Being overqualified as a barrier for getting a job I have a PhD and whenever I apply for a librarian job I am told that I am overqualified for this position. How can I overcome this barrier?

When they say you are overqualified, it probably means:

They are afraid that someone with a Ph. D. will demand a higher salary than they can afford to pay;
They are afraid that you will get bored with the job and quit after a few months because the work won't be challenging / intellectually stimulating for someone with a Ph. D.

So, in your cover letter, you have to tell a good story that addresses the above two items (i.e., tell them why you know you will love this job and not get bored with it). If you search around on google, you can find many articles / blog posts giving more detail.

Well, the resume should be tailored to each individual job you apply for anyways, because you are trying to use it to show yourself in the best light with relevance to each individual position.

So the question is, is your PhD relevant to the librarian position?  If it is, I'd leave it on there and see how you could leverage the skills to stand out among other candidates for the librarian position.  But most likely it isn't, so you'd be better off leaving it off the resume, especially if you could easily replace it with something that is (much) more relevant to the librarian position that you are applying for.


Trouble finding job after disappointing PhD in India Started PhD in 2014.
Mistakes that I have committed:

I did my PhD in a topic that was not the area of expertise of my PhD supervisor.

I was doing computational work, while the past graduates on the topic were all experimentalists. So, I did not know the career prospects.

I did not take relevant courses. My committee did not tell me to take them. I am technically unsound now.

I published very late, in 2017 and that too a bad paper (just 3 citation till date) in a decent journal.

Finally graduated in 2019. Tried everything to get a postdoc or industry positions. Did not get anything. I have just 4 papers from my PhD.

Currently unemployed. Looking for positions since. I am an Indian national. Doing part-time job in call center to make ends meet.

My PhD advisor has offered me 2 years postdoc position. Topic will be little bit different and more collaborative with other research groups. Should I accept? I don't know my career prospects after that? Can I still get into academia or research industry after that?

I apply to both industry and academia. No responses. I want to be in a research field either in industry or academia.
Is every career redeemable?

You did a PhD in 5 years, published 4 papers and got an offer for a 2-year postdoc position in times where research funding decreases. Keep going, looks fine.
Take some courses or workshops on topics where you think you aren't skilled enough, but given that you could publish, I suspect that you underestimate yourself here.

"Can I still get into academia or research industry after that?"

With a postdoc position, you are in academia.

First some good news, with many things shut down due to the coronavirus, there is no need to feel ashamed or like a failure to the people back in India, nothing to brag about, but no shame either.
Explain to them that things are very bad here in the job market.
Tell them (probably lie) that all your co-workers in the call center have college degrees.
Mention that even after the vaccine gets dispensed to enough people, in May-June 2021, there will be 2 years worth of graduates for 1 year's worth of jobs.
Also, don't tell your folks in India about those mistakes you mentioned.
All that should lower the expectations that your folks have for you.
Now, for your career.
First of all, you ARE employed at the call center, so you said.
Second, you have gone so far down the acedemic rabbit hole that you might as well accept the postdoc position that was offered to you.
Third, as far as industry, are you talented in a mechanical sort of way?
Can you twirl a wrench and twist a screwdriver in a way that gives beneficial results?
Do you understand the mechanical workings of a car and appliances?
Do you dream up mechanical devices to accomplish some sort of task?
If the answer is yes to these questions, you have a good shot at industry.
If the answer is no to those questions, either you need to stick to academia (those who can't do - teach) or you could go in a different direction.
You mentioned how you pursued computations rather than experiments, perhaps you could narrow your focus to doing stress analysis equations or change to calculating risk and cost factors for an insurance company, or computationally heavy accounting work.
I hope this gives you some direction.


Is it okay to consider publishing in my first year of PhD? I'm PhD candidate in Applied linguistics, it's been almost 3 months since I've started but I'm seriously allowing for writing and publishing journal articles.

I have asked my supervisor about that, she said that I should devote my time to my thesis and wait until the second year and that writing other forms of papers generally interfere with the thesis.

However, I think I have enough time to simultaneously work on my thesis and also articles, also I have to indicate that the ideas that I'm willing to formulate in articles are not related my PhD focus.

What should I do? Should I wait until next year or just start working on articles and submit them as single author?

Whatever you do, you will want to cultivate a good working relationship with your supervisor, so I'd advise against doing something she dissuaded you from just because strangers on the internet told you to. Talk it out with her.

That said, not a single PhD student I've known wrote/writes a relevant portion of their thesis in their first year, and the advice I have constantly been getting from faculty is that early in the PhD is the time to think about publishing other things. There will most likely be a time when your thesis takes all your attention, and by then it's certainly too late to worry about publishing elsewhere.

I disagree with your advisor.  The archived journal literature is what counts.  You can always pull a thesis together.  Get some notches on your belt.

Furthermore, at the end of the day, your career is your career.  Listen to your advisor's advice but don't follow it slavishly.

Edit:  I see you have clarified that this would be a commentary article.  I agree with your advisor on not bothering with that, now.  Original research reports within your thesis area are a different kettle of fish.  I would emphasize publications in that, once you have enough done (and well prior to and before writing your thesis).


Do you need to read a whole article before citing it? During writing my academic paper, I need to cite a definition in a scientific paper. The other part of the paper, is irrelevant to my work.

I have been advised that if you will cite a paper, you need to read that paper entirely. But in this case, it seems useless to do so.

It also happened a few times when I wanted to cite from some books.

No, you don't have to read the whole paper.
If you think you do, ask yourself this:

  do you also have to read all papers cited in the paper?

For example, I recently needed to know a certain function of n. Some computer experimentation suggested that it might be 3*2^n, let's say. Then I found a paper published in a reputable journal that claimed to prove exactly that. As the reasons why it was 3*2^n were probably rather unrelated to what I was trying to do, I cited them but did not check their proof.

On balance, I think that making every author read every paper they ever cite would slow down the progress of science.

Caveat: this may be field-dependent. For instance, if the paper can be thought of as consisting of just one long definition, then yes, one should read the whole thing.

Yes. Always read the whole article before citing. Don't be sloppy. Don't take lazy shortcuts. Write responsibly. This is academia, not second-rate journalism.

If you cite something you don't understand, or which is riddled with nonsense, or is later retracted, and you show no sign that you were aware of it in your citation, then it will reflect badly on you.

Obviously, in any paper you cite, there will be things that are relevant, and things that are not. But that doesn't mean you can avoid reading the paper, and only cherry-pick reading the one sentence in it that is convenient for you to build your argument. If you don't read it all, you won't know everything in it that's relevant.

Building comprehensively on predecessors' work is how scholarship progresses.  Being lazy, omitting hte reading of your predecessors' work, and citing it blindly without reading it or understanding it, is how bad scholarship propagates.

If it's a large reference work such as a dictionary, then no, you aren't expected to read the whole thing: in such cases, you'll just have to get by with an appeal to authority, by using the most reputable dictionary you can.


"Excellent foreign scholar" from Chinese National Science Foundation I am reading a colleague's CV which lists an "Excellent Foreign Scholar" scholarship from the National Science Foundation of China.  I am not familiar with this program, nor is google particularly helpful for me as a complete non-speaker of Chinese.  Is anyone familiar with this program, and what it would entail?

Preamble: I am one of a few Chinese active participants on this site. There have been some questions about Chinese academics here. I always tried to not to answer them. For example, there was a question about the role of correspondence author in Chinese academia(the OP even offered a bounty for it). I did not answer them for two reasons: I am not an insider and I do not wish to give out information I am not absolutely certain about. However, I feel that I need to give some answer for this question because I just see some un-useful answer. Hopefully some Chinese scholars will answer them after they see this one.

According to this document, "The Joint Research Fund for Overseas Chinese Scholars and Scholars in Hong Kong and Macao is established by Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to encourage excellent overseas Chinese scholars (including those with foreign nationalities) under the age of 50 to conduct high-level joint research with researchers and organizations in mainland China."

I suspect your colleague received this fund. Please note that the qualification is oversea Chinese scholar. "Foreign" here means he could be born in oversea but at least one of his parents is a Chinese.

Go to google for china and you can ask that it translate the page. You will find several articles related to the "Excellent Foreign Scholar" scholarship from the National Science Foundation of China.


Should I cheat if the majority does it? I'm taking the last and hardest exams of my master degree. During the exams we aren't allowed to use anything else but our brain. Cheating is pretty easy though: one has the lecture notes and all the past exams with solutions on the phone and can easily consult them without being caught, therefore the majority of the students does it. I scored pretty good on the first exam but didn't get the best mark like some cheaters did. I feel at a disadvantage here with respect to the majority of my colleagues who will take better grades in these exams and I'll end up with the US equivalent of a C

My main problem here is my disadvantage towards everyone else, especially in PhD application where the transcript of records plays a role.

I also firmly believe that the cheaters will be be caught sooner or later by showing their own incompetence when they for example do research, but this isn't helpful since they may have been given the chance to do research instead of me.

So should I put morals aside and simply go there and cheat if I need to? Is there any justification for someone to do it?

I never did it so far but this time I've taken I've been very tempted.

I can't actually think of any way of justifying me cheating in the next exams. On the other hand I'm not having a fair competition at all here and even if I know some of them are better physicists than me and I'd finish behind them anyway I also know that some of them are worse than me.

I know I'm basically asking if cheating can be condoned, can it?

I don't want to report them, I probably don't have the guts to do it, especially because it's such a socially accepted practice.

Do I have any alternatives beside taking the exams while pretending other students don't exist, pass the exams and go on without looking back?

I don't want to report them, I probably don't have the guts to do it, especially because it's such a socially accepted practice.

A "Snitches get stitches" mentality will not solve your problem. Cheating is unethical. You know that you are "at a disadvantage" if you keep your ethical behavior and the others don't.

  Cheating is pretty easy though: one has the lecture notes and all the past exams with solutions on the phone and can easily consult them without being caught

You seem to know how people are able to cheat at the exam. I would suggest that you report how people cheat (not who) to the professor in charge of your exam. He will either be able to implement counter measures to prevent cheating or change the exam format. This way you can avoid denouncing specific individuals while still preventing them from cheating.

IMHO, there's no need to cheat.

Students are fed the lie "you need to get good grades, because..." almost from birth. It's rubbish. Many very successful people were dropouts. Sure, grades can open doors in the short term. But a grade rapidly becomes unimportant as time goes by.

In my experience, opportunities find you if you forget about being competitive and focus on being awesome. My motto was always "why cram for exams, when you can study properly and actually retain valuable knowledge and skills?" If you are competent, capable, creative, or quick, people will want you to solve their problems and great opportunities will come your way.

My advice is to treat exams like:

something to keep you motivated to work hard; a goal to keep you focused
rough and imperfect feedback on what your strengths and weaknesses are.


How to avoid and address a lack of gender diversity in grant proposals? I just got reviews back on a grant proposal.
On the whole the reviews were positive, but one reviewer criticised us because the five PIs are all male.
The proposed project arises naturally out of a couple of strands of work that we’ve been doing recently. The PIs are the people who’ve been involved in that work, plus the CTO of an industry partner. We’re in a niche area of applied math, and neither of the institutions involved have female staff eligible for the grant scheme working in the area of our proposal.
I support efforts to fix gender imbalances in academia, and I would have preferred a mixed-gender team. However, I’m not sure what I could have done for this project. The options seem to be:

Propose a fundamentally different piece of work with different participants. However, this would likely not be of interest to the industry partner, which is central to the viability of the proposal. Our original idea would then presumably not get developed.

Expand the proposal to bring in female colleague(s) at another institution. However, the funding scheme essentially only provides the salary for one postdoc, so the benefits for PIs at additional institutions are limited. The obvious candidates are all a long-haul flight away, so day-to-day engagement would be challenging. I’m uncomfortable asking people to do work on my proposal when I can’t offer them much in exchange.

Ask someone to put their name on the proposal “for show”. Clearly offensive and counterproductive.

Does anyone have any advice on how to best reconcile diversity considerations with practical realities in these circumstances?
My question is more about the general issue – and whether there is anything I should have done differently – than about how to respond to these particular reviews.

This is a hard and important problem.  There are a few things you can do to address it.
First, admit that there is a problem indicated by the demographics of your discipline.  Tell the funding agency that

neither of the institutions involved have female staff eligible for the grant scheme working in the area of our proposal.

Tell them briefly about your universities' plans for future diverse hiring.  Tell them that the grant applicants do not have control over the diversity of current staff (if this is true).
Explain how the project will contribute to gender inclusivity.  You said you plan to hire one postdoc.  How will you encourage gender minority scientists to apply for that postdoc?  How will your selection process prevent discrimination?  How will that postdoc receive professional development that will advance their career?
Will you be communicating about your project to the public, and will that be done in a way that reaches people of all genders?
It sounds like your project is applied.  Will the application benefit gender minorities?  Even if they get a minority of the benefit, it's still worth pointing out that your project does not exclusively benefit one gender.
Do not add a token applicant.  You are obligated to allocate the project funds efficiently.  Some people argue that tokenism has the opposite of the intended effect.

There are correct answers, politically correct answers, and answers that get you funded expeditiously. The last one of those is: yes, add someone for token, and allocate minimal funds for her. A math project should focus on solving the math problems.


During applications, how can I prove I was the first author of the papers that I couldn't become first author for various reasons? One year ago, I started working on a subject with one of the professors of our department. The idea was mine, and all of the subsequent steps including modellings, simulations, generation of figures, writing the paper and even responding to the reviewers were done by myself completely, and the professor just reviewed the paper and reminded some typos and minor mistakes of this kind, and also added a short paragraph (completely unnecessary in my opinion) to the Introduction section.

But at the end he wrote his name as the first author and submitted the paper. He told me that being second author for him means getting no credit from the department.

Anyway, I'm going to apply for grad school, and he told me he will compensate in the recommendation he will write for me.

As this is my only published paper as an undergrad, and being first author means everything for me in my application, is there any way for me to prove to the admission committees (or the professors; whoever will review my application) that I was the main contributor of the paper?

As this is my only published paper as an undergrad, and being first author means everything for me in my application, is there anyway for me to prove to the admission committees (or the professors; whoever will review my application) that I was the main contributor of the paper?

Short answer: no. Aside from the professor writing in his letter that he did indeed not do the work and just put his name front to brush up his CV, I see no way how you can prove that you were indeed the "actual" first author. And, given that this would essentially mean that the professor confesses unethical behavior, I see very little chance of this happening.

Anyway, I am not so sure whether being first author means "everything" for you. Undergrads are often not the first authors of publications (for many reasons, not just the unethical reason that you were denied first authorship). Further, if I see a paper with a senior author and an undergrad, I am not assuming that the professor did most of the hard work and undergrad just advised - independently of how the authors are ordered. I would assume your average admission committee to be similarly realistic.

If you kept a stack of drafts, produce them. While not definite proof, it would be very hard to overcome even if the professor were to try. Likely, he won't and you win by default.


Is the arXiv a good way to get feedback on one's work? I have developed a method to process images I use for my research. It's nothing revolutionary but I think it might be useful to others than me, and why not, be worthy of being published somewhere (at least for me to cite when I use it).

As it is outside my primary field of research, nobody in my direct lab vicinity can help evaluating its scientific value or novelty (I did a bit of literature research and didn't find any obvious precedent). Normally I would just put it as an appendix in the first article where I use it, but this one is quite long to describe and completely out of my field. It would thus be off-topic in the journals in which I usually publish.

I though of seeking collaboration from someone in my university who works in signal/image processing, I don't know anyone personally and I foresee possible political issues, authorship quarrels, etc. I would nonetheless like to get some sort of evaluation before submitting to a journal. As an outsider, I wouldn't like to waste an editor's time and make a fool of myself.

I have zero experience submitting to the arXiv, by looking at the website it's not clear how/if there is an active system of feedback, even informal.

Is it advisable to submit my methods paper there and expect a feedback?

There is not much of a "formal feedback" system associated with the arxiv.  I say "not much" instead of "none" because the arxiv apparently does do some degree of automatic tracking of citations to its papers.  For instance this arxiv submission contains a link to a MO post in which my paper is (briefly) mentioned.  I had not seen that post before, so that was somewhat interesting.  However, I don't know how this system works and it seems to be much less systematic than, say, what google scholar does.  In particular, I have 25 arxiv preprints and the arxiv itself lists this kind of citation for very few of them, whereas google scholar lists much more.

In terms of an informal feedback system: yes, the arxiv works very well for that, in the following organic way: for many academic fields and subfields it is by far the one place to put your preprint in order to get the most (and the most interested) people to read it.  This includes publication in most journals and the implications this has had on some academic fields are immense.  E.g. I hear that in theoretical physics -- a fast-moving field in which it is apparently rare to look up a paper written much more than ten years ago -- pretty much everyone who is anyone uploads their preprints to the arxiv, and as a result theoretical physicists almost never go to the library anymore or look through actual journal papers: they don't need to.  My field -- mathematics -- seems to be converging to this kind of phenomenon rather more slowly.

On the other hand, to expect feedback may be putting it a bit strongly.  The volume of papers uploaded to the arxiv is fast and rapidly increasing.  I just looked at the math.NT arxiv submissions, and last night 15 papers were uploaded.  I am a number theorist with broad interests, and if these papers came at a rate of one a day or less, I would probably peruse about half of them.  But the current volume forces me to be much more selective.  The arxiv is great advertising, but all the advertising in the world doesn't guarantee that people will engage with your product rather than the sea of competing products (competing for their attention, anyway; they need not be competing with you in the academic sense).

In my experience, I most definitely get enough feedback from my arxiv submissions in order to justify uploading them (although there are arguments to be made for doing so even if you never hear directly from anyone about them).  It happens that in the last three weeks or so I have uploaded four arxiv submissions.  (Since I have 25 altogether, this is obviously a spike in the upload rate.  Some other people do this too.  Now that I think about it, from an advertising perspective it would probably be better not to do this.)  Since then I have received comments on two of the four papers.  The two papers that I haven't heard from yet are I think perfectly solid and interesting -- in fact, one of the two concerns the Combinatorial Nullstellensatz so probably has broader appeal than most papers I have written, and the other is a really substantial project that I did jointly with my PhD student -- so the fact that I've gotten no feedback about them seems to be mostly random.

In summary: yes, posting your papers on the arxiv is a great way to get feedback.  Will it guarantee feedback?  No, guaranteed feedback is exactly what you're buying (so to speak) when you submit to a journal.  Other than that it seems impossible to guarantee. I would definitely submit to the arxiv and see what happens.  If you hear nothing, then you might try sending a few emails to suspected experts which just point to your arxiv preprint.  Having an arxiv preprint versus just enclosing a file adds a certain veneer of legitimacy.

Other questions are more on topic, but let me add that social media and open access, used wisely, are good tools for increase your audience and get more downloads, and (hopefully) more feedback.
Think about:

creating a blog, maybe dedicated to your research
upload your papers in arxiv: this will give us a timestamp, a permalink, and will preserve your paper digitally
use social media to spread the links
Use the blog (or the arXiv itself) as a place to discuss your research (maybe, in more laymen terms), receive comments and discuss with interested people.

Social media (used wisely) do have an impact, and also Altmetrics are developing. Also, please read this question and related answers.


How to mention that we are applying as a couple? My wife and I are applying to US universities for master's and PhD programmes. We both have a electrical engg. degree and are applying to the same department. However we would like to get into the same university.
Is it possible to mention this in the application? Do universities take this into consideration when making admission decisions?

Different universities will have different rules. At some you will be strictly considered as individuals. At others some accommodation might be made, but only at the margins. You can just state in your cover material that you are seeking positions together for personal reasons.
But it is worth mentioning, so that the admissions committee is aware that you have some constraints. But if you are both marginally qualified, by their rules, it would be more a reason to reject both than to admit both.
But is is unlikely that one would be admitted if unqualified even if the other is highly qualified. Being married is probably better than just being "together".
Another possibility for you, however, if you are willing to live in a large city, is to make applications to several universities in some city, like NYC or San Francisco. Then it would be feasible to attend different universities, though such places tend to be expensive to live in.
And the application would be for the doctorate. It is unnecessary to mention a masters in such an application. A masters is normally earned "along the way" to the doctorate, sometimes just by asking and sometimes with some fairly minor additional requirement.

Is it possible to mention this in the application?

Yes it is possible to mention it, but it is unlikely to help and unwise.

Do universities take this into consideration when making admission
decisions?

Possibly, if one of you is admitted and the other is not, mentioning you need a second offer to enrol might result in a second offer.  If you have a credible alternative (another university that admitted both of you) this might be more effective.
Some cities have more than one good PhD program.


Will there be consequences for not participating in ShutDownSTEM? I am a tenure-track researcher in STEM fields. On June 9th, I was told that all meetings scheduled next day were cancelled so that we can be a part of #ShutDownSTEM. I was not aware of it, and I actually thought it was a joke1 (I purposely isolated myself from real-world news).
So I kept all the meetings. On June 10th, it was business as usual for my group. Other people certainly knew we were working on that day.
Will our disobedience lead to trouble later?
Update: Okay, it is actually slightly worse than how I initially described it. Originally I did not know about ShutDownSTEM. On the 10th, however, some graduate students did stop by our lab and explain to us that we should use that day to reflect on ...... someting. My postdoc and I, both being people of color, were somewhat annoyed by such intrusion. So we explain to them we support their cause, but we not are going to spend a day watching netflix, and send them on their way. We certainly tried to be as polite as possible. But I suppose it wouldn't be unfair to say we dismissed their demand.

In my defense, if the president of the university tells me to take a day off so that we can BurnDownUniversity, I'd certainly think it is a joke.

Will our disobedience lead to trouble later?

Anything is possible, and some things are a lot more possible these days than they were just a couple of months ago. It’s quite reasonable for you to be worried.
But let’s be clear. You didn’t “think it was a joke”. That is a poor way to explain your outlook and increases the chance that you will be criticized, perhaps harshly, by people who don’t have patience for nuance, facts, and the intricacies of human nature in these turbulent times. It’s probably more accurate and more productive to say that the whole thing was so unexpected and took you so much by surprise that you did not immediately appreciate how important the shutdownstem event was as a way of expressing your support for an important social movement. Thrown off, unsure what to do, and being a creature of habit and passionate about your work and its importance to science and to society, you ended up sticking with your usual routine. ... Right?
Similarly, I think it’s a mistake to use the word “disobedience” to frame your behavior. Researchers in US academia do not take orders from anyone about when or with whom to hold meetings. If you carefully read the emails you received I am sure you will discover that none of the stuff about canceling meetings and participating in the shutdown day is phrased as a directive. It was almost certainly a “suggestion” or “strong recommendation”, or you were “encouraged to participate”, “invited to reflect on systemic racism”, etc. And indeed I am confident that you reflected on many important issues that day (and most other days in the last couple of months), as pretty much everyone has been doing. Do not play into the hands of overzealous activists who presume to see into your heart and know what you care about and what you don’t care about by professing to a willful disobedience you are not guilty of. Instead, anyone criticizing you for not participating should be forced to acknowledge that the invitation to participate was precisely that - an invitation, making it entirely reasonable and acceptable to decline.
I could go on with a few similar things in your post that suggest a somewhat cavalier attitude that opens you up to a heightened level of scrutiny and criticism. Please try not to give anyone asking about the shutdown the impression that you find the recent nationwide events uninteresting, unimportant, or not worthy of being thought about or taken seriously. When you write things like “I purposely isolated myself from real-world news”, “reflect on ... something”, and “send them on their way” you sound dismissive and create a serious risk of being misunderstood. Since you support the cause of the activists, it would be foolish of them to come after you, but if by your words you give them the wrong impression, it’s quite possible that some of them will not be as thoughtful or charitable to you as they should be.
Bottom line: think defensively about this. Your actions were reasonable, but much could depend on the precise way in which you explain what happened if questioned. Also, find allies who know you and would be willing to come to your defense if push comes to shove. I hope it doesn’t come to that though, and it very well might not. Good luck!

Edit: note that I am posting here using my real identity. In such times when discussing potentially controversial topics I’m always cognizant of the possibility that in the process of offering advice to some anonymous person I never met I may be inadvertently opening myself up for potential attack or criticism by anyone who disagrees with what I wrote or interprets what I wrote in a different way than how I intended.
Oh well, it is what it is I guess. But just to clarify in case anyone gets the wrong idea about what I’m saying: in this answer I’m addressing OP’s concern about possible criticism and/or career damage given their actions during the recent STEM shutdown day of protest, and only that. I’m not commenting on any political movements or points of view and their significance, worthiness, virtue etc, so please do not interpret any of what I wrote as commentary of that type.

In your update you mention that you are a person of color.
In my observation, ShutDownSTEM was largely aimed at white people -- who have not experienced structural racism, and who may not have thought about it deeply.
Several of my professor friends on Facebook are social justice activists. A consistent point that they make (via sharing blog posts, etc.) is that white people should do more of the work, carry more of the burden, of ending structural racism. In general, their criticism is not aimed at people of color.
Although I cannot predict how people will behave, I would be very surprised if you faced negative consequences.


The French school of mathematics "has entered a demographical dip" In an interview made for the 25th anniversary of the Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu-Paris Rive Gauche, its head Professor Loïc Merel says at 1:25:

Les doctorants que nous formons aurons une lourde tâche: celle de reprendre le flambeau de l'école mathématique française, qui est rentrée dans un creux démographique.
[Personnal translation: The graduate students that we educate will have a daunting task: that of taking up the mantle of the French school of mathematics, which has entered a demographical dip.]

What are references backing this claim, and how pronounced is the effect ? For instance, will there be an actual shortage of talent and even some areas taking a toll, or just slightlty less competition for a while ?

Here is some additional info compared to the other answer (which does not have a lot of detail).

Loïc's comment is mainly about fundamental (AKA pure) mathematics. The IMJ-PRG is a pure math research institute. There is a trend in French academia that funding is going more and more towards research that has immediate applications, with some level of disregard for fundamental research. This is the case in pretty much all fields of science (maybe with the exception of computer science). It goes without saying that the situation is dire in social science and the arts, apart from economics, management, and law. (I did not choose these at random, they are legally treated separately from the rest.)

The French ministry periodically releases some demographic information. Here is the latest one for faculty in Section 25, i.e. pure math. Even if you can't read French, the graphics speak for themselves. On the first page, the first graphic is about professors, the second about lecturers (maîtres de conférences), the third about the total. The brown line is pure math, the light blue line is "Group 5" (pure math + applied math + CS), the dark blue line is Science, the black line is the whole of French academia. The graphics are normalized at 100 in 1998. You can get graphics for other years and fields on this page.

To summarize: the number of faculty in pure math has decreased by 15% in France between 1998 and 2018. This is enormous. The number of students increases every year. Administrative tasks are always increasing. This puts an enormous amount of stress on the remaining faculty. (As a comparison, the number of faculty in applied math increased by 11.4%.)

The situation is also dire for new doctors: finding a permanent position is an ordeal, even more so than in similar countries. In the PDF I linked, Figure 3.2 on page 4 is especially telling: in 2018, there were 420 candidates for 22 lecturer positions, and 136 candidates for 14 professor positions. This does not include candidates who were rejected from the "qualification" (94.7% of candidates for professorships and 88.7% of candidates for lectureships are "qualified").

Note that this graphic also shows that there is not much shortage of talent. The number of candidates per position (column "Ratio B/A") decreased between 2014 and 2015, but it's increasing since 2015. The decrease in 2014–2015 was due to the fact that there was an exceptionally low number of available positions in 2014.

A remark, for intellectual honesty: not all French math researchers are faculty. Some are full-time researchers employed by the CNRS. Update: According to the CNRS's official statistics, the total number of researchers in Section 41 (pure maths + applied math, no, it's not the same section as the CNU) is 373: 210 junior and 163 senior. To compare, in 2018 there were 1321 faculty in pure math and 1776 in applied math. That's 3097 total, so CNRS researchers represent about 12%. I cannot say what the distribution between pure and applied is. "Common knowledge" tells me that it's around 10% for pure math.

PS: The ministry's website has a wealth of information. There are statistics about pretty much everything, as well as explanatory notes about the conjonctures. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about the evolution of French academia. However, be careful about aggregates: data about a "Group" (e.g. pure+applied math + CS) may not tell you everything about a "Section" (e.g. pure math).

As suggested by Buffy in the comments, I've now written to Professor Merel and have obtained his answer. Since he didn't mention that I could give it here I'll keep it private. I'll just say that a relevant reference is this publicly available page on the Opération Postes website. Edit (given the comments): the plots on that page show a very subtantial decrease in the number of offered positions in the space of 10 years. On the other hand, it is known that the number of new PhDs per year has not decreased.


In the United States, is associate professor a subset of professor, or a distinct category? In the USA, if someone writes that they are "professor" with no other specification, does this mean full professor, or can it also mean associate professor?  In other words, is associated professor a subset of professor, or is it a fully distinct category?

In the US, Assistant and Associate Professors are also titled Prof. X when being referred to formally. This is unlike in Europe and parts of Asia, where "Professor" is a title that can be used only if they're a full professor. Others are simply referred to as Dr. X (or Mr. or Ms. X, if they don't hold a doctorate).

Short answer: if somebody from the US writes about themselves as a Professor, then it means a tenured full professor.

Longer answer: If you see the title "Professor" in the official university publication (e.g., department website), or in somebody's bio, self-description, or email signature, then it means a tenured full professor (the third, and the top, step in the US academic hierarchy... Instructors and lecturers can hardly be considered academics as they are treated as staff for hire and dismissal).

If you see "Professor" in somebody else's email, especially students' emails, or in the university newsletter, or in some other source that was originated from a person that is not so familiar with the academic ranks, and the hoops one needs to jump through to get there, then it may mean a broader use of the term to indicate an instructor in a university. Essentially, all the adjectives (e.g., an Adjunct Assistant Professor... essentially nobody) are getting thrown out, with only the affiliation with academia remaining in this use of "professor" word. Such a liberty may qualify as an insult to a British/ANZ Professor where the meaning is way more specific. American academics are used to the confusions, though, and let the vague understanding of the title slip when used by un-initiated.

I was getting emails addressed "Professor" when I was in grad school... I would roll my eyes -- can't the source figure out a difference between a Ph.D. student and a regular faculty? They come on very different pages on the department website...


Is it appropriate to ask for letters of recommendation from professor on maternity leave? A professor who knows me very well is currently on maternity leave (her baby arrived in late April).

This professor has known me for 4 years (since first semester of undergraduate career) and also advised my undergraduate thesis (2 semesters).  In addition I also did an independent study course with her, and she has provided me funding from her own grant money in the past in order to pay for me attending academic conferences.

I am planning to apply to several master's programs, possibly PhD, in addition to other things that require such letters (Teach for America, Summer School, etc.).  All of these things require letters of recommendation.

Is it appropriate to ask her for letters of recommendation on her maternity leave, and if so, how should the request be phrased in email?

Yes

I think It would be different if say, you took one or two of her classes. But it sounds like she advised you a great deal, and thus she should have some investment in your educational success. Especially if you have talked about graduate school before. What is important is you give her notice as soon as possible so she can find some time to do it: Having a newborn is no easy job.

I would phrase it as follows:

  Dear X (unless you call her professor, then Professor X, but my
  advisors I call by their first name)

  How is your newborn?

  I realize you are very busy with your maternity leave, but I was
  hoping you might have some time to write me a strong letter of
  recommendation for graduate school. As you might know I am interested
  in ZQR, and your mentorship over my senior thesis has been essential
  to my education.

  Thank you for your time,

  user

I'd also like to add that while I was applying to PhD programs, the professor who eventually became my advisor was on maternity leave while I was asking her questions about the lab. In confidence, she enjoyed my emails because having newborns, while a joy most of the time, often lacks the intellectual rigor that most people are accustomed to in their day to day conversations.

My guess is she will be very happy to do this, and somewhat expects you to ask.

It is fine since it doesn't take too much time. However, you should ask the professor very politely. Remember just invite one time, if the professor says no you shouldn't invite anymore and say thanks to conclude the request. Anyway, in such case, it would be better if you are very familiar with the professor.


PhD Student : Publish Paper with Wife? I am a PhD student, working on Applied Math while my wife is a software engineer. I plan on going to academia after PhD and will start to job hunt soon.

A few weeks ago, I thought of an idea that hadn't been done before. I wrote a crude C++ code to implement the idea and it worked well. I believed that with my theoretical understanding of the problem and an expert coder, we could make something really impactful and incidentally, my wife knew how to. So, we spent some evenings together writing the code (she didn't know math, but I abstracted each step so she could help implement). The resulting code is fairly sophisticated and does an excellent job. I was wondering, now that I write a paper about it, would it look weird if my wife was listed as a co-author? Her contributions were definitely sufficient to warrant co-authorship by any definition.

Let's step aside the legalese of it (my advisor doesn't care and her company might but let's leave that aside). I am asking more from the standpoint of how it looks on one's CV, job application and possibly, tenure.

Nobody will notice or care, unless you share a last name with your wife, in which case the strongest reaction is likely to be, "aw how cute, a husband and wife published a paper together."

I'll go against the grain in this specific instance and say your wife should not be a co-author.  You had the idea.  You wrote a working prototype.  You provided your wife with step-by-step, high level instructions on what needed to be implemented to flesh out the prototype.  Your wife essentially played the role of scientific programmer.  This type of role / contribution is generally mentioned / thanked in the Acknowledgements but is not a co-author.

Those who actually read such a paper may think that your wife is only listed as a co-author because she is your wife.  This may raise some eyebrows and may have some negative impact on your job search.


Pure mathemathics: authors appearing in alphabetic order So the title of the question is quite broad, I've seen a few of questions in the site regarding this particular topic (quite a few actually, so let me know if this is somehow a duplicate).
My problem is the following, I am working on my PhD thesis, and so far me and my supervisor have collaborated in a few articles (that somehow constitute the body of my thesis). Right now I am working on a particular article (on which I've made all the work). The fact is that my supervisor, and apparently all the members of my faculty tend to put authors in alphabetic order. The fact is that my last-name starts with a "T" so by using their logic I will almost surely  end-up being the second\third author.
I don't feel this is actually fair, since after some search online I've seen that in general the order of the authors reflects somehow how much work was done by each one. So it seems strange for me to be like "coauthoring" my own PhD thesis.
What should I do? I don't want to appear pretentious, or rude in front of my supervisor, but I don't think it's fair for me either.
Do you have some advice on what to do?
In case it's relevant my field of research is pure math.

The convention in pure math is to list authors in alphabetical order.
Since this is generally known inside pure math, readers will not draw any conclusions from the author order about the relative importance of contributions. In fact, my impression is that most pure mathematicians prefer to avoid discussion of relative importance of contributions altogether, with the exception of occassionally giving more credit to their coauthors in slightly informal settings.
[As a side note, Author contribution statements seem to be unfeasible for widespread use in math. While there are collaborations where X proved Theorem 1 and Y proved Theorem 2, it is in my experience far more common that X and Y talked repeatedly over a long period of time, and at some point the proofs materialized.]
Admittedly, being listed first will mean being noticed a little bit more. However, in line with the convention about author order, the "X et al"-style is typically avoided. It seems far more common to refer to unwieldly large groups of authors by initials (eg GKSSW proved that...).
The place where your advisor is supposed to express how overwhelming your contributions were is in your letters of recommendation.
That said, in pure math it is also convention that merely advising a student does not establish authorship. It is even a common sentiment that advisors should be very reluctant in appearing as a coauthor on an advisor/student paper.

(edit: my take from the Computer Science community)
I'll start by saying that every research group has their own conventions. Some allow every member of the group to be coauthors of every paper produced within that group. Others use sophisticated systems like counting the lines of text written to establish what is the highest contributing author, then establish the list.
No matter what style your group has, its conventions should be first accepted as valid, since they were probably established a while ago. If they seem implausible, they should be discussed or challenged. From my perspective, it's more important, especially at your stage, to learn the discipline of this job, rather than trying to change its structure.
Now coming to your academic production: regarding papers, I'm of the opinion that PhD students work together with their advisor. Advisors should always contribute to their students' work, and a PhD student should always include them in the authors' list. I am actually happy with the grey area of contributions: since you and your advisor discuss about progress, next steps and ideas, even though he/she might not write a single line in your paper, I think that they should be still considered coauthors. Their contribution, even if only reading the paper and asking to change here and there, is indeed a contribution. I know there is a lot of discussion about that on other platforms, but this indeed is my own opinion.
I see your point with alphabetical order: my surname is with "V" so I had the same issue in the past. It sucks but I worked my socks off to be considered the first author, but at times I did not succeed.
On the other hand, your PhD thesis will be submitted as your own work. I do not know of cases where the final thesis had any another name, apart the candidate's.


Awards in which gender identity is a requirement A friend of mine is considered a minority in her research field, for being female.  Recently, her advisor wanted to nominate her paper for an award sponsored by a kind of Women's Engineering Society.  (Not actually the WES; I don't want to give away field-specific information for her sake.)  To qualify for the award, the student must identify as female.  She therefore asked her advisor not to nominate her, saying that she does not want to compete for an award where identifying as female is a prerequisite.

Her rationale is essentially that while she does identify as (mostly) female, she does not think it's fair to restrict award eligibility based on attributes outside of someone's control, such as gender.  (There are also subissues, with the award eligibity requirements treating gender in a binary fashion, and my friend viewing gender as a spectrum.)  She said she would be happy to participate in an award program sponsored by a women's society if the gender prerequisite weren't there.

After much debate, we further boiled down the issue to the following question:

Do awards with gender identity requirements help or hurt the minorities they intend to support?

We are looking for studies and statistics to answer this question; not just anecdotes.

(A side question is whether her individual refusal to participate could hurt the community she is a part of.  For example, a snowball effect: if a large number of people refuse to participate in the very programs designed for them, perhaps the programs lose funding and then cease to exist for other members of the minority group who do wish to participate. Or perhaps the reputation of the award just goes down.  I would be curious to know if there are documented cases of this happening.)

Note: my friend gave permission to post and update this question.

I applaud your friend for refusal to participate on ethical grounds. I think your second question can be answered in the negative. But not making a public statement leaves the (unfortunate) status quo intact.

The first question however is, at this time, pretty opinion based and some research might actually help settle the question. It isn't my field, so it is possible that something has been researched and reported.

But we are in a time of change. The past was bad. We hope the future will be better. But there is still observable discrimination against women and many others, especially gender fluid individuals. Hopefully this will sort itself out if enough people get enlightened. But there are observable disparities in treatment even when it is (largely) unintended. And those things won't just dissipate without pushback. Individuals of "good will" need to be part of the pushback even (especially) when they aren't part of people and groups who are discriminated against.

But (opinion), if such awards tend to highlight the underlying problems, then they might be useful. And I hope that such things can go away in the future. A future in which individuals are judged only for their own accomplishments and not, at least in part, for things over which no one has any control.

I believe that more than one Nobel Prize has been given to a male whose female student actually did the work and had the breakthrough.

Fifty years ago, in the US, we thought, through the civil rights movement, that we were approaching a better future. Sadly progress has been slow, at best. Maybe stalled.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. (Attributed to several people, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Do awards with gender identity requirements help or hurt the minorities they intend to support?

In general they seem to help an individual of "minority" status, while giving the stigma of all "minorities" in certain fields or with certain funding being due to that status rather than their work standing on their own. It also gives a lot of "minorities" imposter syndrome where they feel they may not have earned their way the way someone not offered many scholarships have. But that's on the individual, certainly many never experience this.

Does her individual refusal to participate hurt the minority community she is a part a part of

If your friend is exemplary, then why not be a success story.  I personally disagree with restricting rewards based on any immutable characteristic but if I felt my exemplary work could shift opinion of my "group" in the positive then I would accept the award and attention it might bring in that field or space.

NOTE: Psychology is all generalities about behavior and there are lots of people outside of the norm on both sides of "minority" and "majority" so both these answers contain generalizations about how individuals and groups of individuals within certain groups might feel.  There will be outliers.


What to do when research leads to poor results? I am an MSc graduate and work as an independent researcher. I spent 10 months on a paper. I wrote many scripts in Matlab to implement four other comparative methods as well as a new method that my MSc professor had proposed. Each of these methods was so difficult to implement.

Unfortunately, the method that I was going to propose does not work well compared to the comparative methods, which were introduced already 3-4 years ago.

What should I do now?

I recommend that you record your failures and not just your successes.  In your case, I suggest you write a technical report giving all the details (the implementation, the comparison, the conclusion).  It may not be considered as a publication worthy of your resumé, but at least it serves to document your efforts and may prove to be useful in the future (in case other people are thinking of using your proposed method).

Also note that your method may appear worse when compared to others using a certain metric (say, time complexity) but may appear better when compared to others using a different metric (say, space complexity).  You might want to look at your method again.

As a researcher all results are Great results, especially when the outcomes are unexpected or under expectations. It is these moments of 'failure' that the greatest discoveries of our times have come from, it is the exception to the 'rule' that have resulted in whole new disciplines and industries. there are no poor results, only poor analysis of the results. Case in point the Michelson-Morley experiment that had completely unexpected results that led to the Special theory of Relativity, and Pauli's discovery of the neutrino because of a mass loss.


Writing papers with deceased co-authors? I am doing a literature review for a project and I have come across recent papers in top journals where one of the co-authors is a famous Statistician (Peter G. Hall, 1951 – 2016). This is an example that motivated my question, but my question applies in general. Reviews in those journals usually take less than 2 years (in most cases, about a year). Thus, the papers where submitted a fair amount of time after the famous co-author passed away.
My question is, how do editors check (if at all) if the authors actually worked on those projects with the late famous co-author in order to (i) justify their inclusion, and (ii) determine if the inclusion of that co-author does not follow some sort of political move to increase the chances of getting a paper accepted.

This situation can happen, just like some professors have been caught putting the name of their son or their wife on their paper in the past.
Generally, the editor will not verify if authors really contributed to a paper because it would be hard to verify. Hence, journals adopts some simple mechanism such as requiring that authors disclose what are the contributions of each author at the time of submission, some journals will also send an e-mail to each author to notify them of the submission, some journals require authors to use official e-mail addresses, and some journals also require that authors sign a document when submiting.
Upon receiving a paper, some journals do a pre-screening where they check for plagiarism, if the paper is out of topic and other problems, before sending to reviewers. During that phase, if something is suspicious, the editor could try to investigate more. Or if the reviewers subsequently find something suspicious, they could also raise questions during the review process.
But generally, it is not easy to discover such cases unless it is quite obvious or some authors talk about what happened to the editor.
For the article that you mentioned, it is maybe correct because top journals sometimes not only have a long review time (1 or 2 years), but also have a backlog of papers to publish that can extend to 2 years in some cases. Maybe that the famous statistician has participated to an earlier draft. But in any case, it is hard to verify this.

Do not add fake authors because they are famous or politically connected.  It is unethical and often ineffective.  (This is for future readers.  I did not think the asker would do this.)
Journals never independently check to see if extra authors have been added inappropriately.  It is impossible for a journal to prove that an author did not earn authorship without an author's cooperation.  Some journals do email all authors, using the list included with the submission, which might cause a (living) author to point out an error.


Can we submit our research paper for review at two IEEE conferences simultaneously? Can we send our research paper to two IEEE conference simultaneously, and then after acceptance, decide which conference proceedings to publish it in?

No.

It is considered unethical in the academic community to submit a paper for simultaneous review at multiple venues (unless it is explicitly permitted by the publications, and you disclose this on submission).

The IEEE guidelines on multiple submission prohibit multiple simultaneous submissions:

  Authors should only submit original work that has neither appeared elsewhere for publication, nor which was under review for another refereed publication.

The guidelines further specify that failure to disclose, on submission, that the work is under review for another publication, can result in (after multiple offenses)

  suspension of publication privileges in all IEEE Publications for 1 year and rejection and return of all papers by the author(s) that are currently in review or in any IEEE publication's queue (papers may be re-submitted after suspension term has expired).

In addition, engaging in this practice can irreparably damage your reputation in the academic community.

IEEE allows certain authors to submit and publish work that is currently under review.

IEEE likewise allows certain authors to submit and publish work that was previously published.

IEEE likewise allows certain authors to submit and publish work that was published by other persons.

Numerous examples can be found by searching the web.


How to get into a top mathematics PhD program? I'm a first year student undergraduate at a top US university, and I'm going to major in math. Of course, I still don't really know what I want to do with my life, but I'm really excited about going on to a PhD in math. What does one have to do to get into a top PhD program in mathematics? When I say top, I mean absolute top - like Princeton or MIT. Please understand that I'm not being presumptuous in asking this: I don't know whether I'll ever be good enough to do a PhD at an institution such as these, but I'm just asking for reference - and out of curiosity.

I've read a lot of threads about similar topics, but answers there are fairly vague ("good letters of recommendation", "advanced coursework", etc). What exactly do these terms mean, and what should I - as a first year student - already start doing to at least stand a chance sometime in the future to even dream of being in a program such as the ones I mentioned?

First off, I have a PhD in a top 20 - not top 3. I believe my school was 16 or 17 when I was doing my PhD. So I'm below what you are aiming for. So feel free not to read this post.

First of all, I'm puzzled by your comment:

  fairly vague ("good letters of recommendation", "advanced coursework",
  etc). What exactly do these terms mean, and what should I - as a first
  year student - already start doing to at least stand a chance sometime

Good letters of recommendation: You will need to get about 3 profs to write good letters of recommendation when you apply to grad school. That means you need them to say you are smart as in PhD-smart.

Advanced coursework: Take ALL the higher level courses if possible. Take some graduate level courses if possible.

Now about grad school: don't think about the top 1 or 2 or even 3 for now. If your goal is math, then your goal is math, not the school. Just focus on math for now.

I do not know you, so whatever I said below might be useless and meaningless.

What can you do as a first year student? Get a good GPA, as close to 4.0 as you can. You want to take as many math courses as you can right? So do some self-study and test out of your gen ed courses. I had a student who tested out about 8 so that he can have time to take ALL the higher level courses.

Are you taking any math courses now? Then focus on them and do well. Doing well does not mean just getting an A. It means being near the top of the class. Your prof knows. Not all profs will take note. But some do.

You have to figure out which profs are interested in growing PhD students. Profs who care will be open to chat with you and guide you. The only way you can catch their attention and learn from them is to be at the top of your class. Ask questions in class (if possible, when appropriate). Do you study ahead? Talk to them during office hours and ask questions so that they know you are interested and are studying your textbook ahead of the class.

When I was an undergraduate I always study ahead. While studying all the courses, I will pick one book and study ahead until I'm done with the book for that course. Then I'll pick another one and study ahead. Etc. Don't just read the book. Do the problems.

It's also a good idea to think about your favorite area in math and study it on your own. Unfortunately if you are not very deep into math, you might not know where to go with this. That's why knowing a prof well will help. He can guide you.

If you have time and if you have not done so, I suggest you look at the textbooks for math olympiads. Study them and do all the problems. Try to finish as much as you can so that you have some time to try some putnam competition books. Math problems in the math olympiad and the putnam are very different from the type of problems you will solve in your regular math classes. In many ways they are closer to research-type math problems. Again, I do not know you. Maybe you have already done lots of math olympiad training.

Another very important thing to note is that it is your responsibility to keep your level of interest in your area (i.e. math) as high as possible. That means spending some time reading up on the biographies of famous mathematicians. Don't do too much of that since you do have to study math.

Books are the most important resource for you right now. Ask your profs for good recommendations. Do not be surprised that your class textbook might not be the best textbook on that subject. It's just one that's convenient and easy to use. I have no idea where you are in your math education. But if you are in Calculus, then you can for instance study "Calculus" by Michael Spivak. If you are very strong in math and have already studied that, you can go on to other books.

Check your math library and see if you can find magazines you can understand. Try the American Mathematical Monthly and the Mathematical Intelligencer.

See if there's a math club you can join. Make sure it's a math club and not just a social gathering for math majors. Nothing wrong with socializing, but if the club does not have math related activities, then it won't help your goal.

If you work very hard in the first 2 years, you might know what area you want to go into. (But it might change.) And if you take some grad level course(s) in that area in your third year, you might be able to attend the research seminar in that area, which might be a weekly meeting. You might be able to start doing some research during your senior year.

Roughly: good grades (3.8+ GPA) in difficult courses, good test scores (80+ percentile on math GRE subject test [not the regular GRE math, which you should get a ~perfect score on without studying]), strong research background and good letters corresponding to it.

That will get you into schools in the top ~30. To get into the very top programs, you will need to meet this standard and also have either (1) a very nice research background / letters, or (2) something "interesting", such as impressive accomplishments outside of math

Disclaimer: not a mathematician


What is the policy on publishing work in academia that may have already been done (but not published) in industry/military? I am interested in pursuing an area of computer security that is very likely already being studied by security professionals in industry and perhaps the military as well. Some of it is published, but I imagine some of it could also be unpublished work that companies and the military might not want to share with the public.
I could see my research group independently developing some unpublished techniques that probably are already in use in some form or another by existing companies who don't wish to share those to the public. In this case, is it acceptable for me to publish this as my own research, given that I have no affiliation to the company in question (assuming such a company does exist, which could very well be the case)? If I do publish, can I be in trouble for publishing work which these companies/military don't want the public to be aware of (but which I developed independently)?

It is fully acceptable to work on, and to publish, results on topics als researched in secret by companies or security agencies. From an academic point of view, there is nothing wrong with that, and neither from the point of view of stealing intellectual property. (But I'm not a lawyer!)  Whether those companies or agencies would be unhappy with you publishing some great new technique for breaking cryptosystems - probably not, but unless you believe in conspiracy theories, this is likely not be an issue.  (They might try to hire you, though.)
There have been precedents, e.g., on the best algorithms to factor numbers, or some cryptographic algorithms.  (I'd have to dig out references for that.)

Academically and legally speaking you are all good. But if you suspect that a thing you learned is sensitive in nature. National security type stuff.
I would urge you to submit your work to the NSA for prepublication review.
https://www.nsa.gov/Resources/Prepublication-Review/
If your work is of concern to them they will likely offer you a very nice salary, and if you like this type of thing you will like working for them. I did.
And if they don't care you are likely to gain valuable feedback.


Shall I review a paper for my advisor? I am a research scholar who published a paper in an Elsevier journal recently.
My advisor had almost no contribution in the paper, but since it is mandatory to put the advisor’s name in the paper, I had to put it.
I was the first author and also the corresponding author.

Recently my advisor said he had got an article from the same journal related to my work and he wants me to review it as he does not have any knowledge in this field.
Shall I review it for my advisor or politely refuse my advisor that I wont do it?

I don’t understand why the journal contacted him and not me to review that paper though I was the corresponding author?
I feel very bad that even though it was my work the journals did not send me the paper for review.
What do journals usually look for when they send a paper for review?

UPDATE:

I did talk to my advisor that I would review the paper if he could mention my name to the Editor so that I get enlisted as a reviewer in their database.
But my advisor is not keen on saying that to the Editor.
He is arguing that this is how things work in academia.
He said that he also reviewed for his advisor but never asked anything in return like this.
When I published the paper he gave me the same explanation that in academia advisors dont work.
It is the duty of the scholars to do all the work and since he has read the draft once and I get my scholarship through him, he is entitled to get an authorship.

One way to resolve this would be that your advisor refused to review the manuscript and suggests you as a possible reviewer. Then the editor can decide what to do. Do not overthink why your advisor was chosen first. He has been around for a longer time and is therefore more known to editors.

I would prefer this procedure to a simple 'yes' to the request  (which would be the easy and probably common approach) because it makes contributions transparent. You made a good start with making yourself the corresponding author of your own paper, so it would be consistent if you sticked to this path.

Addition after comment: The answer above makes most sense if you already know how to handle a paper review resulting in a high quality report. Should you require some general support on this, asking your advisor to do the review together and communicate this accordingly to the editor is a possible and viable alternative.

TL;DR: Doing the review for your supervisor is as mandatory as making him an author of your paper. For the editor, it practically matters only that your supervisor commands the expertise required for the review.

This is kind of circular, but let’s start here:

  My advisor had almost no contribution in the paper, but since it is mandatory to put the advisor’s name in the paper, I had to put it.

While I cannot say whether your advisor deserved authorship of your specific paper, it is not globally mandatory to make your advisor an author of your paper¹. Unfortunately, this is often ignored due to the power advisors have over their advisees, making it mandatory locally (i.e., for advisees of a specific advisor).

Now, the fact that you consider it mandatory strongly suggests that it is as mandatory for you to review papers for your advisor and get no credit for it. Only somebody very familiar with your advisor can tell you more on this.

¹ In fact, making somebody an author just because they are officially your advisor goes against academic authorship ethics.

  I don’t understand why the journal contacted him and not me to review that paper though I was the corresponding author?

The editor probably asked your advisor to review on basis of the following:

He has expertise in the respective subfield as evidenced by being the last (senior) author on a paper in that subfield.²
He has seniority in academia and thus is an experienced peer-reviewer (possibly evidenced by previous peer reviews for the same journal/publisher), a skilled scientific writer, has a broad knowledge of literature, and can judge the impact of research.

While I wrote the above as facts, the editor can most often only assume these things – they were obviously wrong about the first point in your case.
However, they have to make such assumptions if they want to find any reviewers at all.³

Assuming that this is your first peer review, what should ideally happen in this situation is that you perform the review with your supervisor (or some other experienced peer reviewer) guiding you through the process. There are several mechanisms to register your part in this such as your supervisor officially taking you on board as a reviewer (e.g., APS journals allow this) or your supervisor redirecting the review to you (rejecting and suggesting you as an alternative reviewer).

And now we are closing the loop:
Often this is done unofficially and advisees just perform “mandatory” reviews for their advisor – without getting what little recognition there is for peer-reviewing (and possibly compromising the strict confidentiality of the review).
Editors are aware of all this and may belong to the advisor-takes-it-all school of advising themselves.
And if your advisor does not belong to that school, he can still officially redirect the review to you.
From this point of view, the editor needs not even care whether your advisor actually has the expertise listed above; your advisor only needs to command⁴ this expertise – which he evidently does.

There is another practical aspect to this: Most advisees who published a paper a few years ago have now left academia. While this does not disqualify them to review, they may not care anymore. Advisors on the other hand tend to stay and know the people who can perform the review instead. For example, if your work has been taken over by another advisee who has not published yet, your advisor may perform the review together with your successor.

On the other hand, this way of handling things is detrimental to grooming new reviewers (and knowing that you did).

² The interpretation and importance of corresponding authorship varies across fields, countries, funding agencies, etc. Depending on what applies to the journal’s field, the editor may not even have noticed.
³ Things may be a bit more complicated, as the editor may personally know your advisor, the authors of the paper may have suggested your advisor as a reviewer for the same reasons, etc.
⁴ Along the classic saying: “An undergraduate student knows things; a graduate student knows where something is written; a professor knows somebody who knows.


How to decline a postdoc offer a few days after accepting it? I recently received two postdoc offers on the same day.  I accepted one (verbally, in saying "I would like to accept this job offer", but I have signed nothing), but then some additional information came to light that I would not be happy in that role and the other was probably a better fit for me after all.
It is undoubtedly the case that I failed to adequately understand the pros and cons of each role before accepting one of the roles.  I accept this, but it's also my first job,  and frankly I have no idea what I am doing.  If I had a better idea what I was doing then I would have been able to extract this information before accepting one of the roles.  I accept that I have been fairly useless in this decision-making process and I am quite ashamed and horrified by it all (I'm not really sleeping and I've even had nightmares, as ridiculous as that may sound). Frankly, I just want it to end, but I want to make the right decision as it will have a profound impact on my life.  And the right decision for me is to decline the offer that I had previously accepted and go forwards with this alternative one.  At most as it stands I'll have cost them about 2-3 days of time.  It's not as if I've kept them hanging for several weeks or months before finally backing out.  I can already tell my would-be supervisor in the role I wish to decline  is a very decent and kind person and I want to cause them them the absolute minimum undue difficulties and upset.
How unethical is it to decline an offer after accepting it (but without having signed anything)?  How can I go ahead with now going back on my decision and let them know in the best possible way?  Thanks for your help.

Being on the receiving end is very unpleasant, and it will have probably cost them more than just 2-3 days; the bureaucratic arrangement, possibly losing other postdoc candidates, having to go readvertising etc. is a very serious hassle, let's not pretend it isn't. Being there, done that.
Nonetheless, you need to take a decision and inform them as quickly as possible. There is no point for you taking a postdoc that you (and ultimately them) will regret. Decide and inform. This is an unpleasantry that is part of life. Yours and theirs.
To contain the damage as much as possible, you need to face it upfront. Good luck!

You should just tell the postdoc director you've changed your mind. And quickly, so he can look for another candidate, or call back a candidate he refused. The sooner the better.


Can you get into a top grad school coming from UT Knox? I went to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where I got a BA in Philosophy and graduated with a 3.4 GPA. During my senior year, I discovered an incessant love of physics. However, I’ve had to start over practically from the beginning, such as learning pre-calc.

I am now attending UT Knox for an undergrad physics degree. UT Knox is a public school ranked #83 in physics. My question is, how well do I need to do to come from a school like UT Knox, at my age, to be accepted into a top 10 graduate school? I know the odds are stacked against me, but I plan on overcoming them.

I think you are asking the wrong question. For the specific question, your chances of acceptance at a top ten graduate school are near zero. That has nothing to do with you or where you go to school. It is just numbers. The fraction of accepted candidates at such a small set of schools is minuscule.

A better question, that I think will leave you more satisfied, is what you need to do to get into a really good school that will help you meet your overall life goals. It would be sad if at the end of your life the only thing one could say about you is "he went to a top ten grad school."

The way to success to to work hard, learn a lot, read, write, emulate those you want to be like, be bold when necessary, ask for help, learn to work cooperatively, don't burn out, be flexible, practice, ....

You can do all of that anywhere. You can even do it while being a bit of a goofball.

For the record, lots of people are late starters. I never had a positive educational experience until the second or third year of HS. My HS doesn't even exist anymore. But I learned how to be better and wound up with a doctorate and a successful academic career.

But when it does come time to apply for grad school, apply to one or two top schools along with some others. There are a lot of good schools that will help you build a great career and life.

Look at where your professors went to graduate school.  They’re qualified to compare their students to their grad school peers.  So an absolute best case scenario is that some of them are impressed enough to compare you to their grad school peers, which (if it’s backed up with the grades and GRE scores you’d expect with that comparison) has a good shot at getting someone into that caliber of school (or perhaps a little lower).  It’s not going to happen often, but it can happen.  Getting into anywhere better than where your profs went is implausible since they can’t credibly say whether you’d be successful there.


Company wants copy of unpublished work. Should I give it? A prospective employer requested a copy of my PhD thesis and some unpublished papers (still working on them). Is it wise to hand these to them?

From the ethics course we had to take during the first semester of grad school: it depends.

If your research contains anything that is waiting to be patented, then you can't pass it on to a potential employer.

If your research was funded by industry, then you can't pass on unpublished work without the permission of whoever funded it (you could get sued).

If it is part of a larger project that your advisor is working on, then you shouldn't pass it on without their permission (you probably won't face legal action, but your advisor could be very upset with you).

As Nate pointed out in the comments, if you have coauthors for any of this material, you need to check with them before passing on anything.

If it was funded by anyone who made you sign confidentiality agreements, then you can't pass it on without permission (I know people who receive funding from the NSA for cryptography work, or the DoD to work on certain engineering projects who had to sign such papers).

If your chapters contain medical or otherwise personal data collected, make sure it has been anonymised to whatever standards there are in your field (HIPAA etc).

If none of these apply, then you can probably pass it on without problems. I would still check with my advisor if I were you though, just to make sure.

If you value the papers, give them a sample or a copyrighted version, if you think they are valuable enough to put copyright on. But if not, send them, and if they copy, you ruin their reputation by creating a campaign on social media about mistreatment of employees.


What is the typical cost of Summer Course education in the US? I would like to pursue summer college courses - particularly a creative writing class and a computer science class - to help broaden my knowledge and improve upon myself as a person.

However, looking at some college courses in the local city, tuition alone for a single undergrad course is upward of $800 for a three-credit Summer class.

This seems a little excessive.  Is this a typical cost for college summer courses in most areas?  And is there a cheaper alternative if I'm seeking to expand my knowledge pool, and not necessarily seeking academic credit hours?

The cost of summer courses in the United States is likely to be as staggeringly variable as the the cost of courses during the semester.  To the best of my knowledge, most universities generally do not change their tuition fees significantly during the summer.

As such, it will range across at least two orders of magnitude depending on the school you are dealing with, and can easily change by nearly an order of magnitude depending on the type of student that you are.  Consider, for example, this table of tuition rates published by the University of Iowa: you will find that summer course charges are almost identical to semester charges, and differ wildly for Iowa residents and students coming from out of state.

to help broaden my knowledge and improve upon myself as a person

If you don't need the credits toward a degree, then the solution is to audit the classes.  What might trip you up is that summer programs often do not allow auditing, whereas the fall and spring semesters do.

The audit fee is often on the order of 10% of the normal charge.

However, even that has a potential solution.  Send an email to the instructor, asking him/her to give you a call please.  (What you're going to say needs to be said in person or on the phone, not in an email.)

Explain that you would like to audit his class, but since auditing isn't permitted at this institution during the summer session, you'd like permission to do an informal audit.  If the instructor is a reasonable person, the answer will be yes.

On the other hand, if you need the credits, take a look at http://www.collegecalc.org/ to compare tuition rates.

Please note, you can get a very good creative writing course at some community colleges.  Sometimes that's the best place to get individualized attention.  Don't forget to check ratemyprofessor.com before you register for classes.


What do I do if a teacher fails me after they said I'd pass? I just failed a university-level course that the instructor assured me I was passing.  We've discussed my grade in emails but we continue to disagree on how it should be calculated and even on what assignments should count. (The instructor did not adhere to the grading policy in her syllabus - this is a passing/fail issue.)

I have proof that I did enough to pass.  Grades are in and the school is out for the holiday break, but I feel like I need to do something before this becomes permanent.  What should I do?  As a student, how do I challenge a grade I think is unfair if can't resolve it with my instructor?

Contact your teacher (email) and start a paper trail where you outline the assignments in question: when they were due, when they were submitted, and if the teacher received them.
Given the break, schedule an appointment with the teacher after the break to sit down and discuss the issues at hand.
(As per aeismail's comment) I would agree to escalate to the department chair and inform your academic advisor before the dean.
At the same time as 5, should you choose to and if your institution has such a department, contact your ombudsperson office to create an informal avenue of conflict resolution outside of formal (and time consuming) solutions. They offer a means of conflict resolution that tries to arbitrate issues before you take formal action.
Depending on the results (no meet, meet but no success) escalate by appealing to your college Dean the issues and ensure that all paperwork is in order: an executive summary documenting the chronological order of events, all of your correspondence with the teacher indicating that you abided by the syllabus.
If and when you have a hearing, dress nice and present your case when you are called in for an appointment with the dean. Be factual and punctual. Don't demean or insinuate personal characteristics of the teacher in question, stick to the facts and what is the issue at hand.
At the end of the day, if all else fails, I would stand to believe that your college Dean answers to a higher 'officer' of the school. There should be a means to escalate your appeal to this final authority. There might be more, but for most if not all issues, this would be the highest authority to appeal to.

What she said, is nothing compared to what she registered in written form. However, it is unlikely that she had done this intentionally with you. It is nearly sure, that it was a mistake from her part. The question is, where was the mistake: her 180, or her 115.

Alternatively, it might be a mistake from your part (you misunderstood something or so).

"Grading is closed" likely means that even she can't make a fix without contacting other people (typically, some higher-level administration) to change your result. Doing this, she would admit (for powers over her) that she did a mistake, she likely won't do it. However, if she accepts that you should have got 180, then she likely won't let you falsely failed.

Contact she, and explain the problem. Your goal shouldn't be to overpower she, because she is obviously more powerful as you in this case. Your goal should be to set she to your side. But she should see on you that you are very determined in this case.

If you don't have anything written about your 180, and she doesn't side with you, then you are likely lost.

If you are not in a critical situation (for example, you will be a dropout), then I would suggest to let it as it is.

If your degree depends on it, fight until the last shot (student's union and so on).


Are there any examples of popular self published textbooks? It’s a well known fact that textbooks are expensive and that writing a textbook earns you very little in royalties (e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/167367/11353 ). At the same time self-publishing is becoming a bigger and bigger deal in non-academic circles. This sounds like an ideal solution for academic textbooks.
Are there any examples of popular self published textbooks?
I am not looking for any type of (exhaustive) lists. I am either interested in even a single example of such a textbook or alternatively answers that explore the main issues with this approach. Going through my collection of books from the time when I was ‘in academics’, I cannot find a single book that looks like it wasn’t published through an (academic) publisher.

Michael Spivak's "Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry" was published through the Publish-or-Perish Press he founded, probably for just that reason.

I'm not aware of any popular self-published books. However, I want to point out several alternatives that you can consider. First, even if you publish with a "real" publisher, often you can share a manuscript of the book online. In a lot of ways, this seems like the best of both worlds. For example, "Reinforcement Learning: an introduction" by Sutton and Barto, originally published in 1998, has not only been totally free to download for some time; actually the work-in-progress of the second edition was free to download before the second edition was officially published!
Second, the model of having class notes, which can be shared publicly, and eventually turning those class notes into a book. For example, Bernard Deconinck has several sets of class notes which are basically self-published textbooks in progress. Oskendal's textbook "Stochastic Differential Equations" originally started out as class-notes, and now it's published with Springer, but the full pdf of the most recent version is available free to download on researchgate.
In summary, if your objective is to keep cost low, this doesn't seem like a reason to self-publish, since you can still post the full book pdf online even after publishing. You can also post your book pdf today, and let people read it, and then still publish the book officially in the future.


Being Ostracized in Research Group I currently am a sophomore in a US college. I have been accepted into a semester-long undergraduate research group. Officially, we have a faculty advisor as well as graduate student mentors. In practice, we mostly only meet with our graduate student mentors.

The problem is that, from the first day, one of my teammates deliberately ignores me in every group meeting. I do not know why, but they talked to all other teammates except me. Every time I tried to interact with or discuss with them, they skipped me and pretended to that they did not hear what I said.

(I said 'deliberately ignores' because there were occasions when only I and the person in question were present, and the person still refused to communicate with me. However, the person engagingly talk to everyone else. )

My other teammates are not talkative at all. In a meeting, they are the only person who casually led the conversation and left me out of the conversation. I feel ostracized and more and more mentally bullied.

The situation makes me feel extremely unhappy right now. I am quite certain I did not do anything inappropriate to them because the issue arose from the first time we met. For now, I feel out of place and think that I might not belong to this place.

What can I do for now, besides quitting?

One option I am thinking is to approach graduate student mentors. However, I am holding back from doing so because it seems that I am the only person who has this problem. Also, since our mentors are also present during the meeting, I have a feeling that they already knew the problem exists.

For clarification, I had an issue with only one teammate and not the others, and the issue is with that person refusing to communicate with me, even when only two of us were present.

Based on the updates, there are a few things I can offer in terms of advice. The first is that given it's a short amount of time remaining on your term, stick it out. Especially if this is going to impact your college credits/marks/etc. Sure, it's a crappy situation but try to make the best out of it as not to impact your marks or the progress of your degree.

Once completed, don't return to the research group. Take the opportunity now to find research groups within your institution that are nicer and more willing to host a student because it sounds like the current group sees students as a hindrance rather than as a collaborator or colleague.

There are avenues you can take to make complaints about bullying in the workplace, such as speaking to professors (not unless they're the one involved in bullying) or going to a human resources division. However, this may not be in your best interests to do anything 'formal' at this stage of your career given you aren't committed to this lab group on a fixed term contract as an official job. I would be talking to the student mentor you mentioned in the comment about your experience.

I've experienced something similar, yet I am American and faced being ignored by a majority international student research group; they seem to self-segregate themselves in our group.

Knowing that my opportunity to learn the ropes in research through a great group leader / professor, I ignored the fact that I was being ignored, I stopped asking them for input.  I focused solely on learning from the professor and I gave input when needed to the rest of the group.  I earned another research position with the professor the next semester and then no longer had to deal with the people that ignored me.

So, go after the research and be aggressive and proactive.  If your graduate mentors are helpful, seek them out for more guidance.  And yeah, the professor and grad mentors probably are already aware of the situation and group dynamics that are perhaps not fair for you, so don't worry too much.

Lastly, I disagree with the tone and the message in CaptainEmac's answer.  He or she suggests tolerating any sort of bullying and just coping by keeping one's friends around.  What a ridiculous piece of advice.  It's like if a woman gets raped, tell her to cope with it by keeping her friends around.  Sounds absurd, doesn't it?


Is it rude to ask the associate editor about manuscript status for second time? About six months ago I submitted a paper in one of the very reputed IEEE Transactions. I have observed from different papers published in that journal that the average time for receiving the first review is around 3 months. That is why I politely inquired about the status of the manuscript after around 4 months from the date of submission by sending a mail to the associate editor (AE). The AE promptly replied me about the status and said that two out of three reviews were still being awaited. However, it is now six months and I still do not see any change in the status of the manuscript in the online portal.

So, my question is: is it too soon to send a second mail to the AE asking about the status of the manuscript and can such second mail irritate the AE to the point that it might negatively impact the review process of my manuscript?

I think it should be fine to inquire (politely, of course) at this point. While it may be a minor irritant, it should not affect the outcome of the acceptance decision provided the journal follows ethical practice.

If you have a decision to make about the paper it is important to get the information. If it is just to ease your uncertainty then you could also let it go a bit longer. But there shouldn't really be a downside. Maybe a note would get the editor to prod the reviewers a bit.

There are no right answers for questions like these. I have had a wide variety of experiences in the peer review process and known others' experience that have more or less convinced me that the "other" side does not always play by the rules.

(1)I know of a journal where a paper has sat on an AE's desk for 9 months without getting rejected nor being able to get a reviewer. The journal hides behind the claim that it is difficult to get reviewers because reviewing is a voluntary activity.

They do this and they frown upon multiple simultaneous submissions to different journals? Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

(2)I know of a journal which rejected a paper for a wrong reason -- neither the AE nor the referee had a clue what was going on. An appeal was made to the Editor in Chief, who neither acknowledges the email, nor apologizes on behalf of the AE.

So, they will sit on authors' papers and in the off chance it goes out for review, you can get hit by an incompetent reviewers and then the EIC will not respond to authors' emails that enquire about how the journal is going to correct the mistake they made?

(3)For all cliches about it being a very objective process, I have seen authors that are in high-ranked institutions publish mediocre papers in top journals and authors in low-ranked institutions with more sophisticated work get turned down. The review times for the former are also much shorter.

All in all, many journals that are highly regarded are unethically run. It is luck, who you are networked with, who your co-authors are, what the zip-code is of your institution that decides what get published and what does not.

So, to answer your question again, there is no right and no wrong in what you can and should do with AEs/EICs, etc.

It is a myth that scientific publication is an objective field that rewards merit regardless of anything else.