What education does one need to be called "Professor" in the United States of America? What education does one need to be called "Professor" in the United States of America? A woman with a law degree in a junior college paralegal program insists on being called professor at a local community college. She is the only one in the whole school that does this. Is this normal?

I completely agree with the answers by ff524 and Pete L. Clark, but I'd like to highlight one issue that's in the background here, regarding whether this behavior is normal.  When someone makes a point of emphasizing a professional title, it might be because they are pompous, but they might actually have a good reason for it.  It's difficult to do your job well if the people you are interacting with don't maintain an adequate level of respect and professionalism, and insisting on titles can be an effective way to control the tone of your interactions.

Whether this is helpful is often correlated with gender or race: many white men are treated respectfully by default, while women or minorities sometimes find that students or colleagues interact with them in troubling ways that don't arise nearly as often for their white male coworkers.  For example, students sometimes expect unreasonably forgiving and nurturing behavior from women and react harshly if they don't get it, students sometimes disrespect women in class and try to challenge or undermine their authority (for no intellectually compelling reason), etc.  Of course this doesn't always happen, but it's a real problem for some people.

Insisting on the use of a formal title is one way to address this issue.  You run the risk of looking pompous or uppity, but you are willing to take that risk in exchange for reminding everyone of your position and your desire to maintain a formal and respectful tone.  This may not be the best solution in any given circumstances, but it works well enough that it's reasonably common.

So my recommendation is to approach this issue with some charity.  If you hear complaints about someone insisting on a title that nobody else cares as much about, especially a woman or minority, you should keep in mind that it may be their way of dealing with a difficult situation.

As far as physics goes, any PhD hired to teach is rightfully called "Professor." However, their title may technically be, for instances, "Assistant Professor" or "Associate Professor." One is considered a (Full) Professor once one has been granted tenure by the appropriate committee.

In short, one is a professor if one has been granted a PhD and one has been hired on to teach. One is considered a full professor if one has been granted tenure by senior faculty.

That said, I've never met a professor that objected to being addressed as "Dr."

BU has a very nice general breakdown.

EDIT: not sure why I'm being downvoted. If you're an American physics student whose experience is counter to my account, please do share.


Go for undergrad or graduate degree in CS? I am a cybersecurity professional well employed. I am almost 50 year old so since my employer would pay a graduate or undergrad degree I thought about going back to school to enhance computer science skills and apply more software development in my career.

My background:
18 years experience in various roles in network engineering & cyber security.
BSEE, MBA
Multiple computer certifications
Intermediate level in programming (Python, C)

Question is, I am not sure I can be admitted into a masters in computer science if I am not working mostly in programming.

Would an undergrad degree be suitable or just take certification training/bootcamps in programming?

Actually, the CS undergraduate degree isn't just about programming. True that our students learn programming first so that they can build some interesting things in later courses, but there is a lot more to it. Perhaps you have this skill, certainly you have some of it with your background. But algorithms, and data structures are important as is computability theory and information theory.

You already have an undergrad degree and a masters. If you are in the US, an additional undergraduate degree would probably waste a lot of your time. But you might need to fill in a few things.

I suggest that you go visit someplace that has good graduate programs and talk with a faculty member or admissions councilor to see where you might fit in and what things you might want to do before you start formally. Some places will have flexible programs in which you can pick up the missed requirements formally.

Every place will have different requirements for a Masters. In some you will probably be a pretty close fit already. In others, not so much. But only a specific institution can tell you for sure how you stand and give you an estimate of your probable success. Visit in person so that you can get a feel for the place and they can ask you meaningful questions about background and intentions.

This is about two things:

One, what you want, ie think about what the courses offer in terms of the programming skills you want - which will give you the tools?

Two, are there any entry criteria imposed by the institutions you are looking at?

Not being mean, I was a mature student and the academic entry requirements were "adjusted" with "professional experience", based on an interview with a professor...

So, work out what each course offers compared to what you are looking for and, most of all, ENJOY IT !!

You could, easily, end up doing both... depending how you want to start.


Female students coming to office hours in overly revealing clothing [because this is potentially relevant, I'm a 37 y/o male]

Being the end of the semester, I've had a bunch of students come to my office hours to ask questions about things I'm responsible for. Among them, there have been a small number of female undergrads that have shown up wearing the kind of clothing that I think is inappropriate for a meeting with a faculty member. I'm not a prude (I hope), but I feel there is something amiss when a 20 y/o undergrad wants to discuss course validation from a neighboring university and then she goes and sits in front of me wearing booty shorts and a very see-through t-shirt (or a tanktop so skimpy that half her bra shows no matter what, or... take your pick). Before someone says anything to the effect, yes, it's summer, but it is not that warm (we're having a nice 20-25 C average these days).

In short, how can I tell these women, politely, that they should think twice about showing up half naked to meetings with faculty members?

Note that I'm not implying that I'm feeling sexually harassed or anything along those lines. Without getting into details, I'm old enough and happily married enough that I don't find college girls sexually appealing anymore. What I'm looking for is a way of telling them meetings with people higher up in the hierarchy have implicit standards, including some pertinent to what you may and may not wear that doesn't sound like a crude rephrasing of oh please why don't you cover up you filthy [censored].

Does your institution have a student dress code?
Does your location have public indecency laws?

If their clothing violates either, refuse meetings until the problem is corrected.

Otherwise, ignore their appearance and carry on as usual.

Their sense of appropriate dress is clearly different from yours, but like political or religious opinions, such senses are often personal and cultural.  For all you know, a bikini is her preferred set of comfortable clothing.  Without a clear agreed-upon set of rules to defer to, such opinions are unproductive to dispute.  Let it be.

As others have said, if there is no formal dress code, then their clothes are beyond your control.

But, your own behavior IS under your control. So, do not look at these students. Talk to them with your eyes on the ground or on the table.

This expresses your discomfort with the situation in a perfectly legal way. Your eyes are your own, and you do not have to look at people if you do not like their appearance, for whatever reason.

I believe this will make them consider their appearance, at least when they talk to you.


how useful are solo papers? I have heard a few times that having single-author papers is good for your career.  I suppose this is because it shows you are capable of producing research on your own.  But I wonder if it is a double-edged sword.  Say you are early in your career and have only solo papers.  Does this also look bad because it suggests you are not good at collaborating?

EDIT: Just to make the perspective clear. Disciplines have varying authorship traditions. In many fields within the sciences, and where I come from, first name in an author list is first author (considered to have contributed most) and collaborative papers are the norm.

Any article where you are first author is "good" for you. Single author articles have become increasingly rare, at least in fields with which I am familiar. The reason is of course that science is rarely done by single persons but rather in groups. Where single author articles are still relatively common are in the form of review articles where a single author can collate and critically assess the state of affairs in for example a subfield.

Going back about 20-30 years, again in the afore mentioned for me familiar fields, single authorship was almost demanded from PhD students and older faculty would basically frown on co-authored articles. Now, single authorship almost carries something odd about it in the sense that one can wonder if the person does not know how to collaborate. The later is of course not a good view to express but it shows how much the views have turned.

So to conclude, writing a well-referenced paper in a high impact journal as first author takes precedence over single or multiple authorship today. I doubt many would look at single authorship as much better than first authorship on a co-authored article today.

It is a good practice to have both solo papers and collaborative works. While the latter show your capability of team working, the former demonstrate your self-motivation and ability to publish on your own. Both are top remarks that hiring team would consider important.

If all papers are co-authored it would sound suspicious that you are heavily dependent on others; this is a bad mark.
If all papers are solo-authored it would sound suspicious that you are incapable of working with colleagues.

Hence it is the best to have both in your CV.

Beside all the above, in current date, hiring especially in academia does not solely depend on your publication, but on many other factors.

To say that, you should not worry too much about your situation from this point of view.

And it is quite easy to find someone to be added to your authorship list of your paper. Just look around, you will notice many are waiting or willing to do so.


FizzBuzz for Academia, Questions to Gauge Research Understanding Is there a simple line  of questioning which gives an up front indicator as to a    persons ability to do research?

FizzBuzz is an interview question which is used to determine whether an applicant knows how to program. It is a simple problem, with a simple solution which can seperate those who can, from those who can't.

Are there common equivalent questions for gauging someones ability to do research?

(Granted, there are a wider variety of  perspectives of what research is, especially across disciplines so it is unlikely there is as clean-cut an answer to this question.)

No, there is no useful research analog of FizzBuzz.

FizzBuzz is a rather limited test of programming ability.  An incompetent candidate may fail at it, but passing this test in no way qualifies someone to work as a programmer.  Some programming jobs attract lots of incompetent applicants, and it's worth filtering them out, but FizzBuzz is just a small step in that direction.  The only reason we've heard of it is because it makes a great story when someone applies for a job but can't pass the simplest test.

For faculty hiring, there's no need for such a crude filter.  The number of highly qualified candidates is much greater than the number of openings, and filtering out the incompetent is not a big deal.  (If you spend a lot of time worrying about whether your candidates are incompetent, then something has gone catastrophically wrong with the search process.)  Instead, the hard part is deciding who the very best candidates are, and FizzBuzz-style questions won't help with that.

For graduate student admissions, competence testing is more relevant.  However, there's a fundamental difference from hiring a programmer.  In that case, you are looking for someone who already has programming experience, and FizzBuzz helps filter out people who are bluffing about how experienced they are.  Someone who fails could still learn to be a fine programmer, but you don't care since you're looking for someone who already knows how.  On the other hand, most applicants to graduate school have only limited experience with research, and that's OK.  You're looking for potential, rather than experience, and that's trickier to evaluate.  I'm skeptical that any simple, clear-cut test can reliably predict research potential.

As an interview question, I like this one:

  "What's the most interesting discovery you have made in your research?"

Answers to this question can show what the researcher thinks is particularly interesting about their work, exposing some of their character.

It can also be useful to hear what they consider to be a "discovery".


What are the benefits/detriments to graduate students joining unions? The graduate students at my university (a relatively large state school in the US) are considering joining a union. To help decide whether to sign a union card in support of joining the union, I'm interested in more information about how unions have helped graduate students at other universities. What are some improvements to graduate life gained by graduate students at other universities upon joining a union?

I'm also interested in information about how unions have hurt graduate students at other universities. What are some detriments to graduate life caused by graduate students joining a union?

I'm primarily interested in student-body-wide benefits/detriments, instead of student-specific or faculty/administrator-specific claims (e.g. "my advisor treated me better with the union behind me" or "my students have stopped working since they joined a union" is not what I'm looking for).

I went to graduate school in mathematics at a university with a TA union. I think the main effect was to level off graduate student compensation across disciplines -- so, the union was apparently a great boon to those in the humanities, but I heard that compensation for math TA's would likely be higher if not for the union.

Another benefit to the union was that it instilled (for many) a sense of camaraderie and common cause. Union events were fun, and they served beer. It was a good way to get to know your fellow graduate students.

The main disadvantage was that dues had to be paid, around $200 a year (most of which went straight to the AFT). This is not a lot, but on our salary it did mean something. Dues were mandatory, even if you opted out of the union -- although state politicians have since seen to it that this is no longer true.

Another potential disadvantage is that union dues went (in part) to political contributions to union-friendly politicians. I didn't mind, but this tended to alienate graduate students who were more politically conservative than me.

There was occasional heated rhetoric when I was there, and even more after I left, but overall the union didn't seem to do much good or harm. Mostly, I remember the beer.

A good thing in unions is that you get to interact with others, specially your seniors, who can guide you in your academic life because they are one step ahead of you.

A drawback is that you will have to be a part of parties, meetings, and gatherings etc. which could be disturbing for some people who are not into much socializing.


Should I inform my bosses that I'm about to start doing a PhD research? I was recently admitted in a PhD program, I haven't started any research yet and Intended to keep my full day job and try do a research while working.

I think my bosses are unaware of this for now but the thing is that I would like to brag about me doing a PhD by posting on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Doing a research will probably put some additional pressure on me and from a certain moment on, I will probably have some duties at the University which might obligate me to spend some time on campus. That will affect to some degree when I'm able to work an probably my performance.

Would it be safe for me to post and update profiles on Social and Professional Networks and do I need to officially inform my bosses first?

PS. My Job is something of a embedded programmer and the future research will be about image analysis and pattern recognition. I think the job I do and the research are not directly related but after all there are embedded devices running vision algorithms. I also think that my boss could agree to a more flexible working time.

Of course you should!

Certain duties such as a committee meeting would require you to ask for a leave permission from your company. If you break it then, you'd be in trouble. In certain institutions, it is mandatory to provide an NoC (no objection certificate) from your company as part of the PhD admission process. You should've done it before, but the earlier you inform him, the better.

If the boss finds out later that you hide the whole scenario from him, he might get angry and if the boss sends a letter to the university that you're not allowed to study while working because their working schedule is not flexible enough, then you're doomed ;), you will just kicked out from the university or the university will ask you to prove that you'll be having free hours to study while working, so, you better inform your boss about the scenario.

P.S: To the people who ask if the university working for the boss: No, but, every university has a minimum study hours (self study hours apart from standard lectures which are held at the university) that should be spent by the student, if that requirement cannot be fulfilled by the student, his course becomes invalid, so, I just pointed out a major possibility, if the boss sends a letter, that the company doesn't allow him spare time to study (strict work schedule) then the university has the proof that he can't spend minimum compulsory self study time and then the student will be kicked out. Studying part time doesn't mean that you don't have to put minimum effort towards studies.


Running out of Algebraic Symbols I'm currently writing my thesis in computer science. My work contains a large amount of equations to do with linear algebra, data transformations and calculus. On receiving feedback on my first draft from my supervisor, he has told me that I am reusing symbols all over the place. So I am going back over things, but I'm finding that I'm running out of both English and Greek characters and I'm having to constantly search back through the text to see if the symbol I want to use has already been defined. For example:

Take two vectors X and Y with lengths m and n respectively.

All of these symbols have previously been used. So my question is, once a symbol has been defined once, can it not be reused for the whole thesis, and how then should I deal with this problem.

Thanks.

Running out of symbols is a fairly common scenario, and it is usually caused by assigning symbols too early without due consideration to the amount of work yet to come. As such, the main thing to do is to
Restructure
Think about the entire set of symbols you're using.

For which ones is the specific symbol in use crucial for the clarity of the text? There will usually be a core of symbols that you really don't want to reassign, but this is probably smaller than you think. Earmark those symbols for these concepts, and disregard other occurrences (even if they happen earlier in the text).

Keep this core small. Use variations on the symbols (upper/lower case, primes, subscripts) to fit as many variations of the concepts into the key symbols.

Serialize. If you have some sequence of objects which you initially called a, b, c, d, ..., use an appropriate subscript or parenthesis notation to collapse them into a single symbol. Over-expansive naming of sequences of this sort is probably the number-one reason for running out of symbols in the first place.

The other thing you should do is
Encapsulate
It is perfectly OK to have the same symbol appear twice, with different meanings, in the same extended piece of work, as long as there is no confusion between them. This is particularly easy to do if the symbols appear, for example, inside the proof of a theorem. Thus, if at some point you use the symbol x in a context like

Proof. Let x be ... ... ... . ▮

then it is probably OK to re-use the same symbol in a similar encapsulated environment, as long as (i) you clearly define the symbol on its first appearance in each environment, and (ii) you don't (excessively) reference the symbol once you're outside of the encapsulated environments.
Similarly, it is usually OK to reuse symbols in different chapters as long as the topic of the two chapters is sufficiently different compared to the similarity of the symbols and the amount of weight you put into the choice of symbol. This is a very common practice: look at any linear algebra textbook and you'll see the symbol v used a number of times, to refer to vectors that are not necessarily compatible. The techniques they use to avoid confusion are forms of encapsulation.
From the phrasing of your question, it seems that this is partly the problem with your supervisor. One way to go about this is to step up the encapsulation, either by being more clear with the text, by introducing formal environments, or even using graphical means like boxes around examples to make it clear that the symbol choice is local to that environment.
If all else fails
Some amount of creativity is OK
This includes things like multi-letter symbols for important context, though you should be careful with how you typeset them (usually in upright script). However, you should avoid using letters from non-standard alphabets, as they will only further the confusion: few of your readers will know how to pronounce them (which then extends into how they internally vocalize them while reading, and makes it harder for your readers to discuss the paper with each other), and it makes it harder for others to adapt and extend your notation.

You are writing a thesis in computer science.

I can use my own personal experience as a guide in answering your question. Rarely, if ever, have I seen symbol repetition in a single college textbook on anything science/math related. However, across different subject matter and their associated different textbooks we do see symbol repetition. A college textbook on calculus might very well use similar symbols as a college textbook on physics.

Your thesis will get confusing if you use X for this and X for that in a single thesis. In my estimation, you have to come up with a way to clearly convey the differences to the readers. You shouldn't confuse the readers in your thesis. It's counter to conveying the fact that you have a mastery of your subject matter. All that being said, I don't think it will be difficult to differentiate all of your symbols. There are many different combinations you can use to convey differences consistently through your thesis.

This may be a longshot suggestion, but perhaps you could start incorporating symbols from your computer's "Character Map" GUI. For example: Ǟ ź Ǥ

Those three are all from the Arial selection from "Character Map". There are many others.

I don't see any problem whatsoever with re-using a symbol that represents the same thing throughout your thesis. That is done everywhere and in every college textbook I've ever seen. For example, if "D" means density throughout the thesis then you should be able to use it whenever density is discussed.


Is it possible to be an intellectual/do research without the internet? I've been studying linguistics for over a decade now. I've never taken a class, because there are no local colleges that offer a degree in linguistics. I didn't really care though, because I was able to find all I wanted online anyway. I could even talk to other people interested in linguistics.

However, the internet as of late has become increasingly useless. Boards are overrun with trolls which prevents any kind of sensible discussion, the web is filled with fake news and false information, and the number of sites seems to be decreasing. I keep coming up with things I want to research, but have no way to find the answer. If I ask anywhere, my thread just gets overrun with trolls that completely derail the discussion (and that includes this site, I regularly delete my profiles shortly after making them because I simply lose faith that I can ever get anything on having an account on this site).

I've tried to look up actual books, but linguistic books are quite expensive it turns out. And despite having over a dozen libraries in my home town, there's hardly any books in them that talk about linguistics.

I also had a problem doing any kind of research in a research class I just took. I only had a handful of websites I could really find reliable information on (one of them being pew research, which ended up being the one I went to 90% of the time). Its just impossible it seems to find anything that isn't overloaded with fake information, especially when it comes to anything even remotely political.

What I hate about this, is that I liked that I could be a linguist without spending thousands of dollars on a degree. Now it seems, that doing that simply isn't possible. And worse yet, I have no other way to learn about linguistics. I can't afford the books (and I'm not even 100% sure what I should be looking for, the only linguistic book I've ever really heard about was 'The World's Writing Systems by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright'), and there's no college anywhere near me that teaches it. If I can't find information on linguistics online, I just can't go anywhere else. And yes, I've looked on Project Gutenberg, but it only has two books, one of which was published in the 1880s, and the other in the 30s, by a guy that I know isn't 100% reliable (Edward Sapir, if you care).

It feels like I can't be an intellectual anymore. Without the internet, I would just be yet another back-woods hick that didn't know anything about anything. Its solely thanks to the internet that I know anything at all. Without out, I'm lost. I don't know where else I can turn to continue my studies. It seems that I'm destined to become what I would've been without the internet, just another uneducated local living in a pathetic back-water where there really isn't anything of significance. I don't know what I can do to avoid this...

edit: Just because I seem to having people telling me about European Universities: I don't live in Europe, I live in the US.

You aren't taking proper advantage of your local libraries. Most have access to interlibrary loan through which you can obtain just about any book that exists. Talk to your librarian about your needs.

Academic libraries are best for this, of course, as the librarians are trained in the needs of academics. But even my local town library can get just about anything I require. At the town library you may need to know the actual titles you want to read. At an academic library, a research librarian can actually guide you fairly deeply into topics of interest. Perhaps not to the research edge of the known universe, but part way there, at least.

But if you have internet access, then I've found that wikipedia is a pretty good source for academic subjects, though not for popular culture, perhaps. In particular, most academic articles will have a references/bibliography section at the bottom that can point you to books and articles that might be worth exploring.

Be a bit cautious, though, even with wikipedia. I've occasionally found weird statements about mathematics there. But if it seems weird, it may actually be trolls at work. Normally, however, such things get cleaned up quickly (hours).

In an arts and humanities field, the short answer is yes, although you would be missing out on web resources not published in hard copy, and, given how long academic publishing takes, you may be a couple of years behind the times (because new research tends to be disseminated through conference talks and on the www first, pending the lengthy writing-up, peer-review and publication delays).

The big publishers and the big libraries have entered an unholy alliance to make it difficult and expensive to access material in hard copy, despite the fact that most people find it easier to do focussed study from a book rather than an e-book. Major libraries are moving towards acquiring many titles in electronic format only, and some have gone as far as to destroy physical stock on spurious grounds such as the "double-fold" test (WorldCat record for a book about this) (which overlooks the fact that you should not be folding the pages of a library book in any case). Publishers such as Routledge are making physical books extraordinarily expensive, whilst the equivalent e-book remains at a halfway sensible price. Pearson is going further, and trying to discourage ownership of physical books and e-books by promoting a rental model, which totally undermines the notion of learning being a lifetime pursuit (I often re-read books I bought over a decade ago), not a short-term cramming exercise.

Ultimately, this gives publishers and big tech unprecedented power to censor and make things disappear down the "memory-hole", especially where people and institutions rely on cloud storage platforms.


I lost my students' quizzes due to a theft, what should I do? I am a teacher assistant for a big course and I am expected to conduct weekly quizzes. Last week, my bag containing a week's worth of quizzes got stolen. My question is what should I tell my students and is there a fair way to make it up to them?

Report it to the police. Report it to the department.

You don't have anything that requires making up to the students. Of course you should be fair to them and not let this hurt them (e.g., no grade for this quiz, but allow students to take an optional alternative assignment to take its place).

Back in school, I had a teacher who was somehow… beyond all things.

On year, at the end of the school year, he suddenly noticed he hadn't written any quizzes or whatsoever and he had no ground to take grades on.

So he quizzed the pupils one after the other and made some (AFAIR quite fair) grades in their answers.


How shall I report a critical error in a given paper? This is a follow-up of my previous question about this course task:

  Find an existing, published research paper in the field of Chemical Engineering and try to autonomously replicate its results (plots, data, equations et similia).

In my replication study, I found that there was a report error; that is, a mathematical model was wrongly written, but the results shown on the paper were related to its correct form.

  After my revision and replication trial, I found that using their same model, I do not obtain the paper results. There is no presence of replication error by me, and my TA pointed out flaws (of fundamental nature, for example F = mv instead of F = ma) in the model, that once corrected allowed me to obtain the results shown in the paper.

Now, I discovered a pure error in one of the basic assumptions of the model (namely, the molar mass of molecular oxygen set to 16 u, and not 32 u). This error in itself changes all the results of the paper, since it invalidates the reactor model and the subsequent optimization.

I have verified and consistently proved that the error exists, as I can reproduce the paper results including said error. What are my options now? I want someone to take notice and fix this paper, since I have proved it contains wrong results.

Talk to an experienced researcher in the field before getting too excited.  For instance, you could talk to the professor of your course, if they are an active researcher in this area.

The question of what constitutes a "critical error" is subjective and often hard for a student to evaluate.  For instance, perhaps the authors are just using conventions that you are not familiar with, or you have misunderstood what they are saying.

It can also happen that although the text of the paper is literally incorrect, an experienced researcher can see immediately what was intended, and won't be confused by it.  These sorts of errors are typically not taken seriously and are not considered to warrant a formal correction to the paper, which requires a lot of work for the authors and editors.

It's good that you've discussed this with your TA, but your TA is likely a graduate student who doesn't yet have a lot of experience with research and publication in this area.

I think it's pretty common for students to get very excited about finding errors of any kind in published work, and to feel that "the world needs to know".  I've had this experience myself.  But community standards may not be what you think they are, and if you try to raise a big fuss about something that the research community regards as trivial, it'll just waste time and make you look a bit silly.

If an expert agrees that the error really is critical, then they can also advise you on how to proceed.  Typically you would begin by contacting the authors, and they would talk to the journal editor about publishing a correction (or "corrigendum").  In the unlikely event that they don't acknowledge the error, you can also raise the issue with the journal editor directly.  If the discovery of the error is itself something of significant scientific interest, then you could think about writing a new paper about it.  But don't cross that bridge until you come to it.

I‘m not sure if this answer is allowed, based on advertising guidelines of Stack Exchange. Either way: A friend and I have started an app for iOS and Android with the intention of making reporting, discussing and looking up errors in publications as easy as possible. If you want you can check it out at https://mistakey.com.

The idea is to provide a network for collecting reports on all kinds of literature (currently, anything that has an ISBN, ISSN, or DOI can be reported). As others here have pointed out, it is unlikely that an already published paper can easily be revised. We therefore envision our platform to coexist as a hub for discussion and critique without requiring full papers for commentary or response to an existing one.


Why do we pay to present at conferences? I recently presented at a conference abroad (my first one), and the entry fee was $50 USD. Now, as this was my first conference, the concept of paying to present at a conference is still a foreign one to me. I can't really wrap my head around submitting an abstract, it getting accepted and then paying to present about the work mentioned in it. So my question is fairly straightforward. What is the purpose of a presenter paying for a conference? Isn't it for the greater good not to have barriers for showcasing research?

Edit: I see this question has generated of a lot of discussion. Let me explain some of my reasoning in choosing the accepted answer. In the region I am from (the Caribbean), due to economic hardships finding the money to pay for conferences deters many young scientists from even thinking about attending. The conferences themselves generate a fairly significant audience from graduate students, faulty members and the general public wishing to understand the scientific concepts presented (all of whom enter for free). I can't help but think how much more productive  the scientific activity in the region would be if  the people wanting to present didn't have to pay. Many of you are saying that $50 USD is nothing, but are neglecting the various exchange rates it takes to obtain said money. At an exchange rate of 121 to 1, $50 USD could buy me food for 2-3 weeks in my home country. I asked this question without any mention of these things because, in the most general sense, paying for conferences seems, to me, to only provide barriers to sharing results and boosting academic (read scientific) activity, and I wanted to have an idea of what others thought about a (somewhat one dimensional) version of this idea.

It costs a lot of money to put conferences on.  Generally, the fees are to help cover this.

In many fields, the majority of people attending are also presenting.  If they didn't charge people to present, they wouldn't be able to generate enough revenue from attendees to make it work.

Note that $50 is very cheap for an academic conference--in my experience, most cost hundreds of dollars. Even then, in many cases the conference fees don't cover the whole cost of the conference, and the difference has to be made up with sponsorship or from other sources.

I have not read many of the answers, but I am pretty sure I present a unique point of view, which needs to be said my way.

Just like my above mentioned emotion, my research has something unique to say. Most Journals in the Finance area where I publish continue to charge fees , in obvious disparity to other fields for entertaining your paper and allocating time and resources of an editor and reviewer. These two asides are required to understand the context of my answer. I understand the answer could have been structured with the main idea presented first but apparently most readers also like to factcheck parts of an answer before reading it. Allowing journals and conferences sto charge for presentation does not imply we are paying indiscriminately for editorial arbitrariness as below mentioned comments would read. The payment significantly reduces the workload of the editors and allows the submitter to a journal or conference confirm he is worthy of the paper as he pays the fees. That he does not do so or the editor does not follow his given brief that leads to no guarantees from this fact alone does not reduce the merit of this argument or its empirical results. Most paid journals are higher ranked.

I think conferences force you to pay so that they are relatively sure that your paper has something valuable to present to the world. Given that others have paid to hear you , the content of your presentation need to be vetted . This is assured by using a single/double blind paper review but due to the presence of alternate views and because of the human ness of any reviewer, the peer review process is inadequate to test the veracity of the rpresented research. However, in combination with the fact that as a researcher I have to scour for funding for every conference submission, and the peer review process from a known researcher, I make the attempt to produce Original research with enough facts to relate and appeal to an audience which may not be my objective if I was engaged in just pure research which could get published in home school research journals without any conference inputs and wihtout verifying it with researchers.

The second reason we pay to present at conferences is entirely logistical. It is difficult for a conference to pay for the location and various arrangements without participants defraying expenses of the conference / association. Of course the base rate for the conference is usually highly related to the reputation of the Conference and thus reason 1 is much more important.

Also I can relate to the researcher posing the question as it is entirely impossible for me to pay for any conference out of pocet and I have to arrange for funding every time I travel.

On the flip side of course, there are conferences where quality material is foregone as the pnumber of paying researchers is limite but that is just a function of still not having enough conferences in the world to present your research given the number of researchers joining ranks every year and getting aware of and using research methods effectively.


How to establish collaborations with academics who you do not know where you contribute to their research projects? Lately it feels like I haven't been doing enough both personally and professionally. I am very productive at both my place of employment and my graduate studies (i.e. PhD in Soil and Water Science) however I want to be more active. I am perfectly content with crunching numbers, developing models, researching the literature, writing up results, etc...I know I am kinda...well nerdy and weird that way.

Recently I have begun reaching out to scientists in my field asking if they would like to collaborate in an effort to gain more experience with different kinds of data and ecosystems, make more connections, etc. When I offer to collaborate most don't respond...which I completely understand being an overworked scientists in the publish or perish game who needs another person to slow you down? Meanwhile some respond with a "sure love too" then when I follow up with questions or brainstorming ideas no one responds.

Is it proper to email say a professor with an email indicating that I am interested in their work and would like to collaborate on any projects? If they respond with a "Yes, love to work with you" type email with subsequent emails falling on deaf ears, is it them nicely trying to say bugger off?

Collaborations almost never start with a cold email in my experience. All of my collaborations have involved people from my former lab, people I met at conference, or an obvious opportunity where I had the data and they had the analysis tool. Anecdote aside, I think you have to have something the other side will obviously want: a dataset, a method, a tool; access to a site or species or specimen; something besides an idea. Lots of people have ideas. Lots of people even have the same idea. But in order to start a research relationship with someone you don't know, you've probably got to have something they want and vice-versa.

Try crowdsourcing sites for collaboration opportunities. See http://www.crowdsourcing.org/ which has links to places like https://www.zooniverse.org for projects that could use your brainpower and passion.


Is it inappropriate for a student to attend their mentor's dissertation defense? I'm an undergraduate student at a research one university. My former instructor and current research mentor is defending their dissertation soon. I asked if I could attend and they said they would be fine with it.

My primary interest in doing so is to see how the defense process works for when I attend graduate school. I am also just genuinely interested in supporting them since we both research the same material and they've been incredibly encouraging and helpful to me.

I know defenses are open to the public, but, in your opinion, would a student attending your defense add more stress or disrupt the process? I just want to make sure I'm not making anything more difficult for them or overstepping a boundary, even though they say they are totally okay with me attending.

It's fine. As you say, these are open to the public, and it's common for family members, department members, and friends to attend. Since you perhaps are not "firmly" in any of these categories, asking whether it's okay to attend is probably a good idea -- but you've already done this and been given the green light. Enjoy.

It's fine, I have walked into stressful defence-type lectures which one of my teachers was teaching. I don't mean to put the person off, but it's standard and you have to get used to it. When I first started teaching even though I was nervous I invited my friend to sit in on one of my lectures as it's something you have to get used to. Anyone can walk in there, you could be giving a stressful lecture one day and a family member you haven't seen for ages will randomly walk in and sit down to watch.


PhD Mathematics, University of Hagen I am 30 and work for an IT company in Germany as a software developer.

I did B.Sc. in Mathematics (pure) and M.Sc. in Computer Science. Since then I've occasionally spent time with solving math problems or learning new topics.

I've long been dreaming of doing a PhD in Mathematics and I'm especially interested in the Analysis.

If I had financial freedom I would've started a full-time PhD right now but it's not possible, since I'm financially responsible for my own family and for my parents.

At my current job I have a 6-hour schedule, which means that I'd have about 3 hours in the morning and about 2-3 hours in the evening to work on my dissertation. On the weekends I'd be able to give another 10 hours combined. So this makes about ~35 hours per week that I can carve out.

In Germany there is a public (and the largest) University of Hagen, which offers onsite and remote education. It specifically focuses on people, who might not have the possibility to be onsite. It is about 2h of driving from me, so I'd be able to go there from time to time.

Has anyone had experience with that University and what you think of the feasibility of my plan? I understand that it'd be impossible to finish the studies in a regular time of 3 years. I'm talking more of 5-6 years of work.

Almost forgot to mention. I'm also willing to spend about 3 hours / day while in vacation or on holidays with no exceptions.

Another thing that I thought of is going with the dissertation while saving some money in that time and then taking a leave of absence at work for about 1 year while surviving on that money (maybe even combining it with a scholarship if that is possible).

So if it goes well, I'd definitely accelerate in the end by switching to full-time for 1 year and finalizing the work.

Talk to them, the advisors will have met people with all options / constraints...

Or go and see them...


Using nonstandard gender-neutral pronouns to refer to myself in academic writing I am currently preparing my first formal work for publication, which I am the sole author on. While working through final edits, I've come across a few places where I refer to myself and would prefer not to gender myself as female (eg. "the PI also presented on her research at a local event...") as I do not identify as female (non-binary), and prefer to use the pronouns ze/hir if I need to refer to myself in writing.

As this is my first publication, it feels like this may be a good opportunity to start as I wish to go on, and just go for it. But I also don't know if it'll just read as awkward, and possibly requires a disclaimer/clarifying note in institutional affiliation (eg. Author Name, University Affiliation, Department, (ze/hir) or Author Name, University Affiliation, Department; Author uses ze/hir pronouns.)

My question, therefore, is as follows. Is it appropriate to refer to oneself using gender neutral pronouns in academic writing? And if so, do I need to include a disclaimer/clarifying note somewhere?

An additional note: I've unfortunately not had a chance to discuss this with my supervisor yet. Input from others would be most appreciated!

(Note: I've read through as many similar posts as I could find and did not see any duplicates or anything that answered this question, but please do steer me towards any questions that do if relevant.)

EDIT: Thank you all for your answers. I'm in Psychology, where depending on the document, it's okay to refer to yourself in the third person. In this case, I've removed all references to myself by using the passive voice. In the future, I'm going to go for singular "they" when possible, and in submissions that deal more with identity or LGBTQ+ young people (one of my areas of research), I'll probably go with ze/hir since that's in line with my principles and the theme of the research. Unless your answer will add significantly to the value of the discussion, I think this thread is pretty complete! (other nb researchers, I hope this has been helpful. Feel free to get in touch.)

It's your decision what to write, but to my mind, adding a note trying to explain your preferred pronouns seems like it puts the emphasis on something which you probably don't want to make the focus.

I'm young enough to be fairly familiar with this stuff, but I have to be honest, the thing I'd remember after read your paper would be "Huh, I've never seen anyone write a note like that before."  I don't want to suggest the way you identify is something you want to hide, but remember that your article is going to be read (hopefully) by a lot of older people or people from other cultures who have no idea what "ze" is supposed to mean, and I assume your main goal is not to educate them about that stuff.

I would encourage you to instead use "they" or "we" when referring you yourself ("the PI presented on their research" or "we presented on our research"); these might be a little awkward, but they have an established pedigree in writing, and shouldn't strike people as too out of place.

I would tell you to just go for it. There's no need to think of things as 'disclaimers', either: the lines

  Author Name, University Affiliation, Department; Author uses ze/hir pronouns.

function as introductions of the author, and if your choice of pronouns is important to your identity and it impacts the reading of the text (e.g. because the text includes you using those pronouns to refer to yourself) then include them and be done with it.

Academia is already exclusionary enough with respect to people from all sorts of backgrounds and identities, and part of that exclusion is that so far there are no established conventions within academia for how issues like yours can be dealt with. However, those conventions are not going to build themselves, and we as an establishment need your input to help construct them in ways that actually reflect what the tq+ community wants to happen.

It is also pretty inevitable that if you do this you will sooner or later encounter some form of pushback, and when you do, I would say: keep at it. Explain that your chosen gender and pronouns are part of your identity and that you do not feel comfortable with other alternatives, and that a rigid style sheet that does not allow for those kinds of identities is the real-world realization of the abstract concept "this journal discriminates against non-conforming authors".


Cold feet about attending PhD program So I currently have a job in software that I really enjoy, however I've always wanted to do research, so I applied to a PhD program in CS to study formal methods and security. I've accepted an offer from the school I wanted to go to and met my adviser who seems amazing and I have full funding for 4 years. Its a great situation to be in. I had accepted the offer after weighing all my options, however now that I've actually accepted the offer, I've been having cold feet. I was given a generous raise & bonus at my current job (that I didn't quite expect) and I really feel like I'll be giving up (or at least delaying) so many things in my life (housing, hobbies, traveling, etc.). Also, I'll be giving up the security that having a good salary affords (for example, I've had to take care of my mom a few times when she needed emergency surgery and being able to just fly out on a moments notice is really comforting and something I'll lose).

I feel like I made a mistake by not just pursuing the PhD after undergrad, but at the time I didn't know what I wanted to research so I felt it would be inappropriate to go without a clear goal/specific research field in mind.

So I guess, my main question is how should I go about making a career decision when it comes to the PhD? I was so sure I wanted to do this, but its felt wrong ever since I hit the button to accept the offer. I'd love to do research in formal methods, but I feel like I've borderline been spoiled by having a well paying job after living extremely frugally as an undergrad (had like 0 money & support structure during that time) and I don't know if I have the mental stamina to go back to that life. If you guys have gone from industry to a PhD program, how did you make that decision?

I was in industry before returning for a PhD (in neuroscience). I don't know that I regret it, but I do often wonder what my life would have been like if I stayed in industry. For me, one determining factor in returning to school was that I didn't enjoy working on other people's questions. As a software developer, I was always solving the client's problems. As a scientist, I was working on things that interested me (and my advisors).

Factors you might want to consider:

If you decide not to attend, how upset will your future advisor and school be? Will you be burning bridges?
Could you work for a few more years (maybe saving some money) and then decide to get a PhD?
The salary for a CS PhD is generally not that bad. It is not the same as being a penniless undergrad.

I think you should talk to your advisor and let them know how your are feeling. That will give them a chance to provide advice, and also gives them a heads up that you are having 2nd thoughts (which seem totally reasonable to me). If they react badly (which they might do), that is a sign that this relationship might run into trouble anyway over the course of the degree.

Not sure what the answer is, for you.  I will say that the school will get over it.  They have people not show up periodically.  You don't need to go into detail, just send them a letter saying you have personal issues and need to defer/cancel.  You might burn that school, but it won't be an issue if you want to go elsewhere.

In terms of the human consideration and the road not followed, it is hard to say. You may find yourself regretting ditching the school if you pass on it!  Such is life.  Not sure how to give you the magic answer.

I would probably lean towards staying with the job.  I left 7 years post ug to do a Ph.D.  Did fine and had a little extra money and experience to make it easier.  But still not sure if it was right call.  And I had a little more personal motivation than you--getting over not marrying girl I should have, needed to leave the state.

Maybe try talking to some people at another school?  I think talking to the school itself will be a fiasco (or to your job).  If you talk face to face, they may be able to have an intuition if you "belong" more in research or job.

My bias would be to stick with the job unless you are stuck professionally.  If you are getting promoted, that is good sign.  But of course, you will never be able to follow each half of the fork in the road, such is life.


Dealing with a PhD student reneging on an agreement to appear in social media Inspired by this question, I have a similar but somehow different problem.

I recently assumed a tenure-track position. One of my strategies for a visible start is to have a strong presence in social media. We have a youtube channel in which students regularly explain their achievements. Or sometimes we post short educational materials. We also prepare brief videos for each publication as some publishers promote the videos.

However, one of my PhD students refuse to cooperate. I specifically asked him in the interview (both video chat and email questionnaire) if he is willing and ready to prepare such video materials for the group, and he firmly answered YES. Now, he claims it is not part of the job description for a PhD.

I first preferred to ignore this conflict, but now other students are reluctant to do so. Now it is more a matter of my authority.

Since I am new, I do not want to take the case to the department head or other officials.

Now it is more a matter of my authority.

Well, yes... I’m sorry if this will come as a surprise to you, but coming across as an unreasonable, coercive boss who wants to force their students to participate in distasteful, privacy-violating activities that have zero relevance or value to their professional training, is in fact something that will greatly undermine your authority as an advisor. Effect, meet cause.

My suggestion is that, for your own good and the good of your students, you cease those authority-destroying activities immediately. Your “authority” is something that is given to you for the sole use of doing research and training and educating your students. Asking them to appear in social media videos so that you can have a “visible start” is no different than asking them to make you coffee or give you a back massage so that you can feel energetic - both of those things are indeed not in any job description of any PhD student anywhere. They are not things you should ask students to do, and they are not things you have any right to be upset at a student for not wanting or agreeing to do.

Finally, the fact that you asked the student in the interview if he would be willing to appear in YouTube videos only means that you declared your abusive intentions in advance. It does not make those intentions any less abusive.

Good luck in your tenure track career.

Edit: I said I will address some of the comments left below. Rather than try to discuss fine points of logic, which I think will be tedious, I've decided to add a more personal type of note, which I think will do a better job of getting the point across.

I have been asked many times over the years by various people to have lectures I was giving recorded and made publicly available online (on YouTube, etc). I always refused. Frankly, I find the thought of making publicly available videos of myself lecturing pretty repugnant. Why? Well, just because; I don't feel like it, and I don't owe anyone any explanations. If some silly people want to think that it's because (to quote a comment someone wrote) "some people are super self-conscious about their voice and/or their looks", fine, go ahead and think that. (Oh, and by the way, on another occasion I did agree, happily, to participate in a YouTube video that now has more than 700,000 views. Go figure... I guess I'm inconsistent! Again, I leave to others to engage in their pointless Freudian analyses of what that means about my personality or whatever.)

One of the lessons I learned from these experiences is that people who don't care about privacy have a really hard time understanding people who do. The people who asked me to make my videos available online were sometimes quite offended at my refusal, as if they could not understand why anyone might refuse such an amazing opportunity, and even (this was really bizarre) subtly pressured/guilt-tripped me, implying that I would be depriving the world of an important resource (trust me, I wasn't).

OP, I am sure you are a good person and a good researcher who means well, but know this: your student who doesn't want to make YouTube videos really, really, really means it when he says he doesn't want to make YouTube videos. You might have a hard time understanding why; well, it's not important (or any of your business really) why -- just trust that it's true. And it's quite possible that your other students who haven't been as firm in standing up to you feel exactly the same.

To summarize, you probably don't view yourself as an abusive adviser. You think the student is being unreasonable, but he isn't. Attempting to force the issue will have bad consequences for both of you, and more importantly, is simply wrong. So please let the matter go, and figure out more acceptable ways to market yourself and your group.

A research group is much like a workplace. The group takes on the personality of it's leader. Some groups require weekly presentations, some go out to beers together, some are broad, some are very narrow, some have web 1.0 web presences, some present their work on YouTube. If you made it clear that you expect your group to be out there on social media and presenting their ideas to a broader audience than they can reach just through conferences and papers than that is a reasonable expectation. If that student doesn't want to share their knowledge in that way then maybe they should find another group.

This can cut both ways though. If you as a new professor have this policy in place and cannot attract good students because of this expectation then realize it is going to adversely affect your career.

All this bullshit about "privacy" is just that, bullshit. People can want privacy, but need to recognize their are side effects to that (one of which might be not working with you). So many academics feel like they can do everything themselves and come off as extremely arrogant because of it. The nature of the world is that you MUST work with others and you can't expect privacy while working with others. Anyone can choose to limit their exposure but they have to recognize that they are giving something up by doing so.


Faculty member brought sick (feverish) child to class - is this unethical? A faculty member recently brought their young child to a graduate seminar. The child had a fever -- and therefore was deemed not healthy enough to be at school. The faculty member did not ask the students if this would be okay, but merely stated the situation.

Is this a breach of ethical or professional conduct? The general expectation for students at the university is that if you are running a fever, you should not come to class. It seemed highly inappropriate to expose students to potential illness versus 1) arranging childcare, or 2) cancelling class. How should such a situation be handled? Is this a legitimate offense worth reporting?

Is it unethical?  Yes.

Is it worse than the alternative (usually canceling class)?  Probably only slightly.

Is it worth reporting?  Only if it happens repeatedly.

Complain to the university.
You're paying good money to attend classes, and it wouldn't be ethical for a professor to do something that'd negatively impact your ability to attend your other classes. There's probably a Student Ombudsman, a Dean of Students, or someone with a similar position employed by your university, who might be able to help you make a formal complaint, if you choose to do so.
Even if you don't want to make a formal complaint, it'd be entirely legitimate to note it in any student feedback surveys about your course.
An exception to that might be if you were studying pediatric medicine and the presence of a sick child was relevant to class activities, but while medicine is well outside my area of expertise, I'm pretty sure they do their hands-on training during formal placements at hospitals - and breaking that pattern might be an ethical violation in its own right.


How do Professors feel about writing recommendation letter? Just curious about how professors feel about having to write recommendation letters? Is it a chore for them? Or do they actually enjoy writing them? Or is it more of neutral.

I am in a situation of applying to various graduate schools. Last year I only applied to one school and was rejected. This year I am thinking of applying to more schools so as to increase the chance of being accepted. I feel a bit "guilty" about having to ask my supervisor to write 5 separate letter of recommendations. Would it take up too much of their time?

That said, I don't really have any other choice since the recommendation letters are pretty much compulsory.

Although I'm not a professor, my position has a lot of similarity and I have often been asked to write recommendation letters.  My reaction has been a mixture, depending on who is asking for me to write the letter:

Students who I like and respect: "Sure, I'll be happy to.  What are the aspects of your work that you'd most like to have emphasized?"
Students who I haven't got a strong opinion on: "I'm not sure that I know your work well enough to write a strong letter.  If you really need me to, I can, but I think you'd be better served by getting somebody who knows you better."
Students who I have been disappointed in: "I'm sorry, but I don't think that I would be a good person to write the type of letter that you need."

You only want letters from the first type, who will happily sing your praises.  And for a student like that, it's no burden at all: I'm going to want to push your career forward, because I'm hoping I'll get to see somebody who I like prosper, and maybe even return to work with me as a colleague in the future.

As for the multiple letters question: don't worry about it unless you're applying to like 20 schools.  If the programs you're applying to are similar, they're probably just going to be writing just one template letter about their experiences and filling in a couple of blanks to customize for the institution.  Now certain institutions have terrible forms that will make it a pain to send that letter, but that's hardly your fault, and your recommender will be used to it...

I don't think you should ask them to write a recommendation letter from scratch.  This really helped me understand why.  https://www.facebook.com/notes/diane-garnick/dont-ask-for-a-recommendation-offer-a-draft/10152715120029454


If you know a family member who is much more qualified and capable in mathematics than you are, should find another field of specialisation? Imposter Syndrome and depression: I feel pretty depressed that I am not as "qualified" as a close family member. In particular, this family member has undergraduate and graduate (PhD) degrees from Ivy League schools in mathematics. Whenever I try to solve a problem, this family member does it in half the time. Does this mean that I should try and find another field to specialize in?

Research in math (and I assume in general) is hard. It doesn't get better over time, but rather we seem to get used to the accompanying depression and angst.
When I feel down, I try to remind myself that I do math because I enjoy it, not because I want to be the best at it, and for some reason people continue to pay me money to do it. If they stop, I'll figure out something else. In the meantime, I get to think about problems that I love, even if the process of that thinking isn't always fun.
The above is also hard. There are still rough days. It helps me to know that other people, including really smart people doing great math, experience the same feelings.
If you want to switch fields, go ahead. But in general, any field will have someone (seemingly) faster than you - this is not personal, we all feel like this.

[Picture Credit: David Whittaker]
I would recommend reflecting upon why you are in mathematics in the first place. If you're in it because you love doing it, does it matter if someone else is a bit faster? There is plenty of mathematics to go around.

This may be a cause to move into a different sub-field than him... Many people want the glory and to feel they have done something. There is no reason to think this cannot be done within mathematics.

But on the thing of comparision, do you have better questions than him? Do you have novel approaches? These are the things that matter. Also when you talk of his ability to solve problems more quickly, are you talking about elementary problems that take mere minutes? Does he betray a deeper understanding than you?


Tips on how to format a manuscript in marine biology and physiology I'm working on my first publication on work I did as an undergrad. My adviser from undergrad will be helping me edit and go through multiple drafts, but because I'm now at a different university for grad school I haven't spoken to him about this first draft.

I've looked at the publisher's website, but they were vague and provided only general comments about how to format the manuscript. I don't want to send my draft to my old adviser and have him think I'm an idiot because my formatting is different from the norm. (Perhaps relevant: this publication has to do with marine biology and physiology.)

What font is appropriate? Times New Roman 12?
Double spaced?
Do figures go at the end? Should I space my figures the way I want them spaced in the publication?
Do I include line numbers?

Side question: What is an appropriate length (in number of words/pages/whatever) for this type of publication? I know it depends on the journal, but it's hard to translate pages in a journal to typewritten pages. I'm submitting to a journal with an average impact factor.

The general formatting advice from @CapeCode is sound. Generic font (certainly not anything odd) and 1.5-2 line spacing is fine for the text. Tables and figures should go at then end. Many journals ask for figure files not to be included in the manuscript file at all, follow such advise. If figures are separate all figure captions go at the end of the manuscript file.

Regarding line numbers it is not a major issue unless the journal specifies something special. Some manuscript systems provide only PDF-files of the manuscript. Some reviewers then prefer to have the line numbers to locate their comments. If the journal provides the Word files then as @Cape Code states these can be more of an issue. So try to see if you can figure out what the journal sends out but in the end I do nto think it is a major issue.

In addition, I strongly want to push following any instructions for authors to the point. Make sure your use the proper reference formats and follow other journal formatting details. If no explicit instructions for authors exist then look at recent articles to see what styles the journal uses. A manuscript that follows the journal style looks more serious than a manuscript that does not.

As for length, I would say that 6000-8000 words incl. references is a reasonable size for a regular research paper in your disciplines, shorter is possible but longer should be treated as a warning. If you really want to know just count the words on a page and guestimate the total for the article, you will not be far off.

Most of these would depend on which journal/conference you are submitting to. For instance, IEEE and Springer each have their own style.


What does an optimal grading distribution look like? Researchers on education must have thought about this, so I hope to find some directions here. Suppose that I am grading students on a scale from 1 to 10. If I have no prior knowledge of the ability of the students but have obtained their test scores (let's say from 1 to 100).

Suppose these test scores have only ordinal meaning. A student with a higher score can be said to have achieved better mastery of the course but having double the score does not mean that one has achieved double as much as another student. We may also assume that a (statistically speaking) large number of students representative of the student population took the exam.

What should be the optimal grading distribution?

We may also assume that the grading distribution/scale should achieve two goals: a) it should be informative about student's grasp of the material, b) it should incentivize students to study the material.

Regarding a) from an information theory perspective, we may want to maximize the information (entropy) of the grade distribution. Thus, we would choose a scale which yields a uniform distribution. However, in practice most teachers implement distributions which are peaked. What is the motivation behind this?

Assigning grades to fit some "optimal distribution" is misguided.
We don't want to maximize the entropy of the grades in a particular course. It's not a very useful measure of a "good" set of grades. To quote from an answer by Anonymous Mathematician:

  Strictly speaking, Shannon entropy pays no attention to the distance between scores, just to whether they are exactly equal. I.e., you can have high entropy if every student gets a slightly different score, even if the scores are all very near to each other and thus not useful for distinguishing students.

(Note that this was in answer to a question that asked about using the entropy of exam scores as an indication of how good an exam is at distinguishing between different levels of mastery. It wasn't suggesting that grades should be curved a posteriori to maximize entropy.)

What we actually want is for grades to signal as closely as possible the students' mastery of course material. If every student in the course has achieved truly excellent mastery of the course material, they should all get high scores. This grade then seems to carry very little information. But in reality, it is much more useful to say that all students in this particular class achieved excellence and deserve a 10/10, than it would be to maximize the "information" carried by the grade and give some students a 1/10 because their performance was slightly less excellent than the highest level of excellence achieved by a student that year. This scenario (where all students achieve excellent or very good grades) is not even that unusual, as Michael Covington points out:

  In advanced courses, it can be quite proper for all students to get A’s and B’s, because weak students would not take the course in the first place.

For an individual student, the grade should depend on that student's demonstrated mastery of course material, and hopefully not at all (or as little as possible) on the other students in the class.

If you insist on thinking about it from an information theoretic perspective, what we really want is to minimize the Kullback–Leibler divergence between the distribution of students' achievements and distribution of students' grades.

If you have no information about the exam and what it measures, you cannot assign meaningful grades based on that exam score. If you know about the exam, you can assign meaningful grades based on exam scores, but not according to any optimal distribution - you would assign scores based on how much of the exam students are expected to know to demonstrate various levels of mastery, not by mathematically shaping the grades into some predetermined "optimal distribution."

  Edit: Suppose these test scores have only ordinal meaning. A student with a higher score can be said to have achieved better mastery of the course but having double the score does not mean that one has achieved double as much as another student.

Your edits are not going to change the answer; there's still not going to be an optimal distribution. If I have many excellent students in the class and I do an exceptionally good job teaching them, I'll give out many excellent grades, no matter how they rank with respect to one another. If all of my students are terrible and do poorly, they'll all get low grades even if one manages to get in a few more points than another (although in that case, I'll also take a closer look at the class to see why students are doing so poorly.) If half of my class excels and the other half fails to meet minimum standards, I'll give out 50% top grades and 50% failing grades. If their abilities happen to be normally distributed, their grades will be as well. You get the idea.

The distribution of student grades should follow the distribution of demonstrated achievements. Any grade distribution that doesn't is definitely not optimal.

The idea of grading students to some predetermined distribution (of any shape) is known as "norm-referenced grading."  For more information about alternatives to norm-referenced grading, see:

Sadler, D. Royce. "Interpretations of criteria‐based assessment and grading in higher education." Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 30.2 (2005): 175-194.
Aviles, Christopher B. "Grading with norm-referenced or criterion-referenced measurements: to curve or not to curve, that is the question." Social work education 20.5 (2001): 603-608.
Rose, Leslie. "Norm-referenced grading in the age of carnegie: why criteria-referenced grading is more consistent with current trends in legal education and how legal writing can lead the way." Journal of the Legal Writing Institute 17 (2011): 123.
Guskey, Thomas R. "Grading policies that work against standards... and how to fix them." NASSP Bulletin 84.620 (2000): 20-29.

These go into some more detail about problems with norm-referenced grading. You asked for a grade distribution that is "informative about student's grasp of the material." The literature I have cited explains that pure norm-referenced grading is not informative about that; it can only inform about student's relative grasp of the material, compared to others in the same group who have taken the same exam. In other words (emphasis mine):

  It can be useful for selective purposes (e.g. for the distribution of a scholarship to the 5 best students, or extra tuition to the 5 which are struggling most), but gives little information about the actual abilities of the candidates.

Source: McAlpine, Mhairi. Principles of assessment. CAA Centre, University of Luton, 2002.

In the middle of the 1990s, the Swedish secondary school grading system was changed from a norm-referenced to a criterion-referenced system. Thus it became possible to compare (for the same population) the ability of a norm-referenced grading system and a criterion-referenced grading system to predict academic success.

The first paper looking at this Swedish data set is not written in English. (Cliffordson, C. (2004). De målrelaterade gymnasiebetygens prognosförmåga. [The Predictive Validity of Goal-Related Grades from Upper Secondary School]. Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige, 9(2), 129-140.) However, in a later paper, the author describes those results as follows:

  Cliffordson (2004b) showed in a study of 1st-year achievement in the Master of Science programs in Engineering that the predictive validity of CRIT-GPA was somewhat higher than it was for NORM-GPA.

In that later study, Cliffordson found (consistent with the earlier study)

  a somewhat higher prognostic validity for CRIT-GPA
  than for NORM-GPA.

and that across a variety of disciplines,

  Despite differences in both design and purpose, the predictive efficacy of criterion-referenced grading is at least as good, or indeed is somewhat better, than that of norm-referenced grades.

For details, see:

Cliffordson, Christina. "Differential prediction of study success across academic programs in the Swedish context: The validity of grades and tests as selection instruments for higher education." Educational Assessment 13.1 (2008): 56-75.

My philosophy professor's grading philosophy was that by very definition, most people are average (i.e. C)

Students asked if he graded on a curve and his response: Yes - if my grades don't fall on a bell curve with the bulk of the class making C, several D's and B's and maybe a couple of A's and F's then I've either made my tests too easy (grades skewed to the A) or too hard (grades skewed to F).

I suppose it depends on if you're trying to push a few of your students to succeed, or if you're trying to help as many students as you can get good grades.


3 3-hour exams in a row with no time in between. What can I do? I am currently studying computer science in a University in Canada.

I have just received my Schedule for the semester, and I have noticed that, during the finals week, 3 of my 6 courses put their final exams in the same day.

Specifically, I have an exam from 12:30 to 15:20, another one from 15:30 to 18:20 and the last one is from 18:30 to 21:20. All three of those exams are Worth 35% or more of my grade, therefore are very likely to be decisive in my success or failure this semester.

This really seems unreasonable to me. I do not expect, no matter how much sleep I get and how much coffee I drink, to be able to perform at my best for 9 hours straight, without even a chance to eat dinner.

So I have two questions:
First, is this standard practice? I'm only starting my second semester, so maybe I just got Lucky the first time that all my exams were the only one of the day.

And Second, if this is not standard but rather a very unlucky setup, do I have any recourse? Is it rude to ask some of the professors or higher-ups in the school to change the Schedule a little?

It is also important to know that I am taking the classes in the standard path (? I am not a native English speaker, but I am referring to the grid thing telling me the recommended courses to take every semester in order to complete the program in the fewest number of semesters) for my program. I am not taking any special classes that are not expected to be taken at the same time. This means that a lot of people probably have this exact Schedule for this semester, and it's not just me because I made weird choices.

EDIT: Thank you all for your input. I will accept one of the answers now, but to be honest, they were all pretty enlightening. I had already sent an email to all concerned professors AND the faculty 5 days prior to asking this question, and I still haven't received an answer. I will probably forward the same email (it is as polite as possible, asking about what are my options in the context, etc) to some more administration adresses in the hopes that someone can give me the exact policy, or at least tell me who can.

I am very glad that everyone seems to agree that they can usually do something about it, this makes me less stressed. In the worst case, nothing changes, and as one answer mentioned, if lots of students have a worse grade because of this setup, then the playing field is even.

Whether this is a standard practice or not highly depends on your university. However, the attribution of these exam period is an automated process and some situations like yours are bound to happen.

If I were you, I would consult the specific rules of your University. I know at that my previous Canadian University in Montreal (École Polytechnique), there was a rule that limited the amount of exam hours you could have in a 24 hours period, ( I believe it was 6 maximum per day). If such a thing occurred, you could ask for the exam to be moved as this was judged to be unfair.

You can also consult with your student committee (of your department or your faculty) and your department since you say that you are following a standard path. In that case, there will be many students in the same situation and they should prove to be understanding. The student committee can usually present a uniform front and defend the entire class as a whole concerning this issue. There is absolutely nothing impolite about this if you proceed politely and you act as soon as the semester begins. The sooner you handle this issue, the easier it will be to solve.

I believe you are right in saying that this will not allow you to perform to your full potential, and you are right to ask for a more humane schedule.

Well if I were me, I'd get off the web and start studying ASAP.

No, in all seriousness there's often nothing you can do to change the schedule. If there are special circumstances such as bereavement or illness many Universities do allow you to submit for "Special Consideration". The best thing to do is do the best you can and they will scale your results accordingly (based on your assignment grades) if the situation has impacted on your exam performance.

Bear in mind a lot of other students in your institution will be tackling similar workloads and issues (exams early in the examination period or on the same day): you're competing for them for placement in higher degrees and scholarships so it's an even playing field. If one exam has particularly poor grad averages (do to poor schedule or an unusually tough exam) the class scores will be scaled up.

This is why it's advisable to study throughout the semester rather than cramming for exams. Generally, in my exams it was only a recap and practice questions if I had the time. The bonus is that you ought not to have many exams in the days leading up to it so try to eat well and get plenty of rest so your brain performs as well as it can.


Is having a job that you love an advantage or disadvantage when applying for a Masters? I'm currently applying to a masters program in a field unrelated to my current line or work. I am lucky to have a job that I love in a different field. Will this make the admissions committee question my commitment to their program? I am satisfied with my current job, but the Masters would enable me to try and do my dream job.

In case it's relevant, my PhD is in physics, and the Masters is in Computer Game Engineering. I am applying to a one year, full time taught Masters at a UK institution. (Related to this question.)

If it is a full time master, I strongly advise you against having a job, especially a full-time one, at the same time. I don't know what the degree you're applying for looks like, but a master's course is usually pretty demanding and requires a lot of personal work. By pursuing two full-time activities at the same time, I think you put both of them at risk.

A person qualified in another area (such as a Phd in Physics) who wanted to learn a new topic (like computer game development) would likely be welcomed on a full-time taught masters course. Full-time taught masters courses are often designed for those who want a change in direction and have the motivation to focus for the year to achieve that goal.

There are people who want to be an astronaut, for example, who go back and learn new skills and knowledge and collect several degrees in the process.

You do have to have an interregnum in employment, as a full-time course is exactly that. A lot of daily, weekly and monthly time needs to be devoted to it to learn all that material that others will have picked up in a three year Bachelor's degree.

I teach on such a course and we have many "career change" applicants who are well qualified in other fields. It is quite normal.


What are the pros and cons of well compensated STEM graduate students joining a union? Recently, my state has declared graduate students as employees giving them the right to unionize. The students in the Engineering School are very well compensated. The benefits that we get are

Minimum stipend of 29k$ (which was increased ~3 years ago).
Top tier health insurance plan fully paid for by the University and Engineering School
Deans that largely respect student needs and actively address current issues
Plethora of funding for student lead activities
Free services like legal council, psychiatrist, campus clinique, campus shuttle buses, etc.
TA opportunities are always available for those that need them.

Additionally, my department has a very high standard set forth for us. We have nice offices, the Chair actively addresses our concerns and complaints, funds for student activities and community building, computational resources, and more. The quality of life for students in my department (Applied Math) is quite high.

Lately, we've had outside people dropping by to advise us to join a union. The humanities students are largely in support of this movement since they are not compensated as well as the engineering students. In my point of view, there are very few reasons why I can see joining a union will benefit the Applied Math graduate students. Given how well we, the graduate students in my department, are currently treated, what are the advantages and disadvantages of unionization?

Edit: There is a similar question here, however, does not specifically address STEM students.

I am a naive graduate student and will like to be better informed about the advantages and repercussions of joining a union. Whenever administrative University personnel have approached us to dissuade the effort, their tone has been extremely diplomatic and ambiguous about why they are advising against unionizing.

A brief summary of the responses is as follows.

Advantages of unionizing

Security of current benefits
Bargaining power to timely address current, new, and growing needs of the entire bargaining unit
Guaranteed minimum pay
Improving circumstances of students in other schools who are not as well compensated
Human resources like representation for students facing abuse, harassment, or other adversities from their advisors

Disadvantages of unionizing

Partisan representation
Clarifying the distinction between student and employee (though some may argue that this is an advantage)
Paying dues (though contracts usually negotiate higher stipends to offset this amount)
Deterioration of student/administrative relationship

Additional STEM specific points that I'd like to add are

Advantages

Incentives to address issues such as a single student having to monitor experiments running for 8+ hours
For international students, alleviating fears of not being able to find an advisor which prevents them for settling to the 1st person that says yes regardless of their interest
Some departments in the Engineering school offer things like funds for all students in their 3rd year to purchase a new laptop. Adapting this or similar policies universally would be appreciated.
Guaranteed funding beyond X years as set forth by the School, especially when the average is just slightly below X.

Disadvantages

As funds are rerouted into increased stipends, there may be

Decreased support for professional development (conferences, workshops, etc.)
Decreased supplemental resources (rented compute nodes and hours, new lab equipment, etc.)
Fewer graduate student and postdoc hires

Thank you all for your comments; it is all very much insightful. I'll continue to look out for new responses.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 2016 set a minimum salary of $47,476 for professional employees to be exempt from paid overtime. in response to this, the NIH changed its postdoctoral salaries.

While the NIH says

  NIH is fully supportive of increased pay for postdoctoral researchers and has proposed to increase the NRSA postdoctoral stipends to levels above the threshold

their behavior suggests otherwise. What they did is simple increase all postdoctoral salaries below the minimum to slightly higher than the minimum. While historically a year 1 post doc made 4% more than a year 0 postdoc, after the adjustment they made the same. There was no increase in the predoctoral salaries. In FY 2016 the NIH predoctoral salary was $23,376 so slightly less than what you are currently being paid.

While you may believe you are well compensated, some would argue that $29,000 a year is not a fair salary if you are expected to perform unpaid overtime (and what graduate student doesn't work overtime). A union can help fight for things like fair salaries.

Pros:

It is harder for lazy workers to be fired, so if this is your goal
in life union is good
Much more effective to get more money from employer if 1000x people are
negotiating with the employer than if you do it personally.

Cons:

Morality (this depends on you personally so this could go into pros
also), but for example some capitalists would say that it is unfair that employees can organize to fix wages while it is illegal for employers to do that.
Union leaders are like politicians - they do not care about
long term problems caused by popular short term actions or about
non voters(non union members). For example unions preventing people
from getting fired seems nice, until you realize that there is a guy
that works 12h/week and he can not be fired, although there are 5
qualified candidates for his place.
As mentioned in 2. Union leaders are populists, so for example they might pursue policies that would make salaries of STEM and gender studies employees equal if the number of gender studies employees is 4x STEM employees even if the private sector salaries would justify the discrepancy.
Unions can make work atmosphere toxic: like politicians they need to energize the voters/members and they do that by appealing to emotions so after a while part of the voting/union population really believes that other candidate is Literally Hitler/ or that employer is evil exploitative...

note that I know this A will be downvoted due to political bias of academia.


Is it unethical to take ideas from a pre-print to write your own research paper (though the author of the pre-print is acknowledged)? One of my friends is in a very curious position. He has been researching on a number theoretic problem for months but couldn’t solve it until recently after he has seen a pre-print in arXiv which attempts to prove the problem. But though he has taken ideas from the pre-print, his own article differs considerably from that of the pre-print. According to him, following are the chief points of difference,

My friend actually proved a stronger version of the problem.
He gave an outline to the proof of a conjecture that the author of the pre-print stated in the concluding section of his/her paper.

My friend has decided to mention precisely how much he had been benefited from the paper in the Acknowledgements section. Will there be any problem if he sends his article to a journal for publication?

He should just cite what he used or learned from the ArXiv paper and send it in. There's no real need to add an acknowledgement.

No,there is nothing unethical to take ideas from a pre-print to write your own research paper,especially if the author of the pre-print is already acknowledged in your paper,


Is this level of citation acceptable in a dissertation? Please can anybody reassure me that I am okay. I have been so distracted thesis that I’m behind in my revision for my finals.
Never once in my project did I take credit for something that wasn’t mine and I referenced all my sources of information and ideas.
However, instead of citing the same source over and over again I stated at the start of some chapters something like “the content of this chapter is mostly sourced from chapter X of book Y, but I add some details to proofs for clarity for the reader”.
I then go through my chapter and state the results and proofs I am interested in without further citation (unless I use a different source which I of course cite). I follow the proofs fairly closely and have my own extra details for clarity.
I submitted my project to TurnItIn which has highlighted in red a fairly substantial amount of material in some of the proofs. This is really freaking me out as I’m not trying to claim the proofs as mine or anything - I literally say at the start of the chapter where the material is sourced.

It sounds like the way you did the reference was fine and perfectly standard practice in mathematics. And I doubt Turnitin is remotely useful for mathematics anyway.
The more important question is whether what you did meets the expectations of your committee, and you'll have to ask them that.

Is this level of citation acceptable in a dissertation?

the content of this chapter is mostly sourced from chapter X of book Y, but I add some details to proofs for clarity for the reader

No, it is not.
But it seems unlikely that your paraphrase is an accurate reproduction of the type of your citations to which you refer.
If you want to know whether a style of citation is acceptable in a dissertation, then you need to show an exact, specific example of such a citation. To ask whether something is acceptable, and then not reveal the object of your query, is unlikely to lead you to a helpful answer.


Would transferring to a better school in the middle of a graduate program irreparably hurt my professional connections and academic reputation? I did not get accepted into any good graduate programs.  For various reasons, I feel I could do much better if I reapplied next year.  This question isn't about the feasibility of doing so, but of the affect on my professional reputation and network.

It is an investment for the university to give me funding, so it would be a jerk move to transfer simply for the increase in prestige.  But how much of a jerk move would it be?  Would it burn my colleagues and advisors so hard that I would scar my reputation for the rest of my career?  Would I simply lose these people as connections, but have no lasting affect other than that?  Or would everyone be understanding that this is a professional choice, that I am looking out for my future?  (If so, could I request recommendations from professors in the program?)

  If I transfer to a better school either at the end of my first or second year as a graduate student, how much will this piss people off?

To be clear, I am talking about transferring from a mid-ranked state school to somewhere good, at least top 20 hopefully top 10.  And since I am sure this matters, the discipline is mathematics.

This is fine. Don't feel guilty at all. I say this as a math professor at a mid-ranked state school, who has written rec letters for students who, for various reasons, wanted to transfer out.

Be sure not to speak ill of the place you're leaving, but you owe it to yourself to seek out the best opportunities available. Good luck!

In my field, which is not mathematics, externally funded studentships are quite common. Leaving an externally funded studentship is completely unprofessional and very bad form. If a student withdraws the PI will generally lose the remainder of the funding and potentially be band from applying in the future.


If I quit my PhD, would it make my advisor look bad? I am considering quitting my PhD in computer science, because after doing a software engineering internship I realized I enjoy that kind of work much more.

My advisor has been very kind to me, on both a professional and a personal level, and if I quit it might make her look bad. She is an assistant professor and I was her first student. I do not want people to think she was the one who made me quit.

Are people going to wonder if she was the reason I quit?

How much of an effect would this have on her career?

You are a nice guy, but let me tell you this: no matter if it makes your advisor look bad, if you really like the job in the company and believe it's the best thing for you, then you should quit your PhD and take the job. Doing your PhD just because of your advisor will not do any good to either you or your advisor.

Because pursuing a PhD requires a lot of determination. No matter how your advisor is kind to you, making your advisor look good will not be enough as a sole motivation for your PhD. If you don't quit now, you will quit later and it may cause more damage to your advisor.

For a complete stranger like me, if a guy quits his PhD after 1st or 2nd year, there are many reasons beside a bad advisor: maybe the guy himself finds PhD too difficult, or he changes his mind etc and etc. But if someone quits his PhD after 5th or 6th year, I would think there must be something wrong with the supervision.

The only real effect your dropping your PhD program will have on your advisor, is that it might leave her short on her "stuff profs need to do in their jobs" list.  i.e. most universities have a teaching requirement, a research requirement, and a service requirement.  She's now lost an advisee, so she's a bit "thin" on her service requirement, and may have to scramble a bit to pick something else up to fulfil that.  Other than that, though...no, it will not harm her career.