" lenient.
For an exercise with lots of parts, it might be possible to have each TA responsible for only one part. This tends to work for final exams where students answer questions, but less well for programming assignments.
Another way to achieve a good rubric is to have yourself or a small team of advanced TAs scan the student work without grading it and use what they learn to refine the rubric to assure consistency. It is probably a mistake to use this trick to create the rubric in the first place, but it gives you an idea of where the students are going wrong and need correction. An overall view. Once that is in place, the actual grading can occur.
Another trick, though not very easily done in pandemic times or with a large pool of graders, is to bring everyone together in real time to grade all the papers. This could possibly be done online (zoom) and you could be present to answer questions and make decisions.
But, again, consistency is a requirement. The rubric needs to be complete to assure that. The "strictness" is a secondary concern, but could be improved (your idea, not mine) with a proper rubric that everyone finds clear.

Moreover, if you try to grade things on a fixed scale that are fundamentally "fuzzy" then you have an impossible task. If you can define "efficiency" in your example, then fine. But if it is a fuzzy concept then almost every rubric is likely to leave the grading to intuition. Give precise grades on the things that are precise. But for other things, judgement and a bit of compassion are probably needed.
In CS, some things are clear, of course. If a student uses bubble sort on a large array it is clearly inefficient. But selection sort is more efficient than quick sort at a certain scale, which is why library versions of quick sort normally drop back to selection sort for small sections of the initial set.
But judgments about "proper factoring" of code are judgmental. If your feeling is "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." then it is nearly impossible to provide a rubric that will be used consistently by a group of TAs.

Assuming "You" is is the university:  Pay your TAs more to increase motivation.  You cannot expect good quality work or higher motivation for bad quality pay.  Generous grading is low-effort grading.
The other answers advocating rubrics and training are also correct.


How to learn something by reading a textbook? I have a huge issue with learning via books. I try to make notes, but I get bugged down copying everything in books. I try to understand sentence by sentence, I fail to do so. And at last, I give up reading books and go and study some handwritten notes of that subject. How are books actually meant to be read.  I am talking about textbook. I have hard time remembering what I read as well. I am talking about computer science textbooks here for reference. Additionally, I can at least learn sth by watching videos, even though I am not really great at it.

The first thing you need to do is to create a sechdule for your reading. You also need to study your cognitive domain but since you love to watch videos, focus on watching video lectures of the topics in the text book and take notes of important key points which can be easily read and remembered anytime anyday.


Is it true that PhD students need to work 10-12 hours a day every day to be productive? I hear a lot of people brag or complain about how many hours they have to work for their PhD. Is this the norm? And if so is this really a wise choice to make? Do students really 'work' during this period of time (as would be expected in a corporate office), or do many also spend their time goofing around?

I've read that it's only possible to do 4 hours of deeply creative work everyday. Since energy often depletes over the day, I've personally found that outside of a small number of hours in a day, the rest of my time is spent doing mechanical tasks or straining myself in vain to think about a problem.

The answer is no.

There are a lot of factors in play. With my work, a lot of it is creative so it is hard to say when I am working or not.

Do people expect students to work that many hours? Maybe, but it isn't healthy (and maybe not legal).

Do people really work the entire time they are at work? Probably not. Your productivity certainly goes down the longer you work. Whether people goof around or not isn't specific to Academia and can happen anywhere (I don't find goofing around to be a negative thing).

I too have read several studies about the limited number of hours that people have for mentally demanding tasks. In fact, I read a study about programmers that said they were lucky to get 1-2 hours of solid work done in a day. This info can help you organize your day so that you work on difficult tasks in the morning and then mechanical tasks in the afternoon. Also, studies have shown that taking breaks and going on walks can help improve your productivity.

There isn't a cookie cutter answer for everyone. It depends on yourself, the type of work, your advisor, and your coworkers.

It really should not be the norm. Like Austin already pointed out, there is no universal answer to that.
When I did my PhD (in computational chemistry), I also had a commitment to look after students as a teaching assistant. This was certainly my main work during the semester and not a lot of research could be done while simultaneously preparing the next day with the students, grading protocols, discussing related things with the supervisor.
When you are finally at the point where you can do the research for your PhD, you may as well do not consider it as work any more. There are plenty of ways, how you can boost your own productivity. If the environment is right, co-workers, supervisors, friends, equipment, then you should be able to find your way of getting the most out of it.
I personally prefer staying long at my workplace, while goofing around (primarily on the network). I like the quieter hours during the evening, where I can concentrate better. But that is certainly my own choice, so I might end up staying longer than 10 hours, but I would neither complain nor brag about it.

In any case, it should not be a requirement and it is certainly different for any individual.


What can I do with like-new, recent-edition textbooks that I'm not allowed to sell? My employer is sponsoring most of the tuition and fees for my master's degree (in aerospace engineering), including required textbooks. Thus, it is unethical and against policy for me to sell those books once I'm done with the corresponding courses. Specifically, the policy is that I cannot "make a profit on" them, but other than that I am free to do with them as I please. I find that having the physical book is helpful when I'm taking the course, but afterwards if I need to reference it a digital copy will suffice. And while having my office/residence full of these high-level materials certainly makes me feel good about myself, it's not practical. Thus, what can I do with these textbooks that will have the biggest, most positive impact on academia?

Ask your employer.

You should be able to work out a solution both parties are happy with pretty easily. The obvious one is to sell the books and then give your employer the profits. If they don't care, you can also pocket the profits yourself, perhaps recycle the books or donate them to your university's library.

Destroy the books.

Another answer referenced using them for "kindling".  Finding some way to recycle the paper may also be good.  But don't give the books to someone else who will benefit from their text.

My basis for this unhumanitarian-sounding suggestion was this phrase from the question:

"afterwards if I need to reference it a digital copy will suffice."

If you're keeping a digital copy, then you shouldn't be giving away the separate physical copy, because that is essentially resulting in two different copies being used by two different people when the publisher as only paid for one user.  This might violate some actual copyright law, usage agreement, etc.  But even if a legal loophole causes this to not be technically illegal, such duplication basically violates the spirit of the idea of having the publisher (and, down the line, the author) being paid for each user of the book.

As long as you're (sometimes) using a digital copy, the bundled physical copy should remain unused (shelved, destroyed, whatever).


Git repo in shared folder or multiple cloned repos in each researcher individual folder for collaborative data analysis? We are four social scientists working on a dataset that is in a secure server accessible via remote desktop. We have a shared folder where we put our code and datasets:

root
-functions
-data
-documentation
-output

Right now all we have done is to:

git init
git add --a
git commit

At the root of our shared folder. We have also edited a .gitignore file to keep git from tracking images and non-plain text files.

This way, whenever one of us edits a file we go:

git add editedFile.r
git commit

Which can erase the changes if the previous person who edited the same file didn't stage and commit it. Not all of us are fully conversant in git and it is likely that the more skilled will have to periodically check the status of files, stage, and commit them for the ones who don't git yet.

Each of us also has our own private folder on the same servers. We potentially could have each our own local repository in our private folders, and treat the shared folder as a remote. Then we would:

git pull
git add editedFile.r
git commit
git push

As we go by our workday.

Which one would work better for the situation described: fork and pull (each one with our own repository and the shared as a remote) or all work on the same repo in the shared folder?

I pretty much agree that you've got two options:
Work as is, all in the same directory on the same system.
There are a lot of problems with this approach.

If multiple people are working at the same time modifying source files you'll step on each other's feet a lot. Two people can't edit the same file at the same time. You'll deal with annoying "that file is in use by another process" messages all the time.
Someone might make a change that affects the behavior of a function and it'll come as a surprise to someone else.

On the other hand, the issues you'll run into are fairly easy to recognize and plan around. If you all aren't familiar with Git, and expect to be making actual code changes fairly infrequently, the cons aren't too big of an issue.
I would avoid this at all costs. I've worked on projects before where multiple people were working on the same files in the same directory on a remote server and it's awful. Words almost cannot describe the frustration that it leads to.
Multiple versions of the repository
Set up the filesystem to look like:
user1/
--root/
----/functions
----/data
----/documentation
----/output
user2/
--root/
----/functions
----/data
----/documentation
----/output
user3/
--root/
----/functions
----/data
----/documentation
----/output
user4/
--root/
----/functions
----/data
----/documentation
----/output

Each user should have a directory that contains it's own clone of the repository. This lets you avoid stepping on each other's toes when working at the same time, and lets you emulate a "normal" git environment.
From there it's just business as normal, and as long as y'all can overcome the initial learning curve it'll work out much better than if you're all working in the same space.

(The question has been edited twice since this answer was written, it may no longer be relevant.)

You want to use git and either:

  clone[ a shared folder] to our own private folders

or

  all work on the files in [the shared folder]

For the former, you needn't use git, so surely the latter is the only option that makes sense.

  The advantage of keeping all the code in one place...

All the code is in one place (your git repository) regardless of which option you pick.

  ...the ones who don't git won't have to bother learning it

It is hardly complicated to learn:

git pull (before you start work)
git commit (to locally backup)
git push (to share)


Would a 5-year prison sentence totally ruin one's academic career? For committing a crime considered very severe in the U.S. and in some countries (hence the 5-year minimum sentence), but not as severe (but may still lead to imprisonment) in many other countries? He does not have any record of academic dishonesty or anything like that; in fact, he had a solid record of publications and was still building on it before he got arrested. Can he still publish papers that are taken seriously, and obtain academic positions, in the U.S. or in some other countries, once out of jail?

UPDATE: I only know what he pleaded guilty to according to news. It is not something noble like an "honest crime". I have confused conviction with indictment, so now I think the crime is most likely real and hardly disputable. I want to add that he is a first-time offender, so I don't know if his prison sentence can be converted to probation, and if that matters to whom may hire him in the future.

@xLeitix's comment:

  I cannot think of one crime which results in a five year sentence where I would hire that person.

Maybe the crime of failing to notify the town of L'Aquila of a 2009 earthquake that killed at least 309 people? Fortunately for those scientists, the initial court ruling was overturned about 2 years later.

A five year prison sentence would damage an academic career in at least two major ways.  The obvious way it would damage it is from the possible stain on a person's record.  In the U.S., at least, being a convicted felon can be very difficult to recover from, no matter what the crime, due to general societal prejudice.  Add to that the fact that most crimes indicate either dishonesty or being a threat to others, and you've got a serious problem.  It does, however, strongly depend on the crime.  For example, if the crime is an "honest crime" that derives from ones intellectual inclinations (e.g., the notorious example of Timothy Leary, the sad case of Aaron Swartz, or the youthful recklessness of Robert Morris) then it may be "forgiven" from an academic point of view.

The other, perhaps less obvious, source of career damage is from the interruption in ongoing work.  Typically, any working scientist has a number of simultaneous multi-year projects at different stages: preliminary work, proposal, execution, publication.  Each of these fuels the others, e.g., papers from more mature projects help support proposals for new projects, pieces of ongoing work in project execution include preliminary work that leads to new proposals, etc.  With any major career gap, this "pipeline" can empty, and there is often difficulty in restarting it.  This can be a significant problem even for academics who take family leave; a multi-year gap for prison would be much bigger to overcome.  Either, however, can be overcome with time and help from supportive colleagues.

If the he/she can come back stronger from  it more disciplined it could be a blessing in disguise, wisdom comes at different stages for different people.


Is it appropriate to assign Mechanical Turk-type tasks as extra credit? By the end of the term, I always end up with quite a number of D and F students who want to improve their grades. Meanwhile, I usually have lots of menial tasks on hand during the summer, e.g. data entry, translations, proofreading, photo tagging, etc.

None of these tasks is work I am assigned or paid to do.
All of the tasks relate to my courses in some way and the resulting efforts would benefit the next group of students who attend my courses in the subsequent terms.
My school has no official "dead week", but naturally these tasks would occupy time that presumably the students would otherwise use for final exam preparations.

Is there any ethical or professional reason deeming it inappropriate to assign such tasks as optional extra credit, allowing students to move their 50 to a 60 or 60 to a 70 after ~10-15 hours of repetitive work?

As I see it, the grade in the class is supposed to measure a student's mastery of the material. Letting students improve their grade via unrelated menial work is not consistent with this standard and seems dangerously close to letting the students wash your car for extra credit.

If you do it, make sure the kids who have B's have the same opportunities. They probably care more about their grades, and would more ambitiously take the opportunity to do something dumb for the A.


Will my cancer ruin my chances of going to graduate school in math? I commenced my bachelor of math 8 years ago and at the same time I was diagnosed to have cancer. Because of the treatment process and the emotional state that I was in, I only completed 3 subjects in the first year, 1 subject in the second year, no subjects in the third year and only 1 subject in the fourth year. By this time, I was feeling well, and I enrolled full time in the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th year and I just graduated recently with a 4.0 GPA (out of 4.0 GPA). My academic transcript does not show my withdrawn subjects and it only shows my completed subjects.

So my first question is that should I tell in my application about this history? will it have any negative impact on my application? I am afraid that if I tell the admission committee that I suffered from cancer, they will reject me because they may think that if it comes back during my graduate studies, then the same thing could happen. Will it look really bad that I only completed very few subjects in the first four years?

How important is it for graduate admission committee that how long it took you to complete your undergraduate degree?

First of all, I’m happy you’re doing better! It would take a truly heartless committee to ignore the circumstances. In the US it’s illegal if I’m not mistaken, but from a recruiter’s perspective I would definitely see the fact that you overcame adversity and managed to graduate with a good GPA as a point in your favor.

Mention this in your statement of purpose. Don’t be melodramatic, just state that you had to take a break from your studies to fight cancer, and then got back into it once you were done. I’d see that as a sign of fortitude and perseverance!

Good luck!

I am not US-based, so I'm not sure how relevant my experiences are to you, but here goes. I know several professors here in Europe that have told me that they do consider the time it took you to obtain your undergraduate degree an important factor in your application - they prefer employing people who get things done in time. For that reason, I would recommend offering some explanation as to why it took you 8 years to obtain your bachelor's - you don't necessarily have to go into details, you could for example mention a "serious medical condition" or something along those lines. I'd advise putting something to that effect in your statement of purpose / cover letter.

That being said, completing your bachelor's with a perfect GPA while dealing with cancer to me sounds like something that might happen in a movie, but not in real life. Pulling that off requires enormous resiliency and mental strength - you should be proud, and I'm sure that any admission committee would be impressed by that.

However, I think it is advisable not to write about it in a manner that is too emotional, or letting it take up too much space - you don't want to evoke pity, but simply offer an explanation why it took you longer than usual to finish.

Good luck and take care!


How to deal with favoritism in the lab? I've observed that many PIs are especially prone to having favorite students in their research group, and will treat these students differently than others. Most of the time, this isn't so obvious and doesn't cause problems. However, from time to time, this will be made extremely clear as the time spent on the "favorites" are orders of magnitude more than other students in the lab. This also includes assignments of better projects etc. Of course, I realize that as humans, everyone has favorites, and it is unrealistic to expect manager figures to treat everyone equally. However, I have noticed that in the few groups I've worked in, some PIs will make it embarrassingly clear. For instance, it will often lead to hurt feelings and lost productivity when something essential is not done for one student's project (i.e. read over drafts, provide necessary components of experiments) while the advisor runs to help another student with mundane aspects of their experiment (i.e. actually helping them do the experiments, or spending a lot of time talking with them while telling others they are busy). This is of course common in all workplaces, but I do feel that the advisor/trainee relationship is different in that in many ways the success of the student is very much dependent on the advisor.

An anecdote: my advisor was extremely hands-off for me; we met pretty infrequently and when we met, it was mostly spent on talking about small side issues that came up in my projects. Another student of my advisor had a very different experience. He met extensively with my advisor, he found projects for him to work on (I proposed my own, and my advisor didn't know much of my project until I wrote my thesis). The tension for me reached its climax when my defense date drew near; he told me that he was busy with the other student's thesis and that he will sign mine after he is finished with editing the other student's thesis. He ended up reading my thesis only a couple of days before my defense.

Although this seemed like favoritism, in the end it wasn't. He must have judged me to be an independent and competent researcher, because I got more and better job offers afterwards.

So, there really isn't anything you can do. You should just focus on your own projects, and hopefully your advisor is there when you really can't solve the problem on your own. But if you treat each time that your advisor isn't there as an opportunity to show your competence (whether you think your advisor noticed it or not... it does accumulate!) you'll walk out having become independent, which is an important quality to possess in academia.

Personal effort to win the teacher's attention may not be what you want to attempt. The nature of your teacher's favoriticism sounds detrimental. A good teacher should know the difference between explaining things to a student and teaching the student how to decipher the meaning of things by themselves. You can't fix this part of your teacher. However, certain acts of the teacher (as described by you) are unjust and something needs to be done about it.

Anything you do in this regard has to be group effort. A hostile or challenging attitude migh do more harm. Maybe the best people who can approach the teacher regarding this issue in a non-hostile manner will be the favorite students themselves.

It all depends on What kind of a person the favorite student is. I used to be a favorite student in most classes, but I never reserved any private time with any teacher. When the other students had any issue with the teacher focussing too much on me, they used to express their disapproval directly to me.
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My paper has not been published because I did not show up for the conference presentation My paper has not been published because none of the authors presented the paper.  My supervisor (my co-author) was at the conference, but he did not show up to present. I can only assume he was tired that day (he is an old man), although he did manage to present two other papers. He also failed to inform the conference committee of his inability to present.

This is an IEEE conference. The paper was not published in IEEE Xplore, but even worse, it is not even mentioned in the proceedings.

What is really annoying is that they still want me to have their permission to submit it to another conference. This is what is written in their email:

  Your previously-submitted IEEE Copyright form transferred ownership of this paper to IEEE. However, if you would like to resubmit this paper to another conference, please request permission to do so by sending an email message to pubs-permissions@ieee.org.

They also did not reimburse us for the hefty registration fees.

How should someone in my position proceed?
Shouldn't the conference at least mention the title of the paper in the proceedings?

A conference has a number of limited slots for presentations. When your paper is accepted for a conference, someone else's paper got rejected, because it was slightly worse than yours and slots were limited. In this sense, if you are not going to present your accepted paper, this a huge disservice to the conference (and the related community). As I already said in my comment that annoyed you, if everyone did the same thing (did not show up in the conference to present his paper) there would simply be no conference and this will be a huge waste of everyone's time (reviewers, PC comittees etc..). So, the first step is to understand that such a thing would normally never happen.

On the other hand we are still human and life emergencies happen. You may become sick before travelling to a conference and therefore not beeing able to present there. In this case, this is what emails are for. You should have notified the PC chairs that you were not going to make it and ask for leniency. On the other hand, what you describe is even more far-stretched. Your co-author did go to the conference, was probably paid his expenses from his institution and did not bother to show up at the time to present the paper. Imagine the similar example of some PHD student of going to a conference, partying the night before the presentation and not bothering waking up the next time to present. Have you considered the embarassment of the PC member responsible for your session, when they call out your name and noone shows up to present? And nobody even later this day or even two days later, bothers to send an email to apologize for this? Instead you think the conference organizers are in the wrong, because they are actually doing what they told you they would do (contrary to you). Not publish your paper if you do not show up.

A war with them would only hurt you and not them. Apologize sincerely, ask for permission to publish somewhere else and try to be as nice as possible. Do not upload to arxiv before settling things out. And in the next case, understand that in Academia your word is your currency. Make sure you do not break it for whatever reason and if you do (due to some inevitable emergency) make sure you apologize promptly.

The situation shows some parallels with the legal concept "force majeure".  The following site gives a practical explanation of this (you can also refer to Wikipedia):

  Generally, death or illness of one of the parties to a contract is not considered a force majeure.  However, under general contract principles of contract, if death or illness renders it impossible for that party to perform their side of the bargain, they are excused - See more at: http://actofgod.uslegal.com/what-constitutes-force-of-nature/illness-or-death/#sthash.W5aJqpRd.dpuf

Give that precedent, it would seem only fair in this case if IEEE were to release from your contract, and consequently release the copyright ownership, given that the co-author's inability to present was apparently due to health reasons. In your circumstances I would try to see if they are open to this line of reasoning.


How to deal with unbalanced collaborations? As a postdoc in a theoretical STEM field, I have had many wonderful collaborations where all authors contribute non-trivially to the final product. However, there was also many "unbalanced" collaborations: where one author does 90% of the work for example. I am not talking about a situation in which a senior professor is automatically given authorship because of politics. For this question, let's say that we talk about collaborations between researchers of the same academic age/position (e.g. all postdocs).
These unbalanced collaborations are often not a problem per se but can be draining and time-consuming in the long run. To give an example, I have had collaborations where I was almost feeling like a PhD advisor to my collaborator, having to explain/redo everything. In contrast, the balanced collaborations that I experienced were always extremely enriching and efficient in comparison.
As a young and inexperienced researcher, my question is: what is the best approach to choose collaborators?
I see two extreme options:

Don't worry about it. Accept and nurture every collaboration as they come. If your collaborators are not useful, take the time to help them and make them grow, even at the expense of your own growth. At some point, you might also be the "useless" collaborator and you will be thankful to having been accepted in the collaboration.
Avoid unbalanced collaborations by seeking only collaborators you can benefit from. This is probably the best approach career-wise. However, I feel like it can lead to toxic behaviors which might do more harm than good in the long run.

Even though there is probably not a right answer to the question, this is something that has been bothering me lately, and I would benefit a lot from insights of more experienced researchers.
Many thanks!

In any collaboration, some degree of imbalance is inevitable. I've been on both sides of the matter, and the question I've always used to guide my collaboration decision is:
"Are all of the collaborating parties benefiting from the relationship?"
There are a lot of ways to evaluate this question, some very pragmatic and some very personal. Here are some factors one might consider: joy or lack thereof, how the relationship affects future job prospects, impact of the work, access to interesting future projects, opportunity cost for working on the project. It sounds from your description like your answer right now is no, so you should probably stop working with the person in question. Before doing so, ask yourself: "what would change this working relationship for me? Is there a way to make that change happen?" You might find some reasonable requests that encourage continuation, but more importantly this will help you wrap things up better. You do have an ethical obligation to bow out gracefully, though nothing is forcing you to and this may not be possible.

Unbalanced is the norm so they are best to be avoided.
Never write with anyone else unless you know for sure that they have something critical  you need to use.
If you do collaborate write a contract that spells out who will do  what and how much of the total effort.  If they come up short then they forfeit all rights to have their name on the paper.


What to do if my advisor insists on early attendance? I have a genuine problem in waking up early in the morning. My advisor prefers to walk in my office whenever he wanted to. Lately, he started to complain to me about not showing up in the morning. Even the way to
 he used to come to my office has changed, he started to open the door without knocking and then the first thing he checks my computer screen.

I tried to tell him that about my difficulties and suggested scheduling meetings instead. He told me these are the rules of the institution and I have to follow them.

Long story short, I started to come early in the morning but I can barely get anything done.

Update 1: I reviewed the contract, it explicitly mentioned that working time starts no later than 9am. My contract is with an institution not the university directly.

Update 2 : I consulted a doctor and I have been diagnosed with depression. Besides the medication that was prescribed to me, I was asked to take a rest from the school.
Thank you, everyone, for sharing your thoughts.

As a fellow night owl, I feel your pain. Normally I would suggest concisely explaining your difficulties and suggesting a work-around to your advisor, but it sounds like you've already done that. Sadly, your advisor does have the right to set working hours, so you have no real recourse other than finding a different advisor.

The situation might be different if you have a medical diagnosis/disability -- but I don't think "night owl" will qualify, since waking up early is not harmful to your health (not sure about French law though). What I've done in similar situations is to use melatonin to fall asleep early and caffeine pills to wake up -- probably not the healthiest solution long-term, but it does the trick for me.

The advisor of my first postdoc also demanded this... The point is, if he doesn't respect your needs and instills this torture from you just because he can, he is probably unhappy about something else, thinks you are lazy, or just is a dick. And you torturing yourself is just not worth it. Better leave. I so much wish I left that first postdoc boss ...


Is it OK to call a professor by his first name when he/she signs emails by only first name? If a professor in a North American country presents his- or herself by his/her first name in email messages, does this mean that students can refer to him/her by his/her first name? Or is this generally not a good idea, unless the professor has explicitly mentioned that he/she can be referred to by first name? I've noticed that most professors, who prefer to be referred to more formally, do not sign their emails with just their first names, but usually initials or first and last name.

If you are a foreigner, then you can just ask. Most academics are used to deal with foreigners and know that such subtle and unwritten rules are hard to know. They recognize that just asking is often the least awkward solution.

I'm a professor. I have discussed this subject with many, many colleagues. Here is the consensus.

a) What to call the professor?
As a rule, regardless of which country you are from or what a professor signs off on in his/her email, you should always continue addressing him/her as "Professor Lastname" in person, in email and in any other communications .... UNTIL that professor specifically asks you to do otherwise. The professor MAY ask you to call him/her something different. The professor MAY not correct you. As a default, call him/her Professor Lastname.

b) Can I ask the professor what he/she likes to be called?
NO. Do not ask him/her about his/her preference. Why? Imagine that you are a medical doctor. You're been in school for many years, trained hard and despite all odds, succeeded in getting your medical degree. You of course will expect all patients, colleagues, interns, residents and others in the workplace to call you "Dr. Lastname." It would be odd for one of them to ask you if it's ok to call you something else. If you wanted to be called something else, you would probably say something.

It is the same for professors. Professors have worked many years and long hours to achieve their doctoral degrees. Addressing them by their appropriate title is the respectful and appropriate thing to do.

c) Should I really call EVERY professor "Professor Lastname"? Students tend to more frequently call professors who are not white men by their first name while calling their male, white professors "Professor Lastname". Do not fall victim to implicit bias. See point a) above. You should call EVERY professor - regardless of gender, ethnicity, nationality, etc. Trust me. They will appreciate it.


How often is a bad review from the reviewers due to the potential competition with your work? Reviewers are expert in their fields who can understand your work but are also potential competitors if they worked in the same field as you do. How frequent is a bad review from the reviewers due to the potential competition with your work so they can stall your publication?

For example, if you were a reviewer, would you be excited to learn that I have published research that are superior to yours or prove that your research direction was wrong? Another extreme example, if you were an HIV researcher/reviewer, how excited/horrible would you feel if I publish a cure for HIV and will be nominated for Nobel prize tomorrow and you will be sitting down there listening to my talk?  What incentive do reviewers have to give out good/fair review?

In my experience:

If the editor is fair, it doesn't matter terribly much.

The decision to reject a paper is not taken by the reviewers.  The decision is taken by the editor. The role of the reviewers is to give a recommendation, upon which the editor takes a decision.  If a reviewer recommends rejection (or acceptance, for that matter), the editor is free to ignore this recommendation (this has happened to yours truly).  If the editor suspects that a reviewer recommends rejection because of potential competition, or for any other improper reason, then the editor should not weigh this recommendation heavily.  This is one of the reasons why there should always several reviewers — at least in my field (atmospheric remote sensing), I've only come across cases with two or three reviewers.

Secondly: The editor knows who the reviewer is.  If a scientist makes a habit of recommending rejections for improper reasons, he or she will get a reputation among editors.  Editors are usually well-known colleagues in the field, so you really don't want to be known as the envious guy (or gal) who will reject major works of research because it was not invented here.  In the best case, they won't be asked as reviewers any more.  In the worst case, it may harm a scientific career.

Perhaps the scenario described above is somewhat naive, but in those cases where I've either been a reviewer, or been corresponding author, it would apply.  The same for open review papers (such as the geophysical journal, published by EGU, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics).  It might be different in other fields, this I don't know.  I hope that even in other fields, the editor does more than copy-paste and blindly follow whatever reviewers recommend.

Unfortunately, bad and/or fabricated reviews are common if you are in a competitive industry. It is harder and harder to find a genuine and unbiased reviewer who has no hidden interests or agendas. You can watch some industry forums, where writing service owners and freelance writers allegedly post misinformation or untrue statements about each other in order to discredit their competition.

Another thing, you need to be careful whom you entrust your research work. Even if they don't use it today, they may use it tomorrow (or they may change some details and claim authorship). Hopefully, I didn't scare you too much though ;).


Supervisor/advisor ignores me regarding my paper I did an honours degree last year (4 year undergrad study with a research  thesis). My supervisor shafted me towards the end of that year when I was coming up to submit my thesis by being absent with his own life issues and barely communicative, and gave me back drafts literally days before it was due. End result was I fell barely short of the requirements to get a PhD scholarship. So I discussed with my supervisor and he said I could write a paper with his assistance about my work, to bolster a future PhD application.

So we agreed on a date to catch up, the time came and I sent him an email. He has not responded at all, it's been 10 days at this point. Normally he would reply back quickly. I'm getting the strong feeling he's got yet another excuse, but I really need to do this for my professional development/future PhD application. What should I do next? Would it be possible to write the paper myself without assistance (I have all the data).

There are many reasons why people can miss an email; a likely possibility for busy people is that your email simply got buried under many others. So, don't assume he's trying to ignore you, and you should first bug him again (politely) about that.

It is also a good idea to start writing the paper on your own: your supervisor will be much more willing to help you improve a first outline or even a draft than to start from a blank page.

The typical approach of a well-seasoned academic when getting a typical (esp. pre-PhD) student paper is: keep the results and figures, rewrite it all. A typical (there are some geniuses out there) BSc student is not able to write a competitive and concise research paper text. I mean-- yes, they can. But simply not good enough and in most cases too long. It would probably need to be edited so heavily that almost any merit is lost.

To me, personally, it's much easier to write the paper from scratch than to rewrite someone's text.

Notice that this answer does not weight in the previous email "absence" behaviour of your would-be-supervisor in any way.


When journals falsely assume I already have my PhD, do I need to correct them? I have published several papers and have done a number of peer-reviews (on request by the journals) as well. In the communication with these journals, I frequently get addressed as "Dr. Lastname", although I have not finished my PhD yet.
I don't mind when this happens in predatory requests from shady journals and conferences (science spam), because I don't expect them to do their due diligence in finding out correct personal info on all the people they send these requests to.
But coming from more serious sources it feels weird.
In the beginning, I made the effort to correct them, but as it started to happen more and more, I stopped, but always wonder if this is not misrepresenting myself. Maybe the requests for e.g. peer-review would not have been sent to me if they knew that I didn't have my doctorate yet, as several journals I know only invite PhD-holders to review.
So should I always clarify my status, or is this a pretty common thing happening to many researchers, and no one really cares?

Include your proper title and position in your email signature.
I'd say not to explicitly correct them in the email, but to include a signature to the email that says something like "Mr/Ms Sursula, PhD Candidate at Faculty of ABC, XYZ University". Ideally  you'd want to use your university's official email footer format to do so.
That way, you can inform them of how you're properly meant to be addressed, without openly chastising them for getting it wrong.

They should really know better than to presume as much. So, do correct them - but of course, don't make a big deal out of it, so just as a PS when you reply. If people repeatedly correct these editors, they'll hopefully learn.
I should mention this has almost never happened to me. In fact, most journals I was in touch with typically just don't mention the title at all.


Which tables should be put in the appendix? I am currently writing my bachelor's thesis. I made a lot of experiments and I describe them as well as their result in the text. Currently, I have most tables with the results of the experiments within the main part. However, I am thinking about putting at least the bigger tables in the appendix as they make the text hard to read.

What should I put in the appendix and what should be in the main part?

I like to think of appendices (or supporting information, which is the same thing for a journal paper) in terms of the narrative structure of a text. The main text should contain everything that makes up the "story" of the work.  In it, a reader who basically trusts that your methods are sound should find everything that they need to understand the work.

There are often, however, places where it is important to show your work, but that are not particularly interesting.  If they are lengthy enough that they start feeling like a major detour in the flow of the narrative, then they are a good candidate for moving to an appendix.

Some examples from my own recent papers:

Theorem and proof sketch in main text, boring exhaustive proof with lots of slightly different cases in appendix.
Graph summarizing results plus an example of result detail in main text, all the rest of the results in appendix.
Data from method presented in main text, data showing that plausible alternatives didn't work in appendix.
Intuitive description of method and key mathematical concepts in main text, exhaustive mathematical details in appendix.

Exactly where to draw the line is somewhat subjective, but fortunately doesn't matter all that much unless you are dealing with format or length restrictions.

As a rule, the appendixes should be ignorable. That is, if you rip them off, the thesis is still valid and understandable.

Appendixes are good for side discussions or extra supporting materials.


Will a mail to the journal asking about the status of my article have a negative effect on the decision of the article? One of my journal article was submitted to a journal last year. It has been under review for more than 3 months now. I want to send them a mail asking for my article status. It is given in the website of the journal that the average time for first decision after the article goes under review is 8.5 week. Is there a chance that this mail may affect the journals decision, like they may think that I am being pushy and might just not even go through the paper and reject it?

It most likely won't. I think it is normal to push the editor if there is a significant delay. Check what the average time for receiving reviews is first.

I have done it when there has been a significant delay and it hasn't been a problem.

Usually , three months needed for a journal to find a reviewer, collect their opinion on your paper and make decision. Afterward if you didn't receive news , you need to ask about the status of your article .


Manuscript evaluation for becoming an editor I was wondering how editors evaluate manuscripts. They certainly do not have time to read the paper thoroughly. What are the key points to look for when evaluating a manuscript as an editor?

Different editors treat this differently. Some of the things I looked at:

Does it look like a serious research paper? If not, desk reject.
Does the paper pass plagiarism detection? If not, desk reject.
Is it plausible? The methods used should conceivably lead to the results. If it's not plausible, unless the authors provide a convincing explanation, desk reject.
Is the paper review-ready? A paper that has lots of typographical errors, has figures without axis labels, is written in incomprehensible English to the point where I cannot in good faith ask reviewers to wrack their heads deciphering the paper, etc - reject and resubmit.
Is it within the journal's scope? If not, desk reject.
Does the paper have anything interesting to say? Chances are I won't be able to judge the significance of the paper myself, but the authors ought to have written something in the introduction about why their research matters. Something like "this material is important because of [reasons]. Nobody has ever done [calculations] for this crucial property. We do it in this paper and suggest [methods] to make an even better material." would be helpful. If the authors don't give a reason for why their research matters, a desk rejection is more likely.
What tests did the authors conduct? How do the authors know their results really are reliable? If no error analysis is performed, desk reject. The same goes for any standard tests, e.g. before one can claim that a new drug is effective, I'd want to know if there was a control group, if the results are statistically significant, etc. If the authors do not discuss these standard things - desk reject.

Beyond this it depends on what the reviewers say. Reviewer reports can be very varied so it's hard to make statements about them, but the idea is the same: I read what they say and come to my own conclusions. It is possible that I don't understand what the reviewers or the authors are saying, in which case things can really seem like a coin flip. Peer review isn't a scientific process. As a personal guideline, when in doubt, I accept the manuscript. Another person might lean towards rejecting.

You find reviewers who look at the paper for you, and whose judgment you trust.


Purpose of IP address and timestamp on open-access full-text article I understand that some pay-walled journals include timestamp and IP address and/or institution to full-text PDFs to track copyright violations.

However, I also saw an open access journal doing the same despite allowing non-commercial, attributable redistribution and modification.

If that journal grants such rights to readers, then why does it include IP addresses on the copies they download?

Most likely, they are still doing it to track copyright violations. If the document is made available under a license that permits non-commercial, attributed redistribution, then the publisher might wish to collect evidence in cases of commercial or unattributed  distribution.

It's also possible that the same publisher, or even the same journal, also has articles that follow the traditional "all rights reserved" model, and that this information is applied to all downloads indiscriminately.

Note that to give a license on a work you must hold copyright to it. Granting the license doesn't affect your copyright. So the issue is really the same as for more formal (commercial) journals.

The situation might be different for things put "into the public domain" for which you formally give up your copyright. Then the public owns it. But licensed works are still owned by their creators.

If you use a licensed work, the license is a contract backed by the copyright. Without the latter, the former has no meaning.

I can license my own work, but, of course, I can't license your work. It is copyright that makes that clear.

See this, for example:Creative Commons

Likewise, see the discussion of Copyleft at Wikipedia.

Without copyright these could not exist.


Does it make sense for the professor to write a recommendation letter that is directly readable by the student? It seems that US universities usually provide a link to the professor of the applicant, and let him/her directly upload the recommendation letter to that link, meaning that the student would have no access to it. However, when applying to Masters programs offered by German universities, I am surprised to see that they all ask the student to upload the recommendation letter in PDF format/to a text area directly, by his/her own, which seems to make little sense to me.

I'm afraid that some professors will just outright reject writing a letter which is to be handed to and viewed by the student. Or are such worries unnecessary? Is this a cultural difference between continental European and British/American system (My current university mostly follows the British/American system)? What should I do in this case. Should I ask the professors to write and hand me recommendation letters directly, or should I try to communicate with the university and let the professors email them the letter/give me a physical letter sealed within an envelop, which I will send to the university by mail later on?

Is this a cultural difference between continental European and British/American system

I cannot surely speak for all continental Europe, not even for a small portion of it and not for all fields, but speaking with a few European colleagues of mine, it appears that the expectations that we have on recommendation letters are completely different from the typical US expectations.

In particular:

We mostly consider recommendation letters as a mean to discriminate between those that are not able to provide any recommendation letter and those that can provide at least a couple. That is, we expect most of the people not to be able to get one (in a distant past, I wouldn't have considered one who just attended one or two classes with me eligible for a recommendation letter).
We don't expect recommendation letters to be more than one page long, and half a page is ok (you just have to tell me that you had worked with this person and that they are not that bad).
We don't expect the recommendation letters to be sent directly from the reference to the application board.
We consider the writing of recommendation letters as a favour to the applicant, and not as a duty of our profession.

Actually, all the recommendation letters I wrote but one were handed directly to the student (or former student). For the exception, I've received a direct request from a university to submit the recommendation through their online system: the uploading procedure, with questions to answer too, was such a hassle that I've decided that in the future I will probably decline any request for recommendation letters to be uploaded anywhere.

To answer your main question:

  Should I ask the professors to write and hand me recommendation letters directly, or should I try to communicate with the university and let the professors email them the letter/give me a physical letter sealed within an envelop, which I will send to the university by mail later on?

I understand your reasons, but I'd consider this an odd thing to do. I'd simply ask the student to provide the recommendation letters.

In case the professors were reluctant to hand the letters directly to the student, I'd write an email explaining the different traditions.

Why, of course a recommendation letter should be readable by the student - and before you've sent it anywhere; or you just hand it to her/him. It's the other way around that doesn't make sense: Why should the person whom you're recommending not be aware of what you're going saying about her/him? That seems to be mostly an opportunity to "backstab" a person by "anti-recommending" them in the letter.


Should I include volunteer work in my SOP and/or CV? I have been involved in two volunteering groups for the past two years and I'm not sure If I should ever mention it in the SOP/CV.

Should I mention it in one or both my SOP and CV? Also, how detailed should I write on the type of activity/nature of the work/vision/reasoning/accomplishments, etc.

Note: I'm applying for Electrical and Computer Engineering for a master's degree.

The volunteering work is totally unrelated to the degree. The activities are focused on aiding homeless and abused animals

I would recommend against mentioning unrelated volunteer work in one's statement of purpose---after all, you have said that it is unrelated to the career that you are intending to pursue.  If it were directly linked, then of course it would be useful to mention it.

Likewise, there is no space for this type of work in any of the main sections of an academic CV: this isn't like applying to college, where you are encouraged to list a bunch of extracurricular activities to show your breadth and interesting personality.  Graduate admissions is instead more typically about showing that you have the mix of skills, drive, and focus necessary to succeed in you intended program.

It is often the case, however, that people will have some sort of "other significant experiences" section at the very end of their CV in which they put miscellaneous things that they think are important.  If you feel that your volunteer work is an important ingredient in understanding you as a potential professional, then this is the appropriate place to include a brief note.  It may help you if it catches the eye of somebody who finds it significant, and it is unlikely to hurt you.

I see nothing wrong in mentioning that on your resume even if it is unrelated. If you have enough place on your 1-2 page resume, you can put it.
In my eyes, It shows that you are a passionate, social and informed person and not just a (sitting in front of the computer) geek.


Share prize money from conference presentation award with co-authors? I am a PhD student and I recently won a young scientist award and prize money (~500 USD) at a conference for the "best presentation". I did the majority of the work for the presentation, and I was the only one present at the conference.
However, my co-authors (8 people) all wrote their share for the conference proceedings (that's what makes them co-authors). The co-authors are in various stages of their career, from professors to fellow PhD students.

Should I share my prize money with the co-authors? If yes, with all of them in equal amounts? Or only with those who would be eligible for a young scientist award themselves?
Would it change the situation if I won the award for something else, say "best paper"?

I think that it is important to recognize that the biggest value of the award is its contribution to your C.V. and future career, not the prize money.  As such, I think you should approach the question of the money as generously as possible: after all, you gave a good talk, but many of the aspects of that good talk depended critically on the contributions of your co-authors.

What, then, is a fair way of allocating the money?  Pretty much any numerical formula that you follow will both a) leave some people feeling that their allocation is too big or too small and also b) only be a few dollars anyway, given the number of people involved.

I would therefore recommend defusing the question entirely and turning the prize money into an investment into future goodwill and papers: suggest that it be spent on going out for a fancy dinner together (or similar such outing) to celebrate the success of the collaboration!

Yes, you should share the prize money.

I can't think of a better way of ticking off many people right at the beginning of your career than not sharing the money. You do not want to make enemies over this. An issue like this could follow you for decades. Don't make that error.

For the same reason, share it equally, so people don't feel shortchanged.

I understand that the difference between 500 USD and 500/8 = 62.50 USD is nontrivial to you, but the main benefit of the award will be its presence on your CV, not so much the money.

And anyone on your team who already has tenure will most likely decline their share, leaving more to share among the struggling grad students, anyway.

And I don't see how the argument would be different for a "best paper" or other award.


How many professors are there in technical fields with no degree whatsoever? Peter Beck has recently been appointed an Adjunct Professor in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Auckland. As you know, Peter Beck is the founder of Rocket Lab, which has put payloads into space, but Peter Beck also never attended college and even dropped out of high school.

How many Adjunct Professors are there in technical fields like Aerospace Engineering without any college degrees? How many high school dropout professors without degrees?

I don't have numbers, of course, nor even proportions, but I suspect that the number is small.

But more important is the question of how such a person would be hired and what sort of position they could hold. The problem is that a school or university wanting to employ such a person needs some assurance that the person is competent for the position. Not holding any degrees makes that more difficult in general.

But some people have excelled in a field with no formal education. That isn't especially unusual, actually, but not a lot of them will want to teach. But some will. Many will want to do it only part time and money isn't the driver for them, so a position as an adjunct can be attractive both to them and to a university. But no one will be looking at it as a career path.

I suspect that Harvard would be happy to have Bill Gates teach a course occasionally - probably not in BASIC language, though.

Luminaries in a field are probably offered such courses fairly frequently, I'd guess. But especially if the institution is looking to establish a long term relationship with future funding in mind.

A professor (assistant prof, associate prof, etc) has a PhD. That’s a minimum requirement making my answer “zero”.

An adjunct instructor, or lecturer might not have a degree.


Another way to say probability In a paper I want to state that a certain course of action increases the "chances of success" - with success defined earlier in the work.

In my field, words like "probability", "odds", and "likelihood" (and the associated variants) have certain connotations, and are likely to elicit semantic arguments, so I'd like to avoid those words.

The word "chances" seems colloquial.

Are there any other phrases that connote the idea that a certain course of action is more likely to lead to optimal outcomes, while avoiding any words that have mathematical or statistical connotations?

My guess is that "optimal outcomes" may have the same problem as "likelihood" etc.

One possibility would be to restructure the sentence a bit, for example

  Such-and-so procedures promote ... (perhaps "success").

It's much easier to help with a question like this if you give us some of the actual language you're going to use.

"Propensity" is a useful term, similarly you can reference an increase/decrease in the "tendency" of an event or success.


Is it crass to acknowledge a colleague that passed away in my thesis? A PhD student in our school recently passed away unexpectedly, to the shock and  grief of a large number of research students and academics, including me.

I had little to do with him on a daily basis, and he had little to nothing to do with the content of the thesis, but nonetheless it occurs to me to make a mention of his passing in the acknowledgements of my own (Honours) thesis.

Is this appropriate, or could it come off as disrespectful?

I certainly don't think it's "crass", and I have a hard time seeing who could be disrespected.  In general, you can acknowledge whomever you want in a thesis and the only crass thing would be to say something negative about them.

However, there is possibly a bit of room for misunderstanding here, because the ostensible purpose of the acknowledgments is to recognize people who helped you out in some way.  Based on what you write -- you were not close, and he did not help on your thesis -- it doesn't make sense to thank this person in the acknowledgements.

I might instead suggest going for a dedication or commemoration.  Some ways of wording this are given here.  You could either end the acknowledgments with a dedication, probably in its own separate paragraph (and you can dedicate the thesis to more than one person, if you like), or you could include the dedication on its own page separately in the thesis, e.g. "For X", "In memory of X (19xx - 20xx)", etc.

Speaking personally, I like the look of the latter, and I find it to be the opposite of crass to take time out to remember the departed, whether they had a special relationship with you or not.  You are doing your part to make sure that your fellow student will not be completely forgotten for some time to come.  Good for you.

You might easily look like someone who is seeking public attention.

Dedicating a publication is a privilege you should leave to close friends or the faculty staff.

Consider your best friend died, you wanted to commemorate him in your thesis, and then found three others had done the same before you. Could feel strange, couldn't it?

Or think about the mourning parents. They might spend days to find your phone number, cause nobody they know knows it, and then call you, expecting to find someone who is as sad as they are. Do you want to risk that?


Physician assistant school rescinded my acceptance I'm in a complicated situation. I was accepted to physician assistant school and was told I'm one of the most qualified candidates. I'm also a mother of 2 children (under age 3) and living with their father who doesn't want me to go to PA school (because I'll have more freedom).  But not only is he physically and emotionally abusive, but he stopped paying for my cell phone and started throwing away my mail (from my school and everyone else)  to limit my communication with anyone. (Note: I'm three months postpartum and have stayed home to care for my kids  waiting for school to start, and have no income of my own). I communicated this problem with my school via email as they could not reach me by phone. Even though it was embarrassing, I gave them specifics of my circumstances. Yet I Iived up to my promise to keep up with their other requirements.

Yesterday, I was shocked to learn that they rescinded my acceptance because I couldn't be reached by phone during the last month (but did respond to all correspondence via email). I explained the extenuating circumstances, and even presented evidence from police reports proving what was happening at home.

To make matters worse, my parents and I signed a lease on an apartment a block from school and agreed to help me pay for it so I could have a stable living environment with less distractions (constantly wondering if I would be forced onto the streets out of my abusive partner's apartment). We already signed a lease for the apartment.

I know that I honestly put forth my best effort to fulfill pre-matriculation requirements and to communicate with the only means I had (the computer). I couldn't go in person because I have no car. Graduating from this program was my ticket  to financial freedom out of this oppressive situation, and I feel like this school is going way too far to rescind my acceptance based ONLY on the short term termination of my phone.

How can I get the school to remake their offer?

Your highest priority should be getting safe from abuse.  We're not experts on that, so please contact a local authority.
Here is a list.  You may be able to get help without using a phone.
Becoming a physician assistant is not the only way out of your difficulties.  So don't panic about your acceptance.  Higher education does exist to help people like you, but there are many ways to get education.
Contact the Director of Admissions for the Physician Assistant Program and explain your situation to them.  They will want to help you.  If you cannot find this person, try the Dean of Students.  If you cannot find them either, look for an Omsbudsperson.  Your admissions problem sounds like it is caused by disorganization.  If you contact the right person they will fix the problem.  Since we do not know which school you are talking about, we cannot tell you exactly who to contact.
Ask local doctors what they think about this program before you start it.  Not all medical training programs are good.

Someone already mentioned this, but the best course of action is find a lawyer. They can discuss specifics with you and you may have a good case for a lawsuit. At the very least, a lawyer can tell you what your options are in this situation and maybe even just a letter from an attorney may be enough change their minds.


How to remove citations from Google Scholar profile? As the number of citations to some of my articles recently increased, I took a look to see who cites me among the articles listed on Google Scholar. To my surprise I found that I was cited in a document describing talks in a conference and in a curriculum vitae. These two citations are not "real" so I would like to remove them.

Do you know how can we remove some of the citations from the Google Scholar profile?

You can't.

Google Scholar, like everything Google, does not curate the data. It only indexes them and makes them easy to search through. If the citing document is online it'll be counted as a citation.

Google Scholar citations count, h-index and i-10 index are not accurate if you have quality criteria for what constitute a citation (an most reasonable academics do) and should be interpreted with caution.

There are commercial products that give more meaningful citations count per article or researcher. They are generally available via your institution's library.

Log into Google on your scholar page, then select the article. Clicking on the offending article, to go onto it's page. Once on the page for the article there should be a delete option.


Should I post my PhD Thesis on arXiv, if I intend to make a paper based on it? I am interested in posting my math Ph.D. thesis on the arXiv, but I also plan on writing a shorter paper based on some of the results in my thesis.  I plan on posting this paper on the arXiv when I am finished.

Would this be appropriate?

I'll offer a counterpoint to the answers which advise against posting to arXiv.  I have posted my PhD thesis (in math) to arXiv, as well as the papers that I published from it.  I feel good about this decision and haven't had any problems, and I disagree with most of the objections that have been raised.

Here are some reasons why I think it can be advantageous to post:

Convenience of access.  Sure, my PhD university does have an online thesis repository that contains mine, but it isn't so easy to find and access.  I just tried, starting from a Google search, and it took me at least five minutes to get to the PDF (the first few hits all led me to an alternate paywalled repository).  You might like to try finding my thesis in this repository for yourself, starting from scratch, and see how long it takes you.  (Post your time in comments!)  As an added handicap, you don't know off the top of your head the name of the university; and my username below is my real name, but not my full name.   Then see how long it takes you to find it on arXiv.

Of course, the thesis is also on my professional website (well, the arXiv link is there), but we all know how those tend to move around and vanish.  It'd be worse if I had a common name.  So for the challenge, assume it isn't there.
Archival.  In 300 years, will my university's repository still exist?  I guess the data will still be around somewhere, but will it be in a location that people can readily find, and in a format that they can use? (Brain implant uploads?)  The university may not exist anymore; for that matter, the country where it was located may not exist anymore.  I have quite a bit more confidence that arXiv will survive into the future.  I'm not really arrogant enough to think that people will be clamoring to read my thesis in 300 years, nor even 3, but I wrote it as a permanent document and I'd like it to be one.
Updates.  In the arXiv version of my thesis, I've included an addendum correcting some errors and mentioning some additional citations that I've discovered since graduating.  I can't do that for the institutional repository version.

Some other remarks:

My thesis has a fair amount of additional expository material that isn't in the corresponding published papers, so I think there is some added value in having it available.  This might not apply if you have a "stapler" thesis.
I posted the thesis on arXiv some years after the papers were published (simply because I never thought of doing so until then), so there wasn't really any risk of it "overshadowing" the papers.  If you're concerned about that, you could also wait to arXiv the thesis.  In the short term, your professional web page should be a reasonably good way to find it.
My thesis didn't get flagged as having "overlap" with the papers, which are also on arXiv, although there is a lot of overlap.  Anyway, if it had, the fact that I posted the thesis later should mean that it would be the thesis that would have been flagged, not the papers; and I think people would understand why.
Coauthors: I agree that if your thesis contains joint work, that would be a reason to hesitate.  But I would downgrade Anonymous Mathematician's "really unfriendly" to "ask your coauthors for permission".  And make sure it is clear that the thesis contains joint work and that the coauthors are credited.  I would probably list them in the arXiv comments field, and maybe put an extra page at the start of the thesis PDF with the same info.
The thesis is less polished than a paper: True, but I also have on arXiv my undergraduate thesis and some lecture notes which are even less polished.  I guess it's more important to me to have these writings available, in case someone finds them useful, than to reserve arXiv for only my very best work.
arXiv has hosting costs: I don't really understand this objection, since the marginal costs of hosting one more document are surely extremely small.  But you can always make them a donation if you want to help defray those costs.  (Based on a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, I estimate that a one-time gift of US $0.30 is sufficient to cover the storage and hosting costs in perpetuity.)

These days, I'd assume that most universities have an online collection of theses. There is no reason to duplicate work that is already available at the place you'd most expect it to be.

Furthermore, keep in mind that arXiv has significant hosting costs, and as such relies on donations to keep afloat. In that sense, a thesis takes the place of several potential papers.


Does it violate academic social norm to email someone around midnight? I do this often because this is when I wrap up the stuff for my day. But I wonder if it is considered intrusive.

I imagine a scenario where a phone that is linked to gmail rings due to my email, and that wakes up the person I intend to email.

Can people chime in whether it is out of the norm to email around midnight?

Should I try to refrain from doing this?

The good thing (maybe the only good thing) about email is that it's by nature asynchronous. A phone call in the middle of the night is intrusive, because there is an explicit expectation that the receiver does something about the call right there and then. An email is not like that - if you send an email, it will happily sit in the inbox of the recipient until they explicitly take an action to react upon it. Consequently, it does not matter when you send the email.

  I imagine a scenario where a phone that is linked to gmail rings due to my email, and that wakes up the person I intend to email.

This is, in my opinion, not a valid concern. First of all, the kind of person who is annoyed by getting disturbed by email outside of work hours has a very easy fix to the problem - turn off notifications. In my opinion, if you explicitly have notifications enabled you can't at the same time be annoyed that you get notified.

Second, you'll need to understand an almost universal basic truth - starting from a certain seniority, most people in academia get a lot of email. Hundreds per day, in some cases. Many of these emails will come in during the night. If you wake up every time you get an email from one of your collaborators on a different continent, you won't get much sleep at all. So your email is highly unlikely to wake anybody up, because it will drown in the flood of other emails people get over the night.

That said, as discussed in a somewhat related recent question, if you are a supervisor or manager, it may pay to be somewhat careful about what "message" you transport with when you send emails. In this question, a student was stressed because their supervisor kept sending them mails in the night, and the student interpreted these as work items that needed to be done by the next morning. Also, if you as a supervisor are clearly working until midnight, it may implicitly communicate certain expectations and standards that you don't really want in your team.

In addition to @Katu's answer, which I like, you can...

Just schedule a delayed send and avoid the problem

Most mail clients (including webmail IIANM) allow for some sort of mechanism for scheduling messages to be sent at a later time. For example:

"Send Later" add-on for Mozilla Thunderbird

and:

MS Outlook | Email | Delay or schedule sending email messages

or you can just Google "delayed send message" and the name of your mail client / webmail solution.


Losing confidence after a series of paper rejections I don't think I have a concrete question to ask but I want to hear other researchers' opinions. I am pretty sure that there are many researchers who went through this and others will go through it in the future unfortunately.
I am a postdoc researcher with a limited contract and aim to apply for professorship positions. Therefore, I am actively submitting papers (working more than my contracted hours as there are no PhD students to co-supervise and publish papers with) to come up with a good and long list of publications. However, a lot of my papers are getting rejected with a huge disparity in the reviewers' scores. As a reviewer in almost all conferences I submit my work to, I find that my submission is better or equal to top accepted papers (I don't know whether this is a bad lcuk or just an illusion).
I focus mainly on top conferences with acceptance rates of less than 30% or 25%. I was almost sure that my last paper would be accepted because I am an expert in the area and because I learnt to assess paper quality, but it got rejected a few days after another rejection. Now, I am doubting my research capability (although I used to publish easily to these conferences when I was a PhD student). I am wondering whether I am a bad researcher or just an unlucky author.

This sounds like a pretty common case of the human condition.  In my single days, I used to think of dating like "strikes and gutter balls".  That is, either I was getting many dates in rapid succession or going through a prolonged dry spell.  In the former, I was feeling pretty good about myself and was quite down in the latter.
In my current research days, I find a similar emotional oscillation.  This is the nature of research, in my opinion, and it builds character.  You actually sound quite productive, and the results will come.  In fact, I would encourage you to try to get more enjoyment from the process of seeking truth rather than putting all your eggs on the often opaque 'accept/reject' decision.  If I may with another analogy, it's like learning golf.  It's a slew of mishits, duffs, shanks, slices, hooks, flubs, and ineptitude until suddenly you smash a beauty down the fairway and are the envy of your friends.  If the one great shot makes up for the many bad shots, you're hooked.  If not, you're probably going to quit.
Also, pragmatic advice holds: get sleep, review diet, practice self-care, take mental health breaks, seek advice from colleagues/advisors, confirm writing and presentation adequately represents results, etc.

There is nothing called a bad researcher or an unlucky author. Getting a paper published or in general, having a successful career is less to do with sheer talent or hard work and more to do with management. Most successful academicians are excellent salesmen. And becoming an excellent salesman requires training.
My Ph.D. supervisor has 1000 papers to his name and sits on numerous committees and gets a felicitation every odd year. He has close to $15M funding currently. He gets funding not because of his technical expertise but because of his mastery in writing, connections, and excellent man-management. I hate that but it is the system we work with.
He is a bad researcher but a highly successful academician. I say bad because I did my Ph.D. under him and had to ignore him and rely on my co-supervisor because he simply does not know any of his research areas in-depth; but could talk for hours on the future possibilities, research trends, and research directions like an expert. He spends all his time collecting specific keywords from his connections and thanks to his excellent communication skills knows how to weave a story to get the funding.
My supervisor is an extreme case. But to be a good academician you need to get many things right. So firstly start collaborating. Appear as a second or third or tenth author in a number of papers. Look for A* conferences but also submit some ideas to A- and B-ranked conferences. Start building a citation network. It is criminal to engage in I cite you-You cite me, but this is how a large number of academicians thrive. You need a high H-index in your job application and for future promotions.
You are living on the other extreme. Spending long hours in a dingy room, alone working like a mad scientist won't get you anywhere. You may be good at what you do but that is simply irrelevant.
Find a balance between these two extremes. Once you are established as an academician, focus on your research, your style. You need to spend a few years doing this drill.  Who knows, maybe a Turing award or a Nobel awaits you. But, even Nobel laureates or other award winners, win their prize only when recommended by their colleagues: People like my supervisor.
Be it academia or any business only people who communicate, collaborate, and establish quid pro quo relationships, thrive. Talent, scientific expertise, in-depth knowledge of a field are secondary.
In conclusion, it does not matter if you are a good or bad researcher. You need to take certain actions to become a successful academician. And believe me, those actions are a lot easier than solving a complex problem, which I assume you are good at.
Best of luck!