How to approach negotiating the start date of a tenure-track position? A few days ago I got an offer (yay!) from a US school. I have about another week before they want a decision. Over the last few days I have been tallying up costs for start up.  When should I start negotiating?

And here's the bigger question: my wife and I are expecting our first child basically soon as the fall semester starts - how do I broach the topic of a single semester deferral? I hate to do this but we have a lot of worry about transitioning during such a sensitive time (and their health insurance policy does not allay our concerns plus we have zero connections there and I worry about my wife's isolation as I start a new position). This would be the number one thing for me to take the job.

So how would I go about the negotiation? Would I say A is number one thing I need, then B, then C etc? I should I start ASAP? Should I e-mail where I can cleanly layout reasons for each desire?

In regards to the deferral request, how do you envision the school to respond? It is a small department so not sure how they could absorb the workload. I was planning on going into detail how I would use my deferred time to accomplish tasks that would benefit the school (e.g.  grant applications, work on outreach program, prep for spring classes, be willing to take heavier load in spring, get research ready for students etc). I doubt the school will completely dismiss my caution but also worried that deferral will be too much for them to bear.

Let me offer the perspective of a former department chair who was involved in hiring negotiations from the department side. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Hiring a faculty member is a long-term investment. When a department recruits a new faculty member, typically they expect the person to be around for the next 20-30. When viewed through that prism, any short-term concessions, especially ones that come without any financial cost like a deferral or unpaid leave of absence, are fairly negligible compared to the total benefit the department expects to get out of an otherwise-successful recruitment.
Leverage is important, but it’s not everything. An academic recruitment is not usually a zero-sum game where each side tries to exploit the other to the maximal extent they can get away with. Specifically, it is a repeated game where the reputation of a department’s recruitment practices matters a lot for its ability to recruit successfully in the future, and besides, the two parties are going to be working alongside each other for a long time, so it is in everybody’s interest that things are done amicably and in a way that leaves the other side generally happy and satisfied. For this reason, a candidate’s request that can be granted by the department for a relatively low cost will typically be looked at pretty favorably, even in the absence of leverage. (At least this is true in departments and universities run by rational, competent people...)
Keep your cool. From the language of your question it seems to me that you are approaching the discussion from a rather emotional place. For example, you say “I hate to do this”, suggesting that you feel guilty or apologetic about bringing up what you perceive to be a super-delicate or taboo topic. Relax! Such discussions are all in a day’s work for the people you’ll be talking to, and don’t carry nearly the emotional weight that you imagine them to carry. Nor do you have anything to be apologetic about. “Negotiation” in the current context is just a code word for you telling the department what your needs and preferences are, to which the department will respond by telling you what its needs and preferences are, and by a process of joint exploration you and your co-negotiator will arrive at the point in the space of possibilities that is reasonably agreeable to you both. Just bring up the topic of the deferral and anything else that’s on your mind, in a live conversation (ask for a phone/video call with the department chair), and do so in a straightforward, mature, honest and professional way, and you’ll be fine. The worst that can conceivably happen is they’ll decline your request and you’ll be no worse off than you are now.
You should bring up your request as soon as possible. Given the short deadline, any further delay weakens your position, since if you wait much longer, people will wonder if things that you say are important to you maybe aren’t as important as you say they are (otherwise why are you only now remembering to bring them up?). By acting fast you will appear more credible and your requests are likely to be taken more seriously. There will also be more time to explore possible creative solutions that will satisfy both you and the department.

Good luck, and congratulations on the offer, which I’m sure you worked extremely hard to get and is well-deserved.

Frankly, I think their reaction will be laughter.  Most adults have children and you want a semester off because you're just doing what everyone else does?  This is a small school and they need a teacher in the classroom.  If you can't do that, you're not worth messing with.

For whatever else you think you might want to negotiate over, realize that their hands may be tied.  The department may really like you and perhaps would gladly raise the salary or add perks, but the dean cares only about his budget and he gets to decide and he very likely won't decide in your favor.

Yes, I'm a cynic, but you have an offer.  My advice would be that you either take it or leave it.  I believe that the only negotiation possible in these matters is "I have an offer for $90K from this other school. I'd rather come to your school, but you've offered only $70K."  You can't negotiate without leverage and I don't think you have any (yet.)  I'm assuming you don't have a Nobel prize, because if you did, you wouldn't be considering "small schools".

Sorry for the straight talk.


Must I credit others' published research when using it in a proprietary product, if doing so would be bad for business? If a company was building a product that uses methods designed and outlined in a published research paper, should credit be given? If crediting them would be a bad business decision, is it OK not to?

I am building a product that builds on research published by a university research group. The research outlines a quicker, cheaper and more efficient method of doing something that usually can cost much more. So it is basically just a small part of my overall project, although it allows me to cut costs drastically. The method is not patented, and the group most likely does not plan on getting a patent as they make it clear that their research is in no way related to any company or products.

I do believe in giving credit where due, but publicly disclosing the research method that is allowing me to cut costs and release an existing product a lot cheaper than competitors would be shooting myself in the foot.

My original idea was to make the hardware opensource, and then just sell prebuilt versions for a good price, although after seeing what is going on in the 3D printing industry - like MakerBot filing patents on their 3D printer and scanning - I am not sure if it is a good idea.

So without opensourcing the hardware, it puts me in a difficult situation. I would like to credit the researchers, but doing so would be a bad business decision. Would it be considered acceptable practice to use their method without crediting them?

Since business is on your mind, before ethics, you should first check whether there are any legal restrictions on the use of the published research, or obligations arising from such use, issues that may depend on the applicable laws of some specific country. For example, it may be the case that you may not need consent to use the research results, since they have been openly published, but you may have some financial obligations if you are to use it for profit (and not necessarily towards only the research team), patent or no patent. So make certain where you stand.

As for ethics: it is rare for businesses to credit researchers. Instead they usually contract them either for royalties or to secure further development, if there is such potential, and not leave it to fall into the hands of competitors. "Credit due" may be one of the currencies in academia, but "money" is the currency that businesses understand.

By contacting and maybe contracting the research team (after doing your legal due diligence first), you may even be able to secure such exclusive use of their results, or some even more efficient version of them. Again, this will depend on the legal framework applicable.

absolutely:
so your coworkers can recreate your work...
more importantly: because its the right thing to do...
proprietary typically never opens the hood, so don't let "bad for business" ward you off...
on that note: if you are worried about shooting yourself in the foot, etc., how do you think the authors of the work that you built yours on feel?
there are trade secrets, and there's being honest and open: make a judgement call where to stop revealing facts, but don't withhold information because of the unwarranted fear that it'll be bad for business......openness is good for business. and the betterment of all


Should I attend Seminars/Conferences that give Certificates upon achieving some number of attendance? The question is self-explanatory actually.

Should I attend Seminars/Conferences that give Certificates upon achieving some number of attendance? And do they have any worth if I/ to put them in my CV?

I'm an undergraduate student currently in Electrical-Electronical Engineering program and every week there are seminars carried out by University/Department and varius events carried out by various clubs. Some of them give certificate upon attandance and some of them require attending the seminar for some number of sessions for certification but I'm not sure if those certificate have any value at all and I want to know if it's worth ditching relaxing after week of lectures for some certificate that can be obtained by literally every single human being that walks in to the hall.

Thanks in advance.

There is some value in attending these Seminars/Conferences that you may want to consider:

It shows that you are "doing more" than the minimum requirements
You may end up adding or emphasizing important keywords in your CV
The Seminars/Conferences you mentioned are from University/Departments and clubs.  If the Seminars/Conferences have any "Name Brand" involvement, such as corporations or other institutions, you get the name of the institution on your CV.

Building a proffessional profile of yourself the more that you are attending Seminars/Conferences Meetings and Discutions it shows better reputations onbyour Profile Interviews
PhD Sam Beljuli


A professor commented that my research is too simple as compared to my colleagues. What does that mean about my future prospects? I gave a departmental seminar yesterday. It was a short 20 minutes presentation of my PhD thesis. I had presented two of my published works during the seminar. My research topic was to model an experimental manufacturing techniques. I have published two papers (in decent journals) and will be submitting few more.

One of my departmental senior professors privately told me that I am doing too simple research as compared to my labmates.

I know that I am an underperformer in my group, but I never thought my research to be simple. Now, I am worried how my research will be perceived by prospective future advisors and faculties. My advisor says not to heed to the professors comments and that I have done a good job. However, deep down, I feel that the professor might have a fair point. I don't know what can I do now. I have already submitted my thesis and will be defending in couple of weeks, though that professor won't be in my committee.

Perhaps the best route is to split the difference. Note the concern of one professor, but take heart from the support of your advisor. There are a lot of possible explanations.

Perhaps the professor making the comment is overlooking some aspects that are harder than they think. Some things that look easy from the outside are harder when you get into the details. And, perhaps, that professor is just so brilliant that the crux of your problem seems obvious to them. There are such people, of course.

Perhaps your current research really is simpler than that of others in their circle. But you are still early in the profession. You will probably do better work as you advance. The dissertation shouldn't be viewed as your life's best work, only the first.

There is no real reason to worry at this point, and certainly not to panic. But long term, consider the advice you were given. Perhaps a bit more experience will help you judge its merits or lack.

Is it possible you're on the Autistic Spectrum? I did really poorly in the academic side of things due to my brain being wired differently and now that I am diagnosed, it greatly helps me understand why and opens doors for help in such areas as I excel at hands-on/practical things on a level way better than the average person.  But explaining it still isn't easy.

For example, I was always good at maths in school and could fly through maths books but could never "show my working" and I'd explain things in more simplistic terms.

It's not uncommon for those of us on the spectrum to do poorly at Academics but excel in the field, and if you are, there's a lot of helpful resources available these days. (Especially if you're in the UK)

Until I got my diagnosis, I never thought much of myself or thought I would get anywhere and now I'm in a pretty good position.


Do you have to have a PhD to be a "research scientist"? I'm graduating from my master's degree at MIT this summer and I have a chance to stay for another year as an employee in my current lab while I apply for PhD programs. I'd love to do that because I love the current grant I am working on, I love the topic, the people and the PI.

My only hesitation is that there seems to be very limited titles in academia for one who is not a graduate student and does not have a PhD. The truth is, I do not want to be a "lab tech." I want to start becoming autonomous in the field I did my master's and becoming a lab tech is the exact opposite of being an independent researcher (based on my understanding).

I feel like if I start my year-long employment with the agreement with my PI that I'll continue work on my current research but with the "lab tech" title, the post-doc who supervises my work will treat me like a lab tech!

Therefore, I'd like to be a "research scientist" for the next year, but do I have to have a PhD for that? Or, what other titles are there besides a lab tech for people who wants to do research without a PhD in academia?

Titles depend on institution. In industry, you can be a "research scientist" with no particular degree. In a university, a "research scientist" may be a catch-all term for scientific employees, or it may be a parallel track with similar prestige to a professorship (with similarly high standards). I do not know what MIT's system is.

Your job responsibilities will depend on your boss (advisor) far more than your title. If your advisor is on board with you continuing your current research, then great; this will be true regardless of your title. If they are doing you a favor allowing you to remain employed while you apply for PhD programs, then they may expect you to do "lab tech" type work.

It's certainly a good idea to discuss your title, responsibilities and goals with your advisor before accepting the position. But I wouldn't be too concerned about the title. If this were a permanent position for you, I might agree that "lab tech" would be an unfortunate title, and might have unfortunate implications about your ability to participate in original research (especially since you would have to consider your position if your supervisor moves on). But since this is just a temporary stop-gap until grad school, I would focus this conversation on your responsibilities and goals.

The  other  tittle   is   "research assistant"   Yes, people   with master's   degrees   do  get hired  as   research  assistants.   I know  one  person   who  was  hired   by  the  Oklahoma   Geological  survey   as   research  assistant  while  he  was  working  on  his  M.S.  in geology   and   he  remained   employed  as  a  research   assistant. "Research  assistant"  is  his  job  title,  or  was.

How  you   are  treated  by  someone   else  often   depends  on  how  you  treat  them,   if  you  have  no  personal  respect  for  the  post-doc  who  is  directing  your  research,  why   should  that  post-doc  respect  you.  The  post-doc  has  more  life   experience  in   academia  than you   do.

You   don't  HAVE  to  stay  in   academia.   y\ou CAN  go  to  work  for  the  federal   government  I  am  assuming   you  are  in  the  United States)  or  industry   or  businesses   with  master's   degree.   I  talked  to   someone    within  the last  month   whose  daughter   got  two   bachelor's  degrees  and  master's  degree     and  her  mother  says  she LOVES her  job.

I  have  THREE  bachelor's   degree  AND   an M.S.  in   geology.   Yes,  i  wanted  to  get  Ph.D  18  and  15  years   ago.   but  I   would  have  had  to   apply    and  to  another   university's  Ph.D.  program  AND   be  admitted    and  then  i  would  have  to MOVE  to  another   state...  I've  come  to  accept  the   fact   that  i no longer  have    the  physical  stamina   to   get   a  Ph.D.   and  now  my  knowledge  is  OUTDATED   because  i haven't  really kept  up   with  academic  literature.  Even   second  master's  degree    may not  be   worth  the  investment  of   another 3 years  of TIME,  especially since  i might  end up  in   assisted  living  before  i   could  graduate.,   and   that master's   degree  program  REQUIRES   at  LEAST   2  internships.  In August,  2003  i  was  told  by  an  assistant    graduate  college   dean  that  if  i  wa NOT  admitted  into  college  degree  program,   the university  did not  need  ow  want  me  because  Everyone   was  going  back   to  school.   that  was  !5 YEARS   ago.  That  is  still   true  TODAY.

You HAVE  a  job. Do you   want  to keep    that  job,  even if you   are  doing  SOMEONE ELSE'S   research,   or  not  just   because    you     think   you   will be    treated     and  not  get  the  respect   YOU  think you  deserve/  Respect  is  EARNED,  not   granted.   You CANNOT DEMAND    respect and kindness  form  someone  else. I've   had  that  happen   TO ME,   and  it   was   the MOST  INSULTING   thing   that  I've   EVER  had  happen  to me.


What email to use for corresponding author on publications when institution is not permanent? What is the best email to use as corresponding author when publishing academic papers as a graduate student, postdoc, pre-tenured faculty or other potentially non-permanent position where your email address may change in the next few years? I know many academic institutions will let you turn your email address into a forwarding address, but in cases where this is not possible and your email address will cease to exist when/if you leave, what is the solution? Using something like a gmail address seems practical but rather unprofessional--or is it?

It has become quite obvious by now that most researchers are on precarious employment for an extended period of time when starting their career.

As mentioned by Michael and Mark, it is very common to find gmail email addresses in scientific publications. I believe that nobody would find that objectionable.

Tips, anyway:

Do not use party.dinosaur@gmail.com but a variation on firstname.lastname@gmail.com.
The issue of perenniality remains: GMail deletes inactive accounts after some time. Check their tools to address this issue: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en
Self-hosted email (i.e. firstname@lastname.tld) is also subject to cancellation if you don't renew your domain/email host.
If you maintain a web presence, your email will be easily findable in the future.

As a kind of "non-requested bonus", I would advise to register an ORCID and have your paper include it (most publishers will include it by now). The ORCID is a unique permanent researcher ID, see their website. On your profile, you can have a list of all your publications and also of your web page. You can include several URLs, meaning that you can list your current institution homepage, your personal hosted homepage, your google scholar account, etc. The ORCID page will be permanent, easily findable and you can update it.

EDIT: you can also list an email (at your preference) on your ORCID profile.

Google is an inappropriate email address to use, regardless of precarity

Please don't use a GMail on your papers, it is inappropriate, as it encourages and legitimizes use of that platform.

You see, Google has been verified to pass the contents' of users' emails on to the US government's intelligence agencies, as part of the PRISM intelligence gathering program. This was one of Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013.

While the wide-spread use Google's email service is a fact of life we must contend with - as an academic, you must hold yourself to a higher standard when authoring paper than as a mere individual user, and at least not-encourage your readers to use/communicate with GMail accounts.


What's the point of "CV available on request"? A certain fraction of personal websites of researchers has a hint along the lines of "CV available on request." I always found that a bit odd. Are there any situations where a researcher would

Actively ask another researcher for their CV; and
Would be more inclined to do so because they have such a hint on their website?

Doing this does convey useful information: it signals that the individual has made a conscious decision not to post their CV online. If you come across this statement when looking for someone's CV you know not to waste more time searching. I think this is the real reason people do it, rather than any concern that people might otherwise not think to send an email.

No, I don't think so.
(What else is there to say?)


How to network as a new graduate student in a new country First of all, let me admit something from the beginning; I don't understand exactly what is meant by networking in an academic setting.
I am a new Master's student in a country where I never studied before (Germany). Until now, as an undergrad, I have done several internships, worked within a couple of research groups for some time, attended many seminars & workshops, taken several graduate-level courses. During each of those occasions, I had the opportunity to meet with several academics who could (I guess) help me while I am shaping my career, but I've never tried to communicate with people whom I didn't have to. Sounds quite a bit of lost opportunity, but in my defense, I don't like socially interacting with people whom I don't know and don't comfortable being around.
My first question is that what have I (possibly) lost by not networking?
Secondly, what is meant by "networking" exactly in an academic setting? Just knowing each other exists, or being some kind of friends, or just knowing who is interested in what?
Thirdly, how can a graduate student network in events where most of the people are way older, and academically more senior?

Addendum:
I've just come from my first, proper academic event. It was more for a celebration than a networking event, but still, I've met a lot of people and it was great. There were a lot of people who think in the same way as I do (not necessarily we agreed on everything, just our way of thinking were the same; analytical, based on data, etc.). I think I've made some "academic friends", and there was a lot of interesting discussion on almost everything but above all, it was really fun.
But, all the things were with the people whom I had already known a bit, and I found it a bit hard to join the discussion with the people I hadn't know.

Since you

have done several internships, worked within a couple of research groups for some time, attended many seminars & workshops, taken several graduate-level courses

You have probably done a fair amount of networking already. And I'd say likely more than other Master students. You're maybe not as "connected" as someone who introduced themselves at seminars or workshops, but you still know better now what the various speakers are working on. This is a big part of what networking is about.

 Secondly, what is meant by "networking" exactly in an academic setting? Just knowing each other exists, or being some kind of friends, or just knowing who is interested in what?

Since you indicate you are in Germany, networking is about getting acquainted: knowing each other exists and what their professional interests and topics are.
You may also become professional friends (and since you are in Germany, beware of the difference between English friend and German Freund - which is reserved for close friends in English terms)

 how can a graduate student network in events where most of the people are way older, and academically more senior?

The most effective way is IMHO attending conferences.

If you are at a conference on your own (noone else from your group), attach yourself to various other groups that are there in somewhat larger numbers. Easiest IMHO to attach yourself to some fellow students, who are there with also postdocs or their professor around.
If you are attending together with more senior people from your group, I'd expect "your" postdocs or professor may introduce you to their acquaintances.

You can also attend e.g. PhD student seminars. There it should be quite easy to get acquainted with your peers. This is also very relevant and useful networking: a) you can get e.g. information on working conditions in their groups when you'll be looking for a postdoc position later on. b) Like you, they'll "grow up" academically/professionally. In a few years, they'll be your experienced professional peers, PIs and professors that you know already.
Last but not least, I think it also important to get acquanted also with a group of people outside your field. In Germany, I'd recommend joining some sports club/university sports or a theater group or... depending on what your hobbies are.

My first question is that what have I (possibly) lost by not
networking?

This is a hypothetical question, and we will never know. But, depending on the setup that you've been, you might have lost couple of interesting discussions that could have generated some ideas. Don't dwell on this...

Secondly, what is meant by "networking" exactly in an academic
setting? Just knowing each other exists, or being some kind of
friends, or just knowing who is interested in what?

Mostly the first and the last, but not the one in the middle. People will keep it professional, you should not expect to become friends with people that you will meet in a networking event.

Thirdly, how can a graduate student network in events where most of
the people are way older, and academically more senior?

Targeted networking: in such event you usually know the participants upfront. If any of them are of particular relevance to you, you can easily approach them. If they are relevant, you will already have an idea of the topic to talk about. "The seniors" in academia usually deal with people younger than themselves, i.e., their own students. So, you can expect them to be open to discussions, but you will probably not get their full attention. They are there for networking as well, for their own interest. This should imply that the theme" of the networking event is relevant. If it is meant for the young, i.e., a PhD forum, you will have your opportunity. If it is a lunch break in a top conference, people will stick to their ranks.


As a Head of Department, how can I make my faculty happier? I am HoD for a department with over 30 members.

The dept is socially inactive with only one or two social gatherings per academic year.
No politics or "serious personal issues" among members.
Just teaching while doing some research.

I got a green light from (very) top management to make them happier. But I really don't know how!

It might be uncommon, but just ask them.

You could use a basic questionaire if you want to do it anonymously, or you could talk to everyone in person.

Just showing some activity does not help as long as you are having no idea about the needs and desires of your faculty members.

In psychology, metrics about psychological states like happiness are seldom assessed as a single question. The reason is that people's response to a simple question like "Are you happy?" is greatly influenced by many factors that might be unrelated to the particular goals of the person asking the question. So a survey might ask a variety of questions and then "happiness" is a composite of the answers from eight of the twenty questions.

How do you define happiness and how is current department behavior unhappy? How will you measure success, or report success to administration?

You can also look at the task as an attempt to correct problems or as an opportunity to augment things that are already good. So why would anyone ever work in your department?


Should I reward points for an incorrect answer if it is the result of misinformation presented in a TA's office hours? So a TA came to me asking for advice. He gave wrong information in office hours leading a student to a wrong answer.

The TA showed the student how to solve the problem via the wrong statistical test - the assumptions for the statistical test he used do not hold in this case. The answer generated from this test yields a test statistic that doesn't make any sense when you think about it's meaning. Kind of like if you were asked to "find the length of the fence that encloses ..." and your method produced the answer of -50 meters. The TA provided the student with step by step instructions, but did not do any of the numerical calculations. Had he done those calculations he would almost certainly have caught his mistake.

The student complains that she should not be punished because her TA made a mistake. TAs can change HW grades, if they have good reason to do so, and this TA wants to correct his mistake by rewarding the student the points on the problem. I told the TA that I would get back to him as I don't want to give my advice in haste. I think I want to say something like this.

to the TA: "Thank you for asking for my advice in this situation; it is indeed a difficult position to be in. However, this situation concerns me, not because you gave wrong info or bad advice, as we all occasionally make mistakes, but because you seem to have told a student the method for answering the question. While it's OK for students to get help from their TAs, it should only be by reviewing concepts and asking them 'leading questions' that nudge them in the right direction. Note I am not saying that what you did is objectively wrong, as I should have been more clear in my instructions at the beginning of the course, but in the future telling students how to do a problem, in my opinion, is unfair to the students who can't make your office hours."

to the student: "Your TA contacted me recently about changing your HW grade. While I sympathize with your situation, and understand that it is very frustrating to receive bad advice/information from your TA, it is ultimately your responsibility to make sure your solution is reasonable, and therefore I can not give you full credit on this problem. Ultimately the majority of the points you lost were not for using this incorrect method (the TAs error), it was for not interpreting your answer and realizing it made no sense. As stated on the first day of class and in the syllabus I require all students to interpret their answers to make sure they make sense. Please come see me if you would like advice on how to check your answers as this is a very important skill in all scientific disciplines and in life in general. TAs, solutions manuals, and even professors make mistakes. Never trust something just because it was told to you by someone with more authority."

Is this the right thing to do?

I agree that in principle, the student is responsible for critically evaluating information from all sources and rejecting any that's incorrect.  I wouldn't simply award the student points for the incorrect solution, but on the other hand it seems unhelpful to just mark it wrong and leave it there (and despite your explanation, the student will likely perceive this as unfair).  In similar situations, I've done one of two things:

Allow the student to revise the answer, and regrade the problem; or
Discard the problem for that student, and recompute the score for the assignment based only on the remaining problems.

The notion about the "fairness" of reliance on TAs for advice being in question because not all students may be able to attend a TA's office hours is an utterly false premise. Instead of being "equal protection" it's "equal jeopardy."  Bad idea.

If a student is so brilliant that they need no instruction to get correct answers, or if you're such a brilliant lecturer that you reach every single student with the exact best way to deliver the material for 100 percent comprehension...then eliminate TA/student interaction entirely.  However, in my experience, such students and such teachers together are countable on one hand in a given university, usually with fingers left over for other tasks.

If the student came up with the answer that she should have, using the incorrect method, then she should receive credit...if she redoes the solution using an appropriate method, which in your grand mangnaminity you should bestow upon her.  And yes, she should be chagrined to have not noticed the nonsensical answer.


Googling my name reveals silly things from when I was younger. I am embarassed. How will this affect me in my future academic career? I am a masters student at one of the top two universities in the UK and will be applying for PhD positions soon. When I google my (unique) name, the first few results are what you'd expect, my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and some university web pages.

However if you keep scrolling and go through the pages of Google's search results, you see some silly forum posts from when I was 12-14 years old, and some poorly written Yahoo Answers questions from the same time. I am now 22 so this was almost 10 years ago.

I know it's stupid but when I was that age no one really taught me how to use the internet properly and so ended up using my full name in a number of places.

I've not written anything offensive and my name isn't on anything objectively bad, but it's just childish silliness (memes, poorly written stories, Yahoo Answers nonsense, and just weird forum posts) and I'm a bit embarrassed to be honest. I feel like as I continue to progress academically, it will become more likely that people will Google me and see all this which might make it likely that I will be judged. Again, it's nothing offensive or objectionable just old young teenager stuff. Benign but embarrassing.

Should I just ignore it and hope that as my career develops these old results get pushed further back in Google's search results? Should I try to remove this stuff from the internet (very difficult as I have lost all these old accounts)?

The stuff I posted back then has little to nothing to do with who I am now professionally, and I would hate for people to think it is. Having a unique name does seem like a curse sometimes and I have made it worse by being extra foolish when I was young.

I'm deeply involved in web technologies, including search results. The simplest and fastest way to solve this problem is to add other search results. The more "legitimate" and positive results found, the less likely the others will be seen. There are numerous factors in raising search results, but still:

Create another Stack Exchange account with your name and use it.
Create social media accounts with your name.
Join groups and use your real names (in addition to pseudonyms).
Create a Disqus account with your name.

You don't need to make many posts on each site, but place professionally enhancing content there.

If you really want to spend time with this - open other accounts with simple variations of your name thus creating even more false results.

A little work every day and soon you'll have 100s if not 1000s of positive results that will appear above the other silliness.

Relax.

What you did in your 12 is half your time here back. It will become a third soon, quarter slightly later, etc.

During this time you will feed the Internet with new and more relevant content and low-quality posts will become very obsolete and cannot backfire to you. If anyone tries to play that card in an argument, you can belittle it by "And you were a genius in your 12? You made a very poor improvement since then."

The only case your 12-year-old self can backfire at you is a very serious misbehaviour and it still can be dismissed as "I've learnt my lesson from that".

This is the part of growing up and learning. If you don't learn you don't improve. What actually happens to you is judging your old posts written with 12 year old knowledge and 12-year-old skills by criteria adjusted to recent knowledge and 24-year-old skills. Be sure that after 10 years you will see your today's work, you are proud of, with the same emotions as you are seeing the ancient posts Google has found.

If you are about to be assessed by a sane person they will know that and ignore that. If they will assess you because of your 20 years old posts, it is a strong argument for you to never meet them again.


Denying offer of admission from graduate school after accepting The university that gave me an offer only gave me two weeks to accept the offer. I asked them for an extension, and they only gave me a week more. I have still yet to hear from the other universities I applied to; since it is only mid March. I am quite confused as to what I should do, I don't want to give back the offer after accepting it. But I also can't predict what the other universities decisions would be and neither am I too confident as to reject the one offer I do have. Would appreciate some advice. I applied to Masters program in Physics, in Canada.

Presumably the school you heard from was not your first choice.

I'd just be as upfront as possible, with everyone. Next step is probably to contact the schools and/or professors you haven't heard from, say that you have another offer, and ask if they can give an update on the timing of their decisions.

Depending on what those schools say, contact the school you were accepted to and request another extension until the specific dates that the other schools gave you.

Clearly accepting the offer without mentioning the possibility of declining it later is a lie.
And YOU have to make the decision whether it is acceptable to lie in this case or not.

As I was in the same situation, I also wondered what to do.
Here is the decision that I have made for myself:

When applying for a Bachelor or Master degree program, accepting an offer has little consequence for the offering institution.
There is no scholarship attached that could be offered to another candidate and there are quite a few places to begin with, so departments may presume that some accepted offers will be rejected later.
Personally, for me I could live with lying to the institution in this case.

When applying for a PhD program the institution will make plans for you after accepting an offer.
That is, assign teaching duties and allocate funding for you.
If the accepted offer is rejected at a later point, this will cause a great deal of trouble for the institution.
Personally, for me it would not be okay to lie to the institution in this case.

So, that is what I did.
(I applied for PhD positions)
I accepted my less favored offer and withdrew my applications at other institutions.
If one of the other institution had given a life changing offer to me, I might have reconsidered, but the benefit for me would have had to be gigantic to offset the damage I would have been doing to the less favored institution.
After all, even if you do not care about the well-being of your less favored institthat would be burning a bridge, and some fields of research are so small that it can harm your career very badly having burned that bridge.


How to obtain citation metrics for a low-profile journal that is not indexed in major journal databases? I am interested in generating citation-metrics for The journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions using Google Scholar or such tools. (The journal is not indexed in almost any selective database, compounding my woes.)

Is there a way of doing this?

Not a full answer, but I just want to point out that you can to some extent retrieve citations from, for instance, Web of Science (WoS) to journals that are not covered by the citation index per se. For instance, by doing a "Cited reference search". There you will find citations to documents, based on the citation information given in reference list of WoS publications, irrespective of whether the "target" publications (the ones receiving the citations) are covered by WoS.

For instance, when searching for "BRIT ASS STUDY RELIG" (a generalization of "The journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions", which seems to be found in WoS) as "Cited work" I find a ten citations in total to the journal.

This is probably not completely what you are after, but might be useful to know.

To gain citations for the articles published within JBASR, first you must get read.
Have both the authors and the journal board do their PR thing. Have them use all the social media, Twitter, LinkedIn and such; use all the sites like Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley etc. - have all the authors make profiles there and have them make their papers available. Ask authors to refer to both articles within JBASR as well as in priority journals. Use the editorial in every issue to properly cite certain articles within that issue and previous issues.
Think about what it is exactly that you mean to accomplish.


Accepted for Masters but Can Only Attend if I Have a Scholarship I'm not a US citizen, and I was accepted recently for an MS Degree in CS. After asking the Graduate Office, I was told so far they don't have a scholarship for me (only 15 out of the 115 accepted got one).

I'm proceeding with the papers and such, since if someone drops, it will pass the scholarship for the next one, but due to currency exchange and the high price of US education, I can't go without the funding. Is there any way I can prove myself now or is it better to refuse the offer right now?

Ask if you are eligible for student loan.

Scholarships are often not available for undergraduate and Master's degree. It is extremely common in the US (and UK) that students borrow money to pay tuition fee and stipend. My former flatmate didn't paid all the loan until he was 28 years old (his father paid his tuition fee, he only borrowed for stipend). You can consider this as an investment if you believe the degree could bring you a well-paid job in the future.

On the other hand, you don't have to go the US to do a Master's. Many EU countries, such as Germany, provide free education for foreigners, and many provide scholarships based on the household income.

It seems to be a Hypothetical question. However, my advice is to but for some financial aids to study if you really believe it's worth doing.


What to do when there are no courses available to help with my research? How will it affect me? I am a first-year mechanical engineering PhD at a Canadian university. I had by undergrad and a master's degree in materials engineering. My previous master's research was mostly experimental with some implementation of a mathematical model in Matlab and Fortran. All graduate courses were on programming or simple mathematical modeling or experimental analysis.
Now for the PhD degree, my research topic involves continuum mechanics, variational mechanics, and finite element analysis. There are no courses available in my university for the next two semesters. I had taken an "advanced" course last semester which had some continuum mechanics in it, but I found it fairly introductory.
My advisor says that in graduate school one must learn topics by oneself. And no one will look for these courses in the CV if one can publish papers using the methods.
I am starting to learn these from online courses and books. But I feel inadequate because of my poor undergraduate background in mathematics and these topics.
My PhD funding is for three years (can be extended to one more year). I need to start my research by the second year. I don't know what to do.
My advisor just points me towards relevant literature. I wonder if she has my best interests in mind.

Part, or most, of a PhD is about self-learning, so you have to step up and work on those subjects you need.
A PhD is usually to push the boundaries of knowledge in topics / areas etc so learning methods or techniques relevant to moving your research forward is what you have to do - simply said your supervisor is correct.

This is very sad.
Is this research something that the advisor actually wants to do? Has she published in this area? Or is this just something that there was grant money available for? If so you are being used as cheap labor just so that your advisor can appear to be active and engaged.
That most certainly should not be norm, but it is not unknown. You have been assigned to a project for which you have expressed no enthusiasm and in which you have no training or experience. If this is the case what can you do about it? Others have made practical suggestions, but how approachable is your Head of Department? This one of the things that they are paid to sort out. They might be able to point you toward suitable resources. They could assign you to a new advisor. Your Department should also have a Graduate Chair,which might be a better place to start.
It could be however, that doing anything to make the department look good on paper is a deliberate policy. In that case, you may really be on your own. Ombudsman?


How to reward students for learning from mistakes without penalizing those who didn't make mistakes in the first place? We're thinking of implementing a policy where if a student asks a question/makes a mistake in a lab, they are required to write down what that question/mistake was and how it was resolved.  These "lab notebooks" (for want of a better word) will be evaluated based on the quality of the responses to the problems, not the problems themselves.  For instance, if the problem was relatively trivial ("We didn't turn the device on") but the response is great ("we came up with a checklist that we will follow to ensure that the basic setup is done every time") then the submission would be evaluated with a high mark.

For the majority of our students, there will be more than enough stuff in each lab to write about.   However, this isn't universally true and some groups will do the lab just fine without asking any questions.  Whether they make mistakes or not is an open question, but there really are some groups who just get what's going on, take their data and do very well without needing to interact with us at all.  And there's the problem - these students would have an empty notebook because they didn't need to go back and check things out.  Would they get a 0 on that part?  That doesn't sound fair at all.

How can I reward the students who learned from their mistakes without penalizing those who don't make any?

At face value, it seems clear that the issue is that you're trying to mix measurements of two very different kinds of performance. I think the REAL issue is deeper than this, but let's start with the two things you're mixing up:

You want to measure outcomes. Did the group end up with "correct" results from the lab?
You want to measure a specific (learning) process. Did the group learn from mistakes and questions?

The first measurement is usually the default in classroom settings because it's the most obvious. The second measurement has value, though: You're trying to prepare students for life, not just hand them a set of answers. Measuring their ability to learn, and encouraging them to be learners, is important.

That said, measuring outcomes has the advantage that it's not dependent on the process. It's easy to see if the lab result is correct or not. I don't think that's the focus of your question, so let's concentrate on the second concept - measuring the learning itself.

That brings us to the core issue with your proposed process: Measuring learning from mistakes and questions is very, very different from measuring learning in general. You hinted at this when you said,

  For the majority of our students, there will be more than enough stuff in each lab to write about. However, this isn't universally true and some groups will do the lab just fine without asking any questions.

The issue here is that you've singled out a single type of learning to measure. The students who learned by failure and questioning are correctly being evaluated by your grading approach. This is good - you're encouraging that type of student to hone their skills. So let's look at the second group - the students who "did the lab just fine without asking any questions." The important thing to remember is that they weren't born knowing how to do the lab - they learned it too, just in a different way than the question-askers and mistake-makers. The reason why your new approach lacks fairness (as you identified yourself) is that it's only attributing value to one type of learning.

So - is it a bad idea to grade your students based on the questions they ask and the mistakes they make? If you're trying to grade them on their learning process, which is what I think you're trying to do, you need to make sure you're accounting for all types of learning not just the one style. This will be really challenging - people learn in multiple ways and transition between learning styles in a fluid manner, and many learning styles don't leave behind a "paper trail" you can measure after the fact. So let's get to your specific question:

  How can I reward the students who learned from their mistakes without penalizing those who don't make any?

I may be frame-challenging your question, but if you allow me that liberty, I would rewrite it as:

  How can I encourage students to be aware of, and work on improving, their learning skills, versus just rewarding them for getting the right answer to a specific assignment?

I think the answer to this will be much broader than a single stack exchange question, but some ideas to think about:

Include a discussion/presentation during/after the lab where a selected group walks the other groups through how they approached the lab, with a focus on how they prepared or learned the material beforehand and how they dealt with issues/challenges.
When a group asks questions during the lab, let the other lab groups answer it (instead of you). When an answer is given, have the answering group provide explanation of where they got the answer from.
Include an entire lab session, or elements of a lab, that are not part of the graded solution and are deliberately "unanswerable" in that they cover material you haven't taught or are otherwise deliberately difficult. Have the students come up with their own way to resolve this. This could even be a lab where the process intentionally causes failure, which would "force" the students to use your "learning notebook" as a tool to document and explain the failure and their approach to solving it. Purposefully cause them to go off-script and respond to the failure with creativity.

Basically, you need something that accounts for multiple learning styles, and something that encourages accountability instead of just allowing students to "cheat the system" by pencil-whipping busywork in order to get a grade. Notice I left your word choice of "reward" out of my re-worded version of your question - I think awareness and demonstration are probably more important than a reward - at the least because the reward just causes students to focus on the end, rather than the means, which totally dodges your goal of getting them to focus on learning skills versus just a final result.

Edited to add:

Let me further add: I don't think the "learning notebook" is a bad idea. It actually sounds like a great way to encourage people to recognize failure and accept it as part of a (positive) learning process, versus being afraid of failure. It would be great to include along with my three suggestions above. That said, I do think it becomes cumbersome to try to include it as a graded item, and more importantly, regardless of whether you grade it or not, focusing on it (as a graded item) misses the larger opportunity to consider and encourage other learning styles.

Just have multiple labs (or whatever) and grade on results.  You are making it too complicated otherwise.  There is limited time to do coaching and assessment.  If I mess something up once and learn from it, it actually shows up in future work.  It's even better if I have to live with the bad grade versus getting a makeup. (We are not chopping off body parts...who cares if you take a bad grade once or twice...it's a kick in the butt.)

The ONE key help that you can do is having several labs, tests, etc.  Not single chances for failure, performance.  But if you do this...no makeups (other than perhaps the final).


Is it legal in the US for a student to download a copy of a textbook, to study? (this is coming out of a comment thread regarding this question.)

The USA has a Fair Use legal provision restricting its copyright law:

  17 U.S.C. § 107

  Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. §
  106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work,
  including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any
  other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism,
  comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for
  classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of
  copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any
  particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall
  include:

  the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  the nature of the copyrighted work;
  the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
  and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

  The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Obviously there might be other relevant statutes and legal precedents, but  still,

Is it legal, considering the above, for a university/college student to download a copy of a textbook (say, in a course s/he is taking), for studying the course material?
Same question, for a student not enrolled in a class for which the downloaded book is a textbook?
Same question, for self-study outside of Academia?

Notes:

"Legal" in two senses: First, the sense of very small chance of being convicted of a criminal act or obligated to pay money; second, the sense of there being a solid argument for the legality of this act which is likely to hold up if you appeal and appeal and maybe get to the supreme court.
Assume it's been established that the downloader did not publish the copy elsewhere, did not cite from it extensively, etc. etc.
I'm not asking whether it's moral or ethical to download textbooks, only about the legality. I believe it is moral and ethical, but that discussion is not what this question is about; please don't start it.

In general, it is not considered fair use to download the entirety of a textbook, regardless of whether or not you're a student or enrolled in a class using the textbook. Fair use normally is considered to extend to making copies of small excerpts of larger works. For instance, you could copy a particularly relevant figure from a book, or a quote from a textbook or reader for use in a class discussion.

It's my understanding is that "fair use" is about the reproduction of copyrighted materials.

I don't believe it has anything to do with how you obtained those materials.

If you stole the same textbook from Barnes & Noble, would you claim fair use?

It is true that the RIAA and others are suing on copyright grounds & not for plain theft.

How that works exactly, I'm not sure. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.

This excerpt is relevant to your question:

  Where a defendant has admitted downloading and copying song files from
  other users in the P2P network without permission of the copyright
  holders, she cannot claim that such copying is a "fair use".


Is Scimago a good way to rank conference impact? I have seen that the Scimago Journal Rank make a rank of journals that cover different topics and classified them into quartiles. For what I know conferences also made their proceedings books, but I was dubious if they could be compared agains journals like Scimago does.

I say this because I believe that journals have most ot the time a higher impact than conferences, and compare them side to side (journals and conference proceedings) it is not such a good idea.

The question that I have is if Scimago could be a good way to rank a conference impact, and also if there is another computer science conference ranking that uses the same quartile calculus as Scimago?

Any help?

Thanks

Is Scimago a good way to rank conference impact?

No. It isn't.

At best, Scimago is a good way to obtain a modified "PageRank" of a publication in the graph of citations between Scopus-indexed publications in a three-year window, with each citation weighted by the similarity of the citing and cited publications, as measured by their common citation profiles.

Even if you accept that Scimago's abstruse formula is an accurate indicator of "impact"—which is debatable for numerous reasons—neither the raw citation data nor the precise definition of "cocitation profile" (on which the formula depends) are available to independently verify Scimago's rankings.

In particular, a few spot checks suggests that Scimago's coverage of major computer science conferences is spotty, and that the data it extracts from those conferences (even for relatively straightforward things like "number of citeable documents") is not particularly accurate.

This depends a lot on particular area. In some areas, proceedings of the best conferences are comparable with decent journals, while in others conferences are more social events. Computer Science in general is more a conference-oriented area, so proceedings usually have decent impact.

To check it in particular subarea, if you have access to Scopus (other services probably have similar features), try the Analyze Journals tool, to compare some conferences and journals in your field. In my case (Computer Vision), the top conferences are beaten only by the top journals.

For more info on different habits in different subareas I recommend:
Wainer, Eckmann, Goldenstein, Rocha: How Productivity and Impact Differ Across Computer Science Subareas. Communications of the ACM, 2013.

edit: I just re-read your question and noticed your actual answer was about something else. There I can point you again to Scopus (which has both journals and top conferences) and their SJR/SNIP...


A friend helped me with a presentation – plagiarism or not? My friend helped me with my assignment. I was having a bit of trouble and he showed me what he did.
The assignment was a speech with a powerpoint in the background.

I did not receive any help in the speech and it was all my own work but two of my slides are similar to his, and I copied his table. The speech is the part directly getting assessed while the powerpoint is merely for the theatrics. This was all done with his permission and he himself showed me how he did the slides.

The powerpoint was twelve slides long. Does this constitute plagiarism?

Edit: I did cite him in a bibliography which I submitted for his contribution. I, however, did not cite him in the PowerPoint. Also, the similar slides are not in the PowerPoint anymore but the table still is.

Edit 2: I was not found guilty of plagiarism, however, I did lose 10% due to academic misconduct.

My friend helped me with my assignment...I copied his table...does this constitute plagiarism?

Yes: You copied his work, doing so without attribution is plagiarism.

This is definitely not plagiarism. It's like saying you copied Microsoft's works for using PowerPoint to do your presentation. Both Microsoft and your friend created an environment for you to do your works. You don't have to give them any credit.

Your friend didn't do the works for you. You did all of it yourself.


What if I get assigned to teach topic I know nothing about? Do I have any discretion in what I teach? I'm a tenured professor at a national public university.  I was just on a two-year leave of absence (to do a startup) and I'm now returning to the university.  I was just informed I'm going to have to teach a class on X.  I protested that I don't even know what X is, but my chair said "sorry, we have no one else to teach it."

I am tempted to just refuse to teach the class, both for my own sake and the sake of the students.  I've scoured the faculty handbook, but it says nothing about teaching assignments.

I'm sure this varies by institution, but what's your perception?  Does a faculty member have any discretion in what he/she teaches?

Does a faculty member have any discretion in what he/she teaches?

Informally/unofficially: yes, they should have some say in it -- it would be weird for them not to be at least asked about their preferences. Formally/officially: how could they?  If five or ten or thirty or one hundred faculty members each insist that they must teach Y and/or cannot teach X then with very high probability there will be no way to make everyone happy.  Scheduling classes for a university department is a huge pain in the butt no matter what.  (I have never done it myself and would never do it...because it's a huge pain in the butt.  However, my current job of Graduate Coordinator is laterally adjacent to this position and close enough for me to see how difficult it is.)  If you don't give department figures at least some amount of authority over the faculty members on matters pertaining to the department as a whole, then there is an ever present threat of devolving into anarchy.

More crisply: be careful.  Outright refusing to do one of their core job responsibilities is the best way for a tenured faculty member to get in serious trouble, up to and including getting fired.  Based on my own practical experience, it would be a bit over the top for someone to get fired after having pulled this once, but the point is that you'd be standing on shaky ground.  Moreover, outright refusal is not a very helpful position:

  both for my own sake and the sake of the students.

I just said that doing this is probably not in your own best interest.  Moreover, how is it in the interest of the students?  If you really just refuse, then what happens?  I guess the chair books you to teach the class anyway and you don't show up...this is not helping anyone.

So what should you do?  Talk further to the chair and other faculty.  The chair is trying to solve an administrative problem: find someone to teach X.  As with most academic administrators, he is doing it under severe constraints: apparently no one else has an open teaching slot.  So he has found the best "local solution" to the problem: assign Professor Fixee to do it.  You should have at least one in-person conversation with the chair and go over the following two points:

1) Help him understand why his proposed solution is a bad one.

He doesn't seem to be looking at the fact that you have no knowledge of subject X whatsoever.  Maybe he thinks you're exaggerating to get out of an undesirable teaching assignment.  You have to let him know the truth and explore some of the implications of this with him.  (By the way, could it be that you are not actually uniquely unqualified to teach subject X -- maybe nobody else knows any more than you?  Maybe their one expert in subject X left suddenly?  It's possible...)

2) Help him "widen the problem-solving window" to include other solutions, and take on some of the effort in solving the problem yourself.

Let's assume you are literally the worst person in the department to teach subject X.  So who is actually more qualified to teach it?  (You do the work in figuring that out.)  Okay, so why are these people not teaching it -- presumably they are already loaded up with teaching assignments or other professional obligations.  Can you arrange a swap with one of these faculty members?  If so, do it and present that to the chair as a solution.

TL;DR: If you go to an administrative figure and say "Sorry, what you've asked me to do just won't work; please fix it," their answer is much more likely to be negative than if you say, "What you've asked me to do has some serious drawbacks; I'd like to propose that we do this instead."  In my experience when two faculty members come to the relevant faculty administrator and say "We'd like to swap classes X and Y" the answer is usually yes.  Why not?  It creates no new problems for them to solve.

Yes, you have discretion on what you teach just as you have discretion over whether you continue to work there or not.  If the University wants to have teachers teach subjects they don't know, then either they are making it a challenge for you to learn it, or they have no educational standard.

When you got your Doctorate of Philosophy, YOU became the authority.  The term connotes (if not denotes) that there is no higher authority.  Perhaps the chair is suggesting that you don't know your field well enough, or perhaps they're being cheap -- you have to figure which one that is and hold them to a standard you believe in.

If they're not willing to be held to such a standard, then go talk to the Dean.  Go to the Provost if you have to.  If, by the end of your exploration, it turns out that they don't meet your expectations of quality, get out and save yourself a lot of disappointments.


What should I do if I want to work in computer science but my advisor actively despises the field? I am a PhD student in computer science.  My advisor is a Professor in another department and complains that computer science has a poor culture, where people publish lots of rubbish papers instead of a few good ones.  My advisor prefers to publish in journal papers rather than conferences, and when my papers have been accepted to (good) conferences  didn't want to come to the conferences with me.  My advisor has published in computer science conferences in the past but now he seems to have little interest in CS or the CS community.

I am worried that I will not be able to have a career in computer science under these circumstances.  What should I do?

My question to you is why would you have non-computer science advisor if you are in the computer science field? That being said, you should change your advisor

Find someone who is willing to mentor you in the ways of Computer Science.

Life to short to waste on people with negative attitudes toward your field.


I have been accepted to an event where a keynote lecturer is a plagiarist After some decades an event on my research area was announced in my city, so I decided to send my abstract, which was accepted.

However, they recently sent me the programme and among the keynote speakers was a person whose doctoral thesis contains uncontroversial plagiarism. (About 30 pages of his thesis are just a translation from two papers written in English by other scholars into the language in which the thesis was written.) There are no legal charges against this lecturer. Instead, the plagiarism was revealed by an apparently anonymous source about two or three years ago through a mailing list.

I know that at least some of the organisers of the event were in such mailing list, so they do not ignore the charges and had the chance to test whether they were true or not.

I have considered that maybe the best option to withdraw my lecture from the event explaining exactly why to the organisers. This, though, would not help at all, since they already know and do not care. Else they wouldn't have invited him as keynote speaker.

Other option that somebody suggested me is that I use some minutes of my lecture to publicly denounce him. (It just happens that my regular lecture starts right after his keynote lecture finishes.) But there are three problems with this:

When publicly denounced, this lecturer threatened to prosecute the source for defamation. (He's also lawyer.) I currently do not have a job nor a regular income that would allow me to face a prosecution, let alone to prosecute him.
It is very likely that most of the people that are going to the event already know. In such case, and since this is fairly yesterday news, I do not expect that there be any important reaction.
I am about to enter in the phase of defending my thesis, and this lecturer works in my institution as invited professor. Unscrupulous as he is, he may try to retaliate against me by using his power to delay my thesis dissertation. (I do not know how much power he has.)

Finally, you may be surprised as to how a whole academic community could care so little about this case. But I have to say that when the news about his plagiarism came, I myself didn't dare to publicly speak disapproving his behaviour because of what I said in the third point. Still, it was surprising to me that, although I know that several professors disapproved of his actions, apparently none of them publicly manifested their disapproval. I later knew that this wasn't the first time that something like this happens in my institution.

I'd like to know what is the most ethical or less unethical thing to do in this case. One thing is for sure, though. I do not think it would be right for me to go to that event, and speak after him as if he were a respectful scholar. And I am not going to.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

What really matters here is what your goal is. Is your goal to: (A) cause there to be some sort of disciplinary action/reaction against this person; or (B) to make sure that your own name is not tarnished by association with this person in the future.

If you are hoping for (A) I believe that you have answered your own question. It does not appear that any action will be taken against this person based on anything you do in relation to this conference. The discipline is covering this up and everyone is going along with it and as an early career researcher, you are not influential enough to change this. It's sad, but it's true. However (B) is entirely possible for you. If you believe that one day this person will be publicly shamed and denounced fully by the discipline, it is not unreasonable for you to not want your name associated with theirs. This might mean withdrawing from the conference and specifically asking that your name be removed from any material online about the event. Indeed, you don't even need to say why you are pulling out of the event if that includes a risk that it will get back to the person in question.

In this situation, I think (B) is a reasonable concern and a reasonable reason to not speak at a conference. I also think that you are tangentially associated with this person so are unlikely to experience any negatives from speaking after them at the event. Ultimately, with risk of association low, it comes down to your own ethical stance and if you feel sharing a stage with this person violates that.

Your question is really silly. You are going to attend a lot of events in future in your career. Are you going to check on every keynote speaker on whether they have plagiarised in any of their works? Secondly, its not your obligation to bring to light, this plagiarism in public. There is a system, and the advisor and review committe of the plagiarised thesis are the ones who should be really concerned with this. Its their business/headache. You are asking, Can I buy other people's headache?


How to deal with classes that I must cancel due to conference travel? I will be teaching a course which is made up of 13 weeks of classes
in the Fall of 2016.
Unfortunately, I will also be travelling in the middle of the semester
to a conference in the US from my home university located in Asia.
This means that for one week, I will not physically be in my home university and I will have to cancel classes.

Unfortunately, we cover quite a lot of material in the course. Therefore, I am afraid that if I cancel one week of classes I will not be able to cover all the material.
What are my options in such a situation?

I was considering recording a video of my lectures just for that week I am away.
Assignments can be submitted electronically so I could assign work for the students which they can complete and submit online.

What have other professors/lecturers done in such a situation?

I do it like this:

Try to let a colleague* take over. This almost always works with 'standard' classes (intro to statistics, this kind of stuff)
Plan the classes in such a way that the students are busy with something else in this week (e.g., data collection), so that a plenary meeting is not necessary.
Cancel - but if I would cancel more than one meeting of a course, I would probably get problems with my department.

* we don't really have the concept of a TA here, you are either teaching (then, you are a colleague) or not - so 'colleague' also can include graduate students that might be referred to as TA in other systems

(context: Europe/Netherlands; social sciences)

Don’t go to the conference, the customers (students) have paid to get these classes.  Therefore they have a right to be put first.

Without students there would be no money to do research…..


Chair and one of directors insisted that my project is theirs... what should I do? This is my first semester as an assistant professor.  I developed a project (with three publishable sub-topics) and got the IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval.  I prepared a proposal to attend a conference, and submitted it to get my Departmental approval.

Then suddenly my Department Chair and a director "insist" that the project is from their idea; so I should stop working on the project and then give it to them.  Even my chair sends me a formal email including staff members - I developed their idea and so it is unethical....

I decided to leave this school from this ridiculous situation.  However, I am still unsure how to handle this situation.  I really do not care whatever they do.  I just do not want that they use all of my instruments such as surveys for their study.  However, I really do not know what to do.  Would you help?

Please note before reading: The text below contains only my opinions.

Accusing someone with stealing ideas is as ugly as stealing the idea itself.
As far as I understand, the department chair really liked the project and trying to get on the gravy train. Therefore, I do not believe trying to be reasonable with these kind of behavior will get you nowhere. Especially including faculty members, who have literally nothing to do with this matter is extremely rude and unprofessional.

If I were in your shoes, I would do follow these steps:

Explain the situation to the students working in the project (if any).
Ignore his mobbing (yes, I think this is heavy mobbing), and hand in nothing including surveys, project reports etc.
Write to IRB about this matter immideately and ask them for approval that the work was submitted by me.
Ask him to file a written complaint with the evidence that proves the idea belonged to him originally.
Collect/copy/back-up everything that proves the project proposal does not belong to the department chair.
Write to the dean (or whoever he is subordinate of) about this matter, asking to resolve this by official methods (as I have stated, this is clearly mobbing).

It is your own decision to leave the school. I would do the same, probably. But please keep in mind that these kind of issues can only be solved by legal process. All he can do is denounce you, and at this point, he will do it anyways if you drop the project.

Also, I believe that keeping your so called "ideas" to yourself is a responsibility. Either you immideately execute your ideas, or you accept the risk that someone can do it before you.
And there is nothing to do after that happens.

If you were smart enough to have it version-controlled, ask them to provide the documentation that theirs is older. If they can't and still demand you turn over your work and credit, inform the board of regents/trustees for your institution that an exposure of an ethics crisis and bad publicity for the institution are looming unless this problem is addressed immediately. Nothing gets the head honchos moving like the threat of a scandal being broken on national news.

If their project is older, ask to collaborate, because you've obviously shown the initiative to get as far as you have. If they're not open to that, say you will publish only derivative or orthogonal work to theirs and give them ample credit, but that you're passionate and want to pursue it. Usually even the old guard can be brought around by a combination of congeniality and reason.

In reply to the person below: I fail to see how that's harsh. I was using Git since my third semester in university, and the professor who introduced it had worked in university for the bulk of his career as a theoretician. Academics not keeping up with tech and best practices is a reason academics get a bad rap. If you did not defend yourself reasonably against known problems in academic power structures, I have no sympathy for you. I had my own poaching attempts I had to fight off as a Computer Science grad. If you don't cover even basic defences like this, exactly how smart are you really?

In regards to further replies, you can't back-date verified version control very easily, and you certainly can't do it at all with Git or Stash. If you're still using SVN, seriously, get out of the stone ages.

And as a final defense against these parasites, just encrypt your data with AES 256 and throw away the keys. It's a cheap, effective way to prevent their ill-gotten gains.


Is it ethical to tell my teaching assistant that I like him? I, a twenty-year-old female, have come to admire the graduate teaching assistant for my summer course quite strongly. I'm extremely interested in what he has to say, I always pay attention, never use my phone and use eye contact to show interest. I do like them very much and I think about them with warmth often. I want to know about their work, I want to know what he is interested in. I would like to at least be their friend.
Despite my strong admiration I must emphasize that I have not and do not plan to cross professional boundaries until the end of the course.
I have spoken to them though it was only a short conversation about the work that was assigned to us the following weekend, however he did seem quite warm and open to conversation. Specifically he emphasizes in his syllabus to not hesitate to contact him with any questions we may have at all. I would like to be able to talk to them more without bothering them, and over stepping professional boundaries. I hopefully plan to ask them out once the course has ended, but I would still like to be able to have the chance to talk to them too as friends outside of course hours about the course material. Would this be ethical? Should I just back down? Specifically I wanted to thank him for giving me a very positive, in-depth feed back in the essay assignment that I had turned in that I got a perfect grade on.
I've been going through a really rough time in my personal life. Despite having flunked before, I made a promise to myself to work harder and to never give up on my goals. Truly their receptiveness, warmth and passion has genuinely inspired me to keep going and to study harder. I would very much like to thank them for inspiring me and being a good teacher which has helped me understand the material.

Would it be ethical to express these sentiments of admiration and gratitude to them during their office hours?

Would it be possible to date them after the course has ended since he is essentially a normal graduate student instead of a true professor?

*edit
Class has ended and we have a date planned! Thanks all for your advice!
*edit #2
We are still dating and our 9 month anniversary is coming up soon! The relationship is going really well and it is the best and most loving relationship we’ve ever been in! We are excited to grow together and the mention of having children someday has come up occasionally.
Sometimes he jokes about being my TA but he is very adamant about making it clear he didn’t like me during the course, but in conclusion we are both doing fantastic!
Thanks for all your help ! (May 7th 2020)
*edit # 3
Not sure if anyone comes across this anymore but our one year anniversary passed a few months ago and we're growing strong! I'm really happy that I went out of my comfort zone and found a lasting relationship. (10/28/2020)

Wait until after the course is over and grades are in: don't put your TA in a difficult situation.

After that, you are just two adult humans, assuming you won't have any other courses with this TA.

Would it be possible to date them after the course has ended since they are essentially a normal graduate student instead of a true professor?

I am going to disagree with the broad consensus of advice given here, which tells you to wait until after your course is over.  I realise that some universities (particularly in the US) have an absurdly Puritan sexual environment, but even accounting for this, the precaution to wait until the end of your course still seems unnecessary to me.  If you are romantically interested in this student, there is no reason that you cannot express your interest immediately.  And indeed, if you wait, he might get scooped up by someone else.

Since you are the undergraduate student in this encounter, and he is your teacher, it is unlikely that there is any ethical/professional restriction on your own expression of interest in him.  Bear in mind that from his position, it is likely that he will be under some professional/ethical restrictions on how he deals with this, since he is your teacher.  Even so, it should not be all that difficult for a graduate-student teaching assistant to deal with a situation in which he is considering becoming romantically involved with an undergraduate, or (hopefully not) considering turning her down.  University policies on this matter differ from institution to institution, but all that is likely to be involved is that he would disclose this to the course convener, and you might be assigned to a different class, or have your work marked by a different teaching assistant.

Contrary to the advice of others on this thread, there is absolutely no ethical reason to wait until the end of your course to express romantic interest in your teacher --- my advice: carpe diem.


Using rage faces in presentation I was asked to give a talk at a workshop. I plan to tell a short story, 5 - 7 minutes, about how my collaborator and I came up with the idea presented in the talk. This story would:

Give the motivation: I have this problem, and my collaborator had a solution for a (seemingly) unrelated problem.
Explain the contribution: I did this and he did that.
Explain the intuition of the solution: he said this and we recognized that etc

I think the story would be interesting, and as it involves two people, I wonder if I should use two rage faces representing my collaborator and I (yes, I often visit 9gag).

On one hand, I think it would be funny. On the other hand, I'm afraid people may think I am not polite/unprofessional, in particular old people. The workshop is co-located with a top tier conference, and I don't want to leave any bad impression.

Update: Thanks everyone for the answers. At first, I intended to use the avatars on our homepages, but I think it's very award to keep showing my face from slide to slide. That's why I think about rage faces, the reason is that they are very simple, but emphasize the emotions very well: struggle, then confused, then surprised...

But I understand not many people like it, so I will think of other way.

TL;DR: If in doubt, leave it out.

In talks, avoid anything that can offend or be misunderstood, especially if you do not know your audience. It is ok to make self-deprecating jokes, but you want to keep the atmosphere somewhere between serious to light (depending), but outside the sentiment of sadness or anger if you do not have political ambitions. Your "angry faces" may be funny, but never underestimate that they may be misunderstood (including people believing that you did have a fall-out with your friend in the preliminaries of this work - you would be amazed at what people can read wrongly into a throwaway remark).

Myself, I am quite happy use caricatures in talks, but spend time choosing them carefully to help to highlight the scientific point, never on a meta-level. People are busy enough trying to understand what you are doing, do not waste their brain power on issues you think are funny, but irrelevant to the matter at hand.

But if you think something can backfire, you are probably right. If in doubt, better one caricature/clever idea less.

It sounds like you care at least somewhat about leaving a positive professional impression, but the other answers overlook that you might have goals other than an academic career.

I went to graduate school with a student who did a lot of things like this. He enjoyed making things "his style" immensely, and planned to work in industry following graduation. Shaking up the "dry" academic environment was great fun for him, and actually served to help other like-minded folks find him at conferences. He ended up working at an industrial lab that fit his personality exactly, and I think he got this job via contacts made through his antics.

I think the other answers are right that this is a bad plan if you want to work in the academy, which is often pretty formal. Many researchers are likely to be offended by this kind of content, and it is borderline unethical to antagonize them this way. But, if you don't mind having some people think you have been immature, this might not be a problem.


Given a "Date Revision Due" for revised submission of a journal paper, am I required to submit before the beginning or the end of that date? I am submitting a revised manuscript to an Elsevier journal. However, English is my second language and I am confused about the meaning of "Date Revision Due"!

The journal editorial system indicates "Sep 19, 2015" as Date Revision Due. Please tell me should I submit the revised manuscript before "Sep 18,2015 11:59 PM" or "Sep 19,2015 11:59 PM"?!

I guess the local timezone of the journal should also be considered. In addition, Can I submit the revised manuscript by automatic editorial system even if I miss this deadline?

Unlike conferences, a journal's "date due" is rarely quite so precise a moment; this is because papers are all being dealt with asynchronously, on an as-arrived basis, rather than as a massive batch of hundreds all arriving near-simultaneously as for a big engineering conference.

Most journals will be comfortable with you submitting a little late if necessary (though there are some that will automatically discard your paper if you don't hit their deadline).  Thus, rather than fretting about time-zones, I would recommend that if you are worried about a last-minute submission, you instead email the handling editor and ask for a short extension.

At the very bottom, they are doing you a favour publishing your paper. Don't make their job harder than absolutely necessary. I.e., try to submit on (or before) due date, or ask politely (with enough time beforehand!) for an extension. Or just submit your paper for the next issue (unless it is some special issue on your particular topic).


Is it possible to pursue masters degree in the US university without getting financial back-up from family? I am a undergraduate student majoring in Human resource management and planning to get admitted in such a university where I have great opportunity to do research.
Is it possible to pursue masters degree from US university without taking financial help from family?
In what extent does US university provide financial aid for MS students?
What are the benefits of getting TA or RA facility in US university?

In general in the US, masters degrees which are not on a PhD track are not funded. That is there are not really opportunities to work as an RA or TA. As master's programs tend to be more professionally oriented, the expectation is that the student will take out student loans. In contrast, in PhD programs, the student does work for their professor, and therefore receives funding.

My understanding (and this may be more true of the sciences than other fields) is that PhD students are strongly preferred for TA and RA positions. Both TA and RA positions build useful experience for PhD students by giving the PhD student experience with teaching and academic research.

As to the more general question of funding for masters programs, I would guess that you will probably have the most luck looking for opportunities specific to your situation (e.g. field of study), however in general masters students are expected to pay their own way.

It is possible to pursue a masters degree at a US university without getting financial back-up from family:
You can get a grant or scholarship to cover your expenses. I've heard about some people who did that. You fill the forms, add documents and send it to the funding agency which provides grants and scholarships. If the agency thinks that you are worthy, it will award you a grant or scholarship. I just gave you a hint, Google knows more about it (:


Asking a professor to supervise research done with a different professor I'm a 4th-year science student planning to do undergraduate research for credit during the summer. I completed an engineering course the previous semester and discussed research opportunities with the professor a handful of times. From what I gathered during our discussions, he is willing to have me do research with him and his other students; he wants to work out the details shortly before the summer starts.

My department allows me to receive research credit from other departments. However, there are some extra hoops to jump through, and the undergraduate adviser recommended that I find a professor who may be adjunct in my department to enroll me for research credit.

I brought this up to my engineering professor, who mentioned the name of a professor in my department that shares similar equipment for their respective projects. I have never met this other professor before, nor have I enrolled in a class with them.

Would it be appropriate to approach this professor and ask them to supervise the research I'm doing with my engineering professor? They wouldn't even have to actually supervise me; the bottom line is I'm wondering if they would be willing to enroll me for research credit within the department.

It is a bad idea for a professor in your department to enroll you for research credit under his supervision without actually supervising. This is taking all the responsibility without any control, contribution to educating the student, or simply a pleasure doing the research.

However, you probably should connect those professors from different departments, so that they determine their shared interest and responsibilities in this project. Between them (and probably the undergraduate advisor) they might determine the formalities to follow department's & programs's regulations; but if somebody's name appears as an advisor of a work, he must actually do some part of advising.

Absolutely appropriate and in fact, you can use your first and third paragraph almost verbatim to approach the professor who'd be your official supervisor.


Is it beneficial to publish papers not related to your primary research field? I know there is nothing preventing me from publishing an article in a different research field, but is it beneficial other than for satisfying my own interest/curiosity? Presumably these may be added to my CV, and possibly included for funding applications?

I'm honestly surprised at the question.  "Primary" does not mean "only"!

If it's a good paper, then of course you should publish it.  Aside from the obvious personal benefits of making you look more diverse, increasing your visibility in another field, and possibly creating opportunities for future collaboration, you're doing what research is for: expanding human knowledge.  And if it's not a good paper, then of course you shouldn't publish it, even if it is in your primary field.

But to echo shan23's comment: Don't use grants in area X to fund research in area Y.

This is an interesting question. I recently was interviewed for a job and one of the interviewers asked me about a couple of papers which were clearly outside of my field of specialization. She wanted to know 'what these papers say about me and my professional capacity'. I was not prepared... and I said something along the lines of that ... I observe everything and try to identify problems and give solutions, even in a field that I am not directly studying... which, by the way, is my true reason to venture outside of my field. Now, looking at some of the responses maybe I was not wrong to go out of my field and produce some publications.


When applying to a Phd in Physics or Math , do grades in unrelated courses I took have any effect on my admission? I'm currently studying (Undergraduate) Physics in a University where, regardless of their department, every student must take some English, Turkish and History courses, which I don't want to attend. Turkish and History courses are non-credit but not English, so it affects my GPA. Moreover, I will take violin, astrophysics and philosophy courses as non-included.

So here is my question: when I am applying for a PhD in Physics or Mathematics, does any of these courses have any effect on my admission?

Note: My main concern is whether having  low grades in English ,which is not a non-credit course, affect my Phd admission ?

If you are applying to programs in the US, more important than your grades in English classes is your performance on the TOEFL. Many universities have a minimum TOEFL score required before the department can even consider your application, and these rules are often difficult or impossible for the department to bend, even for an exceptionally attractive candidate.

There is more information in the answers to this question. (For example, someone there mentions that the minimums at "Yale and Stanford are about 100, Harvard is 109" -- out of 120 points total.)

Given the quality of the English in your original question (before it was improved by helpful editors), I don't think you can afford to blow off your English classes if you have any hope of studying in the US.

Any university worth its salt welcomes grad school candidates with eclectic academic backgrounds, provided they have an appropriate range of courses, with top grades, in their primary discipline. A nerd with nothing but courses in his/her discipline often lacks depth and perspective.  The Dean of Law at a major Canadian U. was asked what he regarded as the ideal degree as prep for Law School.  He said that would be a five-year double-Honours BA in Philosophy and English Literature.  And I wouldn't be concerned about a low grade in English affecting your GPA.  Your grad school committee will see that it is your only low grade.