Who deserves to be first and second author? PhD student who collected data, research associate who wrote the paper or supervisor? I am composing a manuscript using data collected by a PhD student over two years. She doesn't have enough statistical or analytical skill to publish her work. On top of that, language is also a huge issue for her.

I redid the analyses, created the graphs and started writing with my own flow and conclusion. I am also receiving supervision from a post-doc who got his PhD in the relevant field as the topic of the paper while I don't have much experience on the area.

I am quite confident I have the right to claim as the first author but when I allocate the second authorship to the post-doc, the student was acting up with me. Without me writing and the post-doc supervising, she will never be able to publish her work. So, who really deserves which?

Updated : Let me clear a few things here. I understand the conventionality of assigning authorship here in the US or other advanced countries. PhD student is from a country where even young faculty doesn't know what peer-review publication is. Post-doc(the supervisor) and I (research associate) are based in the US. PhD student collected the data 3 years ago and she and her adviser came up to me to collaborate on research projects and she handed the dataset to me to write. She has no interest in taking part in the writing process (no phone call, email or no showing of desire to learn anything from the process). When post-doc and I started writing, there is not even a promise of her data and research design can produce anything. We had to recraft research questions, redid analyses, graphs and everything. It was much like you download the someone esle collected data from public website, you write analyze and write a paper on it. During my Master year, my US adviser used the 10 years dataset from a peer who collected the data but didn't express interest in writing it. The guy offered us with the data, we wrote it and his name came as 3rd author. Seriously, we don't even know this paper can even be publishable and we are just making the best out of it.

Put yourself in the shoes of the PhD student. She spent 2 years of her life conducting a study and collecting data. She needs help with statistics and writing (this is very common). The person helping with this claims first authorship (in my field this is already questionable) and on top of this even wants to give the second authorship to their supervisor. I can't see how this is supposed to be fair to the PhD student. The post-doc at most deserves third or fourth author. Where is the advisor of this PhD student? You are doing their job (and in my field the advisor would be last author).

My own view is that every disciple's professional societies should settle the entire issue by moving to alphabetical by last name.

There will be complications for some names, but that can be settled best by a committee of those affected.


Citing a work authored by “A. Smith with B. Jones” I have a book, for simplicity’s sake let’s say it’s written by “A. Smith with B. Jones”. Note the with, not and. This how the authorship is credited both on the cover and inside the book.

This is because one of the writers did by far the majority of the work. So, how should I cite it? I am considering the following options:

In-text citation:

  (Smith & Jones, p. 11)

  (Smith with Jones, p. 11)

Reference:

  Smith, A. & B. Jones 2020. A book's title. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  Smith A. with B. Jones 2020. A book's title. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

The main point of citation style is to allow the reader to identify and find the work in question, not to please the authors, correctly represent their contributions in detail, or reproduce how the authors were listed on the publication in absolute detail.
In fact, hardly any publication has equal contributions.
Probably the only reason we do not see other conjunctions very often is that most citations are to papers where the journals control the style and nip any trend towards this in the bud.

On the other hand, the odd with may be confuse the reader. Consider:

  Smith with Jones (2020) established …

As a reader, my first assumption would be that you made a mistake and I consider the following “corrections” equally likely:

  Smith & Jones (2020) established …
  Smith (unknown year) with Jones (2020) established …

Hence: Ignore this peculiarity for citing. It does not hinder the reader to identify or find the paper. It is only confusing and unnecessarily complicates things.

Some illustrative examples leading the alternative ad absurdum:

In a paper with alphabetical author ordering, you do not try to figure out who contributed most and name them when citing. Not only would this often be unfeasible if not impossible to find out, it would also strongly harm the identifiability and searchability of your reference. Aaronson’s contribution to “Aaronson et al.” may be minor; they were just the first in the alphabet.
If a paper has co-first-authorship (“these authors contributed equally”) and further authors, you still cite it by only naming the original first author. Taylor may be a co-first author with Williams on “Taylor et al.”.
You can imagine arbitrary complex authorship phrases. Would you honour the following?

  A. Smith together with B. Jones and some contributions of C. Taylor as well as a chapter by D. Williams

Depending on the journal’s style, a paper by the same group of authors may list them as:

  A. Smith, B. Jones, C. Taylor, and D. Williams
  A. SMITH¹, B. JONES¹², C. TAYLOR³⁴, D. WILLIAMS¹⁵⁶
  A. Sᴍɪᴛʜ*, B. Jᴏɴᴇs†, C. Tᴀʏʟᴏʀ§, & D. Wɪʟʟɪᴀᴍs♠ [sorry for Unicode abuse]

This should not affect your citation the slightest.

The only exception I can think of is if you are Jones and this is your CV, which should humbly reflect that your contribution was only minor.

Cite it as they have authored it. Preserve the “with”. (That’s rough in LaTeX, I know!)


What is important in choosing a Ph.D. program? I'm now choosing a Ph.D. program between two schools and am struggling a lot. Please let me know your thoughts and I'll greatly appreciate any help! The two universities are very similar in reputation and compensation.

School 1's lab: The professor is very nice and supportive. He would support a broad range of research topics and I have the freedom of choice. The students are very hardworking. They published 8 top conference papers last year.
However, the students in this group are from not good universities. And the professor is very young, his oldest Ph.D. student hasn't graduated yet, so I don't know the students' outcome. Also, the students are so hard-working that the work-life balance might be bad. Also, the professor doesn't have as many connections in my desired place of work.
School 2's lab: The students in this lab are all from top universities. The professor has advised many Ph.D.'s and all of them are going to great labs and universities now. The professor has a lot more citations and more connections in the country I want to work in the future.
However, the group only published 3 top conference papers last year. The professor is also not as committed to personally advising me.

The students in this lab are all from top universities

it is an irrelevant criterion for choosing a Ph.D. program for your

... not as interesting

Unless you don't mind being miserable throughout your P.hD, you shouldn't work in this lab if you don't have to, which seems to be the case.

... the professor is very young

I think it is a plus, instead of a negative.

the students are so hard-working that the work-life balance might be bad.

Just because they don't know how to balance their work-life with their life outside of work, it doesn't mean you won't be able to too.


How to ask dumb questions I am having trouble asking questions in seminars, conferences, and public talks.

As a graduate math student I often fail to keep up with speaker and more mature members of the audience at events like seminars and conferences. It is very frustrating to lose track of the talk simply because I am not familiar with one key theorem/definition referenced by the speaker.

On the one hand, many people encourage me to raise my hand whenever something is unclear, motivating it by "no such thing as a stupid question" quote.
On the other, very often I observe people being annoyed by a student asking an "obvious/elementary" question and wasting everyone else's time.

I have seen several related posts on this website, most of which are asked on behalf of the speaker.
However, my question comes for the opposite side of the barricades.
I want to know how to find balance between not annoying the speaker and the audience too much on the one hand, and catching up with the talk on the other hand.

More formally, my questions are:

Are there any (semi-, non-) official recommendations on professional etiquette for mathematicians?
I understand that every situation is unique and highly subjective. However, I would be glad if someone gave me advice on when to ask, how to ask, and what to ask at research talks.
How can I tell if my question is "dumb" (i.e. the answer is well-known or searchable), or if it addresses legitimate ambiguity?

In particular, how can I quickly determine whether a definition/theorem/lemma mentioned by speaker is a part of common knowledge?

All relevant links or examples are appreciated.

Keep asking the dumb questions! It is better to look like a fool, than to be one.

You worry that many speakers are annoyed at the `elementary' questions. Some speakers do it because they are stressed about public talking, and any question upsets them. For some, communication of mathematics is not the aim of the talk; they give it because it is a condition of travelling to the venue, or simply because everyone else gives the talks. Instead of feeling joy at an opportunity to clear the confusion, they might get annoyed at having to do the extra work of explaining some of the background. The annoyance has no long-term effect --- nobody holds grudges for asking dumb questions. To give up actually understanding math for such a petty reason is just not worth it.

There is only one situation in which you should refrain from asking a question. That is when you are representative neither of the actual audience nor of the intended audience. So, if you are graduate student at your department's colloquium, it is OK to ask anything. If you are a graduate student at a seminar in your field, it is OK to ask anything. If you are at a seminar in another field, and there are several other students in your field in the room, again it is OK to ask anything. Only if you a lone outsider at a seminar or a conference that is not in your field, there is a reason not to ask questions.

A good way to ask a dumb question is as follows:

  Sorry, this is probably a dumb question, but [ask question here]

for example

  Sorry, this is probably a dumb question, but isn't a differentiable function continuous?

This signals to the audience that you are just having a momentary lapse.

Another tactic amongst all the people who wish to appear intelligent is to use the word "surely", eg.

  Surely that theorem is not true if you don't have any regularity?


Where should citations be placed relative to punctuation (e.g., full stops and commas)? This question pops up every time I write an article (in the computer science domain), and I am unable to find a British English style-guide providing a proper answer.

Where should citations be placed within the sentence and its punctuation?
Where to put white space?

E.g., which options are preferable:

More coffee is always better. [XY]
More coffee is always better [XY].
More coffee is always better[XY].
More coffee is always better.[XY]
According to [XY], more coffee is always better.
According to XY[XY], more coffee is always better.
According to XY [XY], more coffee is always better.
According to XY, [XY] more coffee is always better.
According to XY,[XY] more coffee is always better.
According to XY, more coffee is always better [XY].
According to XY, more coffee is always better. [XY]

In the IEEE editor's style manual it says on page 34:

  References in Text: References need not be cited in the text. When they are, they appear on the line, in square
  brackets, inside the punctuation. Grammatically, they may be treated as if they were footnote numbers ...

I would interpret "inside the punctuation" as ruling out options 1, 4, and 11, even though the grammatical treatment of footnotes is not quite clear to me.

The Springer guide does not appear to comment on the question.

Any other hints / links / viable styles?

As others have mentioned, all sentences should be grammatically correct. The citation marker of the form [X] may play the role of a noun, or of silent word.

1, 4 and 11 are never correct - they put the citation into the next sentence, where it doesn't belong. Similarly, 8 and 9 put it into the wrong phrase of the sentence.

3, 6 and 9 combine words incorrectly. Spaces can't just be ignored.

That leaves 2, 5, 7 and 10. These are all used, except that the exact form of 7 will depend on the referencing style in use. You could have 'According to Smith [3]', but not 'According to Smith [Smith, 2017]', The latter would become 'According to Smith [2017]'. Also, for 10 you need to think about how long the second phrase is.

I would go for 1, 7 and maybe 11, since the citation is used to back the whole sentence.

Type 2 citations seem to refer to the end of the sentence, especially in more complex sentence structures like:
"Research has shown that coffee is dark, hot and always better [XY]."
In such a sentence, I would assume that only the "always better" statement is backed by the source.


Name of the explanatory chapter in a cumulative dissertation how do you usually call the chapter of a cumulative dissertation (PhD thesis) that describes the research? A cumulative dissertation basically has two part: One part includes (published) research papers and the other part is an explanatory chapter that motivates the research and summarizes the it.

So basically I thought of the following:
'Background chapter'
'Frame chapter' (that would be the direct translation of the German term

I'd apprciate every comment. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the current answer. Are there any other suggestions. I'd be happy to hear any comment on that.

Some places, such as Heidelberg, simply call it a "Summary". Others indicate that the Summary must place the papers in their "Scientific Context". I would favor the latter. But a specific university might provide specific guidance on this, as might an advisor.


Have to give a talk soon but I no longer believe in my research Basically, my supervisor wanted to measure variable X. X is very important to him due to some other projects we are working on. So he wanted me to give a talk on measuring X at an upcoming conference.

I was skeptical -- I thought that maybe X wasn't a real variable, but just a mathematical effect that would cancel out if we did our measurements right. My supervisor gave me some compelling arguments and convinced me that X was real and we should measure it, so I submitted an abstract to the conference and got accepted.

Now, having done the work and taken the data, I am once more convinced of my old idea that X isn't a real physical thing. The talk is coming up soon and despite the enthusiasm that appears in my abstract the best I can honestly say is that we took some measurements and got no results. I know my supervisor would be upset if I give a talk to the effect of "X doesn't matter" because that reflects negatively on his other projects. Should I cancel the talk, change the content so it's drastically different than the abstract, or something else?

Do a practice talk with your advisor before going to the conference. Do it early. It will be a good time to discuss how the talk should be organized in order to  highlight the context of your measurement in the whole project and its relative importance.

It is common for a student working on a small piece of problem (and not necessarily looking at its entire context), to go back and forth between feeling A) the piece is obvious or unimportant; to B) the piece is pretty cool after all; then back to A again.

At worst - if it seems as if your piece really is not so relevant, then I expect he will help you organize the talk so that it still engages the audience. (Not a bad skill to practice. And, if you don't pull it off - at least in my field, if the topic of the talk seems unimportant to the audience, the bad smell lingers longer on the professor/advisor than on the student).

(Of course, also in my subfield, giving a talk at a conference or workshop usually means that we are giving a talk about work-in-progress still unpublished. So strategies may be different if there is a required paper involved for every talk).

But more likely, with working on the practice talk and the discussion with the advisor - you will develop more of an appreciation of how that small piece of work fits and may even develop an appreciation of its other subtleties that interest the professor. In a situation as you describe, I place my bets on the professor instinct on the topic.

I would say don't cancel the talk. Mathematics, Science is built on the foundation of Theories many of which remain unproven today. The important thing is you are making a Case for the existence of X, you probably have not got there yet but what is to say that speaking about it at the conference wouldn't spark a conversation that invariably helps you see the path to the solution.
In Academia, we don't give up we push through.


Can I talk to another professor about quitting my PhD before I talk to my PI? Summary of my situation:

I'm early in my 4th year as a PhD student (Cell Biology), and I think I want to quit.  My program is 5-7 years, so I have at least 2 years left or I can drop out and claim a Master's and say that I have an extra year of experience since I qualified a year ago.

I have an exciting project that I'm interested in, but do not feel like my advisor lets me finish experiments before expecting me to start the next set.  As a result, I have very little to show for a lot of work.  The paper will probably be big, but it's far off.

I don't think I'm getting what I wanted out of grad school. I see ways that I can achieve those original goals in the future, but it will be a while and I'm not sure its worth the wait.

The stress and workload leave me racked with guilt, initiate panic attacks, and have sent me into depression (maybe? I'm planning on talking to someone at my school's student mental health center).  I know it's work related because when I do manage to take a day off, I feel perfectly normal, like my old self, but as soon as I walk back into lab it starts again.

Question:

Can I talk to another professor (someone on my committee, someone I'm familiar with in my department, or someone familiar with my project but not on my committee) to get advice about my particular situation, the advantages/disadvantages of quitting, and how to talk to my PI about it? Or would that be seen as going behind my PI's back?

Talking to other people including mentors is always a good idea.

It sounds like you're having trouble handling the stress of a PhD and your desires to drop out are not related to any particular issues with your advisor. It's almost impossible to tell how your PI would take it. However, I doubt most reasonable people would consider you seeking advice from others as "going behind their back."

This is my own personal suggestion, do not discuss anything with anyone. You might end up building a bad reputation that might stay haunting you for long time. Take few days off, relax, dissect your problem, is it related to your judgment on your supervisor or is it related to the type of heavy load that biology PhD work faces. Do you do all your best and did not get any result.


How much should I worry about British spelling when submitting to a U.K. journal? I'm in the U.S. and have always written in American English. I will be submitting a paper to a U.K. journal for the first time. To conform to British spelling, I've changed the Microsoft Word dictionary to U.K. English, which has caught most of the obvious differences . Even so, I'm worried that it will miss some of the differences listed here and here.  Is this even worth worrying about? Will being lazier about spelling hurt the chances for my paper's acceptance?

The answer depends very much on the journal. Some expect UK spellings; others will permit either American or British spellings. You should check with the journal in question.

Of course, the other option that you have is the following. Since you know what the major differences between the two sets of spellings are, and you have a sense of which one's won't be caught by your spell checker, you could always do a final search-and-replace after you've completed work on the paper to make sure you've switched everything over. (Or at least, everything you know should be switched over.)

That should satisfy most journals, and as shan23 said, I don't think a journal will reject your paper for writing "meters" instead of "metres"; the most you'll get is a referee report telling you to switch spellings.

It will matter. The brits will think you are misspelling if you don’t do it their way.

I use this to help me get it right.  I would look at the “don’ts section”. I think it applies.
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/lawre035/SocSci/Writing%20Journal%20Entries.pdf

Then again you can just browse through the many online dictionaries.  My favorite one is thefreedictionary.  It has so many ways to choose.
http://cognitiveanomalies.com/my-quest-for-the-best-online-dictionary/
Good luck


A place to host static HTML+JavaScript that can be referenced from a paper? My PhD supervisor always told me that we write papers "for the ages". The publication system being what it is, we cannot go back and update any links, so we should not cite or reference a source that may be gone in five years.

With that in mind, I'm looking for a place to host a small open-source web-application, consisting only of static assets (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), and I would like to link to it from my paper. GitHub being as big as it is, I suppose I will trust them for storage, but they do not offer hosting. Ideally, someone reading the paper should be able to go right to a URL and run the app.

Any thoughts?

GitHub Pages web hosting really is perfect for your needs, but you might also want to consider FigShare. You'll get a DOI, which makes it easy for people to cite your HTML application. You could zip up your application using only local references so your app will be downloadable and usable as long as HTML 4/5 browsers exist. Until March 2015, content on FigShare was shared through an international alliance of libraries (CLOCKSS), but alas no longer.

Dropbox and Google Drive both provide the long-life storage and the permanent hyper links to the content of those personal repositories could be an option for you.


Does "minor revision" mean "accepted with minor revision"? I just received a decision letter from a journal editor (after three rounds of major revision). The letter shows that the reviewers "have asked for some other minor revisions". After getting the minor revision letter, I immediately completed the revision in accordance with the feedback from the reviewers (the suggested changes just involve adding a few sentences) and immediately resubmitted the revision to ScholarOne. A week has passed since I submitted the revision, but the status in ScholarOne remains unchanged. Is this normal? Can I assume that this basically means "acceptance with minor revision"? Thanks for your insight and sharing.

Yes, characterizing revisions as "minor" strongly suggests that if you make those revisions the paper will be accepted.  Editors may prefer not to explicitly say that the paper is "accepted with minor revisions", because authors may make "minor revisions" that don't correct the problems, and then feel that they've been promised publication in spite of that.

Depending on the journal, the editor, and the revisions, the manuscript may or may not go out to re-review once again, and even if it doesn't a one-week delay from submission to re-evaluation is not surprising.  In my field (biology) I wouldn't be surprised to hear back about acceptance anywhere from 1 day to 1 month after re-submission.

Minor revision means that your paper accepted by about 70 % but not final acceptance until you fix further comments. Time varies from journal to others, but within one month.


On balance, is it more valuable to review for a journal you haven't yet reviewed a paper for? I'm a grad student, and over the weekend, received two review requests from very good journals in my field, one of which I have already reviewed for.

I declined one because it was out of my area, but it made me wonder if, all else being equal I should prioritize reviewing for a journal I haven't yet, or if it doesn't matter.

I have often seen CVs in my field list journals reviewed for, as well as a number of reviews, so it is information that is out there and valued

Multiple reviews for a journal indicates that you are a trustworthy
reviewer.
Reviews for various journals indicates that you are known across your
discipline.

Thus, both seem to be positive signals (for different traits). No need to prioritize one aspect over the other.

(By the way, you can have such peer review activities verified at Publons, which may be better than just listing them on your CV.)

There is no downside in accepting to review an article from any reputable journal: a good review can only improve the quality of the submission and of the journal.

It is equally essential to decline if one is not comfortable with the manuscript, or one does not have the time to do an adequate job at the review, precisely because a bad review for any reason and for any journal may allow marginal or poor manuscripts to be published.


CV for Ph.D. Applications: how long is too long? I am currently tailoring my CV for Ph.D. applications (STEM). I am applying to various schools in USA and Europe, and most of them are competitive.

Given that I will have a Master's as well as >5 years of research experience in my field, I would like to list most of what I have done/been awarded -- all of which is academically relevant, including roughly a dozen publications -- and am trying to fit everything into my CV/application profile.

Some schools specifically recommend that the CV be around 2 pages long, others make no mention. Some schools have specific fields for listing awards/publications/etc, others don't. However, the shortest I've managed is 4-5 a pages long without crowding the pages with information. Should I keep trying to make it 2 pages long? How long is too long?

You should list all relevant experience in your C.V. and application. Two pages is a rough guideline for the typical master's or Ph.D. candidate coming directly out of a university with limited research experience. This does not describe your situation. So if you need more than two pages, it's certainly appropriate to go over that limit. Where I would try to save some space is in the presentations and posters section—perhaps you could list invited talks instead of all your talks.

A CV is the highlights of what your done from which the other side extrapolates your average performance, so the more good quality work you can put in the CV the better. I would thus recommend no more than 2 pages, personally preferring one page. No one reads all the details anyway.

Check every line in the CV for the question, how does this show I'm uniquely qualified for the position?

For a PhD I'd be looking at persistence in the face of adversity, ability to power through difficult problems, ability to problem solve and innovate.


Can you jettison a project to work on another in the wake of a big discovery? Let's say Alice is a PhD student who's well into the research phase of a PhD. She's got a nice exciting project she enjoys, a helpful supervisor, she's making good progress. And then there's a big discovery. She's excited about the new discovery, she wants to work on it, and her current project suddenly doesn't seem so interesting anymore. Real life example: suppose Alice is a Chemistry PhD student from the late 1980s working in condensed matter, and the big discovery is cold fusion.

Can Alice ditch her project to work on the new discovery? What if the new discovery is in an area that is not her supervisor's specialization? I'm also curious whether Alice can make this switch if she's a professor (as opposed to PhD student).

My guess would be that it's hard for Alice to do this as a PhD student even if there's another supervisor available, because she would have to start over again and therefore take longer to graduate (running into funding issues). It'd also be an administrative hassle especially if she has to change departments (Chemistry to Physics in example above - the fields are related, but not that related). If Alice is a professor then she would presumably be stuck, because she's got to work on her grants. She could apply for new grants related to the big discovery, but it would be a while before she can work on it. Am I correct?

Can Alice ditch her project to work on the new discovery?

Alice has many responsibilities in her life, including satisfying her sponsor and producing her thesis. Whether she should ditch her project depends on those responsibilities. IMO, she perhaps doesn't have enough time to fulfil her obligations and ditch her project (PhDs are short), so she might need to delay working on the new discovery. There's perhaps an exception if Alice is in the early stages of her PhD.

  What if the new discovery is in an area that is not her supervisor's
  specialization?

That's not particularly relevant: Many students work under the supervision of advisors that aren't specialists in their research areas.

  if she's a professor (as opposed to PhD student).

Then, she isn't bound to the time constraints of a PhD, but still has other responsibilities.

  I'm also curious whether Alice can make this decision

Yes, she can. Who else would make it? Pressure may be applied by others, but, ultimately, the decision is Alice's. (That said, she may get sued for her decision, e.g., if she ditches her project without delivering upon contractual obligations, but that's perhaps unlikely in academia, even less-so for student-Alice, as opposed to professor-Alice.)

  I'm also curious whether Alice can [feasibly] make this switch if she's a professor (as opposed to PhD student).

If Alice truly wants to switch, then Alice can make it happen. There may be many barriers: personal, institutional, contractual (including funding obligations), ... But, they can be overcome. That said, should she switch? That's up to Alice. She perhaps has a relatively easy position right now, switching will be a massive upheaval.

So basically there is someone who is "motivated" towards new project and "demotivated" towards old one. One should consider theories of motivation in psychology here. Considering Psychology always helps according to my experience because it predicts our own acts accurately. So in this case “EIV theory of motivation” can be considered in order to take right decision.
According to this theory you are motivated in current state because you see that "output" of the new project is very good as compared to your current project. Second thing is that you have presumed that you will get "more output" while putting "same efforts" in new project. Other thing is that, you consider everything in your favour so that you are fully "able" to discover something big. These thoughts are unconsciously in the back of our mind.
The thing that person should really think of is validity of these unconscious thoughts. First motivational factor will not change irrespective of any condition and situation. At this current situation, as idea is new he/she is very energetic. So he/she may ignore extra work that will really add up in order to do something entirely new. This is surroundings as well as situation related factor. For e.g. he/she may require to change his/her guide person or idea may be entirely off-field for him/her. Other thing is ability and it strongly depends on self-determination and other surrounding factors. For e.g. you may be self-determined but if you are unable to raise funds which are unexpectedly very high then you may fail. He/she should consider all these internal and external factors in detail, consciously in order to assure goal accomplishment.


Asking senior scientists for a subreview I am a junior postdoc (1st year) part of a program committee in an international conference. As a member I have been assigned with several papers that I would like to delegate to subreviewers.

I have in my network researchers who are also postdocs but, they could be regarded as senior. Is it rude, or weird, to ask them to subreview a paper? If so, should I try to find PhD students or other postdocs in my range? If not, to what extended may I ask for a subreview?

You can always ask and they can say "no". It's surely not rude and weird; people are asked to review stuff all the time. The probability is not too low that one or more of them will say "no", but you may be lucky.

In my experience, more senior people are more likely to say "no", but of course if they say "yes" they will be the more competent reviewers. And some say "yes".

Don't be worried about asking somebody something that they don't want to do. If you ask and they say "no", it won't reflect in any way negatively on you.

I don't quite understand the premise. Are you as part of the committee tasked with finding reviewers (in which case they are not "subreviewers") or are you a reviewer and seek others to do part of your job?

I don't see anything weird in the first case. You are at the program committee. It is your job to identify the most suitable people that can act as reviewers. By contacting the appropriate people, i.e. experts in the respective field, you are doing a good job. This has nothing to do with the seniority difference.

The second case seems a bit more problematic. In my field it can sometimes happen that senior people delegate reviews to juniors. But that is usually confined to the immediate environment of the senior person (e.g. his lab or department). And it is more of an exercise and experience building and it is very likely that the review will be reviewed along with the paper again by the senior. If you would like to delegate your work to senior researchers, you can expect that it will be done by their students if it is accepted as such at all - people might not be fond of doing reviews outside of the formal channels.


How much percentage royalty do I get from Springer (as the paper's author) and how I can apply for royalty payment? I have submitted a paper to a Springer conference and it has been published. The publisher will charge 24.95$ to anyone who would eventually download my paper and 201 copies of my research sold by Springer official site.
How much percentage royalty do I get from Springer (as the paper's author) and how I can apply for royalty payment?

You get nothing: Welcome to academic publishing.

Here's how academic publishing works.

You write the paper. Your peers review it for free. The journal charges people to read the paper to cover copy-editing/hosting costs, and to make a profit.
You write a paper. Your peers review it for free. The journal charges you to cover copy-editing/hosting costs, and to make a profit, then gives it away for free.

Unfortunately you're not allowed to save money by doing the copy-editing yourself, nor are you allowed to use your institution's infrastructure for hosting. You can't submit to a university-run committee to organise the peer review.
To be taken seriously you have to publish in the well-known and established journals of your field. To publish in those journals you (or the tax-payer or funder) have to contribute to the publisher's profits.
To answer your question more directly, they won't be giving any of those profits to you.
Edit: forgot to say, for anyone who can't afford to pay for scientific articles (or who wants to make a point), you can access the majority via Sci-Hub.


Is asking for the syllabus as a student before class starts frowned upon? Is asking for the syllabus before class frowned upon?
I usually ask because I'm trying to figure out what we're going to do and whether I have interest in the subject.

It should be perfectly acceptable (nearly) everywhere. You may not get it, for a variety of reasons, but it is fine to ask. Note that some places have it online, so you might look there also.
Even an older syllabus might serve your purposes.

i) the syllabus should be available before a student selects a course - and indicate requirements and successful completion will satisfy requirement for a course at the next level
ii) the syllabus should include a list of recommended text books
iii) ideally, a lecture schedule will suggest pre-reading material. It is recommended that the student does pre-read they can then focus in the lecture on parts less well understood
iv) past exam / course work should be available. Again read and map "tests" to the lecture schedule.
Ideally "test" will describe how grades are awarded. A very generic approach is Pass : a text book answer, Merit : identifies weakness in the text book answer, Distinction : offers a "worthy" solution to those weaknesses.


Can I call an assistant professor "Professor"? My former teacher, who had done her PhD in a top-10 university in the UK in 2009, is an assistant professor in my former school.
On the day when I visited my former school, I saw her at the school canteen unexpectedly. I smiled and nodded to her before I said "Good afternoon, Professor Aiko." We were talking for a few minutes before she went back to her office. When I was sitting on a subway train on my way home, however, I was wondering
if it was impolite for me to call her that.
Can I call an assistant professor a professor, and say "Hello Prof. Nickname"?

Yes, you can call any kind of professor a professor, and you should.  Addressing someone as "assistant professor" or "associate professor" would be...well, it's simply not done, so I can't say if it would be rude or just weird.

It is similar to military protocol, actually: e.g. if someone is a rear or vice admiral, you call them admiral.  In contrast to the above example, I'm sure some knowledgeable party could be specific about what bad thing could happen to you if you screw that up!

In Australia the convention seems to be the opposite of that described in most of these answers --- it is usual here to reserve the title of "Professor" only to someone who is a fully professor.  It is certainly not offensive to call someone "Professor" if they are at a lower level, but it might feel unearned to the recipient.


Why are some professors critical of even casual use of Wikipedia? Many of the professors and lecturers I come across are very critical of Wikipedia, but they never give proper support for their claims of "Wikipedia is bullshit!". And they threaten "Do not use Wikipedia if you want to pass!", and they mean it seriously.

It is true that "any Tom, Dick and Harry can edit it", but it is also true that Wikipedia takes a lot of effort to add in citations.

I do understand why we should not cite Wikipedia directly, instead go for the primary sources, but many do not even allow Wikipedia as a introduction to a subject matter. If I tell them "I read from Wikipedia that..." I get dismissed immediately, yet in online forums we use it like a Bible.

What is the real reason Wikipedia is perceived negatively among many professors, even for informal use (e.g. as an introduction to a subject)?

A small sidenote to start things off:

  If I tell them "I read from Wikipedia that..." I get dismissed immediately, yet in online forums we use it like a Bible.

Well, one of the reasons for that is that "I read in Wikipedia" is almost synonymous with "I have exactly 5 minutes worth of knowledge on the topic". The problem here really isn't the fact that you read Wikipedia, but that citing from it implies that you have read nothing else on the topic. If I am an expert in whatever field, I would probably not take a concern from somebody who implies that all his knowledge comes from a few-minute Internet recherché very seriously, either (no matter what source (s)he actually found). Also, which online forums "use it like a Bible"? Most that I hang around at are very critical of Wikipedia quotes, mostly for the reason I stated above - arguing based on a Wikipedia entry does not exactly establish creds as a person knowledgeable about the subject.

Now, let's discuss the real question here:

  What is the real reason Wikipedia is perceived negatively among many professors, even for informal use (e.g. as an introduction to a subject)?

(note that the question is specifically about using Wikipedia as an introduction to a subject, not as a primary, citable source)

Honestly? It is probably a combination of feeling threatened, reluctance to embrace change, and lack of knowledge how Wikipedia articles actually evolve over time.

"Feeling threatened" in the sense that Wikipedia is kind of decentralising knowledge compilation, which is of course not necessarily something that makes academics (the people that used to be more or less the definition of "compiled knowledge" in pre-internet times) very comfortable.

"Reluctance to embrace change" in the sense that Wikipedia is (in comparison to text books or lectures) a very new (and radically different) way to get an introduction to a topic, and most humans tend to be sceptical of this kind of disruptive technology.

"Lack of knowledge" in the sense that many critical academics simply have not taken the time to study how (especially popular) Wikipedia articles actually evolve over time. I am convinced many would be positively surprised if they knew how well quality control in Wikipedia actually works in practice. I remember that in 2004, c't (a well-known German magazine widely read by IT professionals) ran an experiment where they took random articles out of various encyclopaedias, anonymised them so that one could not tell the source anymore, and had domain experts compare them to anonymised Wikipedia articles for quality and technical errors. Wikipedia was consistently rated higher-quality than even well-respected standard encyclopaedias. That being said, I assume that the average quality of Wikipedia articles degrades a lot for entries on more esoteric topics, so I actually agree that for deeply scientific topics, one should be somewhat skeptical of Wikipedia, just as one would be about any other single source.

Finally, I have to say that I know many professors that don't have a problem with using Wikipedia as a starting point for your review of a subject. However, if you write, for instance, an seminar paper, you are expected to read the primary sources (and I fully agree with this).

On the one hand, Wikipedia is one of the greatest accomplishments of human civilization.  Never before has so much knowledge been so easily accessible to so many people.  It is one of the wonders of our world.  On the other hand, this means that if you want to do anything yourself you need to add value beyond what's in wikipedia which everyone else has access to anyway.  Wikipedia is the new bare minimum of common knowledge, and so you should assume your reader already has access to wikipedia and anything you write needs to say something that's not already available on wikipedia or else it is worthless (not because wikipedia is worthless, but because you haven't added any value beyond wikipedia so the reader might as well just read wikipedia instead).


Is reusing old code for a new assignment considered self plagiarism? How to protect yourself if you consider it to be, and a group partner does not? I am taking a graduate machine learning course and am working with another student in the class on a final project. In his undergraduate studies, the other student wrote code that accomplished a similar task, and mentioned in our previous meeting that we would be able to leverage much of this code for our current project if we wanted to. I responded that I believe it would constitute textbook cheating and self-plagiarism, but the other student disagrees and believes that re-using the code would not constitute self-plagiarism because he himself wrote it, and it would be redundant to re-write what he had already done.

Now, the course instructors have made it clear that we are not allowed to use any external libraries to perform certain classes of algorithms for this project. This students' prior code would fall under this category of prohibited tools, but he claims that it doesn't qualify because he wrote the code himself (so it is not an "external library"). I believe this is hyperbole, but he disagrees. It is also worth mentioning that this code is licensed under an MIT License, though it is not widely used at all.

It has gotten to the point where I am uncomfortable going forward with the project by re-using his old code, and he does not want to do work on the project that he considers to be redundant. My worry is that if it turns out we're not allowed to reuse the code, then using it could cause us to fail the course and severely negatively affect our reputations. Even if we don't get caught, I personally feel that it would be unethical to copy-paste old code and present it as though it's fresh code for this current project.

I am unsure of how to proceed. I have tried reaching out to the professor of the course some time ago (she has been traveling for some conferences recently and will be for a while) but I have not heard back from her. Additionally, the course TAs have been unwilling to weigh-in on the situation.

I have the following questions:

Is the above situation usually considered to be self plagiarism? Why or why not?
Is the above act typically allowed in an academic setting?
Assuming you are in my position, and consider re-using the code to be cheating and/or unethical, what is the best way to proceed; both in terms of how to make progress on the project, how to compromise with my group mate, and how to protect myself if my group mate refuses to budge.

What should you do?  You should ask the professor politely and without imposing your pre-judgement on whether this is or is not prohibited by the rules of the class.  You are not in a position to make this judgement.  The only person who can give a definitive ruling is the professor who set the rules.

I recommend an approach like:

  My teammate has previously created code that would be very applicable to this project.  Can we use that code, or does it count as an external library, and we should instead write it again as an exercise?

While you are waiting for a response, I would recommend proceeding in two ways in parallel:

You implement a new version of the library from scratch, while
Your partner builds upon the existing library.

That way, you get the educational value of building the library, rather than using the pre-existing library, and your partner can push on ahead without either of you being stalled while waiting for the result.

Imagine the problem this way:  Each class you take, is like you being a contractor for that class, writing code for the "company" that is running that class.  So, when you finish the semester, and move on to the next gig (i.e. the new semester starts and you're now in this project), the problem you have here is that, in principle, your partner does not own that code.  It's not strictly true, but it's essentially the same type of issue!

You can bring concepts from place to place, but you can't carry CODE from place to place, and that's the same in academia (apparently so in this circumstance, anyway!).  The definitive answer is that you and your partner have to take what is called a "green-field" approach to the code he wants to carry forward...you have to re-write it anew.

Also, the so-called problem of self-plagiarizing is very real and a very common problem.  You can't just pick up academic work done for one class and re-submit it for another class...if you're caught, it's usually a big problem.  You can get by it by going FULL DISCLOSURE, and full citation (to yourself as the previous author) but that's something that requires direct and prescribed intervention BEFORE you hand it in, with the professor involved.  Some will be ok with it, some decidedly not.  It's their call.

My suggestion?  You propose along with your partner that you re-implement his existing API with new code.  You bring the code to the instructor, say that it is what you intend, and get her prior blessing.


How to decide whether a mistake is sufficiently relevant to publish about it? How do I know my results are significant enough to be published?

I am a physicist and I have found a very common mistake that appears in every paper in my area of interest. I thought it would be nice to let the people know it should be corrected. However, it is a very simple mistake, very basic math. I thought at first I could publish that as a short letter, but then I realized that I am unsure what actions the significance of the error(s) warrant.

How do I know whether an error is important enough to write a letter to the publication's journal?

You should talk to colleagues from that area of interest to check whether it actually is a mistake or maybe a common generalization that, although not perfectly correct, is still 'good' in the systems that were discussed in the papers. Also writing a mail to the authors of said papers is a better idea before writing to the journals without any cross-check.

This is where you define yourself.  There isn't a right and wrong answer to be suggested.  You're helping improve the wisdom contained within the Academic Establishment itself.

Otherwise, I'd say you don't have to know.  That's what the peer review process is for.  But it might save you some time to use this radical tool of the Internet, whereby you can be in informal dialog with peers across the world.


Does a present-day editor tend to sieve out submissions before sending them out for review? Out of curiosity, I would like to get a feeling of what is the attitude in general for a present-day editor of a prestigious (not an objective modifier, of course) journal to deal with a new submission before sending it out for review.

I notice that some journals of high impact would state it as an editorial policy that an editor may desk-reject (so to speak) a submission without finding a reviewer if the submission is so-and-so. Then I think that, if I am an editor, I definitely do not want to waste any reviewing resources; hence I become a pre-reviewer in this sense. Does this line of thinking apply to most editors? If this is the case, then a submission passing over an editor's inspection means at least that the editor feels that the submission is potentially publishable; but to what extent this implication is true?

When you are running a journal, no matter how where it sits in the prestige rankings, all sorts of things wash up in the submission box.  One might think of these as roughly falling into four categories:

Clearly plausible and on-topic papers
Papers whose focus or quality is dubious, but are still worth sending to review
Papers that are clearly off-topic
Papers that are clearly below the journal's quality threshold

Until you actually see such a stream, you might not realize just how bizarre the material can be that shows up in the third and fourth categories.  I'm talking about likely-schizophrenic ramblings where the text changes color and font multiple times per paragraph, blatant plagiarism, or papers that don't even bother to connect themselves to the research field of the journal.  Heck, even as a graduate student I was once sent a videotape by a man who had decorated his trash can to look like a robot and explained in great length how the "robot" can would react to All in the Family episodes so that it could save humanity by terraforming the Sahara desert.

In a highly interconnected world with people working at all sorts of levels of quality, a lot of this type of junk shows up.  It's entirely appropriate for an editor to reject category #3 and #4 material, so as not to waste everybody's time.  I really don't want to ask people to review plagiarized or insane material.  I also don't want to waste time asking them to review things that are probably science of some sort, but still absolutely certain to be rejected.  It is thus the case that nearly every editor will be asked and find it justified to perform some degree of pre-evaluation and desk rejection.

Where it becomes difficult, however, is that different editors and different journals have different standards for determining where to draw the line.  When authors disagree with the journal, it can get rancorous, especially for the "glamour" journals that can be so high value for authors to publish in.  Thus, we hear primarily about the mistakes, the borderline cases, and the places where politics and prejudice hurt the scientific process.

The key questions are this:

What percentage of the time is the system going wrong?
What can be done to improve it?

I'm almost certain that #1 is a pretty small percentage, simply because there's a lot of detritus that nobody is likely to object to desk rejection on.  Despite that, the number may well be too high: study of this topic would be both useful and likely very difficult, given the subjective nature of the judgements.  There clearly are places where the system goes wrong, and reducing that fraction will likely be good for all of us.

Most journals exercise editorial prior-to-review rejections based on, allegedly, low urgency, significance and novelty.

While an editorial rejection due to a poorly written discussion can be clear, rejections due to the other above enumerated reasons constitute a contradictory practice since in this case a fairly small group of people (editors) decide which research topics/authors/institutions/viewpoints get represented in the high-impact journals and which do not.


Is watching porn in university a crime? I am about to start my graduate studies in an American university, moving from my native Peru. Over the course of my under-graduation, I have developed this strange habit of watching porn at odd times, say afternoon, or morning. Sometimes I watch in classroom too, of course, reducing the volume to zero. I ensure I do not disturb others while watching, by not giggling, or engaging in other clumsy activities.

I am nervous about moving to America. Will I be caught by the IT admin of the university and suspended or barred? Does this policy change with universities? Do some universities not mind this? Many of my friends spend their entire nights in their labs and I find it difficult to believe they do not visit any porn sites.

Let's start with the disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

If you're over the age of 18, it's not illegal to watch most types of porn in the US. Certain types of porn, like child pornography are illegal. Don't watch that crap.
It is illegal to download works without permission of the copyright holder. From what I've seen, porn companies are more likely to sue than others.
Streaming copyrighted works is a legally gray area. Mostly it seems that
the sites hosting the material get hit with lawsuits, not the
viewers, but this may change.

Certain universities may require that you don't watch porn. This will probably be the case at the more religious ones (e.g., Liberty, BYU), so check the school's honor code/student policy if you're concerned.

As to watching porn in class or lab or the library or any public space: Don't. I imagine most every US university has a policy against this. If they don't have a specific one, they'll find another one that applies. It's not only rude to those around you, but watching porn where non-consenting people might see it can be considered sexual harassment. This may get you expelled.

If you want to watch porn, do it in your apartment or dorm. Social norms dictate you shouldn't watch it when others are in the room, but you can talk with your roommates about that if you want.

In most cases, no. There are some, already mentioned exceptions (copyright, child porn, etc), but it is very improbable that you will confront problems on this ground.

Watching porn, it is surely not what matches your goals of study or work there. Thus, you use the resources of the university for something which is not study and not work. The problems on this ground are much more probably in your case.

But not this is the real danger. The real danger is, that it is a highly anti-social act in that environment (and also in any study or workplace environment), and thus it will cause a permanent and serious damage in your reputation.

In your place, I never ever did it. Even if it would be totally legal and accepted (while it is not).

If you can't completely avoid that, I suggest to do it before going to the uni, and pray more.

P.s. The network firewalls of your university may have some porn-filtering, or at least detecting functionality and thus visiting porn sites may trigger a security event. Even if nothing happen on the social side, this may show from you until the ethernity, that you watched porn. The same is the case in every workplace. Either use your own devices and network for that, or use some VPN gateway solution which is knowingly undecipherable on an intermediate node.


First research proposal for a postdoc application I am completing a PhD in area of "applied" mathematics (although technically this general area is very broad and sits in between both pure and applied ends of the spectrum).

I am applying for some one-year post doctoral positions at another university. These positions are not attached to any specific member of academic staff, and are thus open to all applicants from pure / applied /statistics  - a committee decides who gets the position, depending on a "number of various factors". I am meant to submit a research proposal, however. I have contacted an academic there whose research is in a similar area to mine (but still quite different, of course).

In my situation, given that I am still yet to complete my PhD thesis, and publish my results, what would be the best thing to do regarding the research proposal? How stringent are the requirements in general regarding research proposals for first-time postdocs in the eyes of professional mathematicians? I certainly have a number of potential research avenues to pursue stemming directly from my work - should I just write about them?

In mathematics, your situation is very common.  A lot of people don't have any papers written and are still completing their PhD when applying for their first postdoc.  There's nothing "stringent" about "research proposal requirements."  (Are there even any requirements?  Typically, just that something be submitted, I suppose.)  What you'll be evaluated on mostly at your stage is your area of research and letters of recommendation (and possibly your teaching ability, depending on the position).  Yes, people will look at your statement, and you should do a good job at writing it, but don't worry too much about it.

Generally what you should do in a research statement at your stage is:

summarize what you've been working on, and your (partial?) results till now
indicate, in some but not a lot of detail, what are some future things you are interested in working on (these do not need to be things you're definitely going to do)

The point of this statement is:

To see that you can effectively communicate your work/ideas (and possibly to get a sense of how well you understand its context)
To see if what you're doing is of interest to the faculty there
To see that you have some decently thought out ideas for future work

I propose that, you finish your PhD first and you will have a broad and clear picture of what you are looking for and what is required of you.
 Njori-kenya


Is there a difference in academic writing styles between engineering and women's studies? Coming from engineering, when you write a paper, the goal is to be objective and analytical.  We use references and try to define terms for a clear understanding.  The goal at least is to provide facts that support a hypothesis in as unbiased a way as possible.  I think there may be some difficulty in always remaining unbiased, but recently I came across an article that seems to be written like an opinion piece more than a piece of academic work.  After going through it I looked up the author, who is a professor of women's studies.  She writes about robotics being sexist.  Does women's studies have different goals in academic writing than engineering?

To be specific, it is these types of sentences that confuse me on the intent of the academic writing in women's studies:

  Enter HRP-4C, a new-generation gynoid that was unveiled in the spring of 2009 as a body double of and for (or to replace?) the average human female.

Why would a journal allow the publication of the unsupported rhetorical question "or to replace"?

  The android wears his maker's unfashionable beige shirt, dark trousers and black windbreaker jacket."

Is it professional to call a world-famous robotics researcher "unfashionable", and why is it necessary?

  . . . exact body consists of silver and black plastic molded to resemble a Barbarella-like custome, which accentuates her ample breasts and shapely, naturalistic buttocks."

There is no supporting information of how the square, minutely curved metal is purposefully making the visual the author interprets.  But what I don't understand with this is instead of referring to the robot by its name or the paper, the author continues to refer to it as "robo-Barbarella."

Did I just happen to come across a unique piece of writing, or are there very different styles of writing in academic disciplines?

CS and WS are each concerned with a different kinds of questions, and the language their respective practitioners use simply reflects this difference.

This is familiar to me, given that I've been on both sides of the divide (English Lit as an undergrad minor, cognitive science for my PhD). I got a glimpse of why it exists many years ago when I was in a course with a bunch of Lit Crit majors and we were discussing a certain poem by a certain contemporary poet. The Lit Crit people where pointing at a specific part of the poem and going "Is this an allegory for his lost love? Is this a metaphor for the senselessness of  war?", and so on. Then, in a youthful display of naivety, I said "hey, the guy who wrote this poem is still alive, why don't we try to get in contact with him and ask him what he means?". The lecturer leading the discussion looked at me very sternly and said "that is not the point".

That was very illuminating, I think. I'm sure that the poet in question had something specific in mind when he wrote the poem (and we'll never know what it was because he's dead by now), but the Lit Crit guys don't care about that. The intended meaning of the poem is irrelevant to them, what they care about is the meaning(s) that others might extract from the poem. In the same way, in the passages you quoted, the author doesn't care about the android in and of itself, but rather about how others feel about the existence and characteristics of the android, and how these feelings affect other feelings and beliefs we might have about related issues. That is what allows him/her to make judgments about fashion and other things.

In comparison, people in the sciences care about "objective truth" (for lack of a better term), not about how other people feel about stuff. If I write in a paper "stimulus A caused neurological response B (p < 0.01)", asking about the Marxist/feminist/whatever interpretation of this finding is about as pointless as trying to get to the "objective truth" underlying a piece of poetry.

I'm going to write the answer that the OP is surely hinting at and that a substantial number of readers are thinking (minority or majority is hard to say).

Yes, engineering and women's studies have different writing styles because they have different aims.  The goal of engineering is to build new technologies and thereby benefit mankind.  Objectivity is highly valued because nature itself is objective.  You can't trick nature.  The goal of women's studies, on the other hand is about identity politics.  Its aim is to further the power wielded by a subset of the population.  Power is determined by people and people can be manipulated.  As has been confirmed in numerous psychological studies, people respond to emotion far better than reason.  Hence, the most efficient way to further its goals is naturally through subjective persuasion rather than objective analysis.

I find it ironic that someone would write about a roboticist being sexist while throwing out sentences like: "The android wears his maker's unfashionable beige shirt, dark trousers and black windbreaker jacket."  But it isn't surprising if you keep in mind that the goal isn't objectivity, but rather to promulgate dogma, since the success of the field is entirely determined by how many people buy into its core edicts.

One of those core edicts, incidentally, seems to be that men and women have exactly the same distribution of innate intelligence (mean, variance, probably all higher moments).  There is not any room for discussion on this point even though it seems self-evident to me that this should be a purely empirical fact, and that especially now with full genome sequencing, biology would have a lot to say about this issue.  How you respond to this answer likely correlates heavily to your view of the following incident in the math community:

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/on-the-recently-removed-paper-from-the-new-york-journal-of-mathematics/


How to concentrate during conference talks where the quality of the presentation is poor? I have read a lot of tips on how to give a good conference talk: know your audience, give context, don't talk too fast, give your talk a clear structure or story, minimize text on slides, etc.

However, more often than not, presentations I've been to break most of these tips (quickly flipping through walls of text and equations while droning on in monotone), and I find it very difficult to concentrate on the talks.

Any tips on how to pay better attention and be able to learn something from these types of presentations?

When I attend talks where the quality of the presentation is poor, I like to use it as an opportunity to learn about what not to do in a presentation.

I have an ongoing list of "things not to do in a presentation", with examples from talks I've attended. I just take out the list and add to it whenever I attend one of these presentations. I find it helpful for improving the quality of my own presentations - more helpful than just reading tips others have written about presenting, because when I refer to my list I am reminded of exactly why and how a presentation is made worse by [insert bad thing here], from personal experience.

Usually as a result of taking notes on the presentation technique, I end up also paying attention to the content of the presentation, which is a nice side benefit.

P.S. I also have a list of "effective presentation techniques" and I add to it whenever I attend a talk where the quality of presentation is very good.

My daughter was in the army for a while; when class got too long or too boring, it was permitted/expected/encouraged that you stood up, walked around, did knee bends; anything that would keep you from dozing off.  You were there to learn; and you did what it takes to do that.


Referring to previous work “by the authors” Let's consider two papers, one by authors A1, A2, A3 and one by authors B1, B2, B3. In the case of two publications by the same research group, some of the authors may be the same, some may be new… Typically, the senior author/team leader is the same, which means that A3 = B3 (in fields where the senior author is typically listed last).

Now, my question is: in which cases is it okay to refer to the earlier work by the words “the authors”, as in “the authors have shown in [ref] that…”? Is it only okay if the two author sets are strictly equal? Or is it used when A ⊂ B or A ⊃ B? Or when the first author is the same?

I would avoid "the authors" unless it is exactly the same set of authors (preferably in the same order).

I don't see anything wrong with "B1, A2 and B3 have shown that..." even when A2 is one of the authors of the present paper.  It seems a little strange at first, but is quite common.  I have also seen phrases like "B1 and the second author have shown that..." to refer to a paper by B1 and A2 while avoiding mentioning A2 by name, but in more complicated examples it gets pretty unwieldy.

What about the passive

  It has been shown that ... (refs)


Are 'please cite my paper' emails socially accepted? I am a PhD student in physics. A few months ago, I submitted a paper (which has meanwhile been accepted, but not yet published). The preprint is on arXiv.

Now, I saw that a few days ago, another manuscript, from a different group, has appeared on the arXiv, and I think there are large parallels. It's not that my work would dramatically alter the interpretation of their conclusions, but I think it would have been appropriate to link the works.

They also have a very broad 'catchy' title on their paper to make it sound spectacular and it seems to me that this title also relates to my work.

I'm not really suspecting conscious malice from the authors or so. But I wonder if I should send one of the authors a link to my paper, or if this is frowned upon.

Emailing them could be acceptable -- and I would even say it should be encouraged! -- but you have to tread very carefully. If you write an email like

  Hey Dr. Jones,

  I saw your newest paper on arXiv and I noticed you didn't cite [Wouter et al, 2020], do you think you can post an update and cite me?

  Wouter

this would come across very poorly, and in general the above email would be socially unacceptable.

Instead, you could follow the following steps:

Read the paper carefully to find how it relates. It is likely that you, as an author of the other paper, are overestimating the overlap. There still may be some important overlaps, and reading it carefully will allow you to narrow down on the precise similarities.

For example, you mentioned that their broad and 'catchy' title overlaps with your paper, but if the actual material does not overlap, then the overlap in the title is probably superficial and doesn't require a citation here.
Once you understand the scope of the overlap, consider how many papers there are in this topic. Is this a topic with dozens of papers every year, in both high-quality venues and low-quality venues or arXiv? Or are both of your papers the only ones even addressing this topic? In the former case, I would expect that citing you is wrong (they should instead cite one of the more classic or well-known examples in the literature); in the latter case, I think they should cite you (although given that they didn't, they probably aren't aware of your paper).

At this point there are two cases: either you have determined that there is overlap and they should consider citing you, or you have determined that it's probably fine that they didn't cite you. If you still think they should cite you, then you can proceed to the next steps:

See if your advisor or a senior colleague knows this group, and can email them instead. It would be far better to get an email from someone they know about this, rather than some PhD student they haven't heard of.
Finally, as a last resort, write the email yourself. But keep the email professional and careful.

Don't say that they should cite you; do say they might be interested in your recent work.
Do assume that the work was done completely in parallel (it probably was).
Don't overstate the overlap or relevance of your work.
Don't assert that they have an obligation to be aware of your work; the literature is usually extremely vast, and it is hard to keep up with everything, especially arXiv papers with 0 citations posted a few months ago.
If there is another paper, other than yours, that is more representative of the line of work that your paper represents, which they didn't cite, suggest that work instead. And maybe in that case, don't mention your paper at all.
Above all, focus on your interest in their work; state that you saw their work and found it interesting; you can even ask questions, see if they have tried method X or considered question Y. Best case scenario, this could be an opportunity for future collaboration (or you could be a postdoc in the group later, etc.)

I think if you follow the above steps and guidelines, the email should be OK. And if they really should cite you, hopefully this diplomatic approach will cause them to do the right thing (the scientifically honest thing) by citing you.

If you decide not to write an email, then what you can do instead is cite their work in the future. Or meet them at a conference. These are more organic ways for awareness across research groups to develop.

You could be the next victim of a plagiaristic group - the same as Grigory Perelman
I don't think you should ask for anything. Carefully compare papers and possibly they could be a plagiaristic "predator authors group". They search for preprints which were not yet officially published and kill their publications by publishing the same material first. Grigory Perelman was a target of one Chinese plagiaristic group and luckily he was already famous enough to withstand such attacks on his beautiful scientific works.  But this episode with Chinese mathematicians really hurt Grigory's soul as much as he does not want to do math anymore because of such situations.
Do not ask and do not contact plagiarists in any way. Instead contact your publisher as fast as possible. Because the sooner you draw attention to criminal scientific group, the faster they would drop their plagiaristic papers to not get shamed.
The worst possible thing that could happen is if plagiarists will cite you. Like those who were citing G. Perelman while printing his own works. When they cite you, they create a backdoor for walking away prompting that they had a "collaboration".


Plagiarism of former supervisors copying from my master thesis I graduated a couple of years ago performing a master thesis with two supervisors. They both were happy about it and wanted to write a paper from my thesis, including me as author, but after my graduation I didn't hear from them again. It is worth to say that my supervisors had the pdf file of my thesis and all the figures and plots in vector graphics.

To my surprise and deception, I found out that my two former supervisors have published a journal paper based on my master thesis, which is not cited. Not only they have reported all of my plots, but they have also copied the captions (with almost no modifications), equations, tables, and entire sentences (some of them just copy-pasted, other ones with very minor modifications). Moreover, the simulations section reports 2 simulations that I carried out during my thesis, and both the parameters, the plots, and the analysis of the simulations is basically copied from my thesis. After all this content taken from my thesis, I only see that the authors have just acknowledged me in the article for the simulations only, and not even for all the plots and all the sentences they used.

Needless to say, this situation makes me very angry and frustrated. I would like to know, given this situation, whether:

I can accuse my former supervisors of plagiarism, contacting the editor of the journal and proving that a very large portion of the paper is taken from my thesis, which is not cited. Although my thesis is not available online, the authors could have included it in the list of references, and I can prove that they have a copy of it;
I can ask to be included as author of the paper, since most of the work published is based on my master thesis, and not only the "simulations", as the authors wrote in the acknowledgements.

I can accuse my former supervisors of plagiarism, contacting the editor of the journal and proving that a very large portion of the paper is taken from my thesis, which is not cited. Although my thesis is not available online, the authors could have included it in the list of references, and I can prove that they have a copy of it;

Yes, you can do that.

  I can ask to be included as author of the paper, since most of the work published is based on my master thesis, and not only the "simulations", as the authors wrote in the acknowledgements.

Yes, you can also do that.  Based on the information in the question, you should be an author on the paper.  I suggest you contact your supervisors and ask them to fix the author list first.  If that is unsuccessful, you should follow your university's grievance procedure.  Contacting the editor should be the last resort.

If they supervised your work, they do have some right on the result. Check the exact guidelines, any licenses you gave to your school or funding entity. Before doing anything rash, do ask somebody knowledgeable with all details. Could be a trusted colleague or your lawyer.


How to deal with repeated resubmissions of a bad paper (as a reviewer)? (Context: theoretical computer science.)

I just received a review request; I have previously reviewed three previous versions of the same submission (twice for conferences, once for a journal), recommending rejection each time.  For one of the conferences, there was discussion between reviewers and PC members; all reviewers agreed that the paper was “strong reject”.

Between each iteration, the paper has been lightly revised, but never addressing two fundamental problems: the novel content is very insubstantial, and the write-up contains substantial self-plagiarism.

The author(s) have/has extensive publication records, containing some genuinely significant work, but also a very large amount of repetition, often to the extent of self-plagiarism.

My current response is: accept to do the review (first letting the editor know that I have reviewed earlier versions and recommended rejection); then see what significant changes have been made, and if the major problems haven't been addressed, re-reject with essentially the same criticisms as before.

A generous referee might reasonably judge the work substantial enough for a third-tier conference, and not notice the self-plagiarism; so I guess the paper will probably strike it lucky and get published sooner or later.  Is there anything else I can or should be doing to forestall this?  Or should I accept that bad papers do get published, and that the damage the authors are causing to their reputation with referees/editors along the way is enough censure?

This type of repeated submission of junk is something that I truly hate, but also don't know any good way of dealing with.  The problem is that the same freedom that supports novel science also leaves room for this type of "publication-shopping."  In essence: any more unified method of "disapproving" junk papers, to prevent them from wasting everybody's time, will also work against highly novel papers that are meeting resistance from entrenched communities---see, for example, the decades-long fight Barbara McClintock faced in getting her work on gene regulation accepted.

We are thus left with the current and default system, in which each publication judges independently, and in which reviewers face frustrating situations like the one you describe.  My recommendation, then, is simply to judge the paper on its merits, of which it has little.  The biggest key strike is the self-plagiarism: once you've discovered that, the rest doesn't really matter, because self-plagiarism is an offense worth rejecting a paper over in and of itself.

I would recommend informing the editor, along with informing the editor about the history of the paper.  They may then either judge whether to speedily reject the paper (and possibly initiate proceedings against the authors for the self-plagiarism), or whether to ask you to formally write this assessment as a review.

You could do the following; review the paper and make the review available on-line on Publons. This would also allow for a discussion where also the author could share her/his point of view.


How to silence the voice that tells you you're being financially irresponsible by spending 4 to 6 years doing a PhD? I'm very conflicted regarding applying to (American) PhD programs vs. not doing so and finding a job in industry to have more money.

The thought of doing a PhD makes me feel financially irresponsible; yet, I have concrete research interests and would be doing a PhD for the right reasons.  I've also been told that my application would be strong for some good schools, so I feel I'd waste a valuable opportunity.

How do you decide to do a PhD, knowing that it's the "poor" route to take for the next 4 to 6 years of your life?  It feels like a reckless move, but at the same time, a dream worth pursuing, and that nothing in industry could possibly come close to digging deeper into my research projects that I've started on.

When you go to the industry, how do you silence the voice that tells you you could be spending your time advancing the knowledge of humanity, rather than devising new ways to make people look at an internet ad, or helping big stock exchange companies aimlessly move money from account A to account B, without any net gain for the world?

In America the financial situation is even worse in comparison to Europe. The problem: You would have to pay insurances mostly yourself and only get a 30% less salary in comparison to e.g. Germany.

Nevertheless, I can tell you out of my experience that 90% of the PhDs are so frustrated at the end of their limited contracts that they just swap over to industry. Research is not really what most people hope for. In most cases you anyway have to work on projects given by a cooperation partner/boss. Then you hope to get a Nature paper with what you obtained from the project lottery or start working on a small side project (and lose time because you have to follow the main project still).

If you are lucky enough to place a potential Nature paper, maybe your boss asks you to hold some results back for political reasons (someone else working longer in that lab shall publish his shit results maybe earlier and the impact of his paper shall not suffer because of an overlap, or there are contradictions because they faked data), or that someone else shall become the first author because he is higher, and everything was just a waste of time.

On the other hand it can be an amazing experience, because some Labs just work. Unfortunately, you sooner or later have to take another PostDoc and you may enter a Lab which is not like your first one. Also keep in mind, that you periodically change your environment and you are usually all alone in 3 year intervals. I know some scientists which lost also their relationships or divorced.

Welcome to bullshit science!

Addition: Don't start a PhD somewhere where you have to work 4-6 years. Try to find an opportunity for max 3 years.


How to react to a student proselytising during office hours? A few weeks ago, a student asked me during my office hours whether I was religious or not. More specifically, he asked whether I believed in his religion, and was visibly disappointed when I replied negatively.

How should I react to a question such as this? Religion is a bit of a touchy subject, and even if I am a TA (i.e., not the instructor of the course - and more importantly, also a student), I don't want to be put in a similar situation again.

More generally speaking, how do I react to a situation in which I have to answer a question in a way that I know is likely to upset a student, without lying or making the situation worse?

edit: Some comments have pointed out that the student was never actually preaching, and I understand and somewhat agree. The reason I chose this phrasing over anything else was because he did try to make the conversation into something along the lines of "Do you want to learn about the ways of [religious figure]? There's always time, you know".

edit 2: I'm in computer science; there is no link whatsoever between religion and the contents of the class (or the whole program, really).

You address this by stating directly

  "I would prefer not to discuss this topic during office hours. Can I help you with any questions you have on the homework?"

If the issue persists, I would speak with the professor and perhaps also your dean of students (or something similar).

Some religions make recruitment ('Spreading the Good News') a permanent obligation.  This student seems to believe in his religion, and doubtless gains benefit from it.  Maybe it even makes him a better person.  Don't set Human Resources up against all this.  No-one wins, everyone gets upset.

You deal with lots of people.  You WILL be put in this situation again.  People will also invite you to join pyramid selling schemes, book clubs and drinking parties.  It's part of YOUR life skills to be able to deal with these politely, and without getting YOURSELF upset.   Don't worry about his behaviour.  Worry about your reaction.


Students with physical disabilities - blindness, deafness, etc Update: There isn't any disabilities office. Not US...

I'd like to expand on a comment I just made down there: I'm not trying to find a silver bullet. I just want a reasonable starting point.

It is a pretty straightforward question:

  As a teacher, what can I do to make sure the course is accessible to people with physical disabilities?

I have limited experience with these issues; a student lost some of his eyesight midway through the course. It wasn't that big of an issue; the only change we made was to print the exams using a bigger font.

I'm thinking specifically blindness and deafness, but then again, my lack of experience in this matter might lead me to forget important stuff :)

Therefore I'm aiming my question to anyone with some experience at this, from both sides of the table. What changes did you make to the material? Classes? Exams, etc., etc., etc.?

Official guidelines are helpful too. I'll try to find the guidelines at my university and add it here, if relevant.

Rather than edit it, I'll append a more detailed version:

  What are the best practices to prepare material when dealing with students with blindness or deafness?

I know the question is quite general. That is because I'm trying to be proactive. I'm aware that these issues should be dealt in a case-by-case manner, but I'm looking for general good practices/experience to reduce the work needed to perform these adaptations, on both sides.

A few examples following jakebeal's answer:

There are a few file formats that don't play nice with accessibility software (screen readers and protected PDF files).
What multimedia material would you prepare? A subtitled video can be useful to deaf students, for instance.

I would like to echo the other answers and enhance by focusing specifically on the breadth of ability challenges that may be faced by various students.  There are many different types of physical challenges that students may face, and even for a given challenge the answers may be different.  For example, did you know that most blind people can actually see, just so poorly that it cannot be effectively corrected, and that "blindness" actually covers a wide range of different conditions?

The key approach to any student with physical impairments that need accommodation is:

Do not assume that you should be handling it alone, or that you have the necessary knowledge to make an appropriate accommodation for that individual.
Ask the student.  They are the world's foremost expert on their condition and needs.  You'll generally do much better if you begin by just treating them like any other capable adult.
Get the university's experts involved, who will help you work out an appropriate plan tailored to an individual student.

At my university, there is an entire Services for Students with Disabilities office that handles these kinds of issues. Students with health issues that require accommodations are referred, usually by their teachers or doctors, to the office. At the office, they are screened for which types of accommodations will truly help them while being fair to other students given the circumstances. Then, the students can go to their professors with official forms indicating what kinds of accommodations they can receive.

This system allows professors to give very specific and reasonable accommodations. There's no risk that they'll make decisions that are too generous or restrictive, make the situation worse, are taken in by a student who is lying or refuse to believe a student who really has an issue, or fall for any of the other very serious risks associated with trying to decide what to do on their own.

I strongly suspect that your university has a similar department. You should do some research and see whether that's the case.


I wasted six years of my life getting a PhD degree. What should I do, and how will I survive? I struggled with low self confidence throughout my bachelors, masters and PhD in chemical engineering. After spending two years in Masters and six years in getting a PhD degree, I am lost at what I can do with my life.

Initially, my plan was to be in academia. Though I love doing research, I don't see that as a possibility anymore.

I did not do well in my PhD. I have only two first-author journal publications in ~2.5 impact factor journals. I did not acquire significant skills. I am bad at programming, and I have a 3.7 GPA. I did not learn to drive or learn any foreign language. I did not improve my health or developed a new hobby. I even did not spend time on having a relationship. In short, I have done nothing over the past six years.

My PhD supervisor has given me a postdoc position. And I feel extremely inadequate. I feel that I won't be able to do anything after my postdoc year, and I will just be a burden and disappointment to my parents.

I am an international student living in the US.

I don't know what I should do. What should I do?

It looks to me like you did not do so badly as you think. Two publications and 3.7 GPA are not so bad. It might depend on the field, it might not be the best ever, but I have seen much worse. If your supervisor offered you a postdoc position after having you for 6 years as a PhD student, it means that they consider your work useful.

You might be suffering from impostor syndrome. Do read the question and the answers in that link and see if you identify.

If you are not sure now, you have plenty of time during your postdoc year to decide whether you want to continue in academia or get a job in industry. The pros and cons of both options have been discussed extensively, as a quick Google search for "industry vs academia" shows. I personally agree with this source.

And, in most cases, the answer to "I have wasted X years of my life because I did not do Y and Z" is "do not look at the past and do Y and Z now". Especially when, as  in your case, Y and Z can be done at any stage in your career life, such as learning languages, programming or driving.

You don't think you did well during your PhD, but you stuck with it anyways. That sounds like a lot of PhD students. But, it also sounds like students that stuck with something, b/c their parents were back-seat driving their futures.

As others have said, your self-esteem issues stem from something. Something makes you feel inadequate all the time, and makes you compare yourself to others all the time.

Usually, that starts from overbearing parents constantly comparing you to other kids, chastising you for not being as good as some top-tier, stellar performer in your same grade or field, etc.

My dad did that to me my whole life. I was expected to get good grades. When I got them, I didn't get a "good job!" or anything. But, if I got bad grades, I got punished. As I got older, my dad would constantly compare me and my siblings against each other and to other kids his coworkers had. "So-n-so's kid is doing XYZ." (to insinuate it's better then what I was planning on doing, or was doing).

Even when I was an adult, my dad was trying to back-seat drive my career with "advice" that wasn't so much him trying to do what was best for me, but what was best for my career. He never took me, as a person, into consideration when giving advice.

What I realized over time (chatting with my dad extensively) was that he made decisions in his career... he gave up moving up the ladder or managerial positions, because he decided to start a family. He took a back-seat position at his job where he kept his head down and kept his mouth shut so he could keep earning an income and not rock the boat while supporting his family. He made one major career shift up the ladder to get more money, and in retrospect it was an awful decision that uprooted the family and set in motion events that pretty much tore the family apart.

What I realized as I got older was that he was trying to coach me to have the career he wished he could have; he was trying to guide his dream job vicariously through me.

He would push it in ways by either telling me exactly things he thought I should do, or package it as "I was chatting with kids at the gym and giving them advice, and this one kids doing XYZ" (again, to insinuate this "one kid" was doing something better then I was).

I got sick of it.

So, I stopped chatting with him about work, school, etc. When he'd ask or press, I simply told him that I was only going to speak with him like a member of the family, not someone I was seeking career counseling from.

I eventually had a blow-up with him, because I was tired of him trying to back-seat drive my life while I was watching his life implode around him with issues he wasn't staying on top of during a situation that basically forced me to take control of his responsibilities when he ended up in the hospital.

What I learned was ... just ignore him.

In 20 years time, my dad won't be around any more. But, god-willing.. I will.

In 20 years time, will I be happy if I had followed my dad's advice and done this and that? No. I'd be miserable, because he was pushing me to go in directions that were making me miserable.

So, why bother listening to him? Why bother trying to please him?

In 20 years time I can follow his advice and be miserable while he's dead, or I can ignore it and be happy while he's also dead.

Ultimately, I have to figure out what makes me happy, though.

But, when you have someone constantly telling you that you're not doing good enough, you need to do better, you're not doing as well as so-n-so over there, you should be heading in a certain direction, you need to do it all before a certain BS time limit... you know what, you eventually turn into a hot mess that thinks very little of yourself b/c you constantly have a devil on your shoulder that never thinks what you're doing is good enough.

Tell that person (or those people) to go screw off.

Since you're international.. and you're in a STEM field.. and you went through a PhD even though it sounds like you didn't really want to .. I'm going to assume you're Indian.

You need to have a moment of clarity where you decide to be your own person and stop having your family tell you what you need to do and where you need to go in life.

That can be hard if your family is paying the bills.

But, I may be making assumptions, but your story sounds almost identical to a ton of other folks I rubbed elbows with in college... all of them Indian. They were taking STEM when really they wanted to do liberal arts or whatever they were passionate about. Their family pushed them into an "lucrative career", b/c it's all about the money and status with them.

I had a couple of Indian folks tell me they had a massive weight lifted off their shoulders when they told their family to stuff themselves. They were dating people locally, and one was wanting to marry the girl he was dating. One guy dropped his STEM and went into art which is what he really wanted to do (and he was an AMAZING artist).

Ultimately, you have to figure out what makes you happy, and stop listening to folks constantly running you down and telling you you're not good enough.

I rented a room from a gay couple, and one of the guys had a degree in aeronautic engineering. You know what he did for a living? He was the director of a high school band. His parents pushed him to do engineering, b/c he was in the closet and just kept his nose down and did what they said. When he finally got older, he got tired of them, and came out of the closet and pursued what really made him happy: music.

People have to have that moment.

So, you're asking how you'll survive over here? I think you really need to ask yourself what will make you happy. And, you need to start ignoring folks that are running you down.

With a PhD in Chemistry, you don't have to be a great programmer. There are companies that will hire you to figure out some chemistry, and team you up with Comp Sci or Info Sys folks that will do all the coding and stuff for reports, data science, etc.

If you don't like what you have a PhD in, then go figure out what you do like. Maybe you like working on motorcycles or scuba diving or whatever.. find a way to make a career out of it.

It's better to live a modest life that makes you happy, even at the expense of others, then to be rich and f'ing miserable b/c you decided to make everyone else happy.. usually folks that won't be alive in 20 years time.. which just leaves you miserable while they're dead.