Why are many obviously pointless papers published, or worse studied? In the field I specialize in (I'm currently a moderator of crypto-SE), I see many obviously pointless papers published, often in publications where that costs money. I imagine that's the same in many fields. Why are such papers published, or worse, studied?
Example: there are tens of thousand papers on image encryption, including thousands at MDPI, which has Article Processing Charges. Yet, the subject is almost¹ enough to tell the work is pointless: once digitized, and especially after it's compressed (as almost all images are today), image is data that can be encrypted just like anything else. The International Association on Cryptographic Research correspondingly publishes no paper on image encryption in its peer-reviewed publications; many of the papers about image encryption it references are refutations, and they do not go further than its non-reviewed preprint server.
Worse, I regularly see evidence that students at least think they have no choice but study a pointless paper riddled with errors. In this recent example, the paper attempts to apply an (unstated) Elliptic Curve signature scheme to inter-vehicles communications, but examination shows that the authors failed to find parameters for a usable Elliptic Curve. The paper cites 36 references on the same vein, many comparably poor. The OP ended up writing (in chat) "unfortunately I have no other choice but to study this paper", and I could not determine for sure if it was designated to them as a reference, or was just a poor choice.

Addition: what about the hypothesis that some subfields like digitized image encryption are abandoned as obviously not worth attention by actual reviewers, and flourish precisely for that reason? This particular subfield is remarkable in that it has developed standard patterns for the many articles, and some bogus measures of the efficiency of the encryption. To see what I mean, sample the papers this query returns (at least these all are officially free to read, if not to publish).

¹ I admit we must check that the image is encrypted and decrypted by a computer, and that the sole objective is encryption (rather than e.g. hiding data into an image, that is steganography, or Thumbnail-Preserving Encryption). Examination shows that most articles returned by that query are only about encrypting a digitized image, and many of the others are seriously defective.

Some poorly-run institutions pay people to publish papers.  The pay is not based on the quality of the papers, only the number and possibly other useless information like the indexing of the paper.
Some poorly-run institutions require students to publish papers to get degrees, but the quality of the papers is not adequately assessed.
Some people do not realise their papers are pointless.
Some of the papers that are pointless in your opinion are not pointless to other people.

There are also many good papers.

Publication worthiness is a condition of most funded academic research work. This results in a lot of papers each year on every field. There is nothing wrong with that. But maybe we need to categorize our journals better as regards the seminality of the work presented. This is not to say that papers particularizing or generalizing existing findings, those showing anomalies to a general trend or simply modelling/remodelling a well-understood phenomenon should not have a place in journals. Clearly they should. But probably not in the same journals as seminal work.
One might consider other categorizations also, e.g. on applicability of research work.
On your point about specious or doubtful papers, this reflects on editorship and more pointedly on readers control over editors. Maybe it would be healthy to have subscribers vote each fall to retain or dismiss existing editors. Better still, there might be a maximum term for each editor and due care to ensure new editors are not simply proxies of the old ones, e.g. ex-students, ex-colleagues. I accept that for specialist journals that were founded by a small number of dominant researchers and which has a limited number of subscribers this would not be easily done.
The futile study of pointless papers is often due to many references to them in review papers or textbooks. It may be ameliorated through a rating system. The internet allows users of any product or service to rate it. Likewise serious critics (credentials provided, of course) of a paper might be allowed to rate and re-rate it in terms of content validity and current relevance. Anyone preparing a review paper would then be wise to have regard to its rating before referencing it.
Finally, I think all stakeholders in research (and not just active researchers) should speak up more on occasions like those mentioned above. Usually we content ourself with shooting off to a sympathetic colleague in the privacy of our office - then neglect to do anything more about it. This results in the next crop of researchers falling into the same frustrating hole as we did.
Professionalism includes a duty to challenge the competence of our colleagues (as well as that of ourselves) when it is lacking.


Worried about Ws (withdrawals) on transcript and letters of reccomendation for a masters program Disclaimer: W stands for withdrawal, it’s when a student withdrawals from a course regardless of grades after a certain deadline for course changes.
I graduated from a Big10 Engineering school with a 3.6 GPA and now work for a fortune 50 company.
I currently am looking at masters programs in engineering (these are non thesis/course work classes) and I am certain I can do very well on the GRE. I am looking at M. Eng degrees and professional masters programs, not MS research based ones.
The concern I have is I have some Ws scattered throughout my transcript(2 were for classes I took and realised slightly after the deadline that I didn’t fit into the topic nor was I interested, they were not relevant to my career) and 3 were because of financial distress and health issues that arose.
My letters of recommendation from industry are from supervisors that have PhDs and prestigious careers, although as for an academic ones I currently am trying to obtain very good ones. It’s been difficult as I only developed a close relationship with 2 and the one I want I did my senior project with. The downside is the project didn’t go as well as it should’ve but I earned an A and a B+ in both semesters of the project, the professor is also very difficult to get in touch with.
Am I in jeopardy for applying to masters programs? These are not super competitive ones like MIT, Berkeley, U Mich. etc. They’re for working professionals and they’re M. Eng degrees with schools like RPI, UConn and UMass. I’m just worried about those W’s. The courses that are relevant to what I want to study in grad school had entirely As and B+‘s, especially upper level math and engineering courses despite one C.

Short answer:  The Ws aren't great, but they're basically unimportant in light of the rest of your portfolio.
I'm a little wary of withdrawals, because I know from personal experience that my own university's academic advising tends to use them as a way to help students avoid failing classes.  So they're not great on your transcript, especially multiple Ws.
But if I saw a record like yours, that included graduation from a good school, good grades in the most relevant classes, successful time in industry, good recommendations from respectable professionals, AND it was for a professional-oriented graduate program on top of all that, I would almost certainly discard them as meaningless to appraising the current you.
Of course, this is based on my experience, and it's possible the departments you apply to could think differently.  But I wouldn't advise anyone in your situation to fret over it.

I don't think a few W's will hurt your chances of grad. school since the rest of your transcript is good. Also, a W doesn't necessarily mean that the person couldn't handle the work, all it says is that you withdrew from the class. As in your case, this often happens because of financial difficulty or health issues. A transcript laden with W's might look suspicious, but I think a few are okay.
Although I'm in a different field, I can relate to your post because I'm in a similar situation (not with W's but with having a hard time finding LORs). My situation is worse because I do want to pursue a research degree (MA with a thesis), but if you're pursuing a professional-track degree, your letters of recommendation won't be expected to speak to your research ability. They just want to know that you can handle the work (which you clearly can with mostly A's in the relevant courses) and that you show up to class/participate etc. So even if the project didn't turn out as well as you'd have liked it to, it's not going to be relevant to the degree you're pursuing.
Again, this isn't my field, nor am I professor (just another student hoping to get into grad. school in my field), but your application sounds fine to me. Just be sure to do good on the GRE, as a high score will improve your chances. Good luck!


My professor has told me he will be the corresponding author. Will it hurt my future career? I recently got acceptance in an SCI journal, and my professor has told me that he will be a corresponding author (CA) even though I have done almost all the work.

Does not being the corresponding author hurt my chances, as I am looking to start an academic career very soon. Should I ask my professor to be the CA instead?

My professor is a real nice guy and has taught me a lot, but I am concerned in this case. Any suggestions?

Edit: My field is Electrical Engineering and Computer Networks specifically.

First, take time to read this question to understand what does the Corresponding Author mean for different publishers. The definitions vary, but in principle CA is the author who can be contacted about the paper results after the publication, including the long-term period (10+ years). Perhaps, you are the best person to act as a CA for this paper? Do ask yourself the following questions:

How certain is that you will be working in academia in the next 1 year? 3 years? 5 years? 10 years? What about your Professor?
If you provide your current contact details (address, email) as a CA, how likely is that your correspondence will reach you at this address in 1 year? 3 years? 5 years? 10 years? What about your Professor?
A CA may receive some specific questions about the study, but also broader questions about possible ways how it can be changed, adapted for a new problem, applied to a particular area in another discipline. There may be questions on how the methods used in the study compare to what other groups were doing or are planning to do. Are you fully prepared to answer these questions? What about your Professor?

If based on the answers, you decide that you are the best person to act as a CA, simply initiate a discussion with your Professor, using your answers as key points of your proposal.

It's the norm.  Arguably it should not be the norm (like advisors tacking on to papers where they did zero work).  But it is the norm.  The idea is grad students are little mayflies and the prof has corporate memory.  So roll with it.  First author is still more important. Also, make sure you get to publicize the work at conferences, etc.

I like the spirit though. Keep looking out for number one.


How to deal with failing a student? I supervise a student who is working on her bachelor's thesis. The problem is that she has not delivered anything, never asks for any help, and when I offer her some help she claims that she understands and she will work on it. But nothing really happens afterwards. We (me and my supervisor) talked to her multiple times in different 'intervention'-like sessions, with no success. Now it is the end of the semester and she has done no more than 10% of her assigned tasks.

Also, she never delivers what I ask for, even the most basic of things. For example, all students are supposed to hand in their time plan within two weeks of their work, but she has never handed it in, despite my (and my supervisor's) repeated requests. Not only does handing in a time plan help to keep track of one's work, it is also part of our grading scheme. And she knows about that, since we are very transparent about how grading of the thesis works, by giving the students our grading excel sheet before they even sign up for a thesis with us. Nevertheless, she didn't bother handing a time plan in.

All the other students in our institute have their final presentations next week, and even though she knew of it, she was asking for an extension. When I refused that via email (I saw no reason to give her an extension), she just dropped in, claimed that she is not prepared for a final presentation, and that I have to give her an extension and so on. I eventually gave her an extension, because she was extremely stressed and not in normal conditions, was almost breaking into tears, and most importantly made a scene in the institute hall. I played a little tough though, by asking her to give me an exact delivery date within two days.

I have even asked my colleagues and fellow PhD students multiple times if they think there is something wrong with my supervision of her, but they always assured me that there is nothing wrong with that and it's about her personality/character (we have a very transparent culture in our group, so we criticize each other openly). Also, my former students gave positive feedback to my adviser regarding my supervision. I even made my supervisor ask her privately about quality of my supervision, and she gave him positive feedback!

Moreover, she also has an exercise class with me, and she was the only student playing computer games on the lab computer instead of working on her exercise. She knew that I (her thesis supervisor) can see her, but she didn't bother. That, I have to say, was the last nail in the coffin.

Given this background, I already know that she cannot (will not) deliver, no matter how much time I gave her. Thus, she will almost certainly fail her thesis. But on the other hand I feel very bad failing a student in her first big project, especially since if she fails she will probably need to study one more semester to finish her studies.

Now I am struggling with these three options:

Wait for two days, and if she doesn't give me an exact delivery date (which she probably won't), just give her a fail grade.
Give her an extension for ten days or two weeks, and then grade her based on what she delivers eventually, which most probably is a fail grade anyhow.
Give her a longer extension, long enough for her to pass the thesis.

I would be glad if anyone can give me some recommendations on how to deal with this situation.

PS: For all people asking if I was allowed to give her an extension: Of course I was. Otherwise I would have a very good reason for refusing her request. In our university supervisors have lots of freedom in how they want to deal with their students.

Wait for two days, and if she doesn't give me an exact delivery date (which she probably won't), just give her a fail grade.

Given that you already agreed to this extension, this is the only option you have. Do this.

Honestly, you should not even have agreed to this extension. I understand that you were under stress when you agreed to it, but students making a scene will happen more often to you in the future, and at some point you will get inured to it.

  I feel very bad failing a student in her first big project,
  especially since if she fails she probably need to study one more
  semester to finish her studies.

This seems to be your real question. Unfortunately, there is really no way around this dilemma. If someone persistently does not deliver assignments and refuses all offers of help, failing them is the only option. Anything else will make a mockery of the entire system of higher education. (And be sure that other students will notice.)

Look at it this way: if you pass her, and she gets a degree, what will her employer do with her if she continues this way? They will fire her, and quickly so.

It appears that this students needs some serious help and counselling. It appears like you already did all you could do in this regard. I would recommend that you wait for two days, fail her if she does not hand in the date, and write up an explanation like you did here. Send this explanation to her in writing. Explain that it appears she is not ready to take a course like yours. Direct her to any counselling resources available at your institution. Keep a copy of this explanation for your file, in case she escalates this to your department head/dean/whatever.

Then do not enter into any further discussions with her, unless she retakes your course.

Like everyone else, I would say that you should give her a failing grade. Everyone else has expounded brilliantly on why you should as it relates to her performance and manipulation of your good intentions. I write this answer, not to reiterate what others have said but instead to offer one more piece of advice about why giving her the grade that she earned is the only appropriate course of action.

If you give her extensions, you have lied to every other student in your class about expectations and grading.

and therein you begin to erode the confidence of those who have worked hard and met your expectations.

In a similar situation when a student was asking me for an extension, I asked the student if he/she realizes that - if I do - then they're asking me to lie to every other student just so they can have more time. When I asked that student if they actually wanted me to lie to the rest of the class, he/she understood, and said 'no.'

In the end, it is a great disservice to those who have taken you at your word and trusted your educational authority. It is those students who have worked hard to meet your deadlines and expectations that will lose faith in you, your class, and the subject, if they see that the ones who don't take class seriously get more advantages than they do.

Good luck in decision making. Do the thing that is best for your whole class and know that what you do for one student, you have to do for all students.

Let us know how it goes!


How to obtain a readable format of an article? It became a real problem for me. I need to read some old articles for my research but these qualities are so bad that I can't even read the text. For example, this article "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012365X74901368?via%3Dihub".

Do you have any opinion on my problem?

You have two options. Either you try to locate a paper copy (or a copy thereof) of the journal issue via your local library and if necessary via the interlibrary loan or you contract the vendor of the digital copy (sciencedirect in your case) and complain about the quality of the digitised paper asking them to upload a better-quality version. I tried this with another publisher (degruyter) and it took a couple of months before they updated the digital copy of the paper on their website.

As per my comment you can ask your library to get the paper via an "Interlibrary loan" - just go in to the library with the details of the paper - make sure it is all correct and they will contact you when it is available.

Or, as the publishers - shown on the paper, but I don't know how long they can take...

When I last did an interlibrary loan it was 10 to 15 days and it was ready, but it may depend on how old the paper may be,...


Discrimination against theists by atheists in academia Several times I read or heard about the claim that there is a discrimination against theists in academia by atheists. For example the german newspaper ZEIT Campus ONLINE cites an anthropologist Robert J. Priest:

  Für Akademiker ist es ganz einfach, sich zu diskreditieren. Sie müssen nur sagen, dass sie religiös sind

  For academics it's easy to discredit oneself. You just have to say you are religious.

(Source; translation by myself, I could not find the original citation)

I searched for surveys about that claim but could not find much, except creationists arguing against evolution theory.

So my question:

Are there surveys about discrimination of theist people by atheists in academia?

EDIT

I deletet the follow-up question "Is there discrimination against theists by atheists in academia?" because it is too opinion based and is probably answered within the survey(s) I am searching for.

Addressing the question in the context of the Unites States, it appears that it's questionable that any discrimination, and that if there is any such discrimination, it is a) not particularly strong, and b) highly entangled with other factors, such as conservative religious social and cultural activism.

It is an undisputed fact that in the United States there is a higher percentage of non-believers in academia than in society at large.  The key and unresolved question is whether this is a result of self-selection (e.g., non-belief being correlated with interest in scholarly investigation as a career and belief being correlated with disinterest) or whether there is also some component of discrimination.  One can find serious and respectable scholarly work both arguing that there is significant bias and that there is no significant bias.

Even articles strongly advocating that bias exists, however, find that if any such exists it is not particularly strong (else it would not be so equivocal to study) and that it appears to be measurable only with respect to religious people who are a) strongly culturally conservative, and b) activists with respect to politically polarizing positions (e.g., opposition abortion, gay marriage), and also c) at very particular stages of career (entry to graduate school, possibly at tenure promotion).

In short: even amongst those studying and debating the question, it appears that even if any systematic bias exists in US academia, the vast majority of theists are not significantly affected.

Religion is a deeply personal topic that should be left out of scientific debate. If religion were to come up as a citation or reference in a scientific paper I doubt that it would be published. However I have never heard of someone being discriminated against academically solely due to their personal beliefs provided it doesn't taint the objectivity of their work. It would be unethical to discriminate against someone due to their theistic beliefs alone.

I have witnessed light hearted chiding directed at people who are open about their religious affiliations but their work and research were still highly respected in their fields.


Should I mention that I worked as a professional online poker player on my university application? I'm 27 years old and I'm applying to university. On the applications it ask the student to list activities and employment during time away from school. I played online poker for living for ≈4 years, should I mention this? Or would I be looked down upon and perceived as a gambling addict? There's no room on the application to go into details.

If I don't mention it then I'll have this big empty gap with no jobs listed – only activities. I'm applying for undergraduate studies into CS.

I like @DanRomik's analysis, but the same analysis leads me to a different conclusion: yes, list it.

First, it gives a better picture of who you are and what you have been doing.

Second, while some people may be prejudiced against poker players, in most applications there are things (and lack of things) that may be viewed positively by some committee members and negatively by other committee members.  I don't think the concern should be too great that it will lead to too much veto-ing of your application, as might be the case for being incarcerated for a violent crime, say.  (Of course this is my personal opinion and not based on any hard data from surveys--I imagine it might be an issue at some schools, but probably not most.)  I personally would find lack of activity for 4 years more of a concern.

Third, the fact that you are no longer playing poker professionally (I infer this from your use of past tense) indicates that, even if you were addicted to gambling at some point, you overcame it.

I'll suggest one of two options.

Option 1: Put a positive spin on your poker activities

It's one thing to write "I played poker online a lot and lived of my winnings." It's another thing entirely to say "I developed a statistical  algorithm for multi-round poker tournaments while affiliated with ACME online games inc." the more you can make it professional-sounding (not necessarily with the angle I've demonstrated), the better it sounds.

Option 2: Fill the gap with other things

I'm sure you didn't play from dawn to dusk, get drunk and go to bed for 4 years, right? You're applying to be an undergrad, not a R&D team leader. Maybe you spent time doing volunteer activities? Helping your family out? Pursuing an interesting hobby? Traveling abroad? Even if that doesn't cover all that much, you can play it up.

PS - If your grades are good, I don't think anyone would care what you did before your undergraduate studies. I mean, maybe for a scholarship, but not beyond that.


What can I do if my advisor threatens to take away authorship of my undergraduate research work? My mentor professor has threatened to take authorship of my work away from me because of a disagreement. Can she do this? Is this plagiarism on her part for not including me as an author? I wrote the original paper, before editing. She never provided a syllabus and kept tacking on more and more things for me to do. I told her she was taking advantage of me and was told to go to the head of the department. She now says that I can no longer get a grade above a D, even though I am an A student and won an award for my work at a symposium. I have no idea what to do about this situation.

If you are the original author, you have authorship rights and your advisor cannot take that away from you. The worst that she can do is refuse to coauthor with you and take her own name off the paper, not yours, although if she did that, you should remove her contributions from the paper.

At your school, there should be a number of people who will advocate on your behalf, and I would start there. The dean of students and the department secretary are usually good first stops. If that fails, you could consider going to the school dean, the provost, or conceivably even the university president (although if it got that far, you are likely in the wrong or have a terrible program). If your advisor publishes without you as a co-author, you can seek redress with the editor of the journal where she publishes.

If you already know that this is an issue, you need to start getting your "ducks in a row." A first step would be to 'publish' your paper as a working paper somewhere. Where you do that is going to be discipline specific, but SSRN is a good choice if you are in the social sciences, and Academia.com has this ability as well. If you do that, make sure you give appropriate credit, too. Two wrongs don't make a right, as they say.

Try to ensure that as many people as possible can attest that the idea is yours, and if you still have the original graded by the professor make digital copies, preserve the original at all costs. In the end, you don't want it to be your word against hers, and the more evidence and witnesses you have, the better. Rightly or wrongly, other faculty are more valuable than students, so show it to as many faculty as possible.

A few words of warning.

What you are talking about is plagiarism, and could even be intellectual property theft. Universities take this very seriously, and it can end careers—both yours and your advisor's. Consequently, things can get very dicey very quickly. Be absolutely certain before you start making claims publicly that you are in the right: talk to someone you trust outside the department and outside the discipline and show them your work with the work you are doing jointly with your advisor; verify your sources; know your allies. Once this goes beyond you and your advisor, and perhaps a small cadre in the department, it is the intellectual equivalent of going to war.
Be prepared to come to the table. If this isn't published yet, then there is still hope for a negotiated solution. Know what your objectives are, and use your position to get those objectives, and don't get hung up on abstracts. For example, if you are really hoping to get into law school, then being author may not be as helpful as something else, and be prepared to accept that something else. Make no mistake, what I am talking about is corruption, but as an undergraduate, it is highly unlikely to be worth hanging yourself out to dry over something like this, if there is a negotiated compromise. On the other hand, if you are hoping for a PhD and a career in the field, then authorship can be crucial, and you may need to go to the mat over this so as not to be seen as a pushover or a flake in the future.
Don't get caught up in office politics. If your advisor has enemies, and she likely does—especially if this is typical of her treatment of others—departmental enemies will likely try to use you as a weapon to get to her. While it may be gratifying to do so at first, if you let that happen your interests will fall by the wayside as the whole issue becomes about whatever stupid issue is driving the office politics, and not about your intellectual and students rights.
Don't get steamrolled, but don't overstate your contribution. This is hard as an undergraduate, because you definitely don't have as much information about the discipline as your advisor, and it can be tempting to think "My idea changed the world!" whereas it is only a minor contribution. Know what you have done, and don't get pushed off that, but being seen as someone who is self aggrandizing or consistently over-estimates their own importance will hurt your cause. There are already people who devalue contributions because of who the contributor is, and you don't need to give them any ammunition, or give your potential allies pause because they are unsure of the reliability of your perceptions.

Usually a university will have a policy specifically about publications and student projects. I'd  recommend beginning by finding their policy. But in general, yes, she can do this (all personal ethics aside). Assuming she does not use any substantial part of what you wrote, it is not plagiarism. As a student project, your work is generally considered like that of an RA (again, this is legally, not morally), so you have no requirement to be listed as an author of the paper. Assuming, of course, that anything you wrote is not being used in the publication.

My recommendation would be to try and discuss it with your previous advisor, and if they are not willing to discuss it, or you cannot reach an agreement, ask your advisor if they will get the chair of the department to mediate (she'll be less offended than if you just go over her head). If she says no to that, discuss it with the chair yourself. But be clear on exactly what you want to get out of it. Whether that's a chance to write it yourself (which doesn't legally make you first author as a warning), or merely inclusion as an author on any final publication. Always keep your end goal in mind in all conversations.


Why does my advisor / professor discourage all collaboration? So I have had this advisor for about 8 months now. Literally all students in my department talk very highly of him: his previous graduate students (master's) have gone on to have successful careers in PhD programs or are top data scientists who earn six figures.
I just took his class this fall. He prohibited all collaboration for homework, and we were not allowed to ask him questions either, unless we thought there was a typo on the problem or similar. Also, we were not allowed to discuss the material with others i.e. we cannot study for exams together or even talk about the book we were using. Or any of the topics. According to him, "collaboration is for undergraduates who struggle". So yeah.
Well, moving forward with his research. He refuses to read anything I write if it has a typo or I've made a mistake with citation. He won't read anything I've done, if he sees an imperfection. He also has strictly told me not to discuss my research with others / seek help elsewhere. Him I can ask questions, but only on papers / reading that I should do. Nothing about how to learn to program something or if I have a difficulty understanding a theorem. He always tells me "you're a master's student, you should do this on your own, you're not an undergraduate anymore".
Also, he has questioned the legitimacy of my undergraduate degree a few times due to me not being able to prove something he finds "trivial".
Now he wants me to learn programming in C, which we never discussed when I began my research. He compares me to his previous students, claiming how so and so worked 95+ hours per week on their master's thesis for 12 months after finishing all their classes. He idealizes cultures where studying is prioritized over everything, even one's mental health.
I am frankly getting tired of this, and contemplating on switching advisors. Am I just going crazy, or are his remarks completely out of line as an advisor? Is collaboration and similar stuff really that bad and makes you lazy and incapable of doing stuff on your own?

This sounds pretty extreme, even for the "sink or swim" school of education. If you can meet the extreme standard without going crazy you will probably turn out ok, if a bit of a workaholic. But the road will be hard and painful.
But, given your sense of it, you should probably move quickly to the exits. Not everyone is like that. Some of us actually try to be supportive.

As for the "why" of it, he just seems to demand perfection and won't compromise in any way.

Collaboration can be a source of cheating for cheaters. Education is about learning independent thought and critical thinking, not formed from the opinions of others but by you. Just work hard, and let the rest of stuff roll off. Be respectful of your advisor and stay focused on you.


Would it be rude to ask a famous professor who doesn't know me personally for a recommendation letter if I have published in a high ranking journal? Would it be rude to email a famous professor asking for a recommendation letter to Dphil, if I had published in a high or moderately high ranking journal in her/his field and just have letters from foreign unknown professors?

The professor does not know me apart from the published paper. Information about whether the professor knows the paper, or knows me due to the paper, might be edited in later. I was thinking to add my grades (the lowest is an A-), curriculum, and send to professors that work in my subject (it is a very small field). But if it is rude doing this, I don't think it could improve my case.

The benefit of recommendation letters is that they give insight into abilities that are not reflected in the rest of your application. Your grades and your publication are already in your application. A professor who doesn't know anything else about you has nothing to write that will help you.

To directly answer your question: it comes across more naïve/inexperienced than rude, but either way I do not see how it will help your case.

P.S. This answer assumes that the professor is not already familiar with your work before your email. To be more specific, I'm imagining you sending unsolicited emails to a bunch of the biggest names in your field (selected purely because they are "famous"), who have not previously heard of you or your work (as far as you know), asking them to write a recommendation letter for you entirely on the basis of your having published a paper in a journal.

If the professor is already familiar with your work (e.g. has cited it, or has had an email correspondence with you about it), then I agree with this answer that his/her letter can potentially be helpful. Similarly, I think Ben Webster offers some useful advice about attempting this in a more nuanced - and potentially more effective - way.

The point to a letter of recommendation is that it is a recommendation.  If they don't know you, then what is their basis for recommending you?  If they're straightforward and honest, they can't.  Therefore, the request is basically asking someone to lie.  Yes, that is rude.

Hence, I favor the first sentence of Ébe Isaac's answer.


Re-using text from a grant proposal in a paper (or vice versa) I have a grant proposal that I'm ready to submit, and I would like to re-use a significant amount of the text (on the order of 5-8 pages) in a paper that I intend to submit to a journal for publication.  Is this considered self-plagiarism?

As I suggested in the title, I am also interested in the reverse direction of this.  Is it okay to take significant amounts of text from (e.g.) my own unpublished doctoral dissertation and use it in a grant proposal?

If this were an issue of paper-to-paper copying I know both of these would be clearly off-limits.  The key issue that I am wrestling with is whether the rules are different for unpublished works like dissertations and grant proposals.

Copying proposals to papers: I am sure many have not thought about this but many have copied material to and from proposals. Copying from a proposal to a paper should not be a problem since a proposal is normally not a publication and I have never come across a funding agency that claims copyright on proposal texts sent to them. If anyone knows of exceptions, it would be very interesting to know how they handle proposals. Taking the idea to the (silly) extreme one could argue that copying what you write in a notebook to a computer-written manuscript is self-plagiarism. The key lies in what sources are considered published and which are not.

Copying papers to proposals: Copying from a journal paper to a proposal should normally not be a problem either since the proposal is not a publication and not something that should be distributed. But, the journal text may be subject to copyright so it makes sense to see to what extent one might infringe on those rights by copying text to  a proposal. I doubt any journal would care much (or indeed find out) as long as the proposals are not made public. Since most application processes are very strict and reviewers are not allowed to disclose materials (some actually ask you to physically destroy any printouts) I doubt there is a problem but strictly speaking this may indeed be a grey zone.

EDIT: I will add a definition for self-plagiarism: Copying material you have previously produced and passing it off as a new production from the site plagiarism.org. From this perspective the question becomes, is one trying to pass of the copied material as a new product?

Well, the operative question is not really whether this is called "plagiarism" - it definitely is - but whether that's a bad thing. After all, the intended audience of any given document you prepare might be okay with copying large sections of another work; if that's the case, go ahead and plagiarize all you want, nobody will care. But if the people who will be reading a document do not want to see plagiarized material, you'd better not do it, regardless of whether the document will count as a "publication."

From what I've heard, grant review boards generally fall in the latter category. There are probably some exceptions out there, but I've been told in no uncertain terms that plagiarism in a grant application will result in instant rejection, and perhaps even punitive measures such as a temporary or permanent ban on submitting any further grant applications to that funding agency. I've seen examples of proposals which were rejected because they copied as little as one paragraph, or one figure, from decade-old papers, despite the proposals having excellent scientific merit. The copying need not even be exact, so tweaking a few words per sentence from your existing writing doesn't make it okay (as is the case for plagiarism in general).

Bottom line: everything in your grant application should be written exclusively for that application, not repurposed from elsewhere, just as you would do with a published paper. Grant reviewers treat plagiarism much the same as journal editors do.

(And also: though this answer treats plagiarism in general, as far as I'm aware the same rules apply to self-plagiarism.)


Can I publish a paper on my PhD work without informing my old supervisor? I was a PhD student and working on a paper. My adviser told me that he could not support me anymore so I left him. Now I am wondering if I could publish that paper on my own. There were 3 other coauthors on that paper but I was the first author and main idea was from me.

Your paper had other authors. Generally, if you want to publish it, you have to communicate with the other co-authors (whether they were your supervisor or not).

Regardless of who the first author on a paper is, if other individuals made authorship-worthy contributions to the work, you can't publish it without communicating with them first.

When an academic paper is produced, the copyright generally belongs primarily to the institution at which the work was done and secondarily to the author(s) of the work.

Therefore you must seek and obtain the permission of the institution at which you were enrolled before disseminating the work in any form, whether electronic or otherwise or presenting it at a meeting or conference. Failure to do this would represent a breach of academic ethics and could leave you open to legal proceedings from the institution in question.


Is "liberal arts" a unique feature of American higher education? Liberal arts programs are very common in the US but not in Europe (correct me if I am wrong). As I see here in discussions, the environment of liberal arts colleges is different: for example, student-faculty relationships.

Have such historical liberal arts programs and schools changed the overall higher education in the US or are they just different types of programs.

Are the universities which are not focused on liberal arts influenced by the culture of liberal arts programs/schools?

It's probably not unique, but practically yes the concept of a "liberal arts" college or education is specific to North America. Some European countries have a form of "liberal arts" curriculum at the high school level (e.g. the German or Swiss Gymnasium) where a broad spectrum of "classic" subjects are taught with the purpose of allowing students to join any university education.

But (continental) European universities generally have individual programs for math, philosophy, history, science, etc.

It's actually quite puzzling for people who attended university in Europe to hear their US-educated colleagues say "Yes, I majored in physics and medieval music".

Almost all schools possess a form of LA training, even if they do not adapt the title. LA programs are generally rooted in the classics. Therefore, LA training could be nestled under the title of History, Litt, Classics… In the US, a classical edu. is quickly fading. There are only a handful of schools that offer them. Such as St. Johns, Chicago, SBC Undergrads, HMU… In general, the LA and Humanities have been in a decline (although there was a recent bump in applications). Your question about cultural impact: Every university you go to is impacted by the surrounding culture, and will shape the teaching. Since much of LA is rooted in classics, its helps bc the material is static, but ones approach can be entirely different from school to school.


How does one figure out how hard it would be to get tenure in a given department? Anecdotally, I've heard that it's easier to get tenure in UK/Canada than in the US.
I've also heard that some departments have a reputation for denying tenure.
Are there statistics about this? (related question: Tenure and tenure denial rates by universities)
How can a job seeker determine how difficult it will be to get tenure when weighing offers from multiple departments?
EtA:

For instance, are there polite/coy ways of asking about this?  Would students or post-docs know and be in a more honest position than the profs?  Are reputations widely known and so just asking some senior people would likely give you a good sense?
Another aspect of this question: are there regional differences, as I alluded to?

Let me mention some aspects not covered by the other question.
I think that for an individual case it is nearly impossible to make a prediction with any validity. Even if you can determine the historical record for a given department, things change. Things always change.
The decisions on tenure are based on both the needs of a given department, which evolve over time, and the actual record and performance of an individual candidate. Nothing in this is very predictable. You can do a "good" job that isn't "quite" good enough as measured by the evaluations of your peers. You might be a bit unlucky in your research production or your teaching evaluations. Or you might be especially lucky. It varies.
Worse than that is the question of changing economic and even political situations. A legislature may decide to reduce funding for a university or for a specialty just as it becomes a factor for you. Economic conditions might be especially good or bad for bringing new students into the university (or your department) at just the point at which decisions are made.
There have been situations in which a department recommends a person for tenure, but the university says no, due to decreased or even uncertain funding. After all, tenure is a long term commitment that may be difficult to make in uncertain times.
And, of course, a pandemic might hit.
While one can gather statistics about such things over time, such things are essentially meaningless as a predictive measure for an individual. You take a chance. You work hard. You hope for the best. But also, you keep flexible if you are wise and look at how your current trajectory is going with respect to the trends developing around you.
The one thing you can do is try to match the stated priorities of an institution to your own skills. If you are a better teacher than researcher, then a teaching college will almost certainly be a better "bet" than a research focused institution. But that, I assume, is obvious. But be realistic about your self evaluation.

It is a game-theoretical exchange, of sorts. The university (or institution offering tenure) does not really want to offer tenure. However, since other institutions ARE offering tenure, it has to match. It will tend to offer tenure if they believe a) you would bring more prestige (and grants, etc) to the institution than it will pay out over time and b) there is a chance some other institution coming to the same conclusion. Supply, nice to see you again, have you met my friend Demand yet?
In being that - it is basically as any other job - but tenure being as it is the assessments and the appetite for risk are likely different.
Thus we can conclude - if you are a stellar intellectual it is easier to get tenure at lower rank institutions than higher, if the grant/patent/prestige economy is volatile it will be more difficult and if there are several candidates available to the institution per field it will be more difficult. Questions to ask to assess the likelyhood of tenure would be as to the financial health and prestige of the institution, the "hotness" of the field in question, the grant/patent economy of the field and finally, what is the competition like.


How can I get a PhD position to work on solving a particular mathematics problem that I have formulated independently? I have a pure mathematics problem which I formulated after years of research in signal processing of audio signals and years going into formulating a problem on precise mathematical terms, which is a provable/disprovable mathematical statement. (I avoid using the term conjecture as I am not qualified enough)

My belief is that it has very important applications in real world signal processing. I want to solve this math problem, and I need funding, research environment, collaborators, and access to mathematicians for discussions. All this I believe is provided by a PhD position in a University that is serious about path breaking research. My goal is to solve this particular problem and not any other problem.

How can I go about achieving this goal?

Edit : summary of problem

In effect i have proposed a new formula for inverse fourier transform with no assumption on its jumps except that they are finite and absent beyond a certain point. This new formula ensures not only pointwise convergence but also convegence of variation. Classical Fourier formula does not have convegence of variation in the presence of jumps.

Unfortunately, I expect it will be difficult to find a supervisor who will take you on under these circumstances.  It's not impossible, but it will require finding exactly the right match, and that will require a lot of luck.

Here are some of the issues that will worry potential advisors:

What if the problem is too easy, and turns out not to be substantial enough for a Ph.D. thesis?  Will you drop out from graduate school in disgust?  Will you angrily insist that you signed up to write your dissertation on this topic and now they have to let you graduate?
What if the problem is too hard, and you spend several years in graduate school with no hint of progress or even the potential for future progress?  When your advisor suggests changing course, will you listen?  Or will you keep banging your head against this problem until they kick you out for lack of progress?
What if the problem doesn't end up being nearly as interesting or important as you hope?  Will you accept this outcome, or will you turn into a crackpot who insists that the rest of the research community is just wrong?
Are you too emotionally invested in this problem to judge whether you are making progress or how interesting it is?  How painful or awkward would it be to work with you on this topic?
Are you interested in learning how to do anything else besides work on this specific problem?  The purpose of a Ph.D. program is to train researchers with some breadth, not just to solve one specific problem, so you need to maintain some perspective and longer-term goals than any single problem.

It's possible that none of these issues is an actual problem, but few people will agree to supervise this thesis unless they have enough knowledge of both you and your problem to feel reassured.  Unfortunately, the bar for "enough knowledge" is probably pretty high.  I wouldn't do it unless I knew you relatively well and had spent some time thinking seriously about the problem.  This is not going to happen during the ordinary graduate admissions process.

Instead, I think you're probably best off not worrying too much about graduate admissions, and instead just focusing on convincing people that this is an important problem.  If you can make a real intellectual connection with a professor based on this problem, then you can explore whether it might be a suitable topic for a Ph.D. thesis.  Otherwise, applying to graduate school for the sole purpose of working on this problem is likely to be fruitless.

(To be clear, I might be wrong about this, but it's my impression based on the limited information in your question.)

In your shoes, I would apply to a "bunch" of PhD programs, and write about your desire to take a PhD program for the purpose of solving this problem in your Statement of Purpose. I wouldn't go much further than this, and ask for funding and research grants until I got admitted. The single-minded focus on the one problem will give people a clue about your level of interest.

You may be asked to work on a few "other things," but hopefully, your posture will land you in a program that will allow you to spend most of your time (80% or more) pursuing your field of interest.

In giving you this advice, I'm assuming that you want a PhD for this one purpose only, and have no other reason for seeking a degree. If there are "other" reasons, I would make solving this problem only "part" of my Statement of Purpose.


Is it unethical to supply a marked solution to a student who has shown intent to cheat, with the intent of identifying them for punishment? One of the adjuncts that I work with found that one of their students had posted their assignment on a freelancer website asking for the solution.  We joked that he should place a bid and fail them afterwards and had a lengthy discussion about sting operations and entrapment.  In the end we came to the conclusion we were not the police and to let the chair know, but ultimately take no action.

I was wondering about the ethics of anonymously giving this student a marked solution with the goal of identifying the student and removing them from the class.  In particular, I'm imagining we could write a correct solution with some additional embedded information that will be recognizable when the student turns in their answer (for example, extraneous steps that don't break the solution but don't add any value).

Some additional clarifications:

Assume that the student clearly only wants the solutions for a grade and is not asking for assistance in understanding the material
This would be done as a private transfer of documents (like email), not a public posting (like a Stack Overflow answer), to avoid issues of other students stumbling upon the personalized solution.
We would provide the correct solution, but with some additional embedded data that identifies the source; for example, metadata, comments, and, in the case of code, extraneous steps that don't break the solution, but don't add any value.

[We] had a lengthy discussion about sting operations and entrapment

The distinction between the two is important here. A sting catches someone doing something they were already going to do. Entrapment is where you trick them into doing it in the first place. If you posted an advertisement offering to solve the assignment for them, and some students took you up on that, that would be entrapment, and would definitely be unethical: they might not have cheated if you hadn't posted the advertisement.

But in this case, they have already chosen to cheat. The only thing you can change is whether the assignment that they cheated on is easily recognizable as such. In some cases, it's hard to distinguish between a sting and entrapment. That isn't the case here; there's a (presumably) timestamped job posting the proves they were planning to do this before you got involved.

You should still definitely run this by the department chair or someone first if you decide to do it, though. It looks similar to entrapment even though it isn't, and it's better to justify your actions before you do them, instead of letting it be an unpleasant surprise when the student complains later.

The fact that you'd be getting paid to do the assignment is an issue, as well. Returning the fee to the cheater after catching them probably addresses this issue. (And maybe turn it over to the department in the meantime, to avoid the appearance of potential impropriety.)

Edit: A comment requested an unambiguous conclusion, so:
My view is that it is ethical, but it's very close to the border, and either encouraging cheating that would not have otherwise happened or profiting from the actions you take would push it over to the unethical side. And because it's so close, it's important to have some amount of transparency (e.g. by telling the department chair in advance) so as to avoid both the potential for and appearance of impropriety.

I think that the legality of doing this would be in question in a lot of places. I doubt that the police could do a similar thing (in the US) without first obtaining a court order, for example.

I think the ethics of it might also be questionable, but I think a discussion with an ethicist might be in order. The reason for the requirement for a court order, by the way, is to get an independent, non interested, opinion as to the propriety, as well as the legality.

You made the right decision IMO to avoid doing this and to be cautious about it.

However, if students are informed specifically or generally that such sites are monitored it might at least cut down on the practice. Of course it would be more useful if such assignments could be marked on those sites when they appear.

Ultimately, of course, while we want to "catch a thief" it is better all around if we can prevent the theft in the first place.

Based on the comments here let me add that I haven't claimed that the activity is definitely illegal anywhere, only that it might be. Moreover, my suggestions to avoid this action is to save people from potential grief that they might suffer by taking an action that "seems fair, but is foul". I try not to recommend risky behavior and generally caution people against it. Your desires may differ, of course.


How do people peer-review many papers? I am an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. I try to be an active peer-reviewer but on average it takes a few hours to review a manuscript (reading, some searches in the literature, checking some relevant reference, and finally writing the report).

I review 2-3 papers per month and I need to spend some time outside my working hours. In various blogs, articles, websites like publons.com, I see it is not uncommon to review 10-20 papers per month.

Then, I came to the conclusion that I am doing something wrong. Because by my calculations, it is impossible to peer-review many papers along with various tasks of an academic.

I don't think people who review 10–20 papers per month are likely to be doing a good job.  They are probably just reading a paper once and writing a couple paragraphs (at most) based on superficial impressions.  I've certainly gotten reports on my own papers that seemed to be produced that way; and they were both frustrating and not very useful.
I personally review about 3–6 papers each month, and that is by far the most of anyone in my department; I have also received outstanding referee rewards from multiple journals, mostly just recognizing my high levels of work.  (This also represents a big part of the professional service work that is expected of me as a faculty member.)  It would certainly be possible for me to referee five times as many papers (although I would have to contact a lot of editors to volunteer my services), but that would turn refereeing into a the largest component portion of my total workload.  It would not be possible to do those reports properly and still be a productive researcher.

In my opinion the peer review process is deeply broken. The quaility of the reviews I got so far is concerning. In most journals just one out of three was able to find a real flaw. Sometimes the other 2/3 criticise even positive aspects because they did not read the paper or lack complete understanding. Then you have to write a boring response letter back until the stuff gets submitted. In my opinion an exhausting process which often ends up with the fact that another group working on a similar process gets your data and submits urgently. I am pro non-anonymous reviewing. I guess the review quality would increase greatly and the reviewers would be also more polite sometimes.

I guess you have to choose a speed which fits to you. If you feel not confident to review 20 papers then do not do so.


Is it worth it to master LaTeX or MS Word? I want to know, if I submit a paper to a journal, will they change the formatting of the paper? For example, will they change the position of the tables or the figures?

If they change these, then I think it is not necessary for me to learn MS Word or LaTeX in depth. As long as I can write the paper in a readable manner, it should be fine because the journal will make the format better if the paper is accepted. But if there is a specific style and format of the papers published in the journal which must be fulfilled by the authors, then it is a different story.

My field is physics and biophysics.

This depends entirely on the journal policy, which in turn tends to depend strongly on field.  For example:

In computer science and electrical engineering, many ACM and IEEE journals expect papers to be turned in using a format that is very close to publication and then re-format little if at all.  For these journals, good mastery of LaTeX is a must.
Many biology journals, by contrast, will refuse to take nicely formatted submissions and require text to be submitted separately from figures.  For these journals, you mostly just need to know how to use your citation manager.

Beyond looking at individual journals, I would say that a good rule of thumb is to consider how many equations you are likely to publish.  The more mathematical your work, the more likely that your publication venue is to have embraced LaTeX and the more benefit expertise with it is likely to be to you.

"Is it worth it to master LaTeX or MS Word?"

Just wanted to echo Dmirty's sentiment, but also mention that LaTeX proficiency is a bit of a niche skill. If you are good at it, it can potentially open other doors for you; I found my current job thanks in part to this. If you like LaTeX and find that you are good at it, it is worth your time to master it since these skills may pay off in other ways. However I cannot really say the same about MS Word, its such a ubiquitous program that you are expected to have some proficiency with it in academia.


How much does the reputation of the undergrad institution matter in top 10 graduate schools in Mathematics? I will be starting as a freshman in August 2018 in an undergrad institution. My school does not have the best reputation for mathematics in my country. Although it has a tie-up with another nearby graduate institution, which is the well known to top 10 US graduate program in Mathematics. Some Faculties from it teach courses at my institution. As from there, I do have hopes of getting good LOR's. Because of fewer facilities, many students in my undergrad pursue their honors thesis at a different location. Few of them pursued outside of my country under AMS fellows.

Ph.D. placements at my school include Dartmouth ,Northwestern, Paris, UIUC etc.

I do have the option of taking a gap year and target two other schools A & B.

School A has recently started its undergrad program. Although it is fairly reputed in my country and abroad.
Their placements include Chicago, Ohio State, Wisconsin etc.

School B has the best math undergrad program in my country. It has a stellar reputation in top 10 grad schools in the US and many students are pursuing PhDs in those schools.

I know Harvard or Princeton is beyond my reach, but do schools like Chicago or Berkeley care more about elite undergrad status. Should I take a gap year? Can stellar letters of recommendation and good honor's thesis outweigh undergrad reputation?

Unfortunately, this is not really a trade-off we are qualified to help you with.  There are just too many unquantifiable factors (we don't even know what country you are in!); I generally don't really recommend students putting off the rest of their lives for a year to try something like an entrance exam again.  Even if you can get in, it could be that going A and B will make a big difference, but you can't possibly know that (maybe Chicago had a really bad experience with the last student that came from A; you just can't control this stuff). Who can possibly guess what the general political situation for foreign graduate students in the US will be in a few years?

So my advice is to start at your current institution, and do the best work you can.  That's what you can control.

If your school doesn't have a fine mathematics department, you should not limit your doctoral options. There are over 200 US universities offering the doctorate in mathematics. Focus on getting the best preparation you can and look at other schools. It's so hard to get into the best schools even with everything going for you. btw, I thought Harvard was beyond my reach. I was shocked when they admitted me despite my horrible undergrad and my graduate school grades, mostly A's but quite a few B's and even a B-.  Harvard considered my age (university at 15) and graduate course load (42 courses in 2-years) and paid me to be part of their genius program ... any 16-graduate courses I wanted to take at any Harvard school or MIT. I didn't think I was worthy. They saw past my grades because I told my story. Tell your story. (I spent 10-years as a Harvard interviewer. Tell your story as if your future depends on it. It does. Best of luck to you.)


Why do universities tolerate uploading papers on their websites? Lots of professors provide their full papers published by scholarly journals on their personal website (in the university official domain). PDF files of their final papers published by different publishers are available online. However, this is against the copyright transfer agreement, and the authors have no right to distribute their papers publicly. In other words, the authors have the same right as well as others to distribute their own papers publicly, as this is the marketing right of the publisher.

This is clear violation of the US copyright law, like distributing cracked software programs or movies without copyright. Why the university officials do not take action over this copyright violation?

One may say that this is their personal website and they are legally responsible, but if someone distribute an illegal item on his/her personal website, the university will not allow this because it is part of the university domain.

I think universities ignore this because it seems to be less criminal, but why? as it is still illegal. So much the worse, it is even common in top universities where considering legal issues in different aspects is quite serious.

Why the university officials do not take action over this copyright violation?

Because they can't.  There is no way to tell whether a given electronic preprint violates the publisher's copyright-transfer agreement or not.  Different publishers place different restrictions on authors' rights to redistribute their papers.  Some allow posting pre-edited versions; some allow posting the official camera-ready version; some allow neither; some only require an exclusive publication license and leave copyright in the author's hands.  These restrictions change over time, and may depend on whether the author paid an open access fee to the publisher.  The only way to determine whether an electronic (p)reprint is posted illegally is to read the actual copyright-transfer/publication contract.  But this contract is directly between the authors and the publishers; universities have no record of these agreements.

Because they don't have to.  At least within the US, university web sites generally fall under the "safe harbor" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which requires copyright holder to request removal of the specific items to which they claim copyright.

Because the publishers don't care.  Scary legal language notwithstanding, academic publishers in many fields have zero interest in pursuing legal action against individual researchers for posting copies of their own papers in violation of copyright transfer agreements.  (I have heard this said specifically about ACM, IEEE, SIAM, and Springer, by people with connections inside each of those organizations.)

Because it's not in their best interest.  Both universities and the public benefit materially from the public availability of research by their faculty, students, postdocs, and other researchers.  Universities have no incentive—aside from a potential legal threat that they know will never materialize—to proactively censor that research.  Many universities, and more recently many governments, have adopted open-access policies that either encourage or require their members to amend publication agreements and make their work publicly available.

Because researchers would revolt.  Even if academic publishers started sending DMCA notices to universities, and even if universities required their members to take down copies of their papers, in violation of research community expectations, the people whose research is being censored would simply take their business elsewhere.  Those publishers would receive fewer papers, and those universities would receive fewer graduate school and faculty applicants.

You are describing the US arrangment. In the UK though to be able to participate in the research excellence framework, thus in future funding for the university, all research must be made open access. Most if not all UK universities have their own open repositories where one will publish pre-prints if the journal or academic repository a piece of work was published in was not open access.


Should I use self-made animations in my scholarly presentations? What do you think about the addition of animations to powerpoint presentations? I'm not talking about the generic animations that can be added to powerpoint slides, but the use of animated films to illustrate a concept (I'm in biology by the way).

Despite going into the sciences, I've always had a love for the visual arts, and have been teaching myself animation for the past little while. I think it can be used as a great way of communicating scientific concepts, and will also likely make me stand out in a room full of graduate students. However, I'm not sure if this could possibly back-fire and make me seem less serious about the science? The type of animation I plan on making would hopefully be on par with ones made by professional medical animators.

I'm also a little unsure of the intellectual property aspects of this process. I have made short animations for my presentations before, and although people were quite impressed, my old supervisor seem to think that she (along with everyone else in the lab) could simply start to use my animation in their presentations. I didn't have a problem with this arrangement since it was my first animation, and I definitely was not expecting to be paid for it. However, as I'm starting graduate school and entering a different lab, I would be a little hesitant to agree if it were to happen again, now with animations I've spent a considerable amount of time working on (especially if I will not be the first one presenting it since I'm a new student). I'm currently thinking about showing an animation I made to a PI that I hope to work with in the end (made specifically to illustrate her research). Although I want to impress this person who I think is a great scientist, I also don't want to be taken "advantage" of... Would it be unrealistic to be paid for some of my work during graduate school?

Nate and cbeleites have handled well the finer points of the advisability of making the animations. I would encourage you to go ahead with them, but there are a large number of detail-dependent considerations that need to be made. I want to weigh in on the intellectual-property aspect of your question.

  Would it be unrealistic to be paid for some of my [animation] work during graduate school?

In a word, yes. You are already being paid to produce research and its corresponding dissemination materials. Asking your group to pay extra for a specific class of dissemination material will strike people as odd and probably as very selfish. I think it is unlikely that anyone will agree to this and you risk alienating your group and the rest of the community.

In addition to this, I do not think you should attempt to limit the spread of your animations. Instead, get ahead of the market, and engineer a situation where (i) people will want to share and use your animations, and (ii) people using your animations will bring credit to you and your group. More specifically:

Make sure all your animations identify you as the author, and your university and research group. Make this visible enough that viewers will see it and have enough time to register it, but discreet enough that users of your animations will not be tempted to remove it or skip over it.
Keep your animations publicly available in a visible and discoverable place online. This can be a YouTube channel, GitHub repository, university webpage, something else, or some combination of the above. Make it easy for people to find the animations from you, instead of getting nth-hand copies from someone in their lab.

This online space can then grow to include, say, your research papers, potentially turning some of your animations traffic into interested readers of your publications. This gives you as direct a benefit to your career from your animations as you can really hope for.
Provide clear licensing details for your animations, which could be CC-BY or CC-BY-ND. Make this clear but concise and easy to follow. It is up to you to gauge your audience, but I would claim that people are much more likely to use your content in ways that you would like if you (1) actively give them permission to use it, and (2) clearly state the ways you would and would not like your content to be used. If you provide your animations under CC-BY and state as the attribution requirement that people provide a link to your repository, you are creating a contract of sorts between you and those users, which adds a barrier on their side of the channel (they need to actively breach the contract to misuse the content).

Moreover, if you do this early then you can get ahead of the game and set clear rules for how you want your own research group to treat the animations. Make it easy for people, and particularly for your own group, to know how to credit you, and they are very likely to do it.

Academia is a weird place, and there are many ways to be compensated for work which are not monetary. (Think, for example, of journal editors and paper referees, who perform their jobs on a voluntary basis, in the understanding that they are service activities that actively contribute to their standing in the community, and therefore indirectly to the visibility of their research, their avenues for further collaborations, and ultimately them keeping their day jobs.) You should not expect direct financial compensation from your animations, but there is no reason why you can't market on them and use them to further your career. You just need to be somewhat more clever about it.

In this sense, the situation admits a clear analogy to the (sad) state of the music publishing industry over the past twenty years or so. People are going to pass around your animations, whether you want it or not, in much the same way that people are going to share music illegally if it is the cleanest way to obtain it. The music industry we have spends all its resources trying to clamp down on this, with little effect beyond alienating people; don't be like them. Instead, be like the music industry we wish we had: actively trying to harness the new technologies and media to generate new, fresh, legal ways to get the content, that actually make you want to use them. This is what I mean by beating the market.

Unless the animation serves a specific pedagogical purpose,  DON'T.  It will usually be more distracting / cheesy than useful. As with website animation,  less is more.


can I not mention that I have will complete a PhD degree while applying for another one in another country I am a second-year Ph.D. student/ RA from a university in country A. I had no problem with my laboratory or supervisor; however, as I could not speak the country language and was not able to find a post-doc position due to COVID, I applied for another Ph.D. positions in the same field in an English speaking country (B) where I can immigrate and settle. In the application form for the universities and during my interviews I mentioned that I am a Research assistant, omitting the fact that I am a Ph.D. candidate. Also, my supervisors mentioned that I am RA in their recommendation letters understating the fact that I want to go to an English-speaking country. The problem is that due to my successful publications our department from country A decided to grant me the Ph.D. degree at the end of this year.
I read some posts that mentioned that omitting your academic records is the same as falsifying them. I am afraid if I go to country B without mentioning that I was in fact a Ph.D. candidate and RA and get in huge trouble, so what should I do?
Is it be unethical if I omit this fact that I would have a Ph.D., refer it to RA and start the second Ph.D. in the same field in country B, or should I contact the prospective professors from country B and tell him/her that I did a mistake in my application?

The comment of Jeff is worth considering. Do you really need a second doctorate to migrate.
But, under the circumstances, send a message to the new university stating that since your application, you were awarded a PhD, but, assuming you want to, that you still want to continue your application and enter the new program. Stress that the research proposal will be different if accepted.
Hiding the recent degree could come back to harm you.

Does country B automatically recognize academic degrees from country A? If yes, I'm afraid you have to mention your PhD. If no, technically for them in country B you are (academically) nobody.


What is 'Diamond' Open Access? I have heard of 'green' (self-archiving in a repository) and 'gold' open access (immediate open access in a journal), but what is 'diamond' open access? How does this differ from green or gold open access?

Diamond open access is like gold, in that the article is immediately open access in the journal, and nobody has to pay to read it.  However, in gold open access, the author (or their institution or funding agency) normally has to pay a publication fee to get the article published.  In diamond open access, they don't have to pay, so the process is completely free of charges to both authors and readers.

See http://www.jasonmkelly.com/2013/01/27/green-gold-and-diamond-a-short-primer-on-open-access/

A diamond open access journal can be paid for through the Society's membership fees, which include access to the Journal. If journal access is free anyway, you may ask why would people pay membership fees? Because they believe in the mission of the Society, want to support the open access journal, get a discount on annual meetings, and generally support that society and journal.


Can/should one put a copyright notice on one's CV or resume? Why/why not? I have not yet seen anyone in academia put a copyright notice on their CV or resume. Why is this?

One might expect that even if the content is implicitly copyrighted, the layout/format/style of the document -- perhaps more so for a graphic designer -- is part of one's intellectual property.

While your CV can technically be regarded as a piece of intellectual property, the usual reason why people assert their copyright to a work by putting a copyright notice on it is to deter and prevent other people from copying or sharing that work (usually so they - the authors - can profit by selling the work).

With your CV, it is actually in your interest to have as many people as possible sharing it and passing it around, so the incentives work completely in the opposite direction from a more traditional type of intellectual product.

Now, if your CV is such an amazing piece of work that people will be willing to pay for a copy, we’d be having a different discussion...

Putting copyright notices on pages you write is alien to how people think, and they typically never consider the possibility they might need to/want to do that.

After all, copyrights (and copyright notices) are strange artifacts of authoritarianism in human society, dating back to how the British crown decided to artificially prop up publisher monopolies centuries ago.


How would I judge the status of a researcher without talking to them or reading their papers? I was using Google Scholar to judge the rank of a researcher, but then realized I couldn't find everyone I wanted to and came across this question which highlighted this problem. Looking at Scorpus, which was suggested in that same answer, seems to downvalue any non-Elsevisor publications and not have any current data (from the last year). Microsoft Research seems altogether unintuitive to use and doesn't seem to have h-index at all. I tried PublishorPerish, but filtering data to find the correct researcher's papers seems ridiculously difficult.
I would like to be able to judge status somewhat programmatically, understanding there may be some flaws in this method, as it would be somewhat cumbersome to do it by hand on the scale I would like to. I will probably supplement it my sorting the top 3-5 by hand, but I would not like to do the entire set by hand.
Is there any proper solution to this problem? If not, what is the generally accepted method to do this?
At the behest of many people, I am a student, but this question is geared to generally understanding the current methods of researcher evaluation, not necessarily just by students

Assuming the question is about status and not quality:
Job title is a strong indicator of status.  The meaning of each title typically depends on the country.  For the US, as an example, named professorships have the highest status, followed by professors and associate professors.
The status of the university is also a strong predictor of status of the researcher.
"Status" is not quantitative and attempting to rank status is not productive.

Use Scopus, because:

Sure it's maintained by Elsevier, but it also includes non-Elsevier papers.
Even if it does not have data from the last year, papers published in the last year probably have not have had time to accrue enough citations to change the h-index of well-established researchers.

Alternatively you could use a database such as Google Scholar or Web of Science.


How to proceed after being threatened and treated poorly by university faculty after reporting physical assault? I’m an Indian PhD student at a mathematics department in the US. A few months back, I was deliberately shoulder-bumped for a few seconds by another PhD student. This student had previously chased me across the department (literally), invaded my personal space, and stared me down. I asked to change offices, which is usually a routine affair, but a faculty member stepped in to prevent this. I had to remain in close proximity with this guy, who continued to act in passive-aggressive ways.
After the shoulder bumping, I threatened to go to campus police. The aforementioned faculty member responded (in writing) saying: “There is no proof of this ever happening; I can’t prevent you from going to the campus police, but be warned that both of you can get expelled."
Also prior to this, I had reported several racist incidents from another student. A few example quotes are:

"you fucking Indians" in a very threatening tone,
"don’t tell me you fucking Indians count so fast,"
"You Indians and Chinese are taking over,"
or in a mocking tone: "It’s funny there is racism in your country."

When I showed this faculty member documentation of these events, he wrote to me in an email: "I don’t agree with your assessment that there is anything racist in these incidents." He also said the racist PhD student was "special" (though there is no written evidence of him saying this).
Another teaching faculty member had been similarly racist. He said things like:

"I was scared to come here initially because I thought I would have to learn Hebrew",
"I'm so white I'll never be mistaken for an Italian who gets mistaken for a terrorist when doing Math on a plane"
Telling a room full of Chinese students and a couple of Indian students: "If you speak in Mandarin or Hindi in the corridors you will get into serious trouble, like some Chinese students and postdocs from the past who were speaking Chinese in the corridors and it created a lot of mistrust and there were very serious complaints" (no-one else has ever heard of these incidents).

Further, he physically intimidated me and barged into my office at one point. The faculty member said he had not done anything inappropriate (again no written evidence of this specifically). In fact he said, it is commendable and shows the teaching faculty member is very socially aware and aware of his white privilege.
I would not have necessarily made an issue out of this again, but I recently received a threatening letter from the dean and this faculty member. This letter warned that I could be "withdrawn" and stated that I wouldn't be allowed to defend a thesis right away. I replied saying "Are you sure you want to take such a tone after the murder of George Floyd?" Their reply was: "If you keep speaking like this, we will 'withdraw' you."
How should I proceed after these incidents? I'm particularly interested in legal recourse (though the incidents mentioned may be hard to prove in a court of law, although I have these written emails from our faculty member).

There's a lot to parse here, particularly in the lengthy comments section.  The way I see it is you've got two options:

Go outside of the department for help
Avoid these conflicts and finish

It seems apparent that the department is not going to help you through this, since you mention both the Dean and the department chair being involved negatively.  If you opt for number one, you should look for school-wide resources, similar to Title IX coordinators for gender issues.  I'm not aware of this being standardized, so you should look through your university's resources.
I think whether you go with option 1 probably depends on how close you are to finishing.  If you're close, and you've been able to work successfully with your advisor, is it possible to minimize, or even cut, all contact with the rest of the department, and just get your degree?  It's hard to swallow injustice, but from a utilitarian point of view, there may not be much to gain by fighting with the people in charge of the department you're in.  Letting bullying by fellow PhD students go unanswered by simply avoiding them galls me, even, and I'm the one giving the advice!  But you should at least weigh the option when considering what's best for you; fighting racism in your department, or escaping with your PhD.
Of course if you're not close to finishing, option two becomes far less viable.  I'm sorry you're in such a toxic environment, and I hope you can finish your degree successfully despite it.  Perhaps some combination of 1 and 2 is possible - it seems sensible to immediately begin avoiding the sources of conflict in your department, even if you do opt to challenge their behavior at a higher level.

Do you have smartphone? Just install app called IP Webcam(I am not sponsoring this, I don't even know the meaning of sponsoring), now follow all procedure set it all up, it works even if your smartphone is locked. It can simply record videos and audios of them. If you can successfully record the incidents and then present them as proof, you are done with your part, let them handle the legal stuff now. Of course as mentioned by one of the answerer, if you are close to finishing your degree, better come home safe and quick! I wish I could help you real quick.


Will I be held responsible for working with a supervisor accused of sexual misconduct? I am a first-year Ph.D. student. In the last year of my undergrad I began a research project with my then-advisor, who planned to hand me off to his former postdoc (let's call him John) who is tenured at my current institution. I believe that John is the only researcher working in this subfield at my current institution. However, I have recently learned John was actually on administrative leave for the spring and fall semesters of 2020, because he was accused of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a female graduate student. He is back now and I do not know if the university's investigation found him at fault. I am trying to determine the appropriate path forward for myself. Currently I am tempted to quickly finish this project, with the help of my undergraduate advisor rather than John as much as possible, and then get out of that subfield; after all, I'm just a first-year, and should be able to switch without too much trouble.
I have two questions about how I may proceed. The second is more important, the first being more of an IPS.SE question than anything.
Is it appropriate to ask the department chair or another authority figure if John was found "guilty"? Though I am a man, I am uncomfortable working with John if the allegations turned out to be true. I have to weight my discomfort against the fact that I really enjoyed the project, and would strongly prefer to finish it this year. On the other hand, he's back, and teaching calculus no less, so maybe the truth turned out to not be as severe as the allegations. In any case, my decision would be a lot easier to make with this information (in fact it seems that the department may have tried to hide the reason John was on administrative leave from the first-years, though the other graduate students all knew). However, I fear that because I have not established much of a personal connection with the authority figures here (thanks mainly due to COVID) that if I ask I will just come off as a gossip.
Will having worked with John, knowing what he was accused of, tarnish my own academic reputation? I certainly don't endorse John's actions (and, again, don't know what he was actually accused of, or whether he was found guilty) and don't intend for him to be my thesis adviser -- I just want to get this one project done, and following the suggestions of this Academia.SE post it seems like I should just go ahead with the project, but I'm not sure if the reputation hit will be worth it. So suppose that I work with John, even though I know he was credibly accused of misconduct. I write a paper, coauthored with John. I recognize that my actions may come off as callous towards the victim of the misconduct, and while I don't know her identity, I strongly suspect that her research interests are similar to mine. Should I expect my reputation to suffer?

The matter is best left to the official circles. Do not pry, do not gossip. As for being tainted, you are just a student and dependant, and if you neither enabled nor profited from the prof's (alleged, we don't know) misconduct, you should be fine. But if you start poking your nose into matters yourself, you'll get into a lot of trouble, from being seen as a nuisance to the officials, to getting the prof upset, to violating privacy laws, to unwittingly becoming a witness.
A career-limiting move.

It looks as if you have placed John in a "guilty" category in your own mind, although you know nothing about it. Acting on rumors and gossip, and especially in the "sexual harassment" area is particularly nasty. Doing a project with John will of course not hurt you, unless you have your own illegal issues. However, I would strongly suggest you switch to another person to work with, mostly for John's sake and then for yours.


How to split two papers that Google Scholar incorrectly thinks are the same paper? For some reason I don't understand, Google Scholar thinks two of my papers are the same, despite different titles, co-authors, and publication years. When I click on one ("Resonant absorption as mode conversion?") it lists 27 versions, most of which are the completely different paper ("Three Dimensional MHD Wave Propagation and Conversion to Alfvén Waves near the Solar Surface. I"). It therefore combines the citations for the two. How can I split them? I even tried deleting both papers and adding them manually from scratch, but without success.

By now there is an option when editing the merged GoogleScholar article's version as shown in the example below. The option is called "Unmerge this article and add it to my profile as a separate entry."

"unmerge" in GoogleScholar is not possible.
SOLUTION: delete the [merged articles] noted with *, then add them separately ;-)
it worked for me..
Good luck!!


Is using the phrase "... is left as an exercise for the reader" considered good style in academic papers/theses? Possible arguments:

Pro

For brevity for trivial deductions

Contra

Looks like the writer could not be bothered to write an extensive explanation
Definition of what is trivial to which reader and what not

I believe it's only appropriate in the type of writing where you are in a position to give the reader excercises. That is, in course books or other learning material. There, I think it's fine, assuming you've already given enough information for them to be able to perform such an excercise.

In papers or theses, you're actually trying to convince the reader that you're right - the reader is in the position of power, not you, as you want something from them (to accept your ideas) and not vice versa. Therefore, I'd never write such a phrase in a paper or thesis.

It's of course a viable requirement to leave out some parts of the work, either because of space constraints or because they're trivial, long but straightforward, would derail the course of the text, or something similar. If possible, such parts can be delegated to an appendix, or left out entirely. But I would accompany this with different phrasing, something like this:

  The formula (7) can be obtained from (6) using straightforward application of [insert appropriate math branch here]

  A detailed proof of statement (4) unfortunately exceeds the scope of this paper.

  The derivation of (3) from (1) is too long to present here, but it can be worked out using a symbolic computation system such as Mathematica.

  Equation (7) follows from a straightforward application of this-or-that theorem to equation (5); we refer the reader to existing literature on the topic for details of this.

The phrase about an exercise for the reader is very passé, and can only
be used in textbooks.

The normal phrase in research articles is ''we omit the details''.


When should someone be a coauthor instead of being in the acknowledgements? We had a master's student working on our project.  He set up a database for us, and wrote some of the initial code with me in a pair programming session.  At one point, he had more commits to the repository than any of the other students working on the project.  Then he went to do an internship for the summer, and after that my advisor did not want to keep him on the project for some reason, even though I thought he was friendly and easy to work with.

My advisor chose not to list him as a coauthor, and put him in the acknowledgements section instead.  However, there was another guy (a professor) who didn't write any code at all, and wasn't there throughout most of the project, but he wrote the introduction and related work sections for us, and he got listed as a coauthor, even though he probably did a day's worth of work on the project (maybe two).  In fact, my advisor gave him the coveted last author position, even though my advisor came up with the idea and directed the whole project.

What determines who gets put as a coauthor, and who gets put in the acknowledgement sections?

Usually, the key indicator for co-authorship is the contribution of creative content. Did the student have own ideas that improved the paper? Was the program/database he wrote just a technical thing, or did it contribute scientifically? These are some questions that can help make/understand the decision.

There is a fine line to walk sometimes. Especially between different subject areas, there can be discrepancies who gets to be co-author. Sometimes everybody is counted, sometimes only the first author and his advisor(s) without any students.

I've worked with people on projects that I thought should've been coauthors, but was told not to include them.  Part of the reason was that they were not one of the official collaborators on the project.  They helped, but in no way contributed to the actual manuscript.

In general, if someone is a co-author, they will be given the opportunity to make revisions on the manuscript as it goes through the peer-review process.  It is advisable to keep this list to a minimum, so that only the core group of contributors are listed as authors.  Otherwise, the revision process can take too much time and publishing the manuscript gets difficult.

If someone helped to write the grant proposal that funded the project, they will almost certainly be listed as a co-author.  Another thing to keep in mind is that a co-author will be a representative for your manuscript, so it is advisable that they completely understand the scope of the project and research material.  And, sometimes its just good to have someone well-respected in the field as a co-author, even if all they did was "write the introduction", because they have experienced insight.  So, if they can get involved after most of the research work is done, they can contribute to the manuscript nicely in just a few hours.  This is in contrast to a student who did weeks of coding on the project, but may not be able to contribute any real substance to the manuscript.