What are the consequences of using Sci-Hub? A student of mine has told me about Sci-Hub, where people can download copyrighted scholarly articles for free.

I have cautioned him that it is illegal, but he challenged me asking me what would be the consequences for him if he only downloads files uploaded by others.

So my question is, what are the potential consequences of using Sci-Hub?

It's of questionable legality, but it's not going to lead to prosecution. For me personally using sci-hub has led to new research results in fields outside of my specialization that will (very likely) appear in leading peer reviewed journals. One problem I'm not sure about is whether it's wise to say in the acknowledgements: "I thank Alexandra Elbakyan for setting up Sci-Hub without which the research results reported in this paper would have been impossible", in an Elsevier paper.

Using sci-hub therefore has at least the consequence of your personal scientific enlightenment, and possibly even of many other people who benefit from research you have been able to as a result of using sci-hub.

Sci-Hub is not a repository of user-uploaded material. See e.g. this explanation - it uses institutional usernames and passwords to obtain the material. When you request a paper, if it's not already in the repository, Sci-Hub uses someone else's institutional access to get the paper. How Sci-Hub got those usernames and passwords is unknown. It's possible they were donated by Sci-Hub supporters, or they might have phished for them (remember also that it is almost certainly against your institutional policies to give out your username and password).

In other words you are correct and your student is wrong: Sci-Hub is illegal.

As for consequences, as in the linked article, if you are doing analysis of the papers themselves, then you're stuck because you can't publish data which you obtained illegally. Beyond that there's likely to be no consequences. There are simply too many people using the service. On a personal level it comes to one's moral values and how much one is willing to do something that's illegal, which I won't comment on.

In the long term if everyone decided to use the service then the publishing world will change massively, although it's complex enough that it's hard to forecast what actually will happen. Also, remember that the modus operandi of Sci-Hub isn't unique to academic publishing. Sci-Hub is a threat to all publishers of non-free electronic content, since it will probably work on Wall Street Journal articles and whatnot.


How is a PhD project budget set? In experimental fields, such as physics, chemistry, and engineering, every professor has their own lab/workshop, normally with several externally funded projects. A PhD student may work on currently funded projects.

However, it is the responsibility of the university or department  to provide the cost of this PhD project. How and by whom is the budget of a PhD project set?

I mentioned experimental fields, because the costs of these PhD projects are normally much higher than tuition fees (consider that the student has no research fellowship).

In the US and UK, at least, PhD students in he sciences and engineering generally receive funding that covers both tuition and a modest stipend to for living expenses. The exact details of the funding (e.g., taxable or non-taxable, benefits, and whether funding is given for tuition or tuition is waived) vary widely. The funding can come from a number of sources.

The easiest to understand are external grants directly to a student. The grant has a budget and the student is expected to keep the research costs within the budget. Additional costs, potentially including space charges and other overhead type fees, need to either be covered by the student or negotiated directly with the supervisor/department/university.

Grants (both internal and external, and start up funds) to the advisor generally cover a project bigger than a single student. It is the advisor's responsibility to make sure each sub project is appropriately budgeted for and negotiate with the department/university for additional money. While some students will be given an "official" budget by the supervisor, most are required to have the supervisor sign off on all expenses. Budget issues often come up during the design stages of a project.

Departments and universities also fund PhD students. This type of funding is sometimes in the form of Research Assistantships, but more often is for Teaching Assistantships where the student needs to teach in order to get the funding. Research costs can be, but are not always, covered by this type of internal funding. It is left to the student to either cover the research costs themselves or negotiate with supervisor/department/university to make sure the costs are covered.

My experimental research is relatively cheap, but I think in the vast majority of fields, the big cost is staff. Apart from possibly the most expensive types of experimental research, a supervisor with reasonable funding, will likely be able to find the money to cover experimental costs for a PhD student. It might require some limits to be placed on the project (e.g., including some modeling or theoretical work to reduce the costs).

Typically, a PhD is not a job and thus a candidate does not have to have wage. Thus, it is not anyone's responsibility to provide any costs.

Professors, in different grades (but capable to be supervisors to PhDs), accept PhD candidates and conduct with them (as supervisors) novel research in various scientific disciplines. From this research, the candidate proves that he/she is able to hold the title of PhD and this whole process leads to the PhD tite (if the candidate succeeds).

Funding is side effect/project/what_ever. There are various opportunities for the state, country, companies to actually buy/fund novel research results and by this process there is a useful feedback from the scientific domain to the professional one which, in many cases, drives the production of new products and services.

So, if a Professor has a vacant position for a candidate and if the field of the research is close related or exactly at the field of a fund opportunity and if the Professor cares to apply for funding and if the application is approved then money can come for this research.

If the money finally come, then there is a usual division of labor with an appropriate "wage". These may (and is most likely that they do) vary between countries, universities, continents.

Thus, if someone needs to conduct experiments which need some money to spent then either the institution provide them, or he/she provide them, or the Professor has already a funding going on and cares to actually "hire" a PhD candidate to conduct the novel research based on the experiments.


Stating surprise about another researcher in my talk I will be giving a talk in a research seminar in mathematics in a couple of weeks. During this talk, I'm planning to present one particular result of mine which shows that a certain method introduced by another researcher several years ago is quite limited. This limiting result is really simple and I cannot believe that this researcher did not notice when writing their paper.

When presenting this work to my colleagues at my own department I expressed my surprise during the presentation quite bluntly.

I cannot go into much detail but given the structure of the paper in question I cannot imagine that they were not aware of this fact at the moment of writing the paper. To me it rather seems that they omitted this limiting result to make their paper seem better.

How should I behave at the research seminar at a university I'm only visiting where I don't know the faculty that well? Can I also express my surprise there or would this be considered bad etiquette? Not sure if relevant, but some of the people there might know the researcher in question better than they know me.

Edit to address some comments/answers: First of all, thanks for all the helpful answers, they really give me a new point of view. Secondly, I wanted to mention that it was not my intention to criticise another researcher in public. I was (and am still) honestly surprised about both my result and the other researcher. I learned from the answers that others could misinterpret my intentions and will therefore only mention facts. Thanks for that!

Talk about the work. Stick to the facts.

Clearly and bluntly stating the limitations of a result is fine, but criticism of a researcher during a research talk is completely inappropriate.  Your expression of surprise could be taken as criticism of either the researcher's ethics or their competence, neither of which is appropriate to air in front of a research audience.

Whether the researcher is junior or senior is irrelevant.  Whether the researcher is known to your audience or not is irrelevant.  Criticism should be delivered privately.

Call the researcher and ask him/her what they think about x. When you get the answer, you can relate what he or she told you.


I feel like I forgot my simple mathematical knowledge Please help me. I can not tell psychologists about this because they are not mathematicians (They will not understand me)

Sometimes I don't read about mathematics for a couple of months, I do not think anything about my research and then I feel like I forget everything when I go back to research.

For example, I was working on a very important problem in March, and then I stopped doing mathematics so far. I want to go back to my research now, but I feel myself as weak, exhausted, lost my math skills and charlatan. Fear of failure, fear of losing everything, makes me crazy.

what can I do?

When I start researching again I have to learn math from scratch because I feel I have forgotten everything. It's disgusting because it makes me feel bad.

Please give advice =)

Thanks

As a grad student in computer engineering, I have a similar problem when I switch between projects that use different programming languages. I might spend months working in a high-level language like Python, only to switch to a project using a low-level language like C, or a project whose language I'm unfamiliar with, like MATLAB.

As I see it, there are two issues here:

1. Documentation -- setting a project aside is unavoidable at some point. As @Bemte pointed out, the trick is to document your work well enough where you can pick the train of thought back up days, weeks, or months later. This takes time and effort to do well (something I'm still learning). Suffice to say -- your documentation should include everything that you need to familiar with the work in a reasonable amount of time. That might include:

Detailed notes of the conversations you had, proofs you were working on, etc.
Papers you were reading
Textbook chapters that are important
And so on.

2. Patience -- you said it's been a couple of months since you had looked at your work. I can say for sure that if I went 2 or 3 months without looking at my code, it would be like reading gibberish, and it would take me a couple of weeks minimum to get back up to full productivity. I may be reading too far into your words, but it sounds to me that you need to be patient with yourself. High-level mathematics is not a subject that you learn overnight; and any psychologist will tell you that it takes time to enter the flow. Be patient with yourself.

I'll add this quick caveat: if you're concerned that you're still forgetting information even after you've been working on it continuously for weeks/months, that may be a sign of a more significant neurological or mental health problem. In that case, consult with (medical) experts. (Update: see @aparente001's excellent answer on how to best do this here.)

But otherwise, it's likely just a matter of being human -- we all forget things after a while :)

Mathematics, anxiety, and the brain

This info is from the NCBI, I am constructing it from the Abstract:
Studies have shown that learning mathematical and numerical concepts relies on many cognitive processes, including working memory, spatial skills, and linguistic abilities.
This paper discuss the relationship between mathematical learning and cognitive processes as well as the neural substrates underlying successful mathematical learning and problem solving.
It also discuss the relationship between these cognitive processes, mathematics anxiety, and mathematics learning disabilities (dyscalculia).

It says that mathematical cognition relies on a complex brain network, and dysfunction to different segments of this network leads to varying manifestations of mathematical learning disabilities.
 Hope this help.


Having trouble getting my "assistant" to put in work. How do I tell him to help out more without being rude? I was recently asked to train a new undergrad research assistant in the lab I work in. I was then told this new lab member is my assistant. He has no experience working in the lab before this, but I had been there for about a year before he came in. We have been working together for a few months now, but I am stuck.

I did have the chance to talk with him more, and he told me that he is only doing research to get a paper published. After all, if you complete research and do not get published, what is the point? I was a little bit taken back when I heard this, though not surprised. Of course almost every researcher dreams of being published, but me personally, I truly want to learn. I am not boasting and trying to make myself look better, but I personally believe my experience as a researcher will serve me well in my future career. If I do get published, all the better! I do strive to have enough data for publication, but I put my learning first.

After hearing this, my opinion of John changed, though I try very hard not to make it personal. I try very hard to focus on the research, and put all of my energy towards making my project successful. He always mentions to me how his schedule is very full, that he is always busy, but at the same time, I also struggle in giving him work to do. I do not want for him to take credit for something I did (in the long run), but I am afraid that because I may appear weak to him, this will most likely happen.

We had a meeting with our PI a few weeks back, and though John had mentioned to me he would be available for work that morning... once our meeting concluded, and several alarms later (that the professor subtly hinted his annoyance with the constant going off of his alarms), he mentioned to me that he has to get going. He gave me one idea that we could do to improve our project, but then as he walked away, said that his schedule is starting to become busy. I am busy too, I am overwhelmed sometimes, but I simply cannot stand the complaining anymore. I would like to tell him in a nice way, that if we are to work on this project together, he must put in the same amount of work that I do. However, the professor has mentioned he is to be my assistant, so I am not sure if he does have to put in as much work as I do?

I am really stuck on how to stand my ground and not appear weak, but at the same time, I do not want to be mean/a jerk. I am also wondering whether I am just putting John in a negative light because I see him as competition? Any thoughts?

Disclaimer lable: 100% organic locally grown opinion

I think there are a few aspects you need to reflect on.

First, it's fine for different people to create a joint effort with different motives. As long as the motives move the main goal forward. In addition, just because he wanted to publish a paper does not imply that he does not value learning. If his saying made you assume that he is just on for a free ride, I think that can be too premature a conclusion.

Second, learn how to manage people. Don't expect them just to fit in perfectly with your schedule and work style. Set up ground rules, lay out tasks, and negotiate on the ways of reporting. A very good feature about this case is you know his Achilles' tendon (or hanging carrot if you're a glass half-full kind of person): Name on the publication. Lay out all the works or tasks or learning for him and demand him to complete them on an agreed time or his name will not be listed as an author, but in the acknowledgement. Be civil about it and listen to what he says.

Third, sort out your own conflict. First:

  How do I tell him to help out more without being rude?

And then:

  but at the same time, I also struggle in giving him work to do. I do
  not want for him to take credit for something I did

Actually do you need an assistant or not? If yes, then make sure the terms are clear and he followed through. If he did, and ended up in the paper, he will eventually take some credits of yours AND you will also take some credits of his. This is what collaboration entails, at the end we have a general idea who did what, but it's inevitable to have some shared credit. If you're completely possessive about your work, and you think that he is taking advantage of you, then you should consider if you need an assistant or if you should decline this responsibility assigned by your supervisor.

Lastly, strengthen yourself up. Listen to this:

  I am afraid that because I may appear weak to him, this will most
  likely happen.

What about you that is weak? Why do you just label yourself weak from the get go? Personality? Physique? French? The only thing you need to be stronger than him in this case is your knowledge in this project. All others are side matters and you should not place yourself in the victim seat. An effective manager does not have to have strong personality, he/she just need to be fair, just, and remain clear and open in communication.

Lastly lastly, you should also talk to your supervisor for advice and tips. Work on it to create a happier collaboration experience.

You need to tease him in a slightly edgy way, e.g.:

(Monday morning) Hi, Manny, how's it going?

(Answering your own question, pretending to be or speak for him, so you'll have to change your voice slightly) Spent the whole weekend working!  (Now speaking for yourself)  No rest for the weary!  Come, let's get started so we can get out of here in good time.  Do you remember ... [and now quiz him on some safety procedures you taught him last week.]  Do not humiliate him under any circumstances.  Just tease him in a friendly, cheerful way.

We want him to get the idea that complaining, and not doing his job, is ludicrous.

Edit: If you're a grad student, and he is an undergrad, then you can expect his number of hours in the lab to be much less than yours.  However, you needn't have to put up with constant bragging, complaining, whining, etc.  Deflate his airs of self-importance by poking fun.  Gently.


How do you answer "Oh, you're a professor? What do you teach?" I suspect anybody who's a professor knows this story: you meet someone new in a social setting and it comes up that you're a professor.  The inevitable next question is, "oh, what do you teach?"

It's a perfectly reasonable question, and one simple answer is: well, tell them what you teach!  But the question also implicitly suggests that professors do nothing but teach, and to answer it directly feels like you're only reinforcing that perception.  It also does nothing to steer the conversation toward your other passions, like doing research and writing grants.

Q: How do you answer this question without being rude, while still painting a more representative picture of what a professor actually does?

I usually get assigned to teach ____________ (e.g. introductory biology classes), but actually, most of my work at the university involves research in the area of ____________.

At the risk of provoking ire by posting a third significantly different answer to this question, even more irritatingly with a question:

You obviously want to be genuinely understood. (So do I). So, I imagine, does everyone else who has weighed in on this thread, and probably everyone who has asked, "What do you teach?"

What can you do to understand others and give them what you want from them?

A number of professions, and a lot of people, are not well understood to the outside world. If I may draw on a bestseller that doesn't have or deserve respect in the academy, a car mechanic is probably very misunderstood. People think that a mechanic is someone who loosens bolts, moves assemblies aside, and replaces parts like fan belts. But from the inside, that's maybe 10% of what a car mechanic's job description. The lion's share of a mechanic's job description is to pin down, sometimes on faint, ambiguous, or confusing evidence, what is the root cause of a mechanical problem. It's the same thing as computer programmers developing, except that the mechanic is debugging a metallic mechanical system instead of code in a computer. The unappreciated car mechanic is one part automotive robot (that partially disassembles and reassembles cars) and nine parts sleuth (that uses clues to pin down the root cause of unwanted behavior--or lack of behavior).

If you don't like people not understanding some things that are very basic to you, what can you do to give others the understanding you seek but do not receive?

(P.S. If you'd like a bookworm's place to start, you might try Please Understand Me!)


How to formulate good problem statements in CS research Short background: I started my PhD last November and now I am helping a master student writing his MSc thesis. I still have problems when I need to formulate a concise research question and even, at least in workshop papers, some publications fail in formulating clear research questions as well.
The topic the CS student writes about is the following. There is this work by Bracha on pluggable / optional type systems, e.g.  for scripting languages. The student wants to solve the same problem that these 'pluggable typesystem' solves. But he is using dependent-type theory, i.e., to check that values in the scripting language are valid according to a given type. This can solve (or better solve) problems related to scripting languages (e.g. security problems in web programming; because everything is basically a string in scripting languages).

I find it hard to come up with a concise research question. (And possibly also with a method to evaluate the approach).
So, my question is:

Are there any references that can help me to formulate valid research
questions?

The closest reference I have found is this mini-tutorial by Mary Shaw.
From Germany there is also a Memorandum that is interesting, but the focus is only on information systems research and not CS. (I can't find a link to the long version in either English or German yet.)

Have you tried the following:

  Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers. Chicago: University of
  Chicago, 1987. Print.

It's a very nice book and is applicable to CS (unlike many other research methodology books).

Problem formulation is crucial phase in the research process. It start from; what is known at certain point of time and what is gape/defect/uncertainty/challenge/weakness in existing knowledge/system/model/solution or answer to a quest. Also Problem formulation starts from thrust/quest/hunger for new knowledge/knowing to unknown or need for exploration/extension/enhancement of the existing knowledge at a point of time. Finally Problem formulation precisely needs to define and draft the statement of the weakness in aforementioned knowledge using crystal clear words with preferably directional hypothesis. In statement it should cover 1)what is required?, 2) desired inputs and outputs with desired features and inter-linkage.


Is using an old book's solution considered cheating? I'm currently solving a coding problem. I remembered that i came across this problem in another book i studied myself to improve my coding in the summer.  That book has the same problem to this assignment. I understand the answer and know how to explain it but not sure if it is cheating to use that piece of code for my assignment.

One more thought in addition to Buffy's answer:

Transparency is maybe the solution here: tell your prof "I remember this problem, I met it studying book last summer. How shall I proceed with the assignment?"

This will ensure that there won't be any ground for accusing you of cheating
Prof may give you another assignment, from which you can learn more.

No, it's not cheating. You were tasked with solving a problem, therefore your task is to solve.

Unless you were meant to create a new method or something specific you are merely solving the problem which is to find a way to solve a problem.

Using an old answer is like calling a redundant function. And as long as you get to understand how that code works in your answer then all is fine.


Can departments sanction students who do not take sufficient precautions to protect their work? One of my colleagues was teaching an introductory programming course this past spring. He discovered several students cheating by taking code from a public GitHub repository, which contained all the answers for this class. This repository already had an issue opened on it by a professor from another large school, who requested that it be taken down because his students were using it to cheat. No response.

Fortunately, the student left some identifying information in the comments, which we were able to use to determine that he attends our school, in our department. We attempted to contact him to request that he remove the offending code--unfortunately, emails to both his departmental email and his GitHub email went unanswered.

The department has a student code of conduct which states that students must take "all reasonable precautions" to prevent others from using their work. While this student is clearly in violation of that, we can't exactly fail him out of a course he passed over a year ago, and failing him out of course he's currently taking seems petty.

We've considered escalating this to the department, but we're not sure if the department can actually do anything about this. Can a department in the US punish a student for helping other students cheat even if the student is not taking the class where the cheating is occurring? If so, what should be done? If not, might there be anyone at the school that can do anything? This is a large, public state school.

Can a department in the US punish a student for helping other students cheat even if the student is not taking the class where the cheating is occurring?

I don't know what you can do legally, but morally I think it would be wrong to try to prevent the student from making his/her coursework from past years' courses public. Making the work public could help the student market themselves to prospective employers, and has multiple other benefits for both the student (ego boost, impressing friends, fulfilling an altruistic desire to provide a useful internet resource they worked hard to create, gaining valuable experience using github, and more) and the internet (people from all over the world could download and use the code). Who are you and your colleagues to say that your selfish needs of not having such code available for download online because it facilitates cheating by your colleague's students are more important than the needs of the student and others who can genuinely benefit from the student's work? I think your premise that the student is doing something wrong is simply incorrect.

  If so, what should be done? If not, might there be anyone at the school that can do anything?

Yes, something could be done; you and your colleague could free yourselves of the harmful mindset of trying to control what your students are doing with coursework they worked hard to create after they finish taking your classes. As Massimo Ortolano suggests in the comments, stop taking the easy way out of giving the same assignments year after year and then blaming others for how easy it is for your students to cheat, and instead put in the work to give original assignments.

First ... Can some form of punishment be carried out? With the statement as phrased in the Student Code of Conduct, perhaps a case might be built. The case would ask whether the action by the student is truly in violation of the guideline/requirement to take all reasonable precautions to prevent others from using his work. At its core, the question is whether the action was done out of ignorance or with intent. As this is a civil case not a criminal one, only the latter has grounds to move the case forward at all. Along with the question of can some form of punishment be carried out, the companion question is what is suitable punishment. Since you have not asked, I will not venture.

Second ... Should such an action be initiated? That is a question to ask of your Provost and your Legal Affairs Office. At a minimum, they should be made aware of the issue and offer you advice on their stand.

Third ... Will this happen again? You bet!

Finally, even when assignments are changed to try to get around this problem, resources exist that will tempt students to just "copy and paste" an answer. I therefore also suggest explaining to the class the reasoning behind the Code and bigger policies such as Copyright and Patents. The intent is to teach students so that they do not fear that they cannot look outside for resources or must otherwise hide their actions behind a mantle of secrecy. It is to teach them the right way to do what they want to do anyway.


What should I (a professor) do if a student keeps answering other students' questions before I start explaining? I have a student who keeps answering other students' questions before I could even start explaining. What should I do in this case? Should I ask them to come meet with me? If so, how should I convey that it is not ok and it is not their job.

This would, I think, depend a lot on how the "answering" student goes about it. Just interrupting a request to the professor is disruptive, but some people do this sort of thing by reflex. But yes, a quiet word is in order. Ask them to meet with you. But decide first on what you would like them to do to correct the action.

If the answers they give are generally correct then it is a different situation than if they are mostly irrelevant, I think.

One thing that such a student fails to understand, of course, is that often the best answer is a minimal answer. An answer that lets students develop insight, not just get answers. Saying too much in answering a student question may be worse than saying nothing.

One option is just to require them to remain silent, but another is to ask (require) them to raise a hand before saying anything and first getting permission. But yet another, that might be useful, depending on the student, is to require them to write out an answer when they feel the need, rather than to blurt it out verbally.

But the behavior can be a symptom of many things. Some are insecurities on the part of the student; a need for affirmation. Some would just be showing off for the professor. Without knowing what it is, it is difficult to formulate an exact solution.

You have a right, of course, not to have your course disrupted by outbursts, but think a bit about whether the disruptor has needs that also need to be met. So, as part of your quiet word with them, ask first why they think it important to do that. Depending on your view of the student, the question might be direct, or you might want to be a bit more subtle about it.

And sometimes it is actually useful to have students volunteer answers to the questions of others as long as you maintain control over the process. If one student is dominating a conversation, it might be counterproductive for others.

Just put down the interrupter.  Well thanks Hermione.  Boy somebody likes to jump in an answer. Well now, not everyone is taking the class for the third time. Stuff like that.


Using WolframAlpha for a take-home exam Is it ethical to use WolframAlpha on a take-home exam for a math class? A couple qualifiers: this is a make-up exam where the original exam allowed for a scientific calculator but not a graphing/symbol-solving calculator.

The professor has made no other stipulations about the exam yet (no word on if it's the same rules as for regular exams or otherwise). He has simply just announced one will be given out.

Generally speaking, if a particular set of tools was permitted - in your case a scientific calculator but not a graphing calculator, I would assume those would be the only tools permitted.

This is especially true for tools, like Wolfram Alpha, that duplicate functionality of things that have been disallowed, like graphing calculators and calculators that can deal with symbolic notation.

Is it ethical for the professor to give a take-home exam with a set of instructions that probably can't be enforced by anyone? Is the professor going to police every student's taking of the exam by patrolling each and every domicile? The point is that in real life you have to consider and worry about what the other students are going to do. Trust me...it's generally not the "ethical" thing.

In all likelihood, the professor is going to create a very difficult take-home exam and then allow the students to have at it, no holds barred. This will eliminate the effects of the unavoidable tendency among students to be unethical.

Here's the crux of it. If you are going to break one of the professor's rules, don't get caught and never ever admit to it if you get accused. That goes for the rest of life as well because there will always be someone "holier than thou" who will try to hang you.


Non-binary, more modern alternative to "Dear Sir/Madam" I'm emailing a graduate STEM admissions department in the UK, and don't know the modern preferred way to begin the email.
Many authors suggest "Dear Sir/Madam," but of course this implies a problematic gender binary. A common, gender-neutral option, "To whom it may concern" is often criticized as too formal or impersonal.
There is enough advice on this topic to suggest that the recipient will (for reasons that are beyond me) actually care about whether an inherently impersonal email has an opening line at all.
What's a modern, etiquette-conscious applicant to do?
(Feel free to answer for other countries besides the UK too.)

I would suggest something along the lines of:

  Dear Admissions Committee,

or

  Dear Department of (STEM),

etc. You can usually find what a particular department/program/etc is called from their website. Avoid addressing the "Department of Chemical Engineering" as the "Engineering Department"; it would be most polite to use their own phrasing because it shows you've paid some attention and aren't sending out a copy-pasted letter to everyone.

For another example, I just randomly looked at a particular department, the "Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology" at the University of Cambridge; for their "MBE"  program they have a "contact" page that says to "please send an email to the MBE Office": in that case I'd simply address the email:

  Dear MBE Office,

For any of the above, you can also omit the "Dear".

In a comment, @DanRomik suggests modifying the salutations to refer to particular groups of people (like "committee" does) rather than abstract departments: examples include: “Dear MBE program administrators”, “Dear MBE office team”. I think that's perfectly fine, too, if you find that more logical.

When I was taught how to write formal letters in the 80s/90s, the answer to how you deal with the unknown gender of the recipient is "Don't".

We were taught that formal letters always start "Dear Sir" if you don't know who will be receiving it. Not "Dear Sir/Madam", not "To whom it may concern", not "Hello". Always "Dear Sir". Our teachers acknowledged that this was not correct if the person receiving the letter was female (non-binary wasn't on anyone's radar then) but taught us that it was the standard convention because English does not have a way of making the greeting for letters non-gender-specific. Whilst the person receiving the letter could well be female (or non-binary, sure), they would also know that this was the convention and would not be offended by it.

Many people still follow this convention.  I'm only 45, so it's not like it's your grandfather talking about "when I was a boy"!  With that in mind, it would not be unreasonable to simply start your letter "Dear Sir".  (Unless you know the name of the person, of course.)


How do I politely and tactfully tell my advisor that I would like more consistency in meetings? I am a PhD student. My advisor is great, but like all academics is very busy (administrative duties, other students, research...).

What happens almost every time I try to have a meeting, since the beginning of my PhD, is the following:

We set some date, say Thursday at 10AM.
He isn't in his office at 10.
At 10:30 he arrives.
It turns out Thursday isn’t great, actually, so let’s meet Monday instead.
Comes Monday morning, and the meeting is postponed to Monday evening, and then to Tuesday.
But Tuesday is a busy day too, so let's say Thursday at 10?
But at 10 there are emails to be sent, and more meetings, so let's say 5.
At 5 he isn't in his office, but at 6 we can meet, meaning I come to his office, sit, and wait sometimes half an hour until he's done writing emails, calling people...
Then we can finally start talking. Six days after the initial meeting was set, at 6:30PM.

I think over the past three months I’ve been able to have a total of five to six hours of meeting with my advisor.

Writing all this, I realize I’m a bit upset, and I’m afraid it’s going to show if I try to talk to him about it. Because let’s be honest, I don’t want to continue like this. I cannot plan my work day, sometimes I have questions that could be answered immediately but I have to wait weeks, and it’s just generally an unpleasant experience. (And while I know some people are able to work very late into the night, I basically become useless after 6PM on a normal day...)

Of course the long-term solution is to become an independent researcher and not rely on meeting with my advisor. After all, I won’t have an advisor all my life. But right now, I’m not quite there yet. How should I approach my advisor about this, without sounding selfish or upset?

To clarify: yes, whenever I have questions I try to exhaust all possibilities before asking my advisor: internet, my advisor's other students, other people in my lab (though this is a very specialized field, few people can help me if this is about my research). But for some questions, either I am not able to find an answer elsewhere, or there is no alternative to asking my advisor, e.g. "do you think I should go to this workshop", "where do you think I should submit this paper", "is my abstract ready to go", "I found this and it looks promising, should I continue in this direction or stick to the original plan"...

Tell him you would like to have more guidance, and ask to have regular meetings with a fixed schedule, same time every week. This way he will have a permanent entry on his calendar, and be more likely to reschedule tasks around it.

Some weeks you'll have more results, some others you'll have less, but it will be good if you can keep having at least a short chat every week.

Where is your funding from? If you have somewhat independent funding (NSF or other external fellowship) I would recommend making yourself less available. Set a firm meeting time that reoccurs once a week at the same time and place. If your adviser isn't there in the first five minutes, leave and don't agree to meet again until the next scheduled meeting time. This might annoy your adviser but if you are independently funded there is nothing he or she can do about it. They will eventually adjust to retain you.

If you depend on your adviser for funding you may be more forced to adapt to their way-of-working. If it really bothers you, you could change advisers and work with somebody more consistent. I know this isn't a good option. My adviser was the same way and it made everything much harder to get publications out.  Luckily it is just a PhD and not a marriage.


Does going to a graduate school with less prestige than your undergraduate school hurt you? I am trying to decided whether pursing a Master's in Computer Science will make me more competitive for a job designing video games. I went to a prestigious undergraduate school and finished strongly. The graduate schools which offer Master's programs with concentrations in video game design are less prestigious than my undergraduate school.

The average starting salary with a graduate degree from one of them is actually $30k less than my starting salary with just an undergraduate degree.

If I attend a less prestigious graduate school, will that cancel out my undergraduate degree? Could I end up making less money with my graduate degree from one of these less prestigious schools? Will employers make the false assumption that I attended a lesser graduate school because I did poorly as an undergraduate?

Edited heavily based on further information provided by OP
If you are going into industry, or pursuing a Master's, it may hurt you in the short term
A Master's degree is mostly course work. It's too short for you to create a body of work that stands on its own. The quality of the courses largely determines, consequently, the quality of the Master's. Prospective employers may use an institution's reputation as a heuristic/proxy for the quality teaching.
Attending a less prestigious institution will make it more difficult to get interviews. Not being able to attend the bigger names also means you miss out on their alumni networks.
Create a compensatory professional network that overcomes these limitations. Most Master's in CS programs have a semester-long project. Make an impressive project and shop it around. This is a good way to build rapport with potential employers.

In my experience people care more about whether you have the appropriate skills for the job at hand rather than where you went to college.

What work-related experience do you have in your field?

Do you have a professional network you can leverage to get the attention of people you might not otherwise?


Rules for using an electronic text as the texbook for a class I have just completed my PhD in Mathematics and accepted a job as a visiting assistant professor. The course I am assigned to teach allows me to pick the textbook I wish to use.

I am currently looking for lower-cost/free textbook options for my students, and I have found a textbook that I really like in the SpringerLink database. My school’s library has a subscription to this database which give students access to an electronic copy of this book free of charge. Are there any rules which prevent me from assigning this as the textbook for the class and giving them the option to download it for free through the library?

Well .. one idea is to assign the book as the textbook then notify the students that they should get the book via buying from amazon ... or that your library has access to Springer resources free of charge for the students. University students are adults that can make their own decisions.

As the course coordinator you are not selling the book, and it is not your responsibility to hand in a book to each student. Students can: buy the book or use free resources on their own progeratives. Students are not liable, since they are just accessing your library to view already available resources.

As long as you do not directly post content such as homework questions or chapter text from the book or directly share such content in any way, such as on the course website or as handouts, you are not liable. You are just assigning a book as recommended textbook and notifying the students their options. Students are also not liable since your library enables them to access free material they wish to view.

I also just want to give an example of clear violation. If you buy the book and make a pdf out of it and share them in course site (does not matter whether public access or not) that would be a breach of copyright.

Are there any rules which prevent me from assigning this as the textbook for the class and giving them the option to download it for free through the library?

The most important rule which prevents you from doing so is the copyright law. It allows the fair use of educational material only for nonprofit educational uses in the classroom. Scholarly publication and copyright in networked electronic publishing, 1995, page 9 Perhaps a small small example. If a third party can publish a printed version of the textbook and earn money with it, and this is no longer possible because of somebody else misuses the license of Springerlink for publication purposes, then it will become a legal case.

It is important to know, that vendors of electronic publications are not selling their products but licensing them to the library. That means, the vendor can decide what the correct usage scenario is. Electronic collections and wired faculty, 1997 What librarians and teacher can do is to look at the issue and work together to resolve it. Aggregation or aggravation? Optimizing access to full-text journals, 2000


Critiquing or commenting on someone's talk Assume I attended someone's seminar talk which I liked a lot. Also I heard that yet another expert X also said that the talk is interesting.
Is it ok to say to the lecturer that the expert X and I liked the talk, or should I not mention another's opinion?
Now assume the opposite situation: the expert X and I did NOT like the talk.
Is it ok to say to the lecturer that X and I did not like the talk, or again should I not refer to other people?
[update] Now assume that the lecturer explicitly asked me if I heard what X said about his/her talk. Can I tell the lecturer X's opinion (assuming X did not ask me in advance not to do that)?

X, being an expert in the field, can presumably find ways to communicate their opinions to the speaker, publicly or privately, if they wish to do so.

Often, opinions communicated between experts will be much more complicated and mixed than a simple like/dislike. "I agree with you on points A, B, and C, but I think point D is contradicted by Y's research. I'll send you a reference." is much more likely than either extreme.

If you just heard X talking about point D and Y's research, you could get the impression X disliked the talk. If you just heard X talking up points A, B, and C you could get the impression X liked the talk. Neither impression would be fully accurate.

Unless X has positively authorized you to speak on their behalf, you should not do so. If asked directly, indicate that you are unsure and, as suggested in a comment, encourage the speaker to talk to X directly.

In this particular case, even if you thought that X thought the talk was nice, but actually he thought it was bad (or viceversa), I don't see why it would do any bad if you tell the lecturer what you think X thought. Unless the lecturer was very happily expecting to hear X's opinion, then it's ok. Of course, what I would do is to say to the lecturer exactly what I heard coming out of X's mouth, or whatever you've been told about X's opinion (in case you didn't even hear him personally). If the case was that the lecturer was really trying to impress X, then even if you make the mistake of telling him that X thought it was great, but he actually thought that it sucked, then the lecturer wouldn't get mad at you or something like that, basically because he would realize hours or days later, and much less is the chance of him getting mad at you if he doesn't know you.


How to make a one-year study plan for a difficult exam and remain motivated throughout? In a year, I will be taking a difficult entrance exam at a renowned postgraduate school. There are many competitors, most of whom are smart. Despite that, I'm aiming at becoming #1 in the exam, and that's why I have started preparing now.

I have interviewed a few top candidates of the past years and already learned which books I should read and how much I should study every day.

I think that learning more about planning would help me a great deal. But those books on planning and goal-setting mostly focus on reaching financial goals. I have not managed to find any books befitting my situation.

Another thing is that, because the duration is quite long, I'm afraid that my enthusiasm may start weakening after a few months into it, no longer performing at my best.

So, here is my question: How can I a make one-year study-plan for myself, and remain motivated in the long run?

Also, any suggestions about books, software, etc. that will help me reaching my goal will be appreciated.

I would recommend you not to rely upon external entities for motivation. Rather then relying upon just some books and software, practice "Self Motivation".

Each day think about the happiness and satisfaction that you will achieve once you got an admission in the targeted postgraduate school.

Furthermore, browse through the list of notable alumni from the same school and make a target that you will also feature in the same list some day.

It will encourage you to put 100% effort each day without losing excitement.

making plan is essential for the exam but rather more imp is to excute daily and alway remember ur goal ...
if u able for the exam then u also able for making strategy or plan ownself...

so belive in ownself,hardwork,smartwork systematicity ,mindset,ur god  and positive think ...

never give up...
  always think about ur goal ,goal,goal...so...on


How long to wait before contacting another arm's length referee? Good afternoon,
I am trying to find an external referee to review and evaluate an application package for a postdoctoral fellowship. This assessment, which is a required element of the application, is due August 13. I e-mailed a first potential referee a couple days ago (so certainly not very long at all). I introduced myself, identified why she might be well-placed to serve as a referee, and identified the deadline. Rather than following-up, it is likely that I would reach out to another potential referee if I don't hear back from her. At what point do you think I should reach out to another potential referee?
My initial thoughts are after seven or eight business days. I realize this may not be considered a long time for these sorts of applications, but I fear that the likelihood of a positive response will be severely reduced at that point and I don't want to put anyone who does agree to take on the assessment in a position where they feel rushed.
Would value your thoughts!

You are very considerate to your referees, and I hope you get this postdoc position!
There is no exact number of days for these things and you would know the person's emailing habits better than me. Perhaps in another 2 days (4 days total), you can write him something like:

Dear Prof. XXXX,
I am just writing to follow-up on my email below.
Of course there is no rush for your assistance with refereeing my application package, because it is not due until 13 August. I wrote to you this early because I wanted to make sure that you had plenty of time, since I wanted to inconvenience you as little as possible.
If I may, I would just like to ask whether or not you might be able to act as one of my arms-distance referees for this application package: The deadline is not until August 31st, but I would just like to first establish who is going to have enough time to do it and who doesn't, so that if for example you are not able to do it, I don't end up asking someone else with not much time available. The idea is for me to be as considerate as possible to the time and energy spent by my external referees.
Sincerely,
user125706

Please feel free to adjust this letter, or write your own based on it, or copy-paste it. Whatever makes you feel most comfortable.
Good luck on getting this position!


What should I do when a paper is published similar to my PhD thesis without citation? As part of my PhD thesis I extended an existing method to a new problem. I finished my PhD thesis about 5 years ago and graduated afterwards. After graduation I started working in industry. I never published my thesis (or parts thereof) as a paper, since I was mainly focused on working at the beginning and after several years just was not motivated enough, since I was not pursuing an academic career.

Using a simple google search about the topic you would be able to find my PhD thesis even though the content cannot be accessed online, but surely could be accessed by contacting my previous school or the library.

I recently found a published paper that pretty much does the same things that I did for my thesis. It makes the same modifications to the existing method and comes to the same conclusions. My thesis is however not mentioned or cited in the paper. I am not implying any sort of plagiarism. Once you think about the problem, those modifications are very natural. It's just that I came up with them earlier.

As said above, I was never really interested in publishing my thesis, but now that I saw the paper I was thinking: Hey, I was the first! They should have at least cited my thesis!

I am now wondering, what my options would be and came up with the following two possibilities:

Well, tough luck! I never published my results and so it just seems fair that somebody else did (assuming that they came up with them independently).
Write the editor of the journal and inform them that the main message from the paper was already covered in my thesis and thus is not novel research.

So I was wondering, whether number 1 above applies or whether I should go with number 2. Or what would be other possibilities?

Well, if you did not publish, and your thesis is not available, you really can't complain that somebody else's similar independently performed work is not novel - they had no reasonable way of knowing about your work.

Really, the only way to approach it is the first way. And learn that undocumented work buried in a drawer somewhere does not exist as far as the rest of humanity is concerned. Going forward, document and publish (as appropriate) your work (document for internal business use, publish for the outside world).

Perhaps, you should look at this question:
What's the point of PhD theses if nobody reads them?

People do not read theses even when they are publicly accessible. In your case, who want to read your thesis need to overcome the hurdle of contacting your former school or library. (I would suggest putting your thesis on ArXiv if you hope somebody to read it).

Theses are not official publication. And even publications in lower rank conferences are largely ignored, as they are often of low quality.

Nowadays, there are just too many papers to read, and the junk/predatory journals/conferences make the problem worse. So a strategy to optimize the time is to read only papers in well-known conferences, and hope that the authors did a good job in their related work (in good papers, they often do).

No pain, no gain.

Publishing papers in top venues is a pain. But there is also reward on it, otherwise people just goes for easy venue to avoid rejections.

In my field, Computer Science, a PhD student is expected to publish a couple of papers in order to graduate. What other assumption can you make about a thesis without publication?

In your case, you didn't even try to publish your idea, didn't even try to make it accessible, why hoping it get cited?


How do I stay motivated in my PhD research when my advisor doesn't seem to like me very much? My PhD advisor and I simply do not get along. I think it has a lot to do with the language and cultural barriers (we are in Germany). We had an argument this week that almost led to me quitting, but on Friday we discussed how things could be improved. However I still can't shake the notion away that he doesn't seem to like me very much and that things won't get any better.

Here is my situation: I got a fully funded, 100% research position throug the Deutscheforschung Gemeinschaft in what is loosely translated in English as a "graduate school" (Graduiertenkolleg). We were told that we could concentrate on our own research (no teaching requirements), but our funding only lasts 3 years, so we have to finish by then. When I took the job, I thought I would be working more closely with the other fellows hired by the graduate school, even though we are based in the research teams of our PIs. In my case, my PI has 3 other PhDs with teaching obligations, i.e., not under my funding scheme.

I had thought I won't have any other obligations other than my own work. But little did I know that my PI has been harbouring a grudge against me this whole time. Here's a list of things he mentioned:

He told me that I always seem so depressed, so I should think about whether I really want to pursue this path. I have been diagnosed with depression, so this is unlikely to go away overnight. He never once asked me what was wrong.
He says I "don't seem interested" in the research going on in his team because "I don't ask any questions".
He also told me that I hadn't followed through on my promises to help out with the team. I had once offered to set up a social media strategy, and he just said "sounds good" and moved on to the next point, so I didn't think he was interested.
He says I never engage in team discussions or offer helpful suggestions to my other PhDs. This is categorically not true, since I always tell my colleagues whether I see something (journal articles, workshops) that could be interesting for them.
He says I didn't offer to supervise any bachelor's or master's theses.
He is always critical about the way I present information. For example, I have sent him presentation slides and he says it has too much unnecessary information. Then I send him presentations that he says lacks crucial information. I never know which information he needs, and I get shut down either way.
He says I favor the events of the graduate school over his team, since I have had to miss some meetings to attend required coursework.
I explained to him that I had thought my obligations are to the graduate school, that I have to finish on time.
When I explained to him what I had thought I was hired for (no teaching obligations etc) he told me that he doesn't believe me, that I should have known that I was part of his team primarily and that the graduate school was just a funding scheme.

I felt like he couldn't see my contributions simply because I wasn't behaving in the way he was expecting and doesn't seem to understand that I don't have it all figured out. Later on, when things calmed down a little, he explained to me that in Germany, most positions in my field are only supported up to 65% (if you're lucky), so I should think of my work as a fully paid position for work that can be done in a 65% position. But how was I supposed to know that?

It's worth noting that he is very accommodating to the circumstances of other PhDs in his team (e.g., one home office day a week for those with children). But for some reason he doesn't seem to care all that much that I have depression or that there are some things about German academia that I don't know about. I still want to continue with my PhD, but how do I motivate myself from here on?

What a shame that your professor hasn't been giving you constructive feedback as you've been going.  I think I would end up depressed, working with someone who waits, and then dumps a lot of negativity in a complaining and blaming way.

So... I see two choices.

1) Find a different advisor.  OR:

2) Try to make the best of a less than ideal situation:

a) Take all of his feedback and rewrite it, with positive phrasing.  Read the constructive version a couple of times a week, telling yourself, "This is what he meant, only he was held back from expressing himself this way by his own cultural upbringing, personal shortcomings, etc.  This is like the Fats Waller song, "I'm gonna sit right down, and write myself a letter." (lyrics).

b) Pick a couple of his feedback items at a time to tackle, to see if you can make some progress with.

c) Guide him to give you guidance in a more positive, constructive way.  Here are some ways to do that:

(i) Next time you share a powerpoint draft with him, include the extra material, and in the body of the email, when you send it to him, say, for example, "I know that this draft needs to be pruned down.  Can you help me cut it down, by suggesting which slides should be removed, and which ones should be edited?"

(ii) Ask for an appointment specifically to speak about coping mechanisms for your condition.  Take an outline on an index card with you.  Use I-messages.  (You and I know that he has contributed plenty to the difficulties in your relationship, but it won't help matters to let him know that.)  For example, "I need constructive criticism, as part of my training.  But I get easily discouraged and overwhelmed by negative criticism.  So, when I share a draft with you, could you please find something positive to say for every three negative things you say?  That will help me keep my perspective."

(iii) Make sure to give him positive feedback whenever he makes a step in the right direction, for example, "Thank you so much for helping me edit my powerpoint.  Your comments were extremely helpful."

d) As others have suggested, work on breaking your isolation.  (I understand completely your explanation of how it came to be.)

Last comment.  You might be right, he might not like you very much.  But what struck me more clearly was that you don't like him very much.  Sometimes when a person struggles with depression, it is hard to give oneself permission to have strong opinions of this type.

Here's hoping that if you decide to stay in this group, the two of you find  more to like about each other!

In this Situation. I would go ahead and find a different advisor. He does not seem to be that very helpful. If you cant do this, then your best bet would just try to make the best of the situation and persevere.


Is it ethical to send an unpublished draft preprint to a competitor by email to establish priority? I am a mathematician. I recently formulated a conjecture, and was working toward proving it. Another mathematician I know only via email also conjectured the same around the same time.

I now managed to prove the conjecture. I think it is an important result.

However, my paper on this is not ready to be put on the arXiv, because there are natural questions related to this conjecture that need to be solved first (otherwise the paper will look incomplete). I know I can solve these questions, but it will take me time to do that.

From a recent preprint this person put on the arXiv recently, I am convinced that he is also not too far from proving this result (my solution did not use his results and was not inspired by them). Thus, I am worried that he will also obtain the same result.

I was wondering if it would be ethical for me to "block him" and establish priority by emailing him my solution of the conjecture?

It seems to me that there is some amount of "having your cake and eating it too" in your question.

First of all, I think private mathematical correspondence, including sending preprints, should only be "friendly" (or "collaborative"); it should not be "unfriendly" (or "competitive").  If someone emails me a paper, I don't in general have an obligation to read it.  If you think I am about to prove something very soon and you send me something with the aim of taking away the independent nature of my proof, that seems quite unfriendly.  The correspondence doesn't advance the field in any way; it only seeks to advance you at my expense.  As others have said, if the natural state of affairs is that both you and I will arrive at proofs of the same result independently in roughly the same time frame -- great, we will both get the credit, and it will not be divided in half in any clear way.  I don't see why you need to perform machinations to try to prevent that.

Also, you are trying to establish priority in a rather strange way when there are two much more standard ways: submit to a journal and/or post on the arxiv.  Regarding this, you say:

  My paper on this is however not ready to be put on the arxiv, because there are natural questions related to this conjecture that need to be solved first (otherwise the paper will look incomplete).

But you also say:

  I now managed to prove the conjecture. I think it is an important result.

If the conjecture is important, then a proof of it should make for a very nice paper.  Most papers "look incomplete" in the sense that they leave something natural undone.  And most of us do not get to work out all the consequences of our results in the same paper as those results are first published.  Doing too much in one paper is risky for several reasons, one of which is that the longer you sit on a given result, the larger the chance that someone else will do it.  You seem to be trying to circumvent this natural tension with your private correspondence.  While not unethical per se, I don't expect it will be well received.

Given the situation and the concerns, I suggest that you do upload to the arxiv a short note that proves your conjecture and that does not have all the bells and whistles you would like to eventually have.  You say that it is two pages long, so that I would expect that the relevant mathematical community will be able to quickly ascertain whether it is a correct proof of the conjecture.  Because of this you don't have to submit right away or even submit the version of the paper you put on the arxiv.  You can take the time to make the additions that you want.  Of course, other members of the community can respond to your arxiv preprint and build on it as well.  That's what's fair, it seems to me.

One possibility is to publish the proven conjecture to the arXiv by itself to establish priority.  Leave the fleshing out of details and answering of the other questions to the paper you'll be submitting to a journal.

  My paper on this is however not ready to be put on the arxiv

I don't know if there is such a thing.  Okay, papers consisting of only a few words are not ready for the arXiv, but that's not what you have here.  Since you presumably will be publishing your result in a journal, the completeness of what you put on the arXiv is not of paramount importance.  Since the arXiv is not peer reviewed and often has things put on it such as short essays commenting on practices in the field and joke/April Fools paper (at least in my field, astronomy), a short paper focused just on one result not fully fleshed out would fit in quite naturally.

Another possible alternative is something that just started in my field: American Astronomical Society Research Notes.  These are intended to be very short summaries with very fast turnaround times (I believe they are not peer reviewed) of summaries of works in progress, results that need to get out quickly (e.g., observation of a transient phenomenon), or negative results that aren't worth writing a full-fledged paper for.  I don't know if mathematics has something similar.


Acceptability of 'not possible' for master thesis research I am currently working on my (Computer Science) master thesis, and have been doing so now for about 5-6 months. The default time for thesis work at my university is about 9 months. Aspects such as literature review and 'planning' were all approved and went very smoothly.

Slowly I am realizing that the method I have planned to develop is simply not going to work. To be a bit more clear: I have thought of a model to solve a problem that isn't currently solved, and have found that my model doesn't improve on any of the exisiting 'attempted' models nor does it contribute anything 'useful' to the industry other than 'this model doesn't work.'

My question being: is it acceptable for the conclusion of a master thesis aiming to implement a new model for a problem to be 'doesn't work?'

I am worried sick that my supervisor or anyone evaluating the work would dismiss it, since of all three research questions I have not been able to make a single one work and have concluded bit-by-bit that it's not possible to implement this model effectively.

Is it acceptable to conclude a master thesis with 'my method doesn't work?' Will it be a problem if I just present my work and conclude with 'no success?'

You have to discuss this with your supervisor / advisor.

Then you can agree the direction.


Why do academics prefer Mac/Linux? In the commercial world, Windows utterly dominates. As of time of writing its market share is somewhere around 85%.

I don't have similar statistics for academia, but my personal observation is that most professors seem to prefer Macs, especially on personal devices. Linux is also a lot more common than in the public at large. Windows computers are still around, but much less common - maybe around 1/3 of computers run Windows, a substantial fraction of which seem to be because they're preinstalled with Windows.

Why the preference for Macs / Linux?

It's not entirely accurate to state that Windows 'dominates' in the commercial world. While this is generally accurate in Desktop and Laptop computers, keep in mind that the vast majority of web (and other) servers are Linux-based. Keep in mind that 100% of the TOP500, a list of the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world, are on Linux. Keep in mind that Linux, especially if you include Android, is almost definitely the most prevalent operating system (kernel) in the world in terms of number of devices.

A lot of academic institutions, especially in more computing-related fields, are big supports of open-source/FLOSS communities, and Linux is obviously a very big underlying part of such communities.

And, most key in my experience, for academic/scientific environments, Mac and Linux have enormous computational advantages over Windows - the underlying Unix architecture model and the inherent support of very useful shells like bash, very useful device handles (eg. /dev/random, or device IO handles), etc. These things make the development of custom code, especially for scientific, computational, or instrument-interactive purposes, a lot easier than on Windows.

Even if you're not using custom code, I'd venture to guess that absolutely any computing cluster worth its salt is being run on some kind of Linux. If you want to just use that cluster, it's far less hassle to SSH in with a Mac or Linux computer with SSH built-in, than having to use something like Putty and fiddle around on Windows.

In all, science is very heavily dependent on computing. And high-level computing is very dependent on Linux. In my view this is the biggest reason that very compatible Unix-like systems like Mac and Linux are far more prevalent.

I am a Mac user at client side but my scripts run on Linux based server. Because the way of work is similar I don’t need to learn double logic. I try to avoid Windows as much as possible.

My main reasons for Linux:
- free, available to anyone at any time; this enables free research, free science, free development, free sharing
- many free and open source projects shared by universities
- open, yes - you can adjust or create your own Linux if you need something special, or find out how things are made if something doesn’t work as expected
- scalable, secure, social

My main reason for Macs:
- user friendly (for Mac users haha)
- hardware and operating system tuned to work together which results in more effectivity, efficiency and less failure; many startups and edu decide for Macs because in total it is less expensive than Windows based systems in a period of 3-5 years even the purchasing cost is higher
- easy to port linux stuff to MacOS and get benefits from Linux
- secure, stable, beautiful


Why do a second PhD in a "neighboring" discipline? I recently received an application for a PhD position from someone who is already working as a postdoctoral associate. The difference in fields is not particularly large—I work in chemical engineering and materials science, while the applicant originally is coming from computational chemistry.

So the obvious question is, why would someone want to pursue a second doctoral degree when they already have one in a related field, and why would I, as a potential advisor, want to consider someone interested in doing this? (For instance, it seems obvious that the person wouldn't likely need as much training as a novice, but there would also be the challenge of trying to find such a person gainful employment afterwards.)

I've seen two reasons for this.  The more worrisome reason is the one mentioned by EnergyNumbers in the comments, namely that some people just collect degrees.  In particular, they may feel having two Ph.D.s would look exceptionally impressive, or they may be unable to settle on a specialization, or they may feel that getting another degree is somehow preferable to getting a job.  These could be legitimate as personal desires, but they are counterproductive for a research career.

The other reason is to recover from a bad career start.  Sometimes someone's grades keep them from getting into a good graduate program, or they face other constraints (geographical or financial) in their choice of programs, or they fail to connect well with their advisor.  They may eventually get a Ph.D., but not under good circumstances, and a second Ph.D. might lead to a much better career.  The difference between this case and the first case is that these students don't actually want a second Ph.D. as such.  They regretfully feel they need one to achieve their career goals, but they wish it had been their first and only Ph.D.

Recovering from a bad start is a less worrisome reason to seek a second Ph.D., but of course the challenge is figuring out which students have moved beyond their past difficulties and which have not.

First why a Postdoc would consider a second PhD:
       TO SURVIVE
      Needless to say, how the existing system treats the Postdocs-Use   them, as a cheap labor and throw them. In almost all of the occasions, it is the Professor/Supervisor who is benefitted.
      According to Nature article, vacancies in academia is available only for 15% of the Postdocs. In addition to this, comes the problem of Visa and Racism. In France, it is impossible for one to get a job (even in Industry) let alone be called for the interview, without perfect French and a "French" sounding First & Last Name. Yet, French institution lure students from developing countries with their fancy programs. In one of the article on the "invisible" racism in Canada, one even acknowledged that the system is skewed in favour of Canadians (they want the good jobs for Canadians), yet they beckon PhD's and postdocs, from all over the world. Then, say the education is not enough, forcing them to work as bartenders and taxi drivers. Nature (Journal) itself points to some postdocs to have taken up the job of a forklift. Personally, I know a postdoc ending up as a stay-at-home Dad...And in almost all cases, none even spares a moment to think about the future and families of their postdocs or help them acquire skillsets that could help them move to industries, in the worst case scenario. Neither, opportunities in entrepreneurship is supported (National Laboratories, for example). In fact, Canada actively discourages it.

So, the best reason I think a person would choose a second PhD is to survive and since, PhD is usually longer than a postdoc could hope to acquire skillsets that could be used in industry and subsequently find a job. Personally, I would urge you to consider the postdoc as you'd be helping him and also prevent another "idiotic" bright student from wasting his life in the name of academic/knowledge pursuits  It is a beneficial proposition for you as well, as a postdoc would require less supervision and hence more publications could be achieved for lesser cost...!


Are results that are derived simply by using more computational power publishable? Let's say Alice has written a paper that attacks a well-known problem in a clever new way. Her paper ends with "these methods work up to N = 10; for larger N, the calculations are prohibitively expensive".

Bob reads the paper and successfully duplicates Alice's results, but where Alice only had access to a 4-core desktop, Bob has a 4000-core supercomputer. Therefore he can calculate what Alice found prohibitively expensive, and get results up to N = 20.

Are Bob's results publishable? He didn't actually do anything special, he just had more computational power. On the other hand, the results are definitely new, and interesting (for whatever reason N = 20 is the point where interesting effects are predicted).

If they are publishable, what would Bob actually write in such a paper? Everything sans the result could effectively be communicated in one sentence ("Read Alice's paper"). If they are not publishable, how is Bob to communicate his results to the wider world?

I suspect something like this has happened in the past, in which case I'd appreciate a link to such a paper.

(I switched the order of a couple of your questions to give the answer a more logical flow.)

  On the other hand, the results are definitely new, and interesting (for whatever reason N = 20 is the point where interesting effects are predicted).

If the results are new, and interesting, then they are by definition publishable. The key point is they add something meaningful to the sum total of human knowledge. That’s certainly a sufficient criterion for publishability (in an idealized sense it should be necessary as well, but I fear it isn’t - plenty of things get published that don’t really meet this condition).

  Are Bob's results publishable? He didn't actually do anything special, he just had more computational power.

The concept of “doing something special” is both mostly meaningless and (to the small extent that it has any meaning) completely irrelevant to the question of publishability. Plenty of authors of excellent papers “didn’t do anything special” - they just had more patience and were willing to work a bit harder, or in many cases just got a little bit luckier, than their peers, and ended up discovering something significant. Publication is not a prize that’s given for “doing something special”, it’s simply the scientific community putting a stamp of approval on a discovery that it is correct, new, and worth paying attention to.

By the way, one can even say that a researcher Bob who works harder than his peer Alice is pretty much the exact scenario you are describing of someone “having more computational power”. In this case the computational power is of the human sort, but I don’t see why that should change the calculation.

Edit: another thought is that Bob actually did “do something special”. It’s not just that he had more computational power, but he had the foresight and intuition to realize that it would be worthwhile to apply that computational power to Alice’s particular problem rather than spend his time and resources doing any number of other things. So although it’s not really that important as I said above, even by your own criterion I think there is more merit to the achievement than your description makes it sound.

  If they are publishable, what would Bob actually write in such a paper? Everything sans the result could effectively be communicated in one sentence ("Read Alice's paper").

Bob would simply write what he did and what the results were, and what makes them interesting. If it can really be described in one sentence I’d argue that it likely wasn’t such an interesting result after all. But on the off-chance that it was indeed interesting, then it would make for a great one-sentence paper. There isn’t any rule that papers have to be longer than one sentence.

Its completely publishable and called 'secondary literature' (Which is different than secondary source):

It relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. A secondary source contrasts with a primary source, which is an original source of the information being discussed.

May fall under a review article too.

As a clarification: Secondary literature is material that interpret, evaluate, or analyze the evidence derived from primary materials and/or sources.


How to ask what my salary will be for German PhD position I am a biomedical engineer; I was offered a PhD position in Germany. They already prepared my contract but never mentioned my salary. I was wondering if there is a polite way to ask how much will be my salary.

They will not tell you a number in Euro, as the person tasked with the hiring decision probably doesn't know the amount either. You need to ask for the paygrade and then use the calculator on this page to find the amount.

It is a very easy conversation, because neither you nor your supervisor can do anything about the payment. No negotiation, no decision making, nothing involved. You cannot say anything wrong (as in, reduce your chances for a good salary).

How to calculate the amount from the paygrade

First, you need to know which tarif applies to you. On the page I linked, choose "TVL West" if you will work in a state of former West Germany, and "TVL Ost" if you are in former East Germany. You will see a blue calculator form in the upper right corner.

The paygrade information your boss tells you will be of the form "E13, 50%". It may have been printed on the job ad, but not always.

E13 is the "level" determined by the job's difficulty, and is fixed for the position. The rules here are so firm, I don't know if it is even possible to have a PhD research job ("wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter") at any other level than E13.

The percentage is the worktime percentage paid. It is up to the institution to decide if they are going to pay you full time, half time, or some other fraction. Paid full time is practically unheard of outside of computer science departments, biomedical should be 50% or some more. The actual time your boss expects you to be present in the office may be different from what your contract says, and it is also up to your supervisor and work to know if you will need to put in some unpaid extra hours outside of fulltime work hours. If you have a cell culture which needs to be fed every day, you might find yourself coming back to the lab on weekends too. But the money you get depends on the number in the contract, and it is simply calculated as a proportion of the money for the full time.

The calculator also asks you for a Stufe. It refers to a pay "raise" based on years of work experience. If you are a freshly minted M. Sc., you start at "1", get upgraded to "2" after one year in 1, then to 3 after two years in 2, etc, up to 6. If you have worked somewhere else before and gained relevant experience (HR judges what is relevant), you can get into a higher group, but not higher than 3 when you are changing institutions, or when you are changing the E level within the same institution.

If you are single, your "Steuerklasse" (tax classification) is I. If you are married, try "IV" for the first calculation. If you are in a civil union with a same sex partner, that also counts, but I don't know how difficult it is to get a civil union or same sex marriage from another country recognized in Germany.

You will get some extra money if you have small children, but I don't know which ages count for how much.

If you are either Catholic or Protestant, you will also pay a church tax. For this, choose the link behind "Kirchensteuer" and enter the state in which you will be working.

Leave everything else at default for the calculation, and press "berechnen".

For example: in my institution, a biology PhD always gets a 50% E13 contract, and assuming he is single, atheist and has no previous work experience, this translates to 1758.68 €, of which he takes home 1208.12 €.

Beside the Stufe for years worked, your salary will rise a little bit every year, as the whole paygrade is adjusted in a negotiation on the highest level between the provinces' governments and the trade unions. You cannot get a pay raise by negotiating with your boss, nor could he give you one if he wanted. The exception would be giving you a few more percent worktime, if you are not already at 100% and if your institution's policy allows it. This is rare and will likely require you to take on one more project beside your PhD work.

An additional payment in December is customary, but it is not as high as a regular monthly salary.

Congrats on the position!

I'm not sure how it works in Germany (and perhaps I am wrong since other answers talk about "grades"), but in the UK we often call it "funding" rather than "salary" since the money typically comes from research councils rather than the university itself. Some PhD positions come with funding, some do not, so for me it is completely acceptable to ask.

As a PhD student myself, I would feel much more comfortable asking "will there be any funding available for this position?" rather than "what's my salary?". Hope this helps.


Disclosing employment in acknowledgement of conference paper I'm a part time PhD student in computer science and work full time at an asset management firm. My paper was accepted into an IEEE conference. However, I have not used any of my work's resource for the paper (though my work could use some of my findings once it's published). Do I still need to disclose my work affiliation in the Acknowledgement section of the final submission and state that there's no conflict of interest?

In your particular case, your work got accepted at an IEEE conference. Congratulations.
IEEE has a relatively extensive website on author ethics. It doesn't seem to mention affiliations at all. Obviously, what you put into the paper should be correct, though.
But what is the role of putting the affiliation on the paper? After all, you speak for yourself, not your organization. It is (1) assigning credit, and (2) to make contacting you easier in case that is needed.
For none of these purposes, the asset management firm needs to be mentioned. It makes sense to declare potential conflicts of interest proactively, but as you wrote, there are none.
Many researchers do other work on the side, such as consulting, a small start-up, giving educational courses, etc. - I've not seen such a declaration of not having a conflict of interest in a (computer science) paper so far.
However, it probably makes sense to check if your main employer is fine with this (or even requires you to not mention them in the paper  - this could for instance be the case if they have no way of checking what you wrote is correct and hence don't want to risk their name being on the paper). Due to reason (2) for putting an affiliation on a paper, I believe it to be OK to put your asset management company as an affiliation on the paper if they insist.


Advisor professor asking me for the source code of my dissertation in order to be used by another student I finished my master's degree (Computer Science) a short time ago, and I don't currently plan to continue my academic studies.

My adviser asked me for the source code of the application I developed for my final paper (and for which I received a perfect score) in order for one of students they currently advise to continue my work as part of their bachelor's final project.

This question is similar to this one Advisor professor asks for my dissertation research source code. The difference is that my work will be used (continued?) by another student as part of their final paper.

Should I do this or is there any reason for me to be concerned about this?

Update

To provide some clarification. I was not paid for the work that I did for my paper. (however I also did not pay for my master studies in case this matters). I put a significant amount of time into this (by my standards at least) around 5 months. Also, my paper was not submitted in an article, journal etc. It was only submitted to the university (without the code), and then I defended my work in front of a committee. This paper/project is the work based on which the diploma is given. The mark received for this is noted on the diploma.

In the end decided to make the repository public (with a license).
Thanks for all the answers, they made me realize that learning is based on sharing.

You developed the code as part of your curriculum. It's quite possible that therefore, the source code belongs to the university anyway. This does depend on the laws of the country your university is in.

Also, I don't see what you should be concerned about. Someone else building on your work is exactly how science is supposed to proceed. If I were you, I'd take the request as a compliment.

Here's how I'd look at the situation in case OP (or a future reader) is in  Germany.

In Germany, the IP of a Bachelor or Master thesis is almost always owned by the student.
With software, there may be a more complicated situation if the student wasn't the only author of that software - but the exam regulations for the thesis would anyways require that the student's contribution can be unambiguously identified (and that would apply to the next thesis student as well).
The university (or advisor) must not ask for a license/IP rights before the thesis is finished and graded.

More details on this: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/63605/725

With this background, were OP in Germany I'd say that the advisor now after the thesis is finished is an indication that they are a good & nice advisor who follows these rules. So to me, that would be highly reassuring, the contrary of creating concerns.

Unfortunately, I'm emphasizing this because in my experience there are professors/advisors who do not care at all about these rules and (at the very least) create the impression that the student does not own such IP produced during a Bachelor or Master thesis*.

For OP, I'd recommend to use the occasion to learn about software licenses, and talk to the supervisor what license they'd need.

As the code is part of the Master thesis, it likely has scientific merit (as opposed to being a tool that is helpful to the group but does "contain" scientific advance). That means that in publications about the software, OP should be co-author. Publications that use the software should cite OP (the thesis).

There shouldn't be anything to negotiate here as the rules for academic co-authorship (and for the next student being required to cite & report all sources for their thesis) are quite clear. Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to explicitly talk about this.

* The situation is very different for PhD thesis since many (most?) PhD students are employees of the university, and that employment relationship automatically transfers IP rights to the university.


Authorship for paper with questionable statistical analysis For my master thesis in clinical medicine I have collected and analyzed data for a retrospective cohort study. Now one year later, a research assistant of the group is about to submit a manuscript based on my master thesis and I have been offered shared first co-authorship with said research assistant. Upon internal review I have noticed the following issues:

Definitions of clinical outcomes of the study have been changed such that they are now not well defined and not even of clinical interest
The statistical analysis I had performed for my thesis was completely ignored and omitted in the manuscript. For the manuscript, the research assistant employed statistical models I deem inappropriate as confirmed by fellow researchers external to the group. In addition, reporting of methods and results is poorly written with critical information missing.

I have provided feedback concerning the statistical methods but it was ignored. My advisor refused my request to see the new statistical analysis (in particular, I asked for the statistical software files edited by the research assistant), telling me that even though I have shared co-first authorship for the paper, I am not entitled to any insight in the statistical analysis, since the research assistant is in charge of it. I’m having a hard time accepting publication of a study of which I’m co-first author but haven’t seen the analysis behind it, especially since I highly suspect it is inappropriate. My advisor threatened to remove me from the paper completely if I don’t agree blindly.
Shall I renounce and let it be published without my name? Shall I agree and accept to have a paper published with my name and the knowledge that the quality might be really bad? Shall I contact the editors of the journal they want to submit it to?
Edit: Thank you all so much for your thoughtful answers and comments! I appreciate your help!

If you are to co-author a paper, you need to agree with its methodology and conclusions. You don't.
My advice, in general, is to offer to work with others to improve the paper to meet everyone's standards. You indicate that this might not be possible, which would be a fault of the PI. If you can't convince them to work with you, then I don't see a real way forward without saying that you won't be part of it in any way.
They can then go forward if they like, citing your past work properly. If they don't do that, it would be time to contact editors.

You have to decide between not being an author and keeping yourself away from the paper or being an author with all the benefits and, possibly consequences, that come with it.
Will it be worth the authorship or not - you need to decide, but given the way you express your concerns I feel you are leaning to not being an author.


What are the ethical considerations when publishing a cheating technique? Suppose I have devised a way to cheat at cards, exams or any other situation in which secret communication with other people or machines provides unfair advantage. The method is novel and uses original technology and algorithms such that I think they might be worthy of a scientific publication.

The method is not a mathematical trick to solve a game while sticking to the rules, in which case I would see no ethical issue with publishing it. Think more of a method to remotely stream answers of a test directly into the retina without anyone else noticing.

I wonder if it would be unethical to publish this method in an academic journal. I personally feel strongly against cheating at exams, a little less strongly about cheating at cards but still, I wouldn't like to be making cheaters' life easier.

In their book "Beat the Market" Thorp and Kassouf write about why they published their method to edge their stock market investments. While the situation is different since using maths to make money is neither illegal nor unethical, some of their arguments might hold in my case.

In short, they say that they chose to publish their trick because other people will figure it out eventually, so:

They might as well get credit for it.
If everyone knows the technique, it becomes easier to replicate, detect and prevent.
As Syndrome from The Incredibles would say: "When everyone's super, no one will be."

Any other things I should be considering?

Let's ignore the legal aspects of that process since they are boring and off topic.

I can’t really tell you what to do with that vague level of detail, but I can give you an example.

There seems to be a team at the Ben-Gurion University in Israel that regularly comes up with obscure ways to transmit data to devices not connected via any network connection.

Stuff like:

DiskFiltration: Data Exfiltration from Speakerless Air-Gapped Computers via Covert Hard Drive Noise,
SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit,
and many many more.

The only uses I see for that stuff is to either help malware authors and intelligence agencies or make people aware of this communication channels to increase security.

If your findings are anything like this, I don’t see a problem.

Update
After you clarified it's about a method to remotely stream answers of a test directly into the retina without anyone else noticing:

There are a lot of uses for such a technique which are not related to cheating. Pick some of them as motivation, and then later in your paper describe how this could also be used for cheating. Maybe give hints what some mitigation measures could be.

"Cheating" does not warrant a scientific publication, because cheating only works in the dark. Once people know, they disqualify you if you try it, and what's good in a publication that makes itself obsolete the second it is online? Other (non-scientific) magazines might of course like to tell their readers.

(I'm not talking about about a cheat that is not really about a specific game, but includes the discovery  of a more general human trait or similar.)

If your trick is NOT against the current rules, but you just have understood something about the game that noone else has, then of course it's worth publishing. If the game does have some reputation among academics, that is. Chess, checkers, roulette are fine, some esoteric role-play game from last year probably not. ;-) But if your trick is sufficiently new and scientific, you should be able to transfer the principle.

That's of course generally necessary: You have to show how the principle of your trick is something new and undiscovered, or how it is a transfer from an unrelated subject. If it is bound to the special (faulty) rules of "Monopoly", it's not going to get a lot of scientific interest, and should go to a journal for professional gamblers or similar.

(Ethics is totally irrelavant. Someone else will have the same idea, and use it. It might be ethical to give some people advance notice, but that's hard to decide, as they could also make illegitimate profit with it. Same problem as with security leaks in software.)

(After reading the update to the question: Write the paper about the general technique, and put a notice in it how it could be abused.)