"academia"

"Q: What is the h-index exactly and how does it work? What is the h-index, and how does it work ? A: The h-index is a measure of the impact of someone's publication list. An h-index of 10 for example means that the person has published 10 papers with at least 10 citations. The total number of papers published may be higher, but only 10 will have 10 or more citations. Critics argue that this measure disadvantages young researchers who did not have time to publish a lot and whose work has not been published for long and thus may not have attracted many citations. Other criticisms include that it makes a researcher focus on how to increase the citation count for a paper that may be not that good but would increase the h-index. For more explanation, see for example the Wikipedia article. "

"academia"

"Q: How do I select a graduate program? I've applied to several graduate (MSc) programs overseas, and I've received several acceptance letters. Now I have the problem to select one of those programs. How should I do it? What should I look into each program? No program offers funding, and some programs are elegible for a local scholarship. I can fund some programs with my own money. A: May I ask why you chose an MSc instead of a PhD? What is your career goal? I don't mean to imply one is better than the other. If you are going to spend a lot of money and time, it should be well-spent. In some places, like the UK, not much more time is needed to get a PhD beyond an MSc. In the U.S., PhD's in the sciences are usually completely funded. Per badp this seems not to be the case in Italy. For either an MSc or PHD I suggest looking at the career paths of former graduates of that lab. This is something I wish someone had told me when I entered my lab. The charisma of the lab boss or excellence of the equipment are meaningless if, after 2-3 years, you can't move on as you hoped. Trace the career path of the last few graduates - from MSc all the way to how many wanted to and got faculty positions and how long it took them. In my experience what you do is much less important that who you know, which comes from getting into the right environment. A: As you are presumably pursuing this degree so you can eventually work in industry, I would consider the following: Find out which programs are more highly regarded in industry. Consider the success rates of each university in helping their graduates find employment; this can vary significantly from institution to institution. Consider the extra-curricular aspects; what does each program's city have to offer? Programs with ties to local industry may help you obtain some useful internship experience. A: Depending on which country you are talking about, there may be league tables for the universities in that country. While the total ranking can be misleading, they provide useful information such as staff to student ratios -- the higher the ratio, the more opportunity you will have to ask questions. I would also look at the reputation of the universities in the specific field that you want to do your MSc in, e.g. how many people work in that area and are they well-known (involved in many conferences/journals and similar). In the end it might boil down to money though, so you should probably look at what you can afford first (not only in terms of tuition, but also living expenses in that area). "

"academia"

"Q: Submitting a subset of my work to ArXiv I've been thinking of publishing a subset of my work in fluid dynamics to arXiv. I realize the following about arXiv: ArXiv isn't a journal I would need to be endorsed to submit an article on arXiv The reasons I would like to submit a subset of my work to arXiv are: It would only be a subset of my work thereby NOT negating my chances of publishing work in a regular journal. I would like to disseminate information to the society as soon as possible. Does anyone have any thoughts or comments about this? Is there something that I'd need to feel uneasy about? I realize that there has been another question regarding submission of work to arXiv and I read it here. A: Opinions on when to submit things to arXiv vary both between and within fields. See To Post or Not to Post: Publishing to the arXiv Before Acceptance How to use arXiv? for lots of opinions. You should talk to your advisor/colleagues who can give you a better sense of how people in your field think about this. "

"academia"

"Q: What are the most important criteria to consider when hiring postdocs for a research group? One of the most important challenges that academics will face is group management. Although this takes many forms for graduate students, undergraduate assistants, and so on, I believe postdocs are a fairly "universal"—a professor hires a postdoc specifically for his group. However, it's not necessarily clear what qualities to look for in a postdoc. Does it make a difference if it's your group's first or second postdoc, versus the n'th postdoc? How much weight should one give to letters of recommendation? How do you analyze a publication record, especially when towards the end of the PhD, many papers are often still unpublished and therefore "embargoed?" Are there any criteria that applies specifically to postdocs that might not be considered in, say, hiring for industry or business? A: My answer, item by item: I think that there is a difference if this is yet another postdoc or your only postdoc. But most important, we should pay attention to the ratio postdoc/permanent researchers. If the ratio is low (few postdoc, lot of permanent researchers), you can choose to work with "junior" postdoc (=someone not completely capable for working alone), while if the ratio is high, you need postdoc that are in fact already at the level of an assistant prof. But at some point I think we must ask ourselves if we always need one more postdoc. I guess this will depend on the field. In theoretical fields, when we hire a postdoc, this is to work with him. In some more practical fields, we tend to hire postdoc to make them working for us. The two cases are different : in the first case we need someone that will have ultimately an academic position, in the latter we need someone for coding, experimenting, etc. Personally, I am not interested in the letters. I ask for references and I take my phone to know more about the candidate. Letters are always telling that the candidate is great, even if this is not completely true. I ask the candidate his/her papers, even those unpublished, and I read them. Then I contact some of the other authors to know more about who done what. Clearly yes. A postdoc is a researcher, I think that the way of working is very different : you can spend a lot of time without being "productive" when you are a postdoc, which is not the case in industry. This can be depressing, so we have to make sure that a postdoc (which has less guidance than a PhD student) can handle that. "

"academia"

"Q: As a postdoc with a one-year contract in Switzerland, am I allowed for a B visa? I worked for a year in Switzerland, but I have been given an L visa, even as a European. This has strong limitations in terms of rentals and bank services. Other people got a B visa for the same contract. Was this a mistake, and how can my university enforce a request for a B visa ? A: When did you graduate? A new law came into effect in 2010 which requires that all new postdoc hires of individuals who held a PhD for more than 2 years at the start of the contract be only given L permits. (I only found out after I had a similar discussion with human resources a few weeks ago.) If you have had your degree for less than 2 years, it is possible your university can sort it out for you. If you have had your degree for more than 2 years, there's pretty much nothing the universities can do (aside for lobbying for a change of the law). In regards to bank services: for a place to put your money, try PostFinance for which you can open an account at most post offices. They care a bit less about the issue with the permits. The main problem with having an L instead of a B permit, with regards to banking in general, is that they may be unwilling to give you a credit card or extend you a loan; you shouldn't have problem getting a place to put your money. "

"academia"

"Q: Teaching Assistantships and research I'm working as a TA now, and I've found that I'm spending an inordinate amount of time on my TA-ship. Is this normal? Furthermore, is this expected? I'm worried that my research career will suffer because of my lack of research productivity. A: I suppose it depends on the factors that are causing you to spend more time teaching than you think you should. You should talk to (1) the other TAs and (2) the course leader/director. Find out what is expected and what others are doing. If you are a relatively new graduate student, then I think it's normal to spend more time teaching and preparing for your teaching. As you start teaching the same courses repeatedly, the time you have to spend in preparation will decrease. If you think of the time you are teaching as working on a craft that you will use for the rest of your career, then it is time well spent. A: In Canada, TA's usually have a contract that specifies how many hours they should be working per week / TA term. If you are going way over that you could talk to the course coordinator. Your supervisor may also get upset if you are spending a large proportion away from you research project, which his / her grant is paying you to work on. This is especially true if you are approaching your reclassification exam -- assuming you are going that route. A: I know what you feel like. When I was a fresh TA, I spent an "inordinate" amount of time with my TA-ship. I came to understand that both my research and my teaching assignments did have equal priority and I couldn't neglect one and give preference to the other. There were always weeks when my teaching load was more manageable and I could progress my research and vice versa. Of course, how the dynamics of your advisor affect this have a major implication on what "inordinate" would mean. Here was my experience as a TA the first time I did it: Taught two sections of a lab, each requiring about 2 hours of lecture (4hrs total), 5 hours of preparation (5 hours total), 1 office hour each (2 hours total) and 2 hours grading each (3-4 hours total as I graded the same thing for both sections) Graded 200 homework assignments a week for a course what was out of my specialization (8-10 hours a week) Total TA time per week ~ 25. I also had to do research and that time commitment was highly variable! I hope that generally gives you perspective. Some background about me: Been in grad school since Fall 2006. Pursuing a PhD in mechanical engineering. International student. "

"academia"

"Q: How to recruit a PhD student without a strong connection to teaching? As a postdoc, I'm considering to apply to research-only positions (for instance in a research institute, and not a university), and I know that one of the responsibilities of being a researcher is to recruit PhD students. I personally only know people (including me) who have been "recruited" for a PhD by one of their teacher (usually at Master level), and so I wouldn't be sure of how to proceed in order to recruit a PhD student as a young researcher: Are there some specialized websites where to post ads? Is it better to contact some teachers to see if they have good students to recommend? Moreover, in this case, which criteria can one use? If I were to teach, I would have a whole semester to know a student, and to decide whether it would make a good fit for a PhD, but how to do that during a one-hour interview? A: PhD studentships are quite often advertised like "normal" jobs, i.e. on general job boards/recruting websites. If you have contacts, by all means use them. As for evaluating the candidates, similar guidelines as for evaluating applicants for any jobs apply. I don't think there's a one-fits-all answer. Note that the hiring process may also depend on what institution you'd be working for. They might have an HR department that screens/selects the candidates. A: There are a couple of ways to determine whether a particular graduate student is a good candidate for your lab. Subject knowledge. While this is often unfair to the student, I know many researchers who will only accept students who are familiar with their area of research. This saves time in getting the student up to speed, which can take many months, as you probably know. Simple personality matches. By the time they're looking into your lab, they've already been accepted into the graduate program and kept their grades up high enough to be applying to labs, which means that (assuming you agree with the standards of the program) they are fairly smart. Your job is determine whether the student would be a good match for your lab in particular, and whether you want to work with them on a daily basis for the next 5+ years. Rotations. Many programs have graduate student rotations, which will give you an opportunity to interact with many students, and get the chance to know them better than the one-hour interview you mentioned. Aside from this, read up on general interviewing tips. Almost all the articles you'll find discussing general hiring advice is applicable to recruiting graduate students/postdocs as well. A: I am presuming by your question that you are talking about working in Europe; in North America, scientists at non-academic research labs generally are not generally expected to recruit PhD students. Unfortunately, I don't think there is an easy method for applying for positions outside of posting announcements on sites like academia.edu or TIPTOP. However, you will need to make sure that you are clear on your future workplace's requirements and regulations regarding the recruiting of graduate students. Many such institutes do not have PhD-granting programs of their own; in that case, you would need to make sure you were affiliated with a program that does grant doctoral degrees before you begin recruitment. "

"academia"

"Q: In U.S., why do many engineering departments care about professional engineer registration? I have seen many engineering departments want professional engineer registration. Why do they care? A: There are 2 major theories about credentials: human capital theory and signaling theory. Under HCT, a license (such as a PE) shows that you have accumulated a credible amount of knowledge (you must graduate from an accredited engineering school) and experience (you need to have worked for 4 years after your bachelors to sit for the PE exam). Under signalling theory, the PE shows that you have done what it takes to legally call yourself an engineer. One interesting comparison of the differences of HCT and ST is The Career Consequences of Failing versus Forgetting. You may know just as much as another person, but the one of you that passes some hurdle signals to prospective employers that the hurdle passer is the better candidate. This is because hiring a person is trying to predict future behavior/success with limited information, and many people use signals as heuristics. You will also find out that universities hire people who have degrees. A cynical view is that they have a vested interest in maintaining the supply of people who get degrees. A signalling theory viewpoint is that universities think degrees are important enough that they only hire teachers who have them. In many fields of engineering, your working career will be very short if you do not pass your PE. Civil is one such. Other engineering fields, such as Electrical (which is mine), typically have state exemptions for manufacturing, so very few EEs take their PE. When I was younger, I was quite opposed to licensure. Now, I see it as a way to distinguish myself from other candidates. One interesting blog post that inspired me to sit for my PE exam is this one. Another is a dissertation (which is not online) titled "Hiring and Inequality in Elite Professional Service Firms". My advice is to take your EIT and PE exams as soon as practical. Some US universities require you to take your EIT exam during your senior year (as in they won't issue your diploma without passing it). Disclaimer: I am registered to take the PE exam this April. A: This is because, in the U.S. as in many other countries (like Canada), Engineering is a regulated profession, like medicine and law. To call yourself an engineer, or to perform certain 'engineering' tasks, you need to be accredited (or registered or ..., name changes by country) to do so. They care for the same reason that they want lawyers that have passed their bar exam to teach law, etc. "

"academia"

"Q: Will people judge me negatively for skipping department seminars? I'm a graduate student in the Earth Sciences. The breadth of my departments runs the gamut from geobiology to geophysics and everything in between. As a result, a large number of the department seminars that get hosted are on topics that I have little or no background in and do not relate to my research field in any way. The expectation seems to be that everyone should go to these type of events to stay abreast of major events and gain some breadth of knowledge, but whenever I go to one that is far outside my sphere of knowledge I end up resenting the wasted time. To me, it seems like a huge waste to sit through a 60 minute talk on something I don't have the background knowledge necessary to understand in even a rudimentary way. Sometimes this is the fault of the presenter for not preparing a talk for a broad enough audience, but with biology talks I know that the fault is my own. Don't ask me the difference between a protein and an amino acid; I have no idea! So lately I've felt a strong temptation to blow off some of these events reasoning that it would be vastly better to get in another experiment that day than go sit through a lecture I'm not equipped to understand. But I'm worried that other people will think I'm being a slacker as a result. Do you look down on colleagues who sometimes skip out on talks far outside their expertise? And, Is skipping an event like this better or worse than showing up but discreetly reclaiming time during bad talks by studying on a smartphone? Obviously, whipping out a laptop during a lecture would be very rude, but flipping through flashcards on my ipod while sitting in the back of the hall would be a low-key way to reclaim some of that time during talks when I have no idea what they are talking about. A: I would say that you should always go to seminar, unless you have some very compelling reason not to go (you are away, you are working on an experiment, you are trying to finish writing your thesis, etc.). There are four reasons: Scientific courtesy. To travel somewhere and give a talk to the 10 people who show up (5 of whom you already knew) is really irritating. Good or bad -- you learn something about presentation. Even if you say "wow, I should never do that in a talk" your hour has been well spent. You get perspective. You never know when something that someone says will make you see your own work in a different context. The speaker may someday be interviewing you for a job. It's better to be able to say "I heard your seminar" than "Oh, sorry, I missed your seminar when you visited." A: Try to always go. If you're a first/second year grad student, go because you have to. If you're a third/fourth year grad student, go to learn about disciplines and topics other than yours. If you're a fifth+ year grad student, go to network. A: Let's ask another question: is there at least one good reason not to go at the seminars? Time consumption: except if you have a 1 hour seminar each day, you can probably afford the time loss due to the seminar. BTW, it it a time loss only if you go and don't speak to anybody, don't ask questions and don't try to understand a little piece of what is presented. It is not profitable: really? A lot of research results start with ideas from elsewhere. Of course, it can be different for earth sciences. Even if you don't see something directly useful, you will probably be confronted to different ways of thinking. "I am going to the seminars with my laptop/smartphone, people will think I am rude": and they will be right if you use your laptop for other things that taking notes about the talk. To be fair, this can be considered OK to go with your laptop for working during the talk if your the dean, or the head of the department... Well, in fact I cannot see good reasons not to go, except if it takes you 5+ hours a week... "

"academia"

"Q: University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D? What I'm trying to understand is, to what degree does the status/rank of the University (where one completes his/her Ph.D) matter while shaping his/her career after graduation? I would like to know the weight given to one's school in both the following cases: While applying for post-docs/faculty positions in academia While applying to industrial research labs For instance, I've read on some forums (I can't locate the link now) that while considering prospective applications for tenure-track faculty positions, very few Universities accept a candidate who has completed his/her Ph.D from a lower ranked school having a lesser "brand" value, irrespective of the fact whether he/she has published equally original work as his/her counterpart from an Ivy league college. How much truth is in this statement? It would be really great if someone already in academia, either as a newly-accepted faculty or someone on the Faculty Hiring committee could share their experiences/statistics on this regard. I'm simply interested to know the answer, without commenting at all on whether such a practice is justifiable. Similarly, what about recruitment to internationally acclaimed research labs (like IBM T.J.Watson lab or Microsoft research lab) - what importance do they place on the pedigree of a candidate's college, before taking into consideration what they published ? I'm personally interested in answers related to the field of Computer Science (theory), but the question is applicable to any prospective grad student in any discipline in my opinion. Feel free to share your personal experiences post-Ph.D in detail, as that would give me (and future viewers of this question) about what its like to carve a career once you are out of school! A: Let me answer as a theoretical computer scientist with former PhD students in tenure-track academic positions and many years of experience on faculty hiring committees. (However, my understanding is that the selection process at industrial research labs like IBM T.J. Watson, Microsoft Research, Google Research, AT&T Research, etc., is really not that different from academic recruiting.) As always, take my advice with a grain of salt; I'm as guilty of confirmation bias as any other human being. Nobody in theoretical computer science cares where you got your degree. Really. We. Do. Not. Care. We only care about the quality and visibility of your results. Publish strong papers and give brilliant talks at top conferences. Convince well-known active researchers to write letters raving about your work. Make a good product and get superstars to sell it for you. Do all that, and we'll definitely want to hire you, no matter where you got your degree. On the other hand, without a strong and visible research record, independent from your advisor, you are much less likely to get a good academic job, no matter where you got your degree. (This is less true in more applied areas of CS, in my experience, mostly because it's significantly harder for PhD students in those areas to work independently from their advisors.) But. Faculty candidates are necessarily judged by people who are not experts in their field. Without the expertise to judge whether your work is really good, those people must look at secondary data that correlate strongly with successful researchers. One of those secondary characteristics is "pedigree". Did you get your degree at MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, CMU, another top-10 department, or somewhere else? (What's an "Ivy League"?) How good/famous is your advisor? If they're really paying attention: Where did your advisor's other PhD students get jobs, and how well are they doing now? Fortunately, most good departments do make a serious effort to understand the quality and impact of applicants' results, instead of relying only on secondary data. Also, secondary data matters considerably less once you actually have an interview. And. In my experience, where you get your degree is strongly correlated with successful research. I got my Master's degree at UC Irvine in 1992 and my PhD at UC Berkeley in 1996. The biggest difference I saw between the two departments was the graduate-student research culture. Every theory student at Berkeley regularly produced good results and published them at top conferences. When the FOCS deadline rolled around each year, the question I heard in the hallways from other students was not "You know the deadline is coming up?" or "Are you submitting anything?" but "What are you submitting?", because "nothing" was the least likely answer. Everyone simply assumed that if you were there, you were ready and able to do publishable research. Publishing a paper wasn't exceptional, it was just what you did. That cloud of free-floating confidence/arrogance had a huge impact on my own development as a researcher. I've seen similar research cultures at a few other top CS departments, especially MIT, Stanford, and CMU. (Caveat: This is an incomplete list, and there are many departments that I've never visited.) tl;dr: Yes, getting a PhD from a top department definitely helps, but more by helping you become a better researcher than by making you look better on paper. A: The short answer is that it can matter fairly significantly in where you get your post-doctoral fellowship and eventual professorship, and it will matter very significantly if you choose to follow a career outside of academia. When looking for a job in academia, potential employers will look at many factors, including publication record, research success, research track, who your advisor was, etc. The school is important but other factors are involved. When looking for a job outside of academia, they will look at your GPA and the name of the university from which you graduated. In this case, your university could easily be a "make it or break it" part of the deal. A: The larger the workplace, and the more applicants they're responsible for screening, the more important a role the academic pedigree will end up playing. A small business with a handful of applicants—or a professor hiring a single postdoc—probably doesn't need to screen out candidates as efficiently or as ruthlessly as someone that gets dozens or hundreds of applications for an opening. To point out specific data points, my previous employer had a "preferred" list of schools for its technical hires; if you went to a school that wasn't on the list, it was a lot harder to get hired, and some hiring managers wouldn't even try to go through the work needed to get around this ruling. In some cases, this even applied to people who had been out of school for decades! So, your pedigree is almost never a disadvantage; and as I have been told by many an academic, it can be of enormous benefit to you, particularly if you make the most of your opportunities at a big-name school. "

"academia"

"Q: Usefulness of prior industry experience before entering grad school? I'm wondering what impact does prior industry experience (by which I mean 2+ years in a non-trivial functional role in any established organization) lend to the profile of someone who is entering grad school for a Ph.D. (in my case, its Computer Science, but I expect the question to be applicable to other areas as well) ? Do admission committees look upon it as a bonus point, seeing that the applicant has managed real-world responsibilities successfully in the past, thereby improving the chances of acquiring funding (in terms of TA/RA) ? More importantly, does it help the candidate during (and post Ph.D), when he is looking for research internships/post-docs ? In both cases, assuming the position the applicant held is in a completely different area from his/her research, what other factors become important in the both the above cases? Is it the difficulty of projects the candidate undertook (which, frankly, very few people outside the organization are equipped to judge), or the level of success (promotions, accolades acquired during the stint in industry) that matter, or are there other parameters as well ? Also, in case it is deemed that such a profile offer limited/no advantage to the grad student, it would be nice to know why that may be the case - after all, most (if not all!) organizations are run for profit, and they would tend to have very little use for someone who is not productive or capable of learning. A: I sit on graduate admissions committees (in computer science, in the US), and I spent 4 years in industry before going to grad school. I agree with others: Industry experience per se is not particularly attractive, unless it's directly related to your proposed area of study. (Industry experience may be more attractive in more applied areas of CS; I'm a theoretician.) But it depends on what you do while you're in industry. Admissions committees are looking primarily for strong evidence of research potential — raw "wattage", intellectual maturity, independence, initiative, creativity, attention to detail, eagerness to fight with hard problems, and most importantly, real results. Recommendation letters that specifically address those qualities, whether from academia or from industry, will increase your chances of admission. If you just sit in your cubicle and competently produce the code that your manager asks for, not so much. My industry experience was a point in my favor during my academic job hunt, but only a minor one. A: As someone who sits on an admissions committee, this isn't idle speculation, but it is a personal perspective. I agree with the other responders that industrial experience probably isn't of much interest to an admissions committee, unless you get a strong letter of recommendation from a supervisor who can make a convincing case for admission to the graduate program. The issue is that while you are in industry, unless you're in a position where your actively doing things related to your graduate school education, your knowledge of the "basics" is atrophying, so it will actually be somewhat more difficult to get back up to speed for the coursework typically required for a PhD program. The longer you're in industry, the harder it typically is to play catchup. That said, industrial experience may be of interest to an individual professor within a department, and would certainly help with employment following the PhD program. "

"academia"

"Q: Changing mailing and e-mail addresses as corresponding author--which to include? I finished my undergrad last year and have since been working in the private sector. I'm about to submit a paper with my senior thesis results. Two questions about corresponding author information: I'm listing my current affiliation in the private sector for various reasons. We are moving offices, and our address will be changing in about 3 months. Should I use the new mailing address or the old mailing address? I know it's kind of silly since nobody sends mail anymore, but I'm curious either way. I will probably be going to grad school in a couple of years, and my private sector e-mail will not be accessible if I leave. Would it be passé for me to list my @gmail.com address for correspondence to ensure I'm always reachable? Thanks! A: I agree with you and shan23, it doesn't really matter, but the newer is probably better. Well, to be bluntly honest, I tend to have a negative a-priori when I see an author of a paper with a gmail address (especially when I review it, when it's not double-blind). I know it's stupid, because it should only be about the quality of the work, but I can't really help it. Mostly because I know that there is no authentication with gmail address (I potentially could get an alan.turing@gmail.com address). I think it's ok to give an address that will change, after all, few people spend their entire career in the same institution. A: As you mentioned, the postal address does not matter - but in any case, I'd lean towards the newer address! Its definitely OK to do so - I submitted my Masters thesis with my gmail.com account, due to the exact same scenario as outlined by you (currently working, am hoping to go to grad school this fall). "

"academia"

"Q: How to evaluate potential advisers on grounds other than their research/publications? While accepting an offer to grad school, one is basically entering into a lasting relationship with one's adviser - most likely, someone whom the applicant has never met before, and the only exposure has been through the potential adviser's website/publications. It is in the interest of both parties to ensure (to the greatest possible extent) that there are no personal/professional traits of either that hamper the formation of a pleasant working relationship - no-one would want to go through the ordeal of having to change advisers midway! While the faculty has a chance to have a good look at the applicant's profile as well as his motivations (through his grades and SOP), the applicant doesn't have a similar opportunity. So, I'm interested to know what parameters can be used to gauge a potential fit. I've thought of the following: Past students: Did anyone ever drop out/change advisers midway, and if so, for what reasons? These would be a bit hard to find though, as I don't expect the faculty concerned would list them on their website. It would be great if anyone could let me know how to find out the list of incoming students to a department for any year. Publication rate, taking into account the venues where they were accepted. Time taken to graduate - though I accept this is more dependent on the student, a median figure should be telling ... What they did post Ph.D. - did anyone get tenure if they went into academia, or is almost everyone unable to break out of being a post-doc? Tenure status: I'm a bit unsure about this, so wanted the community's opinions about it. Just so that I'm clear, I'm only trying to calibrate the applicant's expectations about the working style of his potential adviser - and hence need to know to what extent are the following "typical" assumptions valid. Tenured professor A full professor is more likely to get grant funding, hence less time spent on TAship - but could also mean less time/effort spent on interactions with students (either being busy with other projects/talks, or due to more commitments to family at that age). Tenure-track faculty (Assistant profs) More likely to be young and energetic, and could translate to more time spent on one-to-one discussions with grad students - but funding may prove to be an issue, and may have to be on TA for a longer period. What other factors would be relevant in this matter, and to what extent am I correct/incorrect in either the factors considered, or for undertaking this exercise at all? A: There are a few things I would generally look at in a potential advisor beyond just their research/publications: Who were the co-authors on their papers? Are they actively collaborating with people in your field - people who could be potentially useful for post-doc posts, etc.? Do their students often show up as primary authors on publications, or are they invariably buried in the middle of a long list of authors? Personality. This goes beyond just do you like the person. Do they prefer frequent updates, meetings and the like, or is the occasional check-in enough? Are they a morning person and you prefer working nights, or the other way around? If you send a long email, would it get answered, or do they not often fail to answer emails? I've had some professors who I'm very fond of nevertheless would make poor advisors because of wildly disparate working styles. How are their students funded? Your funding stream can have serious impact on your completion time and productivity. If every semester, its a desperate Pick-N-Mix of funded side projects, TAships, etc. you're going to have a lot on your plate that, while potentially an interesting experience, will slow down your progress. Where do their students end up? Do they have decent career trajectories? Are they supportive of alternative paths like industry or government? Rank and age. A young professor might be more aggressive and eager, on the other hand they're less established, don't necessarily have the same level of institutional support, and if they're not yet tenured, its possible they'll disappear. An older professor may be more established and stable, but might not use "cutting edge" techniques, or feel less of an internal drive to publish. A: You listed it in your question, but just to state it as an answer, you will always want to look into any professor before joining their lab. This includes: Looking up their publications and becoming familiar with their research style; do you agree with how he performs research? Does his thinking style seem similar to yours? Speaking with current and past students from that lab and getting their sense of what it's like working for that professor Talking with the professor yourself and seeing whether there's a personality match Simply looking up their name online and seeing what comes up I would suggest that tenure status is not as important when deciding what lab to join, unless the professor is having difficulty securing continuous funding. You can ask about funding sources when speaking face to face. Most professors are equally dedicated to their job whether they have tenure or not. Remember, you will be spending numerous years with this person, and there's a very high cost of switching professors as the years add up. Make sure that you not only like their research but you also get along with them. A: If you can get any information, don't underestimate the importance of simple personality factors---do you expect to be able to get along personally with your potential advisor? This is hard to gauge if you don't have the chance to meet the person, but talking to current or former students may give you some idea. Also, I'd add to your list how your advisor is viewed in the rest of the field. Not just on the quality of research (though that's important too), but again, how much people like your advisor personally. Again, a small factor, but having other people in your field like your advisor can make a difference. Unless you have a very close decision and need a tie-breaker, I'm not sure it's worth trying to read the tea leaves about what tenure status implies, since I suspect the person-by-person variation is greater than the between group variation. "

"academia"

"Q: Advisor isn't advising I'm having the problem that my advisor isn't providing me with any real guidance. To avoid making this a rant post, I'll just state the facts: my advisor is an MD/PhD, working almost full-time as an MD. He comes to the lab once a week for lab meetings, and often doesn't have time to meet. He seems to have lost interest in doing research, and isn't being helpful at all regarding how I should proceed with my research. So far, here's what I've tried and how well it worked out: Talking to department graduate chair: marginally useful, scheduled a useless meeting with me and my advisor. Nice meeting, but no results. Talk to other members of my committee: pretty useful, gave me some very good advice about my research, but I wonder how often I can use them as a resource Any other suggestions on how I can handle this? A: My answer depends on how far along you are in your research and whether you are in PhD or MD?PhD program. If you are in a PhD program and you are less than a year in leave the lab. If you are more than a year in at you next Thesis Committee meeting, if it's scientifically reasonable, try to either set a date for graduating or ask for a co-PI. If you are in the MD/PhD program, you will have to consider your PI's position and whether a lukewarm letter from someone in his position is worth your staying in the lab. If you plan to go into a competitive surgicial or medical subspecialty, it just might be. I, sadly, think that checked-out PIs- even those without the excuse of having to go see patients- are increasingly the norm. Getting to be a professor is a great way to age rapidly and burn out, especially in the biomedical sciences. Also, professors aren't selected for their mentoring skills so much as scientific productivity. Often scientific productivity means exploitation or disregard because of self-involvement rather than nurturing. A: In addition to the department chair, is there a head of graduate studies or the like (e.g., an ombudsman)? You may want to consider talking to them. Generally speaking though, unless it will severely derail your progress, I'd consider changing advisors, and starting to talk to your committee members about shifting who is your chair. "

"academia"

"Q: Do I need to have teaching experience before entering grad school? I'm considering going back to graduate school, but I've heard from a number of friends that graduate students are all required to teach. Is that the case? I have no teaching experience at all. Will that negatively affect my chances of getting in? A: In general, no, it won't. Having teaching experience might weigh in your favor in exceptional circumstances (a graduate department that needs a lot of teaching assistants, and you're "on the bubble"; you're going into an education program or something similar; or the application specifically asks for teaching experience). However, most graduate schools don't expect that students have prior teaching experience, and provide training to smooth the transition. Teaching load also varies widely from program to program: some science and engineering students TA for one semester over a five-year program, while humanities graduate students may have to TA every semester to pay for their studies. "

"academia"

"Q: Submitting the same research to multiple conferences I'm aware that it's a violation of terms for most publishers to submit the same article to more than one journal, but I frequently see authors whose papers seem very similar, particularly papers released in a single year. In my field, neuroscience, this is particularly true about conference papers; one researcher will often have numerous posters/conference papers about seemingly the same topic. What are the guidelines for acceptability regarding this type of behavior? A: According to the Committee on Publication Ethics Guidelines on Good Publication Practice, the term "redundant publication" is defined this way: "Redundant publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross reference, share the same hypothesis, data, discussion points, or conclusions." In addition, it states: "(1) Published studies do not need to be repeated unless further confirmation is required. (2) Previous publication of an abstract during the proceedings of meetings does not preclude subsequent submission for publication, but full disclosure should be made at the time of submission. (3) Re-publication of a paper in another language is acceptable, provided that there is full and prominent disclosure of its original source at the time of submission. (4) At the time of submission, authors should disclose details of related papers, even if in a different language, and similar papers in press." Note that (2) states that it is generally acceptable to present a paper in a conference and then later publish exactly the same paper in a journal, as long as you mention to the editor that the paper has been publicly presented. According to the paper Science journal editors’ views on publication ethics: Results of an international survey, "Breaches of publication ethics such as plagiarism, data fabrication and redundant publication are recognised as forms of research misconduct that can undermine the scientific literature." It also stated that redundant publication is an unethical practice. Of 16 ethical issues studied, redundant publication had the highest severity (that is, it caused editors the most concern---more than plagiarism or data fabrication). A: Rather than asking what's acceptable, I think it's worthwhile to step back and think about the purpose of scientific publication. Your goal in publishing should be to disseminate useful ideas, not to create a publication record. If you have ten papers that are all very similar, it's hard for people to learn about your ideas because they won't have time to read all those papers. Just write one good one. A: Personally, I have no qualms with submitting the same talk to multiple conferences; however, in my field (Chemical Engineering), we don't really do conference proceedings. Therefore, it's not such a big deal to present a work more than once; it's being given to different audiences that might not otherwise see the work, and it's not going into the publication record multiple times, so there really aren't any ethical violations going on. However, in a field where conference papers are required to give a talk, then ethical rules demand that you disclose if a paper has been accepted previously. If you've changed the material enough, or introduced enough new material, then it's a little bit more of a grey area. But it's still better to err on the side of caution than to get caught out. "

"academia"

"Q: How early should a graduate student begin their job search? Generally speaking, are there good "milestones" to suggest that a graduate student should initiate their job search? Roughly a year from completion? More? Less? Is there a particular time of year a job search should be kicked off? Basically: The job search, how do I time it? A: The following is condensed from advice for academic job hunts that I've read here and here - I imagine it should be somewhat applicable for jobs in industry as well: If you would be applying for a position at Fall, begin applying from summer the previous year - applications tend to be sorted during committee meets, and the earlier you apply, the fewer applications are there, so there are higher chances of getting your application noticed. Hence, you'll want to draft your research statement, teaching statement and curriculum vitæ (CV) the summer before your search. If you are applying for industrial as well as academic positions, you probably want more than one resume, since achievement, skills, and goal-oriented resumes can be more effective in the industrial setting. The middle of January is when most schools stop accepting applications. Even then, keep submitting to any position you find through February, particularly if someone there recommends you apply. You will probably hear back with invitations for interviews in January and February, but sometimes even March and April. Get your letter writers primed as early as possible. You'll need at most six letter writers, but no less than three, and you'll want to ask them at least a month in advance with all your documents. A: If you're talking about job searches in general, it's never too early to start making contacts with potential future employers. Getting on their "radar screen" early can only help you when it comes time to apply formally for jobs; in addition, if you are their "preferred" candidate, you may find a job posting "stressing" your particular research direction. When it comes time for the actual submission of applications, academic positions typically operate on an annual cycle that depends on the field, and you should plan accordingly, as given in the response by shan23. The timing for other jobs varies, in particular depending upon the state of the economy. However, at the absolute minimum, you should start applying six months before your anticipated graduation; in the current circumstances, I think twelve months ' advance lead is also acceptable. Further out, the crystal ball is probably too cloudy for both employer and applicant. "

"academia"

"Q: What's the net income of a W1/W2 german professor? I've seen a job announcement where the salary was said to be comparable to the assistant/associate professor level W1/W2 in the German system, and I was wondering how much it would exactly make in terms of net income (i.e. after ALL taxes). I found this link that states that for Western provinces, it was in 2007 between 3400 and 3900 euros gross per month. This other link states that in Hessen (which is where the position is based), the gross monthly salary is 5386 for W2 and 3901 for W1. Then, according to this calculator, a 3900 gross salary means 2167 euros net, after all taxes. So my questions are: Do these numbers make sense? Are there intermediary ranks between W1 and W2? How negotiable is the starting rank in general? Are there bonuses to take into account when you're single with no child? Is the tax system identical for german and non-german? A: The rules for a German professor are quite different than for a typical German employee. The first thing to note is that you will be a Beamter, which is a very special class of government employees. In particular, you are automatically exempted from the public healthcare system, as well as having to make direct payments into the social security system out of your paycheck. Instead, the pension payments are covered by your employer (the government of the Land in which you work), while the Beihilfe system helps to defray part of your insurance costs (the rest of which you pay for through a private insurance contract). In other words: you get billed for your health care; your private insurance reimburses you for 50 percent of your costs, and 30 percent of the costs for other family members. You submit the remainder of the bill to the university, which reimburses the remaining 50 percent (70 percent). The net result of this is that you get a much higher percentage of your income as take-home pay relative to a traditional government employee. Your tax status depends on your marital status, so as a W1, you can expect to take home somewhere between 2800 and 3200 euros per month, as reported by the Öffentlicher Dienst website. There are some differences due to cost of living in different states. However, expect to pay about 200 € per month for health care, or more if you have a family. However, I should also note that just this week came down a new ruling from the German Federal Constitutional Court stating that the salaries for professors hired since 2005 are too low, and need to be adjusted. This has the potential to adjust salaries upwards somewhat—although it is not yet clear by how much. (The state of Hesse, against whom the ruling was made, has until January to adjust its salaries upwards.) To answer your other questions: There are no ranks between W1 and W2. The base salary is nonnegotiable, as it's set by the state government for which you will work; however, you can negotiate some terms of your "package" (support for students and other workers), and you may be able to get some "performance bonuses" negotiated into the contract. Teaching duties are set by federal law, and are similarly nonnegotiable (although you can negotiate the ability, for instance, to teach in English rather than German) Bonuses are not available for single people with no children; instead, according to German law, they're actually taxed at a higher rate. There is no difference in salary based on nationality. "

"academia"

"Q: Is it possible for a student in first year of Ph.D to secure funding for attending conferences? Note: I'm primarily interested in answers relevant to Computer Science (Theory), but answers in different areas in CS / totally other disciplines are equally welcome. In most (if not all) PhD programs, incoming grad students are supposed to take relevant courses and fulfill their TA-ship duties (I'm assuming not everyone gets a RA from the 1st semester itself). During that time, they are also expected (and highly encouraged) to keep reading on their chosen research field, to have a concrete idea of where all the focus in that field is at that moment. In my opinion, I would consider that attending important conferences and interacting with leading researchers in their field would play a very important role in the development of a young researcher, as he/she would have the chance to get motivated by the best brains in the business! But, it is unlikely that he/she would have publishable results at such venues within such a short time, and if he/she doesn't have a fellowship/travel scholarship, it is unlikely that he'd be able to afford the registration/travel/accommodation expenses from his own stipend. So, what are the options in front of such a student to make attending such events possible: Do advisers cover the expenses for their incoming grad students, for attending such talks/conferences, or is there a provision for such funds from the department ? How much does the answer to the above question vary between different colleges - I've heard (unconfirmed) reports that higher-ranked institutions have more funds to burn, and as such students in such departments can afford to attend talks without publishing in them (at least for the first 2 semesters) ? Are there specific scholarships/fellowships that exist to primarily cater to conference related expenses for students? If so, it would be great to get some leads on where to look, and what are the primary qualifications (>90% of fellowships in US require the applicant to be an US citizen, making it extremely difficult for international students to get one!) ? A: As Willie Wong says, it depends on your school and your advisor. As an obvious general rule, departments and advisors with more research funding are more willing to spend it. (As a reference point, my department does not offer such funding, because individual faculty generally have enough money to support their students' travel.) A significant number of CS theory conferences have external support for student travel; see, for example, SODA 2012 and STOC 2012. These grants usually require a letter of support from your advisor, so you at least need an advisor. (In many PhD programs, including mine, PhD students do not necessarily have formal advisors for the first year; students are admitted to the PhD program, not to any particular research group.) A: For questions 1 and 2: it depends: you have to find out from your individual advisor/department/university. Furthermore, you characterisation In most (if not all) PhD programs, incoming grad students are supposed to take relevant courses... is certainly not true internationally. Many PhD positions in Europe, for example, expect the student to already have had a Masters degree and to start doing research the minute they arrive. For those positions attending conferences starting in the first year is almost a must. For Question 3: The best place to look is the conference organisation itself. Often funding is given to students to encourage participation. A lot of professional organisations also offer funding for full time graduate students to travel. (But note that preferences for grants maybe given to those individuals presenting [either orally or at a poster session] at the conference.) Some examples: The American Mathematical Society offers travel grants for any full time graduate student in mathematics to go to one of their sectional meetings, and for any last year graduate student in mathematics to go to the Joint Mathematics Meetings. The American Geophysical Union has a host of various travel grants available. And I want to especially outline their Lloyd V. Berkner Travel Fellowship which is designed to be given only to 'AGU members under the age of 35 who are residents of countries designated by the World Bank as “low” or “lower-middle" income per capita.' In particular, the opposite of the US citizen requirement you quoted. Conferences like the Association for Computing Machinery's CCS also offer student travel grants. The website states: "Any graduate student in good standing, regardless of nationality, or any other criteria, except as noted, may apply." In fact, aside from actual full graduate student fellowships, and some scholarships directly sponsored by the US government, many travel funding opportunities do not have the US residency requirement. (What they may have, however, is a pesky requirement for you to travel on US flag airlines.) A: As others have said, it depends on your school, department and advisor. There are a couple ways a first-year student might be able to secure funding: If you're already tied to a project with an advisor, they may have travel funds as part of their grant support for some of their graduate students. Some conferences have small amounts of awards for graduate students to help pay for the conference - you can apply to these, in hopes of getting them. Some of these do require you be presenting a presentation there. Some universities have one-time or (in rare cases) multiple-time travel scholarships for graduate students. In my experience, these tend to be enough to soften the blow of paying for a conference out of pocket, but not enough to pay for it entirely. The good news is I think the pressure you might be feeling to go to a conference your first year is a little off. I got very little out of conferences (including the all-important networking) until much later in my program, when I both understood what was going on better, and had more interesting things to say. "

"academia"

"Q: Difference between reference/recommendation What is exactly the difference between a reference letter and a recommendation letter in Academia? According to Wikipedia: Letters of recommendation are very specific in nature and normally requested/required and are always addressed to an individual, whereas letters of reference are more general in nature and are usually addressed "To Whom It May Concern". However, I've often seen applications where it was asked to provide letters, without being explicit about whether it should be recommendation or reference letters (according to the previous definition). I only ask letters from persons with whom I have worked closely (typically my former advisors), because I believe they are the best persons to ask about me, but it seems that some people also include letters from persons they just know. In other words, what exactly is expected when a job application asks to "give references who can provide recommendation letters"? A: With due deference to Wikipedia, colloquially, the two terms are used interchangeably. A: As per the definition given on the webpage of McGill University: A "letter of recommendation" is one that is specifically requested by someone for a determined/defined employment position, academic program or award application. Generally, these letters are sent directly to the requester and not seen by the student. They can be categorized as: Employment Related Academic Admission Commendation or Recognition Performance Evaluation A "letter of reference" is normally more general in nature and not addressed to a specific requestor. Often you will see these letters addressed as "To Whom it may Concern" or "Dear Sir/Madam". These letters are most often given directly to the student and kept for future use. Situations where they are used tend to be: Character Assessment Academic Related Employment Related General Purpose As this site also explains, a recommendation letter is more specifically related to skills and qualifications of a person with respect to a definite position/program, whereas a reference letter is usually more general in nature and refers more to the overall character of a person. A: In my experience, a person can serve as a reference and be contacted by the potential employer/school, usually by phone. Alternatively, a person can write a letter of recommendation which they mail themselves. So when a job application asks to "give references who can provide recommendation letters," they most likely want their contact information. "

"academia"

"Q: Balancing coursework, research, and teaching I'm a first-year graduate student, and I just joined a computational chemistry laboratory. I have three tasks now: pass all my courses, fulfill my TA duties, and start research. I'm finding that I'm spending all my time doing the first two, and very little doing actual research. I'm worried that my advisor will be upset that I'm not getting up to speed quickly enough on my research (currently, learning the python programming language and reading a whole bunch of papers). Are first-year graduate students typically expected to do a lot of research, while still managing their grades and TA duties? A: I think the answer lies in what your PI thinks you should be doing and how well you can, at least, appear to be doing it while doing things other than research. Even if your PI doesn't enforce a certain allocation it's in your interest to do as much research and little else as possible. You won't get a PhD by teaching or taking classes. An overload, in my experience, is unavoidable first year. Is is possible to take electives that your PI teaches? That's about the only coursework he or she won't begrudge you. A: A lack of time for research in the first year is pretty common in programs with heavy course requirements, and your supervisor will usually know this especially if she or he has other students. I used to tell my supervisor that I was pretty busy with courses and this was no problem, and I doubt your advisor will get upset if you also have this issue. On the other hand, I like the comment of DNA. You'd be surprised that even with a busy schedule there is a lot of room for improvement in how you manage your time. If you take a bit of time to examine your schedule, possibly with the aide of a spreadsheet, often you can find ways to improve your efficiency. Courses and TA duties are tiring and it is difficult to work after them. If this is your case you could try getting up earlier to have the best part of your day for a bit of research. Even three hours per week per semester will be around 40 hours in a semester, depending on the semester length, and you can accomplish much in this time. A: I think it's fair to expect a first-year student who has course obligations to spend some time on course work, but along the same lines as if it were another course—and by no means the majority of time. When the department requires coursework, it's kind of unfair for a faculty advisor to complain about you having to spend your time taking the required classwork. Particularly in a department like chemistry, which tends to have comprehensive qualification requirements, expecting a first-year student to devote more than a modest amount of time to research is rather unreasonable. If you spend too much time on research, and not enough on classes, you could end up failing your qualfiers. If you don't pass those, you won't get your Ph.D., either! "

"academia"

"Q: Details an applicant should include/exclude in an introductory letter to a prospective grad school adviser? I'm applying for graduate school (PhD in computer science), and I'm considering writing to faculty whose research areas match with what I intend to pursue, to understand: Whether they'd be looking for new students at all in the coming year? If they did, would they be potentially interested in my profile (I know no-one would guarantee an acceptance without me going through the process of application), but it would help to know if they would not be interested at all in me - which would leave me free apply to other schools in which I get a neutral/positive response. Keeping the above in mind, what would be the best way to introduce myself in the first mail? What should be the salutation - I know "Respected Sir" sounds archaic, but was wondering if "Dear Professor X" sounded too informal or not! Do I state my credentials (details of where I did my undergrads/masters) first, or do I state my purpose in writing to him/her? How to mention my background concisely, without giving too much details, while at the same time not "underselling" myself as a potential grad student? I want to give a link to my resume/profile hosted on my website - should I embed the hyperlink, or is it better to write the link in plain text? How do I end such a letter - the obvious ones (such as "see you soon" or "till we meet again") being not quite suitable in this case)? I'm basically afraid of saying too much (causing vexation) or too little (resulting in no response to my missive). I understand that the faculty are accustomed to seeing their inbox flooded with such mails each year, few of which ever get a positive response - which may not always be due to lack of an interesting profile, but the manner in which the mail is worded (Many professors have explicitly mentioned on their websites that they would not respond to generic "Do you have funding" type of queries no matter what the credentials of the student are!). Though my interest is specific to CS, I believe it would apply to other fields as well. Also, I would be interested in the opinions of both present faculty members (who have to sort through such mails), and past applicants to grad-school (who have the experience of successfully writing to their advisers before applying)... A: I have a list of things you should do from my seniors (Some might disagree): Try not to over-sell yourself. There is a fine line between stating facts about yourself and boasting. Stay on the former side. Try not to mention things and leave them abruptly or incompletely. For e.g., Don't say "I was involved with a project in the University of X where we studied Cancer Treatment." (Thats it). What did you do? Where did it lead? What is the status now? Thats the crux of the information and sadly, that is left out. Have an interesting question or comment in the mail. Merely stating that you read a paper or attended his talk is not enough. Billions of other students will be stating the same. What made you like it? Why was it relevant to you? Side note: Surprisingly, many professors who I mailed have been interested on how I stumbled on his paper. Never ask direct questions that the professor wouldn't like answering (At least in the first mail). Asking him about his funding status isn't the best idea in the first mail. This is true for many reasons: For one, most profs wouldn't like telling you such details without you proving you are worth it (Why would they?). Secondly, your intentions are getting obfuscated. Are you really interested in the professor ( & his research) or his money? If his research was interesting but he couldn't fund you for X years, would you still go? If this wasn't obvious, don't mass mail/mail merge. Be honest about what you say. This includes no exaggeration. Make it short. No one likes reading a billion lines to find out who you are. Emphasize your work and what differentiates you from the rest rather than your grades and scores. Grades and scores (GRE/AGRE) are bonuses (or deal breakers) but they are secondary. A: This is another example where internationalization of programs makes an answer more difficult. If the program in question is in the US, for instance, you should probably never contact the professor directly until after you've been admitted into the program in question. Since admissions decisions are handled centrally, it's just a waste of time. For foreign professors, however, I believe you should again exercise caution before making contact, and also keep expectations low. For instance, I'm in the role of Assistant/Associate Professor that Charles mentions in his response. However, I will probably not take the time to respond to a request asking for positions in my group unless I think a candidate is an exceptional match, and would be one I would actively consider for the group if I had an available opening. Otherwise, I don't reply, just because it takes too much time. To address the question of salutation, I would absolutely use "Dear Professor X," or some other salutation that includes the name of the person you're addressing. Otherwise, it doesn't look like you're doing other than sending out an email blast to a bunch of email addresses—another move which almost guarantees that your email is going to be consigned to the "ignore" pile. A: As an adviser in TCS, I don't want new students, I want to work/advise someone who is in my opinion very promising. First, the email must be concise (not necessarily short, but concise): be respectful, don't ask abruptly if the person needs students. Present shortly yourself: "I am XXXX, currently studying YYY at university ZZZZ" Then, present your work interest, and more, show that you are aware of the work of the person you target: "this year, I educated myself on the problem of finding an algorithm of complexity XXX for solving YYY. During this process, I analysed in details the method for finding a lower bound that you present in paper ZZZ" Ask for a short scientific discussion, you can either ask for clarification on the aforementioned lower bound, or explicitly mention that you have some ideas about the problem, or that you need some guidance on further reading about the problem. Anyway, make sure that you worked hard before coming to the meeting. If you cannot afford the travel (too far, too expansive, etc.), ask kindly if you can ask a few scientific questions in another mail. Once you're known to the person, everything is easier. Then you can ask about your future. The thing is to make yourself known for something different than job request. For instance, you target TCS, if you are known on TCS.SE, it will be easier to have guidance/advice from TCS researchers that are also on TCS.SE. Concerning some of the points you mention, don't hesitate to join a resume to your mail or (better) a link your (serious) homepage. "

"academia"

"Q: What is the typical time period after which an incoming grad student is expected to start publishing? An incoming graduate student is typically required to help out as a TA, take courses both related to their research and required by the program, as well as to start reading up on the research topics in his field. Unless he has worked in the same research area prior to joining grad school, it is unlikely he would get any publishable results very soon after joining grad school. To avoid being depressed by this apparent lack of results in the first few semesters, it would be helpful to know what the adviser/admissions committee expects out of him in that time, and by when he would be expected to start having publishable results? I'm interested in the answers related to Theoretical CS, but as always, I believe it would be applicable to any grad student as well - so it should not be specific to this field. A: This wil vary significantly according to advisor, but I'd say a typical plan is: Years 1-2: coursework, begin research Summer of year 2: Small research publications (in my field, 2-4 page conference proceedings, small steps) Year 3: Get some real research done, more small papers Year 4+: ~1/2 paper a year, ish However, the variance may be too great for this to be meaningful. I have a friend who published 17 papers during his 6 year graduate student tenure, and I have a number of friends who published zero peer-reviewed papers during my grad school tenure. Take the numbers with a grain of salt. A: In France, the PhD is funded for 3 years generally. In our university (Paris-Sud university), PhD students meet a committee composed of the adviser, the head of the lab and the head of the doctoral school each year. In TCS, if you have not published (or have a paper close to be published - that is submitted) during the second year; this yields a big red flag. So, it means that it is expected that some results are ready for publication during the third semester of the thesis (even in a small workshop). Edit : PhD students are doing a 6 months internship before entering the PhD, with their PhD advisor mostly, so in fact the research is done on 3,5 years, and often 4 without much troubles. "

"academia"

"Q: Beginning PhD in related field without subject area expertise, will that be a problem? I just finished an undergraduate degree in psychology, with a focus in biological sciences and pre-medicine courses. In looking at my options for graduate school, I've taken an interest in biomedical engineering; tissue engineering, medical devices, medical imaging, etc. My biology is pretty solid, but I'm not much of an engineer, aside from a few math courses. My question is, are students entering a PhD program typically very well-versed in the field, or is there a lot of "learning on the job"? A: While shan23's answer is good, it is also somewhat incomplete. There are a few things to watch out for when you're coming in to a field from another department: You will need to keep in mind the qualifying procedures for your new department. Will they expect you to pass exams in undergraduate coursework in the new discipline? If so, then you'll need to do a lot more "catch-up" work early on to make up for the potential shortfall. Unless the new area is an interdisciplinary one—such as biomedical engineering—they're probably going to want to see some track record in the area. You're going to find it a lot easier to move into biomedical engineering from mechanical engineering than from economics. You may find it helpful to try to find a position as a lab assistant or something similar to this in the new field before you try to start the graduate coursework. However, this is by no means required. (But it would help to prove the "dedication" aspect, which is what you'd need to convince a graduate school admissions committee about in order to have a successful application). A: I had asked the same question related to CS in TCS.SE (found here) - from that, I'm summarizing the answers I got w.r.t your field: Before grad school is a very early stage to change fields. Many people shift then. It's acceptable and expected. In your application, explain your changing fields (so the readers understand why the letter writers are not from psychology, why you took lots of biology courses, etc) If you have research experience (especially if there's some angle towards biological subjects in them), it still counts for you, even if it's in a different field If you have good grades, it still counts for you, even if they are for courses from a different field. Admissions committees are generally looking for "strong" students where "strong" is largely defined via prior research experience. i.e. they especially want to know if you've had the experience of doing research, were successful at it and have a good idea if this is something you really want. The letters are important as experienced researchers' evaluation of your research ability and potential and grades give some indication of overall academic aptitude. Thus, if you have strong letters from your supervisors, it still counts for you, even if they are from a different field (strong = from a professor who knows you well and has great things to say about you). "

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"Q: Advisor asking me to work on research not covered by my grant I have a rather difficult quandary. I'm a first-year student, and I joined my lab group to work on a clinical psychiatry/neuroscience grant. I've been making slow progress towards familiarizing myself with the grant. However, my advisor (actually, one of my two-advisors... they both run the lab together) has been having me work on a separate project of his, completely unrelated to my work. From what I can tell, this project would take a few months to work out, and the result would be my co-authoring on a small paper with another graduate student in the lab. My worry is, I receive a stipend from the university every month, and that stipend is paid for my the psych/neurosci grant. By working on the second project, I have the feeling that I'm "stealing" from the first grant. I was told by my advisor that this sort of time-sharing between grants is normal within the research world. My question is, is that true? If it is a problem, how should I deal with this? A: I think it's true that the time-sharing between grants is quite normal within the research world, at least, I've observed it a lot, and in any case, you shouldn't have to worry about that, because it's under the responsibility of your advisor. Actually, one of the problems when it comes to funding is that in order to make a grant proposal, you somehow need to know precisely enough where you're going, otherwise you have the risk not to be able to achieve what you promised. Hence, I know that it's quite normal that when applying for a grant, some parts of the results promised at the end of the grant are already done, although maybe not finalized. So, you can use the time you would have spent doing the research you promised (but already done) to do some other research on another topic, so that you can apply for another grant on this topic. That's why in the end, the main question is whether it benefits you, as a first-year student, to work on the other project. Clearly, working on a different topic is always a good experience, especially when there is a potential publication at the end. I don't know how long is your grant, but if it's 3 years, then spending a few months on working on something different will not really impact it. Of course, if you have a grant of only 6 months, then maybe you can't really spend half of it working on something different. So, to summarize: don't feel guilty about it, I believe this kind of things is pretty common, and just consider whether it can be good/interesting for you or not. A: Time sharing between grants is extremely common - I've often been asked to work on projects unrelated to what I am formally being funded for. As @CharlesMorisset mentioned, many grants are now written with a sufficiently robust idea of where they're going, how they'll get there and that they'll work that a considerable part of the research is already done. Additionally, since grants need fairly strong preliminary results sections these days, one is essentially forced to use current funding to do the research for "future" projects. So I wouldn't feel bad about it for the reason you've mentioned. I would consider asking your advisor "why this project?" Do they just need a warm body to do the work? Would they like to give you a shot at an early, modest publication? Is there a particular skill they are hoping you'll develop working on this project? "

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"Q: How are the personal assistants for professors usually funded? As examples, the lab executive assistant at http://www.klab.caltech.edu/people.shtml or the lab administrative assistant over at http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tapio/people.html#admins A: Funding for non-research positions comes from either direct or indirect sources. Direct sources means writing a proposal that includes funding for personnel such as a lab technician or an administrator for a research center. In this case, the funding is obtained directly through grants. Most of the time, however, the funding is indirect: the salary is paid by the department, rather than an individual research group. This funding is paid for through the "overhead" charges that are included in research grants. (In some cases, such as public universities in Germany, this funding is also indirect, coming from a grant by the state or federal government given to each professorship.) A: I've seen three common ways of funding staff - undoubtedly there are more. For staff directly related to the running of a research lab, for example senior technicians, lab managers, dedicated programmers for computational research, etc. there may be funding written into the direct salary costs of the research grants their faculty member submits. For example, many of the grants in the field I'm in have direct funding for data managers and the like for the duration of a research grant. If a faculty member anticipates needing a particular type of help - most often a lab technician or programmer in my experience - they may ask for their salary to be part of the faculty member's startup package for some small number of years before (hopefully) the faculty member can support them through mechanism #1. Other staff members, such as personal assistants, some research staff etc. are theoretically things that are supposed to be paid for by the rather sizable chunk of a grant budget that goes to indirect costs to the university. Whether or not this occurs in practice is another question all together. "

"academia"

"Q: What are the options for fellowships for international grad students in USA? I'm looking for fellowships that an international grad student can apply for, to support him/her while working towards a Ph.D. (additional to whatever funding that may be available as TA). So far, I've been able to identify the following: Fulbright Scholarships for International Students (applications have to be done more than a year before, and they've suspended 2013-14 grants, so not really an option for me) Aga Khan Foundation International Scholarship Programme, which has the following selection criteria: The main criteria for selecting award winners are: l) excellent academic records, 2) genuine financial need, 3) admission to a reputable institution of higher learning and 4) thoughtful and coherent educational and career plans. Candidates are also evaluated on their extra-curricular interests and achievements, potential to achieve their goals and likelihood to succeed in a foreign academic environment. Applicants are expected to have some years of work experience in their field of interest. It would be great if I could get to know of similar fellowships that an incoming student can apply to, before starting grad school. A: The Smithsonian offers fellowships for international grad students, specifically a ten-week summer internship for pre-dissertation grad students and 3-12 months of funding for post-dissertation grad students. Also, you get to work at the Smithsonian. "

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"Q: What rules guide whether to put qualifications on an academic business card? I'm just wondering what rules of etiquette guide whether an academic puts qualifications on a business card. I'm assuming that either "Dr" at the start or "PhD" at the end is important to include where applicable, perhaps with the exception that higher titles such as "Prof" would take precedence over "Dr". However, what about beyond that? A: The accepted conventions also depend strongly on country. As a general rule, though, I'd avoid anything "cute" unless you happen to be your own boss. For instance, in the US, I'd expect to see doctoral-level degrees listed. I'd also expect to see high-level professional qualifications, such as "PE" for "Professional Engineers." Similarly, if a master's degree carries sufficient professional weight in one's discipline, I'd list that, too. You are also correct in assuming that Prof. "overwrites" Dr. In Germany, by contrast, one is expected to list all degrees of equivalent standing, including honorary degrees. This can lead to rather unwieldy titles such as Univ.-Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr.-Ing. h.c. Dr. rer. nat. E.h. Johannes Schmidt (Note: I've seen substantially longer, too!) However, two additional points are worth mentioning. First, any degree at the master's or diploma level is considered significant enough to list as part of one's title: Dipl.-Ing. Michael Mustermann would be expected for someone with a "Diplom" in engineering. Secondly, until recently, non-German degrees were not considered the equivalent of German degrees. An American doctorate holder was Joanna Doe, Ph.D. and was legally not allowed to call herself Dr. Joanna Doe However, this has been somewhat relaxed recently, although only for degree holders from certain countries. "

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"Q: Does doing a postdoc mean a commitment to an academic career? I have heard that it would be a bad idea to take up a post-doctoral position, if your ultimate goal is to work in industry. The basis of this maybe that it is harder to be hired for an opening at a company, maybe because you would seem unsure of your direction, or would be over qualified for a junior role. If there are no ideal jobs available at present, should I take up a post-doctoral position as a safe option, or easy way out, in the meantime? A: Well, clearly, it depends on many factors (my answer is probably strongly influenced by the Computer Science field). If you want to apply for a non-research industry position, then clearly, the postdoc might not appear as a strong point, unless you can travel, attend conferences, manage a budget, develop an application/software/experiment, apply for patents, etc, in general any transversal skill that you can justify. But if the postdoc is just sitting in an office writing theoretical papers for a couple of years, then it's probably not the best choice. If you want to apply for a research industry position, then a postdoc can be a good point, although of course, the closer you can be connected to industry, the better it will be. Ideally, you could do a postdoc in industry (in CS, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, and many others offer this possibility). A: No. There are many reasons you may want to do a postdoc; gain experience in a particular subfield, get to know the research of a particular advisor, work with a particular research group or department, or even to work with a industry group, in the case of industry-sponsored postdocs. You may be asked why you chose to go the postdoc route when you are eventually interviewing for industry positions, but it is by no means a declaration that you are going "academia-only". Note that this is particularly true during recession periods; it's much easier to get a postdoc than a "real job". A: I'm writing in from the biotech industry. I hold an MSc, but obviously I work with a lot of PhDs and have observed many PhD hires. Most PhD level industry positions REQUIRE time spend at a post-doc position. This would be either in academia or industry, but academic post-docs are infinitely more common. If you are being hired at a company straight out of a PhD program, that position will (9 times out of 10) be a temporary post-doc position itself. Be aware that there have not been nearly enough PhD positions in industry to go around for the last 5 years at least. And many companies have strict policies against hiring PhDs for non-scientist positions. I've seen many times a research associate (BS/MS) position post, and we receive up to 100 applications from PhDs that go straight to the trash. My recommendation for a transition into industry would be: Do your PhD and post-doc research in the most prestigious labs possible and publish in the most prestigious journals possible. This is because other PhDs will hire you and be impressed by your boss' name and publication record - so it's the same idea that holds if you were to stay in academia. Skill set is important, but in most cases is not what gets you hired. It is assumed that you can be trained to use any protocols or equipment in house. Maintain contacts with everyone you know who is or moves into industry, including people at the BS/MS level. Referrals are extremely important and sometimes the only way to get in. Seek out projects that are collaborations with industry labs and go to every industry-sponsored event on your campus. Ask the professors in your department if any graduates or former post-docs moved into industry and try to get in contact with them. And bottom line: no hiring manager will blink if they see a post-doc on your resume, as long as it lasted less than 5 years and you have results to show from it. And in many cases, managers expect or require some type of post-doc experience for a career position. "

"academia"

"Q: Failing to deliver promised research Will people look down on me if I say that I plan on doing research that I end up not doing due to various reasons, especially if I'm a PhD student? I guess it's somewhat expected, and that experienced professors don't always believe that I'll end up doing what I say (because unexpected bugs and events happen all the time). And sometimes you also end up going on detours. That, and professors always say that they do things on smaller timeframes than what it really takes them to do. I guess if I always meet my commitments, then people might believe me more. But on the other hand, it always helps to get more feedback on ambitious projects that I don't necessarily believe that I will finish. A: There is a huge difference between saying that you will do a given research effort, and saying that you will obtain a particular result. If you have guaranteed the latter, you made a mistake, it's research, there is no guarantee on a result ! So, if you give a work planning to your adviser, you have to stick to it. Of course, you can have (once, not twice) a real problem that ruins your effort (house on fire, a relative at the hospital, etc.). To summarize, you can promise that you will work, but not that it will work ;) If you always fail on your commitments, you will never be seen as reliable, and people won't work with you, it's that simple. A: The question is subjective in nature, but the answer is almost certainly no. Academicians are always applying for funding, looking into collaborations, reading research articles in different fields, and generally taking an interest in new research venues. It's expected that you'll occasionally (maybe even regularly) expand your research interests, and it's the nature of the game that some of your attempts will not pan out. Anecdotally, my graduate research advisor completed a whopping 10 grants a year for a very wide variety of research projects. Each grant entailed a good deal of preparatory research, in which we would explore a new field and try to find some preliminary results strong enough to drive the grant through. Some of my (and my colleagues) most interesting work (medical ontologies, intelligent systems, lung-powered electricity generators) came from these failed grant attempts. A: In my experience, the answer to this is no. Projects die for various reasons all the time - the funding vanishes and there's no one to work on it, it turns out to not to be a particularly productive line of thought, or as a graduate student, your interests shift. In my mind, the important thing is that you have put in as much effort as is expected of you. If you've told your advisor you've had a random musing you'd like to pursue, then come back a month later having not gotten very far but decided upon poking around a bit that it's not worth doing, then no harm, no foul. I also have to agree with aeismail that it depends on what you're framing as "research". Not being wedded to X, Y, Z things must be done, come hell or high water means if thing Q turns out to be really interesting, you're free to pursue that instead. But that's a long-term question. If, on the other hand, you've said "Sure, I'll make a figure for that data by next week" and you consistently fail to do things like that? That is going to have an impact on your reputation. "

"academia"

"Q: Do school-wide holidays count against personal vacation time? I keep hearing different things from different people and it seems there is no clear policy laid out at my institution regarding the definition of graduate student vacation days; I'm curious how PIs and students handle this issue at other places. At your institution, do University-wide holidays (such as "Spring Break" or "Winter Recess / Christmas holiday") count towards a graduate student's two weeks vacation? I always thought the expectation was just that you should be working most of the time, regardless of what day it is, and that seems reasonable to me as long as students have flexibility to take leave when they want/need to without somebody nagging them about the specifics of when/how much time off. However, recently there's been the assertion by certain bean-counting PIs in my department that students should be working 6 days a week (including nights) and only taking 2 weeks of leave in total (including major holidays). Most people probably work about this much anyway, but being told that it's required leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If people want to get really specific about the "number" of days worked/not-worked, there should be a more standard definition of what comprises a work day (i.e. 9-5, not 9am-12pm). Am I way out of line here? A: This is not meant to be an official opinion, since obviously the rules depend on the local labor laws. We should distinguish school holidays—days on which classes are cancelled—from official holidays, on which the university offices are closed. A graduate student not working on a school holiday would be counted as taking leave; however, when the university is closed, that is not normally expected to be a working day for anyone, and thus students would not use a vacation day in such a case. Advisors should not have policies in place that expect students to be regularly working six days a week, particularly since that would mean that they are potentially in violation of a whole bunch of labor rules. Given that information, my personal opinion is that research cannot be done according to a timecard. There will be days when you go into the office and figuratively spin your wheels all day, and there are days where you are firing on all cylinders and getting tons done. In my own group, so long as someone: is prompt in answering requests, attends group functions, lets me know if he or she will be out of the office for extended periods, and is getting his or her work done, then I will let that person work in whatever manner is most conducive to getting the job done. That's more important to me than knowing they clocked in 8 hours per workday. "

"academia"

"Q: How important are teaching portfolios in obtaining an academic position? I have been recently introduced to the idea of teaching portfolios, that is a collection of teaching experiences and references made by peer educators. Their supposed purpose is to go along a researcher CV when applying for a position in academia, i.e. assistant/associate professor. Any first hand experience? A: This may be useful for someone considering a career at a teaching-first school, but I've never seen such portfolios asked for or even considered at research universities in the US and the larger European countries. A: Creating a "portfolio" for teaching used to be the norm for those entering the teaching career on the secondary (high school) level and below. My portfolio is HUGE (a 3-inch binder stuffed full of lesson plans, my philosophy of education, professional development, letters of recommendation, photos of my students, etc.), but I've only had one administrator ever actually LOOK at my portfolio and that was when I was interviewing for my first teaching position. The move I've seen from many universities is to have their teaching students create virtual or online portfolios. If I were you and I were considering applying for a higher-ed. position, I certainly wouldn't create anything that was a step backwards in technology. If you choose to create a portfolio, spend the time and create a virtual one. "

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"Q: Is it possible take take part in a research project if I'm not a part of a university? I graduated with a Masters of Engineering, concentrating in digital signal processing, in particular medical and audio, almost two years ago. I've always been interested in research, but due to personal circumstances I could never commit a lot of time to working on a research project with a professor, and obviously didn't get a chance to publish anything. Now that I'm more settled and have much more time on my hands, I started getting involved in some open source projects and reading some technical literature (engineering, mathematics) that I couldn't get to before. However, I'd still like to find someone to to collaborate with on a research project who is already established in the field and publishes papers. Part of the reason I want to do that is to be able to eventually apply for a Ph.D. program in a good school, and having publications would be a great thing on my resume. What I'm trying to find out is how I can work on a research project similar to those graduate students work on as a part of their studies if I'm not a student anymore? Should I contact my old professors from the university? Is it possible to find some "open research" team that accepts collaborators from outside? Do I have to do it on my own (quite frankly I'm not sure I can give myself a good enough quick-start)? In short, I'm willing to volunteer my time in exchange for a possibility of publication in the future. Can I do it, and if yes then how? A: It's certainly possible, though admittedly somewhat harder outside the framework of a university. Some potential avenues, answering generally - not all of them might apply to your particular circumstance. Academic/Business partnerships. These are a new hot topic, and in some fields quite active. Universities love them because they're a revenue stream. Businesses like them because its harder to get closer to the cutting edge than at a major university. Look for companies that do this as potential employers? They're good for both dabbling in research, and also as a springboard into the research side of things - I've met several "private sector refugees" in my time. Research-oriented companies. Quintiles, RTI, Westat, RAND, etc. all come to mind. There are tons of these companies, and many of them both pay quite well and actively publish. Are there any that serve your particular field? Consulting. Research groups occasionally have funding for outside contractors of one sort or another - and if someone really wants to work with you, they may write such a position into a grant with you in mind. For example, I have some grant support for a freelance programmer. I've known other people hired for a particular expertise, or just "a warm body who isn't a student". This is probably the path you'd end up going down if you both contact your ex-professors and want to get paid. Volunteering. Academics are cheap. It never hurts to ask if they've got some side project you might be suited for collecting dust in the back. A: The short answer is yes, you can. There is no need to be in a university, a research lab to work on a research project. There is also no need to have a PhD or any other specific degree/position. This is however somehow unusual. But, there is a bunch of people in industry that publish on a regular basis some serious research work. If you have no idea of the problem you want to address, or at least a broad domain, this will be even harder. I can only advice you to offer your manpower to people who are established researchers. For that purpose, you can go to seminars, you can maybe, if this is possible where you live, lurk into some graduate lectures, etc. After a while you will be able to talk with people and offer your services. However, the simple way is to work with relatives. For instance, my brother is an entrepreneur, and he wrotes two papers with me (one is published, the other will be soon I hope). Of course, it was simple: I described one of my problem on a sunday lunch at the parents house, He had some ideas, we worked on it... "

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"Q: When asking research-based questions, what are some good practices to maximize the rates at which people reply to emails? Matthew Might has an excellent article on his website. But what are some other good suggestions? One important thing is identification (some professors are simply happier to reply to emails than others). Surprisingly enough, I find that famous scientists in my field (for whatever reason) tend to be more responsive to emails than non-famous scientists. I don't know why this is the case, but maybe it could be that they simply know more, so it doesn't take them as much effort to give information/advice? Sometimes, I even go as far as to look at Rate my Professors site ratings, since the ones with exceptional ratings often tend to be happy replying to emails. Another thing: maybe taking a class with the professor (in which case they may feel a bit more obligated to reply to them?) Or maybe simply distributing one's emails in such a way that one wouldn't have to email each professor more than an interval of once every few weeks? A: All of the points in the linked article are very true in academia as well. Some points which may be specific to academia which he didn't mention: If you're referencing a specific article or talk, reference it very specifically ("In your presentation at SfN 2012 entitled 'The Amygdala and You', ..."). If you can quote a specific slide/paragraph, all the better. Mention (concisely, one sentence or less) why you're interested in knowing. Your problem may very well be something which the researcher is interested in, and s/he may be more interested in responding and following up later on. If you're working for someone in the field, mention it at the beginning ("I'm a postdoc working for <Mr. Bigshot Fancypants whom the professor likely knows>, and...") Note that researchers are more often than not interested in talking about their work, so the very first point from the article ("Don't email") is likely bad advice here. Definitely try to get in touch and talk about your mutual interests (if you have a valid question, of course). "

"academia"

"Q: How to format for a useful journal club? I've been attending my lab's journal club for a while, and I'm wondering whether there are better ways out there of conducting a journal club. To make the question more generic, our club seems to have two purposes: Ensure that the students in the lab are reading papers in the field Discuss the latest research findings in the field Regarding goal (1), that's kinda what I'm spending all my time doing; I'm doing research, and much of that involves little more than reading a ridiculous number of papers. Insofar as accomplishing goal (2), I'm not sure we do it the best way possible. The journal club I'm currently attending is run by a professor. In general, one person prepares a presentation, and the professor grills that person on the paper. Other people chime in if they're interested, but more often than not it's an hour of watching the prof duel with the student. If the student is well prepared, I'll learn a lot, but when the kid has clearly not read the paper well, it's just a waste of everyone's time. What successful journal club formats have you encountered? A: This is based on my experience being in some highly unsuccessful journals clubs, and some very successful ones - at least in my mind. You must have faculty involvement. I've seen more than one journal club that either didn't have faculty members, or had a faculty member or two who just kind of sat back and didn't say anything. That's bad. Faculty members who can contribute, answer questions, and generally provide some context for papers are excellent. They're good for pointed questions we might have missed - I've had faculty members ask a question about a figure that got into an interesting discussion of research ethics, one that led insight into some politics ("The reason that commentary appeared in this journal is Y"), etc. I prefer to have them separate from lab meetings, and drawing from a wider audience than my specific research group. I find the breadth of experience, diversity of papers, and keeping up with things taking place beyond my narrow little laser-like focus to be both refreshing and more useful than going over a paper half of us already read. Giving the journal club a greater context. Yes, keeping track of the literature is important. But its importance seems to slide if you know your analysis should be done soon, or something needs to come out of the water bath, or midterms need to be graded. One semester we framed ours as qualifying exam preparation, and another as professional development - the people presenting wrote their critiques like responses to requests for peer review. Overall, I've found journal clubs to be most useful for mid-level graduate students - they need enough experience to have thoughts, insights and feelings about the paper, but if a JC succeeds, eventually they should need it less and less. A: Fomite's answer is great. Along the lines of "greater context" - you could form a journal club around a topic, rather than around your laboratory. When I was in grad school for plant biology, a friend of mine in Ag Chemistry formed a photosynthesis journal club. He was able to get his supervisor (photosynth bacteria) and another PI (plant focused) on board as regular attendees, while the student himself proctored the meetings. I participated not because I was studying photosynthesis myself, but because I wanted to learn more about biophysics. Attendees (including the professors) took turns selecting papers and leading discussions. It ended up being good study for my qualifying exam - and a good way to get face time with others in the department that I wouldn't normally interact with. This is one way to get around the "students take turns getting grilled by one professor." Take the initiative or find another student who wants to run a club, and find professors who want to participate but not lead. The environment will be different. "

"academia"

"Q: Obstacles in job hunting for US citizens in non-US nations I am curious to know the kinds of obstacles a US citizen would come across when trying to find work in academia outside the US and/or those that a non-US-citizen faces when trying to get an academic job inside the US. It would seem that, logistically, it would be easier on the department to hire a citizen over a non-citizen. Is there any advice applicants can follow that would greater their chances? Do you have to be extraordinary for a department to hire you over an equally qualified citizen? A: There a multiple levels on which this problem operates. This is especially true for places saturated with immigrants. (For instance, USA with Indians/Chinese) Getting the Job This problem itself has a million subdivisions. Firstly, it is fairly difficult for immigrants (who studied in that country) to get jobs without exhibiting something really outstanding. The problem is not so bad for sectors such as computer science and electrical engineering wherein professionals are required by the dozen. The problem, however, is really bad in areas such as Theoretical Physics or Chemistry (or basic sciences). With limited vacancies and a million outstanding candidates, it is really difficult to crack that "top job". Working in Sensitive Sectors I don't even want to get started on sectors like Aerospace. More often than not, graduates from the top universities in USA and Europe have returned to their homelands because all companies stress on citizenship. For EU, it is fairly difficult for a Non-EU resident to get a job in the first place, add to that defense and secrecy and you have a useless degree. In USA, it's even better, if you graduate with a PhD in Aerospace Control Systems from say, Stanford, you are still worthless for US companies because they don't ask just for citizenship anymore but also Top Secret (or Lower) Security Clearance! That's at least 10 years for a foreign citizen. Immigration and Visa Getting a job is one part, getting the necessary immigration documents cleared is another. I mentioned about Aerospace engineering being a potential problem as far as jobs are concerned. But thats not all! USA has published a list called the technology alert list which requires screening of candidates before granting a visa. The immigration laws in the Europe aren't very friendly for Non-European to begin with but as far as I know, they don't maintain a strict segregation between "things non-citizens can't do" and "things they can". However, rising far-right politics, things don't seem to get any better in the future. A: Do you have to be extraordinary for a department to hire you over an equally qualified citizen? That really depends on the search criteria. If the criteria specifically calls for international experience—and many jobs around the world now do exactly that—you might not be disadvantaged at all, and in some cases even have the upper hand. That said, it is true that hiring a citizen is generally easier than hiring a non-citizen, and in the EU, it's easier to hire a non-citizen who lives in the EU than a non-citizen who lives outside the EU. The result will be a lot more bureaucracy. Whether or not the hiring unit wants to go through the extra trouble will make a lot of the difference, and it's not something you have much control over. (The same principle applies in the US for non-citizens!) "

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"Q: Journal publication and acceptance to competitive conferences My graduate training is in an interdisciplinary field (bioinformatics). I am affiliated both with a genetics department and an interdepartmental program that encompasses everything from genetics to computer science to evolution to statistics to engineering. The life-science-oriented fields seem to place a lot of value in publishing papers in high-profile journals, whereas some of the more quantitative and technical fields (comp sci and engineering especially) seem to be focused on getting accepted to high-profile conferences with low acceptance rate. So far in graduate school, I have focused completely on publishing papers in journals and have not worried about getting into competitive conferences. My question is twofold: first, is my assessment of the life sciences vs the quantitative sciences accurate? and second, should I consider submitting my research to competitive conferences in addition to journals? Will this make me more marketable as an interdisciplinary scientist down the road? A: I'll give you my own opinion, as something of an interdisciplinary scientist in a nearby field (I work in mathematical epidemiology) with publications in both places (the conference paper frankly by accident): First, your impression is indeed correct. CS and related fields very heavily weight conference presentations and proceedings papers in ways the life sciences really don't. In my mind, there's two things you should be considering: The opportunity to double-dip a bit. We had a question about this recently, but I think it applies to you as well. If your project has "Life science spin-offs" and "Computational science spin-offs", you can submit to both places. For example, I have a project that will end up living in both applied math journals and clinical journals. There's no reason you can't do both. This part is purely my opinion. When in doubt, I'd go for journal publications, for a few reasons. I've found most CS and technical people recognize that outside their field, its papers or nothing, better than the other way around. Journal papers are also more likely to get on the radar of people you want seeing your work, get indexed in PubMed (LNCS for example is not indexed in PubMed) etc. Those departments will also probably recognize your technical chops either via talking to you, the technical bent of your publications, or a few conference presentations. I sympathize with your problem - it's sadly familiar. Generally, I'd try to figure out which audience you want to sell yourself to more, and do as they do. A: I can confirm the much heavier weight on conference publications in Computer Science. You should certainly consider publishing in high-profile conferences unless you want to shift your focus away from Computer Science. The other thing I would add is that often conference publications become journal publications. This is mostly because of the page limits imposed by conferences -- short papers are often only 2 pages. There is also a fair number of Computer Science conferences that offer fast-track or special issue journal publication for the best papers. I think a lot of people in Computer Science do not consider publication at a conference or a journal, but rather conference first and then journal. A: As a "classically-trained" engineer who's moved into interdisciplinary work, I would argue that the weighting of conference papers seems to be restricted to computer science, rather than being generally true for "quantitative sciences." For instance, I don't see any such strong preferences in mathematics, chemistry, or physics, and there's definitely no such bias in chemical engineering (my "home turf"). In engineering, perhaps this is because there aren't as many "prestigious" meetings, and because we don't submit anything more than abstracts in order to be considered for a presentation slot. "

"academia"

"Q: How to assess the quality of a degree? In my academic career, I have found that it is pretty difficult to assess the quality of a degree before enrolling. Usually only during the course of your study do you learn what the actual quality of the degree is, which are the best schools, and what your chances in the job market are going to be like. Getting in touch with students studying at the university is usually pretty difficult if you're not enrolled, and i don't really trust the responses of the professors (who have a vested interest). What would be a good way to judge the usefulness of a degree? And how can you reliably assess the chances of getting a job with that degree? A: Many universities will publish statistics on how many of their graduates are employed or in further education within X months after graduating. If you're only concerned about getting a job, then that's probably your best source of information. That said, in the end it depends on you. People get jobs with crappy degrees and fail to get jobs with really good degrees. Whether you'll be able to get a job in your chosen field will depend on what exactly you do for your degree. A good opportunity for improving your chances of getting a job after you graduate is to do an internship while you're at university. Many universities have job centres or similar that can help you with that. "

"academia"

"Q: Is there a generally accepted format for submitting papers to journals? I believe in Mathematics and Computer Science journals usually accept LaTeX documents. In fact, the AMS has a number of packages and document classes for just this purpose. What about other disciplines? I'm not particularly familiar with the humanities. Would a Microsoft Word document be unacceptable? Does it vary from subject to subject, or even journal to journal? A: The policies vary entirely from journal to journal about what is considered acceptable. APS journals, for instance, will accept both MS Word-based documents as well as documents formatted with RevTeX, their modified template system. ACS journals and a number of other publishers also offer their own LaTeX- and Word-specific templates for authors to use. Whether the use of the template is required or merely recommended is also a function of the journal. So, as a general rule, you should always check the homepage of a journal before you start preparing an article for submission to that journal. To some extent, I prefer working with LaTeX in preparing manuscripts, for the simple reason that their plain-text document format makes it a lot less painful to switch back and forth between different templates, compared to a word-processing format like Word or LibreOffice or Pages. A: It does indeed vary from subject to subject, and journal to journal. I once got in a short argument with some math students who had asserted "If its going to be published, it needs to be in LaTeX", a disagreement that only ended when I went and found some submission guidelines. For three fairly good journals in my field (Epidemiology), you have some considerable differences. American Journal of Epidemiology wants everything in either Word or PDF format - LaTeX documents are compatible with this, but its certainly not doing anyone any favors in terms of already being formatted. Epidemiology will accept LaTeX documents, but warns that the odds of typesetting and other erros increases in formats besides Word. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology only requires that an editable version be available. So the de-facto standard in my field is Word, though of course there are ways around that. And then, as mentioned, there are formatting issues beyond just "what's the file extension?" How references, the text, and figures are reported - must odds ratios be graphed on a log scale or not?. How p-values are treated. What format graphics are allowed to be in, etc. As Fabian said, submitting to a new journal often involves combing through the same content to subtly tweak formatting. A: This varies a lot between journals, and probably even more between different disciplines. In the life sciences Latex is rather rare, MS Word seems to me to be the most common format in my subjective observation. But the actual document format, be it Latex or Word, is only part of the difference between journals. The exact rules on how to format a paper vary so much that you'll have to put significant effort into adapting the same manuscript for different journals anyway. Check out the Author submission guidelines for Nature or those from JACS as an example. They often regulate details like how the axis labelling in graphs has to look like. The journals also often have different length requirements, so you might have to shorten your manuscript if you decide to switch to a different journal. "

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"Q: What are the consequences to the researcher in cases of academic fraud? The purpose of this question is to attempt to generate a concise but comprehensive answer to the question, what happens to the researcher after fraud is discovered? I'm familiar with some consequences: Listing on the NIH Office of Research Integrity website Retraction of relevant publications Prevention from publication in journals for X years What other are some other typical (and atypical) outcomes? A: As I posted in answer to another comment, more often than not, schools want to avoid the dramas associated with plagiarism scandals. That is why schools like Harvard will prompt researchers accused of fraudulent behavior, such as Marc Hauser, to resign, rather than go through tenure revocation procedures. But losing one's job is fairly likely, and an unofficial blacklisting is almost certain to result. One other consequence, though, is often forgotten: the peripheral damage of academic fraud cases. Sensationalized results, such as those in the Jan Hendrik Schön and Hwang Woo-Suk cases, led many graduate students to embark on projects in those disciplines trying to reproduce and expand upon the promises implied by those projects. When those projects collapsed, a lot of graduate students were left in the lurch. "

"academia"

"Q: How do I specify I do not want to perform a specific type of research on my CV? A couple of years back I did some research at a company in a field (Computational chemistry) that I am no longer interested in pursuing (To be blunt: I discovered that I dislike computational chemistry, and lack a certain numerical intuition needed to interpret the results). As I have this and a number of computer science classes on my CV several jobs I have applied for have added computational chemistry to my duties, which leaves me in the unpleasant position of explaining that I'd rather not do that type of research. (See edit below for an explanation of the process) I'd rather not take that experience off my CV, as it explains why my undergraduate degree is taking so long (I was working for a semester instead of taking classes), and my supervisor did offer me a good reference letter, since I was a good worker, despite the fact I didn't get great results. Also, to be frank, I'm an undergrad and would like to list it to stand out from the crowd a bit: Relevant work experience is much rarer then good marks. Is there a way I can include that position on my CV, but specify that I'd rather not peruse that field of research? Perhaps as a footnote or a comment intside that description of the job that 'This is a field of research I am no longer interested in perusing'? EDIT: An explanation of how applying for summer jobs tends to work in my experience: I'm an undergraduate chemistry major applying to be a research assistant over the summer. The general process for this is you find a professor doing the type of research you want, and email them your coverletter and CV. If they like you then they either hire you, or apply for a grant to get funding to hire you. Formal or informal interviews can take place at any time during this process, depending on how the professor likes to operate. Formal job descriptions are usually only placed on the grant after the student applies, it isn't listed on the profs website beforehand. Therefore I've applied to several synthetic chemistry groups then been either told I'll be expected to do some modelling as part of my job, or asked if I would be willing to do such research: The second option isn't so bad, but the first is rather awarded to explain, doubly so if I'm not told of this until after the grant is already awarded. A: Usually, in an academic CV, you can distinguish between "Research Activities", which consist of all the research you've done in the past, and "Research Interest", which consist of all the research you want to do in the future. So, someone who would include a topic that you don't list in your research activities without asking you first would be a bit rude. However, in order to avoid this kind of cases, and not to be too explicit (that is, not saying "I don't to work on Computational Chemistry"), you can try, in your cover letter or your research interests to put a sentence like "Although I have a good background in Computational Chemistry, my research interests rather lie in ..." or "My background in Computational Chemistry taught me to [...], and I'm now interested in broadening/focusing my interest on [...]". That's a bit more subtle, but I guess the message should pass. A: Typically, the way you would state that sort of preference is by noticeably not including it in the list of interests. Given your experience with the technique, not including it on a cover letter, or in your "Objectives" statement on your CV, should be enough to prompt someone to ask about it during the interview process. If it does not come up during discussion, you will definitely want to proactively mention it at some point during your interview. That being said, the best way is to not apply to labs which do that sort of work, and focus your search on areas that do interest you. "

"academia"

"Q: What types of industry positions favor PhD over a masters? I'm coming from a biomedical engineering background, and I'm noticing that almost all job postings ask for either an MS or a PhD, and from speaking with my friends with masters it seems that masters are often favored, because they demand less pay. In fact, the only positions that specifically seek out PhDs seem to be research positions in industry. Based on that, I'm curious to see if this exists beyond just engineering. Are there any non-research industry positions that actively seek to hire PhDs over masters students? A: I am currently employed in the biotech industry. Hopefully this is helpful but it may all just be obvious: Concerning research industry positions, jobs are generally classified as PhD (scientist) or non-PhD (research assistant/associate). For scientists positions, sometimes someone without a PhD will be considered if they have significant experience - e.g. Masters plus 5-8 years, Bachelors plus 10+ years. However, PhDs are generally favored over non-PhDs for outside hires. For research asst/assoc positions, non-PhDs are favored over PhD holders, and many companies have policies that prohibit hiring PhDs. Concerning non-research industry positions, holding a PhD will give you an edge over BS/MS holders, but you have to compete with other specialized degrees. For business developement and upper management positions, you'd have to compete with MBA holders (along with internal hires from research/scientific management). For legal positions, you'd compete with JDs and certified patent agents. For project management, there are certifications as well. If you were to hold MBA/JD/additional certification AND a PhD, you would be extremely marketable for these types of positions. It's a lot of work to add something like that on after finishing a PhD program, but companies often love to have PhDs on staff in those types of positions - but generally you need to have the other qualifications as well. Edit: Also, the best people to talk to are professors from your current/old department who are on any company's board of directors. They will know exactly what kind of people a company wants to hire, and will be able to tell you how to target your job search, or what kind of experience/credentials matter most. A: High-tech engineering companies, for one. A friend of mine works at a small system-on-a-chip designer company, and they supply highly specialized chip designs to other businesses which utilize embedded systems -- think leading automotive, aerospace, consumer electronics OEMs. The company is small and every engineering employee has at least a MSc, most of them have PhDs or higher (that would be associate professors and professors). Another example is automotive R&D -- mechanical engineering. Companies are financing new development of new methodologies in product development -- particularly structural optimization, design automation, manufacturing process simulations. Virtual prototyping is the name of the game for top manufacturers currently, and the demand for highly-skilled experts is great, even in these uncertain economic times. In the country where I study, PhD projects are financed jointly by interested private companies as well as research organizations, and the companies have a vested interest to receive not only the direct results from the research, but also trained individuals that can integrate the research outcomes into their product development or manufacturing process. Obviously YMMV by country and research field. PhDs in in mostly theoretical projects might have harder time finding a good position after graduating, while hands-on graduates whose projects were conducted in collaboration with industrial partners are much more likely to secure a senior technical position even before their dissertation. A: I don't have hard numbers to support this statement, but I've been told that many investment banks are quite interested in PhD (although mostly in hard sciences) for quantitative analyst jobs. These positions are not research positions, but it seems that the rigor and the experience of research, in terms for instance of modelling data, acquired during the PhD is appreciated. "

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"Q: Ph.D. in UK/Ireland as "Dipl.-Ing." from Germany Is it feasible for an engineering student from Germany to get into a Ph.D. program in the UK/Ireland? Specifically, what should one keep in mind/try to accomplish in the last two years before finishing the "Diplom"? How would one apply? Maybe this question can be extended to other combinations of countries, but I didn’t want it to be too broad. A: In short, yes. If you're talking about the "traditional" 5 year Diplom, it's essentially equivalent to an MSc, which is what most universities require to start a PhD (although some only require a Bachelor's degree). I don't think you need to keep anything in particular in mind when finishing, apart from making sure that you get good grades for your transcript :) The application procedure wouldn't be any different from other students, although you may have to explain in some detail what your degree is. A: Yes, it is certainly possible. One thing to keep in mind is that practically all PhD programs in the UK require some evidence of an acceptable standard of English (see here for an example), usually IELTS or TOEFL tests, and depending on your English skills, this might warrant some preparation during the last year of your Diplom. Many PhD programs also require at least two letters of recommendation, so the sooner you have an idea who might provide these for you, the better. "

"academia"

"Q: What are some good practices when asking people to share their PowerPoint presentations from a conference/talk? In many cases, they (understandably) don't reply (or they are uncomfortable with sharing them, as they often contain unpublished material). Also, I do this often, and don't want to be known as "the person who asks people for their powerpoint slides". At the same time though, it's simply far easier to remember the content of a presentation/talk when you actually have access to the stuff inside (and I do discover that I learn faster from talks than from any other source). Most of the time, I request the slides as a reference for learning the material (since I'm still new to the area, and they are quite helpful for that). (though I do wonder - what are the underlying circumstances when most people ask for them?) A: There is no magic when it comes to asking for presentations. And there is nothing wrong with being the person who asks people for their powerpoint slides (at least you show that are interested and it may result in them being cited; and it shows that they got their job done - though a presentation they interested others in their idea). If they don't reply (or don't sent it), it is usually of one of the following reasons: They are busy and missed your mail, It would take their time to find the presentation and send it (it may be big so it is not just sending an e-mail), They would prefer not to make it public as: It is not polished enough for anything but a presentation, It may contain things that they would prefer not to share publicly (e.g. plots form other papers, preliminary data which may later proven to be wrong or incomplete, pictures or video they don't have right to share further, etc). If they don't want to share it - they have right to it. However, usually they have nothing against (and actually are happy to do so) as long as you make it quick and easy for them. So it is a good idea to ask for slides just after their talk - they may have it on their computer (so you can copy it to your stick) or on a stick (o you can copy it to your computer) or send it right away. Also: Send your e-mail at most a week after the presentation, Be short and concise (what exactly you want, what do you want with do with it), If there is no response try writing the same e-mail a week later. A: Be very clear on what you want it for, particularly whether you will be sharing it further (even within your group, with your advisor, &c). I often post edited version of the slides online, but I always want to have control on the contents that are public, semi-public, or private. A: I don't mind sharing my presentations, but I make sure that I provide a read-only format only (PDF) with slides scaled to e.g. 1/4 of actual size, in raster format (so that more than one would fit on a page). When people ask for presentations, I expect they'd like to have the material handy for further reading and reference, not to present it or use it themselves. One would go even further and restrict the PDF printing, copying and modifications, although these can be circumvented with a reasonable effort if you know what you are doing. I don't do this as a matter of principle, but I can see how some people might want to have such kind of control. "

"academia"

"Q: How much guidance should I reasonably expect from an MSc Thesis Supervisor As part of my MSc I have to produce a Thesis/Dissertation which forms an integral part of the program and classification (roughly 1/4 - I imagine the subject can make a difference, so I should say that my MSc is in Mathematics in the UK). I am wondering to what extend I should expect to be completely on my own in this endeavor. I have a supervisor who has a pretty good research reputation as far as I can tell from his publications and collaborations, so I'm quite happy in that sense, however it s becoming increasingly evident, that he will not provide much guidance when it comes to specific topic selection or anything else for that matter. Is this normal and to be expected for an MSc Dissertation, or is it a bad sign that should make me think whether it may be better to switch? (I was under the impression that at such a junior level one could still expect quite a bit of hand-holding when it comes to the selection of a feasible topic). A: I'm not sure how much of your issue is related to the specific field—mathematicians are known for being somewhat more independent than graduate students in, say, engineering. That said, your advisor should at least show signs of being interested in your research. If you feel like you need help, and aren't getting any, then you need to make arrangements to get it. At first, I'd recommend talking to other graduate students and postdocs under your advisor. Next, I'd talk to other students outside the group; finally, I'd move on to other faculty. It really depends on how easy or difficult it is to change advisors. If it's relatively easy, then in the end, it might be necessary as a last resort. If not, you'll need to make do with a rather unfortunate situation. Ultimately, this is a case-by-case kind of situation: you'll need to talk to more people in your department and find out how widespread this is. Some advisors are completely hands-off, and expect their students to be self-motivating. Others are hands-on to the point of micromanagement. In math, my impression from conversations with colleagues is that the tendency is towards being hands-off, but it's impossible to say what will be the case in your specific department. A: Staff at my department have to propose specific projects for MSc theses (possibly together with the student). Even if your university doesn't require that, I would expect your supervisor to help you significantly with selecting the topic of your thesis. For the thesis itself the help will be less, but I wouldn't think it reasonable to expect an MSc student to essentially come up with their thesis topic unless they want to. "

"academia"

"Q: Good source for pre PhD level papers/dissertations in Mathematics I am looking for a good source to get my hands on some pre PhD level maths papers/dissertations, because I want to get a better feeling what is expected. (i.e. BSc and MSc Dissertations) My department is unfortunately not at liberty to make MSc Dissertations available for copyright reasons, so I am stuck with asking individual people. In order to get a good overview I'd really like to get my hands on a much bigger selection of papers though, so I'm looking for a good online sources. A: Your best source of such information would be to look for electronic repositories that are at least partially "open." The openThesis repository offers one such source, and you might find some information on sites like academia.edu. An alternate source would be to look at individual school's repositories. For instance, MIT's DSpace offers copies of many recent MIT thesis and dissertations, which can be previewed by anyone, although you need to be a member of the MIT community in order to be able to download and print documents from the site. A: A quick Google search for "partial fulfillment master science mathematics" finds hundreds of MS theses in several branches of mathematics. "

"academia"

"Q: Is there an international taxonomy of academic titles/ranks? Looking at the list of academic ranks on Wikipedia shows that the same academic rank/title can mean quite different things in different countries. For instant, a "research assistant" in the US can stand for an undergrad student doing an internship, while in the UK it can stand for a postdoc. Similarly, the term "lecturer" might stand for a permanent position (e.g. in the UK) or for a teaching assistant position, open to graduate students. However, when thinking about it, there are not so many kind of possible positions (permanent or not, with teaching or not, with research or not, with PhD supervision or not, with team responsibility or not, etc), and having a clear title could help a lot (for instance, in my case, I've been working in four different countries, with a different job title each time!). Is there some kind of official taxonomy that one could refer to? If not, who could be in charge to create it? (the EU, if only for intra-Europe mobility?) A: In general, the answer is negative. Not only there are different systems in different countries (and same-spelled degrees may have different requirements), but even if a degree seems to be the same, it is not necessary considered equivalent. Often universities and institutes have some freedom in the interpretation of degrees earned in other countries. Common sense can be a good guide but in case of doubt you need to check if university (or institute) X accepts a foreign academic title Y instead of their Z. For example, when I obtained degrees licencjat (3 years undergraduate, 180ECTS) and magister (5 years undergraduate, 300ECTS) from a Polish university, they refused to translate it into anything else (stating explicitly that it is not equivalent to anything else). However, some other Polish universities do translate it into Bachelor of Science and Master of Science, respectively. Nevertheless, my new institute didn't have problem to find them qualifying me for their PhD program. "

"academia"

"Q: How do I effectively use tags to organize my bibliography? I use the online tool citeulike to manage my bibliography. The main tool to organize the library is tags (functionally equivalent to tags here on this site). One problem I seem to be having is I do a very poor job of initially choosing tags, so I need to continually re-tag my library to keep it organized. Is there any advice on choosing an intitial set of tags? Or will it be necessary for me to continually maintain my library to keep it organized/updated as much as I would like? A: Tagging is only useful if you use it with discipline. Look at Wikipedia or Stackexchange, most articles can be determined by 5-6 categories (science - math - geometry - euclidean geometry - metric). Stackexchange has a max. of 5 tags, often you only see 1-2 on questions, which is often pointless, as those tags will appear often in the question/paper title and abstract too. Wasted time. So, if you decide to create a tagging system, use at least 4-6 tags depending on how interdisciplinary and specialized your paper/link collection is. Also consider to not only tag by topic but also kind (review, letter, peer-reviewed, experimental results, theoretical analysis, explanation of new measurement method, meta-discussion...), year, personal rating (very interesting article you learned a lot from and should read again from time to time), rarely/often/top cited, new theory/model, strongly discussed in the research community A last note. I use myself Copernic Desktop Search as a supplementary tool, I download all papers of possible interest (disk space is cheap ;) ), papers I read, will read or maybe will never take a look at. The point is that Desktop Search software often has more powerful search operators and sorting mechanisms than Google Scholar & Co. If you know how to use them, you can save a lot reading and tagging time or tagging at all. You know, if you are smart in using Google & search operators and have a good vocabulary, you don't have to ask a lot questions on internet boards. Conclusion: Don't use tagging for creating a pure thematic and linear directory structure, if finding again your papers or bits of information can be done by learning a good Desktop Search software. Use your tags in a personal way and remember, the point is not to structure your bibliography like a folder directory for categorized files, the point is to find again the bits of knowledge and most memorable papers, which will rather look like a strongly interconnected nonlinear tag cloud. If you look how people tag sites on del.ic.ious, often only 2 or 3 tags, sometimes using up to 10 pure thematic redundant tags, they are doing it imho wrong and waste a lot of time. A: I don't use citeulike myself, but I think it's important to make a difference between tags and keywords. Indeed, keywords are usually already included in the paper or at least in the abstract, so you don't need to retag them with duplicate information. Instead, it's better to use tags to give some personal context, such as why did you read this paper in the first place, or which general idea can you connect it to, or for which of your papers you used it, etc. In this case, there is no "wrong" or "right" tag, just some facts. "

"academia"

"Q: Selecting journal reviewers through cover letter I was planning to use mdpi.com to submit a paper to "Entropy" journal. The journal perfectly matches the area that my paper covers. However, they require a cover letter to five reviewers selected by myself: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/instructions Coverletter: Check in your cover letter whether you supplied at least 5 referees. Check if the English corrections are done before submission. Is this the standard procedure? Can you propose other similar journal? I am getting afraid that receiving feedback is not an easy task, and I can wander with the paper for a year or so. A: They don't require you to send a cover letter to five referees, but just to indicate in your cover letter the names and contact info of 5 potential reviewers. It's just to help them finding reviewers for your paper (as they say, they might not use those you provided). But I don't think you need to contact the reviewers first. As far as I know, it's a pretty common procedure, I've seen it for several other journals. A: I wouldn't say that a journal asking for reviewers is "standard" practice, but it is by no means rare. For instance, nearly all ACS journals require that the paper submitter provide the names of between three and six potential referees. Other journals that I've submitted to, including J. Chem. Phys. and the Physical Review series do not require referee lists of any kind. It should be noted that the choice of referees is entirely discretionary on the part of the editor. The editor is free to pick from any or all of the names on your list—or none of them, if it's an area the editor knows well enough to assign referees independently. "

"academia"

"Q: Historical data for success rate of grant/project applications? Is there any publicly accessible information regarding the success rate of grant/project applications for science/technology and other research grant programs (e.g. NSF grants) and its variation over time? I'm not interested in an exhaustive list but some illustrative examples would be much appreciated. A: Check out the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools. It may take you some time to find exactly what you're looking for, but there are numerous reports available, with a good deal of detail. A: It's surprisingly hard to find that information, I was expecting to get it more easily, in particular when public funding is involved. I've found for the European Union FP7-ICT call 1, there were 1836 proposals for only 318 accepted, with a total 1.2 billion euros funded (Source, slide 18). I guess a good strategy could be to contact the Research Division of the European Commission, I'm sure they have this information somewhere, and they are probably able to provide it. "

"academia"

"Q: How to fruitfully utilize faculty-student orientation sessions at institutes you don't want to attend? More than once, I have had (graduate school admissions) orientation sessions where the faculty of the institute introduce their fields, their research and what they expect from potential students (Among other things). At places I am interested in, this is a useful exercise. However, there are often places which I don't wish to study at but have a few good professors doing some really good work with great knowledge of the field and awesome intuition. How does one fully exploit an opportunity to interact with good professors from institutes you are not interested in attending? This is very different from a research conference for obvious reasons. Further, If I am not interested in that institute but wanted the opinion of one of the professors about another institute/lab (the ones I am interested in attending), is that a taboo? How does one stay in touch with such contacts where your only excuse to mail is to ask a question? I really want to be on email terms. I have read and understood their work but what is it that should be the content of mails written to them? It doesn't make sense to simply send them emails saying that I read your paper or I attended your talk. (Please feel free to edit this question in any amount if necessary) A: I don't think you can expect to get the opinion of a professor about another institute/lab. You can probably get some facts (like this other institute has more/less money, they are more/less active in this area), but nothing subjective. Academia is pretty small world, and people try as much as possible not to say anything negative publicly (and since everything said is positive, it can be hard to distinguish the real positive from the fake one). You need to have a real interest in their work. As mentioned here, it's already pretty hard to maintain collaboration between people interested, so if there is no clear interest, it will very hard to be on email terms. But, the question is: why do you want to be on email terms? See the previous point. You need to really interested, meaning you've read and understood their papers, and are able to ask questions that go beyond "what are the possible usage of your approach?". As a general remark, professors are usually already very busy dealing with their own research/teaching/students. Of course, they usually are open to new collaborations, but they might lack the time to work with a student who is not theirs. A good solution could to try to visit them, academically speaking, for a month or so, to work on a very specific topic. A: From your stated question, you need to tread carefully. The nature of the environment at those presentations is one where the professors are looking for potential graduate students, not collaborators. Even more so, if you're a potential graduate student, you likely haven't done any real research yet, so you can't work out "collaborations" or anything. That being said, it's perfectly acceptable to simply walk over to them and ask to hear more about their research and interests. They know that you're looking at many labs and many not choose theirs. Just make sure your request to remain in contact comes across as a "Do you mind if I contact you later to discuss your research?" and not "Can we talk later even though I have no interest in joining your lab?" Now is not the setting for that; wait until after having joined a lab to initiate that conversation. "

"academia"

"Q: Publishing a creative, important result – does it create any real finance opportunities (jobs, etc.) I often fantasize that when I will get my work to successful end, then I will have new possibilities open – and that maybe I will even receive scientific job offers. The work is obtaining new important results in computational sciences. But then I get to the ground, think that giving someone job is rather a necessity for the employer – and not an act of appreciation or even not an act of support. Then, my results are important and useful, so someone may need them. However, the results can be understood, used and further developed by some other scientist. So it will not be necessarily me, who will get the job. One related example that comes to my mind is Stephen Wolfram, who is independent because he is earning money himself. So he was not appreciated by someone, instead he won his share in software market. A: Sadly, there is not a strict correlation between doing good science and being financially successful. It is entirely possible to do "creative, important work" and still not be well rewarded for it. For instance, one could have published these results in an obscure journal that very few people will read. Or, as another example, the researcher might be a poor "salesman," unable to convince readers and fellow scientists of the merit of his work. In general, you need a combination of both networking and technical skills to forge a successful career as a researcher: the contacts will help you get interviews for jobs; your technical knowledge will get you the job. A: When I worked for HP (in the storage area network division), much of the published research articles were for things that it still took several years to bring to market. Generally, it was about 5 years between the first papers and the time a product made it to market. Even things used everywhere - SQL - took 9 years to go from research paper (Codd's paper was in 1969) to first commercial product (Relational [now called Oracle] was released in 1978) with several large companies (including IBM) trying to bring a product to market. In software development, academic research runs 5 to 30+ years ahead of in-the-field practices. As for Wolfram, I don't think he's a good model to emulate, as he fits the model of a crank more than the model I would attribute to a good scientist. Despite that, I bought his book and use his software. Another example I can think of where creative important results don't translate to success is Long Term Capital Management. Founded by 2 Nobel Prize winners in economics, it was the first massive Wall Street bailout in the 1990s after the Russian financial crisis resulted in Soviet/Russian bonds going belly up. One of the founders was the Scholes in the Black-Scholes model, which is one of the most important equations in finanace. Discovering something great and/or important takes a different set of skills than bringing that discovery to market. A: aeismail's response is on target, and just to extend it a bit more, you will find few researchers who make money directly from their research. All your work is owned by the university and patents you file are owned by the university. That being said, it is fairly common for a researcher to found his or her own company based on their work. There are numerous examples of this, but just to give two examples from my own experience: Psychology Software Tools, the company behind E-Prime, a popular psychology paradigm programming language, is owned by Dr. Walter Schneider, a psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Computational Diagnostics, Inc., a company offering neurological monitoring services, is run by Dr. Robert Sclabassi (recently retired), who has numerous publications in the field of EEG signal processing. Aside from creating a startup, some professors will consult externally for a fee. Anecdotally, depending on how well-connected the professor is, I know a number of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who did consulting work on the side. Often, if researchers have business acumen and interest, they will follow one of these two paths. "

"academia"

"Q: Are there any students at the United Nations University? The United Nations University (UNU) is an academic arm of the United Nations. If I understood well, it is doing only research. Are there any people who are actually enrolled as "students" there? References appreciated A: The United Nations University does not really work as a normal university, but rather as a research center. The difference is that they recruit students from developing countries as for a period that can go from several months to a year, in order to make them work on concrete research projects, so that they can gain experience (which can help them to apply for a Master of PhD program somewhere else). For instance, this a job position for students at the UNU-IIST (International Institute for Software Technology). Note that the UNU-IIST also plan to offer a joint PhD program with the University of Pisa. Note also that it seems that each institute of the UNU is to some extent independent, so maybe other institutes provide more academic programs. So, to answer your questions, technically speaking there are students at the UNU (when I was working at the UNU-IIST, there were something between 10 and 20 students), but they are not "enrolled" by the UNU, it's more like some kind of internship. "

"academia"

"Q: Are university counseling services usually able to help with the professional troubles that PhD students face? The thing with PhDs is that it often takes someone who knows the politics and people of the field in order to really understand (or help) a PhD student's troubles (if any arise). At the same time, there are many similarities. If they don't, who are the other best people to talk to in case issues arise? A: In general, university counseling should be aware of how to deal with PhD student affairs as well as undergraduate issues. (Perhaps different staff or the two groups, perhaps not.) However, I'll focus on the "if they don't" part of your question. There is usually a graduate "officer" in most departments, who is tasked with making sure that graduate students complete the requirements of their studies, and that departmental regulations and policies are being followed. This officer should be the first person to talk to if something goes wrong, and the problem can't be resolved between the parties directly. Beyond that, the members of the thesis committee have an obligation to intervene in the case of severe conflicts that could disrupt the program. Ultimately, though, the chair of the department would be the last "internal" stop before you would have to go to the university-level administration (the office of the dean of graduate students, or a similar position). If you are looking for advice from fellow students, perhaps you can get information from the student committee that is present in most departments. A: Many university mental health centers have PhD-only group therapy programs. These often focus on stress and anxiety. They will be proctored by a professional counselor but are designed to be a space where graduate students can help each other. The benefit is two-fold - you get to talk to people who are in grad school in your university, perhaps in a similar field or program. You'd be surprised how similar some issues are regardless of field of study (research falling behind, concern about funding, conflicts with PIs/advisers, etc.). But in group therapy you are able to work through issues in an explicitly private space. If you are having a serious issue, it may be good to start here rather than within your department. I'd say that is any grievance you air to someone within your department has the chance to spread. "

"academia"

"Q: Is it advisable to put entire source of my thesis up on GitHub? I've been using git for a while and now GitHub. I'm starting to write a master's thesis. Would it be a good idea to upload all the files to online public repositories? Does anyone have any experience with this? EDIT: Thanks for all the answers. I consulted with my adviser about this, and he said that latex sources were ok, as the document will be open access anyway. My source code however was not, primarily because the collaboration already has a protected wiki for such things. A: I'm told for your field that the answer might be yes, because you're slightly less threatened in terms of being scooped than most, with physics (apparently) going largely by who submits first. I would be extremely cautious publishing the source of my thesis in its entirety on a public repository. I'm all for repeatable science and open access, but the public should only have access to your code when this condition is met: You have no further use of the exclusive access to your code. All the questions you've programmed have been answered, the papers and presentations that emerge from them are in press, and at this point, it is a question of reproducible research. Once that's true, sure. Until that point? You're running the profound risk of your research being stolen. A: The answer is in two parts: Yes, it's a very good idea to use an online repository with a versioning system to write your Master thesis. It offers a nice automatic backup, you can easily sync from different locations (office, home), and (this is mostly true for papers rather than a thesis) you can easily collaborate with people outside of your university (i.e. who wouldn't have an account on your university server. No, it's not a good idea at to make it public. Plagiarism is real, online versioning system do not offer any real protection, and you don't want to make it too easy to copy, especially when you're not finished yet. I'm all for the open-access of finished documents, that you can put on arXiv, but in this case, there is a real timestamp, and your work can be indexed (for instance, in Computer Science, arXiv is indexed on DBLP). For these reasons, I've been personally using for my papers BitBucket, that offers for free to academics their unlimited plan (unlimited public/private repositories, unlimited collaborators). In this way, I create a private repository for each of my paper, give the access rights to my co-author. It seems that GitHub also provides a way to have a private repositories for academics: https://github.com/edu, so you can keep using it for sharing your open-source code (for instance) and use it with a private repository for your thesis. A: Talk to your adviser about this. Do not make anything that is unpublished publicly available without their knowledge. Any other people who might be co-authors on your papers might also have a say. Having said that, a private github repository is a great idea (I used one myself for my PhD dissertation & papers). "

"academia"

"Q: Software for managing departmental alumni relations My department is looking for a CRM tool to manage its relationship with graduated students (either on BSc, MSc or PhD level). What we want to achieve: Show our candidates that you can get a well paid work after graduating Physics in Poland (they don't believe such positions exist) Allow our department to track careers of out students and possibly change study program to better fulfill their needs Gain input from former students Allow current and former students to view/apply for job opportunities (people from our department who start a company often look for people with similar education level) All these use cases are more or less practiced now, but mainly using emails. I was wondering what are established practices, particularly in Western Universities (since Polish ones tend to lag somewhat, especially when it comes to such problems). Do your departments do any kind of alumni tracking? If yes, what tools do you use? If not, why not? A: LinkedIn is a fine resource for this sort of thing, especially for keeping track of alums' careers and contact data. I encourage my students to link to me for exactly this reason. "

"academia"

"Q: Subtle (and not-so-subtle) humor in scientific literature Tonight I was scrolling through my RSS aggregator (which includes subscriptions for several journals I follow) and this abstract caught my attention. The article's title, as well as the name of the software it describes, includes a subtle reference to this popular internet meme. This gave me a good laugh, and an excuse to watch that ridiculously silly video again. But on a more serious note, this is not the first time I have seen the use of subtle (or not-so-subtle) humor in the title of a scientific journal article, conference abstract, or poster presentation. Sometimes the humor is even injected into the body of the publication itself. But in general, we as scientists are expected to write in such a way that our findings are easily communicated and easily reproducible. The focus is on clarity, objectivity, and reproducibility. There are of course no formal rules about the use of humor in scientific literature, but are there any de facto rules? Do these de facto rules depend on the field (computer science vs genetics) or the publisher (Oxford Univ. Press vs BioMed Central) or the journal's impact factor (Nature vs Frontiers in Genetics)? Does humor even have a place in scientific literature, or would we be better off without it? A: I see humorous titles in scientific articles now and again, like the "Wizard of Odds" joke in a recent commentary in Epidemiology. One should however be somewhat cautious. The general use of "marketing gimmicks" like questions in the title have been suggested to increase downloads but not actual citations - which flawed or not flawed form the basis for how both the paper and you as the author are evaluated. Consider this finding: The results of the current study indicate that in two prestigious scientific journals in psychology the use of exceptionally amusing titles (2 standard deviations above the average rated amusement) was associated with a substantiate ‘penalty’ of around 33% of the total number of citations. The present results were found in both of the examined journals and cannot be attributed to potential moderating effects of the title length and pleasantness, the number of authors, the year of publica- tion, and the article type (regular article vs comment). While that might not be perfectly generalizable, I think it's pretty easy to say that being overly clever is hazardous. A: The NCBI ROFL blog is a good source of intentional and unintentional humour in the scientific literature. In general I think we can get a little too po-faced about the "importance" of the scientific literature, and a little humour now and then (used wisely) can help to make a point. It is an easy thing to misjudge, however, and I think it is true that no humour at all is vastly preferable to bad humour. A: The brief answer is that, yes, humor has its place, but it should never be used at the expense of the integrity of the results; even when used, it is often only used sparsely; and the author typically is somewhat known in the field. (You rarely find a very young professor publishing something like that.) "

"academia"

"Q: When should I tell a potential employer about a spousal accommodation? The title sums it up: At what point during the interview/negotiations do you let a potential academic employer about spousal accommodations? A: I don't believe there's a universal right answer for this question. I think it depends on the level of accommodation required, as well as the particulars of your own situation. In general, if you're not being considered for a tenure-track or permanent-level position, there often isn't a lot you can do in terms of getting spousal accommodations, unless you have a very generous employer. In that case, I wouldn't think there's ever a good time to bring up the matter, because there won't be much in the way of possibilities. For a tenure-track or equivalent position, on the other hand, I think that I would wait at least until the level of having secured an interview before bringing up these issues. Any earlier, and some employers may (perhaps illegally, depending on jurisdiction) wash their hands of the issue by skipping you in making the list of finalists. Once you've gotten the interview, though, that's no longer a concern. Whether to mention it during or after the interview depends on the ability of the school to do something about it. I would lean towards mentioning at the interview, and particularly so f the school has a "dual-career" office in place. If you wait, then you may spend your time negotiating and having to accept or decline the offer without a firm commitment of help in hand at the time. "

"academia"

"Q: How do you make corrections to a published paper? What's the best way to make corrections to a published paper? Should I amend the original paper and mention in a footnote (or similar) what was changed and why or prepare a completely separate document and put that on my website/append it to the original paper? I'm not so much worried about how to get it to the publishers that handle the paper, but rather about how to go about it. I would especially like to hear from people who have done something like that or know someone who did. A: It depends on what the error is. If the error is the publisher's fault—for instance, if they failed to make a correction you specified in the proofs—then they have an obligation to correct the error. In that case, an email to the editors alerting them of the problem, along with some documentation of the original list of corrections, usually suffices to get the problem fixed. (This will usually be accompanied by a "publisher's note" alerting the reader to the correction, although the original article will usually be updated to provide the correct information.) If the error is something discovered after publication, then the best way to fix this is to prepare a short comment detailing the error, the correction, and its implications on your work. The resulting item is then submitted to the journal as a "comment" (or, in some cases, an "erratum," if the journal offers that as a submission option). In this sense, it is like any other comment on a paper. A: What's the best way to make corrections to a published paper? Although it isn't clear what the "best way" is, I am fairly certain that it is not the standard approaches that are currently used (e.g. as described in aesmail's answer). PLOS enables authors and readers to post notes, comments, and corrections on published articles. Corrections can be either minor or major corrections, and are reviewed by PLOS staff. I think that this is a step in the right direction, and by lowering the bar for publishing a correction will hopefully promote better science. A: Journals oftentimes make their procedures regarding varying types of corrections available on their website (e.g., Nature). I would speak with the journal and see what their preferred methodology is. This way, you can have the correction listed alongside the original publication, which would maximize the visibility of the correction. Almost no one reading your paper will check your personal website to see if corrections have been posted there. "

"academia"

"Q: Doing a PhD with significant external time obligations (e.g., marriage) Graduate school has a reputation for being a tremendous time-sink. I'm currently married with kids, and I have a fairly busy extracurricular schedule. Is it common for married people - or anyone, actually, with significant external time constraints - to not finish their graduate work, specifically due to conflicting obligations? A: The people who I've seen with considerable external commitments who have still gotten through in a reasonable amount of time all boil down to one thing: They treat grad-school like a job. From 9 to 5 (or 10 to 6, 11 to 7, whatever works for their schedule) they're working. No, they're not available for the infinitely many distractions of life, any more than someone at an office is. They pack a tremendous amount of productivity into that time, and then when they need to be with their family, they're with their family. Those at least are the people who got through it sane. I think the other major trait is to recognize that, because you have a life, this might take a little longer, and not burn yourself out trying to hammer things through to the point of exhaustion. A: I've seen it work both ways: some people realize that they have a limited amount of time to work as a result of their external commitments, and therefore make themselves super-productive during the hours they are able to do research. I think, to some extent, that most of the people with severe external obligations fall into this class. For a sizable minority, however, the balancing act proves too difficult—although this is often a function of a mismatch in expectations between the advisor and the graduate student. If you believe this could be a problem for you, you should definitely talk with your advisor; if the outcome is unsatisfactory, you should also consider speaking with your thesis committee and the "graduate officer" of your department. In general, I think that if you are a productive graduate student, your advisor would be willing to work out suitable accommodations for your schedule. A: I had a similar dilemma (mine was whether to become a parent during grad school), and what solved it for me is the realization that, if all goes according to plan, my post-PhD life won't be too different from my grad student life. I'd like to stay in academia, and all the current difficulties will remain (e.g. short-term contracts/grants, traveling, unevenly distributed workload throughout the year, etc.). This realization was one of those: "Aha!" moments for me. If it doesn't work out now, it won't be a viable option for the future either. That being said, I do try to keep a 9-5 schedule, and I don't think it would have worked out well if my partner wasn't as involved in parenting as I am. Perhaps working in industry is different, and it really is easier to have kids. In any case it might be an idea to ask yourself whether you think your obligations in grad school would really be all that different from what they are at your current job. "

"academia"

"Q: What journals do not allow open access to published material? An increasing number of funding organizations require publications on the research that they fund to be open access, i.e. available to the public without having to subscribe to a journal or pay a fee. Does anybody know where I can find a list of journals/publishers that do not allow material that they publish to be published this way? A: This answer to a related question points to http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/, which allows you to look up the policy of specific journals. A: Directory of open access journals is the most comprehensive listing for the open access ones, so if you find a journal there, it's open. If not, then you need further research. Though usually clicking on an article link should be sufficient. "

"academia"

"Q: What are the advantages and disadvantages to completing a Masters program before applying to a Ph. D program? I've been considering applying to graduate school of some form or another in Mathematics. During my undergraduate years, I did decently on my undergraduate coursework (mostly A-s, some As, a B) but not stellar, and it wasn't until I started taking graduate courses as a senior that I started buckling down and getting solid As or higher. I also had no research experience at this time. I eventually want to apply to a Ph. D program in pure mathematics. Since I didn't really click until later in undergraduate years, so I was considering applying to 2-year masters programs in mathematics, and then based on my performance there, decide whether I'm fit to work towards a Ph. D. My question is, what are the advantages and disadvantages to completing a master's program before applying to a separate Ph. D program? I know masters degrees are sometimes considered terminal degrees. Would doing well in masters coursework be advantageous in applying to Ph. D programs later on as opposed to immediately after undergrad years? Does strong performance as a masters student make one a more attractive candidate, or do programs have less interest in applicants who already have a masters? Is it wiser to apply for a Ph. D directly? I'm sorry if this question is considered too much of a soft question. Thank you. A: I can only speak for my (computer science) department. Students who apply to our PhD program with MS degrees are held to a higher standard than applicants who apply as undergraduates. What we look for in PhD applicants is strong evidence of research potential. Most undergraduates don't have an opportunity to undertake a real research project, but MS students do have that opportunity, by definition. It's much harder for MS applicants without publishable results to be admitted than an undergraduate in the same situation, all else being equal. Grades are much less important (unless they suck, which yours don't). On the other hand, the fact that your already decent grades improved when you started taking graduate classes is a huge point in your favor. Be sure to get recommendation letters from your instructors in those courses, and hit them up for research opportunities. I recommend applying to both MS and PhD programs; some departments will even let you apply for both simultaneously. There's a similar effect in NSF's evaluations of graduate fellowship applications. NSF splits the applicant pool into three piles based on the number of years of graduate education: still an undergrad, less than 12 months, and more than 12 months. Expectations are higher for applicants in later piles. In particular, publications are a de facto requirement for students in the more-than-one-year pile, even if their one year of graduate education was in a non-research masters program. A: Many PhD programs require you to do a masters on your way to a PhD, so the point in many cases is moot. That being said, Advantages: You'll get a chance to see whether research is something you like before committing to the PhD process. You'll complete most of the coursework, so when you get to the PhD work you'll be able to more quickly focus on research. Disadvantages: Depending on the masters, you may be spending money on your degree. Many PhD programs will fund your way (in exchange for you doing awesome research). You'll be required to do a master thesis, which can be comprehensive, and you may come to view it as a waste to do it twice (one for masters, one for PhD). A: Other than what eykanal mentioned, you might want to consider the following points: Pros If you have lackluster UG grades with little/no research experience (in terms of publications/term papers/internships), few top PhD programs would be even willing to look at your application, not matter what are your scores in the GREs. I assume your letters of recommendations (LORs) from faculty would be average at best as well, which would really, really hurt your admission chances. So, a Masters degree would help you rectify that - you can aggressively start pursuing research-based projects with the faculty, and work at a publishable thesis. This would both give you something added to your profile (a publication), and you can get much better LORs from your masters faculty - something that may get you into that top school where your dream adviser works! You can get (some of) your Master's course credit transferred to your PhD program, so that you can start working on your thesis much early, and may even finish faster! However, this really varies from department to department, so make sure you inquire about this before applying! If you are really, really sure of what field you want to research in, you can find the top people in your field (whom you'd want to be advised by during your PhD) - and start corresponding with them during your Masters, asking queries/having discussions about their most recent papers, and using them in your Masters thesis (assuming you'd be working in the same field). That way, when you finally apply, you would stand out in their mind from the other applicants, as someone who is genuinely interested in their research. Mind you, I'm not asking you to fake anything! Be sincere about your passion to work in the same research areas, and they just might be convinced to bat for you during applications review! Con On the other hand, if you do not fare well in Masters program, most admission committees (ad-coms) would take it as a red flag - as it would bolster the less-than-stellar impression your undergrads created, and hence they might deem you not fit for PhD at all. This might be the case with even the ad-coms that might've been willing to give you the benefit of the doubt when only presented with your undergrad records - so, tread carefully if you happen to embark on a Masters, as your performance there would undergo even greater scrutiny! "

"academia"

"Q: Does a informative and clear professor webpage often increase the number of prospective PhD students who apply to work for the professor? Here is what I would call a particularly informative and clear professor webpage. Of course, it's not the most important thing (for me, personally, I mostly discovered professors through asking current professors whom to contact). But a lot of PhD students do discover professors to contact through Internet searches, which may be especially relevant for PhD students who might not have as many connections (especially international ones). And maybe a strong professor webpage could also increase the "fit" of the applicants who do decide to contact the professor. A: As an international student who is (was?) looking for potential advisors, I'd say yes (As far as I know)! The algorithm for me worked as follows: Contact the obvious ones. These were authors of papers I read recently (& liked), editors of journals etc. Basically, the ones with good "academic presence". Look at professors who have written textbooks or survey papers. Look at strong departments for professors. (By strong I mean : Reputation, Rankings and Star Power/Infrastructure) If a professor has a good webpage (Updated recently with list of current/past projects, list of graduate students and alumni), Shoof! Time saved! If a professor has a bad webpage (Last updated in 2001 or with minimal content or whatever), then run him on google scholar. Read his papers and try to find out what his students are upto. Once a professor has been selected, run youtube and ratemyprofessor on him. This is usually worthless but it did yield some awesome results once in a while. It did help get a virtual lab tour at times. In conclusion: Maintaining a good website does help students (especially international) get to know the professor better. It does save us a lot of time by having access to all relevant information at one place What is most irritating is webpages with very old content. I would prefer limited recent content to old obsolete content. "

"academia"

"Q: Can teaching help one's studies? Most of the questions about teaching assistantship portray TA'ing as a waste of time that only damages research. Although I am not TA'ing this year I consider applying for a TA position next year, because I feel I kind of missing it and it actually helps me to focus on my research. Are there any clear benefits of TA'ing for one's studies and research? A: Of course, it depends on how much teaching you would be doing, and how many hours a week it would take you, but generally, I would consider the following pros/cons points: Pros: Teaching might allow you to meet other people than those you are doing research with, and interaction with different people can be useful in terms of research (for instance, you can find a nice collaboration idea with a prof or another TA). Teaching brings more immediate rewards (positive and negative) than research. When I was doing my PhD, I was also teaching (about 60 hours per year), and sometimes, when I was stuck with some research problems, it was a nice feeling to interact with students and to feel "productive". Teaching is a good training to clearly explain ideas and concepts, which an important skill to write good papers. Teaching provides you a different activity aside from research, and can help you focus (as you said yourself). Teaching is good on a CV, and if you consider applying at some point to a lectureship/professorship position, then having done some teaching during your PhD can allow you to do some more research-oriented postdocs after (and thus get potentially more papers), so it's somehow a good time investment to do it when you're not expected to produce a huge amount of papers. Cons: Teaching takes some time, especially if you are teaching in a field where you are not an expert. The downside of the immediate rewards is that sometimes, you can get frustrated because of the teaching, and that can have an impact on your research production. In conclusion, I would say that being a TA has really clear and acknowledged benefits, as long as it does not take too much time on the research activity (I would say no more than a day per week during the official periods of teaching). A: I would definitely say that teaching helps you to understand better your teaching subject. Learning something is very different than learning something so that you are able to explain it to others. As Einstein said it. If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. When I teach, I see different viewpoints while I am explaining. When you see, students do not understand your example, you are forced to think about it. A question force you to see other parts of subject. These things always help me to understand my subject better. But you should be picky about your subjects. A subject which is completely different from your research topic is not suitable. But a subject which is helpful to your research subject will be better for you. For example I am studying Machine Learning, a lot of courses are offered which will be helpful in this topic. Statistics Optimization Data Mining .... But in the same token, web programming may not be helpful. "

"academia"

"Q: Alphabetical author list in non-alphabetical journal (A followup for this question) Say your field's convention is to have alphabetical-ordered author list. What should you do when your work is accepted to a (multidisciplinary) journal in which the convention is to order the author by contribution (e.g. Nature)? A: If it's a well-known journal like Nature, then I would follow their convention. Everybody who reads the article will assume that you do. A: My first stop would be checking if the journal has any particular authorship policies. If it does, follow them - if its not the way your field does it, welcome to the perils of interdisciplinary research. From there, in my mind, it splits into two questions: Is it a field-specific paper that happens to be going in an interdisciplinary journal. For example, are all the authors from Alphabetical Author List Field? Then put it in that field's ordering. Is it genuinely interdisciplinary (multiple fields with different traditions)? I'd probably default to the non-alphabetical ordering scheme, as among people I work with its the more common ordering scheme, and those who come from other fields that don't do that are generally pretty understanding. Or, if the authorship list is small enough, see if there's a clever ordering of author names that gets everyone what they need (it happens). "

"academia"

"Q: What does author order indicate? When you look at a paper, what order to you assume the authors are in? Most important/most work done first or alphabetical? In my group we usually use alphabetic order, but I've been wondering if that might create a misleading impression with lots of people. On a related note, would you expect the name of a PhD student to be always first on publications related to her/his work? A: The answer is strongly conditional on discipline and, to a lesser extent, country of origin. Conventions vary widely, as does the degree to which they are institutionalized. For instance, in some fields (e.g., Philosophy), co-authorship is not common and there is no convention about attribution, so absent an explicit note people are are likely to think the more senior author is the primary one. In Sociology, co-authorship is common and the convention is that the first author is the lead author unless there is a note indicating equal authorship. In Economics, co-authorship has become increasingly common over the past few decades but the convention is to list authors alphabetically, regardless of degree of contribution. In some fields the primary author may be determined by looking to see if there's a note specifying to whom correspondence should be directed, regardless of order of authorship on the paper. Meanwhile in many lab-based science disciplines, where it's sole authorship that's rare, author order is governed by different norms. In some fields, the first author is the one who is primarily responsible for the paper (what that means can vary, too), the last author is the lab head or primary grant-holder, and the order of authors in between is sometimes influenced by other norms. But other conventions exist, too. Knowing what they are and how to interpret them is part of one's socialization into a discipline. To make things more complicated, some fields—or some journals, or some labs, or some individual authors—may have their own rules or conventions designed to clarify things by listing credit more explicitly. Even worse, there may be a kind of hermeneutics of author-order where people parcel out credit to different contributors regardless of order of authorship, as when someone says "Sure, X is the first author and Y helped him write it up but it's obvious the paper was Z's idea". In your case, if your lab or unit is using a convention that's not standard in your field the most straightforward solution is to make a note of this in your articles. This isn't an ideal solution because papers will still be cited or referenced without people paying attention to your clarifying note, but there isn't much you can do about that. A: Kieran's answer is correct, it really depends on the field, but I couldn't resist the temptation to link to this (funny) paper by Andrew W. Appel, which tries to study which Computer Science conferences are Maths and which ones are Science, based on the assumption that Math researchers publish using alphabetical order while Science (i.e. more applied research) researchers do not. I wouldn't say that these are hard facts, but at least, that's quite interesting to read! For info, it was referenced from this question on CS Theoretical SE: https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/a/3126/8030 A: In my field (Epidemiology) I would always assume that the authorship is appearing in the "Most important work first, PI/major senior contributor last, others in the middle" authorship scheme, but it varies dramatically based on field. Under that scheme, I would expect the papers that emerge from a PhD students dissertation to have them as the first author. Ancillary papers, those where their results/data are published as part a compendium of findings from a larger study, etc. are where I wouldn't necessarily expect their names to show up first. "

"academia"

"Q: What percent of assistant professors generally receive tenure, and how does this percent vary depending on both school and field? Are new assistant professors more likely to receive tenure in an expanding field, like biology? And are they less likely (percentage-wise) to receive tenure at elite schools? A: This is actually quite a difficult question to answer specifically. Here is a brief paper reviewing some of the reasons why good data is unavailable on even very basic questions, together with some references to what is available. In the U.S. case, everyone agrees that, in general, the higher-ranked one's university, the more difficult it is to get tenure. Departments at some elite schools are notorious for their unwillingness or inability to grant tenure to their junior faculty over a very long period—in some cases, decades. (Just last year in my own field, for example, one of the leading departments tenured one of its junior faculty for the first time in more than twenty years. This is an extreme example, but you get the point.) Beyond the well-known general patterns and the (sometimes widely-reported) particular horror stories, though, many very interesting questions remain difficult to address systematically—including your one about expanding versus stable fields. The question is complicated by the fact that the institution of tenure itself is changing, as is its role within the university. As Wikipedia notes, in the United States "The period since 1972 has seen a steady decline in the percentage of college and university teaching positions in the US that are either tenured or tenure-track. United States Department of Education statistics put the combined tenured/tenure-track rate at 56% for 1975, 46.8% for 1989, and 31.9% for 2005. That is to say, by the year 2005, 68.1% of US college teachers were neither tenured nor eligible for tenure; a full 48% of teachers that year were part-time employees. "

"academia"

"Q: Are the Survey rankings for the National Research Council really more objective than the Regression rankings? This blog post argues so, but I have my doubts since the author works at a graduate program whose S-rankings are much better than its R-rankings. I have a feeling that R-rankings do capture some things that S-rankings don't capture. Professors who are far ahead of their time, for example, might be recognized as such, but I would expect that their papers probably won't get very high citation counts for some time. A: No, both rankings are basically nonsense. Even if you agree with the NRC's choice of a single "quality" model across all intellectual disciplines, the rankings are based on horrendously incomplete and incorrect data. This is especially true in computer science. Also, the claim in the blog post is an obvious joke. The S-rankings are "better" because writer's home department's S-ranking was better than its R-ranking. "