How can I find out if someone really holds a doctoral degree? We're currently interviewing candidates at my company and I'd like to verify if some of them really have the academic degrees they claim. One in particular claims a doctoral degree from a German university.

I've contacted the university, and the dean wrote back saying that they could not provide this information without the written consent of the individual.

I found this policy rather odd; I would have thought that the granting of a doctoral degree was public information. Is this normal? Is there anything else I can do to find out?

I obtained from the library a copy of the thesis in question but it was in German. I also found through Google a spreadsheet which appears to be a list of dissertations published by that university, but it is unclear whether these are doctoral dissertations or not. The person in question and his dissertation are in that list.

You could ask the candidate to provide written consent for the university to verify his degree. If he refuses to allow verification of his CV, then he's probably not someone you want to hire, regardless of whether his doctoral degree is legitimate or not.

I found this policy rather odd; I would have thought that the granting
  of a doctoral degree was public information. Is this normal?

Answer:

  nothing requires a university to release this information upon request
  to anyone who asks, and in practice, many universities will require
  consent (and maybe a fee) in order to release it.

Meaning, they do it for money, which while is a hassle for you, is brilliant on their part.


Graduate Admissions and Earlier Programs I began an undergraduate program in subject A and because of circumstances outside of my control (receiving threats from someone with a history of violence against me), had to repeatedly withdraw from courses in that program.

I am considering going back to school in a totally different subject, and I very strongly feel that I have the ability to do well. If I do well in this subject and want to enter graduate school for it, would they be willing to only consider my grades in the relevant second program and overlook the earlier unrelated one, especially considering I had a legitimate reason for it and did well afterwards in the related program? Or would the withdrawals send up too many red flags?

(Edited in later) I think this question is rather different from the How does the admissions process work for US Ph.D. programs question because that's a more general question about making up for bad grades or things, but I am asking about special consideration for extenuating circumstances. There's a difference between getting a bad grade in a class because you weren't good at the material as opposed to having to withdraw from it because you are receiving violent threats from someone who has previously beaten you.

First of all, I'm sorry for your painful experiences. To answer your question:

Based on my extensive experience directing a graduate program at a leading public R1 university, your initial experience in the initial program will have very little bearing on your chances of admission. I say this for a number of reasons:

We are concerned with trajectory even more than overall grade point. I am relatively unconcerned by someone who gets C grades during freshman year, so long as I'm seeing A and high B grades by junior and senior years.
When a student goes to school for a couple of years, then does something else for a few years, and then returns to school, I consider the grades subsequent to return almost exclusively. In most cases, unlike yours, this is because the student needed time to grow up. But I'm happy to accept that he or she (frankly, it's usually a "he" that fits this pattern) has grown up and to accept the high marks after the return to school as ample proof. I don't care what somewhat was like as a 19-year-old, I care what that person will be like in my program.
You can and should explain the switch of programs in a graduate application. Having a letter-of-reference writer explain it as well would be a wise move. Once an admissions committee sees the highly valid reasons, there is little chance that they would hold your record at the first institution against you.
Everywhere I've been, if grade points are used to prune or order applicants, only the gradepoint at the final undergraduate institution is used. This may not be universal, but frankly I find it unlikely that most graduate admissions programs would go to the trouble to compute the proper weighted average across programs, even if they did care about your earlier performance.

I hope this is helpful and perhaps even encouraging.

Having worked in an admissions department at a large university it can be hit or miss (depending on the officer that gets your application) in my experience.

This may only be the case at the institution I worked at, so take it with a grain of salt, but there was strict adherence to a minimum admissions average.

My best advice would be to retake the course if you can and try to get a better grade THEN explain in your letter your circumstances. If that isn't possible try to include documentation from a professional (depending on you issues) if you can.

I know it sounds pretty awful that is how a liberal minded university behaves behind closed doors but I wish I could tell you otherwise.

Best of luck


Can authors email you for free PDFs of their textbook sold for profit I'm asking just about textbooks that are sold for profit, not free ones. I know journal authors can email their papers or articles free, but textbook? Is Reddit comment wrong?

I ask all subjects like finance, economics, law, not just science.

  Science textbooks. When a scientist gets published, he/she doesn't get any profit if the schools use it. Every textbook I've had hasn't been free, so I just email the publisher and find out one of the names (of whom was published) to email them. Since they get no money, they'll be glad to email you back the entire book, to which you can print off yourself. It's a life hack people should know instead of having to pay thousands for college textbooks. Edit: I did this with my Calculus/Geometry professor in ISU (Indiana State University) and he said that he only got one overall pay for being published with other professors, and that he would be glad to give it to me, as he would all of his students. I'm not lying.

I am the author of a textbook. The book retails for $50. I get 50cents for every copy sold.

I do not own the copyright on the book and it would be illegal for me to sent you a copy, even if I had a copy to send (I mean, I have the original word documents, but the final PDF looks nothing like that).

The book has been scanned, and when it was not so old I know that copies of it did float around Pirate Bay. I wasn't particularly upset.

That sounds like someone conflated a few mechanisms that are unrelated.

If you are working on your own paper, you are expected to cite any relevant work, and being cited improves your own standing, so authors will happily send you a copy of their papers if your university for some reason doesn't have access to the journal it was published in.

Generally if you need access to a paper you'd talk to your local librarian first, and they would check if they have a subscription for the appropriate journal, and emailing the author is a last-resort option. In some universities, that is also handled by the librarians, who will archive a copy in the local library as well then.

For textbooks, that mechanism doesn't work because you are not working on your own papers yet, so there is no direct incentive for authors to bypass the publishers. Some still do that, because having textbooks available to all students streamlines the lectures quite a bit, which produces better evaluations.


Are athletes' college degrees discounted by employers and graduate school admissions? This question and the pertinent answers suggest that, as a rule, college athletes in the United States are not held to the same academic standards as other students. It also seems that this is well-known.

If so, employers and graduate school admissions committees can be expected to discount the degrees and the GPA of college athletes in order to control for an informal "athletes' bonus" when screening applications.

Do employers and admissions committees, in fact (but likely not formally), discount athletes' grades and degrees? What is the approximate "discount rate", as it were (e.g. the average athlete's bonus)?

"College athletes" is much too broad a brush.  The kind of double-standard you're referring to is mostly focused on a much smaller group of men's basketball and football players at Division I schools.  These are essentially full-time professional athletes.  A lot of the very best athletes among this group do not stay long enough to graduate anyway.

I also think you're overestimating the value of academics and underrating the value of athletics to employers.  It takes incredible dedication to become one of the best people in the world in a sport.  That's genuinely valuable to employers.

Finally, even in the revenue sports, there are many fantastic students who get good grades in rigorous classes.  I've had great students who are world-class elite athletes.  Looking at the major and the grades gives a pretty clear indication of the level of rigor involved.  And of course there are plenty of non-athletes with non-rigorous majors and mediocre grades.

This last point is especially clear in the context of graduate admissions.  Graduate applications include letters of recommendation and a full transcript. It is easy to see directly whether someone is taking rigorous advanced classes and doing well in them. There’s no reason whatsoever to discount athletes based on the existence of easier classes when you can see what classes they actually took.

employers...can be expected to discount the degrees...of college athletes in order to control for an informal "athlete's bonus"

If an "athlete's bonus" is equivalent to the value add of their sport,* then no discount is necessary.

*Competing as an athlete demonstrates attributes not necessarily demonstrated by others. E.g., non-athletes may not have shown the commitment an athlete has.

  Do employers...discount athlete's grades...?

Such a discount could be considered as discrimination, which is illegal in many jurisdictions and likely something employers should avoid.


Can I get a PhD if I did research without being enrolled in a PhD program? I have been working under the supervision of a Professor at a german University for a couple of years on a research project that could be published soon with me as a first author.

However I am not enrolled in any PhD program. Is it possible to get a PhD if I were to write a PhD thesis based on the work I have done so far without having to enroll on a program.

It seems now like a waste of time to enroll into a PhD program and have to do an additional 3 or so years.

Your best bet is to talk to the professor that is supervising you. Course work is less of an issue in Germany, so you might be able to speed up the process considerably if the professor is willing to accept your research as a basis for the thesis. Whether or not that project is suitable as a basis for a PhD thesis depends on the research that happened and your exact role in it. Maybe your work can count as an entire thesis, maybe it can count as an entire thesis if you do some extra work on, maybe it can count as a chapter, and you need two or three other projects to complete it, maybe it is just not suitable. We don't know, but your supervisor can tell you.

I would be surprised if submitting a thesis based on a single paper were enough.

In North America, the cover page of the thesis usually indicates that the work is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree.  The other requirements are usually courses; it’s not so uncommon to have talented undergraduate publish as a first author, but this does not grant them a PhD.

It is regrettable that you should think it a waste of time to enrol in a PhD program.  Learning is best done through contact with a mentor, and through discussion with others.  Publishing is overly focused to provide the fully enriching perspective achieved through the patient training that is recognized by the degree.


Is the phrase "thanks, but no thanks" appropriate in an email sent to a supervisor? I recently have had a discussion about my friend's tone in his email.

His supervisor asked him whether he wants to attend a summer school in May. He wanted to thank him for his invitation and also wanted to keep the mail short. As a result, that is what he came up with:

  Hello Professor,

  I have plans during that period. Thanks, but no thanks.

  Regards,
  John

He is getting along well with his supervisor, but I believe that the phrasing is a bit disrespectful nevertheless. It might be the case that I am not a native speaker.

Am I exaggerating the situation and this is something can be overlooked?

It sounds extremely rude, I am afraid. I would assume mitigating circumstances for a non-native speaker, but the "no thanks" permits "thanks" to be interpreted as substantive, and thus has a highly dismissive connotation which should never be used with your superior, and neither with a friend you would like to keep.

The connotation that shines through (at least in the UK) is a sarcastic "Yeah right, you think you do me a favour? In future, please spare me your ideas."

As a native English speaker, the phrase does not strike me as offensive. It means, "Thanks (for the great offer.) No thanks (because I'm busy.)"


Is it correct for a PhD holder to sign as "Dr. J. Doe, PhD"? I have seen some of the PhD holders sign as "Dr. [First Name] [Surname], PhD".

Is it academically correct to write "Dr. Frank Amoani Arthur, PhD"?

There are two important points to note about name markers that refer to academic titles:

You can have more than one of these markers in your name: Kay Doe, PhD, MD indicates a person who is both a doctor of philosophy and a doctor of medicine.
The marker Dr. can very often be used as a variant of the post-positioned markers. If both of them are equivalent markers in your country, you can choose either marker to refer to your academic title.

These two observations make the suggested name form Dr. Kay Doe, PhD rather ambiguous.

Does it refer to a person with two doctor titles because there are two markers? Or do both markers refer to just one doctor title? But if so, why is that doctor referred to twice in one name? This may even lead to suspicion: Does the name bearer use two markers which refer to the same  title with the intention to sound more impressive than their academic distinction actually warrants?

This ambiguity is avoided if you use only one title marker per title.

Dr Jones if he has a medical degree.
Mark Jones, Ph.D. or Dr. Jones, if he has a Ph.D.
Never Dr. Jones, Ph. D.


I wrote the code based on a paper's methodology; are there any legal problems with making it open source? I coded the methodology based on the paper "Free Water Elimination and Mapping from Diffusion MRI" and I am curious if I am legally bound to take permission from the authors or the journal in making the code open source on Github?

You are not required to get permission to implement an idea you have read about in a paper, or to make it open source.

The paper is protected by copyright, but this only protects the text and images in the paper (the expression of the idea), not the idea itself. The copyright on the paper does not prevent you from creating your own realization of the idea in code and distributing it freely. You should also acknowledge the source of the idea by citing the paper in which you read about it, but this is an ethical requirement, not a legal one.

The exception to this is if the methodology in the paper is patented; in this case additional restrictions on what you can do will apply.

IMHO you must cite their paper in your Github repository explicitly, but you are not required to get a permission.


Do graduate schools check the disciplinary record of PhD applicants? Do Physics (STEM) graduate schools in the US check for disciplinary record if they don't ask for it in the application? The outcome of the violation doesn't appear on my transcript. Only way a graduate school can find out is if they ask my school (in US) for my academic record. I am not going to lie if they ask but some school's application form doesn't ask for disciplinary records. Does that mean they will not check for it?

Generally speaking, in the US, you can depend to some extent on a "right to privacy" that would make such an inquiry improper and replying to it also improper. But it isn't necessarily assured.
The US Constitution is silent on a right to privacy, but many Supreme Court decisions have expanded that right, though not to the extent of the EU's Right to be Forgotten. Also, many US states will have privacy protections in place that make the communication of certain kinds of information improper without the consent of the person involved.
However, if some transgression of a student is also law-breaking, then the rules may change and the information may be part of the public record in that case.
In addition, most (I think) US colleges and universities would treat disciplinary action against a student as a private matter and some might purge the record upon graduation (or after some time period). Part of the philosophy is that if we are to punish a student for some act then that should be the end of it, though the record might be retained until graduation to guard against recurrences.
Overall, I doubt that, given the more or less general, if informal, sense that privacy is a right, that any graduate school would ask and that the likelihood of getting an answer would be very small.
Part of the reasoning here is that the grad school would have no particular reason to ask, having no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of an applicant.
Of course, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the candidate would be asked directly about certain kinds of misbehavior, and if asked it would be a potential problem if a candidate were to lie (as noted by Anonymous Physicist).

In my experience some schools take a very hard line on academic dishonesty and expel students for cheating on exams. This would probably show up on your record.
Other schools give students a few strikes by having an internal list of disciplinary action, so that a repeat offender can be identified for expulsion. Otherwise the list stays private and probably won't come to light in future applications.
Discipline regarding drinking in dorms and things like that probably won't show up unless it gets so bad that you have a criminal record.


Why do professors want to make sure that their notes written on the blackboard will not be published? I am a university student and have recently found out how much easier it is to use my smart phone to take snapshots of notes professors write on the blackboard during lectures (since I am quite bad at understanding and writing at the same time, it is very useful).

To make sure the professors do not have problems with this, I asked each of them before starting to take pictures. They all had the same response: they are fine with it, as long as I do not make the shots publicly available. Of course, I have no intention of doing so. However, it made me think: why do professors emphasise this? All of the material is already public, tens of different lecture notes exist, some of the profs even made their own lecture notes freely downloadable for anybody.

So my questions are:

How could bad quality pictures of the blackboard cause any harm to them?
Why would it make a difference if I copied the content into my notebook or typed it in word by word and published that? (I have never heard any professors asking the students not to upload the notes, they write themselves during the lecture.)

The scribblings a professor writes on the board during a lecture represent the lowest-quality type of content that that professor will ever present in public: handwritten, hastily created under time pressure and at a time of high cognitive load, messy, unchecked, and prone to error. On the other hand, professors, like any other professionals, will much prefer to be judged by the highest-quality content that they produce, e.g., their research papers, which are carefully crafted over a long period of focus and concentration, digitally typeset, polished repeatedly, and double- and triple-checked for accuracy. So, to the extent that a professor gets to control which of the content they produced gets publicly released, they will almost never voluntarily consent to the release of the low-quality content.

An analogy that occurs to me is that of a movie actor: for precisely the same reason as I described above, actors prefer for the public to form its opinion of them through their movies, and not through a paparazzi photo of them taken while they were out shopping for groceries, wearing disheveled clothes, no make-up, a sloppy hairdo etc. So, if you don't want to be like a paparazzi, you will respect the wishes of your professor and not publicly post photos of their blackboard writings.

Edit: I feel a need to clarify my remark about "lowest-quality type of content" and "hastily created [...] messy, unchecked, and prone to error". It seems that some people are reading this as a description of some kind of unprofessional professor who comes to class unprepared, delivers a poor quality lecture, then out of insecurity and fear of having their poor lecturing skills exposed publicly, refuses to allow pictures of their blackboard posted online. That is not quite what I meant (or at least is only one possible scenario covered by my answer). I was talking much more generally about any professor, whether excellent or poor, who comes to class, well-prepared or not, and delivers a lecture, which may be an excellent one, and then, for completely legitimate and rational reasons and not out of any insecurity, guilt, or shame, objects to having pictures of their blackboard posted online.

Why would they object if their lecture is so good? Some have asked. The logic behind this is that the blackboard scribblings, even of an excellent and well-prepared professor, will still be a type of content that was created during a very short amount of time (the time of the lecture), while the professor is busy doing several other things at the same time (talking to the class, figuring out the details of the math or whatever it is they are writing on the board, consulting their notes, keeping track of time, etc.), is under the psychological pressure of being watched by a large group of people (many people find this a stressful situation), and has no time or cognitive resources available to detect or correct small errors that may be introduced inadvertently, no matter how carefully prepared one is. So, in a purely relative comparison between this content and other kinds of content that the same professor creates (e.g., research papers, which as I've said are thoughtfully prepared over many months), blackboard scribblings are relatively speaking a low quality content. It is simply an unfair competition: two different kinds of content, two different quality standards, and for the reasons I explained, many professors quite reasonably prefer to have only one of the two types be posted publicly online.

Finally, note that all of this is not at all at odds with the fact that the blackboard writing can still be good or even excellent in the context of the lecture in which it is performed.

It seems that they do not want to be held to any mistakes, accidental plagiarism or misattribution, or inadequate explanations that they wrote during class.

Also, they may view publishing itself as a process of 'quality control' that lecture doesn't offer. Also in some fields there is a fear of being 'beaten to the punch' if something you are working on is made available before it is complete. Ideas are intellectual property and there is a fear of that property being stolen or unfairly adopted. Publication leaves a paper trail to resolve any potential disputes, so they tend to be avoided all together.


Number of recommendation letters? If a department places no limit to the number of recommendation letters, how many are appropriate?

Are 5 OK? Are 7 too many?

Of course this depends on how strong the letters are - but let's assume that all of them are equally strong.

Go with three strong LORs like everyone else and call it good.  No one needs five and seven is ridiculous.


Thesis Advisor conundrum Last semester, I took class A and loved the material. It was a subject I excelled in and professor A' was someone I understood well.

I thought it was perfect to take the course 2A and make A' my thesis advisor, but this entire semester, he missed many classes (due to sickness and/or being the Chair of our department), was only available for 'pop in' office visits, rather than scheduled ones or scheduled office hours, and we rarely had homework we could do, because our class was riddled with confusing theory and no examples.

For a grade, he asked us to learn and present material in class. I'm a student who needs to bounce ideas off others in order to really understand material really well.

Since no one (fellow grad student wise) could help and he was always unavailable, I stuck to books and mathstackexchange.

I got turned around many times, and when I had to present, he constantly interrupted me to tell me "what [I] meant to say". After 40 minutes, I got so worked up I started to tear up.

I felt like the time I spent trying to work through material by myself was worthless, and anything else I could say wouldn't be "up to snuff" in his eyes, but I pressed on through hiccups and tears. I know he was trying to make me a better student, but I'm not sure I can take a year of trying to do something right on my own, rarely meeting up with my thesis advisor, and falling flat during my thesis defense.

Questions: do I find another thesis advisor? Is this just a personal problem, and I should consider counselling?

You've not really commented on your thesis advisor's role as a research supervisor, which is quite different from being an instructor. Someone can excel in one role but be [almost] incompetent in the other.

Consequently, it's hard to give you solid advice. The basic question is if your advisor's unavailability is impeding your research progress. If so, then you should definitely explore other options, if possible. For instance, look for a co-advisor for your project with A'. If no options with A' pan out, then you should consider switching advisors.

However, if the teaching style doesn't carry over into research issues, then it may be worth your while to wait and see if things improve.

I don't think that your advisor has done anything especially wrong. He was busy as a chair of department, so he cut on the class. This is natural and common. He is a chair, which will be a great asset to you and means probably that he has organizational capabilities, many connections, talents, and good scientific reputation, as well as seniority.

You like the subject of research of your advisor and this is of the up-most importance.

He behaves in an honest scientific manner when you presented your ideas, and this shows seriousness and attentiveness as well as care. Perhaps he is a bit impatient; but nobody is perfect.

Overall, I have not seen anything crucial that would entail you to switch an advisor.


Wrong internship dates in my CV for graduate application I am sorry if this is already repeated but it is a very urgent need of mine.
Actually in my CV for graduate applications, I put my industrial internship period as May to June 2016 and research internship period as May to June 2016. Actually it is may to June 2015 for industrial internship period. I didn't notice this mistake till now and I have already submitted my applications. What do I do?

Correct the dates on your CV, then check the admissions website to see if there is any information about submitting corrections or amendments to your submitted application.  If there is not, email the corrected CV to the admissions office or department with a very brief line, along the lines of "Hello, I submitted my CV with my applications but later noticed I put the wrong year on one of my internships.  I've corrected it in this version.  Thank you for your time."   Include any relevant reference information to your application.

I honestly wouldn't expect it to get replied to, or possibly even noticed - admissions offices are very busy this time of year.  But this way if it does come up you can refer to your earlier email with the corrected version.

I also wouldn't fret about it over much.  It's remotely possible it could hurt you against an otherwise identically-qualified candidate who didn't make mistakes on their paperwork, assuming anyone even notices the discrepancy.  But even that seems like a very small detail against a good candidate.  The other thing I would suggest is that you proof read the whole thing carefully before you submit it with this correction; if you didn't proof read it well the first time and missed this mistake, it's possible you missed others too.

Good luck!

I think you should find out how to submit the corrections and then submit them. That's precisely what I would do because it's important to avoid the appearance of lying. The overlapping dates could make you  appear to be a "superstar" when, in reality, you might only be a "shining star". :>)


Transcript of records is full of grammatical/spelling/formatting mistakes and the issuer gets angry when I inform them Institution in a non-English-speaking country.
I do not speak the native language of that country.
I studied entirely in English language and all of my educational documents are originally issued/generated in English, therefore there is no possibility of receiving the document of interest in a language other than English (Patricia Shanahan's answer is thus absolutely irrelevant [this answer]).

Types of errors in the transcript of records

Grammatical
Incorrect course titles
Initial letters of some of the course names are capitalized, some are not
Margins, line spacing, and the overall format/style of the document (pure chaos, ...)
Incorrect usage of the in course titles (e.g. Introduction to the Mathematics)

I have been dealing this issue for more than a year. My BA degree's transcript of records is full of mistakes, not one or two, but dozens of them.
Last year, when I received the transcript for the first six completed semesters, there were so many errors in the document that I simply could not believe some other student might not have noticed it throughout the years. Thus, I went to discuss this with the person issuing the transcript. I delineated all of the mistakes one by one. However, they were absolutely reluctant to modify any part of the transcript at first, and they even went on to tell me that I am wrong. I then decided to provide examples of transcripts issued in the US and use online resources and dictionaries to prove my point, which all in turn made the said person annoyed and yet more reluctant! More surprisingly for me was their reaction when I explained the margins/line-spacing/style/format issues, their simple reply was whether I have ever been diagnosed with OCD.
Nonetheless, I was able to fix quite many of the mistakes. Now, a year later, I have received my final bachelor's degree with the complete transcript of records encompassing eight semesters. And, there are still a lot of mistakes: grammatical, spelling, and incorrect course names. The format of the document looks terribly unprofessional, with different margin sizes on different pages, inconsistent line spacing, and unnecessary white spaces/blank areas. It looks like a cheap document issued by a 'nobody'. If it was not for the huge seal of the university and the Ministry of Education on each page, anyone would have considered this document to be fake.
The person in charge is so selfish they do not want to admit that their English is insufficient. Their lexicon is extremely limited. Once they were so enraged when I mentioned a simple mistake  that they actually had to call the English Language Center of my university. However, the center affirmed that indeed the version I have provided is correct and the one written on the transcript is wrong. However, even after that incident the person in charge of issuing the transcript were still reluctant to follow many of my corrections.
How should I deal with the incompetence and reluctance of this person?
Should I create the document neatly myself in LaTeX/Word, clearly highlighting all the changes I have made, and then ask him to consider issuing the document that way?

I suggest requesting a copy of the transcript in whatever language the issuer writes best.

For some purposes, such as graduate admission to a foreign university, you may need to pay for a certified translation by a professional translator.

Print it out, take it to your school administration office and show them what needs to be fixed. I've used this myself as I was in a  similar situation. As long as you do no alter the grades/gpa, there should be no issues for them to stamp their insignia on a fixed transcript due to typo errors.

I edited this from my previous statement since Ben was right, my original method can be seen as a bit unethical


Marijuana use and job/grant opportunities I am now living in a state (in the US) where marijuana is legal (for recreational use) and I'd like to be able to try it. However, I am concerned that doing so might effect my job or grant prospects as a current graduate student. In my field, students can intern for the DoD or NSA and my understanding is that smoking marijuana is a disqualifier for those kinds of positions.

Am I correct in this?

Are there any other grants or jobs for which this would be disqualifying?

Regardless of current policy, your career may be affected by policies 30 years in the future. Although the trend seems to be towards increased tolerance of marijuana, it is not possible to predict how things will be throughout your career. When I was a teenager US federal policy seemed to be moving in the direction of eliminating poverty and racial injustice as important objectives - see the "Great Society" programs.

You seem to be in a field that may lead to US government employment, or needing a US security clearance, or both. That makes you very vulnerable to changes in policy. The consequences of not being able to truthfully deny ever using illegal drugs could change in either direction.

You will have to make your own trade-off, but remember that you need to consider what could happen over several decades, not just what is happening now.

Honestly, I would just not disclose that type of information and instead tell them that you don't use those substances. The fact is that public policy is extremely out of touch with substance use and it really shouldn't matter what you do in your personal life if you are qualified to be doing the job. Just like your sexual orientation, you really should not be disqualified from something you're qualified for because you decide to make a personal decision about what goes into your body. As long as you're not the type to be abusing substances to the point that it would impact your performance on the job then I truly cannot see any reason why you can't be doing both. However, with all of this being said, if they do drug testing then you're facing a very different set of risks. Many top performing professionals in their fields have used and do use substances, so live your life while also getting that position.


Postdoc opportunities in mathematics I am expected to finish my Ph.D in mathematics (if relevant, more specifically - in commutative/homological algebra) by the end of this academic year. I am studying in a somewhat minor university, although my supervisor is a well know figure in his field.

Following my supervisor's advice, I submitted applications for postdoctoral positions in about 20 top level universities in the US. As most of these universities already finished hiring for this year, I suspect I made the mistake aiming too high, and would probably get negative answers from all the different employers.

Assuming this is the case, I am now wondering what should be the next step in my academic career. One option is to stay at my current university for another year (but with a much lower salary, as my scholarship will come to an end). I should mention that my supervisor highly discourages this option, as he thinks that I should get more involved in the research community of my field, and my current university is a poor place to do so.

Alternatively, I am wondering if there are any other opportunities for postdocs in Europe or the US for the 2013 academic year, in my relevant field, of which the deadline still did not pass.

Any advice or idea for my situation would be helpful.

Thank you

There are several major websites on which jobs in mathematics, including postdocs, tend to be posted.  Most importantly (in the US) mathjobs.org, but also the AMS's service and others.  (See this mathoverflow question for many more.)  Postdoc positions can take a while to sort out, since many of them are filled (or even created) in response to what happened earlier in the hiring season, so there may still be opportunities, especially if you're willing to look outside the US.

I'd like to give you some advices:

1) Strong reccomandation: do not choose an university where to apply by focusing only on its excellence, but choose it only if there is a research group that studies your research stuff.
Working for some years in a research group that does not match with your scientific objective could be a very dangerous error.

2) After identifying which universities have a research group focused on your fields, try to apply for the best, basing on Times Higher Education Ranking, or another indicator.

Good luck!


Changing PhD topic and effect on career I'm a PhD student in my third year (4-6 is common in my country) and seriously consider abandoning my current topic.
The new topic is in the same general field (CS related), yet in a vastly different domain and would need a quite different methods. My advisor suggested this switch, he could keep me funded in both cases, yet probably better with the new topic.

Arguments for switching are both personal interest in the new topic (it's recently trending, I was interested from the beginning, yet few positions were available) and lack of progress in the current area:

I could produce some publications, yet not up to my advisors expectations (should be easier with the new topic, given the impact factors of the journals my advisor suggested)
For the last 6-8 month I made barely any progress (lots of failed experiments)
I would probably have to abandon my current methods anyway due to 1./2., so half a year or so will be lost learning new methods no matter how I decide

Yet I shy away from switching, mainly due to already being quite old (combination of personal problems and a switch of my major as an undergraduate) and fearing how my C.V. would look if I did take about a year longer and had this second switch...

Thanks for any input.

Most people won't care.

The time to PhD isn't really considered all that important unless it's highly anomalous (much shorter or longer than standard), and if you get good publications out of it, nobody is going to make a big deal about switching topics. It happens for all kinds of reasons—funding changes, or because the original project doesn't pan out for whatever reason (technical or logistical).

It will also not impact your career much, unless you're planning to continue studying one of those areas as your post-graduation career. Again, the overall quality tends to matter much more than the actual topic in most cases (particularly if you're moving into a different area from your graduate work).

For the last 6-8 month I made barely any progress (lots of failed
  experiments)

This sounds like you have not treated your prelims as a contract negotiation.

The best advice I've received is that when you pitch your thesis topic to the committee, make sure that everyone agrees on the structure and methodologies involved. That way, if your work falters or your experiments fail, but you followed the guidance outlined by your committee, then you have still earned a pass.

Another piece of great advice is this: nobody is going to read your thesis.

Do not switch your program and do not start over, just complete the tasks you were given and move on. If you decide to switch fields later on, fine... that's normal, reasonable, and expected.

And just because you're studying one thing in school doesn't mean that's what you have to do for the rest of your life. There have been plenty of PhDs that completely jumped fields of study, out of CS and into sociology for example... or vice versa. Besides, the latest rage these days is adding "multi-disciplinary" to your grant proposals.


second on campus interview for TT faculty position (3rd interview total) I have a question for anyone who might be a department chair or on a search committee. What does it mean if you get invited for a second on-campus interview? I have already been there once for a standard on campus interview. For context, this is for a tenure track assistant professor position in the sciences.

I have been a department chair (math department, large US university) and nonetheless find your situation completely baffling. I have literally never heard of a TT job candidate being invited to a second on-campus interview. This is so unusual that I can’t really come up with a plausible guess for why the department that invited you thinks they need you to visit again; moreover, I think this may potentially bring the competence of the people who came up with this plan into question.

Please don’t rely on idle speculation by strangers online. My advice is to email the people who invited you and ask them to clarify what their plan is for the second visit and why they think it is needed. In my opinion, if you already had one on-campus interview, at least in a normal situation they should have all the information about you that they need in order to make a hiring decision. So I’m guessing their explanation may not be the most logical one. But at least you will have a sense of where they’re coming from.

Generally it would mean that they are very interested, but not absolutely sold. It may be that some senior professor wants to see more of you or meet you for the first time. They may want some student opinion in some places. It isn't frivolous, since they are spending some money, but you still have to close the deal.

In the long term it is probably a good sign that if you get the job they are treating you as a serious contender for eventual tenure. They are doing more than just filling a temporary slot.

But, close the deal.


How can I get the key to my professor's lab? I am a undergraduate student working with an awesome lab director from whom I've learnt a LOT. He is a very knowledgeable and energetic person, and is generally available for help. The lab atmosphere is full of helpful grad and PhD students.

Even though I have been working for over three years with him, he is unwilling to give me the key. Says that I should contact the other senior lab members, and ask for them to open the door.

An issue that came up today that made me vent off some steam on the Academia StackExchange. Instead of going home, I stayed after my morning class so that I could go to the lab and get some research done. However, no one was in the lab. I called my lab mates, but they either had work, had their key taken from them, wasn't answering, had gone on a trip... You get the idea. I ended up investigating the lab equipment of an adjacent lab.

This isn't the first time either. One time I had arranged with two people to come the next day: neither came nor informed me. This is especially inconvenient when the lab is on a remote section of the campus.

I have explained the situation to him, more than one. Once, he said that he would give me the key, but only if I came to the lab more often. I explained that as a human I do get tired and need rest: as much as I love research, I don't want burnout either. I'll add that several times I wanted to go to university, but since no one answered the phone, I headed off to another university to study. In the evening, I was able to contact him, but he called me lazy and only doing stuff that wanted.

How can I approach my professor about this? And more importantly, what is it that I am doing wrong? I don't need the key per se, but I do want to perform research. And for that, the lab needs to be open. While the lab mates are helpful, I do understand that they have a life. I cannot force them to come at 7 in the morning only to open the door for me, can I?

I'll add that my work has led to two conference proceedings and both me and my professor are optimistic that it will lead to a high-impact article. This wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for my professor's help and guidance.

Couldn't your problems be solved -- or at least, manifestly made your lab director's responsibility -- just with some planning in advance?

You wrote:

  An issue that came up today that made me vent off some steam on the Academia StackExchange. Instead of going home, I stayed after my morning class so that I could go to the lab and get some research done. However, no one was in the lab. I called my lab mates, but they either had work, had their key taken from them, wasn't answering, had gone on a trip... You get the idea. I ended up investigating the lab equipment of an adjacent lab.

(By the way, you had a morning class and then couldn't get into the lab on a Saturday?  That makes me wonder where in the world this question takes place.)

You make it sound like your decision to "get some research done" was made more or less on the spur of the moment.

  This isn't the first time either. One time I had arranged with two people to come the next day: neither came nor informed me. This is especially inconvenient when the lab is on a remote section of the campus.

This time you planned it one day in advance.

  Once, he said that he would give me the key, but only if I came to the lab more often. I explained that as a human I do get tired and need rest: as much as I love research, I don't want burnout either.

All of these things add up to the following conclusion: you and your advisor don't have a clear understanding of when and how often you'll be working.  So you drop by sometimes, find out that no one's there, and maybe that's your fault because somehow you've implicitly agreed to show up as much as you can but at random times.  That's not professional behavior!

I see a rather easy fix: first, agree with your advisor how much time per week you'll be spending in his lab.  If you hear a "As much as possible if you don't want me to think you're lazy" response, you'll have to move the conversation past that.  You can promise in advance to devote XX hours per week -- i.e., you have to figure out in advance how many hours -- to the lab.  (If you and your advisor can't agree on how much time you'll be spending the lab: sorry, but you don't have a wonderful working relationship, you have an entirely dysfunctional one.  But since you have mostly positive feelings about your advisor, I am optimistic that he will listen to reason here.)  Then you need to make a schedule with your advisor about exactly when you'll be in the lab.  If he doesn't want to give you a key -- okay, but then it's his problem when you get locked out of the lab, not yours.  Every time that happens, you don't call up every other member of the lab, you leave, and then the next day you approach him and say that unfortunately you couldn't get into the lab at the time you had agreed upon, so is there some aspect of the agreement he'd like to adjust?

Bottom line: if you model the behavior of a professional rather than someone who drops by when he's interested, you'll implicitly challenge your advisor to be professional to you in return.  It seems unlikely that someone who cannot rise to the standards of professionalism set by a conscientious undergraduate could be a successful lab director, so I am rather optimistic that this strategy will work for you.

Your adviser is doing the right thing.

No one, especially not undergraduate students, should work alone at night in a lab.

It is very unsafe to work alone in a lab. I know that this is very common, because students are young and inexperienced and haven't been around long enough to see what can happen. Just like young guys on motorcycles.
Also universities have a can-do atmosphere, where safety is generally seen more as a burden than a requirement.

Of course, advisers often don't mind their students risking their live, because if you do care for the safety of your students, you will not make it in the cutthroat competition we call academia.

Take for example Eric M. Carreira, who pressured his students to work evenings and weekends.
http://www.chemistry-blog.com/2010/06/22/something-deeply-wrong-with-chemistry/

I am an industrial chemist, and I can assure you, that anyone writing such a letter in the private sector would get fired immediately. In our company, it is formally prohibited to work alone.
There have been cases when companies where fined huge amounts by OSHA for such letters, people have actually gone to jail for accidents that happened on their watch.
Unfortunately ETH doesn't care about safety and hired this guy.

Here are two recent cases to remind people why it is not a good idea to work alone

  In the early hours of 13 April, undergraduate students working at Yale
  University's Sterling Chemistry Laboratory made a shocking discovery.
  There in the lab's machine shop was the dead body of 22-year-old
  undergraduate student Michele Dufault, her hair tangled in a lathe.
  She had apparently died of asphyxiation

www.nature.com/news/2011/110418/full/472270a.html

I'll bet you a dollar, that when anything happens, the adviser, the same who would have claimed authorship of the work, will call you an independent researcher just happening to work in his lab.
Patrick Harran of UCLA even claimed that his student who died in his lab, was not his employee, but employed by the university, so it wasn't his job to keep her safe.

  Sheharbano “Sheri” Sangji, a 23-year-old University of California at
  Los Angeles staff research assistant, died three years ago after
  suffering massive second- and third-degree burns when a chemical she
  was handling caught fire.

www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/03/ucla-faces-criminal-charges-lab-accident

So even though it might be common to work alone, it is unprofessional and dangerous.
Don't be the one who gets burned to death or strangled in a lathe, and don't be the eager beaver who thinks it is ok to take risks in the name of science, and don't push others.

You should thank your adviser that he is keeping you safe. It is great to see that some people actually do care. Please tell him thank you.


Recommendation letter by significant other if you worked with them professionally? My significant other (SO) and I are in five years of relationship. We met working in a lab and she already earned her PhD at that time. I was a graduate student. She was the main person I went after my adviser if I had logical questions about my project and helped me the process throughout. We now have two publications together. We worked professionally together for almost three years. She knows my potential both personally and professionally.

I am wondering if it is okay to use a letter of recommendation from her to apply for a PhD program.
Updated: I edited the word "supervisor" as suggested by a commenter. She wasn't an official supervisor but, provided tremendous help with analytical issues. We also stay collaborating on other research projects until today even after we both were out of the lab.

No. If she discloses your relationship in the letter, the reviewer will likely disregard the letter completely, and may question your judgment for having asked her for a letter. If she does not disclose your relationship in the letter, that is a serious enough omission that it could have consequences for you later on (I can't quite tell where you are in your career, but the more senior you are, the more severe these consequences could be).

While it is clear this situation calls for some thought, it is of my understanding that your personal life should have little to do with your academic/professional life when it comes to making decisions such as these.

When your SO makes you a recommendation letter, they will be speaking as an objective and professional academic with reputation on the line who has had experience working with you and has published credible papers alongside your - also professional -  name. Not as as someone whom they've simply shared ice cream and would like to go to the Caribbean with.

The reason the relationship must be brought up in their writing is to recognize your personal and professional lives as two different things. If someone still goes at length about how it is a nepotism affair like other answers hypothesized, they'd be slandering your SO's and even your own reputation because it should not be the case.

If a reviewer who "notices" that you are together declines the letter "immediately" as other answers have suggested, then they have acted unprofessionally because you being in a relationship with them does not take away your credibility as a professional academic or your experience in any way.

tl;dr - Your SO is a reputable professional whose recommendation is as valid as any other. And like any other, it all really depends on how much real impact your SO's recommendation would have over someone else's.

If you don't have any meaningful recommendations in comparison, go with your SO's, and have no fear.


Is it ok to show up to a conference without registering if I don't eat any meals? I'm planning to attend a prestigious conference in computer science. The registration fees are very high (~150$ per day). I'm presenting as well, but on a co-located event directly after the main conference.

I don't know whether my university will fund my registration fee for the whole conference. They will most certainly fund the fee for the little event where I'm presenting. In case they don't fund the whole conference, is it acceptable to show up to the conference without being registered? (Of course, I wouldn't have the conference meals with the other participants on the days I'm not registered.)

No, it is not acceptable.

You can of course email the organisers and ask if you can participate without paying, but do not be surprised if they say no.

(Please note that conference registration fees cover lots of things besides the lunch. Among others, conference registration fees may cover the rent of the hall in which you are sitting, and expenses related to the speaker who is giving the talk. Conference organisers are definitely not expecting random people to come there without registering, unless they explicitly advertise this possibility.)

Yes, it is possible, and even students and postdocs in top (and rich) schools do this sometimes. However, your question is unclear, since you asked whether it is "OK". But it is not clear OK by which standards? Moral? Legal? Is it normative? Is it widely acceptable?

You can see by Juka Suomela's answer that some academics does not see this as "acceptable", i.e., they perceive this behavior as a morally bad behavior. Some people, me included, have a different value system, and they perceive this as mildly okay, but it is unclear whether the latter group of people is marginal.


Is reviewing papers moving away from voluntary community service? I recently came across reviewing policies which make it a requirement for authors submitting a paper to a conference to also accept reviewing for it. Here is an example:

  In order to submit paper(s) to EMNLP, you must nominate at least one
  author to serve as a reviewer, (usually the most senior author) and
  for that author to take on a full load (of up to 6 reviews).

I completely understand the rationale behind such decisions: the ratio submissions/reviewers cannot grow infinitely while maintaining a proper review process. Yet I'm concerned about the implications for the quality of the reviews, since people who are forced to do it might not be as careful as voluntary reviewers. This also feels like a step down from the traditional "community service" philosophy of the peer-review process.

Is this a general trend in the research community, i.e. is this happening in other domains as well?

If yes, does this imply a change in the peer-review paradigm? For instance, as a researcher should I stop doing "free reviews" in order to keep my reviewing time for mandatory reviews?
If no, are there other solutions being tested to the problem of ever-increasing papers/reviewers ratio?

I will address your three questions directly, and in-line:

  "Is this a general trend in the research community, i.e. is this
  happening in other domains as well?"

I have never seen this before, and never heard of it. Everyone else that answered and commented, except for one person, has said that they have not seen it happen in their field either. The one person in the comments that did see the trend was Franck Dernoncourt, who says that it's definitely a trend in NLP (which probably means Natural Language Processing, not Neuro-Linguistic Programming). So, it is not a "general trend", but it is happening in some fields (such as yours and Franck's).

  "If yes, does this imply a change in the peer-review paradigm? For instance, as a researcher should I stop doing "free reviews" in order to keep my reviewing time for mandatory reviews?"

My answer is "no", but even if it were "yes", I do not see how that means you should "stop doing free reviews". The vast majority (by a long shot) of peer-review is still done for free.

  "If no, are there other solutions being tested to the problem of ever-increasing papers/reviewers ratio?"

I have never seen any other solutions tested. The peer-reviewed conferences I submit to, such as QIP (Quantum Information Processing) keep an extremely high standard for who is able to review. There is a committee of reviewers who are selected because they are recognized world leaders in their sub-fields, and each of them reviews several papers. Forcing any random person that submits a paper to review a paper, would lower the standards of the reviewers, and hence the standards of the conference.

No, requiring authors to review is not a wide-spread practice or trend.


Harsh marking - is it worth complaining? I know that we have to be meticulous in pure mathematics courses, and I appreciate that. Comparing a particular course I took recently to the other pure math courses I've taken before, it appears that the marking has been unnecessarily severe. I had assignments which weighed 25% of the total mark, but the marker could almost arbitrarily pick what we would have had to specify in solving a problem. For instance, sometimes there were points in a proof for which it was not clear at all whether or not they should have been specified, since they were either evident (clearly, there were parts in which the marker was very fault-finding, not like in most other pure math courses I had taken) or were previously proved in class or in a previous assignment. The marking scheme was entirely up to the TA who marked the assignments, so that he decided which questions to mark or not to mark. There were usually 20 to 25 total marking points in each assignment, but some questions were deemed to weigh only 2-3 points, and the TA could easily deduct 33-66% of the mark for missing / skipping minor details of the problem, whereas the entire answer / main point was correct. The instructor had admitted during the course that either more total points should be introduced or partial points (such as 0.5) should be given, but that didn’t happen. Some questions weighed disproportionately many points, such as when in one assignment, which consisted of five questions and which was marked out of 25 points in total, one of the questions was worth 9 out of 25, and it was not the most time-consuming question. In the final examination, the marking style similar to that of the assignments was applied, and I’m convinced that it was too harsh.

I've discussed the exam results with the instructor, and I'm still convinced that the marking was not always quite appropriate. I also wrote an email to an advisor and he said that I could write a petition to reconsider the marking. But should I really do this? I feel that the department would not perceive such an action very kindly, and some talks in the department would probably follow. So I'm not sure if it's worth it.

Should I just move on and forget about this?

I disagree with aparente's suggestion that filing a petition is a good way to get the department to improve.

Generally speaking, an instructor has a lot of latitude to determine how grades are determined in their class.  You can challenge your grade by a petition, but whoever considers the challenge will be inclined to defer to the instructor's judgement, unless the grading was blatantly unfair or unreasonable (some universities use the standard "arbitrary and capricious"), such that the grade wasn't really related to the quality of the students' work.  A grading scheme that is just "too harsh" or "too picky" isn't likely to meet that standard.

It also isn't really a good way to bring the issue to the attention of the department, due to the adversarial nature of such cases.  If the grade is upheld, as I suspect it would due to the required standard of proof, people may tend to view it as "the instructor is right and the student is just whining".  It will also focus the attention on you personally, instead of on the fact that this is a general problem affecting many students.

I would suggest instead that you mention this issue in your course evaluations, and encourage other affected students to do the same.  Explain the issue in detail and as objectively as you can, keeping the focus on how this affected the quality of the course, rather than on how it impacted your own grade. If the department cares about teaching quality, this will encourage the instructor to work on this.  If they don't, then there is probably nothing you can do about it in any case.

If I assume you are in the U.S., given the situation you described,

  there is no reason not to follow the procedure the advisor described.

Although no one here can decide for you, what I can say is that there is an objective consideration in favor of filing a petition: to help your department improve.

If you decide to file a petition, I recommend keeping that motivation clearly in mind for the writing of the petition and for any discussions you may have with the instructor or department administrators.  In other words, it's best not to project concerns about your grade as your prime motivation.

If you are undecided whether to file a petition, it might be helpful to meet with a department administrator first, to ask for guidance.  This can help you pick up on subtle things such as staffing issues that the department is already aware of, for which a solution is already in the works.  Also, the administrator may decide to look into the situation without your having to file a formal petition.


How to deal with people looking at their mobile phone during my presentation? I was invited to give a research seminar in another department, and two professors kept looking at their mobile phones while I was talking. They were doing this at the start of my talk, and they kept looking at their mobiles for a fairly long amount of time, maybe 15 minutes, without interruption.

My personal view on this is to be tolerant. I accept that nowadays “technology is in our pockets” and the web offers infinite opportunities for distraction. Moreover, people may look at their smartphones for scholarly reasons, for example they may be doing a quick search for literature related to the topic being presented. I do not know for sure what people are doing on their mobiles, and it’s not up to me to discipline their behaviour.

That being said, I think that the basic rules of politeness and consideration for each other’s’ feelings still have a role and place. For example, if I know that I am going to be distracted during a talk, then I sit at the back of the room and try to get unnoticed. If I can’t resist the lure of the smartphone, then I keep it under the table and I try to look at it only for a short time. And maybe add an apologetic smile.

But on that occasion, both professors were sitting in front of me on the first row, with their mobiles in full view, and acted as if my talk didn’t matter. I must add that both professors are much higher in status than me, also the university where I gave the talk is of much higher rank than my university.

I didn’t want a confrontation so I pushed all the unpleasant feelings aside, and I concentrated on my talk. However, I recently thought about this episode, and it occurred to me that maybe I needed to show more assertiveness. Not for the sake of my ego (I don’t care about these two and what they do in seminars), but because assertiveness shows that we care about our research and our value as scholars, regardless of our status.

How would you deal with people overtly and persistently looking at their mobile device (phone, laptop, etc.) during your talk?

My attitude to life is to spare my mental capacities to things I can affect and change. Yes, it is annoying to see people at a workshop not paying attention. No, there is nothing I can do in the moment that would (i) change their behavior, while (ii) not make me look petty.

So, disengage from these feelings. Focus on those members of your audience who pay attention and interact with you. Make a resolution to have a great first slide for your next talk that may sway one of the two (or maybe both!) to get pulled into the talk. These are the things I can affect.

It's a rough matter, in my opinion. And I have plenty of opinion; see Technonomicon for one tiny slice.

One way-heavy-handed thing you should not say (perhaps a commenter may have a better idea) is to say:

"I've worked hard on all this presentation to give you my best, and I can't give you my best if your attention is split between me and a smartphone. So why don't we have a few minutes' silence to post off those last emails, or whatever will be distracting if we jump in, and then we'll all be in a position for the lecture to go well."

In a non-academic setting, there is a famous (blue-collar) restaurant where they ring an obnoxiously loud buzzer if someone is using the cell phone. The wall has a wall plaque saying, "We don't allow cell phones in this restaurant. If you are someone so important that you have to be on a cell phone, you should be eating someplace much more upscale."


Is "flowery language" frowned upon in engineering and STEM related research? I work in an engineering field (related to AI, machine learning, etc.) and something I found interesting is whenever I use "big words" or even long words  like "substantiate" or "corroborates" while compiling a draft to be submit to a conference and such, I will get a request from my co-authors demanding me to change them.
For example:

"these related works are germane to our present discussion." I got a
request to change the word "germane" to something else. Really?
Or "...therefore, the scenario considered in [reference] is situated diametrically
opposite to ours." I was told to change "diametrically". Really?
"The experiments in [references] corroborates with our results". I was told to change corroborates to "collaborates".

There are a lot more examples, especially in the latest draft. But I don't want to point them out just in case my colleagues are reading this forum. :-)
Mind you, this is all in the introduction of the paper, hence no way to confuse it with any technical terminology. This happens to me so frequently that I became almost clairvoyant as to which sentences I will need to rephrase in the upcoming revision.
My intention is merely for the writing to be conversational, and this is done in order to distinguish our works from some of the truly monotonous writing styles pervasive in this field.
Also worth noting is that some of the top authors in this field uses very flowery language (sometimes in my opinion excessively so), so you can say that I'm perhaps subconsciously trying to imitate them.
We are working in a North American university. However, some of my colleagues are non-native speakers (who have stayed here for something like 20 plus years). I wonder if this phenomenon is more wide spread or it is just happening to me.

There's nothing wrong with long words. The real issue with your writing is that it is redundant.

"these related works are germane to our present discussion."

In this sentence, "germane" just stands for "related", so you're effectively saying "these related works are related". Here you are using the English cliche of pairing a common word with a rare synonym, which we also see in phrases like "trials and tribulations" or "vim and vigor". As in these examples, you include the common word because without it, people won't always know what the rare word means. But the very act of doing that makes the rare word completely useless. Redundancy in this form should basically always be removed.

"...therefore, the scenario considered in [reference] is situated diametrically opposite to ours."

This is another example of the cliche above. The word "diametrically" isn't doing any work the word "opposite" isn't already doing. It's only there for the purpose of being a long word.

"The experiments in [references] corroborates with our results".

This is not correct usage: the word "with" shouldn't be there. Incorrect usage of a long word is very bad: people who don't know it will be annoyed with you, and people who do will judge you.

Aside from what everybody else has said, I think it's worth noting that you're not prominent in your field (yet). Prominent people have more leeway than newbies. This is unfair, but it's the way it is.
So yes: write as simply as you can, without losing the complexity of the points you're making.


How to cite a paragraph in project report? I am writing a project report for my master degree in STEM (U.S.). I have to cite a large paragraph of others' work. This paragraph describes some basic stuff (For example, a duck has two eyes and two legs). I did not change a word in that paragraph.

I have already cited this paper at the end of my report. Is there anything else I can do to avoid plagiarism?

When you use someone else's words verbatim, you must either

put it in quotation marks, or
indent the paragraph (make it a block quote)

to indicate that those words are not your own. (Most style guides recommend block quotes for long quotations.)

You must also indicate somewhere near the paragraph (e.g. in a footnote, parenthetical reference, or other kind of inline citation depending on what citation style you use) which source in your reference list it comes from. (You must do this - indicate what source it comes from - any time you use someone else's ideas or material you found in a reference, even if you summarize or paraphrase it in your own words.)

In general, a rule of thumb for avoiding plagiarism:

For any idea or information that isn't your own work, clearly indicate where it comes from. (Excluding facts that are "common knowledge".)
Additionally, make it clear any time you use words or images that you didn't write/create yourself. (For example, with quotation marks, block quote formatting, or image credits in the caption.)

Although rules tend to be more lax in Master Theses (at least the ones I've come across), what you did was indeed plagiarism.

Just adding the citation is not generally enough when you copy a text verbatim, as you might have a conflict with the copyright of the original source.

In order to avoid plagiarism, you should take the information and re-write them in your own words, i.e. the way you understand them and the way they contribute to your subject.
Then you must add the citation right after the text or as a footnote. You should also have it in the bibliography section (as you have done).

Edit: I propose you go to the wiki page on plagiarism and the subsection "Common forms of student plagiarism" and try to avoid all these forms of plagiarism. Case 8 is what you did.


Is the following a form of dishonesty on the part of the school? This distance-learning school claims to be a member of a certain international academic organization . But after checking with the said organization, I found out that the school's membership have expired years ago. Just last week, the organization informed me that they have requested the school to remove the questioned information from its website. To date, however, the school has not yet acted on this request.

Can the school's action or inaction qualify as a form of dishonesty or should we give the school the benefit of the doubt?

(By the way, the school is government-recognized/accredited.)

Does no really matter if the school is government recognized or not. Two things here.

Accreditation / Membership -  usually costs a lot of money each time you need to "refresh" it, so the school may have chosen not to do so. That does not necessarily mean, the school is not up to the standard. It may even be that school has decided not to participate as a member to this organization because of reasons unknown to you.

Next to that, these companies makes its name by doing proper evaluations. Those are always based on certain time period, and the conditions in the school at that time. Within 4 year period, a school can change half of its staff, have a new director, and a completely different set of standards, guidelines, and internal quality assessments. This is why schools must comply with the accreditation or membership standards continuously in order to keep their accreditation. And that is why these companies have a right to ask the school to remove it from their website / media.

It is not possible to determine from your writing, if we can attribute the school with dishonesty (requires knowledge of wrongdoing) or if this is part of the school policies working too slow, but in any case, if the company has contacted them, and instructed them to remove the false media materials, and they do not do so in a reasonable time, I would consider it at least a breach of trust, and most likely also contract.

Please note, that for a school that most likely advertises every start of the academic year, it will most likely make financial and moral sense to change these materials shortly before that start of the new academic year, which is a long time. If this bothers you, always feel free to write a letter to your school explaining your viewpoint. You can also write anonymously.


What is this "can I hire you as a tutor" scam? From time to time (presumably because I have an academic address, or am listed on a university web site) I get an e-mail like this: "My son will be in your city next month for two weeks.  He is interested in your subject.  I would like to hire you to tutor him.  What are your fees?"  I assume it is some sort of scam, since it does not mention what my city is, or what the subject of the tutoring is.

Does anyone know what happens to the naive academic who responds to this?

This is usually a version of a "babysitting scam", where some generous out-of-town person wants to pay you a royal ransom for some minor errand or babysitting someone you've never met. It goes a few different ways, but it's usually some version of asking for a quote of what it might cost, and then wanting to pay you in advance. They'll usually want to pay with some sketchy method like needing you to sign up for an account on some website (they'll try to steal personal/identity information or give you a virus to steal more info), or Western Union/Money Gram or PayPal.

They will then inevitably try some variety of overpaying you and asking for some bizarre method of returning them a portion of the over-payment, like "oh just send me a money order/check" or asking you to Western Union the money back to them (especially if they paid you by check or some other such method). The key is the money you return is non-refundable, but the method they paid you with can be stolen accounts/funding, or reclaimed/cancelled (bouncing a check or counterfeit check/money order). You end up with less than nothing, because the income is gone and your "refund" to them is gone too.

Sometimes they'll just ask for your banking information to "deposit the money with you", but they will need illegitimate info to do it like your bank account and login, or information that can be used to steal money from you (bank account and routing information that can be used for payments), etc. Sometimes there'll be some crazy reason.

They'll also often have variants where they are out of the country, have some weird imaginary legal issue they try to rope you into, claim they are in the military for similar reasons, etc. They could also try to deposit fake/stolen funds and then try to rope you into an accompanying scam where they try to shake you down as if you violated the law (they'll pretend to be investigators, police, or organized crime, depending on the situation/scammer).

Sometimes they want money, sometimes they just want to steal your personal information so they can steal from you or sell your identity to someone else.

I've seen the same base scam in business, where they instead want a quote for some large order, often with some urgency and willingness to pay a premium, or for hiring a consultant, etc. All the same base methods, just with a different 'hook' to get you in.

Just replying will only waste your time and ensure you get more emails as you'll likely get added to "known potential sucker" lists. The danger is getting drawn in to the web of lies they use to scam - some of which are stupidly obvious, and some of which are really quite clever and drawn out.

It's a form of the advance fee scam. I handle the e-mail for a martial arts dojo and deal with that style of inquiry often. The scam is that they will be paying you via check and will "accidentally" pay you far too much. They then will ask that you kindly return the excess. What you don't know is that the first check will be bouncing and that because it's on a foreign bank it may take months for it to actually bounce. In the mean time they have already cashed your refund check and disappeared.

My answer to those people has always been is that "I would be delighted to teach their sons (or whoever they wrote about) but that I only deal in cash. Please have your driver bring the cash payment on the first visit. It will be $1000. Thank you."  The scammers never respond back. At times I've been bored and don't ask for the cash right off. I instead string the scammer out a bit before dropping the hammer which is that their payment must be in cash. At that point they vanish.


Can I submit my manuscript to a second journal without receiving withdrawal confirmation from the first journal? it's a month from the submission of a manuscript of mine in a "World Scientific" journal, but its status is still "Editor Invited". I just sent the editor-in-chief a note to ask about the situation because the editor assignment process is unusually getting long. The editor-in-chief did not answer my inquiry, so I am about to withdraw the paper. Let's say (s)he doesn't confirm my withdrawal request. Will I be ethically authorized to submit my manuscript somewhere else considering that I will keep the withdrawal email (in case someone claims that I hadn't withdrawn it before new submission)?

This is actually a really interesting question as I don't think there's a black and white answer to this. Ethically, a "reasonable" attempt must be made to confirm withdrawal of the manuscript. People will draw the line at different points.

I would argue that one attempt at contact is not sufficient to be considered reasonable. If possible, I would contact the editor by phone as well as email. Check to see if there's a withdrawal protocol through your online account or if there are any additional contact details of committee members.

I would only feel comfortable submitting elsewhere if I had made multiple attempts to contact the journal over a period of 4-6 weeks. But that is just my opinion. I'm interested to see what others think...

Will I be ethically authorized to submit my manuscript somewhere else considering that I will keep the withdrawal email (in case someone claims that I hadn't withdrawn it before new submission)?

No, I think you need to receive the official withdrawal confirmation from the journal, as long as the journal that you have submitted your manuscript is not a predatory journal. I assume it is not predatory cause World Scientific is not that kind of publishers I believe, at least in my own experience with them.

You mentioned that you have contacted the Editor-in-Chief of the journal and he/she did not respond to your inquiry. I think EiC is not the right person to contact in case of withdrawal. I don't have experience with withdrawing a paper in World Scientific, but in my experience with Elsevier, usually this process is handled by associate editor or even administrative section of the journal. If those people also did not respond to your inquiry, I think you need to find a more direct contact way like phone to get in touch with them and see what's the procedure to withdraw the article. If all of these suggestions failed in a timeline of 2 or 3 weeks, I think you need to assume that maybe the journal is indeed a predatory journal.

For the last moment that you want to submit your manuscript somewhere else, please read the current journal's policy and agreement that you agreed upon your submission to find out if you give them your consent to publish your work or not (which I think you did cause otherwise submission to be considered for publication is meaningless...). Cause, if you failed to receive a response from them and if they are indeed a predatory journal, it has a really high chance that at some point in the future, they will publish your work and if you already submitted somewhere else or get accepted in another journal, you may ran into some copyright and dual publication issues with both journals.


Is it possible to have a career in academia and not be confident in their field of research? I thought getting a PhD in my mechanical engineering field would lead in gaining confidence in the field. However, it became other way round. I am far less confident on my skills and knowledge than I was when I started my PhD.
I am well published in my research field, I have decent theoretical knowledge about my field. However, I am not confident. I often hesitate with my answer, even though I know I am right.
I get afraid before starting a new project and technique even though I am sure that I can acquire new skillsets easily.
Self doubts is a recurring theme during all research endeavors. When I feel low confidence, I also start to regret my decisions to be in academia and pursue masters and PhD.
Does anyone else get this feeling? How to cope up? Can I find a place in academia with this issue?

This is very possible. Many people in academia struggle with impostor syndrome and find themselves on the "I know how much I don't know" side of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
While this is common, that doesn't mean it's a good thing - it makes you miserable and so it's worth doing something about it. There are a number of things you can do:

Check if your university has counseling services. This is something they'll have experience with.

Having the occasional honest talk with your peers. It can take a big load off your shoulders to find out that other people at your level also aren't always confident. One of my professors noted that a lot of academics like being a "magician", able to conjure amazing results seemingly without effort. But most magician's tricks take lots of practice that you never see.

Teach or coach students at a lower level than your own, like Masters or beginning PhDs - you have a lot to share with them, and it can help ground your confidence to see just how much you do know.

Find colleagues you can trust to occasionally talk over your work with. They don't have to be exactly in your precise field, but close enough that they can ask critical questions. It can boost your confidence to know that you do have a backup that helps you avoid missing "the obvious".

To summarize: what you're experiencing is not unusual, it's a normal result of being smart enough to know what you don't know, but you don't have to suffer. Help is available.

It is also possible to have a career in academia where you primarily focus on teaching and public service.  Such positions would probably not be found at a top research university (unless your "public service" area is something they desperately want to get), but could be at a regional university, a 4-year college, or a community college.


First author doesn't want a co-author to read the whole paper First author is a PhD student, as am I. All of the other co-authors are our supervisors. The first author doesn't want me to read the paper, because we are both PhD students and I might plagiarize (?!) her work. Can I report this person for unprofessional conduct to the University committee? Or how should I behave?

More details/Update: My supervisors are having huge issues with this student also because now she doesn't want them as co-authors of other chapters of her PhD. As for me, the supervisors sent me a copy of the manuscript so that I could read it, but she discovered it and overreacted. She submitted that paper to a good journal but didn't keep me in the loop so I had no idea about the reviews until our supervisors told me (again against her will). Now, she doesn't want to acknowledge my contribution for another paper. Because of this latter my supervisors and I decided to collect evidence of her unprofessional conduct in the present and in the past.

There is a golden standard (codified in the Vancouver Recommendations on authorship) that every author individually vouches for the correctness of the entire paper. In other words, you can't ask a co-author to only read and write part of the paper, because they need the whole paper to vouch for its correctness. They wouldn't satisfy the criteria to be allowed to be authors. It also suggests a broken collaboration culture if there isn't even enough trust among co-authors to let each other read everything that's happening in a collaboration.

But beyond that, the idea to not let the co-authors read parts of the paper just doesn't make any sense: A paper is intended to be published, at which point it becomes available to everyone, not just the co-authors.

Making my comment an answer :

The only solutions are not either you behave or report the student.

There are middle ground cases where you can have a conversation with everyone involved and convince them that letting you read the paper is the correct way forward.

You can convince them, e.g. by making sure that all the information is shared via writing (email) and with other important people (supervisors/academics) cc'd, thus putting you in a situation where you would be caught cheating if you were trying to plagiarize it.

Hopefully that would convince the first author that you do not plan to act maliciously and gives them proof to react in case you do.


Can leaked nude pictures damage one's academic career? I have an ex who has posted nude photos of me online in the past, linked to my online social media, and posted my full name and where I live. I am concerned he may do so again once he finds out I'm now in a PhD program (he's very jealous of any success I have), and may link to my school bio page, or worse.

Revenge porn is illegal in my state, and the case against him is currently pending. I have also gotten the photos taken down with a DMCA letter (I hold the copyright over the photos in question). At this point, I am concerned with how a future attempt could affect my career.  I can handle the embarrassment now that I've been through it once, so if that's the biggest concern, I can deal. I just don't want to lose a career over it, given how small academia really is and how a reputation might follow one around.

My question is, if I don't change my name (I've considered this, assuming I can keep him from finding out) and my photos are circulated and discovered by faculty or students, how likely am I to be thrown out of my PhD program or later lose a job as an untenured prof? Is a name change worth it?

(If it makes any difference, they are essentially just topless portraits; I'm not engaged in any sexual activity or anything weird, and were taken 10 years ago when I was very young and foolish.)

I think you can generally trust faculty to be adults when it comes to graduate admissions and a tenure track job.

The biggest problem I would see is when you teach (future undergraduate) students. I'm not sure how you would want to deal with them.

I would say that university administrators tend to be adversity shy and could be a problem.

I would instead look to see if a lawyer might help you DMCA the sites hosting the images as well as file either a legal complaint or restraining order against you ex.  This latter bit is best asked on Law Stack Exchange.

University registrars and faculty are used to students having to change their name due to a variety of circumstances. You should be able to get new transcripts and letters issued under your new name without issue. But the abuser can also link images to your new name unless you can prevent him or he loses interest; so a name change is not a foolproof solution.

I will write a partially dissenting opinion.

While I agree that all in all, this wouldn't greatly damage your career, it may do so in one specific field - if you're dealing with computer security.

It wouldn't ruin the career, but the fact that you exhibited such an obvious security carelessness (allowing someone else to have naked photos of you) will cause some people to question your professional judgement in your own field. In other words, your sin wouldn't be the existence of naked pictures, it's being demonstrably not security conscious.

Just to be clear, I am not saying they would be right - your career would be in academic research and not as actual practicing security expert where such lack of judgement is actually meaningful. But I would expect that there IS a risk for some people to be that judgmental either way.


What is the justification for the typical punishment of a student who did not cheat but helped others cheat? Imagine this scenario: you're in an exam. Somebody asks for your help to answer a question. You help them (whisper the answer, slip them a note, whatever). You get caught. You get punished.

That's fine. You're not allowed to help others cheat. You broke the rules. The university is liable to punish you. All of this makes perfect sense so far.

But.

In my experience, it is often the case that this student who, remember, did not cheat on their own exam, often receives a punishment directly related to that exam, i.e. they fail the exam.

This does not seem to make any sense at all. The wrongdoing of the student has nothing to do with their performance on the exam. They did not cheat. Therefore, their exam is a separate thing entirely, and punishing them by failing them seems like an arbitrary thing to do.

Let me give you an example. Say a student punches a teacher. Would this student ever receive a punishment like "oh now you have failed your exam in Abstract Algebra!"?

No. The punishent will be general (suspension, etc), but the exams are not touched.

So, in the above example, why is the student who helped others cheat being punished on their exam, when their exam performance involved no cheating at all? What is the justification for this?

Probably the main issue that makes this policy logical is that when two students are caught communicating during an exam, there is no foolproof way for the instructor to tell who copied from whom. The communication may have been one-sided, or it may have been two-sided, or it may have been one-sided but in the opposite direction than what the instructor suspects. Thus, by the mere act of exchanging information with another student, in any direction, the student undermines trust in the value of their own exam as an indication of their knowledge. Giving them a failing grade is the only policy that guarantees that they will not get away with getting illicitly-earned points. Since as you yourself said, some form of punishment is definitely logical, giving that specific punishment becomes logical both as a deterrent and as a defense against a student getting away with copying.

In other words, the policy makes perfect sense, and is pretty much the only rational way for universities to address cheating on exams.

Even when people tell that the one who has helped to cheat doesn't make a mistake, there are always many reasons to tell that he has done a mistake because

If he helps, what happens? He may help his friend but in the end his friend will be motivated by this and will repeat this many times. So he was an obstacle to his progress which means he has committed a serious mistake.
If you help cheating you are on the side of promoting cheating. So you should be also punished.


A student in my course does well on exams, but doesn't do the homework: Go easy on them, or make them "pay the price?" I have a student in my course that does well on the exams, and his answers to the exam questions show a deep understanding of the material. However, this student has not been handing in the assigned homeworks and has a missed a few lab assignments, as well. I've been told by other faculty that he has a job which keeps him up late, and have noticed that he struggles to stay awake at times during the class.

Depending on how he fares on a project worth a large portion of his grade, and the final exam, the missed homeworks/labs could cause his grade to be below a C, which is the required grade that a student must receive if they are to advance to the second, more advanced course [and, a C grade is also needed to get credit for the course; otherwise, the student will need to retake it again on the next offering, which isn't until two semesters from now]. Further, this student is a senior, so a D grade would be a major setback for him.

For those of you who have been in this situation before as an instructor, my question:

  Have you ever passed/failed a student like the one described above? If so, do you regret your decision? Why or why not?

As an instructor, when I find myself in this situation, I invite the student to make an appointment to speak with me privately in my office.

During that private meeting, I will discuss his/her current performance in the class, and point out the likely consequences if he/she does not submit the required work.  I will advise the student as to what he/she must do to achieve the grade he/she needs.

Then it's up to the student to earn the grade he/she wants - or to fail. You can't live their lives for them.

One follow-up question I wold ask is whether the exam in question is as rigorous as the OP suggests; the student may indeed have known the material well (or known it already from past exposure), but if it required very little practice to master the skills needed to excel at a summative assessment, how powerful a measure could it possibly be? My students often ask me for a final exam whose grade could trump the rest of the semester (probably because they got that "Senior Day" treatment in high school), but I ask them two question which quickly snuff out the requests:

Would you be satisfied if your exam results dipped and thus brought your A down to a C, "just because" you got a 79.8% on the exam?
Are you prepared for an exam genuinely testing every major "essential" ("irreplaceable") concept we have discussed, and not this "gentler" one I have prepared in acknowledgement that you have already showed me a partial mastery based on your earlier exams? ("'Cause I could always make this final exam a lot more challenging....)