"Competing interests" not disclosed? retraction? I have recently come across this paper in Nature Communications: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17419-7
From the authors’ affiliations and corresponding email it seems like all authors are employees of Babylon (a health technology company) but the authors state in the “Competing interests” section that “The authors declare no competing interests.” even though they are evaluating their own product and give themselves an outstandingly good evaluation.
The journals “competing interests” policy states:
“Funding
Research support to the author or their institution (including salaries, equipment, supplies and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through this publication. A specific role for the funder in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, should be disclosed.
Employment
Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment
by any organization that may gain or lose financially through this publication.”
https://www.nature.com/documents/nr-competing-interests.pdf
I wonder how it is academically legal to still state “The authors declare no competing interests.”? Is this not the mother of all competing interests? Especially in a respected journal like Nature Communications?
EDIT:
I found this here:
"Editors should consider retracting a publication if:
[...]
The author(s) failed to disclose a major competing interest (a.k.a. conflict of interest) that, in the view of the editor, would have unduly affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and peer reviewers."
https://publicationethics.org/node/19896
Should I contact the editor? Is this really a reason to retract this paper?

Assuming that their company can potentially gain from their research results, this is a clear violation of the signed competing interest declaration. The fact that the authors' affiliation is a company does in no way remove their obligation to declare a potential competing interest. In fact, Springer Nature specifically includes present employment as an example of a competing interest that must be declared:

Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated
employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially
through this publication.

Whether or not you should contact the editor is up to you and depends on how sure you are that their company does in fact have a competing interest. If so, then the violation is pretty obvious (although bear in mind that just because the authors work for a company in the field does not automatically mean they have a competing interest). If Nature Communications doesn't think this is relevant you can then follow up with a question here, how inappropriate the academic community thinks their lack of action is and how strong your case is that the company has a financial interest in these results. But I would expect their editor to act on this information and issue a correction or a retraction.
Springer-Nature is one of the world's most important and biggest publisher of scientific results. Their policy is not a weird aberration but represents the norm of a large scientific community. This requirement to explicitly declare any competing interests is standard in many scientific fields (such as biomedical research). For example, Elsevier also requires authors to explicitly declare their competing interests, and authors can only declare  that they have no competing interest if they certify the following:

The authors certify that they have NO affiliations with or involvement
in any organization or entity with any financial interest, or
non-financial interest  in the subject matter or materials discussed
in this manuscript.

In the example here, the authors would not be able to sign such a statement because they do have an affiliation with an entity with an interest in the subject matter.


How much will dropping out of a Master's program hurt job prospects? I am extremely dissatisfied with the Master's program I just began and plan on dropping out ASAP. I currently have no interest in finding another graduate program and instead wish to pursue a job outside of academia. As I see it my two choices are to either stick it out for the rest of the semester and just try to maintain C's, or to simply walk away from it and accept the F's because the drop deadline has passed.

The main question I have is how much more damaging is the option of just walking away mid-semester?

I realize that certain employers will view the situation differently, but I am just seeking opinions here. I have no idea of what industry I would want to work in or how that might affect your answers. Or if anyone has advised students in similar situations, I would greatly appreciate similar advice.

As for my records before this program, I got my BS in applied math and graduated with honors. I am hoping that I can bank on this earlier performance and explain the reasoning behind dropping out to potential employers.

I would stick it out and get the best grades I can.  I would try to monitor my stress level and do things I enjoy as well.  The important thing is to finish things in a clean way and not let yourself get to the point where you drop everything and leave.

The job market is extremely competitive these days.  A master's degree can have a big effect on what pay you receive and how far you can go in certain industries.  You might not feel like a master's degree is worth it now, but you might want to go back to school for a different degree or even to complete the same degree.  It's hard to predict what the situation will be for you in 5 years or 10 years.  Bad grades now can restrict your possibilities for years to come.  Who knows? You might be thinking about getting an MBA in a prestigious program in 10 years and find yourself stuck having to explain some bad grades from years before.

Your first one or two years of work, people might ask about your GPA as well, and leaving the graduate school off might be tricky as it might leave gaps in your employment.  Although, I have seen it work to just not put what year you got your undergraduate degree.

Dropping out mid-class is a red flag. It marks you as somebody who has left unfinished business behind, with no clear, compelling reason. I would hesitate to hire you, as you might do the same in the middle of some critical task.


How to deal with a micromanaging supervisor? I am doing my PostDoc with a reputable professor, who achieved a lot in our research area. I really learnt a lot of things from him, but the problem is that I am uncomfortable with his supervision.

He is kind of person who wants to show that they are open and accept different opinion but when we start discussing he does not accept the other opinion and very often justifies his opinion by "If I was a reviewer I would reject ....". After a few discussions with him, I just say you are right. He has also an annoying attitude; he points out what he does not like directly (which is not always from the aspect of wrong and true) and if he believes something is wrong, he shouts and says it is wrong (even if you are presenting). At work, he has opinions about everything and I should apply (not because it is his opinions but because we discussed and his opinion is always true).

When we write something together based on one line idea, of course, I write what I think is right, but he just gives the feeling that you are doing something stupid and says it does not work (it is still an idea). Overall, I am allowed neither to do mistakes, to disagree with him nor to give wrong assumptions.
-I would prefer that he gives his opinion by saying I prefer this idea better and pointing out a wrong assumption by saying I don't think this works. Evaluating me (monthly for example) instead of just saying directly you are wrong (because most of the time the mistake does not affect the work). -

Since I started working with him, some colleagues just left because not agreeing with him (I don't know the details) but he told me that because they were not able to do what I asked them for. Also, during our meetings, he made so many people cry, especially girls because of his way of criticism.

We are now writing a proposal together and he asked me to write about his ideas, but he does not like that I am just doing what was assigned to me and not taking lead and drive the proposal. Actually, I don't feel that I am allowed to do thing by myself because he is pointing out everything so I just wait for his orders.

Before, I just accepted this fact and to deliver the work and accomplish his orders until I finish my PostDoc contract, but now he behaves as a micromanager and wants me to take lead. The two things don't match in my opinion.

I don't know how to deal with this situation.

It is a difficult situation but you can try the following:

Tell your supervisor the following:

  I would prefer that he gives his opinion by saying I prefer this idea better and pointing out a wrong assumption by saying I don't think this works. Evaluating me (monthly for example) instead of just saying directly you are wrong (because most of the time the mistake does not affect the work). -

It is not guaranteed to work —  if he's certain he's always right, he's probably certain that he's right in how he does the supervision. But it may hive him the food for thought and eventually lead him to adapt to your needs.

Take a more leading role in collaboration. He explicitly expects you to do it. Yes, you will probably be criticised for your mistakes, but if you manage to process this feedback constructively, you will get  a lot of useful knowledge and experience.

  I don't feel that I am allowed to do thing by myself because he is pointing out everything so I just wait for his orders.

Don't wait for his orders. He explicitly wants you to try and fail and receive his feedback on it and try again. This is his supervision method. It's annoying but it's not the worst. Maybe, ask him also to note and appreciate good things about your proposals when he sees them.

Micromanaging requires a lot of time, effort and thought. It's not an easy or pleasant strategy. Being control freak is not fun. PI's are pushed into it often because they:

are responsible for large and complex projects
do not have time to do all the work personally and have to rely on postdocs
do not receive the expected outcome from their postdocs — for various reasons postdocs may waste project time and funds and achieve nothing.

There is a delicate balance to strike between developing a postdoc as an independent researcher (i.e. allow them to take lead, try and fail), and achieving project goals (i.e. get excellent results and produce top-level publications). These two goals contradict each other, and any PI is under a pressure to deliver both. This may lead to the conflict you describe as:

  he behaves as a micromanager and wants me to take lead. The two things don't match in my opinion.

Unfortunately, this is a direct consequence of modern funding system and culture of success in academia.

I disagree with another answer suggesting to "blame the professor". My advice is to try to help your professor.

Control freak. You can learn a lot about getting things done, but it will be high stress. If you are asking how to win with such a person, well you need to become their "star". This requires you put in long days, 7 days a week, at being the world's greatest bootlicking assistant. You decisions will have no value, your hard efforts can be discarded on a whim for an alternative approach that only differs in that he thought of it instead of you, and you may never be allowed to get full credit for any major aspect of the project.

I'd say the real danger is the recommendation you need from this person. In my experience such people write pretty bad recommendations, even for their "stars". Look into how much he has helped previous students and postdocs. If they struggle, just leave asap.


How do you enforce handwriting standards for homework assignments as a TA? I am a TA who is helping to grade student homework assignments for an undergrad engineering course which involves a lot of mathematics. The homeworks all together count for miserly 5% and is only graded based on completeness. One of my biggest petpeeves is poor hand writing for written work. I don't exactly have good hand writing, but for things that are turned in or show other people (i.e. for communication purposes), I always ensure that the quality of work is top notch quality.

However, most students in my class have terrible handwriting to the point I cannot even decipher what they are trying to communicate. Wherever there is supposed to be a straight line, I see a curve, not even a well drawn curve. If students run out of space on their piece of paper, many resorts to cramming massive amount of calculation in the margins rather than starting a new page or even flipping the sheet over to the other side. Even worse is that most students write in pen, and when there seems to be an error, they have no qualm of scratching it out using a scribble. I am not a pen person so this is something I have difficulty in understanding. Homeworks are rarely stapled. Let's not even talk about the diagrams, I have no idea why they even bother drawing one. Most people just don't seem to care.

(a picture I found online just to give you an idea what it looks like, sometimes the entire page is crossed out because of some mistakes in the calculation)

I have been telling them to write neatly since homework 1. Yet this problem persists. The main problem is that the homework grades counts for so little, and there is nothing to enforce quality of homework. If a homework is completely done, even if the hand writing is so poor that I could not decipher exactly who handed in the assignment, I am still required to give full grade. I have talked to the professor who is running the course, and he basically gave me a "I don't want students whining over grades" sort of reply. I am powerless to change the policies of the course, and at maximum all I can do now is giving out recommendations to the students on expected, but not enforced, handwriting standards.

Is there anything I can do in my situation? I had hoped I could see a reflection of myself in this pool of students but I have yet to see that person which makes me a bit disappointed to be honest. Whether if these people go directly into the workforce, or remain in academia, clarity in communicating is very important and I fear if they do not change their habits quickly it could lead to some very negative consequences in their professional life.

Am I overreacting?

Should I tell them a white lie that I am going to give zeroes for unclear, poorly written homework but in actuality I will still give full grade for completeness?

My approach is simple- homework is submitted as a typed .pdf file, no exceptions.  Homework is submitted online through the course management system (Instructure's Canvas in our case), which enforces the required file extension.

Yes, this means that my students need to learn how to produce typed mathematical equations.  They're welcome to use LaTeX (probably the best choice in the long term), Google Docs (which has a pretty intuitive system for math formulas that's adequate for most purposes), MS Word (which has an awfully complicated and hard to use equation editor), Apple Pages, or whatever software they like, but they have to convert the output to pdf so that I don't have to deal with all of these different word processing software packages.

However, most students in my class have terrible handwriting to the point I cannot even decipher what they are trying to communicate.

Fail them. End of story.

If you can't understand the answer, you can't verify that it's correct.

Zero marks; move on.

The handwriting will quickly improve, from anybody who wishes to pass the module.

Make this policy clear in your lectures then the responsibility is known to be on the students. Frankly this should be blindingly obvious to everybody involved, but I am aware that students sadly take no responsibility for anything nowadays.


Disappointed about Academia I was a first-year PhD student but was forced to quit although hard-working day and night! I am disappointed, I am now 27 and did not create family, left my home country. Problems from the past in my family hugely affect my mental health. I have OCD and some other health issues.

Everyone admires my personality in presenting my work, however I am now shocked as I dreamt of doing good research to really help people and imprint a memory before leaving this earth. But I found it does not look like that. When I was a little girl, I used to tell my late mother: "I do not want to be an ordinary person, I want to add this world, to become an important person".

However, while writing now I would burst in tears and feel deeply alone. I suffered from complaining, so I would forget to speak and grew used to keeping every thing inside. I am afraid for my family as I feel responsible and I would like to make their lives better. Maybe the problem was that I did not do as well as the others? I thought I could do something new and meaningful, but I ended up being kicked out.

I would be grateful if someone tell me how can I overcome this harsh period?

What you state here is something that many do indeed feel coming into academia. The image of research as being something greatly impactful on an individual level is a bit of an illusion. We only hear of the famous researchers, and not of any of the hundreds of thousands overshadowed in every field. Further, the process of research can actually alienate you from the fruits of your labor. Even if you do impactful work, you likely won't feel it or see it in a favorable amount of time. Those that seem to fare well in academia are those that are content with the reality of the dynamics involved, and enjoy what they really do.

I will say that from what you describe, however, your mentality towards work and life in general seem to be quite unhealthy. Indeed you have tragic circumstances that led to this, but its something you should work on with a therapist. The will and need to change the world for the better is definitely a common motivation, but not one that should be above all other reasons for a persuit, because its a goal that is almost by definition impossible to achieve to one's degree of personal satisfaction.

I doubly recommend therapy to help with loneliness, and making steps towards reaching out to friends and forming support groups, because the work load involved in grad school can be isolating. As a second year PhD student, I really recommend going out of your way to find people.

You are not alone.

From my understanding of your post, you felt forced to quit after holding great expectations about yourself and in spite of making a significant effort for one year. If this is the correct interpretation, I believe your supervisor has failed miserably.

Unfortunately, modern day academia is not focused on human development and resources. It is mainly about politics and power, and increasingly infested with egoistic manipulators.

I suggest you do a great deal of self-assessment and seek professional help. Also focus on networking, improving transferable skills, and meeting capable change-driving individuals. Consider the following points:

I do not know which is your home country, and what is your family condition. But realistically assess whether spending 4-6 years on a PhD would really help your family in any meaningful way. Most young PhDs in my home country are either unemployed or underpaid, thinking they ought to have started working earlier.
Being successful is as relative as being lucky. Based on your description you seem to have joined an awful place for pursuing a degree, and was denied support from the beginning. Are you sure you would have fared any better in staying there for any longer? It seems to me you have spared yourself of years of lost time and internal pain.
Do understand that decision-makers and highly influential individuals are typically not academics. Seek to invest in your skills, contacts, and look deeper into the private sector and entrepreneurship.
As a 27-year old I think you are still very young, and I do not advise anyone to start worrying about "making a family" prior to 30s. But, of course, I do not know the social norm in your culture and your own life goals.

Breath deeply, don't look back, start afresh. You are free.
Good luck!


Author title(s) and affiliation(s) What is the correct format to fill out this field in a form? What if the author has no affiliations? Could you please give some examples?

  Author title(s) and affiliation(s):

Author: Ninja Cat

Title(s): Dr

Affiliation(s): None, unaffiliated, or https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=no+affiliation


Who owns the research data at US research institutions? When a graduate student, or PI does government funded (NSF/NIH/etc) research at a US R1 institution who owns the data?

What portion of the copyright for the research data does the graduate student have and what portion does the PI have? My understanding is that graduate students are supposed to be listed as co-inventors on resulting patents meaning that they should own some portion of the copyright? Can a graduate student deny a PI access on copyright grounds?

My interest comes from a debate we recently had between two PIs where one refused his copyright for our collaborative research results (some anonymized medical outcomes data). Apparently, PIs can refuse to their copyrights to each other, but can graduate students?

No one.

The short answer is that “data” as the term is understood by US law is not covered by copyright, thus in popular parlance it is not “owned” by anyone. If you google “can data be copyrighted” you will find various articles explaining this in more detail. Here is one.

The longer answer is that, as seems to often be the case in matters of law, the legal meaning of “data” seems to differ slightly from how people use this word in normal speech. What academics might refer to as “research data” may also include aspects of what is referred to in some sources as “presentation” or “compilation” of data, and to the extent that this is the case, copyright might apply to it after all. In that case, the copyright would be owned by some combination of the PI, graduate students, the institution that employs them, and any funding agencies who might have funded some of the research, depending on the policies of the institution and funding agencies. For example, at my own university, researchers own the copyright to the work products they create.

I also notice you are mixing up copyright and patent rights by mentioning them together as if they were the same thing. They are not. Data is not a form of invention so I don’t see how patent rights would apply to it. But more generally, if a graduate student and PI come up with any patentable inventions, those would be subject to quite different rules and policies than those covering copyright. For example, at my own university, patent rights for researchers’ inventions will generally belong to the university, though the inventors can receive a share of any royalties generated from their inventions. As far as I know this applies equally to graduate students and regular faculty. But you should check the policy at your own institution.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

For the NSF, specifically, see: https://www.nsf.gov/od/ogc/intelprop.jsp

For NIH, see: https://grants.nih.gov/policy/intell-property.htm

Each agency will have a published policy. Just go look for it. Or consult an IP lawyer.

But note that acknowledgement for something and ownership of it are quite different things.


I got the following comment from a reputed math journal. What does it mean? I got this comment after more than 75 days of submission:

  The considered problem in this manuscript is a practice in high mathematics and can not be a paper for publication in high-level journals.

What does it mean?

My educated guess is that the reviewer is a native speaker of German and mistranslated some terms into English:

The German word Übung translates both to practice and to exercise.
In German universities, höhere Mathematik (literally: higher mathematics) was used as a label for mathematics courses for students of other scientific fields or engineering. At times, this only referred to the calculus courses (and not the linear-algebra courses). In particular, these courses usually focus on applying mathematical concepts and do not compare to courses for students of mathematics. (I wouldn’t be surprised if you can still find this label in use somewhere.)

If my guess is correct, the reviewers comment means something along the lines of:

  This manuscript is just a (demonstrative) exercise in undergraduate mathematics and therefore not suitable for publication in a high-level journal.

So, your manuscript was rejected because it allegedly does not feature any new mathematics.

The considered problem in this manuscript is a practice in high mathematics and can not be a paper for publication in high-level journals

Probably he means "high school". But, Gauss found many solutions in his high school years... Nobody exactly defined where "high school" ends. Because in my high school, I modelled Frank-Hertz experiment. With complicated enough approach this could become Plasma Physics article, enough for publication in any scientific grade journal.

Another probability is that they think subject lies in field of "high mathematics", and they understand it as "mathematical analysis". It exists in some high school programs, but generally considered university discipline, rather then school. Again, it is actually possible to create problem inside mathematical analysis and solve it, creating material of grade which is enough for publication anywhere.

Also you can always publish it in journals for PhD/high school students, which have lower bounds for inclusion of articles.

Not explaining what exactly in your result did not fit into bounds for publication is nonsense. Such uncompetent staff which doesn't even bother to explain the subject of article should be fired because most probably their PhD degree was bought (remember how french physicists had bought degrees in 90s and after great scandal they were both fired and their works disqualified).


Professor refuses to write a recommendation letter to students who haven't written a research paper with him I am currently a fourth-year  Electrical Engineering student. I have been a top-ranked student in our department. I have passed 3 courses with a professor in our department and have received a full mark in all three. I did participate a lot in all classes and had many discussions about the courses in his office hours. He knows me very well. I have also been the teaching assistant of this professor twice, for two distinct courses. I believe that I have also done a decent job as a TA for him. I also have worked in his research lab for a year now.
Recently I have asked this professor for a recommendation letter for graduate school and he refuses, arguing he has decided to only give a recommendation letter to people who have written a research paper with him. By the way, he is willing to accept me as a master student, in his group but I prefer moving to another university.
My professor is new to the field I am currently working on and I believe it is hard for an undergraduate student to write a scientific paper in this situation.
I wanted to ask whether his refusal for recommendation letters is reasonable and also ask for some advice on how to handle this situation.
PS:
Maybe "reasonable" is not the best choice of word. I mean whether only giving recommendation letters to co-authors is something "common".
I am applying to a direct PhD in the US. But I am from a different country. Direct PhDs are not possible in our country.
I Professor obtained his bachelor degree in our university and his PhD in the US.
He has also worked as a professor in the US and in Europe before joining our department.

I wanted to ask whether his refusal for recommendation letters is reasonable

My personal opinion is that if you worked in his lab for a year (satisfactorily), it is unreasonable to refuse a letter. All the more so if you had other good interactions (TAing, etc.) with him.

  and also ask for some advice on how to handle this situation!

Unfortunately, my opinion counts for absolutely nothing. You cannot force this professor to write you a letter, and would be unwise to try. All you can do is find someone else. Preferably someone who can comment on your research, or at least someone who can confirm that your advisor almost never writes letters for undergrads (i.e., vouching that the lack of a letter from your advisor should not reflect poorly on you).

I had very similar experiences when multiple professors refused to provide me recommendation letters. Including those who provided various good words about me.  They gave a lot of excuses, such as they think i was a good student but since i did very bad score in masters degree and certain research entrance competitive exams so the evidence do not reflect that goodness.
(But in fact the purpose of recommendation letter is originally opposite, it is to measure the research qualities that do not reflect in an exam).
Unfortunately the recommendation letter system is often not used as it was intended for. Instead it is misused or abused. I must not generalise, but yes it is seemingly misused sometimes. Recommendation letters or forms should be used to convey the psychological insight. But unfortunately it sometimes become a battlefield of authoritative power-play, where the academia suppresses the student to be blindly obedient to the teacher to get a dazzling recommendation letter, and to a more freethinking student, the career can often be down on a "blink of eye" of professors, guides, seniors etc. So sometimes the recommendation letters tend to contain false or unknowingly wrong informations.
Also presumably many recommendation letters are not read in details.  Because  in an advertisement for Ph.D. admission a lot of (50, 100, 500, 1000 or more) applications arrive and a very little number of people having a versatile mentality checks those applications, and most of the applications are speedily rejected since they will fund for a very little number (usually 1 to 25) of positions. Sometimes recommendation letters written in a very mean way such as "candidate X worked in our lab for Y years, (s)he is honest, hardworking, sincere, intelligent, blah blah" as used to be in schoolday character certificate. They seemingly look for a signature and an institutional stamp. They often check for reputation and influence of the referee, and the interpersonal or inter-institutional rapport with the referee. Also the recommendation letter has the minimal role in the weightage to select the candidate, most of the recommendation process done through phone calls, in-person meetings, pannelling systems and bargaining. This is unfair, but this is real and unavoidable, it cannot yet be officially prevented, given the authority bears huge power and ego.
Also, another factor that prevents a professor from write a recommendation letter is; to writing a recommendation letter poses a risk or threat of responsibility to oneself (the referee professor) that makes them scared to write a recommendation letter say for example a the student is suffering invisible disability. Because they might think on new institute the referred student will take time to adapt and the new professors will then blame or defame the referee professor. Referral system is such a drastic way to prune out students so that if a student earns so much trust that referee take a huge risk on oneself; omly then application could be done.
..............................
In conditions your guide refuse to write the recommendation letter, ask other professors, ask more open minded teachers to give recommendation letter.  even go to your earlier academia such as college and school. Make the issue open up. Explain why a recommendation letter is necessary for you. Carefully read brochure of your target institute that if they specifically mentions who can be your referee. If they does not specifically mention it, I think it is technically okay to take recommendation from your older academia such as your college teachers.
At the same time, you need to personally meet Ph. D. supervisors if it is legally allowed (in some academia it leads to disqualification as they call it "canvassing" whereas in some other places it is legal to just take an appointment and having a conversation).  However it is difficult or impossible if the target institute is on another country, but still you may communicate using E-mails and video chat sessions. Explain them your specific problem with collecting recommendation letter and whether they can select you based on other available information about you.


Would it be acceptable to occasionally sleep at the lab? I'm currently an undergrad, and work as a researcher in an EECS lab. Recently, I discovered a novel application to work on, and so for the last few weeks I've been staying at the lab late almost every day, leaving at midnight or later. Since I live in a dorm on the opposite end of campus, I usually don't get to sleep until around 2-3 AM. In the morning I need to be up and in class by 8-9 AM (depending on the day), in a building that happens to be right next to the lab.

Would it be acceptable to set up a foldable cot at night (leave it under my desk during the day) and sleep at the lab occasionally? I'm usually the last person at the lab at night. If it cultural context matters, I work at a research university in California (US).

EDIT

The lab is mostly composed of graduate students and professors, so they usually maintain a regular 9-5/5:30 schedule at the lab (minus office hours and lectures). As one of a small handful of undergrads, I'm usually there between 4 (when class ends) and well after everyone else leaves. In some cases, graduate students will sleep in the graduate student lounge just outside the lab proper (still part of the lab IIRC).

Ask your supervisor. If your PI supervisor controls the space and gives you permission, there shouldn't be any problem for you.

I've seen situations where there are experiments that need to be babysat over long periods and researchers bring cots into the lab so that they can devote more time and provide more frequent checkups than would be possible otherwise.

Of course, if you are homeless and living in the lab for some longer period of time to avoid paying rent somewhere else, that seems like a much bigger problem. Honestly though, I've seen that done as well. The OK-ness and consequences of sleeping your lab will depend on the local culture, rules, and laws. If you ask a supervisor, it will be their responsibility to make that call.

Beware, it is mostly much more dangerous as it seems, even if it doesn't violate some policies literally. It is already dangerous if you here there until 2AM.

Things are controlled not only by policies and rules, but also by personal feelings. Especially if you have longer plans about your research, on the sympathy of the employees of the lab will depend much more as you would think. And most of these people goes away around 17-18PM, to his family, and they are always there around 8-9AM, to do their job. If you are out of his cycle, it can make a general, negative impression from you.

Although it can be even positive, if you can show very clearly, your task is important, and you are there because of your diligence. It will depend not on your answers to questions, but on your teachers / leaders (which is probably a prof "governing" the lab and the research there). And this positive effect will only work if it happens seldom.


Free, open-source substitutes for Mendeley? Mendeley is (mainly) a proprietary social network to share basic citation data and research papers. see also

Are there any free and open source substitutes for this service?

A technical possibility: users could collect BibTeX data and a hash and share this information.
It would be very useful to have such a free service because every journal provides the citation data in a different format. That includes false field entries, broken files and hidden download buttons on the website.

The only alternative that comes to my mind is Zotero:

It is open-source,
it comes as a standalone application or as a web-based version with Firefox, Chrome and Safari connectors,
it integrates with Word or OpenOffice,
it syncs with the Zotero server,
it has BibTeX export,
and more.

The Zotero standalone client is cross-platform and open-source (AGPL licence), and it can be run on its own or synchronized with the web version. The web service is free to use up to a fixed storage quota, with paid storage available, and there is an open-source implementation of the dataserver available if you want to roll your own. The local client stores its data in SQLite format so in principle your data is not locked in, but the database is relatively hard to trawl externally; however, since the client is open source there are relatively few future-proofing concerns.

No, there isn't anything that is an exact copy of Mendeley, the server, the clients, the API, and the content, but all composed of 100% open source software.

For the record, Mendeley does contain some open source and the API is freely available, so if you wanted to build an application of service to the scholarly community, you'd probably be better off building your own open source client but leveraging the messy and difficult bits that we've already solved and make available via API, such as the metadata extraction and impact tracking bits.


How to cite a Linkedin Profile in IEEE format? The IEEE standard specifies said format for all website citations:

  World Wide Web

  Author(s). “Title.” Internet: complete URL, date
  updated [date accessed]. M. Duncan. “Engineering Concepts on Ice.
  Internet: www.iceengg.edu/staff.html, Oct. 25, 2000 [Nov. 29, 2003].

In particular to Linkedin profiles, the format I decided on so far looks like this:

  John Doe. "John Doe." Internet: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johndoe/, 2017. [Nov. 10, 2017]

Is this the correct format for a linkedin profile?

Print a copy of the document as a pdf, and host the document on your public Dropbox directory. Then cite it as a webpage, corresponding to the location of Dropbox directory.


Is it acceptable to be listed as an author based only on technical assitance? I am a PhD student in bioinformatics/computational biology. A year or two ago I helped a fellow student using a software package she needed for creating a certain type of figures for her project. This week I got an email from that student asking if I wish to be listed as an author in a paper she is submitting in which she used these figures.

Other than helping to get her started with this software package and maybe helping her a bit with improving her code otherwise, I made no contribution to that project and in fact had only a very vague idea what she was working on until I saw the manuscript this week. I estimate that at most I dedicated 5-10 hours  to the whole thing.

So my dilemma is if such a minor contribution justifies me being listed as an author.

On the one hand, I have invested very little in this student in terms of time and effort, and was not involved at all in her research process per se.

On the other hand, I did invest a considerable amount of time learning to work with the said software for my own project (totally unrelated to hers) so I think there was some kind of knowledge/skill transfer involved that may have saved her some time.

If it matters, the paper has four authors other then me: the student that I helped, her two supervisors, and another PhD student who to my understanding was much more involved than me in this project.

I'm looking forward to hearing your perspective, O wise ones.

The criteria for authorship may somehow vary by discipline. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) stipulates four criteria that must be met if someone is to deserve authorship.

  Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;
  AND
  Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the
  work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

The ICMJE guideline further states that contributors fulfilling only less than four of the criteria should not be listed as authors but should be acknowledged.

A COPE discussion document about authorship also raises authorship criteria that are considered in different disciplines.

You may decide whether you qualify to be listed as an author based on the different guidelines available, probably based on the one closest to your discipline.

There is no reason why you shouldn't go for authorship. Free publication, you have nothing to lose, as a student yourself why not?

Anyone can be an author for a paper as long as the first and last authors agree. I'm an author for a paper on something I had absolutely no idea, but I'm still an author!

FYI: Providing technical advice is of course counted as serious contribution.


Can public political criticism of my alma mater result in my BA being revoked 35 years later? Perhaps it is a sign of paranoia that I even ask, but is there a chance that the private college I got my BA from back in the 1980s would revoke my degree if I were to publicly complain about its political stances?
Unfortunately, I have never donated significantly to the college, so my views don't hold any real force.
I doubt they would do so. And if they did, I find it unlikely that it would set off a chain reaction. But theoretically, my teaching degree depends in part on my MA, which in turn depends in part on my BA. Theoretically, if my BA got revoked, I could lose my teaching accreditation and hence my job. But can they?

Thank you to everyone for these thoughtful and detailed responses. My fears have been broadly dispelled, although some anxienty remains. I probably have more to fear in my current setting directly, than through a chain reaction involving my degree.
I have posted some thoughts in the comments under the first response and will remain engaged in the discussions above.

I've been working in Academia for the past ten years. The only cases of degree revocation that I am aware of were due to severe cases of academic misconduct such as plagiarism, fraud, or large-scale cheating. The rationale is that gross academic misconduct invalidates the achievement the degree should certify.
Revocations on grounds of expression of (political) disagreement with the issuing institution are unheard of in rule-of-law democracies. I've never heard of such a case, although it would certainly have become very well-known.

Historically, there have indeed been cases in which degrees have been revoked for purely political reasons, including cases where the degree holder espoused, or was perceived to have espoused, political views at odds with those of the university:

In 1930, the Tunisian scholar Tahar Haddad published Our Women in the Shari'a and Society, a controversial book advocating expanded rights for women.  Haddad was declared an apostate and his alma mater, the University of Ez-Zitouna, stripped him of his degree. [1]

In Nazi Germany, the government passed legislation to revoke the doctoral degrees of Jews and political dissidents, and certain university senates independently issued revocations of their own accord. These revocations were not universally considered to have been voided after the regime's downfall in 1945, leading some universities—among them Vienna's Technische Universität Wien and the University of Wroclaw, standing in for the dissolved Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau—to formally reinstate them years later. [2–4]

Beginning in the 1970s, Soviet universities would often revoke the degrees of academics (often but not always Jews) who had emigrated, or even merely attempted to emigrate, for political reasons. [5, 6]

I'm not aware of any similar politically motivated revocations happening in modern times in Western countries, though it is certainly conceivable that this practice continues or could occur in the future in authoritarian or politically unstable regimes.  If you got your degree in such a country, and if your words or actions reflect unfavourably on that country or on your university, then it is possible that your degree may be stripped as punishment.  (Without knowing what university you attended, what the political situation is there, and exactly what you said or did that they may find objectionable, it's not really possibly to quantify the risk.)  However, if you got your degree from an accredited institution in a country that broadly protects freedom of political speech, then you probably don't have anything to worry about.

References:

Ziba Mir-Hosseini. Justice, Equality and Muslim Family Laws: New Ideas, New Prospects. In: Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen, and Christian Moe, eds. Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition. London: I.B. Taurus, 2013, pp. 13–14. ISBN 9781784537401. DOI: 10.5040/9780755609277.ch-001
JTA. Poland University Restores 262 PhD's Stripped by Nazis:
Wroclaw Shamefully Zealous in Targeting Jewish Academics. The Jewish Daily Forward, 8 January 2015.
Monika Scislowska. 7 decades on, scholars to annul Nazi revoking of doctorates: Polish, German academics to denounce the stripping of Jews’ university qualifications during WWII. The Times of Israel, 8 January 2015.
Juliane Mikoletzky. Continuities and Discontinuities: Personnel Policies from 1945 to 1955.  In: Juliane Mikoletzky and Paulus Ebner, The Technische Hochschule in Vienna 1914–1955: Part 2: National Socialism – War – Reconstruction (1938–1955).  Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2016, pp. 177–192. ISBN 978-3-205-20132-8.
David Baltimore, Paul J. Flory, Arthur Kornberg, Polykarp Kusch, Marshall W. Nirenberg, Arno A. Penzias, Mark Kac, and Jack Cohen. Degrees Revoked in Soviet Union. Science 216(4544):360, 23 April 1982. DOI: 10.1126/science.216.4544.360
Dorothy Hirsch. Scientists in the Soviet Union. Nature 292:578, 13 August 1981. DOI: 10.1038/292578a0


Source code plagiarism detection tool that checks against online content I asked this question on Stackoverflow and was directed to ask it here. The question is:

I wanted to ask about plagiarism detection tools for source code written in C++. When I searched Google the ones I found compare between documents that you already have. What I'm looking for is a tool that compares against content on the internet (i.e Github).

We use the MOSS (Measure of Software Similarity) system provided by Stanford, at here.

There are many general sites such as:

http://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/

Sure, they will flag everything that "has to be copied" such as
    int main
but everything that "has to be copied" should be common between your students. It should then be fairly easy to not take it into account using a simple script removing anything shared by more than 80% of your students, preferably before submitting it to the plagiarism checker.

It would probably be easier using a website with an API such as:
https://api.plagscan.com/guide


Students bringing babies to class I'm a student; recently, in one of my classes, a fellow student brought their baby in a stroller. She may have asked the professor beforehand for permission to do this. The baby cried, made loud utterances, and loudly kicked the inside of its stroller. Several students, including me, found this very distracting. The professor didn't react to any of this. What should he have done? Should students be prohibited from bringing babies to class, or are there some circumstances under which it should be allowed?

I didn't complain to anyone, as I assumed that the student brought her baby to class because of exceptional circumstances and that this wouldn't become a habit. I don't know whether anyone made a complaint. This has only happened once, during the most recent lecture.

A blanket ban on bringing babies to class is probably not allowed at many institutions. However, I agree that if the baby is acting up, then the supervising parent should take the baby out of the classroom so as to minimize disruptions to the overall lecture.

This should be reached as an agreement outside of class time so that the lecturer is not placed in the position of having to stop lecture to ask the parent to remove his or her child from the room.

This is a great question for several reasons. In today's world, we have phones they are to be turned off from ringing and when they are vibrating, they are just as annoying; we have people clearly watching a program on a laptop during a lecture; now we have a small child not behaving, which is normal, but we do not know why the child is there that one day.

The question of the baby in class could be complicated. Has this happened previously? If not than there may be a very good reason and the professor knew.

Therefore, ignore this. If this becomes a standard event I would find out if babies can be brought into class. Going to school makes being a mom even more difficult; you have to give her credit. She came to class.

Perhaps helping her might let her know the child needs to behave better, or be brought to class while tired enough to sleep. Run her round the park, than come in. Or perhaps pass the child around the room and see who she quiets down for, "It Takes a Village" as I recall.

This is one of those problems that deserve compassion, understanding and a discussion with your professor on how to have a baby in class should she return and how to let Mom know she has to behave a bit better. There are so many distractions, one more seems to blend in.


Bombed an academic interview, should I do anything about it? I had an interview a few days back for a grant for graduate studies. The interview panel consisted of various judges including some of the most renowned and well known researchers/professors in my field(s) of interest. Some of them almost have a celebrity status given the kind of respect they command.

Now comes the bad part. My interview was going good for most of it, I was answering a question when I was told that none of what I said made sense. I was completely caught off-guard. To the best of my knowledge, my answers were correct, but the committee did not share my enthusiasm. I came across to them as an impostor who was simply winging things/saying random rubbish.

The interview went downhill from there. I was so flustered that even the questions which I could have answered in my sleep went wrong. I tried putting some things down on the whiteboard and tried explaining my answers but by then the committee had lost interest. The overall experience was very bitter with me almost coming across as undeserving to even has been shortlisted for the interview. Post the interview, I felt extremely guilty not for torpedoing my interview, but because I felt that I had wasted the time of such esteemed academicians.

My question is regarding, what if any action should I take at this point? I know for a fact that the grant will not be awarded to me, but that is not my concern. Some of the members on the committee are at the forefront of research and work in their field (which heavily aligns with mine). I do not intend to spoil my relation and any chance of a future collaboration with them because of this one interview. Some of the possible actions that came to my mind were:

Sending an email to one or more members of the committee, apologizing for the interview.
Sending an email to one or more members of the committee, asking for feedback.
Sending an email to one or more members of the committee, trying to explain my answers and why they were not completely wrong given the context.

Are any of these too far fetched? Any alternative action that you would recommend? Or should I just let it go?

PS. In case you find any details of my question to be fuzzy, please ask for clarification. Any sort of help/feedback will be appreciated.

First of all, you should cool down before you take any action. Clearly, the interview was an emotionally intense event for you, so don't do anything in the spur of the moment (and "a few days later" may still qualify as "in the spur of the moment" in this context). Let a few more days pass, and see how you feel later.

Second, seek the guidance of a trusted person or mentor who is aware of the details. Maybe your advisor can feel out to what extent you have really bombed the interview quite as badly as you perceive it? Note that especially for interviews on grad student level, the committee will be positively used to people giving bad presentations and not being quite able to argue their case. Unless you have made a really monumental blunder, the committee has probably already forgotten about the details of your interview by the time the next coffee break rolled around.

Which brings me to the third point: no matter what you do, don't write an email reminding people that you did poorly or excusing yourself for not doing better. Don't try to argue your points, either. This won't make your interview better, but now people may also think of you as somewhat unprofessional. If you feel you need to write an email, keep it professional, thank them for the opportunity, and ask for feedback.

  Any alternative action that you would recommend? Or should I just let it go?

Letting it go is generally the right course of action in these situations. I have personally done my fair share of bad presentations, bad interviews, and (in retrospect) crappy paper submissions. Learn from them and improve for the future. You are a student. Mistakes are to be expected. Life will go on.

As someone who's been on the other side (the committee), taking at face value what you wrote, it sounds like you had a mediocre, not horrid, interview. One which you didn't perform very well at, and someone on the committee behaved like an ass.

I don't know if academia would be better or worse off if such an occurrence were rare enough to be memorable for members of the committee. But it very likely isn't. They've each collectively and individually interviewed dozens of junior people whose ideas seemed naive or uninteresting (whether the problem is the ideas or the interviewers' lack of imagination combined with narcissism is always a question...); who were less than compelling speakers; or bumbled questions. Whoever behaved like an ass to you probably behaved that way all day, maybe their entire career, and more humane members of the committee are probably heartily sick of his (it's always a he, somehow...) behaviour.

Bottom line is what feels like a big deal to you has likely already faded in the mists of time for them. The bar for making a bad impression is high, just like the bar for making a good impression. You likely merely didn't meet either one.

As others have answered, I'd learn from it as best you can, but I would not pick at the scab by taking any action in response to the interview itself. To the extent things did go badly rather than just not-good, the last thing you want to do is cement that in peoples' memories. Or force the kinder members of the panel to wrack their brains weeks after the fact to try to recall enough of the details in order to write a nice response note to someone junior who has since written to them, clearly distressed.

You can, if you wish, think about some of the discussion points and if you can turn them into something interesting/exciting (best to confirm this with a 3rd party....), reach out to specific individuals on the committee that you would like to have a positive relationship with and focus on the exciting/refined/improved ideas. Something along the lines of

  Dear X. You interviewed me 3 months ago for the John Q. Moneybags Ceremonial Monopoly Money Grant. We had a bit of an inconclusive discussion about y and z. I've followed up on this, of course, and think there's something quite interesting here, namely a and b. Thought you might be interested (regardless of the grant, of course). Let me know if you'd like me to send you more information.

However, I'd do this only after checking with someone that a and b are in fact good, not just "dang, I wish I had said that..." slightly-better answers. And that X is in fact an individual good for you to build relationships with, and likely to respond positively to such outreach.

Good luck!


Can you get a PhD based on work or life experience? Is there any possibility that I could be awarded a Ph.D. degree based on my work or life experience and good educational background?

Can you guide me to any institution offering such Ph.D.s?

Ph.D.s and other academic titles and degrees awarded for "work experience", "life experience" and so on are products of diploma mills. You pay a lot of money (thousands of USD) for a piece of paper that is completely worthless.

Employers know these worthless "titles". Such a "Ph.D." will not help you get a better job, and it will in particular not help you in an academic career. Instead, using such a "degree" in an application will brand you as naive at best or a fraud at worst.

Depending on your jurisdiction, using a "degree" "awarded" by a non-accredited institution, as these diploma mills usually are, may be illegal.

Nobody here will direct you to an institution that engages in such practices.

In my experience, you won't get a Ph.D. degree with just work experience. You need to contribute to the community by producing journal articles and research papers. So as long as you have significantly contributed to the academic or social environment and the university recognizes your talent, yes you can get a Ph.D. on successful review of your publication.

Note: Ph.D. award is given for your contribution alone, not as a company or as a team.


A lecturer is hard to understand, what to do? I have a lecturer at university that I find very hard to understand. My lectures are taught in English, but my lecturer is of East Asian origin, and English is not his first language.

I find the lectures incredibly hard to follow, just trying to understand what is being said requires a substantial effort, and I find the material is challenging in any case.

There is no textbook for the course, but we are given printouts of the lecture slides that are used in the lectures (six to each side of an A4 page). While the lecture slides do contain the material, they don't explain it like a good lecturer would.

I've spoken to my tutor about the course, telling him that I find it very hard to follow the lecturers. Many of my peers feel a similar way to how I do.

Finally, let me point out that I bear the lecturer no ill will; I just want to do well on the course.

As a lecturer in Asia, I appreciate what you are saying. I have some colleagues who are Asian who are quite clear when they speak English and others with whom I require a minute or two to even recognize when they are speaking English because their accent is so strong. You have to work with what you've got.

While you could confront your lecturer, as snim2 said in an answer, you need to be delicate about this. The lecturer could find you condescending or insulting. Even if the lecturer does not think you are being purposefully hurtful, making a lecturer self-conscious about his accent might make him an even worse lecturer (of course, it could help, depending on his personality).

I would recommend talking to the lecturer and simply say something like this: Hi teacher, I'm finding it necessary to read more about this topic in order to do well in your class. Could you point me in the direction of some reading material that I can use to improve my understanding of your subject? (then stop talking)

Once you have the reading materials, focus your learning there, perhaps with some genuine emails to your lecturer, if he allows.

Even the lecturers I've met with horrible English will happily go out of their way to find some material for you to read. Either they will recommend a textbook, some articles, or they will have some material they have collected on their own. I don't believe I have ever met a university lecturer who would be offended by this approach nor have I met one who would not support a student with such a request.

I have seen this problem solved two ways.

Get the professor to write extensive slides, which he can use in class. Many professors just read slides they preprepared for the lecture anyway, and this is the best thing a professor such as this can do to increase his understandability.
Get transferred to, or just start attending, other currently ongoing versions of this class. Often the class is being taught by multiple professors concurrently. Often they even cooperate and teach the same things on the same day.


U.S. grading system: Why discrete grades? Background

In the U.S., many colleges adopt an A–F grading scheme, topped with pluses and minuses.

Professors vary in the way they assign A to F grades, but my sense is most rely on discrete “bins”. For example, some professors use relative grading and (roughly) give an A to the top third or the class, a B to the second third, etc. Others will give an A to students who get between, say, 100% and 95%, and A− to students between 94% and 90%, a B+ to students between 86% and 89%, etc.

Using discrete bins necessarily implies some knife-edge cases where a student is right at the border with the next bin, and it would have taken very little for that student to jump into that next bin and improve their letter grade by one “level”.

That would be all fine (I guess) if letters where only honorary titles, and what mattered was the actual underlying percentage grade. However, in most places (i.e., all the places I know), it is the letter grade – and never the percentage grade itself – that is attached to the student’s academic record.

This could be an issue per se if a student wanted to show proficiency in a particular topic and got, for example, an A− that was in fact very close to an A. That student’s academic record will forever show very good but not perfect for that course, whereas it should really indicate almost perfect. This creates understandable frustrations from students who nearly made it.

Things get even worst when averaging through different courses and computing one’s GPA, since most colleges then use a scheme like the following one:

A: 4.00
A−: 3.67
B+: 3.33
B: 3.00
B−: 2.67
C+: 2.33
…

Again, this means that the half of a percent a student needed to jump from an A− to A will have a significant effect on that student's GPA, where really, the effect of getting one more half of a percent should be negligible, regardless of the baseline percentage one is starting from.

In a world where GPAs are taken so seriously, this means that half of a percent can make a significant difference in a student’s life and career. Again, this can create understandable frustrations for students who nearly made it.

My question

I know that there are “palliatives” to deal with the discrete grading scale and avoid some of these knife-edge cases, such as rounding up decimals. In all fairness, I don’t think those are real solutions (rounding up decimals just moves the problem from one threshold to another), but that's not what I am interested in here.

What I would like to know is:

Are there any arguments in favor of using a discrete grading scheme like the one above?
Or is just a product of history and the difficulty to coordinate practices across the vast number of U.S. colleges?

In other words, is anyone claiming that the discrete scale has virtues of its own other than the fact that it is used in so many places – creating comparability –, and that it would be hard to coordinate a change at all those places at once?

I am in favor of using the US discrete grade system. Some thoughts I will address are as follows:

As the OP mentions, in the US, the ABC grade system is relatively standardized and well understood by a large variety of institutions. It makes comparisons among students from a variety of schools more compatible (although, yes, not perfectly comparable).

Beyond this, I feel that the ABC system delivers the appropriate amount of granularity. After all, you have to truncate grade percentages somewhere. In some sense every system is discrete.

One method that I have used for my students in math classes in the US is a clustering system guided by the grade cutoffs. The percentages are guarantees. After that, I cluster students into grade groups, with students who barely missed the cutoff still usually getting adjusted up. For example, let's say that we have the following percentages:

  93.23%, 93.17%, 92.88%, 92.81%, 92.08%

I would give the first four students A's and the final student an A- under normal circumstances. (It is usually more nuanced than that). I feel that the grades I gave my students usually very accurately described their proficiency relative to the stated outcomes of the course.  This was also vastly true when I was a student. In fact there were times where I would prefer to take my A grade than my raw percentage. An 'A' sounds much better than "I got 83% raw, but I was the second highest grade in the course."

In my opinion, the ABC system actually is a stronger system than a raw percentage system. Is a 95% in Dr. Haskin's Calculus I class better than a 97% in Dr. Bodrel's Calculus I course? Both would result in an A grade. Or how would a 97% in Calculus I compare to a 97% in Floral Design? By using the ABC system, we effectively run a sort of "low-pass" filter on the grades. In my opinion this actually allows for a fairer comparison between students.

Let me also add that having a raw percentage system would be awful from the perspective of an instructor. Students already anguish about their grades. Now picture if they had to anguish about not just getting an A, but getting 100%. You would end up having students with 98% in the course worrying about getting 99%. It just becomes excessively fiddly. As a former student myself, I would actually hate a raw system. I was grateful for being able to get an A with 94% in a class without having to worry about pushing it up to a 95%.

I will close by saying that school and grades are not always fair. Such is life. No matter what system you use, there will be drawbacks from one perspective or another. There is no system that is perfect.

Addendum: Several comments have mentioned thoughts on being graded relative to others. Note first that my proposed method never moves a student down a grade, only up. Several comments seem to overlook that.

  @BartoszKP: "You are grading not 'their proficiency relative to the stated outcomes,' but 'their proficiency relative to the stated outcomes and relative to other students.' Did other students doing well make this student suddenly know less?"

How could raising a grade indicate a student "knew less"? It seems that raising a grade would actually indicate a student knew more.

I guess I could grade students solely on their raw scores, 100ths of a percent be damned. Then students would be graded with less relativity to their peers. But wasn't such a "zero-tolerance of rounding up" system one of the named drawbacks of the ABC system? It seems like we are trying to play both ends of the flute here. I can see that it would be patently unfair if I rounded students down a grade. I must say though, I have never had a student complain about being graded "relative" to their peers when I rounded their grade slightly up.

Secondly, to continue the thoughts on being graded relative to one's peers, we need to keep in mind that it is next to impossible to provide students from current semesters the identical exam experience as students from previous semesters encountered. By adjusting scores within semester, this can help control for slight variations in exam difficulty from semester to semester. Note that I do not always have complete control over exams, since they often must be written on teams with other professors. All told, which system seems more "fair," a system that does not control at all for variability in exam writing styles or a system that attempts to account for that?

I think it depends partly on the nature of the class.  As a (former) teacher of electronics, I could argue that ABCDF is too granular:

Can student identify a clipped signal or not?
Can student measure the voltage on a test point or not?

But an art class would be very subjective.


My PhD adviser is objecting to my request to change my PhD topic I am a midway PhD candidate, I have finished all of the coursework and the qualifying exam. This my fifth semester (i.e. I'm starting my 3rd year now). Now I feel that, the topic I've selected to work on is not the right one for me. As both my adviser and myself are not experts in that area.

I initially thought things will go fine and progress gradually but it hesn't gone as I expected. So far I have managed to write a manuscript for review paper (almost ready for submission) but I have only got very simple preliminary results. I'm really not feeling comfortable to continue in this topic because I am not getting the guidance that I need. I know that as a PhD candidate, I have a responsibility to do almost research and learn new techniques on my own but definitely help is needed to become an independent researcher, otherwise, we wouldn't have an adviser at all.

I have tried to contact someone in the field from another school but my advisor is not helping me in that regard (which I feel is discouraging). I don't know how am I going to make a meaningful contribution to the field, if I'm struggling to reproduce some results from the literature (that might look basic for the people in the field).

Last week I told my adviser I'm thinking of changing my topic;

  he told me either I have to continue on the same (current) topic or I need to find a new adviser, he also mentioned that he might leave the school soon so know if I should change to a new topic since this could may take time and delay my progress further.

I'm concerned that changing my adviser at this stage might look negative in the department. I've worked diligently to be allowed to work with my current adviser so I'm trying to avoid that option unless absolutely necessary.

Now, is it expected that I will continue working this topic even if I'm not comfortable with it and my adviser may not help me on it or should I change my adviser regardless of the consequences.

I'm looking for any suggestions on how to convince my adviser to change my topic and work on something that is in our field.

What you need is a realistic option. According to what you write, your advisor may leave soon and your advisor doesn't want to work with you on a different topic. Consider those as given. You aren't going to "wear the advisor down" or impose your own will on the advisor. That seldom happens and even more seldom successfully.

If your advisor is satisfied with your current progress and expects completion before he leaves then one viable option is to keep on with what you are doing.

If you really must abandon the topic, then a different advisor is probably a viable option as well.

I don't see other possibilities here that have much likelihood of success. Either of those two options has implications on time to completion, of course, as well as on how you act and feel in the short term. But either can be leveraged into a career. Keep your eye on that prize. Not the short term.

The project you are tied to wants you to conduct research which reasonably can be put in the subject area for the grant money the project received. If you work outside of that area it can look like your advisor uses the promised money for stuff other than it was supposed to / assigned for.


How should one interpret a requirement that a proposal in pure math be "jargon-free?" I'm applying for a fellowship wherein they ask for a long proposal about what I'm working on (a PhD thesis in pure math).  Then they advise me that some of those evaluating me will be from non-math departments, so the proposal "should be jargon-free."

Right off the bat I guess [PSL2(Od):Γ] < ∞ is out of the question...  I could explain what a manifold is to a mixed audience, but I think they'd need to do some homework before they followed what it might have to do with finite index subgroups of Bianchi groups (or whatever topic you might be studying).  Without the "jargon" I feel like my whole language for it is gone. Afterall the reason we have so many definitions is because each one refers to a distinctly defined thing that we previously had no name for!

I can see that I could take a more historical, conceptual perspective, but I'd still be dancing around what I'm actually doing.  It's especially hard to summarize something that is not even fully developed.  I think that for people who don't study math, the only reference point is science applications, but those don't really exist here because then it would be applied math and not pure math.

I'm coming up short looking for anyone addressing this online.  There are multidisciplinary tips about writing proposals, but I think the accessibility problem is at its biggest with pure math.

I think that the key idea here is that they want to know why you are doing what you are doing more than what you are doing.

Let's say you're diligently working towards establishing an isomorphism between soliton elves and the christmas-tree singularity.  That's all well and good, but:

There are lots of properties in the world.  Why is isomorphism between soliton elves and the christmas-tree singularity an interesting property to try to establish?
Is there a higher-level strategy to your approach than "just do lots of math until the problem is solved"?
Why is the approach that you are taking a good one?
If you establish this property, what are the consequences, and what comes next?

A really good and clearly written proposal should be able to have its logic grasped by pretty much any scientist, whether or not they are capable of judging its originality, plausibility, and significance in detail.

My only suggestion would be to describe how the work you do could eventually be applied to improve the human condition. I simply don't accept that pure mathematics can't be of benefit to humankind.


Can a thesis not answer the research question and still be good? I have written a thesis about applying some AI techniques to a simulation that my professor introduced. To make this happen, I had to implement a very large amount of software, because the simulation works in another language, follows different principles etc.

After 6 months of hard work, I did not reach my goal. I was not able to actually implement the AI technique I wished to apply to the problem. I created a lot of reusable components that future developers (and in fact other students as I was told) will want to use. But the actual question and also the title of the thesis (which both had to be fixed ahead of time and cannot be changed once it has been started) don't match the main body of my work.

Can a thesis still be considered good even if the question was not answered because it was not "reached"? If not, why? If yes, why? I can imagine this going either way but I'd like to hear opinions and experiences.

Basically I would require another 1-2 months and maybe someone to work on the problem as a team to get new ideas. I believe I still worked in a scientific manor (I prioritized reusability and usefullness over just reaching the question but without it being easily reusable) and no one ever said science is only good if it never misses a deadline. But I can also imagine an argument that simply states an unanswered research question is a bad work.

My original intention was to apply this AI technique to the common example research problems (like Atari games or locomotion) but my professor insisted I apply it to his field of work (energy market simulation). I had to agree if I wanted him to take my thesis and I didn't know how complex the mapping of his problem to the commonly used tools would be. The argument "a good researcher is also capable of creating a reasonable problem scope" therefore is a little unfair as he sort of forced me to extend it.

Alternative B I write a preface / authors comment at the beginning, stating that the title/research question won't be matched but due to university regulations may not be changed retrospectively.

Alternative C: A fellow researcher recommended me to just change the question and content but ignore the title. I hand in my thesis under the forced title but publish it under a more suitable title. That seems a little "fake" as I don't want to lie about my original goal and me missing the final goal.

Edit: Most suggestions go along the lines of "depends on your professor or institution". While I fear this is probably the only right answer that helps me personally, it doesn't seem right that it depends on the professors attitude or personal opinion. From an abstract perspective, is it OK to rate a scientific work as a bad work if it fails to reach a previously defined target when new information came to light along the way? Probably not. But is it common practice to change the research question at the end to better match / suit the line of argumentation? It seems to me the question should reflect what the researcher asked him/herself when he/she started the inquiry. If the results are not what was expected, that doesn't mean it's bad results.

The short answer to your question is yes, you can have a good result even if you don't (completely) answer the original question. However, the advice you really need is from your professor. Don't express negative feelings about how he "forced" you or anything like that. Ask him for his analysis of your work and how to best position it.

Many research questions take a long time to resolve. Don't be discouraged by that.

But the work isn't a failure, and you, especially, shouldn't think of it that way. You want to ask yourself, however, "What, exactly, did I demonstrate in this work". Your wording of the rest should revolve around answering that question and showing how you did a good job of it.

You can have a final section that discusses how this work is part of a larger work and briefly describe the problem you started out to solve.

However, some of your statements confuse me. You seem to be saying that at some earlier point you gave a title to the university that makes a claim of success to the earlier question, and that that can't be revised. Such a policy would surprise me and I would make doubly certain that you are correct. But advice from your professor would also be valuable here.

When it comes time to publish your work, there is no rule anywhere that I know of that restricts you in the title of the paper(s) that get produced. So even if you are sort of "stuck" with an inappropriate title, you can just treat it long term as an anomaly. You then have a little joke you can share with future students if you stay in academia.

I found the answer I gave to the other question :

You can have a valid result showing that the "XXX method" is not the best in YYY situation - that is, or can be, useful work for someone who does not waste their time on that possibility.

They can then focus on a different direction - which you can also do ie checking out if the Tabu search works for ZZ or AA for example..


Does emailing a journal to ask if my article is within scope hurt chances of getting published? When I started my "quest for knowledge" several years ago I began in an already ill defined-field which was on the borders between science and philosophy but as I progressed I drifted further and further into something I can only classify as "something pertaining to many sciences but not really a part of any one field". It became some even I-can-not-tell-what field of science and although I have completed my quest and came with a sound paradigm it doesn't really pertain to the scope of any of the journals in my area which I use in my references. Or to be more precise, it pertains to all of them but only "a little bit", this is why selecting the proper journal seems so difficult now.

In order to solve the problem, and actually thinking this is a solution, I decided to write a small e-mail to journals explaining my situation and what I have done. It was something like a 200-300 word abstract so they know what my paper is about and then asked if this is within the scope of their journal. None have answered me!

Has anyone had a similar experience? Did I do the right thing writing their editorial boards these e-mails? Did I shoot myself in the foot by doing this? Any suggestions what the effect of these e-mails could have been (e.g. they think I am a crackpot, they just deleted them, they put me in a "forbidden list")? Am I doing something terribly wrong here? Can anybody give me advice as to how I can handle the situation from now on? Do such e-mails effect my chances of publishing there negatively or outright stop them?

Don't worry.  There is nothing bad about what you have done, and it will almost certainly have no impact on consideration of any manuscript you may submit to any of those journals.

Most academics divide their time between large numbers of obligations, and they receive many unsolicited emails; this is even more true of those who are on the editorial board of a prominent journal.  Many of them will not reply to an unsolicited message from someone they don't know.

They have not put you on a "forbidden list" or labeled you as a crackpot (unless the content of your message was such as to warrant that -- but even then they probably don't remember your name).

Let me add that it is sometimes a good idea to contact an editor before submitting your paper, and I have done so on occasion.  This usually requires that you know the editor, or that someone who knows them can introduce you -- or that you can manage to bump into them at a conference.  Asking informally if your manuscript is a fit for their journal can be helpful when the work falls between disciplines, and an immediate answer saves time for you, for the journal, and possibly for potential reviewers.  When doing this you should usually contact the particular associate editor who is most likely to handle a manuscript like yours.

I have two suggestions for you.

1) For books, authors are encouraged to submit a "proposal."  Here are some sample instructions:

  Submissions Guidelines

  Please be sure to include the following items in your submission. Your proposal should not exceed 30 pages and should preferably be in the form of a Microsoft Word document.

  A title and a subtitle.
  A one-paragraph overview that explains the premise of your book, why you wrote it, and who you see the audience being (with any relevant demographic data you might have about the potential size of the audience).
  A brief author biography (1–2 pages) that focuses on why you are uniquely qualified to write your book and what kind of platform you have to reach a wide audience.
  A table of contents that outlines the book, with chapter and section titles, as well as brief descriptions of the material each chapter and/or section will cover. It should be no more than ten pages total.
  A market analysis of the potential readership for your book, including a comparison to similar books. When comparing your proposal to other works, please briefly explain (just several sentences) how your proposed book differs from these titles. Please limit yourself to 3–4 books.
  A sample chapter that is representative of the style and content of the larger work.

I will suggest that you take this as inspiration for how to pitch your article to journals.  Try to reduce the 200-300 word pitch down to a more manageable size.  Maybe your pitch will be a little bit longer than the sample I included.  Imagine that you are writing to someone you know pretty well in one of these near-fields.  Explain to this friend why your article will be interesting to its target audience.

Interestingly, when I have gone through this exercise, I have ended up with a clearer idea of what I'm trying to accomplish with my article, and it has enabled me to improve my article!

Your pitch may be a bit different depending on which area the journal you're submitting to covers.  For example, if you submit to a chemistry journal, your pitch would be different from a submission to a physics journal.  You would need to explain to the chemistry journal why your paper would be interesting and important to chemists.  And for the physics journal, why it would be interesting and important to physicists.  (Physics and chemistry are just examples.)

The pitch is written in a more down to earth way than the paper itself.  And note that the pitch is not the same as an abstract.

The pitch is kind of like those short blurbs you hear as ads in the Fresh Air podcasts, where the advertiser tries to give you an idea in 25 words or less what kind of book is being advertised, so you can form a very quick idea of what kind of book it is.

Your pitch will function as a pre-submission query.  As others have noted, this is unusual.  The better you can prune this down, and really focus it, I think the better your chances will be.

If you are going to introduce a completely new animal to your circus, you need to describe this animal to people, so they will be receptive to it.

2) Find at least one person with a strong publication list of his or her own to put in a good word for you -- in whatever way that person is comfortable doing.  In other words, do some networking.  This person will not be recommending that the journal accept your article.  Rather, this person will be requesting that the journal seriously consider your submission, despite its unusual nature.

Make sure that you and this person (~mentor) are on the same page about the thrust of your pitch, so that s/he can underscore some important parts of it, in a way that matches your description.

Last note.  Please don't be tempted to start with the first paragraph of your question here, or anything like that.  It was fine for Academia SE, but it wouldn't be an effective way to start your pitch.

Edit:

To clarify, adapt the above sample instructions to suit your needs.  Specifically, I would enclose the manuscript itself along with the thing I have called the "pitch."


Creating a virtual institute I have been toying with the idea of becoming an independent researcher, raising money by working very long/hard hours for a year, then taking a year off for solely for research. This would be partially for financial reasons (Post-Doc salaries are really awful), but also because I think my research would benefit if I could pour my undivided attention into algorithm design for a year.

The biggest problem with this plan however is that in order to publish my research after a year or so of intensive work, I would need to be affiliated with an institute - even journals like arXiv require this.

This got me thinking - what actually is an institute? From the little bit of research into it I have done, it seems to be no different to a standard company, although most have charitable status and are tax-exempt or non-profit.

If other people would also like to work for-profit for a year, then for-research for a year (or at some other frequency), then a virtual institute to publish under would be quite a useful thing. In fact I'm surprised such institutes don't already exist: we have scam journals and scam conferences - why no scam institutes?

Of course if I did set up an institute to publish under it wouldn't be a scam, (there are numerous benefits I can see a virtual institute providing for members), but the idea of a on-paper-only institute is applicable to both.

I know a number of independent or semi-independent researchers who have set up a small company for themselves to affiliate with (e.g., the whimsically named Turing Ate My Hamster, Ltd.), for various different reasons.

This is pretty easy to do and, I believe, achieves everything that you are looking for from a virtual institute.  It also has the advantage of not being fake in any way---just very small.

Creating such institute might hit some problems about local laws that do not accept/foresaw those things or maybe create some obstacles for possible members. Many countries feature laws that would prevent that such institute could ever be created because in order to allowing operation and/or recognizion as an educational and/or research institute, they demand things that only makes sense to physically existing ones. You can't circumvent that, because trying to do so would imply that your institute would be operating illegally, which would be a very bad idea.

In face of that problem, you might need to research what would be the best country in which the institute would be based to ensure the minimal possibility of such problems.

Further, many courses such as chemistry, medicine or geology needs quite specilized labs or practice lessons that will demand that at least some of the institution courses will need to have physical instalations.

But, afterall, I can assure you that virtual institutes do exist, and there is a lot of them. In Brazil, there is a lot of universities out there that provides many virtual graduation courses and many strictu sensu specialist virtual courses. Some institutes features only virtual courses at all (so you might call'em "virtual institutes"). However, there is no virtual master or PhD courses here yet, and I actually searched for that (dunno the reason though).

In fact, anedoctally, I was thinking about joining a strictu sensu virtual specialist course, but in the end I opted for a traditional one. My girlfriend, however, just started her virtual strictu sensu specialist course. In such courses, lessons are video streamed, homeworks are delivered via e-mail or via upload somewhere, students and teachers talk through course-specific forums, e-mails or some form of chat. With that, tools like Moodle and Skype are omnipresent. Everything is over the internet.

Those online courses features recognition from the government as educational institutes and the diplomas that they would eventually emit for their students is recognized by the government and by other universities as valid. In fact such online graduation and specialist courses are popping-up at such fast pace, that in a few years, it is likely that they will dominate over traditional ones and be the default style. For those courses that can't have 100% virtual lessons, they would become partly/mostly virtual, with only the parts that can't be virtual being not virtual.

Virtual courses have many advantages, such as the students being able to watch the lessons in their preferred times freeing them up to be able to work and earn his/her money through the day. This also free up the teachers to be able to make their best schedules. Also, since lessons are normally video streamed over the internet and NOT live, students may pause or rewatch them just as they would do in a YouTube video, which makes they more confortable to watch (you could take lessons in your bed watching them on your smartphone). This also eliminates those problems that may make some students lose lessons by not being able to go to the class in a particular day due to some particular problem or by losing part of the lesson due to arriving late because there was a traffic jam, or the problem of losing or not understanding an important part of the professsor's talk (in presential lessons this might be a killer, but in video lessons this is no problem since the student can just rewatch that part of the video). Further, since this is not a live video, if the teacher makes some mistake or get confused somewhere, he/she will just rerecord that part instead of confusing his/her students. Another advantage is that people living in areas where there is no traditional course in their area of interest (as is the case of many smaller towns) do not need to move to somewhere else in order to eventually take his/her lessons. Also, by being online, institutions can cut a lot of costs, which also lowers the cost of education for the students. This also allows for larger classes, lowering the needed rate of teachers over students in order to operate, and allowing more students to take courses. There are some disadvantages though, as student-teacher and student-student relations are severely degraded and some students aren't productive taking lessons that way, which makes them go back to traditional presential courses. Also, many types of reasearch becames harder or slower to do. And of course, the student needs the access of a reliable internet connection at least during part of the day.

Anyway, even institutions that features fully-online courses or mostly-online surely exist, they still must feature a physical location (even if that happens to be just an office somewhere) as a requisite to be recognized by the government (at least in Brazil, maybe some other countries do not even need that). Further, in order to be allowed by the government to operate and be recognized as courses, they must feature presential exams, even if everything else is online. Many courses also features semestral or annual student meetings.

So, virtual institutes surely exist, and they are very active doing real research and providing real lessons. All over the internet.

What about scammy institutes? I can assure that they also surely exists, sadly. Many of those virtual institutes are honest, but some aren't (to be fair, some traditional ones aren't too), and many of those institutes are just façades for making easy money by selling out undeserved diplomas. They features very low quality lessons and very stupid exams, if those aren't simply faked altogether. The government are always watching for those and frequently closes those scammy/dubious courses/institutes, but many of them are able to live very long without being caught by government course quality measurements (it is not very hard to trick out the government). With that, many online courses are still seen negatively by many people, to the point that some people simply refuse to hire people who took online courses, which in turn also makes the life of the honest online institutes and students harder.

Further, there is several grades of "scammyness". There are institutes that do dubious/scammy practices only in some courses or some disciplines or just with some students. For example, they might feature honest courses, but might also secretly/illegally sell diplomas and fake scholar records for students that pay enough cash for that without ever watching a single lesson (of course, both parts will never admit that in public, so you will never see that service being advertised). Also, some courses might selectively be too easy or too hard depending on the student (for example, those who pays regularly get easy exams, those who delay or default payments get hard exams). Some may secretly pass a failed exam and fake the grade if the student bribe them for that. There are many other ways where institutes might be in the category "not fully honest but also not fully scammy either". However, those are old practices from already existing unethical traditional institutes that just showed up their already seen face and vigour when they went to the virtual space.