Why is plagiarising words such a big deal? Plagiarising the ideas of others is obviously a big deal. You are stealing the hard work of others and misleading your peers by pretending it is your original work.

But why is plagiarising words and paragraphs considered a big deal? I mean, isn't the point of academic effort to transmit ideas and knowledge? Who cares what specific words were used to transmit it? It's not like we are writing poems here: the words themselves don't matter, the underlying ideas do.

For example, say you are writing an article, and you need to add a short section on some background information. Your original source for this information is some book by a guy called Juntao, in which he writes

  It is well-known that the K-Group is hyperdifferentiable and pseudo-geometric. It can further be shown, given certain assumptions on the continuity of the underlying complex manifolds, that the associated Einstein-curves are super-composites and universally dense in the field of measurable spaces. Indeed, this was shown by Hilbert and Plato in their seminal work on uncountable and analytically algebraic left-Sylvester Deligne graphs.

Say you need to provide this information in your paper. What’s the problem if you just copy it verbatim? I mean, I could write it in my own words, easily. But why should I be forced to waste time on that? Why is it a problem if I just use the above formulation?

As long as you refer to the original material, such as by ending the section with

  For more information on this material and proofs of the stated theorems, we refer to the works of Hilbert and Plato [1840]. A complete summary of the material can be found in Juntao [1998].

then everything ought to be fine, isn’t it? And yet, there are question like this, where somebody wanted to "seek justice" just because somebody else stole a few sentences of his.

Per your example, you are not, in fact,  "forced to waste time" finding another way to express the idea that another author had. You can just copy the passage down verbatim, but to do so without putting it in quotes and citing it is plagiarism. If you write a publication that has no quotes in it, you are essentially claiming that you wrote the entire thing yourself. If you have copied text verbatim, that is false. You are taking credit for someone else's work, which is rather frowned upon in academia.

Authors should be deliberate and unambiguous in their language, so finding the right words to express an idea isn't always a trivial task. A lot of work can go into a sentence that is succinct, precise, and understandable. Your choices are to either find different words to express that idea, or give someone else credit for having done the work already.

I feel like it is pertinent to point out that, in most cases, scientific publications are meant to build on existing work. Plagiarising words and sentences verbatim, without being able to bring an original spin is simply not publication ready.

Essentially if it is a very basic tenet of your field then you will never need to mention it, you may simply cite a standard book and move ahead to present your work. There are word and page limits as well.

I believe this question arises mostly while writing reports and other "unoriginal" documents.

If you are aso student then, think of this as a learning experience, not a broken part of academia.


No summer funding, what to do during the summer? If a STEM field PhD student is not able to be funded for the summer, what do they typically do?  I'd imagine they can't afford to take an entire summer off from their research - or they would probably risk not graduating in the standard 5 years in a U.S. program - but at the same time it would be hard for them to support themselves, eg, cover rent and living expenses, if they aren't supported by their parents / family.

Depending on your specific field, and when you've found out summer funding isn't guaranteed or available, I present main options in no particular order:

Research internship in 'industry' ($ to $$$$$)
Apply for summer grants to work in another University in different, but hopefully related, research ($ to $$)
Get a summer job or non-research internship - ideal if it uses some set of related skills to your PhD, but if not, oh well, bills to pay ($ to $$$+)
As Dawn suggested, a sub-set of summer job is to seek the option to be an instructor, summer teaching assistant, or grader in your University (or a nearby institution), or even being an adjunct for the summer if that option is available to you ($ to $$)
Vacation, travel, relax rejuvenate, try some hobbies, spend time with friends and family (-$ to -$$$$)
Focus on your own personal research, free of official obligations (at least -$, due to living expenses)
Have an existential crisis due to the lack of driving structure which otherwise distracts you from your morality/mortality and the uncertainty inherent in life itself (free, and can stack with other options)
Choose your own adventure

Above all, I suggest planning ahead - if not for this summer, then for the next one. Most outcomes are uncertain, so judicious planning for multiple applications, budgeting (so you have options on how to spend your summer), and trying to develop a number of options will be important.

Note also that many of the options don't need to - and perhaps should not - take up the entire summer, so you should have the option to try out multiple things. Remember: academic life is a marathon, which extends off into the unknown future until you fade away (go Emeritus) or leave ("go into industry"). That makes the longest ultra-marathon on earth seem short by comparison. No matter what you do, try to change things up a bit, work in some rest and contemplation, friends and family, and a bit of fun for yourself too. If academic life starts to resemble a 24/7/365.25 prison sentence, you might want to reconsider your worldview.

Is the school trying to tell you something? Like go away? If so leave.
Assuming not Change Advisors
If your advisor is so poorly funded that he can't afford a summer stipend, there is no chance he can afford to equip his lab, and this really does not bode well for his future, and you're probably going down in flames with him if you stay


Should I ask about the status of my PhD application? I applied for admission for a PhD at a university in the US in mid December.  After contacting a potential advisor, he told me that he is interested in my CV. However, I didn't get any response about the status of my application. So, should I send an email to the professor asking him about the decision of my application or should I contact the university directly?

It's usually the university that handled admissions. Your professor may not have any clue which stage your application is in. So your best bet is contacting the university graduate research department, and asking for timeframes around outcome.


For what reasons (if any) would a journal refuse to inform the reviewers about the final accept/reject decision? I have reviewed several papers for a particular journal in the field of computer science. This journal has the practice of not informing reviewers about the final decision. As an example, I previously suggested a major revision and after a couple of weeks I received the revised paper, then I suggested a minor revision and had radio silence since then (6-7 months ago), so I have no idea whether the paper was accepted, rejected or withdrawn.
To me, it seems like both the decision and the non-blinded, non-private parts of the correspondence should be shared. This seems reasonable given the effort I expended; further, it would be helpful for my future reviews to know whether my review was on par with the others (in terms of both the decision, and the comments). It seems like there is already software that would automate this process (this journal uses Open Journal System as its editorial management system).
Are there disadvantages I am overlooking? What are the arguments for not sharing this information with the reviewers?

One possible rationale would be a belief that the acceptance decision ought to be a confidential matter between the journal and the author, and the reviewers simply don't have a "need to know".
The argument "it is important feedback for the reviewer" isn't very strong, in my view.  Knowing the fate of the paper doesn't really give you much information about whether your review was helpful in reaching that decision, and certainly doesn't tell how you could have made it better.  Conversely, if the editor wants to give you feedback on your review, they can certainly do so without revealing the final decision.
By analogy, consider what happens when you write recommendation letters for people.  When they apply to a school or employer, the school doesn't tell you whether the applicant was accepted or not, because they consider it to be nobody's business except the applicants's (and privacy laws may back this up).  Of course this is a different situation in many ways, but I think the underlying principle is the same - having been part of a process doesn't, in and of itself, entitle you to information about the result which would otherwise be confidential.

Are there any reasons why the details of a peer review process should be kept secret from the reviewers?

Yes, it burdens the editor.

Reviewers can ask for---and in my experience will receive---reviews from fellow reviewers.

The outcome of the peer review process will eventually be known to reviewers (with a few exceptions).


Asked to combine work with competitors, but competitors are under ethical investigation Got a manuscript accepted and then pulled because of a similar manuscript submitted by another group to the same journal. Per the request of the editor, two groups combined the manuscripts. Now the manuscript was held up for unknown reasons.

I re-read the other group's manuscript and found a number of serious flaws. I don't think any reviewer would pass those up. Now I really regret combining the manuscripts with the other group, but it was the editor's request.

In addition, there were some ethical issues with the other group (gift authorship), which may have been reported to the journal by our research integrity officer.

Should I just ask the editor if they will reconsider publishing our data alone with addition of the new data that the journal wanted without having to take the whole mess with us? I am really frustrated now.

If there is any kind of ethical problem with the other group, you need to avoid involvement in unethical behavior as much as possible.  Tell the editor that, owing to ethical concerns, you are no longer willing to work with the other group.  You can ask them to consider publishing your work separately, but you should be clear that you would prefer to take your work to another journal instead of combining the manuscripts.

While I understand your ethical doubts, I see two reasons why going along with the merge may be in your best interest:

If you have access to their manuscript, I assume the other group has access to yours, and is possibly able to correct their flaws. If you pull out, the journal may accept them to publish the result without you.
As the other group is working on the same problem, chances of having them as reviewers in your next submission are probably not small. It is not unthinkable that they would have adversarial behavior and stall your paper while they try to get their own published.

I don't have all the details and I will not make a full judgement, but I hope this can be useful for your evaluation of the situation.


Is it okay to ask your professor about the final exam that I took 3 years ago? So in my first year of university, I failed one class. I was really good at that subject and had great grades but because of my final exam, I have failed it. I felt discourages and thought that maybe I deserved it because I did not prepare for it as much as I could. I thought that I did okay on the exam but there was a thought that maybe I am just thinking that I did well but actually I didn't? Not sure how to describe it.
Next year I am going to graduate and this thought still bothers me, like did I actually do that badly on the exam? I keep thinking about asking the prof for my final paper but I don't know if that's okay. I checked and he is still teaching at my university.
Do you think it is okay to ask about the exam even if it's been so long?

It is completely fine for students to request to see their final exam scripts. As a lecturer, I am actually surprised and slightly frustrated that many students seem to be only interested in their mark, not the feedback.
However, asking for an exam dating back 3 years may be a bit more difficult. Exam papers are only kept for a particular amount of time, often ~3 years. So if you want to ask, do it as soon as possible before your exam paper is discarded.

Most universities specify in the policy / rules / regulations the amount of time between the exam taking place and any review permitted by the student.
Usually this is a few weeks to a few months after the exam board has sat and the official marks sent to the students.
Also, "odd" performance by any student will normally be noted and discussed as part of the exam board - any extenuating circumstances etc. But if the other subjects were fine then they may have simply concluded you had "had a bad day" for that one exam.
So, ask but do not be surprised if the answer is no. If you were asking about the final exams you just took then the answer would probably be an easy "yes".
I have students asking each semester - hoping for extra points... but it does not happen, because I mark looking for reasons to give points not remove them.
But instead of posting here, you could have emailed your professor directly and had a response already - which may have been that they will give you a run down of the questions / answers even if you are not allowed to physically see the script anymore.


Should I include my converted GPA/final semester GPA on my CV? I'm applying to graduate school and I'm contacting potential supervisors, as advised by the universities I'm applying to.

My GPA is 16.33/20. When I convert it to the 4.0 scale,according to WES, my overall GPA, GPA in the final 2 years, the final year and the final semester are 3.41, 3.34, 3.4 and 4.0 respectively.

Does 3.41 look better than 16.33? As I want to make a good first impression, should I include my final semester GPA or does it simply highlight my poor performance in the previous semester?

Provide a copy of the original transcript(s) detailing all the grades.

Any university will convert the values according to their "rules" and evaluate your application as necessary.

I wouldn't describe the smaller time periods within the CV.  If you want to emphasize an improvement trend, do it within your essay.  Just list the 4 year average on the resume.

Yes, convert it to 4.0 scale.  It is the stereotypical standard.  Leaving it as 16.3/20 is a pain, forcing most readers to convert themselves.


Rebuttal is limited to 500 words, but the reviewers asked almost 20 questions I have got a rebuttal for the conference and require to respond the questions reviewers asked. However, the response section says "Your response must contain at most 500 words." How can I answer almost 20 reviewers questions in 500 words? Any suggestions?

I suspect I know which conference you are talking about (I am in the Program Committee) :)

Answering questions in the rebuttal phase of conferences is a newly emerging skill. Almost any paper faces the issue that you are facing - rebuttals are strictly word-limited, and the reviews / questions are waaaaay too long to clarify everything.

A good strategy for dealing with this depends on you understanding how the rebuttal will actually be used in the final phase of reviewing. Essentially, after your rebuttal, there will be a final phase of (online or physical) discussion among the reviewers and PC chairs to decide if the merits of your paper outweight its limitations, if the paper is important enough to warrant presentation at the conference, and so on. Many papers have nobody really willing to fight for it (i.e., everybody mostly sees limitations), and for these papers your rebuttal will not change anything. A handful of papers will only have people positive about the work, and in these rather rare cases the paper will be accepted no matter what you write. Some papers will have one or more quite positive people ("champions") and one or more people who are sceptical or downright negative. In these cases your rebuttal can play a major role in how the discussion goes.

Your rebuttal should be written for this specific case, and it should be written to give the champion(s) the best possible ammunition to counter the arguments of the sceptical crowd. That means:

Answer questions where you have a really convincing answer, especially if they come from the most positive reviewers.
If you identify factual mistakes or misunderstandings, clarify them directly and without the polite hollering one tends to do during journal reviews.
Focus on questions or concerns that multiple reviewers have, especially if you have a good argument.
Focus on concerns regarding methodology, validity, or importance of the work. Don't focus on presentation-level issues (the champion can always make an argument that these can be fixed in the camera-ready version, you don't have to point this out).
Remember that you don't get an actual revision for most conferences. Do not agree that some additional work will be needed (even if it's small), this will work against you.
Do not get into discussions that are a matter of taste or subjectivity (you won't change anybody's mind on those).
Do not feel like you need to address everything.
Skip polite phraseology ("Dear Reviewers, we are very grateful that you took the time to ..."). Get to the point.

Importantly, it's not similar to a response letter for a journal. You do not have to convince every single reviewer. Counter-intuitively, you need to focus your attention on the reviewers that may fight for your paper, and the ones that could realistically change their mind (in that order). Don't worry too much about a single reviewer that will never love your paper (especially one that does not like the kind of work you do or doesn't think it's important). You won't change their mind, and if the others champion your paper the PC chairs will likely side with the positive reviewers. Whereas in a response letter you will often "agree" with certain reviewer comments and fix them in the revision (even if you don't really agree), your goal here is to convince at least a subset of the reviewers that your current version is good as it is. Agreeing with the reviewer's concern may or may not get you sympathy points, but it will definitely not help you get the paper accepted.

Some questions are just questions.

Some questions are suggestions for further work.

Some questions imply that reviewers may want to reject the work.

Address the last questions in your rebuttal and leave the others for now.

If there is an opportunity to give a revised work, then address the first group in the revision.

But it is really only the ones that seem to suggest rejection that are essential to address. If there are so many of those that they cannot be addressed within the limits then the paper may be doomed for now, but you can still give it your best effort.


How to solicit feedback from students about faculty candidates? I am the grad student on the hiring committee, and I have been tasked with gathering feedback from grad students about our faculty candidates. All of the grad students were invited to attend each candidates job talk and an open meeting between the candidate and students.

My first attempt was to simply have the department send out a mass email telling the grad students to email me with their feedback. The next thing I tried was asking a handful of students from various labs to attend the talk and meeting then email me with feedback. So far I have received zero feedback on any of the candidates.

I believe my problem is that these talks are often sparsely attended (e.g., only people in the same field as the candidate) since many students have no motivation to attend and my feedback requests have been too open ended (e.g., feedback on what??).

How can I improve this process?

My ideas:

A rubric of what aspects to give feedback on
An organized committee of students that provide feedback and try to get other students to attend

As someone who was a graduate student until recently, I would have no idea how to respond to a request like this. Even if I were qualified to judge potential faculty hires (which I very much am not, even now, as a postdoc) you've simply asked for "feedback" without giving any specifics. Do you know what kind of feedback you're looking for? You have to answer that question for yourself first.

It sounds like this task was thrust on you. Can you get anything more specific from whoever put you in charge of this?

This whole thing sounds odd to me. In fact, I suspect it's really all for appearances, to make the grad students feel included or to appease some high-level administrator who thinks it's a good idea. If you think that's the case, my advice is to provide free food for grad students after the job talks (without the free food, no one will stay) and hand out evaluation forms with a few questions about the content/style of the talk. The forms are unlikely to be read by anyone, but you'll accomplish the task you were given and the students will get free food. Everyone wins.

Ask Faculty in the candidate's area to task a couple of their Ph.D. students with gathering feedback from the other students in that area and then sending the summary to you sanitized/anonymized.


Formal letter to an academic person holding Master's degree Usually it is simple: "Dear Prof. Berret...", Dear Dr. Jones...". But this time I have to write a formal letter to a person with a Masters Degree (MSc). I never met the person, can not be sure about their gender (Tracy Smith could be both man/woman). The person is active in academia, publishing frequently and their job title is "Director". What are my options?
Dear Director of... (with no name)?
Dear Principal Investigator ...?
Dear Mr Smith?
Dear Mrs Smith?
Anyone?

Don't overthink it. Try to find out the gender and then use "Mr." or "Mrs."
Even many professors don't insist on titles most the time and a person with a master degree is usually just a (former) student, who is one step further than other students. In a second E-Mail you can then use how they call themself in their signature.
"Dear Director" may be appropriate, when the job position is relevant to your E-Mail.
(It may depend on the country how much people want to be addressed using their academic full title)

In these cases, I either sidestep the issue and say "Greetings" or refer to them by their first name, e.g., "Dear Tracy."


Should I quote an anonymous review on my CV? I received an anonymous review from a journal.  This journal does not hide the identities of authors from reviewers.  Should I quote the reviewer's remark that the work is "impressive" on my CV?

Does the answer change if the manuscript is not accepted?

No, and no.  You should not try to hype up yourself with subjective comments in your CV or elsewhere in job applications, say.  Other people don't do this, and if you do you will seem strange and possibly desparate.  Your CV should be a list of objective information.  It is the job of your references to compare your work to other people's and say how impressive it is.

About the most you can do is keep the review in a personal "feel good" folder and look back at it when you need self-encouragement.

I would suggest looking at some CVs of successful PhD students (if you are still in graduate school) or scholars' CVs and use them as templates. I have some suggestions if you want one. I'm in the business/economics field.


Elsevier Review Speed I've submitted a new paper to Knowledge Based Systems journal for Elsevier.

But currently, after about 3 months, its status is still "Under Review"

I have to mention that about 6 weeks after the submission, its "status date" has been changed but its status not!

May you please tell me how long I have to wait for the decision about my paper?

I've checked the paper status in journalinsight.elsevier.com. For the journal, the first decision speed time is about 7.2 weeks. But my paper is still under review after about 3 months.

Thank you

I have to mention that about 6 weeks after the submission, its "status
  date" has been changed but its status not!

The status date changed because, either the editor sent the paper for review or any of the reviewer accepted to review the manuscript. Either case is possible. The status changes/date changes occur when some step has been taken by the editorial side or reviewer side.

  May you please tell me how long I have to wait for the decision about
  my paper?

I guess, nobody can give you a numeric estimate of this duration. It is completely dependent on the reviewer and their response to the editor's reminders. As a reviewer, we get around 4 weeks to review an article. However, they may remind us once or twice or sometimes give us an extension to do so. If the reviewer is very popular (bigshot), the editors sometimes don't care much about the timing rather focus on getting a strong and bias-free review from such reviewers. That takes time.

  I've checked the paper status in journalinsight.elsevier.com. For the
  journal, the first decision speed time is about 7.2 weeks. But my
  paper is still under review after about 3 months.

I have been waiting for last 6 months (and counting) to get the very first review on my paper; not in this journal, but something similar. If you are so curious to know, you should send a very gentle email to the editor asking about it or just a hint to remind him about your article. Because, in a pile of many articles under review, the editors sometimes may not look into your article. Probably something like this:

  Dear Editor

  Could I ask you about the present status of the review of my following: submitted manuscript?
  Title: Knowledge-Based Analysis of Review period of the Journal X (ID: KBS-16-xxxxx)?

  Sincerely

  You

Remember, editors are busy persons; he many not respond to your email too. And, Computer Science/Mathematics journals often take a lot of time for review purpose -- This is well-observed fact. No proof of this hypothesis is required!


Is asking your PhD supervisor a basic question considered inappropriate? I've done my Master's degree in Computational Mathematics. Then, because of several reasons, I decided to pursue my Ph.D. in the field of Quantum Chemistry.

The problem is, obviously, my lack of knowledge in this area. I'm studying, but even in my second year there are still many things I don't understand or which I understand incorrectly.

Now I'm stuck on one, probably pretty basic, concept, where I'm not able to find the proper explanation either on the Internet or in my books and my friends seem to be also quite confused by it (they seem to have just some general idea, as they have, probably, never needed to use it).

Now I'm not sure if I should ask my Ph.D. supervisor about it. Is it considered appropriate to ask your advisor about (probably) basic concepts in Ph.D. program? I'm afraid he'll think that I'm not willing to study the topic myself and that I'm wasting his time.

If your colleagues in the department—presumably also PhD students—don't understand the concept, either, it doesn't strike me that the question is truly "basic." That said, if your advisor is aware of your background, then he should know that there will be some things that might not be "obvious" to you.

Now, in this case, you have already "done your homework": you've searched for an answer on your own but couldn't find one. Mention this to your advisor when you ask the question. A good advisor will recognize that you have done what you're supposed to and provide some guidance to help you. He may not provide you all the answers but should at least be able to point you in the right direction.

Don't ask any basic question if you haven't first googled it or looked it up on wikipedia.

If you read a couple of papers, and still don't understand, you can ask.


Do I benefit my professors by publishing papers with them? I am currently working towards a master’s degree in computer science, after which I’d like to pursue a PhD in mathematics. Talking to some professors, it sounds like: If I can get some things published, I’ll have a better shot at getting funding for my PhD.

I’m currently working on a research project that I plan to use for my thesis with one professor (Professor L), but I've recently received an e-mail from another professor (Professor K) with a research project in mind that sounds more publishable.

My question is: Would I be acting out of line asking Professor K to conduct this research with me with hopes of publishing a paper even though he won’t be my adviser and graduate me from my master’s program?

Are there any benefits for him from working with me, or am I just being selfish by wanting to do both projects? Note that he’s not yet tenured (will this help on his track?).

Would I be acting out of line asking Professor K to conduct this research with me with hopes of publishing a paper even though he won’t be my adviser and graduate me from my master’s program?

You wouldn't be out of line, but you should check that Professor L is OK with you working with K, too. L's biggest concern is most likely to be whether or not you have time to work on both projects as well as going to classes and doing whatever else is required of you as part of your studies.

If you're not already exceeding expectations on your first project, it's unlikely that you'll be able to make good contributions to two projects simultaneously.  Also, bear in mind that, as a master's student, you almost certainly haven't yet developed an accurate judgement of what would or would not be publishable.

  Are there any benefits for him from working with me, or am I just being selfish by wanting to do both projects? Note that he’s not yet tenured (will this help on his track?).

Yes, there are benefits to everybody. Academics are primarily judged in terms of things like their research output, their ability to attract funding (which, in turn, depends on their research output), and their work with graduate students. Working with you directly helps him on two of those and indirectly on the third, so you're not being selfish at all.

And working with smart, enthusiastic, hard-working people is fun.

If you intend to do a PhD, you have to think long term, and forget about a short-term goal such as getting a single publication.

As a general rule, research groups work a bit like the mob: (1) everything is based on trust and you have to build a career within the group so the earlier you start the better, and (2) more often than not, there are shady stories between professors/research groups that you are not remotely aware of as a student (like that Professor X got a certain position over Professor Y in a really dirty way, Professor Z stole the idea of professor X, submitted a grant and got some funding, etc...).

Therefore, you can never be sure if choosing Professor X will prevent you from working with Professor Y later. As an extreme case, I have a friend whose PhD supervisor died and she could never finish the thesis in that University because no one else would continue supervising her just for having worked for him. Just saying.

So, to make the long story short, think long term. If you plan to do the PhD with Professor L, I suggest you accept the project of Professor L; same for Professor K.  If you are not sure or you are gonna do your PhD in another institution, choose the one you prefer.

Working with the same supervisor from beginning to end will certainly work in you own benefit. Working with different ones is an ultra-high risk endeavour.

I wish things were different, but this personal opinion/advice is based on what I have seen after having worked in 5 research institutions in 4 different countries.


How to prevent physical/psychological health side effects of workaholism in academia and research? As a research student, I spend most of my time working on my research career, even when I am at home, I am awake until 3 or 4 A.M just doing my research-chores.

As a matter of fact, long-term having not enough sleep, putting myself under huge amount of stress and hard work and more important, not getting enough exercise will directly put the person's health in to danger.

Q: How should a researcher balance their life to both maintain their health and do their academic job?

I am wondering whether professionals and scientists really hardly worked this much and how their healthy and balanced academic/work life-style is.

I put my health first by committing to healthy activities that involve other people, so I will have to stick to them.

For example, I

Have a standing weekly running appointment with a faculty member at my school. I won't cancel this appointment because she will be disappointed.
Have a standing non-academic volunteer commitment one afternoon each week (giving back to my community is essential for my mental health). I won't cancel this because there's a classroom full of 12-year-old girls waiting for me to come help them with their homework.
Spend 25 hours each week, from Friday night to Saturday night, completely disconnected from the Internet and anything work related. (I do this as a religious observance, but it's definitely good for my physical health, too!)
Hold meetings with students and faculty in other buildings in their offices, not mine, so that I am forced to occasionally go outside during daylight hours (if only to walk from one building to the next).

All of these things are non-negotiable to me. That is, no matter what how busy I am or what deadlines are coming up, I will not compromise on any of these things. They're essential to my health and well-being, I arranged them so that other people are depending on me, and so I prioritize them.

On the issue of workaholism, I think it all boils down to why people feel they are more valuable if they work hard. What makes them believe this? Are they trying to impress people and gain acceptance to fill a void?

Does a person "work to live" or do they "live to work"? The latter seems a waste of life to me.

If working very hard makes a person happy then perhaps they should do it. But if they are doing it for another reason and are not very happy, then maybe they need to reconsider.

Maybe a lot of this comes from popular culture when media personalities talk about somebody's "amazing body of work". We've heard that phrase many times. Ironically, very, very few people are remembered for their "bodies of work". It takes an EXTREME amount of EXTREMELY high quality work to be remembered for it.

People remember Mozart, but they don't remember the very good violinist that played with the city symphony 10 years ago. People remember Isaac Newton, but they don't remember lesser mathematicians who still contributed somewhat significantly.


Does submitting TeX sources to arXiv increase risk of plagiarism? It is mandatory that manuscripts that are TeX/LaTeX-based must be submitted along with all source files, which includes the tex document, images and supplementary files (like CSV files) required to generate the PDF.

According to arXiv's TeX FAQ, this sort of submission does not increase the risk of plagiarizing content. They claim that anyone with little knowledge can extract the necessary files from basic PDF files and that verbatim from TeX document can be easily detected.

Now, taking this from the practical viewpoint, is it really true that this does not make plagiarizing data easier than the simple PDF submission? According to my knowledge there are many potential plagiarizers who find it hard to take vector graphics from PDF files. Eventhough it is technically possible it does deter many to an extent.

So, does submitting (La)TeX source files to arXiv increase the risk of getting the plagiarized?

is it really true that this does not make plagiarizing data easier than the simple PDF submission?

The Arxiv doesn’t claim this. All they claim is that plagiarism is pretty easy anyway. The respective Arxiv text reads:

  There is no file format or other technological device that can protect you from [plagiarism]. At the very least, unscrupulous re-typers would always remain a threat. Postscript does not provide a barrier in any event: it is quite simple for someone with a little knowledge to extract any text from a Postscript file. Moreover a plagiarist who cuts-and-pastes directly from your TeX source is all the more easily detected, since the source is easily identified. We archive all versions of papers so that we can assist in any priority or plagiarism disputes.

  So, how safe is it to submit (La)TeX source files to arXiv?

For all practical purposes I would say it is as safe as any other type of Arxiv submission. I concur with the Arxiv that making a technical copy of your article is pretty easy anyway. Even re-typing the entire article and using screenshots of your graphics is a comparably easy task. Yes, the quality may suck, but that wouldn’t bother the plagiarist.

The main challenge to successfully plagiarise is to use the plagiarised article and remain undetected – not making a technical copy.

Short answer: (La)TeX submissions are as safe as PDF (and anything else, probably).

Scissoring images from a PDF is as easy as running pdfimages. Getting the text is as easy as running pdf2ascii. PDFs are in no way secure. To prevent plagery make sure you publish in a respectable journal - preferably Open Access.

Remember, if your machine can display some media, it must be able to decode it. Some formats may depend on hardware keys, which makes it more difficult to crack, but even so, the data is still present on your machine.

The point of publishing your work is to "stake your claim" to the work through peer-review.


Do universities care about bias experienced in group projects? I am a master's student, and I will complete my master's program soon. During my second year of my MA program, I had to work on a two-semester group project because it was a requirement for the program. My question is the types of critical issues universities care about because universities seem to see issues like academic dishonesty as the most serious offense. Would universities care about the types of incidents that I am about to share below?

Example:

I was in a group project of five people, and four of the members were Caucasians (I am a racial minority female). I was treated terribly by two of the members (one female and one male). We had the final paper that was due just yesterday. The male, who was the editor, tends to procrastinate, and he literally waited until the last minute to make significant changes, and demanded from everyone to make the changes. We did this paper in a shared Google Doc by the way. I had another paper that was due at exactly the same date and time, so by the time that he started to become actively involved, I was much more focused on my other paper. He sent everyone an email on the morning of the day just before the due date, demanding significant changes. I was able to look at emails late that night, and he had sent me another email in the evening, asking if I was still involved in the project. By this time, I was already much more focused on my other paper. My response to his email was that I understand that we all have different schedules, and it is possible that we do things at different times. I had worked on the document and made changes a few days before he became actively involved. His response was basically how dare I challenge him, and called me a passive-aggressive person. He even dropped the F-bomb in his response. Now, the other girl. She also had similar tendencies to procrastinate and got along well with this male. On the document, she purposefully deleted my name, and put a comment, "Let's keep it this way." My relationships with these two individuals had not been positive throughout the year, but I think this incident went very far.

I never had these kinds of incidents during my four years of undergrad at a different university in the US. I am certain that this type of incident is very rare, especially at the graduate school level. I think that I should share my experience with the school because I think that this is a critical issue.

I'm going to come this from the other (probably less popular!) direction.

I see no evidence of racial bias in your description. Of course I wasn't there and can't judge it, but to me it seems like you describe a straightforward disagreement between classmates. I would be very careful about raising the issue of race unless you have compelling evidence.

It is true that the group you describe is dysfunctional. For sure the others shouldn't have waited until the last minute, or should have made an appointment for everyone to work together on the last day. Still, I wonder if you are partly to blame for this. Again, I wasn't there, but:

Looking at this from the light most favorable to you, it seems like you did a good job on your part, submitted it ahead of schedule, and were planning to address the remaining edits later that night.
Looking at it from the light most favorable to them, it seems like you just dumped a bunch of stuff into a word doc, didn't help them edit/integrate/merge/revise/fact-check, didn't respond to requests for changes for an entire day (on the day before it was due!), then became hostile when they asked about it. If there was any misunderstanding about what "your piece" of the project was, so much the worse.

Regardless of whether the second viewpoint is accurate, learning to foresee and avoid such blow-ups before they happen is a valuable skill. (Of course, this is not to make excuses for racism or plagiarism, if those things actually happened).

The university will not intervene in dysfunctional groups. If you can make a serious case for racial discrimination, of course they should investigate that. But the dysfunctional group is really not a university issue; such things fall to the instructor of the course. The instructor probably views learning to navigate such problems as one of the course aims, and will view this as valuable experience for you. The insults, the use of the f-word in this manner, etc., is a very inappropriate way to resolve conflict, but since it is student-to-student, I doubt the university will get involved (unless you are in a culture / campus code-of-conduct that takes such things especially seriously).

Deleting your name from the assignment is probably the most actionable piece of this. Since you can prove that you contributed to this (assuming any of your pieces survived), and if they submitted it without your name, you could bring a plagiarism charge. I imagine the professor would just smooth it over (giving you the same grade as the rest of the group) -- this is likely to be his/her choice (depending on your university's rules).

I'm back in uni after 20 yrs in the work force.

Only way to really drop the hammer on jerks like this retroactively is to ask the professor if they have a rubric that lets group members grade each other.

Going forward, when you start a class and prof starts talking about group projects, you need to proactively ask if they have a way for group members to grade each other. Good professors do. Good professors grade the project/presentation, each member, and then let members grade each other. That way they can get insight into who the slackers and problem-makers were.

In dealing with a group, to cut-off procrastinators from the start, you need to treat a project like a real-life work project.

1) make milestones .. what needs to be done, when it needs to be done by, and who's accountable. There needs to be cut-off dates when things are done, that way pushy procrastinators don't end up running the show according to their schedule.

2) if there's prelim work that needs to be done, tell everyone to do it before anyone talks about meeting. eg: you have to find a video to support a case study you need to read. Every member can do that on their own. You will inevitably get a member going "when can we meet?" They want to meet for the sake of meeting, and will waste everyone's time when you're all just sitting around a table ignoring each other while doing the prelim work that could have been done individually. This person either wants folks to do the leg work for them and just brief them in a meeting (because they're lazy) or they are a social butterfly that thinks all work must be done face-to-face. Now is a great time for them to learn to work as an individual. Assign them a milestone and hold them to it.

3) if someone can't get something done in time, tell everyone to let the group know SOONER rather then LATER. Inevitably you're going to have a team member responsible for a major milestone. And at the last minute, when you think they're going to hand it in they go "sorry guys, my grandmother died, so I didn't do any of my work". Gee, you should have told us that 1 week ago when we had a chance to recover. This kind of person can destroy the whole project. Let them know it's ok if life issues come it.. stuff happens. But, if it happens, let the group know sooner rather then later so it doesn't tank the whole project.

4) if you have a pushy team member, there's a few ways to push them aside... you can get with the rest of the group to ostracize them, you can get with professor to let them know of an issue (most prof's will tell you to work out your own issues, unless it's something really serious, like group member is trying to plagarize other work and you've already told them not to... had that happen in a group before), depending on project you might be able to go behind the persons back and work with other team members on the REAL project after you assign the push member "busy work" (true story, on the business simulation, we had a pushy member that thought he was in charge... he started talking about running financial simulations on the other businesses... I told him that was a great idea, so he wasted his time doing that. He'd show up to meetings thinking he had a lot to contribute. He didn't realize that the business strategy I had didn't care about other businsses, because we were hammering them into the ground and they were floundering.. but it made him feel like he was doing something important. To use an analogy, his financial simulations would be like him looking out the rear view window of a race car to tell us who we just passed.. when I was driving the car and looking out the front window to see where we needed to go. I didn't care about passing people, I cared about hitting goal lines. If we just focused on passing people, we would have been in 1st but only slightly. My goal lines put us in 1st WAY far ahead of the competition. So, by keeping idiot mcgee distracted with busy work he thought was helping, it got him out of the way so I could get the real work done.) Sometimes you just need to toss these idiots a bone to chew on, pat them on the head and say "good boy, you do good work!" in order to get them out of the way.

I think the only real consolation I can give you is that in the real world, groups often work better then in college.

In college, you have slackers that know they can get away with things, you have pushy people you can't fire, etc, etc.

In the real world, you have slackers, but they often get fired for lack of performance over time (people know who the slackers are eventually). Push people will butt heads with other pushy people, but often only the pushy people that get things done and have a brain in their head are the ones that last, because idiots that boss people around without a clue of what's going on will get let go eventually due to lack of performance.

College is just this weird pseudo-simulation of the business world, but with all kinds of loopholes that let jerks get their way, and bosses (professors) that don't care. Because in the real world, a boss wouldn't simply tell a group "well, you guys get a C on this project... do better next time." No. A boss goes "THIS IS THE WORST WORK EVER! I'm going to get with each of you individually to see why, and someone's going to get fired for this!" That's when the troublemaker gets let go.

As for your current problem.. get with the professor.


Is the personification of concepts or terms accepted in academic writing? The subject of velocity therefore also concerns itself with the capacity to process real-time data...

Would the above sentence be appropriate in an academic paper, specifically the use of the word concerns?

This is a habit I consistently notice in my writing when explaining concepts or subjects: I write as if the concept or subject is a person and then attribute words that are usually used in conjunction with human capacities, i.e., I personify.

I am not a native English speaker so my instinct may be wrong, however, I cannot remember that we were ever taught it is wrong to write in this way.

I cannot comment on your specific example, because I do not know what it is supposed to communicate.

As with almost any writing device, I think personification is acceptable if:

it conveys some idea better or more concisely than alternatives,
the target audience can be expected to understand it,
there is no loss of precision when it is needed.

Now, the audience of academic writing consists to a considerable extent of non-native speakers, and precision is often paramount. Therefore, the above conditions constrain the use of personifications much stronger than for other types of writing.

Still, there are many cases where a personification is appropriate, for example when you already rigorously defined some concept and now want to explain it by other means. Many such personifications have found their way into scientific terminology or everyday language to the extent that we probably would not even perceive them as personifications anymore. For example, consider the usage of inherit in biology, computer science, and many other contexts. Also, I have used five personifications in this answer so far (mostly unintentionally).

Example 1

This is from my own academic writing and slightly shortened to reduce context dependence:

  These incompatible results show that the model suffers from an inconsistency.

This is a personification:
A scientific model cannot suffer.
If I had been forbidden to use personifications, I would have written something like this instead:

  These incompatible results show that the model is inconsistent, which is a considerable problem.

Since I consider this rather clunky, I do not expect anybody to misunderstand my use of suffer, and this is not a matter of definition, I opted for the personification here.
(Now, to some of you “which is a considerable problem” may redundant here, but the paper’s target audience it is not, as evidenced by some of the feedback.)

Example 2

Again from my own writing and slightly modified:

  SymEngine is aspiring to replace the pure Python core of the better-known SymPy.

SymEngine is a software package; it cannot aspire.
Without personification I would have written something like:

  SymEngine is developed with the goal that it replaces the pure Python core of the better-known SymPy.

I consider it as likely that somebody stumbles over this more complex sentence structure as over my use of aspire.
For everybody else, the alternative does not add anything.
Again this is a high-level description where precision is not of the essence.

I consider the anthropomorphization of the topic of your research to be unscientific, and I discourage it.

Poor:

  Reality doesn't care if you believe it.

Better:

  Reality is unaffected by your beliefs.

If it is not science or not the topic of your research, then I might have no opinion.


Is it possible to attend my "backup" school but reapply to my top choice and go there if accepted? I applied to several graduate programs and was accepted to my back-up choice. The professor at one of my top choice schools contacted me personally to say that he was interested in my application but had no room for me this year; he suggested applying next year, as "re-applicants" have a good chance of getting accepted on their second attempt.

Though pleased, I mentally dismissed this. I had a tangible acceptance to a school I did want to attend (albeit last choice), and I enrolled in classes. I immersed myself in my new environment, took on a healthy course load with a teaching assistantship, and have received lots of praise for my work and work ethic from my professors and colleagues.

However, with each week I am here, I hear more and more people--students, professors, the head of the department--admit that my program is lacking in many ways. The school offers very few courses in my actual field (a fact they omitted on the school website that boasted what the program had to offer its students). There are two professors in my field, and one is always away. One of them has also been known to cancel classes frequently, a fact that had been addressed to and dismissed by the department. This means that the few opportunities I have to study in my field have decreased. The program is very heavily based on teaching--that is, the teaching as part of my assistantship. Two of the required classes I am taking this semester are teaching-oriented, and while I am happy to teach now, it is not a long-term career goal of mine, and I expressed this to my advisor. It seems, though, that despite what I was made to understand before coming to school, that this program ultimately tailors its candidates for a teaching career.

Ordinarily I would just accept it, as each program has its problems. Yet, I cannot shake the fact that, especially given the last fact, I am going to be geared toward a career I specifically do not want. Add to that the invitation from the professor of one of my top-choice schools, and I find myself wondering if it is unprecedented for a graduate student to switch. I would not be losing any time; if anything, a switch would save time, as the program I am currently in is unusually long, whereas the program I would be entering is comparatively shorter and more compact. Plus, as the assistantship the other school offers is not a teaching-based one, I will be able to take courses in the field of my choice. But before I keep considering, I would like to know if it is even possible.

Common scenario: a professor is recruited to go work at a different university; s/he takes his or her students along.  No one bats an eyelash.

The quicker you can make the change the better; you need not feel at all guilty.  It's just not a good fit.  Your current school would be a great fit for someone who wants to teach.  But it's not a good fit for you.

Yes, it is possible.
However, consider what others have commented.
I would like to add that in future, the switching of schools might be seen as a red-flag.


Etiquette question: is there such a thing as accepting an offer 'too early'? TLDR: Got a PhD offer at top choice, all details checked out, and I want to accept now (much earlier than the April 15th deadline).

A colleague (at the professor level) I mentioned this to said I should wait as it could look 'too earnest' accepting roughly 10 days after notification.

Is there any truth to this claim? I.e. does it 'look bad' (i.e. desperate) if I accept now? I'm just genuinely excited and am ready to lock it in.

Additional details (from comments):

This offer is a 'hard' offer such that it is from the department, many cc'd people, and is in writing
I have other 'hard' offers from other universities and have yet to hear back from a few more

Other relevant questions:

Responding to a prof's email about acceptance in a PhD program

Update:

Thank you all SO much for your input. I went ahead and accepted the offer and got feedback saying they appreciated the rapid response and the PI was eager to arrange a talk for next steps. While this is likely the standard positive response, I have marked Buffy's answer as correct. The first two sentences made the most sense: 'Actually, it is simple courtesy to accept as soon as you know you will do so. This helps the institution deal with its obligations to you and others.' I then let the other universities know immediately after and I hope this helps their search process.

Actually, it is simple courtesy to accept as soon as you know you will do so. This helps the institution deal with its obligations to you and others. It isn't a game you play for "advantage". You hope to develop a long term relationship with this institution. Treat them with respect and expect them to reciprocate.

Don't accept before you are ready, such as when other offers might come in, but don't delay for any perceived "strategic" reason.

Similarly, once you have accepted the offer, extend the other universities the courtesy of letting them know you will not be accepting theirs.

Is there any truth to this claim? I.e. does it 'look bad' (i.e. desperate) if I accept now?

As others indicate, some people/organizations may "raise an eyebrow" at an immediate acceptance, but most wouldn't. Problem is, you don't know which is which.

What I suggest you do is: Write them something which is almost an acceptance, but not quite. For example:

  Dear Mr. [Secretary / Investigator / Administrator's name],

  I was very pleased to receive your offer, and will in all likelihood accept it.

  In the mean time, I would like to know whether [something trivial here]. Also,
  once I accept, what exactly [some procedural-technical question here, timelines etc]?

  Respectfully,
  Reputable Misnomer

So, you're asking about things that happen after your acceptance, as though you're about to to make those arrangements. But you still have not said the words "I accept". When you actually do accept, it will be after a (hopefully very short) while when you get an answer. And regardless of whether the answer is satisfying or not, I don't think anyone would think it strange that you accept then, because it's not an immediate acceptance.

Also, this does "tie" them to you in the sense that you're telling them to expect an acceptance, so unless they're completely psycopathic they would not withdraw the offer without saying "please make a final decision immediately".


Should a PhD student use his academic affiliation for his publications which are not related to his thesis? If a PhD student is working on a research project which is neither related to his thesis topic, nor supported by the university in which he is studying or a faculty member; Does he have the right to use his academic affiliation and contact email?

There are two points here,

If the student is using the university facilities, he may acknowledge that support in the Acknowledgement section of his paper not by using the university affiliation.
The university in which the student is studying in doesn't necessarily want to be associated with whatever research he does in his free hours.

P.S.: Does this consideration apply to the researchers who work in a research institute or company?

Yes.

The affiliation serves two purposes: acknowledgement and identification.

Even if it is not part of your thesis research, if you are receiving resources of any kind from your institution, you should list them as your affiliation.  These resources include money (whether directly related to your research or not), computing equipment, internet access, printer access, electricity, phones, faculty and student colleagues (whether coauthors or not), library access (either physical or electronic), whiteboards, local coffee shops/bars, and the general intellectual atmosphere that encourages you to do research in the first place. You can afford to be generous.

Also, the affiliation helps identify you as an author, especially if you have a common name, or you publish other papers with the same affiliation.

Sorry to revive old post, but here's one more perspective - consider not some abstract "right" of the student, but rather the political and practical aspect for somebody building a career. For argument's sake, OP, let's assume your paper was on a totally unrelated subject, using no university resources, i.e.,  typed up at home on a personally owned laptop. Even so, think about how your advisor will react when he is surprised to learn that you have been spending time and energy working on this significant outside project and didn't even tell him. PhD students in sciences receive a full stipend, and that is supposed to sponsor ALL your academic energy (regardless of day/night). After all, some of us do our best work at night and at home. The time it would take to conduct independent research and publish is easily like a moonlighting job, and this is usually frowned upon or explicitly forbidden. It is a distraction from your dissertation, and will likely slow down the research of your advisor who is paying your stipend. Finally and most importantly, the advisor has powerful influence over your professional future. When that advisor is writing the all-important recommendation letter, you want him to say you are dedicated, focused, and hard working, not that you are an irresponsible dilettante / rogue player. I know this may sound harsh, but it is the reality of the world. (I'm a full professor in the sciences at a top 10 US university, and I have advised 12 PhD students over 20 years.)


Pure math field for PhD when planning to go into industry I'm a mathematics student just starting my third year. Since entering grad school, I have become rather firmly convinced that academia is not the place for me. The intellectual work is great, but the life side sucks. I hate the administrative bloat, the grad student/post-doc slavery system, being constantly surrounded by people with no social skills, the whole toxic self-sacrifice culture. I think I want to just go into industry, find myself some niche, or work my way up a corporate ladder. Probably in tech or finance since that's who needs mathematicians.

Problem: my research area is real pure, pretty much no direct applications at all. So, since deciding to go into industry, I've started to look at another field which I have taken a class on and is interesting to me, but I don't really know very much about yet. It's a relatively new discipline which has seen recent applications in data. There's a couple of people in my department who do related work so I might ask one of them to be my advisor. (I don't have one yet- the first two years here are very coursework heavy and this is the semester to choose.)

The trouble is, I feel like I'm starting back at square one. I fell in love with my original field during undergrad and have been going hard on it ever since. I was research-level before entering grad school, published a paper in top journal, had a bunch of ongoing side projects, and have read enough that I can easily hold conversations with professors about most topics. I know 100% I could bang out a thesis in the next three years if it was in this field. I even have an original topic based on a generalization of my earlier paper, and have made some progress on it on my own.

In my new field, I feel like a beginner. If my peers in the new field have the same level of expertise as I did in my original field, then I'm way behind. I might take longer to graduate, or have a crappy thesis. Or maybe I'll discover I just have no talent in it, that my brain is only built for original field. I don't know.

  I am very confident in my original field, but from an applied perspective it is useless. Is it worth anything to get a PhD in a pure field if you know 100% you're going into industry? Would it be worthwhile for me to attempt to change to something more relevant in which I am a beginner?

It's hard to say much without more concrete info about which fields you are talking about.

I switched from geometric analysis as academic to quantitative finance in industry pretty easily. But it was probably easier at the time in that they didn't expect you to know much, just be smart.

Being an analyst meant that the distance to applications was much shorter than from many fields. However, the PhD badge does help whatever your original field; I have helped people with topology PhDs make the switch.

My general advice to people planning to switch is to do something related to probability or statistics. There are plenty of pure problems but it leaves you well placed for applications.

(see my guide on www.markjoshi.com for more discussion.)

You're in a great position to try the side path, because you have a pretty solid contingency plan (go back to the original area and topic).

But, um, if you like coding, it sounds like applied math could be a fun direction for you to go in.  And it would give you an easier transition to industry, I would think.


How to deal with an abusively condescending professor? I am a beginning graduate student in Mathematics. I have a professor who always brings up the fact that my GPA is not great in my undergraduate degree even though my performance is above the norm in the institution I am enrolled at the moment, so far I got straight A's in the graduate courses that I have completed. He always tries to point out at my flaws in my undergraduate years to humiliate me in front of other professors and my colleagues. What would be a wise reply/reaction to such abuse?

I feel bad about it cause I feel like I am harassed and I don't reply.
I am also currently taking a course with that professor.

As I understand you, you are being publicly shamed (in front of fellow grad students) by this professor by dint of your undergrad record.
If you are in the US, this is violating FERPA by revealing your academic record.  Other countries have similar privacy laws.  File a FERPA complaint and wipe that smug smile off his face.

I'm no expert and I suspect each school is different.  But this is a federal law and I think most schools would take such a blatant violation seriously.  I'm pretty sure this prof would get his leash yanked pretty hard.

Note that it could backfire. You could an enemy who will make your graduate experience miserable. But I'm betting against it. There have been a number of times when I just let a jerk be a jerk because I thought my life would go more smoothly, but found out later that if I had stood up for myself, I would have gotten a standing ovation from 99% of the people around me. This prof is a jerk and his colleagues will likely appreciate him being called out.
Also, in the case of harassment and rights violations, the perpetrator is warned against retaliation in any form. And someone will be watching for it. Someone behind those closed doors will tattle. I think you are perfectly safe.

My experience

When I taught small classes, I would write all the test scores on the board, so that students could see where they ranked.  One young lady thought I was violating FERPA with this tattled on me.  I got hauled into the chairs office where he was accompanied with one of those university JD types (the law students who never pass the bar, but get jobs at universities being annoying.)  and the dean.  They were ready to have a field day with me.  They had already talked to other students and had corroboration that I had, in fact, written all the scores on the board.  The JD was salivating.

We talked at cross purposes for a while, then they figured out that I was writing numbers only.  No names.  No personal information was being displayed.  They were so disappointed. An administrator gets to be administrative so rarely and here they had an open-and-shut case go up in smoke.

So the point here is that at this school at this time, FERPA violations were a big deal.  I suspect that in the current safe-room environment, they might be a bigger deal.  Telling the class that that guy right there has a low GPA could traumatize him for life, eh?

It would appear that he is trying to shame you to make himself feel better.  This is not unusual behaviour, though you would hope for better from a senior academic.  One solution is to call him on it enough to stop it but not enough to make an enemy of him:

"Yes, my GPA was indeed 3.0.  That seems to have really caught your attention because you've mentioned it the last 9 times we've met."

I would not try to emphasis that you are getting great grades now.  The important bit is to call him on his GPA-focus, particularly if there are other people around.  Do it in a manner which suggests that you are genuinely curious about why he is mentioning it, rather than letting him know that it irks you.


Is it a normal process if all changes by "Track Change" function in Word of my revised manuscript are visible after being built in Elsevier? I got a revision reply and the editor wanted me to use "track change" in Word to do changes in manuscript. I completed the revision for manuscript and responses to reviewers file. I re-submitted and got a PDF file (built through Elsevier system).

My revised manuscript showed full red lines and a disorder of lines and between revised figures and original figures. I am sure that the reviewers will be unable to see my revised part and get mad at me immediately.

If i do submit my Word revised manuscript which did accept all changes i implemented in manuscript.My revised manuscript is presented as final document. It will be good for reviewers to have a look on my revised paper. But how come the editor can see changes and modification in my manuscript?

If anyone coped with this process, please give me some advices and suggestion to built a correct PDF file based on Elsevier establishment.

Thank you very much.

I think the comments and changes should have been accepted and then sent to the reviewers for them to appraise as necessary.


Unpublished research similar to mine I am a PhD student and I wrote a paper in the social sciences. The contribution of my paper is that it's the first non-North American analysis on the subject.

There is a working paper I found online from a doctoral student in another university, whose research is semi-similar to mine, and who looks outside of North America.

I am submitting my paper to an academic Journal. I have not cited the other students paper. It's been two years since they uploaded the working paper, and there is no sign of it published anywhere, and no update on the students (now a post doc) own research website. I tried to contact the author to ask if they intend to publish, I got no response.

I did not reference their paper in my research, because I don't think it's right that I should forfeit my contribution for an incomplete paper that doesn't seem to be heading to a journal and undergo peer review.

I am seeking opinions/guidance as to whether I am right. My supervisor has provided no guidance, and I can't find information on the internet.

You need to cite the paper only if you use it or depend on it in your research in some way. However, if you have a section on "Similar Research" then you should probably mention it there. You don't forfeit anything if your work was independent. For purposes of your degree, your supervisor will decide if you have made a proper contribution. For purposes of publishing, the editors and reviewers will decide on priority. Just because you don't cite it doesn't mean that it isn't known.

Independent research on a topic goes on constantly in the real world.

The worst case for you is that if you don't cite it and someone thinks you have plagiarized. But the real world situation is as it is. You can't change that.

New answer

Comments below explain the OP posted their work online first and that their underlying question is about priority, in particular, is priority awarded to the first author(s) to make their work public or the first author(s) to formally publish their peer-reviewed work? My original answer to the original question appears below, and my answer to the aforementioned question is as follows:

Priority is rather contentious. Ultimately, no one can deny that a work publicly available before another takes priority, regardless of whether one work is formally published after peer-review and the other was merely part of the public record. Moreover, no one can deny that authors of the second work had an advantage. Nonetheless, some will argue that being first doesn't matter; being formally published does. But, they still cannot deny the previous statements. Thus, they can only make claims such as "this is the first published, peer-reviewed work that ...," which implicitly acknowledges that the work isn't first. I recommend avoiding such claims altogether and mentioning related work, regardless of whether it is formally published.

Original answer

You open by explaining

  ...The contribution of my paper is that it's the first non-North American analysis on the subject.

Yet,

  There is a working paper...from a doctoral student in another university...who looks outside of North America.

So, your claimed contribution is seemingly a lie: It's [not] the first non-North American analysis on the subject.

(I don't understand how a paper can contribute simply by conducting analysis in a new geographical region; to contribute, you surely need to bring new science. I'll proceed regardless.)

  I did not reference their paper in my research, because I don't think it's right that I should forfeit my contribution for an incomplete paper that doesn't seem to be heading to a journal and undergo peer review.

I consider that to be morally and ethically wrong. You should rightly forfeit your claim of first non-North American analysis, because by your own admission, you aren't first.


Telling PhD supervisor I published a paper about my thesis without telling them or listing them as authors? I am in my 3rd year of PhD. In my program, it is a requirement for PhD students to graduate with a paper that is published in a Scopus Index journal.

Before I entered, and during my PhD, I had already published a few papers to a Scopus index peer reviewed journal (for topics not based on my thesis). At the moment, I am trying to publish a paper as a part of my thesis (with my supervisors' names), but my supervisors keep criticizing the paper and making me rewrite it again and again. This has been going on for two years.

However, I did submit another paper (a part of my thesis) under my own name and without my supervisors' knowledge, and it was accepted. This paper was done without any intellectual contributions from my supervisors - no writing or reviewing. When I told my supervisors about the paper (but not its acceptance,) they were angry that I hadn't included their names, and they asked me to include their names in it. Unfortunately, the editor said I couldn't as I had submitted it initially as one author only.

I am aware that it is my fault that I didn't ask them beforehand, but I know in my heart that if I had included them, it would have taken months or years to even get their approval. In all honesty, they would have ended up demotivating me. I am now really scared to tell them that it has already been published and I cannot add their names.

Can you give me any advice how to handle this situation?

The answers here are generally explaining the fact that supervisors should not be omitted from the authorship as they are supposed to direct and contribute to the research.

The critical problem is, you are saying that they did not contribute at all, and they, naturally, did not write or review the published article. Still they try to add their names as authors when they learned about the article submitted. You can not be an author if you did not even review the article, just this information is sufficient to see that the ethical misconduct is mostly on their side.

Your problem is, you can not both submit an article without making "such" people authors and at the same time maintain a good relationship with them. A one-author paper is, for me, much better than giving credit to the people who disregard the functioning of the academy, by both hardening the situations unnecessarily and also making academic misconducts. Even if you somehow get your advisors' names added to the paper, they will never ever forget this. At the same time, you shake the ethical ground of your publication by this act of "correction", and it may, in the end, cause the rejection to your paper.  All the while, you will still be considered untrustworthy by your advisors, quite rightly in their perspectives.

Your only choice is to forget about updating the author names, and find some other ways to correct your relationship with the advisors.

And please keep in mind that in academy, at least in Turkey, almost everyone faced in a situation that more than the bulk of work done by someone and just because their advisors don't like them they don't give authorship to the corresponding researcher. And these advisors made their Ph.D. in top-tier universities of USA. I think you will most likely face such problems from now on.

My answer is going to be more succinct than most because so many have already contributed so much, but I feel there is a single course of action that will address the concerns.

Contact the editor of the journal and indicate that you are withdrawing the paper. In that email/phone call/letter/etc. BRIEFLY describe your oversight in citing your PhD supervisors as the reason for withdrawing the paper.
Apologize to your supervisors for the oversight.

Journals hate to withdraw papers from publication after acceptance. They've already spent editing and review time to get to this place - withdrawing the paper is a nuisance and they would resent having that time wasted. No matter what they have told you about their policies, they likely prefer publication over withdrawal from publication. If they are trapped by their organizational policies, they will likely be able to respect the position you're in.

Then:

Work with the outcome, whatever that outcome is.


Is it reasonable to ask a professor about the strength of a recommendation letter (after they have submitted)? I have asked a professor that I took a year long project with to write a recommendation to support my application to a well-known, selective masters programme in the UK (my university is based in South Africa). The letter has already been submitted but the problem is, I have no idea how strong the letter is.

Some useful information: I think the project went fairly well and I will not have to interact with this professor again in any formal capacity.

Question: (1) Do you think it is reasonable to ask the professor about the strength of the letter he has submitted? (2) If so, how should I go about doing this?

I would like to do this for the following reasons:

If the letter is not so strong, I have other people who are willing to write me strong letters for my other applications (though none with the same reputation)
I can possibly try to change references for the current application (that the prof. has already submitted the letter for) since I have not submitted the actual application.

Any advice is welcome and appreciated.

It would be quite acceptable to ask for a copy of the recommendation letter (although your professor is not forced to supply it). That is probably a more reasonable request than asking if the recommendation is strong, which may require the professor to justify the recommendation.

Once the recommendation is submitted, you would also be entitled to request a copy directly from the institution you've applied to, as this is covered under the Data Protection Act.

Now, as someone who both writes references for students and reads them, I can tell you that the norm in the UK is for them to be restrained and factual. References that are full of hype are generally treated with suspicion.

Academic referees in the UK are also rather limited in what they are allowed to say. There are generally university guidelines which dictate the format. They usually have to be internally signed off before they can be submitted. Then a copy is kept on file.

Choosing referees is something that needs to be done carefully. Even with the best will in the world, an in-demand professor is not likely to be able to give this their full attention.

During my busy periods, when I was writing references for students regularly, I could get up to 20 requests a week. Normally, I'd have to write those in my free time, in the evenings. So, even though I would want to do my best for every student, references for anyone other than students I'd worked very closely with would become necessarily formulaic.

Choosing a referee who has had the opportunity to get to know you, who you have impressed in some way and who is not run off their feet with other activities is generally a sound strategy.

I believe it is reasonable to ask a professor for a recommendation letter if you developed a close enough relationship where the professor could do so without compromising his or her integrity. Meaning, if the only way your professor can identify you is by your name and the grade you received in his or her class, no, I would not recommend asking for a recommendation at all...much less as for a "strong" recommendation.

It never hurts to ask for a recommendation; however, requesting how the document read might be pushing the boundaries.


What to answer an author asking me if I reviewed his/her paper? Suppose I review someone's paper anonymously, the paper gets accepted, and a year or two later we meet e.g. in a social event and he/she asks me "did you review my paper?". What should I answer? There are several sub-questions here:

Suppose the review was a good one, and the paper eventualy got accepted, so I do not mind telling that I was the reviewer. Is there any rule/norm prohibiting me from telling the truth?
Suppose the review was not so good, so I do not want to reveal. What can I answer? If I just say "I am not allowed to tell you", this immediately reveals me... On the other hand, I do not want to lie. What options do I have?

You could say something like

  "I am not in the habit of telling people whether I did or did not review their papers, sorry"

or

  "I don't feel comfortable answering this question."

Or you could defuse the question with a humorous answer, e.g.

  "I would tell you but then I'd have to kill you"

or

  "I don't remember, I always take an amnesia pill immediately after reviewing a paper"

or some similar kind of obviously nonserious smart-assery. None of these answers provide any useful information to the asker, and all of them convey some level of disapproval on your part at being asked, making it unlikely that the asker would press the case any further.

Edit after comments....

I suggest  that in reply you would use the method of deflection - not answering directly.

You could say reply to the question with something like....

  I tend to find that if a reviewer wants to be identified they request one or more of their papers to be cited, which makes their identity known. If your reviewer didn't do this or come right out and tell you then they probably want to remain anonymous and I'm not sure I want to help you figure out who it was. Did you get a particularly nasty review?

So I am suggesting

first, that you tell the person that if their reviewer did not reveal their identity then they probably want to remain anonymous.
secondly, that you say you don't want to help them figure out who it was because if you say 'no, not me' then they will have a smaller group of people to hunt through
thirdly, you ask if they got a really nasty review and if that is why they are asking.... this may lead on to a more general discussion about reviewing

Please note

I do not reveal my identity in reviews by asking for my papers to be cited--- but on several occasions i have seen reviews were people have asked for their papers to be cited.

Original brief reply

Deflection....

You could saysomething like....

  I tend to find that if a reviewer wants to be identified they request one or more of their papers to be cited, which makes their identity known. If your reviewer didn't do this or come right out and tell you then they probably want to remain anonymous and I'm not sure I want to help you figure out who it was. Did you get a particularly nasty review?


How to revoke my old paper from a fake journal (waset.org)? It was like more than 6 years ago, I was an undergrad senior in a south asian university, we did not have much internet connectivity back then.

I wanted to publish something on a journal/conference to get a feedback on my undergrad thesis (I was curious to know about the quality of my work) and submitted a paper to one of the journals listed on that notorious waset.org.

I was young and novice, above all, I had no idea that people could do such a scam with intellectual issues like "research papers", anyway.

but the thing is that when I search my name on a web search engine (google, duck-duck-go etc.), that biggest mistake of my life still comes up on the first page, I am now near the end of my PhD and looking for an academic/research job. So, I wanted to communicate with them so that I can request them to revoke my paper.

However, their site does not provide any specific contact address/person to whom I can discuss with.

I have no wish to resubmit that to any other place, after 7 years now I can understand that my undergrad thesis work was too "trivial" to be "published".

Is there anyone who is in the similar situation? and is there any way to retract the paper from waset.org ?

any pointer will be greatly appreciated.

Apology: I am feeling very uneasy to share the link of my paper, but their website is provided.

I think there is something you can do to help yourself in this situation.

You could contact Google and ask if they would remove this particular search hit from their cache. As a result your paper will not come up when people search your name in Google. Of course your paper will still exist in their server but I think that a major part of the potential damage can be avoided since I would believe that people do not intentionally go the predator publishers website to search anyones articles.

Here are the instructions to contact Google: https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061?hl=en

I am also in a similar situation. I am a PhD student. I submitted a paper to one of WASET conferences which they had used a name of a genuine top level conference. After I submitted my paper, they accepted within 3 days without any reviews and that made me suspicious. I decided to withdraw my paper after 2 weeks. However, I was surprised to learn from my friend 2 months later that they went ahead and published my paper yet I had withdrawn and did not attend nor pay for the conference. I have written to them almost 20 times to remove my paper but they declined. In short, never submit a paper to WASET, it's a scam for making money through registration fee from unsuspecting researchers.


How to know whether a journal accepts concurrent submission to the journal and arXiv? I am considering submitting my paper to both a computer science journal and arXiv. No version of the paper has been published in any conference or anything at this point.

Is this going to be an issue with the journal?
Should I hold off submitting to arXiv?
If this is journal dependent, how do I find out about the journal policy?

The answer is field dependent, in particular some fields in the humanities tend to consider "already published" what appeared even on a web page. Also, Glam magazines such as Nature and Science want to be able to keep the papers secret until they release them, possibly with communication toward the press. In mathematics, the most theoretical parts of computer science, and some of physics you can definitely put a preprint on the arXiv before submitting to a journal (there might be journals who don't enable this, but they would be a small minority). There is an excellent resource to determine the policy of a journal or publisher.

All of this could be gathered from previous comments. Now, the reason why I write this answer is to stress that for Elsevier, the default policy is that you can put your preprint on the arXiv and later update it according to referee's comment ("postprint" version), but you do not have the right to put the postprint on the arXiv between acceptance and 12 months after publication if the preprint was not there before. To avoid trouble you should thus put your preprint on the arXiv before acceptance (before submission being the easiest way).

My understanding is that it won't be an issue. The latter is mostly dependent on the aspects relative to the legal nature of the copyright (the contract between you - the author - and the publisher - the journal) and the pair-review process. My understanding is that what you publish in ArXiv is a raw manuscript which is the "raw-material" that goes into the pair-review process. The pair reviewed article (pre-print) has suffered many "transformations" based on the the reviewing-editors' requests. The copyright you're required to sign, regulates the pre-print and not the raw-manuscript. Therefore, putting your raw-manuscript on ArXiv shouldn't be an issue as long as the raw-material and the pre-print are not identical. If the latter is false, the reviewers would have not suggested any changes (not even cosmetic changes - rephrasing some fragment, for example) to the article, which, in my experience, is quite rare.


I graduated last year and my advisor passed away unexpectedly soon after. What should I do now for subsequent academic job searches? I received a PhD in mathematics last May. Last December, my advisor passed away quite unexpectedly.

My advisor was an extraordinary person; in addition to being a fantastic advisor mathematically, he was a wonderful mentor who I always thought of as a friend – this is very much a personal loss for me. My initial emotional response was that I should clearly leave mathematics forever. Rationally, that seems uncalled for. Before all of this, I had been aiming for academic jobs in mathematics. However, I expect that a recommendation (as well as other help) from one's advisor is a significant part of an academic job application (for example, this recent answer states that the letter from one's advisor is read first even when applying for a tenure-track job after a postdoc).

How does one go about an academic job search when one's advisor has passed away?

For example, my advisor wrote a letter for me for my job search out of grad school. Does one try to use that letter (via perhaps my graduate department) for subsequent job applications? Do I mention in every cover letter from now on end that my advisor has died (that seems horrifying, since I like my vague sense of denial)?

I am in the first year of a (3-year) postdoc, so I won't be on the job market for a while (in fact, it seems simultaneously very soon and too far away). Of course I can tell that my productivity and motivation have slumped in the last few months, and I know that I should try to get back into gear as soon as possible.

PS: It’s entirely possibly that there’s no ‘practical’ difference between this situation and other situations where one doesn't have a letter from an advisor (as commentor Sumyrda has said), in which case that would be a perfectly reasonable answer that I would happily accept.

Related questions:

While in more of a 'denial' stage, I asked this question to try to get at this.

The analogous question for current graduate students was asked here and here.

There are several questions about dealing with not having a letter from one's PhD advisor on this site, such as this one, or this one, or this one.

This is a very difficult situation. As per the comment by Andy Putman, let your other letter writers explain the situation. Considering you got the Postdoc job, your current supervisor must have been impressed with what your advisor said in his letter. Your current supervisor can include a personal story about something your advisor said about you or even include a few of his favorite verbatim quotes about you from the letter of recommendation for your current postdoc. Anyone on a hiring committee will understand, and will possibly even be personally touched. This will not count against you.

I wouldn't send a copy of your postdoc letter in your application materials If your postdoc supervisor highlighted the strongest quotes from the advisor's letter. If he chooses not to do this or if your advisor's letter in its entirety is much stronger than the best few quotes from it and your postdoc supervisor still has the letter he could send it along with his letter.(note that in other fields this letter may be a bit inappropriate because it could contain a lot of detailed information about how you are a great fit for the particular postdoc position but as Pete points out this usually is not true in pure math).

Unfortunately this does not heal any wounds caused by the unfortunate passing away of your advisor and life long friend, but you should not worry about the letter writing situation. I can't say that I even begin to imagine the emotional pain of losing an advisor so close to graduation, but as someone who lost a parent while in college I greatly sympathize with you and I can think of no greater honor to your advisor than to continue in academia and continue doing great work.

The department chair where you got your PhD can pick up the pieces.  Give the chair a copy of the letter your advisor wrote.  S/he can take it from there.

If you have any trouble with that, seek out another senior member of the department instead.


How do I properly punctuate bulleted list of mathematical equations? Here is an example:
Theorem 1 (Important Theorem). Consider f(x). If something, then

 1. The function has property A:

                  f(x) = g(x).

 2. The function has property B:

                  f(x) = h(x).

My question is the following:

do I capitalize the first letter of the bullet points?
do I include punctuation after the equation?

I typically aim to ensure mathematical expression follow the rules of grammar, but I am stuck here. If I don't capitalize the first letters, then I am not sure how to punctuate the equations.

I agree with you that mathematical formulas are usually sentences or parts of sentences and should be punctuated accordingly. This makes your example rather difficult if you don't want to change the words. I'd capitalize neither of the two bullet items, I'd put a comma after the first equation, and I'd put a period after the second equation.  That doesn't look very good, and besides it would really need "and" between the two bullet items.  So I suggest trying an alternative wording. Here's the first that occurs to me.
Assuming that the equations are intended to define (or summarize) properties A and B, a better solution would be to change the introductory "If something, then" to "If something, then the function has the following properties." Then, instead of numbering the bullet items as 1 and 2, label them as A and B. (Even if A and B are words or phrases, you can use them as labels in LaTeX's "description" environment.) And put periods after both equations, since they're now stand-alone sentences rather than clauses in the "If something ..." sentence.

I'm no academic or mathematician but punctuation in the equation seems like it could only go wrong. Besides, I never do it when writing stuff and have never seen it done. It never even occurred to me someone would try doing that until I saw this question.
Put another way, what's the point of giving the equation its own dedicated line for clarity if you're just going to throw punctuation into it?
Yes, capitalize. There's no rule that says you must or must not capitalize bulleted items, but this isn't just a bulleted item; It's a phrase or sentence and will look very strange without capitalization.
https://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/colons.asp
If you're hung up on the rules, generally, the answer is to do what looks good to your eye.