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thread-10774 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10774 | Funding with PHD +MS admission | 2013-06-26T18:42:49.693 | # Question
Title: Funding with PHD +MS admission
I have completed my BSc in physics and now doing my MS in my country(Bangladesh), but I want to do PHD/PHD+MS in USA with decent funding (RA or TA). I know In a PHD level, funding may be available, but what about MS? I'm saying this because I want to apply in this fall-2014 and during application I may not get my MS results .
# Answer
> 3 votes
In most cases, you do not have to be a MS *graduate* in order to apply for a PhD. I was a MS *candidate* when I applied for PhD about 4 years ago. I could only show 2 semesters worth of results from my MS program. It works.
Also, in *most* programs around the HCI/information science space (and if I might venture to propose, also in computer science), there is very *limited* funding for MS only programs. Things might be different in physics. I will leave it to the folks who know physics better to comment.
# Answer
> 2 votes
In the US, you can apply to PhD programs without having a master's degree; this is actually the case in many fields. However, you will have to successfully complete the requirements for candidacy to a PhD program before being admitted to the doctoral phase of the program.
Funding for PhD-level programs at reputable departments (at least in science and engineering) should normally be guaranteed for some fixed term, provided you are making adequate progress and satisfy all program requirements. (What you have to do for such funding—whether it be research or TA—may vary, but that the funding will come from somewhere should be stated in advance.)
# Answer
> 0 votes
Whether a US university would accept you into a PhD program would depend on the University itself - you'll need to contact them and ask them directly.
Having said that, do you have semester results in your MS, in your application you could state these and say that the final results are pending. Ask the universities you apply to if it is alright to submit your final transcript a little bit later.
In the meantime, gather all your academic credentials that may help in your application - published papers, conference presentations (if any), references etc
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Tags: phd, graduate-school, graduate-admissions, application, funding
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thread-10777 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10777 | Should I take OSAP (student loans) even if I can pay for my tuition? | 2013-06-26T19:58:16.483 | # Question
Title: Should I take OSAP (student loans) even if I can pay for my tuition?
This is something I have been pondering for a while. I am currently in my second year at University and my program comes with mandatory Co-op throughout the 4 years of study. I have completed 3 Co-op terms already and those have covered my expenses and tuition for each term at the university. I understand that not every Co-op will provide enough compensation every time but my parents are ready to support me where and when needed.
OSAP is a government program which funds students doing their post-secondary education in Ontario, more here. The loans are interests free until the student has completed his education. Then the interest rate is as follows:
> On the provincial part of your OSAP loan, the rate is the prime rate of interest plus 1%. On the federal portion interest rate can be the prime rate of interest plus 2.5%.
So my question is, should I apply for OSAP and receive their funding and save what I earn from Co-op? Or is it better to not receive any OSAP funding?
# Answer
I also considered doing this, though I didn't (more from sloth than anything else).
As I understand it, from other students in Ontario, you can pay back the entire OSAP loan in a lump sum at any time. Since the loan is interest free, a rational investor would take out the maximum amount allowed, put it in a risk free asset, and pay it back as late as possible, pocketing the interest.
Now, interest rates are low right now, and OSAP needs a lot of paper work. Being in debt can also be stressful for some people. If you are sure that you won't need any OSAP money, then perhaps the $100 or so you'd make per year in interest is not worth your time.
Also, note that borrowing money now, and then paying it back early will often cause the provincial government to lower your future OSAP payments - since you clearly didn't need the whole amount.
> 6 votes
# Answer
This is entirely up to you, but, having said that - a few things to consider:
* How long would you have the OSAP debt for? Meaning, how long will it take you to pay it off? If you do get it, are their any penalties for early repayment? (just in case you get enough in your Co-op to repay).
* Look at how much savings you have and how much, if any, debts you may already have, alongside all your other expenses - how much would you have to sacrifice to make the repayments.
* You mention that your parents are ready to help if needed (very kind of them). Perhaps look at seeing how much you earn in your co-op - and seeing your parents to cover the balance.
I am in Australia, and, if eligible, we had HECS (now called FEE-HELP), where our tuition is paid by the government and we repay the balance as a portion of tax. It is a good system, but I am still paying mine off over a decade later.
> 0 votes
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Tags: funding, tuition
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thread-10767 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10767 | Is there a difference between a Research Report and a Report? | 2013-06-26T11:17:32.113 | # Question
Title: Is there a difference between a Research Report and a Report?
In my reading about undergraduate student assignments at my university, I have run across the word report quite a bit but the writer is not clearly talking about a research report (but the author might be, without me understanding that).
I'm used to thinking of student assignments as being either a research report (where the student must collect primary and secondary data) or an essay (where the student writes based on understanding without any actual data (though in an essay the student would often cite theories and the opinions of others).
Is there another meaning of the word report in the context of a university student assignment? Can students write reports only based on secondary data (is this a task commonly assigned)? Can someone write a report without data?
I'm wondering if a journalist's investigative report would count as a report using only secondary data (or perhaps not using data at all).
Any clarification would be of great help.
# Answer
As JeffE said, there are differences everywhere about which report is which - potentially confusing the issue.
Having said that, this resource from Purdue University "Purposes and Types of Reports which has further links to examples and guidelines. But, they do state:
> •There is no universally agreed-upon format.
>
> •You should follow the format for your course or your company.
> 2 votes
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Tags: teaching, writing
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thread-10766 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10766 | Are there any studies on how lecturer review sites such as Rate Your Lecturer affect student choices? | 2013-06-26T09:55:51.443 | # Question
Title: Are there any studies on how lecturer review sites such as Rate Your Lecturer affect student choices?
A version of the lecturer review website Rate Your Lecturer recently became active in the UK.
Do you know of any studies which consider to what extent students use this or any other review websites to guide their choice of university?
# Answer
> 9 votes
This is necessarily incomplete, but I do recall a few studies on the correlation between ratemyprofessor.com rankings and student evaluations. Two such studies are:
These are disappointingly old though (2006/2007)
There's a more recent study from 2011:
As for other studies, your google is as good as mine :)
# Answer
> 2 votes
Not confirmed by genuine research, but a very strong hunch based on some decades experience: I'd anticipate that having a few crank-negative reviews among mostly-positive is tremendously beneficial, for more than one reason. First, your "supervisors" (dept head, dean, etc) are often not so naive as to think that there'd be no complaints, so it's harmless. Even better, and more significantly for your day-to-day life, the rants of a few cranks may significantly inhibit other cranks from signing up for your courses. "For the wrong reasons", but to your benefit, etc.
This would apply currently to top-50-research-schools in the U.S., I think, and I'd imagine to most other places in the U.S., since most have not committed to any quasi-automated officially validated anonymous rating system, or any other rating system for faculty teaching.
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Tags: teaching, reference-request, website, evaluation
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thread-10789 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10789 | Fiscal data of university budgets | 2013-06-27T12:40:28.180 | # Question
Title: Fiscal data of university budgets
When comparing different universities, various factors are common to be reported such as number of students (undergraduate, graduate), student-to-staff ratio, number of staff, physical spaces, etc.
However, when it comes to financial data, the amount of endowment is reported (e.g. in Wikipedia).
Is there any reference for comparing financial data of universities (mainly in the United States)? Total budget, tuition fee, funds spent on education, research, campus life, etc!
I mean a comparative database, not attempting to find such diverse data from each university website.
# Answer
> 2 votes
So there is Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the from the National Center for Education Statistics. One of the many variables you can ran institutions on is in fact percent of budget spent on research expenses. That was just the first one I looked for. I don't know how deeply this will go into anything about campus life beyond how much money is spent on housing and student services. But this seems to be the place to go for raw data.
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Tags: university
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thread-10798 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10798 | Interpretation of a PhD degree in a very broad, interdisciplinary field | 2013-06-27T16:22:27.923 | # Question
Title: Interpretation of a PhD degree in a very broad, interdisciplinary field
Back when my older brother started his PhD degree I asked him what it meant to be a doctor in something other than medicine. I don't recall the exact wording he used, but the idea he portrayed was that you take a field, a narrow and specific field, and you specialise in it to a level at which when you are done, you have become *one of the ultimate experts in that very specific field*.
For instance if you are working with combustion physics, you might be one of the leading experts in efficient 2 cylinder, ultra-light engines made out of refined aluminium... Alternatively if you are into neuroscience you might be an expert on a particular neurotransmitter re-absorption in a particular zone of the brain following heavy exercise (or whatever, hopefully you get the point). It might be an opinionated view of a PhD but I feel it's a common way to look at a PhD degree; ***a certification of expertise***.
Fast-forward 15 years... I am about half-way in my PhD studies in the highly interdisciplinary field of bioinformatics, where statistics, mathematical modeling, physics, molecular chemistry and programming boil together with cell biology, to top it all you typically have a theme spice, which in my case is cancer biology. I have a growing feeling that I am getting stretched thinner and thinner by the day, instead of becoming increasingly competent in a specific field, I become semi-competent in increasingly many fields.
That being the case I am not sure I (or others like myself) will fit the "definition" above. I would appreciate some perspective as to how one should be seeing highly interdisciplinary PhD studies and the development (as a scientist and a professional) that graduate studies entitles. Subsequently, how should one go about to profile him/her-self to future employers, seeing as there is no one natural field to pursue, but rather many different ones.
# Answer
As I commented on another board just this morning, the goal of all higher education is ultimately **to learn how to learn.** As a PhD-level scientist, you need to be able to understand, master, and solve problems in fields which you may have never seen before you started to work in them. This means that you need to have a well-developed process for assimilating information, synthesizing it, and analyzing it. You need to be able to evaluate what is useful or not, what is correct or not, and what might work and what might not.
In an interdisciplinary field, your challenge is even harder, as you are trying to assimilate potentially disparate fields of knowledge and combine them into something more than the sum of the parts. This requires learning different jargons, different attitudes, and different approaches to problem-solving and understanding the world. This will actually be even more useful, because this means that you can be pretty good at a lot of different things—which gives you an edge over someone who's outstanding at one thing, but only one thing.
> 11 votes
# Answer
I completely understand your feeling. I can tell you that many other people in this field feel the same. This has nothing to do with how smart or how good they are. This issue also bugged me a lot, but I can offer some insights:
1. Bioinformatics/computational biology is really huge and you cannot be an expert in all aspects. Even if you look at senior scientists in this field, I do not think there is someone who is an expert in all subfields. You simply can't master all the physics, math, CS, chemistry and biology at an expert level - even in a much longer time than a PhD.
2. You can still have a huge impact without being a super-expert in every subfield. Just look at some of the research published in top journals. The reason is that you will have knowledge and a way of thinking that people restricted to a single field may not have. From personal experience, I can say that this is a significant advantage for asking certain types of questions and coming up with certain ideas that single-field specialists won't come up with.
3. After a while you will realize that you actually are an expert. Maybe not in the sense that you know everything about everything, but you will see that you can give good advice to other people, foresee potential problems, and so on. In addition to knowing a lot about computational biology, you will become an expert in things such as quantitative modelling, applied machine learning and "big data" analysis (I hate that term), skills which are very useful in a wide range of fields.
4. The fact that you cannot become an expert in everything doesn't mean you should neglect learning. On the contrary, you should constantly try to expand your knowledge in all related fields. And yes, it can be more difficult than learning only one subject.
5. Finally, in the end you will be working on a specific problem in a given biological problem with a given set of tools. That problem is what you really need to be an expert on.
> 11 votes
# Answer
In my opinion, a PhD is much more than a deep expertise in a particular field. A PhD is a certificate of *the ability to do science*. That's why your PhD is more broadly applicable than in your particular expertise and that's why some people can change topics dramatically after their PhD: from particle physics to atmospheric science, from space science to ornithology¹. In a German *Habilitation*, which is I think a step on becoming a professor, one has to write a review of a field that is not ones own.
The other day, I came accross a job advertisement from the British Met Office that had the following requirements:
> · Proven ability to conduct scientific research, displaying initiative, independence and analytical skills.
>
> · Evidence of the motivation and drive to overcome obstacles in order to solve scientific problems.
>
> · Evidence of the ability to write software to address scientific questions.
A PhD in any natural science proves exactly that; in any case the first two points, and in many cases the third point, too. Of course, domain-specific knowledge is a plus, but it may not be a necessity. Therefore, I think you should profile yourself as *a scientist*.
¹<sup>Scientists performing stratospheric radar measurements discovered an odd diurnal pattern in their measurements near the Antarctic coast. It turns out a flock of birds was flying through the radar beam. One persons noise is another persons signal; said scientist is now cooperating in ornithological research.</sup>
> 7 votes
# Answer
This may not be a complete answer, but I can empathise with you, as I am in a similar boat.
My field is an academic puree of atmospheric physics, photobiology, optics, photography, oncology, opthamology, programming and a dash of education, public information and community safety.
The steps that I take are:
* Identify the main focus/foci - this/these are the overarching main goals of your project (eg for mine, it is Atmospheric Physics and Photobiology).
* Which fields are where the applications/potential applications of your research come from? (eg for mine, they are programming, optics and community safety/education)
* Look at where you can contribute to (the remainder of the list are mine).
That last point is something my supervisor suggested I remember in times that I felt I was being academically-spaghettified - look at the disciplines not so much as fields of study, but as areas that you can and are making a contribution.
I hope this helps.
> 5 votes
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Tags: phd, career-path
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thread-10787 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10787 | Applied/Pure Math PhD Coursework | 2013-06-27T09:55:36.730 | # Question
Title: Applied/Pure Math PhD Coursework
For the purpose of curiosity, I was wondering what set of courses undergraduate math students take if they're on the track to apply for a PhD in Pure Mathematics vs. Applied Mathematics? Let me try to elaborate as best as I can. I mean at my current university, I've known several people who have gone through the track of going for a PhD in Pure Math and they have taken lots of Grad level Math courses and gotten into top US universities for a PhD in Pure Math where research experience in relevant fields is a plus (I think).
But my question is for undergraduate students trying to prepare for a PhD in Applied Math. What sort of coursework do they go through? I mean research experience (I believe) becomes important and taking graduate courses in Pure Mathematics is not so. I do not know much people who went for a PhD in applied math at my school.
I would appreciate it if anyone who can comment on the relevance of pure math grad courses for such students who aspire or strive in applying for a PhD in applied math. Any other comments pertaining to this is welcomed ;)
# Answer
I agree with many things in posdef's answer, except that you might just get your bachelor's and apply straight to a PhD in the US (instead of getting an undergrad and master's, and then applying to a PhD). I should also say that any required course-work will vary from university to university. Many universities have some sort of 'qual' process, where you need to know certain things and pass certain tests at the start/end of your first/second (varying by university) year.
I'm a Brown PhD math student, and we have to pass our quals by the end of the first year, essentially; whereas I have a few friends at places like UChicago or Berkeley, where quals can be more immediate. From what I can tell, the subjects are almost always a subset of real analysis (and probability for applied math), complex analysis, algebra, topology, manifolds, and differential equations. I mention this because the subjects and level of testing can be very high and advanced, and if you did not do a sufficient amount of coursework in these areas, then you would probably have a very hard time passing the quals. (Really, the admissions process would probably take that into consideration, and would be less warm in the admissions process).
This is to say that there is a certain "core material" that many PhD programs seem to care about (although the exact material might vary from school to school). I would say that you absolutely must take coursework in analysis, topology, and complex analysis. But I suspect these are required courses in your studies.
But other than that, you should take classes that interest you, and apply to schools that have good programs in what you're interested in.
> 4 votes
# Answer
It might be somewhat controversial for some here, but I don't think there is any one course that you should take in order to get in a particular graduate program. The reason behind my statement is that I believe the logic presented in the OP is rather backwards; one usually pursues graduate studies in a particular field that s/he is knowledgeable and interested in. In other words, you get your undergrad and Masters, and based on what you know and like, you apply to PhD programs in fields where you are competent. The other way around (deciding on a PhD program without have the undergrad and masters done, and choosing courses based on the desired PhD program) does not make much sense, in my humble opinion.
Also consider that "a PhD in pure/applied maths" is really ill-defined. I can think of a hundred different projects that would have different requirements, with regards to previous courses. I would recommend deciding on a specific subject that you find interesting e.g. "elliptic curve cryptography" or "convex optimization" etc (not just pure/applied math).. then look for announced PhD programs based on projects focused on these subjects of interest.
All that being said; I would think advanced level courses in matrix theory (decompositions etc), functional and complex analysis, as well as optimization theory would be useful in many different graduate programs at most maths departments.
> 7 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions
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thread-10812 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10812 | Will not having a publication affect my PhD chances even though I have research experience? | 2013-06-28T04:16:19.063 | # Question
Title: Will not having a publication affect my PhD chances even though I have research experience?
By the time I apply for a PhD, I will have almost a year of experience as a Research Assistant, but I doubt I will have a paper published till then. The project is still in the data analysis stage, and it will most probably be in the review stage when I apply. Other than this job, I have no other research experience/papers/projects that are much relevant. Though I have 1.5 years of corporate experience in IT. I think the above might be a common cause for concern, especially for people looking to switch fields, and thus hope the question is qualified enough for a general audience.
As for my particular case, I am looking for PhD programs at the intersection of Neuroscience and Computer Science (e.g. Cog Sci, Computational Neuroscience, Neural Engineering etc). I have a bachelors in Computer Science, but my grades are bad. My GRE score is quite good however, and I'm from a well-known college in my country.
# Answer
This is a difficult question to answer and I know little about the intersection of CS and neuroscience. I do know a *little bit* about the intersection of CS and social sciences (i.e. HCI/information sciences) so I will write about that. In addition, I am the student representative on the admissions committee of our department so I have *some limited* experience with that process as well.
You do not **need** a publication to apply for PhD in the US. For other countries, it might be different and I do not have that information. *Potentially,* you will be more competitive if you have a publication. But remember, that all publications are not created equal. If you have a first author paper (or otherwise depending upon the publication standards in your field) in a top ranked journal/conference in your field, then you are competitive (**assuming that other parts of your application pass muster**).
If that publication is in a lesser known journal/conference, you still have displayed some knowledge about how to conduct and publish research - which in the end is better than nothing.
However, in my experience, I have seen that **detailed** letters of recommendation from authors known to members of the admissions committee are usually given way more weight than any published research.
Also, take my words with a pinch of salt. Everything varies from field to field and from year to year.
> 8 votes
# Answer
I am a PhD student of neuroinformatics in UK and my background is computer science. I think I know a bit about the intersection of neuroscience and CS.
Theoretical/computational neuroscience is a growing field and as far as I am aware people with physics/CS background are very much needed. Experimentalists have a whole wealth of data but they usually don't have skills or time to analyse the data, create models, run simulations and obtain predictions.
You don't need publications to be accepted to a PhD programme. There are actually some PhD students who didn't publish a paper during their programme at all... Having good grades and recommendation letters helps but I would risk to say that primarily you need to show a genuine interest in the field, show that you want to find answers to certain questions etc. You already have an experience as a Research Assistant and definitely it is your strength. Focus on what skills you already have and not what you are lacking. If, for example, you are a brilliant programmer in a couple of languages and handle huge databases well, try to sell that. There must be some labs where your skills are on high demand.
Another thing is what university/lab you would like to aim at. If you want to work for top researchers in the field, it might get very competitive and not having good grades and publications works against you. But of course there is a number of less known labs that work on interesting projects and have various collaborators around the world.
Finally, as already mentioned in comments - get in touch with the professors, find out about their research, read their papers, raise some questions. And remember that some labs might be interested in working with you but cannot offer you any funding. In that case it still might work OK as there is various ways to obtain individual grants.
> 5 votes
# Answer
I can only answer from my experience as well, as I am in Australia and studying a physics PhD - my supervisor advised me that it is always good to have some publications under your belt before graduation - makes it a bit easier to defend the thesis/pass examination (we don't do thesis defence in Australia, or at least, at my university).
The reason why it is beneficial is because as you have had part(s) of your research published, it has already been reviewed and accepted in the scientific community.
However, having said that, I was not published at all in my MSc and I had very little difficulty. You do have experience in research with your job and significant IT experience, as well as a very strong letter of recommendation (what got me over the line). You may want to contact the admissions officers of where you are intending to apply to discuss these concerns.
> 1 votes
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Tags: phd, publications, research-assistantship
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thread-10823 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10823 | What gets included for Continuing Professional Development? | 2013-06-28T16:15:53.407 | # Question
Title: What gets included for Continuing Professional Development?
When you are asked to list what continual professional development (CPD) you have completed in the previous 12 months, where do you draw the line on what gets included?
* I would think attending a seminar on teaching skills should be included.
* A new degree, diploma, certificate, etc. would certainly be included
* I would think that participating on this or any other website (Academia.se) would not be included.
* I would think that discussions, no matter how long or involved, would not be included.
* How about reading books?
* How about watching a video series specific to the position?
* How about audio books?
* How about reading articles?
* How about research for writing articles on the subject of teaching (if you are a teacher)?
I would also think as a general rule that things done to improve a teacher's teaching or subject knowledge would count.
# Answer
Seconding Damien's answer - it depends on who you are reporting to, and it depends on what they want. **Ask for guidelines.**
I report to a committee of peers in my department who forward my report with recommendations to the dean. I am judged in several categories. Explicit guidelines on what counts (and what does not) in each category are provided. I would earn credit somewhere for everything on your list. Each category is weighted differently, so I do not received equal credit for all activities. I have taken your list of activities and placed them into the categories for which I would receive credit, and added some of my own.
> Instructional Design and Development - Activities to improve the courses that I teach and the methods by which I teach them.
* Attending a seminar on teaching skills
* Video or webinar series on the position
* Experimentation in teaching methodology
* Developing new materials that better suit the needs of the course
> Teaching Performance and Feedback to Students - Activities that improve my interacting with students in and out of the classroom.
* Nothing from your list fits here
* Reflecting on student evaluations and using them to improve your instruction
* Faithfully keeping office hours and responding to students in a timely fashion
* Advising students and writing letters of recommendation for them
> Scholarly Activity / Professional Development - Activities to improve my knowledge of my discipline and which improve the discipline as a whole
* A new degree, diploma, or certificate
* Reading books, articles, letters, reviews, etc. in your field
* Conducting research in your field, even if specific to education in your field
* Attending, and especially presenting at, conferences
* Submitting grant requests, and especially receiving grants
> Service - Activities which forward the mission and goals of the department, the institution, the profession, or the community.
* Participating in Stack Exchange
* Serving on committees at the department and institution level
* Serving as department chair
* Being active (and especially holding an officer position) in professional organizations
* Educational outreach to the community
> Collegiality - Activities that improve my relationship with my colleagues and improves my colleagues' abilities to perform their jobs.
* Discussions with colleagues focusing on best practices
* Sharing of teaching materials with colleagues
* Mentoring younger colleagues
Again, the specific answer to your question is held by the authority to whom you are responsible - your supervisor, department, department chair, dean, provost, vice president, etc. **Ask for guidelines.** If your supervisor wants you to be productive in the desirable way, you should receive guidelines.
> 3 votes
# Answer
This depends on the authority that you have to report your CPD to.
However, here in Queensland, most of what they decree as being CPD is on your list. Speaking to a rep, reading articles can and often do count towards CPD - and most certainly writing articles and courses, as *long as they relate to your subject areas.*
You are quite correct in that things done to improve the teacher's skills in all aspects of teaching and knowledge that would relate to the teaching area are, for here in any case, considered as CPD.
> 2 votes
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Tags: teaching, career-path, cpd
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thread-10797 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10797 | The use of words such as "clearly", "obviously" etc. in a technical paper | 2013-06-27T16:08:47.680 | # Question
Title: The use of words such as "clearly", "obviously" etc. in a technical paper
Is there any hidden rule for using the words "clearly", "obviously" or similar ones in a technical paper? It can be offensive to the readers in many cases (especially in mathematical proofs), since the reader may not find it "clear" or "obvious". But does that mean that we should completely avoid the use of these words?
# Answer
> 23 votes
Seconding posdef's appraisal, but being a little more blunt: if one is in a position to get away with bullying or intimidating people by implying that it's *their* problem if one has not explained well enough ... well, I'd say it's still a jerk-y thing to do. If one is in a lower-status position, such words will often be red flags.
Or, coming to functionality versus rhetoric versus "formal proof": at best these words are functionless filler. That is, *saying* something is clear is not what makes it clear: if it is clear after these words, it was clear before. *Conceivably* a thing is clear \_once\_noted\_, and thus deserves "Observe that...". But this, too, can be abused if used outside situations where one is noting that something is "a-fortiori" true, that is, is weaker than what the argument has already demonstrated... but presumably suffices for the issues at hand.
# Answer
> 15 votes
I don't think there is a very clear rule for using such words. One possible reason for my claim is that some authors don't even use words "clearly" or "obviously", but they simply say "it follows ...". In mathematics the level of details of a mathematical proof mostly depends on the writer's kindness to her/his readers. I have encountered with many not-so-obvious claims in papers written by experts, where needed several pages of explanations and perhaps some proofs, and several years later, I have found the proofs of those claims in newer papers written by other authors.
Unfortunately, there is an adage which says "brevity is a sign of genius" and it seems some people strongly believe in this adage and try to impress others by leaving not-so-obvious gaps in their works.
Personally I apply the following rules for using these words:
1. If the claim follows from previously mentioned materials by applying well known techniques in 5 minutes or so.
2. If it can be obtained by a few lines of computations again by applying well known techniques. Then I use the word "straightforward".
3. If it easily follows from a well known type of mathematical proofs, like induction, Zorn's lemma.
4. The proof is similar to a previous proof in the paper or in the literature. In this case I mention the resource.
5. I expect a PhD student in the field can prove it easily.
# Answer
> 13 votes
I don't think there is a clear consensus on how to use these words.
As mentioned in some other answers, some people find them annoying or obnoxious. Others think they are a perfectly acceptable way to mention a fact for which you believe a detailed explanation is not necessary. Certainly they are quite common in published writing.
I think it is a choice that you make as part of developing your own personal writing style, and your feelings may change over time.
My only advice is: when you write that something is "obvious", make absolutely sure it is *true*! I've been embarrassed this way before.
# Answer
> 8 votes
More broadly then in regards to mathematical proofs, a mark of good writing is to avoid the *superfluous*. Whether something is clear or obvious comes from the content, not the writer labelling it as such. Trimming unneeded adjectives and adverbs like those you describe should be a regular step in a proof-reading stage. See Strunk and White's *Elements of Style* for a more detailed treatment.
# Answer
> 5 votes
We touched this particular subject in a "Technical Writing" course; the simple answer is that it's a power-stance. In other words, if you are a big-name professor in your field, you can use it without offending someone. Alternatively if you are a petty PhD candidate, then you are better off avoiding not only these two words but also other forms of bold statements when you are drawing conclusions.
As I said this is rather the short answer, I am sure those who are more into linguistics etc might have more insight into the matter.
# Answer
> 3 votes
I was always taught that if you had something to say that was "clear" or "obvious" to your intended readership, then it wasn't really worth saying at all. Made a lot of sense to me, and I've never used those words in any of my technical or academic writing since.
# Answer
> 2 votes
By reading the comments and answers here, *the conclusion is*, that it is usually not a good idea to use these terms. Keep in mind that it might not always be the case that something is obvious to your reader. That being said, the reason you want to use such words is probably because you want to point out/conclude/summarize your findings to the reader.
The bottom line is not to tell your readers what (you find) is obvious, but to tell them what the obvious thing is (conclude/summarize). This way they will either:
A. Confirm their own observation
or
B. Let them know they haven't fully understood yet (they might re-read your article now)
# Answer
> 2 votes
I propose *never* using these words unless your goal is to trick the reader into thoroughly checking your claim, or in an exam's trick question where you set a false premise (though these words are give-aways if not overused). If something *is* obvious there wouldn't be a need to even state it. And if you need to state something, it is *not* obvious.
*If* you think some non-trivial<sup>1</sup> steps should be omitted so your 5 page paper doesn't bloat up to a 30 pager, then please have the decency to either briefly state the trickiest tool involved (be that induction or some specific part of Wile's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem) or - even better - put the detail which you *should* have done anyway into the appendix / online supplement and refer to it.
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<sup>1</sup>Trivial is also one of these words.
# Answer
> 1 votes
I might go against most of the answers here and say **why not?**.
I am going to this right now. I am writing a paper proposing a solution for problem X by adopting well known mathematical model Y. Now Y has clear axioms and definitions (for instance, the set of considered elements has to form a commutative semigroup under combination). I defined X then defined the combination operator. Should I go further and proof it is commutative semigroup? I believe it is clear that X form a commutative semigroup *within my framework*. Yes It is obvious..
Now whether the author of these words is a student or professor, I believe it doesn't make difference. At the end, there is minimum knowledge required to understand any given paper, if its clear then it's clear and you better utilize the paper limited space in something not clear enough.
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Tags: writing
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thread-10837 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10837 | Applying to grad school where I've been on exchange | 2013-06-29T18:35:39.027 | # Question
Title: Applying to grad school where I've been on exchange
I know that many universities in the US and an increasing number in the EU are against taking on their own graduates. Does the same apply to exchange students? I'm wondering if I didn't make a strategic mistake by going there. On the other hand, I did everything to go on exchange to that school because I think they do great research.
# Answer
> 3 votes
> I know that many universities in the US and an increasing number in the EU are against taking on their own graduates
I assume you mean for grad-school ? This is the first I've heard of it. We encourage our undergrads to search widely, but I'd love to take my own undergrads for grad school if I could persuade them to stay.
The sentiment you're referring to is more prevalent at the faculty hiring level: namely, universities are less likely to hire their own Ph.D students as faculty (at least not without some time spent elsewhere first)
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Tags: graduate-school, student-exchange
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thread-10833 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10833 | How do I come up with a dissertation topic early on in my degree? | 2013-06-29T10:51:31.167 | # Question
Title: How do I come up with a dissertation topic early on in my degree?
I'm currently 2 units into my MSc degree (6 units over 2 semesters left).I know this is rather early, But I would like to start work on my dissertation as soon as I can, to give myself enough time and preparation to do "distinction level" work.
How do I come up with a topic I'll stick with? I've had tons of advise from different sources telling me to choose from an area of interest. Considering I still have the bulk of my degree work ahead, this wasn't too useful for me. Do I read all areas ahead of the units to "*fast forward*" the process?. Any advice is welcome.
# Answer
> 8 votes
This is a classic example where talking to your advisor is of the utmost importance. Some advisors want their students to choose a topic as early as possible, and others don't mind if their students take their time. As for the topic, hopefully, your advisor should be able to point you in a direction if you don't already have one.
While I understand the rush to get started on something concrete, you really don't want to do a lot of work on a topic that ends up being (1) uninteresting, and (2) unfruitful. Talk to as many other faculty and students as you'd like, and there isn't anything wrong with reading ahead, with the exception that you might not understand something well enough to make a good decision about whether you should do research in the subject.
My bottom-line suggestion is to take your time picking a topic, because you really do want it to be a good one.
# Answer
> 3 votes
Whether you have a formal advisor or not, you can approach faculty for advice and for suggestions. It is almost impossible for a novice to pick a really good Ph.D. topic (while working alone in a vacuum). Go by various professor's office hours and talk with them about their work. Tell them you are seeking good problems to work on. Ask good questions, and engage them intellectually. Something good is bound to happen. Talk with other grad students who are further along in their program. Try collaborating with other students: this is a great way to get hands on experience with problems, and if things work out, you may get a publication out of it.
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Tags: graduate-school, masters, thesis
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thread-10842 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10842 | How to list this accomplishment on my vita? | 2013-06-29T22:54:10.863 | # Question
Title: How to list this accomplishment on my vita?
I just saw that one of my research articles was the most-read paper in one of the top journals in my field in February of this year. What is the appropriate way, if any, to list this on a vita? It's not an "Award", strictly speaking, so would it be best to just list it as a comment next to the paper?
# Answer
> 6 votes
Great work ! The way I do it is under the Publications section of my CV. The following citation is formatted in the ACM style. You can modify it for your own citation styles.
**J1**. Smith, J. 2013. "The best paper ever". *ACM Transactions of Awesomeness*, 1 (4). ACM Press, NY, USA. (**most read article in March 2013**)
# Answer
> 1 votes
First of all, congratulations!
Secondly, whether or not to include this in your CV depends what you are applying for - if you are applying for positions that involve research, then yes, add it as a comment next to the paper. Then again, it probably would not hurt just to have a comment about it in there anyway.
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Tags: cv, tenure-track, awards
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thread-10747 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10747 | What percentage of STEM PhD applicants have peer-reviewed publications? | 2013-06-24T20:48:07.450 | # Question
Title: What percentage of STEM PhD applicants have peer-reviewed publications?
I am simply looking for a rough estimate on how many PhD applicants typically apply having published a peer-reviewed paper (or papers).
Particularly, I am interested in Computer Science (or STEM fields in general).
Also, it would be interesting to know the same percentage for the admitted students.
These questions can likely only be answered by those on (or previously on) admissions committees, but all responses are welcomed!
# Answer
> 18 votes
I'm in a CS department at a mid-ranked school in the US, and have reviewed applications for Ph.D programs in CS for the last 6 years. I didn't compile detailed numbers, but my sense is that the number of candidates with "actual" publications (as opposed to fluff pubs) is of the order of 5%. I suspect this number is higher for the top-ranked school.
# Answer
> 14 votes
In mathematics, at a 10-20 ranked place in mathematics, essentially *no* grad-program applicants have an *real* publications.
About 1/3 may have some (as Suresh put it) "fluff-pubs" as spin-offs from summer REU programs. These are not *bad* things, by any measure, but are more indicative of the socio-economic class of the applicant than their talent or potential. For that matter, it is sometimes quite awkward to explain to novices that their "publication" is a fluff-pub, not real.
Thus, in fact, there is an actual negative to fluff-pubs on an application, since it suggests a possible unfortunate rigidity or over-confidence.
(Once again, in mathematics, if it were possible to do wonderful research in a few weeks over the summer, why does it take 5 years to earn a PhD? There is a misunderstanding... though, yes, it is good to cultivate enthusiasm among talented beginners! Let's just not lie to them.)
# Answer
> 2 votes
In countries where it is common to do a MSc, many PhD applicants have either published papers or prepared/submitted manuscripts, since a MSc would include a research thesis. The level of the publication can vary, and this can also vary by field (experimental projects typically take longer so probability of publication is smaller).
# Answer
> 1 votes
In computer science at a top-ranked US university, I'd estimate that about half of admitted Ph.D. students have a publication while they were an undergraduate.
So, having a (good) publication is really helpful, but not an absolute necessity. What matters most is research potential, i.e., the potential to be a successful researcher. Showing that you have done good research that led to a publication is one powerful way to show that you have good research potential, but there are other ways (e.g., by doing research, getting strong letters of recommendation from folks you have worked with, excelling in academic work, doing independent work).
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Tags: graduate-school, graduate-admissions
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thread-10854 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10854 | Will taking no courses from physical sciences as an undergrad affect my chances of going to grad school for mathematics in the US? | 2013-06-30T05:39:45.853 | # Question
Title: Will taking no courses from physical sciences as an undergrad affect my chances of going to grad school for mathematics in the US?
I have been admitted to a 4-year B.S. in Mathematics program in an Asian country. The mathematics courses are excellent and at par with the finest universities in the United States and there will a generous number of courses from the humanities. All the same, there is a provision for taking 7 more single-semester courses, to get a minor (alternately, I could dabble in many other subjects other than math).
I was wondering if taking a total of 7 courses in English and Economics instead of courses like physics, chemistry and biology could seriously affect my application when I apply to grad school in the US for PhD in mathematics. I would almost certainly apply to good grad schools like UChicago and Berkeley depending on my interests.
> Will taking no courses from physical sciences as an undergrad affect my chances of going to grad school for mathematics in the US?
# Answer
If you're applying to a *pure* math program, then it's unlikely that graduate admissions boards will be expecting courses in a particular outside discipline. If you're doing *applied* math, however, it would be much more logical to expect to see *some* coursework in an outside discipline.
However, economics may be suitable as an "outside" discipline if you're taking advanced coursework with a mathematical bent to it.
But overall, demonstrating that you are a strong candidate will make a much bigger impact than the specific training you have. Research experience, a strong statement of purpose, and great letters of recommendation will increase your chances of admission much more than if your "off-subject" courses are in economics or physics.
> 6 votes
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Tags: graduate-school
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thread-10866 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10866 | Reference formulas in non-English text books | 2013-06-30T19:17:31.473 | # Question
Title: Reference formulas in non-English text books
In a mathematical paper, is it wise to refer to formulas in a non-English (here: German) text book, under the conditions that:
* the text book is standard in its language region
* all English text books lack the desired presentation
In my case, I am concerend about some formulas from vector analysis, which not too difficult, but American text books do not seem to feature these formulas.
# Answer
You should cite the most appropriate references for your work, regardless of the language of the source. (I suspect that even mathematics, many of the most important references were initially published in other languages, such as French, German, or Russian.)
You are not required to cite only English-language sources in publications, especially if the only source you can find is in another language. However, you may have to find a way to share the reference with editors or referees, particularly if the reference is rather obscure. If it's published by a mainstream company, however, then it should not be a problem to verify it. (I should point out that the importance of this depends critically on how central the reference is; a minor result that can be independently verified is not a problem; a core result requires much greater scrutiny.)
> 9 votes
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Tags: citations, language
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thread-10891 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10891 | How to differentiate between articles, conference proceedings, etc.? | 2013-07-01T17:50:41.807 | # Question
Title: How to differentiate between articles, conference proceedings, etc.?
I have many PDF files for some academic papers. I want to sort them into journal articles, conference proceedings, reports, etc.
How can I know which one is an article and which one is a conference proceedings and which one is ... (any other type of papers)?
# Answer
> 2 votes
Reference managing software such as Mendeley usually provide an import feature for PDF files. You simply supply a list of PDF files and the software automatically extracts the metadata such as title, author names, journal, and so on. The accuracy is usually pretty good, and then you can easily sort and organize the files in whichever way you want.
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Tags: publications, journals
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thread-10885 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10885 | What is a correct way for "marketing" non core PhD achievements on a CV? | 2013-07-01T12:36:44.143 | # Question
Title: What is a correct way for "marketing" non core PhD achievements on a CV?
Reading this question and its answers got me thinking, once non-core PhD skills are learned and perhaps mastered, how can we make these achievements clear on a CV when applying for academic positions?
For example, my PhD majors in atmospheric physics and photobiology, but a significant part of it is in Android programming (the basis of the 3 published papers so far) and a few other skills not directly related to the major disciplines, but important nonetheless.
Related, would having peer reviewed published papers be considered as proficiency in the non core subjects without taking away the focus from the major disciplines?
# Answer
I see no reason at all to leave any reasonable skill or ability off of your CV. Play a musical instrument? Won some medals in a sporting event? Program an android app? Have a black belt in a martial art? Add a section called "Other skills" or "Personal Information" and *briefly* list these skills. There are two reasons for this. First, it can help a potential employer think of you as a real person, perhaps someone they would like to know. Second, many skills can take years of dedicated practice to master; if you can master one such skill, then there is a good chance you can master whatever new skills may be required in the new job.
Here is an example from my life. Many years ago I programmed a video game (one of the old "text adventure" style games. I placed this on my CV, not thinking much about it. It turned out that one of the elder faculty conducting the interview had played that game and remembered it fondly. This alone certainly did not "get me the job," but anything that can smooth the way can be helpful.
> 2 votes
# Answer
What you put on your CV should be tailored explicitly towards the type of job you're applying for. If you're applying for a faculty position at a research university, putting Android programming would be a waste of time, but putting a significant grant you won would be appropriate. Likewise if you're applying to a position where teaching is going to be a large part of your workload, put as much about your teaching experience as you can. If you are applying for a quant position on Wall Street, you need to beef up the programming skills.
So really, the answer is, *tailor your CV to the job you are applying for,* and given that you are applying for academic positions, you should probably leave off the non-core skills altogether. That's not to say they aren't important, but they aren't important enough to list on your CV. If the situation presents itself during an interview, that's probably the place to mention it.
> Related, would having peer reviewed published papers be considered as proficiency in the non core subjects without taking away the focus from the major disciplines?
I'm not 100% sure what you're really asking here, but peer-reviewed research should be listed on your CV unless it is in a completely unrelated field than the one you're applying for. Don't list the paper you happened to get published in the English Literature Journal if you're applying for positions in photobiology<sup>*</sup>.
<sub>\*Unless you happen to have written a piece on the writing of 18th Century biologists and how it affects current photobiology trends.</sub>
> 1 votes
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Tags: phd, cv
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thread-10888 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10888 | Do you place endnotes (in vancouver reference style) after colons or before? | 2013-07-01T14:45:17.587 | # Question
Title: Do you place endnotes (in vancouver reference style) after colons or before?
I have some references I would like to tie to all the dot points I've written after my colon and hence I thought it would be a good idea to put the relevant references after the colon, in endnote form. Here is an extract from the text I am putting together that illustrates what I mean:
```
These acute attacks are typically triggered in genetically susceptible individuals by at least one of the following:2-4
• Stress
• Medications (especially sulfa-containing antibiotics, barbiturates, synthetic oestrogens, certain antiepileptic drugs and a few others. See http://www.drugs-porphyria.org/ for details regarding safe and unsafe drugs)
• Dietary changes (high protein diets, low-carbohydrate diets and fasts are especially notable for causing acute attacks)
• Endocrine factors (fluctuations in the levels of the different hormones present in the body; usually the sex hormones such as oestrogens and androgens [e.g. testosterone, dihydrotestosterone]. Acute attacks are often triggered by the hormonal changes that occur in the different stages of development, e.g. puberty, menopause, etc.)
```
# Answer
> 0 votes
This is a relatively minor point, but in standard American English usage, footnote and endnote numbers would go *after* a punctuation mark, not before one. Usage in British English might be different, and individual publishers may have their own guidelines.
However, one might also ask why you aren't citing each item in the list separately; it might be more informative to the user rather than doing an all-purpose citation at the top of the list!
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Tags: citations
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thread-10889 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10889 | Should I opt for physics as minor for better mathematical intuition? | 2013-07-01T15:01:49.857 | # Question
Title: Should I opt for physics as minor for better mathematical intuition?
Context: I intend to study mathematics and do research as a career. I am studying analysis and abstract algebra now and I shall begin my undergraduate studies shortly.
> Should I opt for physics as minor for better mathematical intuition?
I have been told my friend that physics may lend one intuition into a few mathematical structures though I am not sure. I can only think of differential equations as an example. In particular, please tell me if physics can serve as a source of motivation and if it is crucial enough.
# Answer
> 4 votes
While essentially seconding StasK's points, I'd be inclined to make a stronger claim about the utility of looking at not-so-elementary physics. That is, in addition to all the "mechanics" applications of the 18th and 19th centuries, and Maxwell's late-19th century electromagnetism (which provided a huge impetus to ideas about vectors!), many aspects of quantum theory focused attention on differential equations which have proven to be important examples of mathematical phenomena, in addition to applications to physics. This important-example-intensely-studied phenomenon continued with Bargmann's and Wigner's studies on representation-theory of specific Lie groups, which provided the backdrop for Harish-Chandra's vast program. This specificity was in marked contrast to the "generalism" that mathematicians of the time were embracing, e.g., Weil, Godement.
I think it continues to be the case that physical considerations suggest very-specific examples meriting intense study... which provide test cases for "purely" mathematical ideas.
Witten's (and others') relatively recent "physics" programmes have had a large impact on algebraic geometry (moduli problems, mirror symmetry).
Although I'm also fond of the crypto application/motivations of algorithmic number theory, the breadth and depth seems not as great as the math-phys connection, although of course the elapsed time is much less than for math-phys.
(The optimization and math econ, and comp sci and category theory applications/connections are less familiar to me.)
Still, I must confess that I dropped an undergrad physics minor while studying mathematics, because it seemed dreary to me at the time. Partly this was due to my inability to see the *physics* ideas underlying the tricks to evaluate integrals, but perhaps partly due to the accidentally-dumbed-down viewpoint promulgated in the physics courses ... presumably aiming at "accessibility".
And, yes, there is a similar common risk/disappointment in mathematics courses that give up ideas for the sake of "tractability". The risk is that it gives the wrong impression.
(Yet, yes, sometimes I've been told that what seems to me insanely fussy detail-mongering is the very essence of mathematics, and that perhaps I insufficiently appreciate "proof".)
# Answer
> 7 votes
There's a range of applications for mathematics around many disciplines. In the XX century, physics was definitely the biggest consumer of mathematics, from the photoelectric effect and the black body spectrum in the early century through nuclear bombs and space exploration of the second half. The XXI century looks to shape around biology and life sciences.
1. Physics leans heavily on PDE, real and complex analysis. Some areas may require abstract algebra, but they could turn out to be somewhat exotic (quantum Hall effect and other solid state physics stuff), and you would need to study physics for about 5 years to get to understand what it is if you are starting from ground zero. (School physics IS ground zero, in my books.) Until you know what Green's function is, there may be little point approaching physics for you.
2. Economics leans heavily on real analysis and optimization. There's some use of abstract algebra, although again to get to the areas where it is really needed (welfare economics, may be some very abstract macro), you need to get very deep into grad school in economics.
3. There's quantitative biology, in which separate fields may require way separate math tools: ecology uses some PDEs, while protein structure is computation that could be using abstract algebra, too, to describe the spatial structures (where it overlaps somewhat with material science).
4. Computer science is another big obvious consumer of mathematics, and abstract algebra is very immediately used in various codes. If you want to have an immediate gratification from having learned simple groups, you can go ahead and figure out how the PGP algorithm works.
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thread-10791 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10791 | Do you include references in your CV? | 2013-06-27T13:12:35.860 | # Question
Title: Do you include references in your CV?
Some people do not list references/referees at the end of their CV, and simply quote `references are available on request`. This is more convenient to me for two reasons:
1. Normally, no reference is contacted without permission, so, it is not necessary to be included in the CV.
2. Depending on the purpose (application, proposal), you may want to introduce other references (more relevant to that application). This is the reason that some job applications need separate list of references.
On the other hand, including famous persons as references shows your connections and background. In addition, the audience might be suspicious why hiding possible references!
Which one is preferred and more reasonable?
# Answer
> 12 votes
In my opinion references are transient. I would expect anybody asking for my reference to do so for each time the reference is requested. the reason is that I would want to know for what I am providing reference and also because I am keen to make the decision to be a reference under my own control.
Hence, i see no reason to provide references in a CV in some permanent way. For each occassion the CV will be used it will of course be possible to add names to the CV but then only for one-time use. It is after all not complicated to edit the CV.
To add a line "references are available on request" would be a big no-no for me (this applies to all aspects of, for example, an application, not just the CV). If you have an application, it should be complete and provide all material and information you want in support unless the application makes it clear some information should be added upon request.
# Answer
> 7 votes
I agree with both points you made and with the points made by Peter Jansson.
1. I would not allow my name to be used as a reference without permission - primarily to avoid getting a surprise call/email that I am not prepared for, and when I am not prepared I sound like a blubbering buffoon (which would potentially jeopardise the candidate's chances).
2. This is how my CV is organised, I only include referees that are relevant to what I am applying for (with their expressed permission).
As for famous people, for me, it would be only if they are relevant.
# Answer
> 2 votes
If you keep a generic CV on your personal website or a job search website profile, then it can make sense to add the notice about references, though if you don't have it and you get contacted by a prospective employer, they'll still ask you anyway. I doubt they are not going to hire you because they were to shy to ask for references themselves ;-)
The main reason not to add specific references to a generic CV is that you can't tailor them. If you go for a teaching position, you might want to give the name of the dean at that private college where you lectured for a summer as a reference, whereas if you go for a research position, you want your Ph.D. supervisor as a reference as well as that important guy in some other university that you briefly collaborated with, etc.
Also, when you name references for a specific application, it gives you a chance to let your references know to who to potentially expect a call from. It will help your references (and thereby you) to talk about aspects of you that are relevant to the job you're applying for.
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Tags: cv, recommendation-letter, citations
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thread-10898 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10898 | Why conferences are the main venue for CS research? | 2013-07-01T21:39:19.163 | # Question
Title: Why conferences are the main venue for CS research?
Based on @JeffE's suggestion here, I see many CS researchers care mostly about conferences deadlines. Even when they want to read papers, usually they check the recent proceedings of different conferences.
Having a paper in IJCAI or AAAI for example, worth more than publishing in many ISI indexed journals with good reputation. I have no hard evidence for this but being in touch with CS research, I see little discussion about journal publications. why is that? is it *good* for the spirit of research in the CS field?
# Answer
> 8 votes
There's a reason CS folks cite when we obsess about conferences. The claim is that the field moves so quickly that conferences are more effective than journal for fast turn-around, and so better reflect the speed of developments.
I think this statement is partly true (conferences do have faster turnaround than CS journals) but misses the point entirely (there's no reason journals CAN'T have faster turn around time).
The real reason is the usual one. We got used to having conferences be the primary source of dissemination, and have no pressing reason to change. Having said that, the arxiv is more and more becoming the first choice of reading material and "hot off the presses" material, so I suspect that your question will become more and more moot as time goes on.
# Answer
> 3 votes
Just to add some points to @Suresh's answer which already lists the most important reasons (at least in my opinion).
While it is true that brand new results are usually published in conferences due to their speed compared to journals (there's no reasons that journals couldn't be faster, but, as things currently stand, they simply *aren't*), there are still valuable papers to be found in journals.
The first type of papers I usually read from journals are **extended versions of conference papers**: once the author gets his idea published *fast* in a conference, if it is a Really Important Thing, there is nothing stopping him/her to take some time and publish a detailed version in a journal.
The other type is **overview papers** whose value is not in a vast number of new contributions, but usually are the first ones systematically putting a chunk of knowledge in the same place, and possibly giving a new view of already existing techniques/structures/whatever.
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Tags: research-process, journals, conference, computer-science
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thread-10911 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10911 | Changing major in the graduate school | 2013-07-02T18:09:24.427 | # Question
Title: Changing major in the graduate school
I am a second year under-graduate student studying mathematics, but also taking courses in economics. I am not sure at this stage if I will continue with maths in my graduate school. My option B is economics. Roughly, I would give 60-40 in favour of math as far as my graduate study is concerned. My question is this: Which major should I focus for doing internship and research while I am doing my under-graduate before applying to grad school?
# Answer
> 4 votes
Today your interests lie in economics, but what if by the time you finish, you're interested in computational biology? Good luck selling Economics → Computational Biology to a graduate school admissions committee. On the other hand, with Mathematics as your base degree, you can cross over to most disciplines including Economics (with your chances boosted by further by internships in that discipline).
The bottom line is: **the narrower your major discipline, the fewer your opportunities.**
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Tags: graduate-school
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thread-10872 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10872 | How to make your paper's materials available online? (personal webpages, Institutional server, etc?) | 2013-07-01T04:04:04.860 | # Question
Title: How to make your paper's materials available online? (personal webpages, Institutional server, etc?)
I would like to distribute some of the materials related to my paper (such as source code) available online. I have the option of uploading them to my personal website or to a server in my institution, (or any better ways you suggest?)
I am concerned that if I upload it on the institution personal space, after graduating I won't have access to the server anymore or my page might be closed. and I don't want to disappoint my readers by providing a link which may expire in a few years.
Personal website seems a good option so I fully have control over the materials.
I would like to know if there is any better option or online services recognized especially for hosting academic materials (here my code) which I can link them in my paper?
# Answer
Try something like github which will provide not only a public place for storing your code, but also will give you version control.
Other similar sites exist such as GoogleDocs, FlipDrive, DropBox, ...
> 10 votes
# Answer
I would suggest that if you are able to keep them up-to-date, a personal website containing a guide/summary of your works with GitHub (or similar) repositories to host code.
The benefit of this is that it allows you the best of both worlds. I would suggest that your personal site would be the "professional" portal to your academic papers etc, with blurbs / 'about me' etc while the source code and documentation being managed on GitHub (or similar).
> 6 votes
# Answer
I would also recommend a combination, with e.g. the personal page pointing to other resources where source code, slides, presentations, pdfs are stored. Beside github (or other options where you can have both private and public repositories) I would also recommend figshare, where you can upload many forms of research output (data files, figures, manuscripts, source code etc). Each item will also get a doi, which makes them easy to cite.
> 1 votes
# Answer
For hosting - anything which looks decent and has no adverts will be fine. For me there is little difference if it is hosted on institute's server or not (I know many serious academic sites with personal domains, or on some page farms). But there is a big difference if:
* it is clean and complete (good interface, you can easily reach to publications, affiliation, e-mail etc),
* it is up-to-date,
* it stays there (and don't end as a deadlink in a few years; if you move make it explicit; I hate guessing "which e-mail for which page seems to be the current one").
Beware that even if you host your server, it may became dead (as some setting change, or you forget to pay for the domain).
For code use things which are suitable for code storage, reuse and discovery. GitHub and similar ones (e.g. BitBucket) are the best places.
Also, for hosting you can use `gh-pages` (free, stable and relatively easy to use... when you already can use git). Then for example you can have your page in Jekyll (an example, and on using LaTeX there).
> 1 votes
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Tags: research-process, publications, journals, paper-submission
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thread-10919 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10919 | To what extent do monetary incentives encourages researchers to publish in ISI Journals? | 2013-07-03T05:50:43.320 | # Question
Title: To what extent do monetary incentives encourages researchers to publish in ISI Journals?
There is an argument in my institute that ISI journal publication incentive (in ISI journals only) should be omitted. However, the opposition, including me, believe that such monetary incentive would motivate young researchers who are low paid researchers to publish their work in ISI journals. I checked some of the international universities and found similar discussions tend to agree that incentive is necessary for young publishers and researchers.
What is the status in your institutes and to what extent do you think payment for ISI journal publication encourages researchers to work more seriously?
NOTEs: 1- Please consider that the focus is on legitimate peer reviewed ISI journal publication ONLY, not any other publications such as conference or predatory open access journals.
2- FYI, in Computer Science, publishing in a legitimate peer reviewed ISI journal takes from 6 months to 2 years. If a novice researcher can publish in 6 months, he/she is considered very lucky and brilliant.
# Answer
> 10 votes
> What is the status in your institutes and to what extent do you think payment for publication encourage researchers to work more seriously?
I've never worked in an environment with payment for publication, so my impressions are based on observing it from the outside. I'm sure it encourages publishing more papers, but publishing more papers is different from working more seriously:
1. Publication payments encourage mediocre submissions, since success is defined by having a paper in a certain type of journal, regardless of how good or bad the paper is. In many cases the optimal strategy is not to work hard on writing a few excellent papers, but rather to write as many mediocre papers as possible and then submit them repeatedly in a search for lenient editors and reviewers.
2. In addition to the quality issue, payments per paper create an incentive to break work up into least publishable units.
3. Publication payments complicate coauthorship decisions, based on how the money is awarded. If every coauthor receives a fixed amount, then it creates a financial incentive to add honorary authors. On the other hand, if a fixed amount of money is divided among all the authors, then it creates an incentive to remove less important but legitimate authors. (And if it's just the "first author," then that magnifies the importance of who that author is.) Either way, authorship is being decided based partly on financial pressure, rather than intellectual contributions.
Of course, all these issues are already serious problems in academia, with or without publication payments, but adding direct financial incentives just makes them worse. In addition, using a fixed formula heightens the tension by removing ambiguity. With hiring, one might worry that hiring committees will count papers instead of judging their quality, but at least some of them will prefer two great papers to five mediocre ones. By contrast, the incentives with publication payments are unambiguous, which strengthens their effects.
# Answer
> 7 votes
There is one incentive: **publish or perish**.
Without publishing, young researchers will have a limited chance of a good career in academia. Without good publications, obtaining grant money will be difficult. Without grant money, you will be given more teaching duties and less chance to research. Without publications, you will not be granted tenure. You may end up with a teaching position, which is fine if that's what you want, but the chances of doing research will diminish.
Telling a long term story is perhaps a good way of motivating students.
We certainly don't pay them to publish, though they do get the opportunity to go to conferences to present their work, but only if they have work to present.
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Tags: research-process, publications, journals
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thread-10930 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10930 | Approach adviser to help publish a paper/Journal | 2013-07-03T19:38:47.340 | # Question
Title: Approach adviser to help publish a paper/Journal
> This topic may seem very close to Unable to defend and graduate because of advisers fickle mentality.
I am a Masters thesis student, and been doing my research for nearly 3 years now. Which I assume is quite long for Masters. So why such a long time. Well my adviser ( caring and supportive ) doesn't stick to or follow/have a structure for the thesis. Its like wandering about and finally OK yeah lets do this. Sometimes I face problems midway because we dint plan the thesis properly before hand and foresee what issues we could or would have to tackle way down the thesis, in which case it can be called more structured. Adding to this he is never present when needed.
In-spite of all these, I have somehow reached the very final stages of my thesis and trying to get some good results. I would like to open up and talk to him frankly and still maintain a good rapport so that I can ask to help me publish a paper/journal.
Could someone please give me a template of how I should approach him politely and convey my situation and get the best of this.
# Answer
> 2 votes
Two approaches:
1. You could say, "I think it would be a good idea to convert my thesis work into a journal paper. What do you think?"
2. Write up a version of the to-be-journal submission, present it to your supervisor, and ask "Do you think we could submit this, after some revision, to a journal?"
In any case, it sounds like you need to start being the master of your own destiny, and rely less on your supervisor. It is your masters' thesis after all, and your research.
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Tags: advisor
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thread-10937 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10937 | Three papers came out on new technique at almost the same time. What order do I cite? | 2013-07-03T20:13:29.860 | # Question
Title: Three papers came out on new technique at almost the same time. What order do I cite?
Three papers on a new technique came out at almost the same time. They are all similar and introduce a new method that I use in my research by providing a range of examples of that technique.
Below are the dates the journals record it as received, accepted, first available online, and then the year of the official citation.
```
Paper# Received Accepted Available Citation Yr.
P1 2011-11-29 2012-06-21 2012-08-11 2012
P2 2011-12-12 2012-11-01 2012-11-08 2013
P3 2012-01-09 2012-08-30 2012-09-05 2012
```
* By order received: P1, P2, P3
* By order accepted: P1, P3, P2
* By citation year: (P1 P3), P2
Q: Should I cite all of them? I assume so. In which case, which order?
I would like to cite all three, since all are in reputable journals and their submission dates were so close that I assume all three did independent work and are deserving of a proper citation. I am not sure what order to cite them in.
# Answer
> 8 votes
Different journals have different ways of listing multiple references. I am used to see chronological order in which case P1/P3-P2 would be the order. I write P1/P3 because usually one does not keep track of chronology within a year (although it can (now) be done). It is otherwise common to put authors alphabetically within the same year. If a journal uses aplhabetical order as a basis then the order is of course different. P1-P3-P2 is of course the most straight forward way.
I would definitely put all three in, acknowledging their work. Citing only one of them may come across as not knowing the other publications and thereby the field.
# Answer
> 13 votes
This could be a very delicate diplomatic issue. There might be three groups arguing over the paternity of the original idea. I strongly suggest citing all three.
As for the order, first of all check the journal guidelines. In my field, typically citations are numbered in alphabetical order in the bibliography; if it's the same in yours, then I suggest you to cite them ordered by their citation number (thus alphabetically), i.e., put them in the same bracketed list \[a,b,c\], with a\<b\<c.
Ordering the references like this is a good habit to adopt exactly because of these attribution issues.
# Answer
> 10 votes
You should **absolutely** cite all three papers, if they are all equally relevant to the work at hand. There's no logical reason to exclude one or more of them—even if there were (for instance) a flaw in the methodology, you could still say "introduced by paper X, and an improved version by paper Y" or something similar to that.
As for the actual order of citations, I don't think, in the context of a *single* citation, which order you pick. You could even pick alphabetical order, if that's what you thought was most appropriate.
Now, if all three were in development more or less simultaneously—which appears to be the case here—establishing "true" priority is somewhat more complicated. I would choose whichever order best fits the "flow" of the arguments you wish to make with these papers.
The most important thing, as I mentioned at the top, though, is that you cite the papers; everything after that is "author judgment," and is unlikely to be argued (unless one of the authors ends up reviewing your paper!).
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Tags: citations
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thread-10946 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10946 | How to effectively explain why my research is important? | 2013-07-04T05:25:32.137 | # Question
Title: How to effectively explain why my research is important?
I gave a presentation on my PhD research at university last week, and it was criticised for lacking practical significance. A different comment suggested the presentation was not placed in context. Could somebody provide some advice on how to place research in context and convey its practical significance? How can I effectively assess who/what/where/when will see the benefits of my research?
# Answer
> 13 votes
Ask yourself a number of questions:
* Why am I doing the research?
* What problem am I solving?
* Why should anyone else by interested in this research?
* How can my results help solve someone else's problem?
The first two questions will help you understand what you are doing from your own personal perspective, as well as establishing the context of the work. The latter two will help you establish why someone else would be interested in your work.
In short, ask **What?** and **So what?** about your work.
# Answer
> 6 votes
Definitely, your advisor is the person who should help you most with this question, so make sure you talk to her.
With this disclaimer, I would like to distinguish two things: the good and the bad way to justify the significance of your research. To be clear, good and bad are personal (but motivated) judgments and are not related with what will please people asking you that question, but with what is sane argument.
Let's start with the bad way:
1. this is the most important thing and most others are specialization of it: giving false but vaguely plausible reasons to study what you studied, hopping to reach other's expectations,
2. claiming applications that are often claimed in the area, or vaguely related but at best very long term applications (e.g. "my study of cell migration is crucial for understanding metastases, so it will help cure Cancer"; this works with any fondamental research in cell biology),
3. name-dropping (e.g. "Nobel Prize Trucmuche has studied this 20 years ago, so surely that must be interesting"),
4. generalization for the sake of generalization -applies maybe mostly to maths, but applies a lot there- (e.g. "Finsler geometry is a generalization of Riemannian geometry, so surely it is interesting").
5. lacking any clue (e.g. "My advisor told me to do it, so I did"). If you don't know why you are doing what you do, at some point you should find out or change subject.
Note that 1. is very, very often seen in grant application, and it might be impossible in some cases to apply successfully without resorting to this kind of argument. This does not make it a good argument; we should be as thorough in assessing the relevance of our research than we are in assessing our research result.
Now the good way:
1. this is the most important thing and all others are specialization of it: explaining the reasons why you where interested in the project, why you find it fascinating or interesting,
2. giving perspective applications *that sincerely did motivate your work*, either from start or that you realized during the research process. This may not exist, which is not (rather, should not be) an issue, at least in fondamental research,
3. placing your research in context: how it relates to what has been done before, to which previously raised question it answers, which previously held beliefs it contradicts,
4. explaining how it generalizes previous work *to meaningful, existing examples* (e.g. "My theorem on Finsler geometry explains such and such features of Hilbert geometry"),
5. explain the perspectives opened by your work (e.g. "if we believe this principle applies even more generally, then we can hope to use my methods to understand such and such important phenomenons"),
6. explain why it is fun (e.g. "look at this dancing corn starch: weird, huh?")
# Answer
> 4 votes
Without knowing your actual field of research, here are some general pointers (by no means, is this an exhaustive list):
* Research and find other papers based on or is similar to your work, this will give a bit of a basis for the practical context.
* From reading of papers, try and define a gap where your research may help with.
* Ask your supervisor/advisor for advice in this, employ their help in defining the context.
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Tags: phd
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thread-10849 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10849 | Non-Thesis Masters | 2013-06-30T01:00:14.317 | # Question
Title: Non-Thesis Masters
I am completing my masters in chemical engineering. I have completed my first two semesters but was unable to find a research thesis topic to work upon. Will it be bad to complete my masters degree without a thesis, if I don't get a better option?
# Answer
Whether it will be 'bad' or not depends on whether you intend to pursue further studies (PhD), also, it depends on what the university policy is regarding the completion of your Masters.
I would suggest that you discuss your concerns with your supervisors/advisors (if you have not done so already).
Another possibility is to write and submit papers for publication.
> 4 votes
# Answer
If you're mainly interested in getting a job in the industry after you graduate, it *probably* doesn't matter too much. Sure, a really good thesis *could* be a bonus, but you'll probably have have to get pretty far in the recruiting process before anyone's even going to look at your thesis, and if and when someone does, they probably won't look much beyond the abstract.
The one exception might be if you already have a fairly specific idea of what you want to do in your job, and can arrange a thesis topic that lets you demonstrate the same skills you expect to be using. But it doesn't really sound like you have that specific a vision for your future yet.
If you plan to pursue a PhD degree, though, things are completely different. What people looking for prospective PhD students are most interested in is the ability to *carry out academic research and describe its results*, which is *exactly* what a thesis demonstrates. Without a thesis, you're going to have to find some other way to demonstrate your research and writing skills. It's not completely impossible — for example, you could try writing an independent research paper and getting it published in an academic journal, as suggested in this answer to a related question — but it does have the potential to put you at a significant disadvantage.
---
(*Background disclosure*: I'm a PhD student in mathematics with several years of past experience working in the IT industry. I've also had *some* experience in helping to evaluate candidates for both academic and non-academic positions, although I cannot really claim extensive first-hand knowledge of that side of the process.)
> 4 votes
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Tags: research-process, masters, coursework, thesis
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thread-10928 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10928 | How often should one evaluate a plan for an academic career? | 2013-07-03T15:40:26.670 | # Question
Title: How often should one evaluate a plan for an academic career?
I'm about to start my PhD. I feel I should try to plan my academic career; or set some general goals at least. The time line could be something like 5-15 years. The first years are easy to plan: study this, study that, publish a few papers etc. It gets more difficult to make plans beyond receiving the PhD. I think that if I don't know where I want to go with my degree, it becomes difficult to make decisions during the coming years: when to say *yes*, and when to say *no*. I know I don't want to just end up *somewhere* doing what other people think I should be doing.
How do you plan your career? How frequently do you update your plan and/or check have you progressed as you planned?
# Answer
> 8 votes
What I tell my students starting out is to make sure that they have *realizable* goals. Saying "I want to be a postdoc in field X in five years" is realizable. Saying "I want to work for Professor X at University Y on project Z in five years" is probably not realizable. Making sure you have a plausible goal in mind, and the ability to work toward it is incredibly important.
However, it's important to realize that goals and opportunities change over time. What you think you want to do now may not be what you want to do a year from now. So that's why it's important not to have goals that are too narrowly defined—otherwise, it makes it harder to change your mind later and still be satisfied with the way things turn out.
How often do you reassess goals? As often as you feel you need to. But you should also distinguish between the different ranges of priorities—short-range, mid-range, and long-range. Short- and mid-range should be reviewed on a very regular basis (weekly to monthly); the longer-range stuff at least a few times a year. But these are guidelines that work for me; you need to find a system that works for you.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Here is an advice I give a lot lately: given the state of affairs, make sure each you take a position (start a PhD, start a postdoc, etc.) that you want *it*, and not that you want what you expect to get *after it*. For example, if you take a postdoc that you don't really want because you hope to get a tenure track afterward, you have a great chance of regretting that choice a few years later. If you follow my advice, the worst that should happen is that you have fun with research for some years and end up frustrated not to be able to continue.
This advice is probably not that good for PhD in countries where it is a valuable diploma in the employment market; in France, outside academia you do little more with a PhD than without, and the advice stands (I know a few people that ended up high school teachers after a PhD they did not enjoy, that seems quite a waste).
That said, it means you should reevaluate your plans at least at each opportunity (starting PhD, end of PhD, next postdoc, etc.)
# Answer
> 2 votes
Some universities can help you plan your career, by describing what career paths are available to you, and what steps you should take to follow the path you want. I know this is particularly true in the UK, for instance Birmingham university has the following career pathways (there is something similar at my university, but it does not seem to be publicly available).
For instance, some of the main paths are (in parentheses are only *some* examples are points that can be particularly useful to show):
* research-focused (where, for instance, showing that you can get some funding can be quite important)
* teaching-focused (where, for instance, showing that you can teach and supervise can be quite important)
* technician-focused (where, for instance, showing that you are very skilled in using your lab equipment can be quite important)
* admin-focused (where, for instance, showing that you can work with academics and manage them can be quite important)
* industry-focused (where, for instance, showing that you can address "real-life" problems can be quite important)
* others (where anything can be quite important!).
In my current university, you can have an official, annual meeting with your boss to talk about your objectives with respect to your desired path, and you can get support from a staff development unit. There is also a mentoring program, where you can discuss about your career with a senior staff member, usually not in your department, to avoid any "conflict of interest".
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Tags: phd, research-process
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thread-10893 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10893 | How do you insert links to a printed report? | 2013-07-01T18:21:29.133 | # Question
Title: How do you insert links to a printed report?
I want to write something along the lines of:
```
For this I shall be using the foo library
```
And I wish to insert a link to said library, but I am confused as how to properly write the link. Do I insert it as a citation, a footnote, or just leave it there in the text?
# Answer
If the library is important enough to be mentioned in the body of the article, I would definitely cite it. (If it's only mentioned in a technical appendix, I *might* consider a footnote sufficient.)
Indeed, many software libraries or packages aimed at scientific use may carry a request that you do so, typically accompanied by an example citation, like this one from the R programming language FAQ:
> "To cite R in publications, use
>
> ```
> @Manual{,
> title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},
> author = {{R Core Team}},
> organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},
> address = {Vienna, Austria},
> year = 2013,
> url = {http://www.R-project.org}
> }
>
> ```
>
> Citation strings (or BibTeX entries) for R and R packages can also be obtained by `citation()`."
If no example citation format has been provided for your software library, I'd suggest citing the library web page in the same general fashion, e.g. as in:
>
or as in:
>
If the library has been formally described in a published article or technical report, it may also be appropriate to cite the article or report instead. In such cases, though, I would *usually* expect the library documentation to say so.
Ps. Here are a few earlier questions on the same or similar topics:
> 5 votes
# Answer
I prefer footnote or in text. Others would also consider using a citation. Check your local style guide. Here is one possibility (http://lib.westfield.ma.edu/webapa.htm)
> 5 votes
# Answer
In my area (management), links belong in the references section (whether on a separate references page or footnote depends on the citation format) but generally you should not put links in your text.
If there are referencing system which use in-text links, I have yet to see them.
> 2 votes
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Tags: paper-submission
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thread-10945 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10945 | What is the appropriate mechanism for finding administrative support for a conference? | 2013-07-04T04:38:30.373 | # Question
Title: What is the appropriate mechanism for finding administrative support for a conference?
We're organizing a conference and I currently don't have administrative support to process our income and receipts. I don't have a personal admin and I curious about the best and polite way to find support without pressuring someone into the role.
# Answer
You may want to think about whether you need a full-time administrative assistant for that, or maybe students could take over some of these tasks. It probably depends on the size of the conference also. But I generally found that students are very well willing to take over such tasks, because it allows them a little bit to peek behind the curtains of conference organization.
An important question when engaging students is whether you have funds available to support the conference organization. If yes, then I think it should be easy to find students willing to help for a small salary. Otherwise you would have to rely on volunteering, which may be more difficult.
> 2 votes
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Tags: conference, etiquette, administration
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thread-10960 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10960 | Is it a good idea to continue a PhD with an advisor who doesn't really know your field? | 2013-07-04T22:44:39.013 | # Question
Title: Is it a good idea to continue a PhD with an advisor who doesn't really know your field?
Some background:
* I started my PhD in Machine Learning in April this year.
* My PhD is fully funded for 3 years, I earn around 2000€/month after tax, working only on research and not doing any teaching.
* I'm paid by the grant that my advisor got for his project. This grant his paid by the state.
* My current advisor is a world expert in Machine Learning
* I already submitted 2 papers with him and most likely submit a third one in a couple of months.
The problem: My advisor just got an offer from one of the biggest company you can think of, to do a machine learning project with lots of different world experts newly hired by the said company. It means that he is going to leave his current position at my university in 4 months.
I can't blame him to take this position because I would have done the same. It's an offer that nobody can refuse.
So in 4 months, I'll have to make a choice.
* leave my position and look for a position elsewhere but I doubt I'll find something as interesting and well paid. (My advisor can write recommendation letter for me.)
* to stay at the university and choose a new advisor -\> the problem is that my current research is highly technical and nobody except my current advisor (and I) have knowledge about it (he was a new junior professor and the university wanted to expand the CS department). The rest of my group is working on a totally different subject and I know nobody will be able to help me for the rest of my PhD.
My advisor told me that the university will find me a new advisor if I choose to stay but warned me that my topic will most likely shift to adapt to the domain knowledge of this new advisor. It means that I'll have to give up my current topic and to tell you the truth, I prefer to quit my PhD than to continue on something that I don't like.
For info, I read this post how-to-cope-when-phd-advisor-quits-midway but I think my problem is slightly different.
tldr: Is it possible to do a PhD with an advisor that can't help you? Or is it better to just go somewhere else?
# Answer
* judging ***nobody*** knows the area except you and your advisor seems a strong statement to me specially if you just started doing research (this April ).
I am quite sure there are other folks working on the same topic or something really close to it. Those are your potential advisors.
Taking into account that you just started and he's a world class expert, I believe the best thing is to approach your advisor asking for help. ***Ask him to suggest some names to you***. He certainly knows other academics and can even approach them asking for a PhD position for you (have you looked to his co-authors list in DBLP for example? ). I have heard several cases where advisors help their students secure PhD positions in other institutions.
* ***Take a breadth view over other's research***. Attend their seminars. You might see their work interesting as well.
* DO NOT LOSE YOUR ADVISOR. keep in touch with him and try to be his student even outside academia!
> 12 votes
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Tags: phd, advisor
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thread-10935 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10935 | How do I understand the main concepts in a paper by just skimming through it? | 2013-07-03T20:00:23.463 | # Question
Title: How do I understand the main concepts in a paper by just skimming through it?
What's the best method to understand the real concept that a paper is trying to explain?
Should one go through the paper as it is presented, from first page to last page? Is there a specific walk-through to understand it faster, such as first reading the result section, followed by the concept section, and then discussion/conclusion section? Is there a best practice to be followed?
# Answer
> 7 votes
If the paper is well written, then the abstract should tell you most of the story at a high level. Then the introduction should give more technical coverage again of the whole story – you should then know the problem and the results obtained, though not all the details. The remainder of the paper then will contain just the details.
Of course, most papers do not do that, so you may also need to read the conclusion, the discussion section, and perhaps any other introductory sections. In the end, you may need to read the whole paper before you get what it is about.
However, to really understand the paper, you will need to go through it very slowly, with pen and paper at hand, and try to replicate the reasoning/ideas given in the paper, filling in the gaps – possibly with the help of additional literature.
Not all papers need to be read so deeply. Reading just the abstract and maybe the introduction and conclusion should help you decide how deep to read the paper.
# Answer
> 1 votes
NEVER READ A SCIENTIFIC PAPER COMPLETELY FROM START LINE TO FINISH LINE.
Idea is to get an understanding of what concept is presented in the paper
Open powerpoint/paper
1. Read abstract - Tells us briefly WHAT experiment WAS DONE and WHAT WAS FOUND. What specific results are mentioned - are they relevant to your research.
2. Discussion - Summary of important results and gives reasons based on conclusions and assumptions - Do you agree with the logic of the conclusions and are those useful to you
3. Introduction - Motivation and importance of the research and tries to sell the paper to the maximum. Provides some background information.
4. Results - Provides some raw data which can be related to your own research. Figures and Tables provide data in a compact format for easy understanding.
In figures - does the graphs make sense ? , what are the axis's used and does it mean anything ? Check the units used.
5. FINISH - I have a brief understanding of the paper and I have tried my best to cover all the relevant attributes of a scientific journal.
6. Check the references and see if they are related to the main concept of the paper in hand. Follow through.
Manage a reference library like mendeley to keep an updated list of the literature you reviewed.
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Tags: publications, reading
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thread-10975 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10975 | Publishing as an undergraduate student: can/should I list my university affiliation? | 2013-07-05T14:29:02.523 | # Question
Title: Publishing as an undergraduate student: can/should I list my university affiliation?
I have done some research during the past year on one of the topics I am studying. Now I have got some nice results which I think I should publish. I think I can write a conference paper based on my results; a journal one might be too difficult at this point.
I have conducted the research alone, and have not received any help from any faculty members. Now, when I'm writing the paper, I came to consider for the first time am I *allowed* to publish under the institution I am studying in? I mean, I can list my university as my affiliation, even though I'm just an undergrad student, right? .. I could not find anything on this from the university rules, so I guess its "quiet information".
# Answer
> 5 votes
Ask one of your professors or the administration about what the best course of action is.
Most likely, you should publish as affiliated to the university as the work was conducted while you were at university. In any case, you have nothing to lose by doing so.
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Tags: publications
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thread-10983 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10983 | What to do when a referee asks for changes I am not willing to make? | 2013-07-05T17:48:52.600 | # Question
Title: What to do when a referee asks for changes I am not willing to make?
I have submitted a paper later that was reviewed by four reviewers. I submitted my revisions to all reviewers. Three accepted the review, while the last is still asking for modifications.
The problem is that the reviewer is asking to measure the performance of our work using performance metrics that were never taken into consideration before in the literature (and our problem is well studied - at 30 references !) ..
These performance metrics would require a complete Master Thesis.
Is it fair to judge a paper based on performance metrics that were not taken into consideration by the authors at the first hand ? (noting that none of the previous work considered these metrics) ..
I hate to say it, but the reviewer seems to be reading a paper about my problem for the first time ever, and some of the reviewer comments are contradicting.
Note: I am sorry if this have been asked before. I could not find any thing related.
# Answer
> 24 votes
In your question, there is no mention of an editor for the journal to which you have submitted your work. If you disagree with one or more of the reviewers, there is nothing remarkable about that; it is common, a review is an educated opinion about your work, supposedly based on facts. Normally you would provide an account for how you have met the comments (as you seem to have done) and in the cases where you disagree, you provide an account based on facts and reasoning why you think your way is better than that of the reviewer. It should then be up to the editor, not the reviewer, to decide whether your revisions make the manuscript acceptable or not. In some cases the editor will request a second round of reviews, this is normal, particularly if the revisions have been so substantial that the manuscript is quite different from the original.
This is what I see as a relatively typical way for a review process to take place.
# Answer
> 16 votes
I agree with the other comments that it is ok to not satisfy the demands of all reviewers and that in the end the editor makes the call.
However, it is still possible that the reviewer has a good point that the other reviewers missed. It is entirely possible that common metrics in the field are problematic and that since the other reviewers are "from the field" (and so are you, for that matter), they just don't give it a second thought. I have encountered these kinds of situations before. Remember that **ultimately, you are the one responsible for what you write in your paper - not the reviewers or the editor**. Therefore, I suggest that you keep an open mind and think deeply if the reviewer has a point and how you want to address it and act accordingly.
I am just mentioning this since it is sometimes easy to become overly defensive and dismiss reviewer comments as bad judgement.
# Answer
> 9 votes
Can you elaborate more how the discussion has proceeded? If I am under the correct impression, you don't have to agree with every reviewer nor do everything they suggest. Instead, you need to tell them that their comments have been *seriously considered*. You should be OK by writing the same statement that you wrote here: you disagree, your point of view is supported by previous research, and so on.
# Answer
> 7 votes
If I may relay a piece of wisdom that was passed down to me many years ago, even if you are convinced that the reviewer is a complete idiot, it only means that your paper was obviously not completely idiot-proof.
If somebody managed to find fault on what you considered a trivial point, then the point may not be as trivial or clear as you think. Applied to your specific case, you could show, in your manuscript, that the results shown are sufficient to make whatever point you want to make, and that other specific tests, i.e. the ones suggested by the reviewer, would not contribute to the result.
In any case, though, my first step would be to talk to the editor in charge of your manuscript. She/He will be making the final decision, so it makes more sense to discuss with her/him directly, and not engage in a lengthy -- and essentially pointless -- battle with an individual referee. In such cases the editor can usually tell you how she/he would like to see the referee's points addressed, and that will give you something to work with.
I also echo Bitwise's sentiment that, in the end, it's up to you. If the journal, via the referees and editor, makes demands that you cannot live with, then you can live without that particular journal.
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Tags: peer-review
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thread-10966 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10966 | Summer Schools and academic career | 2013-07-05T09:20:12.947 | # Question
Title: Summer Schools and academic career
There are some prominent summer schools in CS (ML in particular) like MLS (Machine Learning Summer School).
What is the impact of attending such program on academic careers? (or applying for graduate programs)
For example, LxMLS (Lisbon Machine Learning School) this year has ~ 150 selected participants from all over the world.
The summer school offers the following things:
* Lectures (from basics to advanced topics)
* Lab sessions
* Talks
* Poster Session (based on which the students were selected)
Would it be a worthwhile investment of 1000-1200$ (Assuming I have the means to fund myself) or are such opportunities common and easily funded in US and I should be looking at not attending and saving money?
What else would this summer school bring forth for a recently graduated undergrad student?
Some of the summer schools have courses which can be treated as university credit equivalents. Is this true for all summer schools?
* Background: A student interested in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing and has taken online courses in these subjects.
# Answer
I'm a PhD student in my final months, I'm in a different field (geophysics), but I've been to some summer-schools that I found *very valuable*. One lecturer even stated that *summer schools are the best forum for scientific exchange*. The summer schools I've been to didn't have as many participants as yours, but still, besides from the obvious point of acquiring knowledge and skills, summer school permit you to:
* Meet and talk to senior people in your field
* Meet other students, who may be going to be the *future* senior people in your field
The bottom line is: **A summer school is as good as its lecturers are**. Look at the list of lecturers, and ask a senior scientist you know to look at the list. Are there many famous names? *Go for it*. Are those mainly lecturers who spend most of their time teaching at not so well known institutes? Then you can probably spend your time and money better elsewhere. Depending on what's included (lodging/meals/...) and on how long it takes, 1000$ is not bad, although of course it's better if you can find someone else to pay it for you ;).
> 6 votes
# Answer
> What is the impact of attending such program on academic careers?
Direct - very little (unless it is very selective and prestigious *and* the committee is aware of it).
But the biggest things are:
* how much you will actually learn and
* how much you will network.
The later is more important (always you can learn by yourself, and most of learning is self-learning anyway) but you cannot network by yourself. So if there are people from groups you want to apply - it will help a lot (and also: mean that the level seems to be right).
> 4 votes
# Answer
$1500 with everything included? Sounds very good value.
Asides from the great value and the great opportunity for networking with like minded people, it is a great opportunity, through the networking and sessions, to be able to find your focused research interest(s). You never know where the contacts you make, and what you learn will lead you.
I did something similar when I was just completing my MSc - I went to a workshop/conference in Boston - what I learnt helped me refine my PhD research topic; the people I met, I am still n contact with and have helped me when I did not quite understand some topics.
Ultimately though, it is up to what you can afford in terms of time and money.
> 2 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, summer-school
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thread-10969 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10969 | Strategies to overcome "academic-apathy" in the final stages of the PhD? | 2013-07-05T11:38:19.173 | # Question
Title: Strategies to overcome "academic-apathy" in the final stages of the PhD?
Background - I am doing my PhD in atmospheric physics/photobiology.
Here is a scenario:
* The experiments are complete - the results are far better than expected
* Successfully got the computer program to work properly and have developed another
* Papers are published
* Much of the thesis is drafted
The light at the end of the tunnel is most definitely no longer an oncoming train.
But, at this stage, you just don't feel like working on the thesis, you do other things like cleaning, reading, watching movies - procrastination gets worse, and worse despite the submission deadline coming closer.
The procrastination resulting in more apathy towards the project, despite being fully aware of how much work has been put into the project, how much has been achieved and how little, comparatively, needs to be done.
What strategies are there to overcome this academic-apathy, particularly in this late stage of the thesis?
# Answer
> 27 votes
My suggestion would be to set minor distinct goals for each day but not overdo them, make them manageable. Mix boring chores with more fun ones so that the fun ones become a reward. This may seem a bit vague or even wooly. The problem I think you are experiencing is that while working on a PhD you get accustomed to stress and like many (myself included) a certain stress is needed to get something, and really the best, out of oneself. This phenomena, in my case, has only gotten worse, and I simply have a hard time getting anything done unless there is some pressure that gets stress levels up. But, with certain tasks it is possible to get stuff done by breaking it down into smaller pieces because if there is no overview or goals are too nebulous then it is not easy to focus on what to do in detail.
# Answer
> 33 votes
Here is what kept me motivated and got me through the last year of my PhD:
1. A comment from a professor that *the best dissertation is the one that is written.*
2. My advisor kept pushing me to get her chapters. I'm not sure where you stand with your advisor, but if he/she (and your committee as a whole) wants you to finish up, that can be motivating. If you want to push this angle, send out an email to your advisor and committee with your plan to finish -- that will help keep you working!
3. I had set a deadline for myself (as mentioned in point 2), and backed all my planning up to make sure I met the deadline. It sounds like you've gotten to the point where it is just the writing you have left, and I suggest setting up a schedule of when you will complete each chapter.
4. My deadline revolved around the job market -- I knew I needed to be ready to start at a job in August, so I knew I needed to be completely done by then.
5. I took breaks when I needed to. I treated myself to a day off when I got a chapter completed and sent to my advisor, and I had one weekly TV program that I watched religiously. Finishing a PhD is a lot of work, but it doesn't need to be soul-crushing (and soul-crushing work is bad for you, anyway!).
6. I really wanted to see the finished product -- I thought it was cool to have this giant, polished document, and that kept me tinkering on it.
Good luck!
# Answer
> 15 votes
Looks like a clear burnout sign. Instead of watching movies and cleaning. Get on a train and do something totally different. I think you are in this loophole and won't be getting out of it by doing the same stuff over and over (remember Einstein's quote). Normally you'll need just 3 days to reset your motivation. Things you can do:
* visit new places
* see new faces
* talk about anything else but your PhD
* rearrange your furniture (believe me, it helps. Your brain needs to forget old patterns)
* don't read, watch movies or focus on anything more than 15 minutes
* go shopping. Ladies do this all the time to get that confidence kick
Good luck.
# Answer
> 14 votes
I am completing my PhD in 2 months, and had my own revelation on this subject last week, which is helping me.
My own procrastination is the result of a fear of failure and a fear of being mediocre. If I procrastinate, and don't do as well as I hope, I've then got the excuse that "I didn't really try". It was a revelation for me, because this is the very thing I've been telling myself most of my life after I don't do as well as I think I could do.
I have thus been able to accept myself, and my shortcomings, more readily now... which has removed a lot of the internal pressure to perform well. As a result I have found that I am able to work steadily. I will try my best to do as well as I can without too much pressure, and whatever the result, that will be okay.
The revelation in itself did not help so much... it was really the acceptance of myself as I am now that has allowed me to move forward.
A side benefit to this will be better performance, but that is no longer the goal.
If you can relate to this, then I suggest reading up on "Fear of Failure" on wikipedia.
Good luck!
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Tags: phd, thesis, motivation, procrastination
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thread-10518 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10518 | Improving my PhD application for math programs | 2013-06-08T14:12:29.593 | # Question
Title: Improving my PhD application for math programs
This past year I was accepted into two mid range phd programs in mathematics without funding. Here's what my profile looked like:
Domestic White Male Unknown state school in the midwest Majors: Mathematics and Philosophy GPA: 3.93 GRE: Q: 168 (97) V: 167 (97) W: 5.0 (92) M: not taken
Interests: Analysis, Medical Imaging/Modeling, Mathematical Physics
Major Coursework: Complex Analysis, Discrete Structures, Applied Math (survey course mostly in Fourier methods and PDEs), Mathematical Statistics.
Recommendations: One from a top applied mathematician who was very late in sending them out, one from a professor from the previous year who is well regarded but has not had much contact with me and one from a young professor who was fresh out of post doc.
Other: I'm 30 years old. Some former work experience as a co-op student in engineering at a national lab, dean's list, normal stuff like that. I had only completed two semesters at my current school, though. About 6 years ago I was an engineering student at a different institution with poor grades and I did not finish my degree. Also mid to high level (lots of national, some international competition) as an athletic coach working with kids, teens and adults. Some international experience as an athlete as well. I also speak basic German.
Here's how my profile has changed:
Current GPA: 3.94 (.01 difference! However, this does mean 6 more As and 1 more A- to counterbalance my poor record from the early-mid 2000s.)
GRE Subject Score: 660 (52)
Additional Coursework: Formal Logic, Real Analysis, Advanced Linear Algebra, Intro to Abstract Algebra. This summer I am doing a course in number theory and an independent study in Galois theory.
Recommendations: I am going to give the late professor a much longer lead time this time around. He has said that he wants to help me but is always extremely busy. I will also be asking (and almost certainly receiving) a rec from the professor I am doing my independent study with.
Interests in pure math have shifted away from analysis, more into algebra. In applied, medical applications (organ/system modeling and imaging more than bioinformatics) have taken the lead over mathematical physics.
Other changes: Medalist in school's math competition, math tutor in our honors college and privately. Taking a Spanish immersion course so I can list basic spanish on there as well.
I'll be taking the GRE subject again in October and am using saylor.org and MIT's opencourseware to review older subjects. I graduate in August and will be working for a year. I'm thinking about applying to teach at a high school or community college for that time. I also plan on taking one or two graduate courses per semester.
I plan on applying all over the place (\>15 apps) compared to the 8 from last time. I would prefer to go to the west coast. Can anyone let me know if the mid level UCs (Irvine, Santa Barbara, Davis) are reasonable with what I've got now, especially since when I worked at that national lab I was technically a UC employee? Any other recommendations on schools or anything I can do over the next year to boost this?
One other thing: I have no REUs, but is a good independent study with a strong recommendation from it a decent substitute?
Thanks for taking the time to read my post.
# Answer
> 10 votes
In reading through your comments, I couldn't help but get the feeling that you are "all over the map" when it comes to what you're looking to do in graduate school. If this is similar to the way that your personal statement read to the committee, it could help to explain some of the challenges you faced in applying to graduate schools.
For instance, after reading what you have written, I can't tell if you're looking to do algebra or bioinformatics—or if you're in an "I'm happy with either" situation. If it's the latter, this can make it harder for a committee to accept you: algebra readers might think they'll admit you, only to have you wander off into applied math, and vice versa. You may find it better to concentrate on one area—or, better yet, show how the different topics you're interested in are actually related to one another.
Another potential issue is the quality of your letters of recommendation. Is there anyone who can help you to evaluate your letters for you? Some colleges have career offices or academic counselors who can comment on the suitability of your letters for different kinds of programs (academic, industrial, etc.), although they probably won't "rank" them for you. If you had a very late letter, it's a good question as to how helpful it would have been, even if it was from a big name (or perhaps that should be "in spite of" it being from a big name). By this, I mean that the letter would only have value if it actually discusses your talents and skills in a meaningful way. A *pro forma* letter isn't all that helpful, particularly if you are from an "unknown" program. (This latter can also make your job tougher, since your school might not have a track record at many graduate schools).
Finally, it also sounds like you have a rather untraditional academic history. This needs to be explained *clearly* somewhere on your application, in a way that shows thattaking you into a graduate program now would not be a risk. (Not doing this could again feed into the notion that you're flittering around from one thing to the next—which is not a good impression for an admissions committee to have of you.)
# Answer
> 10 votes
**Since this was too long to leave as a comment, I'll post it here in addition to an answer**: Regarding the GRE Subject test for math: admissions wise, the scores are *mandatory* for pretty much every top 10 program in the nation (Princeton, Harvard, MIT, UChicago, Stanford, UC Berkeley, etc). Since most potential candidates admitted to these programs have a track record for some type of research-related activity, less emphasis is placed on the scores and more on their potential as research mathematicians (after all, that's what grad school is about: research). However, in less prestigious departments like Irvine, Santa, and Barbara, more emphasis is placed on the subject test relatively speaking to the top 10 programs because one of the likely reasons some students end up in "lower" departments is due of the lack of research experience. Thus, much emphasis (though not all, credible research-related letters of recommendation are probably more essential) is placed on the subject test. Of course I'm not implying that lower grad schools look more at test scores than publications. I'm saying that it's probably more *expected* that the students will depend on their scores than their publications precisely for the aforementioned reasons. Right from the words of the UC Berkeley website "*Experience has shown that the score on the Mathematics Subject GRE is a partial indicator of preparation for Berkeley's PhD program.*"
As for a "good" GRE score, take a look at what top programs expect of their applicants, and shoot for that range (the higher the better, of course). Once again, in the words of the Berkeley site "*A score below the 80th percentile suggests inadequate preparation and must be balanced by other evidence if a favorable admission decision is to be reached.*" So if I was you, I would shoot for the 80th percentile at minimum.
**Now onto your question**: First of all, +1 to aeismail's answer. I agree with that assessment: It seems to me that you're all over the place! The lack of coordination, I think, might turn off the admissions committee because A) it shows you're not very concentrated in one or two areas which might imply that you don't know what you're going to do and B) you're not very committed to a specific program. Unless your research is going to coincide with different areas, and the scattering departments are a reflection of departmental strengths in those areas, I think that'll be a red flag that you really just want in based on rankings. And if that was the case, you might rejected on the basis of *lack of coordination*. It won't be on their consciousness of course: there'll be at least 14 other schools that may admit you, so why would they care? **Here's my advice to you:**
**Apply to less schools**: 8 - 10 seems like a very reasonable range for me. Even if you don't explicitly state it, imply that you're not just going to grad school based on prestige or naming. Over 15 schools is too much. Show that you're looking at ***specific*** programs, with ***specific*** goals in mind (i.e Applying to schools X, Y, Z because of their strong research areas in 1, 2, 3 and your interest in 2 and 3). 2 safeties, 2 matches, 2 reaches, and 2 "dreams" (you never know :-). They're paying you to do research, not the other way around. Why should schools invest their time in you if you end up switching fields?
As for whether or not these are reasonable choices, that's pretty much subjective. It would depend on the field you're going into (I have no idea how strong these departments are in analysis/mathematical physics) and that's something you can google. You'd also do well to check the websites of each of these schools and look at the expectations for their applicants. Whatever bar they set, shoot for just higher than that.
REUs are just one way of getting research experience so don't worry too much about it. Senior thesis projects that culminate in publications are another. Working closely with a professor is one other way. I think ultimately (aside from research publications) the ***most important*** factor that goes into graduate admissions are your letters of recommendation. If it doesn't show on paper, a credible professor may assess your research potential since they know best what research is all about. Of course the tricky part here is getting letters of rec from the right person: If you're getting them, you're better off getting it from someone who coincides with your research interest. Since you're interested in analysis, it wouldn't make sense to get letters of rec. from a basket weaving instructor. Get it from your analysis professor (preferably, someone who knows you well and from upper undergrad/graduate-level course).
Final thoughts: If you want to improve your PhD application, try starting an independent project or ask to work with a professor. Research that results in journal publications is very rare even for exceptional undergraduates, so do not worry about that. It's helpful to be able to focus on one project for a whole year rather than jump from one to another every single month (the reason for that is obvious: it indicates perseverance and patience, which is very important for any potential PhD candidate). And refine your statement of purpose to show what you have learned from undertaking said project(s).
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Tags: graduate-school, graduate-admissions, mathematics
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thread-11006 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11006 | When conducting a follow-up review for a paper you already made comments on, how detailed should the review be? | 2013-07-07T12:03:38.113 | # Question
Title: When conducting a follow-up review for a paper you already made comments on, how detailed should the review be?
I think the title stands on its own, but I am not sure how detailed to make follow-up reviewer comments for a paper. My sense is that I don't need to re-review the paper, but just comment on whether or not I am satisfied with the changes the authors made. This leaves a rather skimpy review the second time around.
# Answer
> 7 votes
The extent of a re-review depends on what has been done with the manuscript (MS). If the first review round yielded questions and comments that can be fixed but may require checking to make sure the implementation of the comments are correct, then, as you say, you will not have to do a full-blown re-review. If, on the other hand, the revisions are such that the MS has been substantially modified, perhaps with new parts added, new data included, etc. the situation is different. Then the paper is so modified it is in some way more of a new MS than just revised and, hence in need of a new throrough review.
So in my opinion, the need of re-review depends on the severity of the required changes. How you decide depends on your opinion of the new paper. If an editor feels a MS is in need of so substantial revisions it becomes a new MS, then it is often rejected with a note about re-submission after work has been done. So in the end it is your view of the severity or magnitude of necessary changes that largely determines how much should be done. In some cases authors may disagree with a comment you feel strongly about and in such cases it may be necessary to enforce the view through more careful and convincing scrutiny.
EDIT: I should perhaps add that a second or more reviewers may have given other comments that influence your review. This means parts of the MS can be changed in ways you have not suggested so although a new detalied re-review may not be necessary a careful read through and comparison with the old may be in order. Sometimes authors (we) can use conflicting reviews to argue against one or the other.
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Tags: peer-review
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thread-11011 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11011 | Math Professors -- On average, how many hours per week do you think is required to gain tenure? | 2013-07-07T19:12:27.493 | # Question
Title: Math Professors -- On average, how many hours per week do you think is required to gain tenure?
I have a question particularly for the math professors here. I just finished my second year as a PhD student at a top30 University, passed all my qualifying exams, and I've begun working with an adviser in an area I'm excited about. Since the end of the Spring semester I've done a LOT of thinking, and I'm not sure academia is for me. The main issue is my perception of the time that will be required (in terms of hours per week) to get tenure. I have a wife and kids, and I just can't sacrifice the time spent with them, even if it means giving up something I love. I figure I could put in 40-45 hours a week, but then I need to be home. My first year of grad school, I put in 60-70 hours a week, and I certainly never want to go back to that. This last year, I've kept it between 40-50, and that seems about right for work/life balance.
So my question is this... am I correct in ruling Academia out for this reason? I had considering smaller colleges, but I'm looking to earn at least $60k and from what research I've done, I won't make that much.
My next question involves research outside Academia. Is there any place for research in combinatorics, asymptotics, probability, and analysis of algorithms outside of Academia, where the work-culture is a typical 40 hour workweek? I see a lot of research in other areas of mathematics that I'm not interested in (PDE's, Scientific/Engineering, Number Theory) -- but not really what I'm interested in.
So with all that, it seems to me that I'm not even sure why I would get a PhD anymore, other than it might open doors, but it's hard to stay motivated when there is no clear goal, or thing to work towards. My current thinking is just take some CS courses and learn some programming languages, get an internship next summer and perhaps leave with a masters after a year or so unless I can think of a very good reason to stay.
Any advice is appreciated!!
# Answer
I've said this in another thread: if you are outstanding and *efficient*, you can do the work required in a 40-hour workweek.
An electrical engineering professor I know got through graduate school at MIT working 9-5 days with a wife and three kids (all born during school), and he was a shoo-in for tenure (and received it). *But*, when he was at work, he was *at work*--I never once saw him out of work-mode during the regular day, and he put us graduate students to shame with his work ethic. His efficiency and focus puts him over the top. I know I couldn't be that efficient every day, but he makes it a priority to do the best he can at his job (which he loves) and also for his family, and he's figured out how to do it within the confines of a typical working week. Granted, he is also extremely smart, but I believe his efficiency is as much responsible for his success as his brains.
> 28 votes
# Answer
First, I think it might be a slightly dangerous misconception about extra-academic research or work supposedly being neatly contained in 9-to-5.
Second, yes, *efficiency* and *focus* matter a great deal, in any case. Perhaps harder to be efficient and focused if one's motivation or interest is compromised, e.g., by time conflicts, thus making the problem worse.
But is it necessary or possible to "separate" research thinking from everything else? At least for many mathematicians of my acquaintance, it is not only possible to keep a part of one's mind working, if quietly, on an issue, but it is necessary, if not quite inescapable. Indeed, I would tend to claim that entirely putting an issue out of one's mind for 16 hours then necessitates considerable "recover and restart" time when one tries to re-engage. Thus, deliberately putting work out of one's mind entirely can have a further, partly un-necessary, effect, of reducing the effective workday by another hour or two, and having that unpleasant restarting to "look forward to" each day. Obviously this reduces one's effective competence as well as happiness if it happens.
I might recommend thinking more how to *integrate* a work-life and family-life, rather than about how to control or contain one or the other. Conceivably it will become clearer to you that very many of the "long" weeks people spend in grad school are spent fairly ineffectively and needlessly unpleasantly, not just taking up time, but dragging one down psychologically, and producing a state incompatible with family-life, for example. But if/when one becomes more effective at the enterprise, it may be less unpleasant and less an obstruction to the rest of life, apart from literal hour-counting.
> 16 votes
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Tags: mathematics, tenure-track
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thread-11004 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11004 | How aware are grad school application readers of differing standards internationally? | 2013-07-07T10:02:30.040 | # Question
Title: How aware are grad school application readers of differing standards internationally?
Recently two friends of mine have come back to Australia after having done 2 semesters of 3rd and 4th year subjects (about half mathematics) at different branches of the University of California.
They said that the tests would only ask questions directly from or similar to material covered in lectures and example sheets. If questions deviated from the lectures or example sheets very much students would complain to the lecturer. Thus, if one studied the example sheets enough they got an A relatively easily. They returned with A or A+ in all of their maths subjects, but they average about 75-80 for their maths subjects here. In Australia, about 70% of the exam is usually like that. The rest are questions that we learned enough theory to feasibly do, but we hadn't seen that type of question before so it requires some level of cleverness to get it within the time limits of the exam.
My questions are
> Can anyone corroborate that the maths tests at american universities are actually like this?
>
> If so, is this well known and accounted for by the people who look at grad school applications from international students?
>
> How do they fairly evaluate the performance of international applications? How are Australian applicants generally viewed by them?
Edit: Chris's answer below seems to answer the first question by "not quite", which is what I expected I suppose. The other questions still stand.
# Answer
Repeating a bit other remarks: in the U.S., exams in upper-division courses are usually designed by the individual instructor, and vary widely.
There *is* a tradition in top-tier places in the U.S. to "challenge" students on exams, and students seem to expect this, while, yes, in some local cultures students expect/demand exams that contain no surprises.
For that matter, it is not clear to me that "testing cleverness" is necessarily an important goal for timed exams. I am well aware that there is a huge tradition in which quickness and cleverness are construed as fundamental skills/talents. Certainly these are important for math contests, and occasionally useful in the practice of mathematics, but I don't think our classes *teach* these things, in any case. Thus, testing for quickness and cleverness is testing for something outside the course content. Thus, in many regards it is an irrelevant challenge to the students.
That is, substantial mathematics often has *genuine* complications and difficulties that exist despite examples and forthrightness, and it is sometimes (often?) counterproductive to create "challenging (surprise) problems" from material that should be straightforward.
But, yes, people on admissions committees are well aware of such traditions and their variations, don't worry.
For me, the letters of recommendation from math faculty are far more important than grades on the transcript, in any case. Similarly, the statement of purpose of the applicant tells much more than the transcript. And, one more time, the skill set relevant to surprise questions on timed exams becomes ever less relevant throughout grad school.
> 8 votes
# Answer
> Can anyone corroborate that the maths tests at american universities are actually like this?
Some are, some aren't. Grading standards are heavily influenced by national and departmental culture, but ultimately they're entirely up to the instructor, **just as they are in Australia.**
But I expect that most upper-division exams in *strong* departments require enough mastery of the material (as opposed to memorization of examples) to answer a completely novel question that requires the same techniques. The key word here is *mastery*, not *cleverness*.
(I go further than Paul Garrett. Cleverness is not only inappropriate to test on exams; it's actually a *dangerous* habit to cultivate. My most frequent advice to students in my classes is "You're trying to be clever. Stop it. Just solve the problem, one step at a time.")
> If so, is this well known and accounted for by the people who look at grad school applications from international students?
Yes, admissions committees are well aware of significant differences between universities, both within the US and internationally.
> How do they fairly evaluate the performance of international applications?
Generally, by comparing them with other international applicants, preferably from the same country, if not the same university. In other words, exactly the same way we judge American applicants.
In my department, if we get an otherwise strong application from a university we've never heard of, we try to judge by the recommendation letters. But sometimes we just have to gamble, so we admit one or two of the very best students from an unknown university just to *find out* how good it is. If they do well, we admit more from that university later; if they do badly, we don't.
> How are Australian applicants generally viewed by them?
Well, that depends on the individual applicant, doesn't it?
> 7 votes
# Answer
> The rest are questions that we learned enough theory to feasibly do, but we hadn't seen that type of question before so it requires some level of cleverness to get it within the time limits of the exam.
The math and science classes I have taken at top tier universities in the U.S. have had these types of problems as a significant part of exams. As a caveat, those were also classes designed for math and science students. I have tutored students in non-math fields who have taken math and science classes that were less rigorous in that regard (e.g., "Calculus for Business majors").
Suffice it to say that as undergraduates progress deeper into their respective field, they will generally experience more challenging material on the exams.
> 4 votes
# Answer
You have two very different questions here:
1. how the international applicants are being treated, and
2. how are math courses being evaluated.
The site would have been better off if you split them, as they are conceptually unrelated to one another. Ah well.
JeffE gave a good answer regarding the former question. His answer seems generalizable, as I've heard of other departments doing similar things. The admissions committees usually try to identify the countrymate among the faculty of their university and ask them whether the school the applicant is coming from is a worthy one. It is more difficult to do with applicants from Kenya or Morocco than those from Australia -- most academics will know about the top AU schools (and if they don't, I just gave them the link :) ).
For your latter question, there is no good answer as there are 4000 colleges * 5-50 math instructors in each. Oversimplified hand-holding you described is typical of the intro classes where the students will bitch about the letter $\theta$ and the sign $\forall$ as they have never seen it before. This creates huge impediments to instructors in trying to challenge the more inspiring and better prepared students who have to be held back at the level of the rest of the crowd.
I had a British prof in my Stat program, and he said that the British exams are usually written so that 70% completion gives you an A. I.e., the instructor reasonably expects that the top students will get 70 out of 100 on this exam. His exams were like that. As the system down under is built after the British system, you probably have the same approach.
The silly American "grading curve" system is 90-100% for "A", the top grade; 80-90% for "B", the second best grade; 70-80% for "C", which few students want to get; 60-70% for "D", which is a very low pass, and often requires retaking the course. Students want higher grades, and do not hesitate to give lower evaluations to instructors who grade less generously, so the professors, especially whose main responsibility is teaching (vs. research on the tenure track), have the incentives to make the exams simple so that the students are happy. The system produces a lot of students with nominal "A"s who know little to nothing. Only the top 20 or so universities (arguably stronger than the Australian G8 schools) have stronger incentives to maintain the university reputation, and tell their profs to make the exams real. I would expect that the stronger campuses of the Univ of California system (Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD) would know better than just hand everybody an "A".
As an artifact of the grading curve, the instructors have to populate their exams with 70% of very simple problems to let the bottom students accumulate enough credit for their "C"s, and can basically afford only one or two problems on a typical 90-120 minutes test to distinguish between the top "A" students and solid but not the top "B" students. This all is a matter of habit and tradition. Some instructors try to override it by making the total sum of scores in the course to be 431 or some prime number like that, so that there will be an extra step for the students to convert their 301 score to the familiar 100% range -- and most will fail without a calculator, and won't be able to tell whether getting three extra points they can squeeze for a homework would change their grade to pass from 69.93% to 70.05% into the next letter category. Professors coming from other countries may sometimes bring their own evaluation ideas (as my British prof did), and those interested in teaching and learning devise their own systems -- I described mine here.
Best luck with your applications, rest assured that you won't have any issues with the US schools just because you say it "todie" instead of "today" :).
> -1 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions
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thread-11023 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11023 | Is it a good idea to link your LinkedIn profile in the CV section of your dissertation? | 2013-07-08T12:14:58.150 | # Question
Title: Is it a good idea to link your LinkedIn profile in the CV section of your dissertation?
I've passed the disputation and am now preparing the document for the printing press and final submission. We're required to have a CV in the back matter of the dissertation, and I was wondering if it is a good idea to link to my LinkedIn profile in addition (perhaps with a QR code) because it'll be far more up to date than the CV in my dissertation.
Do you think this is a good idea? Are there any things I should consider when doing this?
# Answer
> 6 votes
Your question indicates that you want to use a link to your LinkedIn profile in your CV because "*it'll be far more up to date than the CV in my dissertation*." Are you suggesting that (a) you are going to include a CV that is not up to date, or that (b) your LinkedIn profile will be updated over time and that you won't be able to go back and edit your dissertation?
If you mean (a), then *no*, you need to keep your CV up to date and a link to an online profile will not work. Your academic CV should always be kept as up to date as possible and it should *absolutely* be updated before you submit it in an application or include it in a dissertation. If you are doing your CV correctly, it will include different information than a LinkedIn profile and there is a strong expectation that every academic will have one.
If you mean (b) and are just worried that an archival copy of your CV will be out of date, sure, add a link to LinkedIn or similar. My CV links prominently to my academic homepage on at a permanent (i.e., non-university) URL, which is kept up to date, and which includes a link to the latest version of my CV at all point. I include a date in the footer of my CV although folks will have a date in your dissertation. Personally, I think this is better than relying on a for-profit company and its URLs for posterity.
In terms of the QR code, I'd skip it. These days, almost everybody who reads the dissertation will read a soft copy. A hyperlink will be much more useful. I suspect that a QR code will just end up make the document look dated at some point in the rather near future.
# Answer
> 5 votes
This is a good idea, so long as it is not instead of a proper CV.
Just remember that links go out of date and QR codes will become outdated technology. So when LinkedIn goes out of business, the link and QR codes will be just be remnants of a time gone by.
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Tags: career-path, cv, thesis
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thread-11031 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11031 | Value of having done applied math research when applying to PhD programs in pure math | 2013-07-08T18:15:58.613 | # Question
Title: Value of having done applied math research when applying to PhD programs in pure math
I will be a second year math under-grad in September, and currently doing an internship at applied math research institute. Most probably, I will come up with a research paper at the end of the internship.
However, my interest after my bachelors is to do PhD in **pure math** from a top math school.My question is this:
> Would the admission committee consider my current research since it is in applied math?
In addition, if anyone can suggest me some ideas on how can I bridge the gap between my paper in applied math and my interest in analysis, I would be extremely grateful.
P.S.: Here is a related but different question also of mine.
# Answer
> Would the admission committee consider my current research since it is in applied math?
Certainly. In my experience, nobody cares at all whether an applicant's research experience is directly related to their proposed specialty in graduate school. There are several points to keep in mind:
1. There are only a limited number of research opportunities available for undergraduates, so finding one on your very favorite topic may not be possible. Nobody would hold this against you.
2. Some topics just aren't accessible to undergraduates in the first place (e.g., motivic cohomology).
3. Most applicants don't really know what they will write their dissertations on, even if they think they do. Many will change their minds a year or two into grad school.
4. Undergraduate research in mathematics is generally not as deep as grad student research, and the specific things you learn are not crucial. Instead, the point is to see whether you have an aptitude for research and whether you enjoy it. For those purposes, the precise topic doesn't really matter. (Unless, of course, there's only one thing in the world that you would like to study, but I would consider that sort of narrowness to be a problem itself.)
> 34 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, research-process, graduate-school, mathematics, research-undergraduate
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thread-11039 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11039 | How to find a suitable summer internship university/department abroad? | 2013-07-09T04:45:35.727 | # Question
Title: How to find a suitable summer internship university/department abroad?
Let's assume I want to look for a research internship at a university in the next year, what are decent strategies to find a suitable professor/department?
A few come to mind:
* Ask home university/department/professor for contacts and use that connection? What if I have no prior research experience and professors only know me from classes?
* Google and send CV + Statement to (many) professors via email and hope for the best
* Google for positions that are explicitly offered for 8-10 week summer internships
* ?
# Answer
I am assuming you are an undergraduate; correct me if I'm wrong and I'll amend my answer.
It has been my experience that summer internships at a university that you don't attend are very rare. My advisor explicitly ignored all cold emails from students asking if they could work with her during the summer (even if they were not asking to be paid). Logistically, without being enrolled in the school, things like getting access to school servers, badgeing/keys for offices, etc. is just that much more difficult, and professors just don't have the time to vet students from external schools, nor much of an incentive to do so.
With that caveat:
> Ask home university/department/professor for contacts and use that connection?
Absolutely, but it is going to take more than getting contacts to get a summer internship. Unless your professor reaches out to those contacts himself/herself, you're probably not going to get much traction.
> What if I have no prior research experience and professors only know me from classes?
Then you are less likely to entice them to help you. You're better off trying to work with those professors at your own university instead of trying to use them to work somewhere else.
> Google and send CV + Statement to (many) professors via email and hope for the best
Please don't bother them -- they get too much spam to begin with. You'll not only waste your time, but theirs as well.
> Google for positions that are explicitly offered for 8-10 week summer internships
This is the best option, but I suggest not limiting yourself to universities and to branch out to look for internship experience in industry (if this is such a thing in your field). For one, there are probably more opportunities, and secondly, they are generally more structured and you might get more out of the experience.
Incidentally, many professors use the summer months for work-related travel and to take vacation. This makes it even more unlikely that you will find a position, as the number of professors around during the summer is minimal. On the other hand, if you happen to find a professor that will assign you to one of his/her graduate students, you could potentially still work in the lab under the grad student tutelage instead of directly for the professor (and, indeed, this is probably what will happen in any lab -- as an undergraduate you will probably work more for the graduate students than for the professor, although this obviously varies by school and professor).
> 3 votes
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Tags: research-process, internship, abroad
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thread-10944 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10944 | How do I best position myself to get an NIH R01 grant? | 2013-07-04T04:33:36.450 | # Question
Title: How do I best position myself to get an NIH R01 grant?
From what it sounds like, you need to be in the inner circle of key labs in order to be able to be even considered to be able to apply and get a National Institutes of Health R01 grant. How does a lab position itself to get into that inner circle and then how do you merit a score that will merit review and approval? Should we be focusing on getting several publications out or collecting all of it as preliminary data.
# Answer
> 1 votes
For the NIH NIDCD (and likely other institutes, but I don't have the data), a great way to position yourself for an a new-investigator R01 is to first get an F32 post-doctoral fellowship since 70% of those with an F32 post-doctoral fellowship who applied for a subsequent RPG (predominately R01 and R03 awards) were successful. There might be better predictors, but 70% is pretty good when it comes to funding pay lines.
You should also be aware that the R01 club is not as closed as your question makes it sound. Historically, 25% of R01-equivalent awards are made to new investigators.
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Tags: career-path, funding
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thread-11037 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11037 | Are tuition subsidies taxables for research staff? | 2013-07-09T02:58:22.883 | # Question
Title: Are tuition subsidies taxables for research staff?
I have two Bachelor degrees and an MMath, not looking for any more degrees at this time, but I might be interested in taking some Japanese and Chinese language courses.
I'm working as a research programmer for a university in the US (IU), and they offer the option of
> a subsidy toward the tuition costs, under Section 117 of the Internal Revenue Code.
What does this mean for me?
* Would such subsidy be included in my income, and would I have to cover for the taxes as if I have received all such subsidies as real money in income?
* What happens to the in-state / out-of-state tuition differential? I've moved from a different state for this job mid-summer, and might start taking courses right away in autumn.
# Answer
**I am not a Lawyer or Accountant**, and if you really worry, you should ask one of those or at the very least talk to human resources at your university.
But, based on my reading of the relevant law, part (d) \[usually referred to, I guess, as Section 117-4\] specifically states that if you are an employee of a university, then tuition reduction for you to take classes *at said university* should not count toward your gross income when calculating taxes.
The US code does not distinguish between in-state / out-of-state tuition.
*Caveat*: your local state laws may have different interpretation of "gross income".
> 2 votes
# Answer
Again, *not a lawyer*, but from seminars I've taken and heard about from different people at different universities, the general rule is that things are taxable when you get a notification of a direct benefit from the university. In other words, if they send you a declaration that "we have paid X dollars as a tuition benefit," that may very well be taxable income. On the other hand, if it's handled internally as a bookkeeping issue—you get charged less, and some internal "fund" covers the "difference"—then there's no actual taxable benefit to be received.
However, it is not normally the case that tuition benefits are taxable. This is particularly important for graduate fellowships, because otherwise the fellows receiving the fellowship would be "receiving" tens of thousands of dollars in "gross income" and be responsible for taxes on that, even though they never actually get the money in the first place!
> 1 votes
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Tags: united-states, tuition
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thread-10695 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10695 | Splitting publication fees among coauthors | 2013-06-20T08:37:16.667 | # Question
Title: Splitting publication fees among coauthors
What are accepted ways of splitting publication fees among coauthors, when authors are from different research groups and potentially even different institutions? Especially with open access publication, the fees tend to come out at a substantial amount.
In general, the corresponding author seems to be responsible to the journal for the payment of the fee. I wonder what would be commonly acceptable agreements with coauthors to split such fees?
There is already a general question on splitting collaboration costs here, but the current answer does not apply to publication fees, and I am really interested in this specific case.
# Answer
> 3 votes
I think your question is a little backwards: All ways of splitting the publication fees are acceptable. You might run into some problems with your grant officer about transferring money around, but in the end they will get over it.
The more important question in my opinion is: What behaviour is acceptable from you and your co-authors. I believe the answer is to be nice since these are your co-authors after all. I wouldn't be too put off if a co-author refused to contribute to open access fees or if I was asked to contribute 1/N of the fees for an N author paper where I was a tertiary author and currently under-funded.
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Tags: publications, collaboration, fees
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thread-11041 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11041 | Is it plagiarism to copy formulations from others? | 2013-07-09T09:55:55.920 | # Question
Title: Is it plagiarism to copy formulations from others?
As a non-native speaker of english, I often struggle with always finding new, well-sounding, non-repetitive descriptions for the same thing and I also, to be honest, find it a waste of time of always having to do something different. For example:
Section 1 describes the X while section 2 is about the Y. The Z is explained in section 3 and section 4 refers to A. The next section is about B...
Is it ok to just copy the formulation of someone else (of course my X,Y,Z,... are completely different) and always use the same thing?
# Answer
Sentence patterns are *not* intellectual property; otherwise, every author who wrote "To X or not to X" would be plagiarizing Shakespeare. (They are "riffing" off of him, but *not* plagiarizing!)
The example you are citing is perfectly innocuous, particularly since you are not doing anything more than summarizing the paper contents. The only thing that would make it wrong would be to copy those sentences directly from someone else's work.
> 19 votes
# Answer
There is a fine line between copying and plagiarism. In general the answer would be no, copying would be plagiarism. However, with certain fomulations there may be limited ways to vary. If the text you copy has some intellectual value, the result of someones inventiveness more than just lining up words to form a sentence, then the formulation has intellectual value and should be referenced, not for th eEnglish but for its content. A trivial sentence is just language and it is not unlikely that one would formulate a sentence identically to someone else. We also learn language from looking at how others (who we believe are better than ourselves) may express themselves. This is not plagiarism.
So for me the critical issue is if there is content other than linguistics that is being copied, if so then plagiarism is round the corner. So as a final statement, I would say: better safe than sorry; don't copy stuff, try to use the linguistic formulation but write the sentence with your word. Learn grammar and speling by checking what others do and emulate, not copy.
> 12 votes
# Answer
If in doubt, just repeat yourself.
One of the things that stands out about reading papers written by poor English speakers is the ugly contortions they go to in order to avoid repeating themselves. "X is about Y. Z is about W. A is about B" may be repetitive but it's perfectly understandable. I would suggest that you do this rather than attempting to copy the form of another writer, I'd also note that your assumption that you can simply lift the same form each time and have it look right may well be wrong anyway.
I realise this doesn't answer the question you actually posed but I think it deals with the question you need answering.
> 9 votes
# Answer
No, your example is definitely not plagiarism.
More generally, you can refer to the book "Writing for Computer Science" by Justin Zobel (Second edition, p.65, Section Quotations) to decide when to quote and when to merely copy:
> "note that it is not essential to quote such a dull statement as (...); paraphrase, or even simply omitting the quote symbols, would be more appropriate. Omisission of quotation marks in this case is acceptable--that is, not plagiarism--because (this) statement is a natural way to express the concept."
> 5 votes
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Tags: writing, plagiarism
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thread-11033 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11033 | What makes you keep on reading articles in your non-English native language, while the same information might be published in English? | 2013-07-08T19:47:11.300 | # Question
Title: What makes you keep on reading articles in your non-English native language, while the same information might be published in English?
As a future French PhD student (in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning) that legally HAS TO write his thesis in French, I am a bit concerned about the fact that less people would be able to read it and it got me thinking: why do you keep reading articles in your native language, when some ideas you find might also be published in English?
1. To those who are not English native speakers, do you read articles in your native language?
2. If so, what is it that you find in these articles compared to English-written ones? Are you just looking for useful information for your own research or are you motivated by something else?
3. How would you cite these articles in your own English-written paper?
I understand that using one's own native language can be justified for some fields such as social sciences, but here I am asking about "exact" and computer sciences.
# Answer
> 10 votes
1. I don't usually read articles in my mother tongue. But I do regularly read articles in a language that is neither English nor my mother tongue (French, to be precise).
2. With regards to my mother tongue, the few exceptions are resources (articles, books) I received from some of my collaborators. I refer back to them purely for convenience. For French:
* there is (at least until very recently) still active research in my area performed by researchers who publish heavily in French; to gain access to those results sometimes it is necessary to read the original articles.
* there is a large corpus of useful literature from even the mid twentieth century that still hasn't been completely distilled into English language textbooks. (For mathematics, this refers mostly to *particular arguments* used in proofs. Quite often the same *result* would be available in English, but using a different method of attack. But there are also cases such as \[from outside my field\] The EGA.)
* translations may contain "errors". Sometimes it is good to go back to the original source.
3. I just cite them as I would any other source. Most style guides have sections on special rules for non-English and/or non-Latin-alphabet sources. Just follow them.
# Answer
> 7 votes
Your three-part question is quickly answered:
1. Yes I read articles in my native language
2. Almost never because very few exist except older ones (ca. 1960s and older) and possibly bachelor or masters theses.
3. I would definitely cite them if they contained anything useful
Your concern is valid, regardless of preferences, using a common language ensures better spreading of the science. This does not mean non-English science is in any way uninteresting but will obviosuly be harder to find and read. It will be up to scientists in that language to bring the research to general attention. A possibility with thesis work is always to publish it or parts of it in journals and then translated. In such cases nothing is lost (except time for the complete re-writing)
EDIT: This answer was written for the original question which subsequently has been changed, also in terms of focus.
# Answer
> 5 votes
As a native English speaker who's working abroad, I am finally at the point where I can directly read the scientific literature in the local languages. However, in the past, I haven't hesitated to cite references in French (my "original" second language) when it was appropriate to do so. There are no challenges to do so, really, except making sure that you have the correct abbreviation for the journal title.
However, I would agree with the other posters that indicate that, today, scientific work needs to be in English if it is to reach the widest possible audience. Between the fact that a thesis gets nowhere near the number of "hits" as the papers that are derived from it, plus the fact that it's in a foreign language, and I would expect you to get very little in the way of citations for your thesis.
# Answer
> 5 votes
* I do read scientific literature in my mother tongue (German).
For papers, that are mostly classics and not so recent. However, it is quite common in my field to write theses in German. And there are still serious and good scientific books as well as text books written in German, which I enjoy reading and citing as well.
* I'm also writing my thesis in German.
+ Main reason: My old university required that (would need to ask special permission for any other language). I changed university, but I'm not going to change the language as well.
+ The findings are/will be published also in English. So not having the thesis in English doesn't matter that much in terms of availability in English.
+ Second main reason: the thesis is the place where things are formulated in a less condensed manner than the papers. Such theses are good for teaching students who are usually not yet that fluent in English (applies to some kinds of foreign students as well!) nor in the subject.
* The same (more detailed, elaborate, less "it follows trivially" jumps of thought) is often true also for technical reports, which I read for exactly this reason (any kind of language I understand).
* I cite literature I read in any language I understood (which not that much more than German and English, as I'm not as fluent in other languages).
* For the books, there is sometimes an English as well as a German version. But of course I cite the version that I acutally read.
(If I'd be concerned that the English-only reader would not get from "Leary & Skoog: Instrumentelle Analytik" to "Leary & Skoog: Instrumental Analysis", I may put a note that points to the English version)
* Finally, how would you read and cite e.g. DIN 38402 A 51 if not in German?
# Answer
> 3 votes
Although this may not answer your question, I just wanted to say that I did my PhD in France and did not write my thesis in french. I just wrote a summary (about 3 pages) in french, the rest was a compilation of articles. Since a serious publication can only be written in english nowadays, translating it in french would be a waste of time.
You should discuss with your advisor and see any way to get your thesis published in english. I do not think any legal argument holds.
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Tags: publications, language, reading
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thread-11068 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11068 | Suffering from a third world country academic culture | 2013-07-10T07:43:56.577 | # Question
Title: Suffering from a third world country academic culture
I live in a third world country where I have no chance of getting into good graduate schools in my country for MS CS which are tickets to US Ph.D programs. I am not a perfectionist but other schools have no connections with current research community or professors there have no idea how to write a recommendation letter.
***Problems***:
Working full time, no chance to relocate to other city or job. I always get a biased approach from professors here when I approach for collaboration as an outsider. Impossible to get into their MS programs for me so I have no chance for getting some research experience or any recommendation letters.
What should I do ? I am continuously doing self study on some topics but biased approach and discrimination in my country gives me no chance. I have started to think of completely burning all my books and other stuff because all my efforts are useless going nowhere purely based on where I live.
Do you have any suggestions? Is there a way to find a professor outside this system lacking funding or student, with whom I can work remotely? I can work for free if it comes down to it.
# Answer
> 13 votes
This is an outside possibility, but, have you considered enrolling as an external student at an overseas university?
Admittedly, I am not sure of US universities, but ones here in Australia often have a large proportion of external students - with delivery given online and/or by post (usually the former). An example is the university I am enrolled in (in Queensland) - I completed my MSc while I lived in Tokyo, Japan.
Just wanted to add - don't burn the books and especially don't give up (but understand the feeling, albeit from a different viewpoint). I commend you on your self-discipline and determination - these traits will hold you in good stead when you find your path.
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Tags: graduate-school, graduate-admissions
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thread-11019 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11019 | When is a good time (during graduate studies) to start thinking about writing the thesis? | 2013-07-08T09:40:27.200 | # Question
Title: When is a good time (during graduate studies) to start thinking about writing the thesis?
A significant number of colleagues had their thesis defense in the past year and talking to them got me thinking about my own dissertation to come in about 2 years (I am approximately half-way through my graduate studies).
Based on my experience, the norm appears to be so that the focus of a PhD student shifts from initial getting-used-to-things, to getting-papers-out, do your coursework/teaching (if applicable), getting-papers-out (repeat)... until you are a couple of months away from the dissertation date, and you panic your way into writing your thesis. The panic then leads to stress and errors, which I witness with many colleagues.
Seeing as my projects are particularly detached from one-another, it would perhaps be good to start thinking about some structure, and perhaps even start jotting down some text; not long paragraphs but at least some bullet points on the points I want to mention, statements I want to make in my thesis.
Seeing that I am *only* half-way in, is this a reasonable approach? ... or am I stressing way too early? Does one *need to* leave the thesis writing to the end when the stress is maxed-out, or are there smarter ways to handle the writing? I imagine one drawback of starting now, is that I do not yet have the "bigger picture" but yet again, since the projects are not built up on one another, I don't know if it's a real issue in my case.
Any perspective on the matter is welcome, of course.
# Answer
> 9 votes
I think it is a good idea to start writing down parts of your thesis early on. You need to consider possible structures for the thesis as well so that you know what you might need to write.
Starting early will, however, not remove the need for significant efforts at the end because the thesis evolves and it is only when you have your last papers/experiments/equivalent done when you really know how the text will have to look. This means you should write down text early on with the clear understanding that this text will likely undergo lots of revisions. While this may seem like a waste of time, I have found it useful to have the thoughts down on paper, it also provides a sense of fulfillment, "that you are on your way". In some cases I have had to scrap the texts altogether and start over but I see this as part of the iterative process of scientific work.
By going through the iterations your text will improve and the last efforts will be ever closer to a final product than were you to start from scratch at the end. I went through this myself and I have seen countless students do the same. Being prepared and realising that much awaits ahead is just a realisation that must be clear. Going blindly into the final stages without having a grasp of what is needed is what causes extra and unnecessary stress.
# Answer
> 6 votes
What many folk find difficult is recalling what they did at the start of their thesis work - the literature review. They come to start writing their literature review with all the experience of the in-depth, detailed analysis conducted during their research phase and have perhaps forgotten all those papers that they read, reviewed and used to fill in the background and inform their research.
I suggest that, right from the start of your literature review reading, make short notes about each paper, perhaps at the top of the first page. e.g. "Great introduction to the field, a bit basic though"; "Good for a thorough review of method X"; "Not relevant" etc.
This makes the job of sorting through your massive (!) pile of literature easier when it comes to setting out the path you took through it to come to your research idea.
# Answer
> 2 votes
It is not clear from your post whether your dissertation will just mostly be a collection of your papers, perhaps with some filler material added, or whether it will require a substantial amount of writing from scratch. I've heard that publishing papers as a grad student and assembling them into a thesis is done depending on one's academic discipline, and perhaps depending on the university.
If you are just putting papers together there will be less work involved. Regardless, 2 months sounds like a very short amount of time to be writing a thesis in. Are you sure you got that right? I suggest you talk to other students who left it till late, and ask them if they regret doing so.
I would certainly recommend getting started on a draft immediately, if you haven't already. Things to keep in mind, depending on your area, is that heavily mathematical writing is very time-consuming. Computer calculations, writing software and so on, are also very time-consuming. I would also include graphs and figures in writing software. Figures, in my opinion, are best handled by writing code, making it easy to alter after the event, and giving the best results. Actually, graphs are a good thing to try to get set up early, because they can be a pain. Even if you don't have actual data to work with, you can use dummy data, as long as you know roughly what your final structures will look like.
If your work has significant components of either, you need to allow extra time. You definitely don't want to be in the position of frantically debugging your code a month before your defense to get some important result out, for example. You should also not rely on your adviser(s) to tell you what schedule to keep. It is not their thesis on the line.
Two months before submission is the time for reviewing the thesis for errors, hopefully with the assistance of your advisor, and getting ready to hand it over ot the thesis committee. My impression is that the norm is to allow the committee some time to read it, like a month. They may not read it, but that is considered polite.
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Tags: phd, thesis
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thread-11058 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11058 | In the United States, is associate professor a subset of professor, or a distinct category? | 2013-07-09T21:18:32.827 | # Question
Title: In the United States, is associate professor a subset of professor, or a distinct category?
In the USA, if someone writes that they are "professor" with no other specification, does this mean full professor, or can it also mean associate professor? In other words, is associated professor a subset of professor, or is it a fully distinct category?
# Answer
In the US, Assistant and Associate Professors are also titled Prof. X when being referred to formally. This is unlike in Europe and parts of Asia, where "Professor" is a title that can be used only if they're a full professor. Others are simply referred to as Dr. X (or Mr. or Ms. X, if they don't hold a doctorate).
> 9 votes
# Answer
It should be pointed out that, at least in the US, "associate professors" are a partially overlapping set with the class of "tenured professor," as many associate professors have tenure, but have not yet been promoted to a full professorship. So, there really is "associate without tenure" and "associate with tenure."
However, in the US, as user7691 points out, the correct form of address for any professor, regardless of type, is "Professor X." I would even include adjunct and emeritus professors in this group. If you're looking at a faculty listing and see just "Professor" *after* a name (or in a separate field), however, it's likely that the individual in question holds a full professorship.
> 4 votes
# Answer
*I thought about making this a comment as it only refers to Australia, and your question is about the United States, but it got a bit long*.
The **Australian Context**:
* Professor is typically the top of the academic ranking hierarchy in the order: associate lecturer, lecturer, senior lecturer, associate professor, professor. Thus, professor means that someone is of the academic rank "Professor".
* Common general titles that cover all ranks include "lecturer", "academic", "researcher".
* In terms of titles, the basic rules are as follows (e.g., for Smith):
+ If of professor rank, "Prof Smith"
+ If of associate professor rank, "A/Prof Smith"
+ If of associate lecturer, lecturer, or senior lecturer rank and the person has a doctoral qualification, "Dr Smith"
+ If of associate lecturer, lecturer, or senior lecturer rank, and the peson does not have a doctoral qualification, "Mr Smith" or "Ms Smith"
> 3 votes
# Answer
**Short answer**: if somebody from the US writes about themselves as a Professor, then it means a tenured full professor.
**Longer answer**: If you see the title "Professor" in the official university publication (e.g., department website), or in somebody's bio, self-description, or email signature, then it means a tenured full professor (the third, and the top, step in the US academic hierarchy... Instructors and lecturers can hardly be considered academics as they are treated as staff for hire and dismissal).
If you see "Professor" in somebody else's email, especially students' emails, or in the university newsletter, or in some other source that was originated from a person that is not so familiar with the academic ranks, and the hoops one needs to jump through to get there, then it may mean a broader use of the term to indicate an instructor in a university. Essentially, all the adjectives (e.g., an Adjunct Assistant Professor... essentially nobody) are getting thrown out, with only the affiliation with academia remaining in this use of "professor" word. Such a liberty may qualify as an insult to a British/ANZ Professor where the meaning is way more specific. American academics are used to the confusions, though, and let the vague understanding of the title slip when used by un-initiated.
I was getting emails addressed "Professor" when I was in grad school... I would roll my eyes -- can't the source figure out a difference between a Ph.D. student and a regular faculty? They come on very different pages on the department website...
> -3 votes
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Tags: terminology, united-states
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thread-11075 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11075 | Checklist for cited references, including nasty details | 2013-07-10T15:30:46.753 | # Question
Title: Checklist for cited references, including nasty details
My personal library (.bib-files) contains references which I gathered from various sources, including academic search engines. This includes problems like:
* Some information are missing
* Journal names might be abbreviated or not
* Capitalization might differ
What is a good checklist to ensure that the references are in a acceptable state?
# Answer
> 6 votes
The best strategy for dealing with a reference database (be that a citation manager or just a .bib file), is to clean everything when you initially add it. Otherwise going through these things later, when you need put together a reference list, is a major pain and prone to error. Establishing a standard set of formatting rules/procedures up front is always your best bet.
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thread-11081 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11081 | How much material can be changed between an accepted manuscript and "camera ready?" | 2013-07-11T01:59:46.057 | # Question
Title: How much material can be changed between an accepted manuscript and "camera ready?"
After a paper has been accepted, other than the reviewers' suggestions, how much content can be changed before the camera-ready version is resubmitted? Is there a general guideline? Thanks!
# Answer
> 3 votes
In my (very limited) experience in CS, a lot (if its a conference), *but only if you are somehow improving the paper* \- you can't obviously publish after removing key results that caused the acceptance in the first place!
*Anecdote:* My first publication happened after I was able to solve one of the 3 open problems posed at the end of an accepted paper by my advisor - this caused the entire paper to be re-written in terms of the more generalized result, and it did not go through any further reviews (only an informal mail from my advisor to the editors outlining what we did!)
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Tags: publications
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thread-11017 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11017 | Value of recommendation letters from professors in a different field | 2013-07-08T08:32:05.563 | # Question
Title: Value of recommendation letters from professors in a different field
I will be a second year math under-grad in September, and currently doing an internship at applied math research institute. However, my interest after my bachelors is to do PhD in pure math at a top math school. My question is:
How important would the recommendation letters from my current supervisors be while I apply to grad school? (Note: My supervisors are very active in their field of research, but are not quite famous.)
# Answer
Take what I suggest with a bucket of salt and a sprinkling of bbq sauce.
1. The recommendation letters would indeed be very important, it certainly can't hurt to have the letters on hand, particularly as your supervisors are active researchers.
2. Is hard to answer, as it depends on the university. But, having said that, I would say that the admissions people would look on any research favourably, as well as the internship.
3. Is it possible to write or co-author a paper in analysis? Perhaps you could speak with your supervisors about how to combine the two, or to see if they can recommend another academic in that field that you may co-author with.
> 6 votes
# Answer
Recommendation letters may also represent soft skills. Hence, they are important. Your personality is independent from your field of study, so there is little point in withholding recommendation letters - indicating what kind of person you are - to future supervisors (or committees) if you are going to spend the next 3-4 years working in a team or with a supervisor on a project.
Source: PhD Student
> 7 votes
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Tags: phd, graduate-school, graduate-admissions, recommendation-letter
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thread-11087 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11087 | My MS thesis advisor wants me to delay my graduation for one semester. What should I do? | 2013-07-11T17:22:18.107 | # Question
Title: My MS thesis advisor wants me to delay my graduation for one semester. What should I do?
I planned to graduate this summer, and I went through all the process of applying for graduation and my advisor signs all of these.
* Now I have just 2 weeks to meet the deadline to officially graduate this summer. I have emailed by advisor to help me prepare my final results, proofread my thesis document. This is 2 weeks back, and I don't have any reply so far.
* I get an email from my advisor saying that I can't delay and have to postpone my graduation next semester. "*It is best for you to make an official decision to cancel your graduation, since it is getting too close to the oral defense deadline as well as reviewing thesis.*"
I am OK to graduate next semester, but what I can't bear to understand is the carelessness of my advisor. I have to pay again for a whole new semester because of this.
Any advice what I should be doing at this moment?
# Answer
If you don't have any problems with graduating next semester then just do that. It will give you more time to refine your submissions and to prep for the defense. A little annoying, granted, but it could be a blessing in disguise too.
As for working with your adviser, what's done is done. Perhaps they were delayed in their responses but you may have to accept some of the responsibility here as well, I think. It takes some time to make all of the arrangements for finalizing graduation. It's not like undergrad where they can just look at the transcript and say "120cu, good to go". Heck, just getting a defense scheduled can be a major undertaking. Especially if you're trying to squeeze in under the wire. Stack the university processing and thesis review times on top of that and you're really cutting it close.
I can certainly understand your frustration (my M.S. was delayed by a semester due to a similarly inane set of circumstances which led to all kinds of fun) but my suggestion to you and anyone in a similar situation is to take a deep breath, relax, and use the time that you have to prep as best you can.
Aside: This type of advice question is not a very good fit to the normal SO format. I wanted to provide a response since I suspect that many people have gotten into similar situations but have fair warning that it may get flagged.
> 12 votes
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Tags: advisor
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thread-10725 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10725 | How common is college graduation at an early age? | 2013-06-23T03:01:25.017 | # Question
Title: How common is college graduation at an early age?
I am interested in the statistics of early college graduation, or more generally, the statistics of extreme ages in academic settings (highschool, college, grad school, etc.). For instance, how many students who earn a college degree graduate one, two, three, or more years earlier than the typical age of 22 or so? I am willing for any statistics to qualified in any way (percentages in country W, at university X, in state Y, or from year Z). A quick Google search does not easily reveal this information.
I estimate that less than 5% of the population graduates college two years earlier than normal based on my acquaintances, but this is likely biased as I am a graduate student and it may be smaller.
EDIT: It occurs to me that my question does not ask for any opinions on whether early graduation is good, neutral, or bad. Perhaps it would be interesting to expand the question and have those who experienced graduating early give their stories or opinions.
# Answer
> 6 votes
At least in the USA, the number is probably *much* smaller than 5 percent.
The reason for this is that there are generally fixed lengths for education, and minimum enrollment ages at which the process can start (at least for publicly educated students, who are still the majority).
Finishing two or more years ahead of schedule means that you probably have had at least two events that belong to the following categories:
* Started education a year earlier than "normal" (perhaps because of birthday-limited enrollments)
* Skipped a grade during primary or secondary (high-school) education
* "Accelerated" college studies by reducing the expected enrollment time by either a semester or a full year (through early accumulation of credits via work in high school, or taking college placement exams, credit overloading, and other methods)
The first is the most common, but still only applies to about one-third of the population. The others are much less frequent, with the second probably pertaining to only about 1 percent of students (if that many). The third also probably is not that common, but I don't have hard numbers (but again, probably less than 5 percent of college students finish in three years or less!).
Now remember that you have to have at least *two* such events, and you can start to see why the odds are stacked against a 5 percent rate.
# Answer
> 3 votes
In the UK this number is likely to be extremely small. Within our department we circulate a list of all students under the age of 18 at the beginning of the year. This includes both our students as well as students sitting in on our classes. For this sample size of about 500 per year the number under 18 is typically about 1%. Of these, the vast majority turn 18 there first year. Further there is either a bug in our software, possible, or the remainder turn 18 during the summer since I have never been told about a 2nd year student being under 18. The sample size for 2nd year students is about half as big since we do not get drop ins to our second year classes.
Obviously this could be biased by our department or university not attracting these students.
# Answer
> 2 votes
Specifically addressing the edit to to the question regarding experiences as a younger student:
Aside from what I've already posted in my comment, I guess the only social aspect that I felt I missed out on was getting into university-sponsored senior class events where alcohol was served (I was under 21 at a US school). Most of the time, my age was not an issue socially. I was also an RA (residential advisor), so my age was not assumed to correlate with lack of leadership ability. Academically, it might have even helped me get certain positions, because I was seen as a "driven" individual with prior academic success, and all of those positions helped me get into graduate school.
Now that I'm in graduate school, the only thing I really miss is not having interesting stories to tell about cool things I did during my gap year(s). That problem is common to a lot of people in my class, though, regardless of them being a few years older than me. I don't have people that are my age in my year, but I don't think it's affected my academic success here: I've had four years of high school, four years of undergrad, and three summers of undergraduate research, like (or better than) many of my peers.
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thread-11073 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11073 | How big is the difference between the sustained PhD thesis and a version publishable as a book? | 2013-07-10T12:41:23.920 | # Question
Title: How big is the difference between the sustained PhD thesis and a version publishable as a book?
In other words, how much improvement of the submitted thesis (and presented in front of the evaluation board) is allowed, if you want to later publish the thesis at a normal publisher of dissertations (with ISBN and sell on Amazon)? Is there a conflict here? Should it be exactly the same thesis, or if mistakes are found, or recommendations given, they can be implemented, no matter how much different from the submitted and approved thesis? I'm interested in at least a general view on this, at european level. I imagine there are country differences...
# Answer
> 4 votes
It depends mostly on whether publishing your thesis as a book is a requirement in the PhD process or not. As JeffE notes in his comments, publishing the thesis as a book may be a university requirement before you get your PhD. Though, in the cases that I know, publication is after the defense, and you are allowed to make smaller modifications to the originally defended version, as long as the thesis reviewers agree to these.
Things would be different if publication is not part of the PhD requirements (maybe you have your certificates already in your hands). It's your work, and unless there are specific regulations to the contrary, I'd assume you can do whatever you like with it. In particular also publish a derived work as a book. In this case, I'd still recommend to state that it is **based on your thesis** (not **your thesis**), and discuss it with your PhD advisor.
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Tags: phd, publications
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thread-11101 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11101 | Should I Consider Publishing in a Brand New Journal? | 2013-07-12T16:11:43.200 | # Question
Title: Should I Consider Publishing in a Brand New Journal?
I got an e-mail this morning inviting me to submit papers to a journal. I looked at the website and found that the journal has no back issues. It would appear to be a brand new journal. Naturally, a brand new journal isn't all prestigious, so I have to wonder about publishing in it. But on the other hand, the journal has to start somewhere.
Should someone even consider publishing in such a place?
# Answer
I get the same emails as well.
Things to consider when looking at a brand new journal:
* As Anonymous, Charles and JeffE commented, make sure it is not a scam and that the editorial board are well respected (well-published) academics in your field.
* Make absolutely certain that the journal caters to your exact research field - try and find, or ask, what their focus is.
* Find out about costs if any.
**If** the journal is legitimate and relevant, then consider publishing a smaller paper first, publish your main papers in well established highly ranked and highly distributed journals (especially if you are starting out in academia).
> 14 votes
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Tags: publications, journals
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thread-11112 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11112 | Can I annex fewer certificates for a shorter application? | 2013-07-13T08:41:08.320 | # Question
Title: Can I annex fewer certificates for a shorter application?
I want to apply at a German university for Computer Science. The instruction tells me to annex documents about additional qualifications.
So I decided for the ten most important and most related qualifications and awards I got and wrote an overview page for them. They are grouped by field and date, and there is a short description of about two lines for every qualification.
Now I need to annex the actual copies of the certificates. I feel uncomfortable with handing in ten copies, plus some other documents. I think providing the certificate for every qualification might result in too much pages which won't get read but make a negative impression.
Can I just provide a few of the copies and tell the University staff to ask for more if wanted?
# Answer
> 1 votes
It has been my experience that to not include a certified copy of each qualification at least can potentially result in unnecessary delays in processing your application. Essentially, I have found that many universities frown upon incomplete applications.
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Tags: university, application, awards
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thread-1177 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1177 | Are participations in competitions well recognized for a Ph.D. application? | 2012-04-18T15:19:45.030 | # Question
Title: Are participations in competitions well recognized for a Ph.D. application?
During undergrad, students can face several opportunities, ranging from participation in (1) research groups, (2) study/training for competitions, (3) internships, (4) opening start-ups with colleagues (the latter is becoming very common these days), but I wonder, what is really important, for a Ph.D. application/admission...
By competition I mean ones like: INTEL GLOBAL CHALLENGE (VC), ACM ICPC, IMAGINE CUP (examples from the Comp. Sci. field, and Business, but indeed there may be a bunch of these in other fields, that I don't know)
Talking about (1) and (2) aforementioned...
If a student stays a long time during his/her undergrad in a (world-class) research group, he/she is likely to have the opportunity to publish a bunch of papers (some of these might be good, well-referenced, etc; some of these might be not as good), and meet some good researchers around the world, and so on; it really required dedication.
On the other hand, take part into a training class for competitions (that requires dedication, as well) may lead students to gains in terms of working in group, time-boxed activities, etc, as well as to face the opportunity of proposing solutions for real-world problems, and so on.
It is really tough to do both, in order to have great results, since in both cases time and dedication is mandatory. Indeed, there are some "outliers" students that can do both in a very good way, but I'm trying to generalize my assumption, by considering "average" students.
Hence, it's known that good papers have a great influence on the Ph.D. admission (despite of other well-known recommendations, e.g., a great GRE, good recom. letters, and so on), but I'd like to know if (and how) the universities consider students who dedicated their time to join this kind of competitions, obtaining some prizes, as a consequence, etc.
# Answer
Competitions can be valuable evidence of achievement, but they have to be not just widely recognized, but also really relevant to the field. (Nobody cares if you're a chess champion, since you aren't going to grad school in chess, and the fact that it involves hard work and talent will not help your case; if anything, it will be viewed as a potential distraction that may cause trouble in the future.) The best case is if some of the faculty once participated in the same competition. Then they will know exactly what's involved and what success means. The next best case is if some of their current students participated. Otherwise, it will mean very little, unless your recommenders somehow make a strong case for its importance.
As a test case, let's think about the Putnam examination, which is the most prestigious math contest for undergraduates in the US and Canada. Doing well on the Putnam exam is very valuable in math grad school applications, but even being one of the winners is not a guarantee of admission. The big advantage of the Putnam is that it gives objective evidence of talent compared with a nationwide pool, but the disadvantage is that solving contest problem is really not the same thing as doing research. If an undergraduate writes a paper a faculty member would really be proud of having written, then it looks better than winning the Putnam exam, but most undergraduate papers do not rise to that level and may not be as impressive as winning the exam. It's hard to quantify this trade-off, but I would definitely not advise anyone to neglect research opportunities in order to prepare better for the Putnam. Ultimately, graduate school is about research, and admissions committees sometimes worry about applicants who look more interested in competitions than research.
The Mathematical Contest in Modeling may be more along the lines of the contests you mention: it's a multi-day, team-based contest. My impression is that it carries less weight in admissions decisions than the Putnam exam does. Being able to help organize and train a winning team has real value, but it won't play much of a role in graduate admissions.
> 11 votes
# Answer
If a student is going to dedicate a substantial amount of time to a non-academic, non-research activity, there had better be significant attention paid to this activity in the application itself. I would want at a minimum an explanation of the time commitments and the resultant recognition obtained from these activities. An additional letter of support or clarification (or recommendation) from the advisor for such an activity would also help to assuage my concerns.
However, in general, if there is no direct correlation between the activity and the research field, I am likely to take a somewhat *negative* view of this, if it has a detrimental impact on the rest of the application. (For instance, if I were sitting on a math admissions committee, and saw someone applying who was applying for topology but spent a lot of time on some economics competition and had a weak GPA as a result, I don't think it would help the student's case much.)
> 5 votes
# Answer
I have found that yes, some competitions do enhance a PhD application. An example is a seminar series competition run by my university that I participated in, we had to speak about our current research (mine was the MSc at the time). I came second and it went in my favour for the subsequent PhD application.
> 1 votes
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Tags: phd, application
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thread-11116 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11116 | Productive but not respected advisor - Should I continue with him? | 2013-07-13T15:41:21.073 | # Question
Title: Productive but not respected advisor - Should I continue with him?
My situation is the following: I have a very productive but not respected advisor. By productive I mean that he has published a lot, and with not respected that his work is not cited by anyone except himself (his top paper has 20 citations, 15 from himself).
I will get my master's degree in 6 months, so I need to decide where to do my PhD. To be honest I don't know is my advisor doing real science. Am I judging his career too hard? At least I would not hope to be in the same situation as he is after the next ten years. Also, he demands me to do things exactly as he wants, so I have been thinking this issue a lot.
If you think I should not continue with him, can you tell me what kind of publication record I should demand from my advisor?
# Answer
> 10 votes
There are reasons for setting aside the issue of your potential PhD supervisor's publication record for the purposes of deciding whether to carry on working with him - these reasons are set out in other answers.
**You also need to think about whether your - or any - potential PhD supervisor's working habits is a good fit with yours.** When considering whether to continue with specifically this supervisor, you comment as follows:
> Also, he demands me to do things exactly as he wants, so I have been thinking this issue a lot.
So - is this a good thing for you, or a bad thing? Was that working relationship a positive or not? You mention that you've been thinking about this a lot, and I urge you to be clear about the answer in your own mind before you commit to a PhD program. Perhaps working like this was okay for a MSc project; I suspect that it could well be a problem during a PhD.
What were the experiences of other PhD students in this regard? Did they all have similar feelings regarding how he manages the research of his team?
# Answer
> 6 votes
One of the issues you need to consider is how far along the advisor is in his career. If he is a relatively junior faculty member, then a lack of citations is not necessarily so serious, if they're being published in high-quality journals respected in your field. However, if he's getting a lot of publications in low-tier journals, that could be a sign of a bigger problem. If the faculty member is more experienced (and has been working a long time), this is very much a red flag.
I might recommend that you not continue with the same advisor, but this is only partially motivated by the quality issue. Another thing to take into account is that you should be preparing yourself to have a variety of educational experiences throughout your career, and that means working with multiple people, and on more than one project. If you have only one advisor, you will have only the experiences you've gained working with that one advisor, as well as only have learned the philosophical viewpoints associated with working with the one advisor.
# Answer
> 3 votes
The first question you should answer is: what do YOU want? Then: Where are your interests within your field? Are there opportunities ot develop elsewhere? Are there any reasons not to move?
These are of course personal question than can only be answered by you yourself. As fo rthe advisor, well 20 citations does not sound like much at all, depending of course on how senior the advisor is. I do not think that the publication record is necessarily the best criteria for selecting a graduate school, the quality (reputation) of the department and university is probably more important. It may be wise to visit and talk to other students about the conditions as well, if that is at all possible.
# Answer
> 1 votes
"Also, he demands me to do things exactly as he wants, so I have been thinking this issue a lot." I too had an issue with authoritarian education.
A group can own a great deal so long as the individual members of that group, here and there through the group, do not have as their sole and only goal (pronoun, capital) *I* alone must have, *I* want the power of the group, *I* want this, *I* want that. You have to feel that way, you see, if you haven't go confidence in the rest of the group. If you can't have confidence in the competence of your fellow students, then you have the necessity of taking the job on your own back.
A teacher can provide data or facts, but one worth their weight in gold, is one that has the student learn but is respected for thinking for themselves by guiding them to apply the data.
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thread-11109 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11109 | Problems in coping with my PhD Supervisors | 2013-07-12T21:05:20.850 | # Question
Title: Problems in coping with my PhD Supervisors
I'm a PhD student at a reputable institute in my country. I joined the group of a supervisor who is good at experimental and not so good in analytical front. I also have a co-supervisor who's good at analytics and numerical stuff. Neither know my research problem well.
Initially I had lot of difficulties in understanding the problem. I was a little slow in understanding the analytics. They told me to do lots of stuff here and there. All of them failed. Now I'm in my third year, supervisors are asking me "Are you really interested in your problem, or do you want to leave the course?".
Leaving course mid-way does not make sense for me. But without getting much help from supervisors and working on my own is manageable. Sometimes I get mentally disturbed by their attitude. How do I cope with these supervisors who talk so crazily and seriously at this point of time?
# Answer
> 3 votes
It would be interesting to know what is the subject or area of your research project. After 3 years, there has had to have been a passion to carry out the goals. Follow your dreams. You could be on to something that will help humankind so really take a bit of a breather and handle any doubts of your own. Visualize the future for a moment by seeing a DONE goal that you would enjoy with the same passion moving forward and having a team with you to help out. Sometimes debugging a project can be like watching grass grow. Find things similar to your dream and make a list of successful actions and put those back in and knock off trying to cope. A new strategy and approach to the supervisors will help rekindle their enthusiasm for you as it was in the beginning. Take the project back to where you were doing well. What happened just after... that is all that needs an adjustment.
# Answer
> 15 votes
I would suggest you to write a preliminary research findings report to both of your supervisors.
In the report, explain what you have done in the past two years. State the facts. Don’t point the fingers. You describe what you have tried and why they failed. Don’t make it too long. Refer the details to the notes and the data stored somewhere else. The final section of the report is your plan to tackle the problem further.
The purpose of the report is to let them be aware of the efforts you have spent. It documents the lessons learned. With the report, your supervisors and you would have more understandings about the problem you have been working on for two years. Bear this in your mind, it is likely you would know more about the problem when you write the report.
The report will answer their questions, *Are you really interested in your problem?* Yes. *you wanna leave the course?* No. But you need their help to finish it. If they tell you they can’t help you after they read the report, then it’s time to either change the research problem or find yourself another supervisor(s).
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Tags: graduate-school, advisor, india
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thread-11128 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11128 | University Test Bank Website- Potential Liability Issues? | 2013-07-14T01:49:06.263 | # Question
Title: University Test Bank Website- Potential Liability Issues?
I have an idea for a website, which I'm afraid may land me in trouble. I want to create a website where students from the university I attend can submit exams that they took (with scores of 90% or above), and they will be publicly posted on the site for other university students to utilize and study from. However, would this cause any violation of academic dishonesty rules? Would the professors try to hunt me down and get me suspended from the institution?
# Answer
> 6 votes
Of course, we don't know what your university's academic dishonesty rules say. But in most cases they are pretty broad, and there is probably a clause that could be interpreted to include your website, if your university's authorities decide to do so. I think the odds are good that there will be at least one professor who is upset enough to push them to do something about it. They might just try to get you to take the site down, they might try something harsher. There's no way to know.
In general, I think most professors are aware that students may be informally sharing their exams with one another. For that reason, they usually change exams from term to term, and if they reuse questions, do so only after several years. However, some may be startled to see it done as systematically as you propose, and try to stop it.
I am not a lawyer, nor do I know your local laws, but posting an exam on your website would probably violate the copyright of the professor who wrote it (unless you have his or her permission). This would be another avenue someone could pursue if they wanted your website gone.
Finally, professors could try to prevent their students from posting their exams on your website. For example, they might stop letting students keep their graded exams. Or, they could add a line to their syllabus that "you may not share your graded exams with anyone", on penalty of failing the course or academic dishonesty sanctions. This could not only deprive your website of material, but also make it so that students can't even share their exams informally anymore, which I assume is contrary to your goals.
# Answer
> 3 votes
This depends greatly on your university policies. It could result in some serious formal problems for you which could haunt you for a long time.
Regardless of the policies, I think it is simply inappropriate to do this without the teachers' permission. While I do take extra care to never re-use questions on my exams, others do not and they could easily consider the exam their intellectual property. Whether or not there is any validity to their claim is not really the issue. The fact is that some will feel this way and because of those feelings they will be very unhappy with you.
I think a better solution would be to offer a prep site where previous questions are analyzed and then new questions are proposed which are similar but not identical - that is they would depend on the same knowledge base and thinking skills. There should be no reason a teacher would complain about this (in fact, I would think the teachers would be quite happy about this as it would help students to better prepare for the exams).
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Tags: university, ethics, exams
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thread-11146 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11146 | How should I cite a website which includes institutional information | 2013-07-15T02:50:49.753 | # Question
Title: How should I cite a website which includes institutional information
I would like to cite a webpage which I am accessing with credentials through my academic institution. In this case (and I've seen this often) my institution is indicated in the url. For example:
```
http://ulrichsweb.serialssolutions.com.libdata.lib.ua.edu/...
```
Given that this url seems dynamic and will not be effective for others attempting to access the page, what is the best way to cite this page? In this particular case, the page gives no option for *permanent link* or *link to this page* or anything like that.
# Answer
> 4 votes
I think your intention of not citing an URL like that is correct, since it won't be useful to anybody outside your institution (and maybe not even within, if the URL is session specific). It doesn't make sense to give information in the bibliography which is not useful to the general reader.
First, check whether there are other means to cite the content. If it is a journal publication, you may not need an URL: generally, the standard bibliographic information including the journal name, volume, and page numbers is sufficient. Also check whether the content has a DOI. Then you should always be able to link to it via `http://dx.doi.org/<DOI>`.
If there is no way to refer to this content such that the general public can access it, then it is just not citable. You can only cite publicly available material, and not everything on the internet is publicly available (think about a Google Mailbox in the extreme case).
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Tags: citations
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thread-11083 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11083 | What is the typical payment arrangement for course design? | 2013-07-11T06:24:38.770 | # Question
Title: What is the typical payment arrangement for course design?
Occasionally, my university gives me outside work to design courses for other teachers or graduate students. This includes course books and other complete materials so that teachers using them have little to prepare.
How do schools typically arrange the payments for course designs?
* Are course designs typically only made in a one-time payment, with intellectual property transferred to the university?
* Is it at all typical for course designers to ask to retain intellectual property rights and to receive continued fees for each semester that a course is used?
# Answer
As you changed the question to be more specific, I'll add a separate answer:
> How do schools typically arrange the payments for course designs?
At the universities I have been associated with, a course is designed by the professor that teaches it, or as a collaboration between multiple faculty that are teaching separate sections. Many times you will find that intro courses that are taught by multiple faculty are still independently created -- a Calculus I course can be drastically different when taught by two different professors even if they are teaching it during the same semester. I would not recommend this, but it is frequently done this way. Savvy students will try to take the section with the professor who has the best reviews. Depending on the school, this is one forcing function for better teaching, although not a particularly good one.
To answer the question (Peter Shor's comment notwithstanding), course design is generally part of the duties associated with being a professor, and no extra payment or duty relief is garnered. I have never seen a case where payment is given for course design at the collegiate level. That is not to say that it isn't done, but I haven't seen it. I have, however, seen many cases where one professor will give all class notes, homework assignments, and tests to another professor in order to build his or her course from those materials, but this is done out of good will and not for payment.
> Are course designs typically only made in a one-time payment, with intellectual property transferred to the university?
I have never heard of a royalty agreement for course design, and I would be very surprised if you could get such a deal. Universities do work out deals with textbook publishers for reduced rates on course materials if the book will be required for a class, but that is different from asking a particular professor/instructor to design a course.
> Is it at all typical for course designers to ask to retain intellectual property rights and to receive continued fees for each semester that a course is used?
No. The bottom line is that courses are (read: should be) mutable entities that change with the times, and with the person teaching them. This is not to say that there shouldn't be a standard for a course, but I find it hard to believe that a college or university department would hand an instructor a set of materials and dictate that the course must be taught exactly in accordance with the set of lesson plans, with the same materials. I am all for providing helpful materials for instructors (as well as standards), but dictating them removes the creativity from the act of teaching, and limits the ability to prepare new material for the class.
To get off my soapbox: if you can design a course that your department will buy lock, stock, and barrel, and then you can convince them to pay you each time the course is used, go for it. You'll have to convince them that the course will indeed be viable next year and the year after, etc., but they may be willing to buy your argument. My suggestion is to work out the best deal you can for a one time payment, and move on.
> 3 votes
# Answer
Did you agree to design the courses before talking about payment? I don't know if you have any recourse at this point as there was never a contract in place. I would guess that had you inquired ahead of time, your superiors would probably have asked someone else to do it for free, as that is probably what they were expecting.
If there is a system in place for paying you for the course design, I would assume it would be a one-time payment with no residual payments, and you should work that out before beginning design. If you can work something out where you do get royalties down the road, that also needs to be in a contract, and I would be very surprised if you were able to pull it off (but good luck!).
> 12 votes
# Answer
I think the main dividing line in cases as you describe would be between if you had your own company producing courses and "licensing" them to the university and being contracted as a consultant for doing what you are doing. In the latter case you are being paid to produce something for the university and in doing so waive rights to the product. I do not want to get into the copyright regulations because you will need to find out what the university and your contract says (and that may not be very clear). If you licensed a course, things would be different since then your license would state under what conditions the product can be used and you could ask for a fee every time the course is given.
The main unclear part of all of this is where the intellectual rights (immaterial property) lie. I think you could produce a course under your current contract but retain copyright on materials in the course. Again you probably need the help of a lawyer to find out what is possible. Again you need t look at how the contract or university regulations stipulate such rights. If they do not then national or international laws apply.
> 5 votes
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Tags: copyright, salary, design
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thread-11162 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11162 | What if research does not fetch good results | 2013-07-15T19:06:18.070 | # Question
Title: What if research does not fetch good results
A friend of mine is pursuing a Masters course containing a research dissertation as part of the curriculum. He has done a lot of work on his topic (both studying of existing literature as well as tried out some new methods) but none of them have given interesting results. So, what should his thesis describe? Or does he need to succeed in order to pass?
# Answer
This depends on the program, the committee, the advisor, and the student. To give some anecdotes in both directions:
I have a friend who was a graduate student for a young professor who was just setting up his lab. My friend never performed any novel research, published few peer-reviewed articles, and for the most part did much more work setting up the lab environment than should have happened. Towards the end of his 5th year, he took his publications, white papers, and other documents, stapeled them together, and called it a thesis. He graduated no problem.
A different friend of mine was diligentily working on a single research problem for a few years and didn't find any results. Push came to shove, his committee wanted to see progress on one particular area, and six months later, when he didn't produce, he left with a masters.
Two separate stories, two separate universities, two very different programs. Long story short, if you think you're heading towards a situation like this, talk to your advisor and committee members and see what you can do. Do note that in these situations you can often take a minor finding which does not directly address your central theme and present it as your major contribution to the field, as this can serve to demonstrate your proficiency in research.
> 11 votes
# Answer
A criticism I have heard of European entrepreneurship (vs. US) is that bankruptcy for start-ups is too heavily stigmatised. People are less willing to take risks and start-ups are rather more conservative in their outlook than their American counterparts. Thus American start-ups tend to fail more often but, subjectively speaking, foster better innovation.
It's a compelling argument.
Similarly, in research, publishing or otherwise achieving degrees through negative results is important:
* It fosters an innovative environment where people are willing to try new things
* Publishing non-trivial negative results ...
+ ... informs people from making the same mistake;
+ ... could be extended or fixed by third-parties towards a better solution;
+ ... **stops people from the hype that it so common-place now where even if their results are negative, they feel the need to add an artificial positive spin to get published.**
So in summary, I would say that even if the results are negative, if they are non-obvious or if there's some experience to be gained from them, that should be still be fine.
> but none of them have given interesting results.
But what do you mean by "interesting" results? Do you mean positive results? Negative results are often interesting too.
> 6 votes
# Answer
I'm currently in the middle of planning a master's project that is "high-risk," in the sense of the idea that we're going to try out is a relatively novel idea, and we have no idea if it will actually work or not.
As a "hedge" against this, however, we need to do some methodological work that will support this idea. This work, even if the main idea doesn't pan out, still has relevance within the field, and therefore in and of itself would represent a sizable enough "core" of work that the thesis would be considered successful, even if the "hypothesis" doesn't hold.
In addition, I believe a master's thesis doesn't need to reach the same standards of "advancing the state of knowledge" as a PhD thesis. It should show the results of a project, but it need not be nearly as comprehensive or represent as great an advance as a PhD thesis—in part because of the relative amount of time involved.
What would perhaps be especially helpful here is if the student is able to analyze *why* the various efforts tried haven't panned out. That could make for a significant finding in and of itself, at least as far as the thesis is concerned.
> 5 votes
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Tags: masters, thesis
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thread-11125 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11125 | Should I tell my advisor that our paper is full of mistakes? | 2013-07-13T23:39:06.447 | # Question
Title: Should I tell my advisor that our paper is full of mistakes?
Okay, I'm in a nasty situation. I'm about to receive my master's degree in two months. Also, I am a third author on my advisor's paper, and the paper is completely awful and full of mistakes. Contradicting results not reported etc., it has it all. The thing is, my advisor *will* take it personally if I give comments that would put him to a bad light in front of the other co-authors. Very probably, he would let his anger to be seen in the evaluation of my master's thesis.
Really, I have no idea what to do. Should I be quiet, hope the paper gets rejected, and then RUN FAST, or just write a long email about every error there is? Which one is less harmful? I really don't want my name on that paper, nor a biased evaluation of my master's thesis.
(For background, my previous advisor left the university about 6 months ago, and then I got this new one. So, I could probably get a letter of recommendation from the previous advisor.)
# Answer
Your name is on the paper; you should be able to take a look at the draft, and suggest improvements.
> The paper is completely awful and full of mistakes. The thing is, my advisor will take it personally if I give comments that would put him to a bad light in front of the other co-authors.
Okay, there are two ways to address this. You can pubically say, "This paper is awful and full of mistakes," paint your advisor in a bad light, and face his ire.
Or, you can take each of the mistakes, and tactfully offer an improvement. That is, you could privately say, "I think the paper might have a better chance of acceptance if we made these changes."
In other words, don't edit as a critic; rather, put some work into the paper as a co-author.
There's a fine art to editing work in a way that isn't off-putting for the primary author. People tend to get defensive when their writing is critiqued – it's a very natural reaction. However, if each of your suggested changes is offered constructively, as an improvement to an initial draft, rather than an indictment of it, you stand a better chance of incurring thanks instead of wrath.
On the other hand, if the paper is so bad that it's not salvagable, then I'd suggest requesting that your name simply be removed from the author list.
> 38 votes
# Answer
I would not say that this situation is totally hopeless, here are some suggestions as to how to approach this situation (remember, these are just suggestions):
* If you are not comfortable having your name on the paper, ask for it to be removed - is it a requirement for the completion of your Masters?
* Perhaps ask your previous advisor to co-author a paper with him? Certainly ask for a letter of recommendation as he would have had the most contact with you.
* If you see errors, then it is important for them to be corrected. I understand your concern with regards when it comes time to defend the thesis - if this concern is major, then perhaps speak confidentially, to the Dean about your concerns.
> 12 votes
# Answer
You wouldn’t be asking this question if, instead of errors on a document, your dilemma involved a source of personal injury, such as a hole outside the front entrance folks could fall in and never crawl out of! (Facetious I know, please accept my apology.)
Aren’t you asking “At what point should I point out errors?" Below that arbitrary point I find errors acceptable, above that point, prohibited. Unfortunately, our conscience doesn’t come with a warning lamp. :)
> -1 votes
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Tags: publications, advisor
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thread-11136 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11136 | How to make time to pursue research while employed as a part-time lecturer at two universities? | 2013-07-14T14:33:41.947 | # Question
Title: How to make time to pursue research while employed as a part-time lecturer at two universities?
Actually I have been working like a Computer Science lecturer, part time, in a couple of universities in my country. Main problem is that those universities are only worried in finances, but not in academic productivity. So that is why almost all the lecturers, my case included, are assigned only lecturing hours, but with no time to make research.
The main problem that I got is that love to make research. Sometimes I come with an idea, and it happened 3 times already, that because of the time I cannot write a paper; so that somebody else has published (in other country, of course) my main idea. I think the phrase "publish or perish" is well suited for me at this moment.
I have started to feel frustrated about this. I still have other ideas for research papers in the field and even for making a couple of books in collaboration with other colleages abroad, but I don´t know where to start.
I seen a lot of Professors that publish like maniacs, and I would like to know if there is a way to increase my productivity in the academic field. How should I distribute my time?. It may sound silly, but I feel that 100% of my time is dedicated only to lecture pretty boring undergraduate stuff. Any advice? Mostly of people that are researchers and are in this field, so they have experience about this.
Thanks
# Answer
Would you be willing to **move to another university?** It would be challenging, but possible. My hunch is that if your school does not value research, and if that's really what excites you more than teaching, then long term **it will probably be hard for you to be satisfied where you are now.**
If you do want to move, then I suggest that you **focus on establishing a reputation in some small area**, and also that you try to **make contacts** with researchers at other universities who are working in the same area that you are. I must say that my **collaborations have hugely impacted how much I've enjoyed doing research**. I am at a school that values research, but even there I have not found many people to work with, so most of my collaboration is with people elsewhere. We work a lot by email. The email allows us to get some momentum, so that when I do have a chance to visit one of my collaborators, often we can be fairly productive in a limited time.
Two things that I love about collaboration: (1) my coauthors often have great ideas, and our papers end up much better than if I had written them myself and (2) it's a lot more fun working with someone, and it's easier to stay encouraged. So that's what I recommend that you aim for. If you want to know how to squeeze more research time or productivity (just working by yourself) out of your current schedule, then I recommend that you follow the advice of aeismail and consult a Personal Productivity site.
> 6 votes
# Answer
I think these two posts by a Canadian scholar could give you a few answers: to improve your intellectual productivity and the older one the secret to intellectual productivity.
Among the tips he gives:
* have luck,
* meet people who have truly compatible goals and interests,
* use a divide-and-conquer strategy (i.e. break down your task into small and easy chunks of work),
* focus on producing value,
* enumerate all possible solutions to a problem.
> 4 votes
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Tags: research-process, teaching, productivity, part-time
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thread-11165 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11165 | How to respond to someone plagiarizing my work? | 2013-07-15T20:46:51.753 | # Question
Title: How to respond to someone plagiarizing my work?
I have recently come across a paper that copy-pasted entire paragraphs of one of my papers which is already published in an international journal. This paper appeared in a journal which is not very popular, and I did not get a courtesy citation.
How should I proceed with this? I was thinking of reporting the issue to the editor of the journal where the paper appeared but then I thought that it may not even worth the effort. On the other hand, I still have this in my mind since this is clearly unethical behaviour.
What would you suggest?
# Answer
I would definitely contact the chief editor of the journal and place the evidence before him/her/them. Plagiarism should not be taken lightly. There is a tendency to be lenient when it comes to self-plagiarism of non-critical parts of the text, for example, parts of methods sections (in experimental work). Regardless where one draws the line, copying sections of text verbatim from others is a clear breach to me.
Anyway, it will be the editor's job to pursue the matter after you made the point. If the journal belongs to a publishing house they may receive legal help to deal with the author. If the editor does not react and there is a clear publisher behind the journal it may be relevant to bring it up a level. If you have someone in your university working on copyright issues, perhaps at the library, then you could also talk to them. They may be able to provide further assistance and help evaluate the case.
> 44 votes
# Answer
I don't think you should let it slide.
1. Contact the editor-in-chief of the journal where the offending paper appeared, and explain the situation (with the citation of your paper). If they do not respond, or do not adequately address the matter, "name and shame": spread the word that this is not a journal to be taken seriously. You could also contact the publisher, as Peter Jansson suggests.
2. Contact the editor-in-chief of the journal where *your* paper appeared. They have an interest in protecting the work of their author, and may have more leverage in dealing with the offending journal. If, as is common, you transferred your copyright to them upon publication, they may have a legal interest as well.
3. Consider contacting the author of the offending paper, and/or their department chair or dean.
> 38 votes
# Answer
I have experienced this first hand as well (twice) - not a very nice feeling at all.
Asides from contacting the editors, as has been mentioned. I would also inform those in your research network as to what has happened, for 2 reasons:
* so they are aware of what has happened, just in case they wonder why your research has gone elsewhere.
* so they are aware of the unethical behaviour of not only the offending author, but of the journal that allowed the plagiarised article to be published.
Members of my own research network let me know of both instances when I had been plagiarised (the second time was just within 48 hours of this answer). As with many academics, we have a zero tolerance for plagiarism, so we inform all in our research group for the reasons above - essentially, looking out for eachother in an academic sense.
The last point may seem harsh, but (for what very little my opinion is worth), I find that plagiarism is a deliberate and wilful act of intellectual theft - laziness and even ignorance are not valid excuses. Both the offending author and the journal that let it pass are just as guilty.
> 8 votes
# Answer
I think that you should send an email to the following persons:
1) To the person in charge or program committee of the journal in which your work has been plagiarized. Be prepared that you can stump upon some frisky person who would like to deny any responsibility about this actions, but at least you state your point that what is that person doing is completely wrong.
2) To the author who make the plagiarism action
You mentioned that the journal in which they plagiarized your work is not well known. Well that is one strong reason why you should communicate with them. For the following reasons:
* Sometimes those small conferences and journals want to start to build a reputation, so consider that you will be helping them in that task.
* Also they can get a grasp about the quality of reviewers that they actually have in their staff. In some occasions the reviewers only pass thru the article very quickly, but actually do not check if there has been some plagiarize on it. Do not get me wrong, but a lot of reviewers do that, and most of the discovered cases of plagiarism in journals or conferences has been discovered by external persons to that environment; like in this case.
So in both cases, you will end up teaching some research ethics to both: the cheaty researcher and the careless journal.
> 1 votes
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Tags: publications, ethics, plagiarism
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thread-11159 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11159 | Do US universities offer Graduate Paid Internship programs in CS/CSE? | 2013-07-15T14:58:45.207 | # Question
Title: Do US universities offer Graduate Paid Internship programs in CS/CSE?
Do US universities offer Graduate Paid Internship programs in CS/CSE?
That is, studying MS in CSE while working as a paid intern in a company, which is arranged by the university itself?
If yes, do they have any age limit?
# Answer
Yes, US Universities do offer Graduate paid internship programs in CS/CSE. It is called Curricular Practical Training/Optional Practical Training. But each university is different in accepting your CPT/OPT. You need to have a job offer in hand, check with the DSO of the university for the dates within which you need to apply for your CPT/OPT. You need to be atleast 18 years i guess.
For more information you can look this up : http://www.ice.gov/sevis/practical-training/
> 1 votes
# Answer
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. I don't know but I don't think so.
Remember though that such "internships" are also known as "research assistantships" or "summer research assistantships" and will generally not be advertised outside the university or department because there are usually more than enough ready and available folks.
I have done something similar in the past but only because I know the professor personally and he offered me the position after a few conversations with him.
> 0 votes
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Tags: masters
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thread-11177 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11177 | reviewing other articles for a conference | 2013-07-16T15:48:36.973 | # Question
Title: reviewing other articles for a conference
I have been appointed to take part in reviewing papers for a conference. At the beginning I received an email in which the program chair told me to mark my fields of expertise, so I did that.
After a few days, it appeared in the reviewing page a list of all the papers submitted. But when they assigned me the papers, they do not assign me those in which I have expertise in the field and that I put in a previous email.
So now I have reviewed my assigned papers. I have seen that I can see all the papers submitted and there is also the possibility to put my review in those that there have not been assigned to me. Should I do that with the papers that are my field of expertise? or should I only review those that I have been assigned.
Thanks
# Answer
Welcome to conference reviewing. Your situation is unfortunately *extremely* common. If the number of submissions in area X is less than the number of reviewers with interest and expertise in area X, then inevitably some of those reviewers will be assigned papers in area Y. Symmetrically, if the number of submissions in X is *more* than the number of experts in X, then some of those papers must be assigned to reviewers who'd prefer Z. Ideally, most papers are reviewed by experts and each reviewer is assigned mostly papers in their areas of expertise, but sometimes the matching system breaks down.
By default, **you must review the papers that you were assigned.** But there are a couple of ways to address mismatches.
* If your assignment looks like a *complete* mismatch, you should **quickly** contact the PC chair and express your concerns, and in particular to verify that they received your preference email. If you're early enough in the process, the chair may be able and willing to swap assignments with other reviewers with complementary mismatches. There might also be a mechanism to swap assignments directly with other committee members, but you should always get the PC chair's permission before *actually* swapping.
* Most computer science conference review forms ask for your *confidence* in your review; fill in this field honestly. If you really don't have the expertise to understand the paper or make a recommendation, your review should read "I apparently do not have the expertise to understand this paper or make a recommendation." That's a damning review of both the paper and the assignment process, but that's okay; your job as a reviewer is to **be respectful but brutally honest**.
On the other hand, as a matter of simple self-preservation, **you should *not* review papers that you were not assigned**. Reviewing well is extremely hard and time-consuming, and you have many other demands on your time. (And reviewing badly should just not be done at all.) Generally speaking, doing extra unsolicited reviewing will *not* earn you additional credit or brownie points.
There are a few exceptions. If you see a paper that you plan to read in detail anyway, despite getting no credit for doing so, you might as well write a review. And if the initial reviews of a paper disagree, the PC chair may seek out additional input or even full reviews; if you're asked about a paper *in your area of expertise* late in the review cycle, you should help. (If you're asked about a paper outside your area of expertise in later rounds, you should just say no.)
> 11 votes
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Tags: conference
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thread-11189 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11189 | Do Chinese universities offer CS/CSE Masters programs taught in English? | 2013-07-17T14:51:57.840 | # Question
Title: Do Chinese universities offer CS/CSE Masters programs taught in English?
Do Chinese (PRC) universities offer CS/CSE Masters programs taught in English?
If yes, do these programs require mandatory HSK scores to enroll?
# Answer
If you just search for the universities, you will see that each of them has specific guidelines regarding your proficiency in Chinese.
For Tsinghua university, here is what I find : http://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/publish/then/5975/index.html , but I can't find anything about HSK requirements. My guess is that if the courses are taught in English, you are more likely to be asked to provided your TOEFL scores instead.
Now you might want to look at other universities, you should get all the information you need on their websites.
So, yes, Chinese universites do have CS Masters programs in English, and it appears that they don't required HSK (but you should contact the International Office of each university to be sure of that).
> 2 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, masters
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thread-11201 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11201 | International student loans in the US | 2013-07-17T18:30:05.683 | # Question
Title: International student loans in the US
I'm weighing all my options before the fall application and I wanted to know if it is possible to take out loans in the US as an international master's degree student.
Any tips where to look? Best I've seen are private loans with an American cosignatory. Is it really the extent of loan options for an international? Do universities extend loans to their students or help in getting private loans?
Cheers
# Answer
Yes check with your universities Student Services Department. Most of the universities also give you scholarships provided you have some good scores in GRE/TOEFL or whatever they require. Banks also give Student loans to International students provided you have a credit-worthy US-Citizen as a Co-signer. But most of the international students are eligible for scholarships. Good luck.
http://www.edupass.org/finaid/loans.phtml
> 2 votes
# Answer
Try to check (email) with the offices for international students and scholar that in some universities also handle financial issues for foreign students. They will give you the best options. If you're willing to do research or teaching work, I'd suggest you to personally contact Faculties or graduate program secretaries that may have such options for you. In some universities, most national and international grad students are under teaching or research assistantships, have tuition waived and monthly stipend, and this also build up their cv. This may not apply to specific degrees such as MBA, but if you're in science, technology, education or engineer, it is likely that you can find assistantship to support you.
It may be too late to find an assistantship for the fall semester, you can consider to start next spring as well. good luck!
> 0 votes
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Tags: education
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thread-11200 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11200 | How to read an article? | 2013-07-17T18:26:35.437 | # Question
Title: How to read an article?
I have searched the literature and I'm now have all the papers I need.
I'm reading the papers at the moment in order to write a lit review. I would like to know some strategies to read them, should I read them from first page to last page? or should I read specific sections only?
# Answer
I really recommend that you start reading the Abstract, by that way you can get rid of some papers that would not be so valuable for your work. After that try to get a quick glimpse at the theoretical background, just to catch if there is some background that you are actually missing and you will need for understanding the article fully. Take your time to read the experimentation part and feel free to jump to the conclusions.
Remember that you do not need to read some articles from the first page to the last page, except in some ocassions. There will be some sections that you can clearly jump e.g. the theoretical part, if you have the enough background.
> 0 votes
# Answer
The objective of reading/review academic papers is to critically analyze research studies.
Critical reading is basically a process where you ask yourself questions as you're reading, such as:
* *What was the objective of the research study?*
* *Did the researchers accomplish this?*
* *Why or why not?*
* *Why is the study important?*
* *What are the implications of the findings?*
* *How does this paper contribute knowledge to society?*
* *Do I want to borrow an idea from this paper?*
* *Do I believe something can be improved?*
Answering those questions will help you figure out what you've read and why it was relevant to you and the research study you'll end up designing. It can also help you as you target each section, it's not always clear cut the order in which you'll read the paper critically.
Now that you know what to look for, how you organize those notes is up to your individual preference. There are many options available: hand written notes, digital notes, laptop, ipad, etc. I personally like to use a matrix format with different fields, such as objective, method, findings, theoretical model, etc.
> 1 votes
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Tags: reading, literature-search
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thread-11191 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11191 | Do "Online" CS/CSE masters programs add any value when applying for doctoral/PhD study? | 2013-07-17T15:15:26.033 | # Question
Title: Do "Online" CS/CSE masters programs add any value when applying for doctoral/PhD study?
How much value do I acquire if I complete an online master's degree in CS and I plan to apply for doctoral study?
For example, Georgia Tech seems to offer an online master's program. Does this type program puts up anything to apply for a Doctoral program?
In short, if somebody wants to get a PhD degree in Computer Science, do Online Master's degrees aid in their ambition?
# Answer
## No.
Online MS degrees are necessarily course-based "professional" master's degrees, otherwise known as *terminal* master's degrees.
If you want to apply to a PhD program, you need to provide strong evidence of **research** potential. If you are applying with an MS, you will be competing with applicants in **research** MS programs, who almost certainly have more research experience than anyone with a professional MS.
It is nearly impossible to get that research experience without direct face-to-face contact with more experienced researchers. Even if you somehow learn to do research on your own, you still need recommendation letters that describe your research potential in specific and personal detail, and such letters are impossible to get without direct face-to-face contact with their authors. If you want to become a researcher, you have to do it in person.
> 7 votes
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Tags: online-degree
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thread-11061 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11061 | Charging graduate students for printing | 2013-07-10T01:49:19.163 | # Question
Title: Charging graduate students for printing
My university is starting a policy where graduate students need to pay for printing (10 cents per page) while It was free before. As a student coming from another university, I see it very weird policy. Actually, I am not aware of any university charges its PhD students for printing. I heard faculty members will be charged as well but at lower rate.
is freely printing a fundamental right for PhD students? If Yes, how to raise it?
is this common in other universities across the world (charging PhD students for printing)?
# Answer
> 18 votes
> is freely printing a fundamental right for PhD students?
A fundamental *right*? No. But charging for printing borders on the ridiculous. – Printing is a *necessity*, not a right.
Think of it in economic terms. A PhD is a job (there are a few peculiarities, and it’s also part of a student’s education, but nevertheless you ultimately are doing a job, which consists of doing research). If preventing you from printing makes your job harder, the institute has a financial interest in removing that obstacle.
What company charges employees for office supplies? The concept is ludicrous. Why not charge them rent for their cubicles as well? Printing publications, drafts and reports for reading is simply a fundamental part of doing research – unless your institute sponsors ebook readers; and even then your PhD will probably involve filling out forms for HR etc.
If your institute suspects that printing is predominantly used for non job related purposes then that may be a problem that needs addressing (and the same goes if the institute suspects that printing could be reduced without impacting performance – lots of companies have tried paper-free offices but so far I haven’t heard of any resounding success, at least not in science). But charging students for printing is still unacceptable since it obstructs them from doing their jobs.
# Answer
> 13 votes
We had unlimited printing through our department (Computer Science). When I taught high school, we also had unlimited printing and copying but we also had a copy card that counted down the copies -- when the card reached zero, we had to get it refreshed. I assume this was to keep us apprised of just how many copies we were making, but I don't think it ever slowed anyone down.
These days, I don't print much, but one of the best purchases I made was an inexpensive laser printer that cranked out lots and lots of pages with nary a whimper. The convenience outweighed the cost significantly. It's amazing what you can get these days, e.g., duplex and wireless for $80.
If you can't get the policy changed, and are going to print more than a couple of hundred dollars worth of pages (2000 at $0.10/page in your case), I'd recommend a cheap laser printer (to print 2000 pages, it can cost as little as $80 for the printer, $15 for paper, and $45 for a high-yield toner refill).
# Answer
> 8 votes
I finished my Ph.D. at a large state university. We could print 250 pages a month, and after that it was five cents a page.
I still remember being informed one month that I owed four dollars, and having to trek upstairs to find the right person to pay it to. It struck me as undignified and distasteful, and reflected a feeling among many of the grad students that the support staff were there to enforce rules, and were "not on our side".
This issue becomes especially salient if students are expected to print out worksheets, solutions, and other materials for TA assignments. If I had to pay for this out of pocket, given poverty-level graduate student wages, I would be quite resentful.
I believe that policies like this are relatively common, perhaps usually with some free monthly quota -- but I nevertheless urge you to oppose this policy at your university.
# Answer
> 5 votes
Here in Asia my university does not support any kind of 'free printing.' If (any) student wants to print a dissertation, an assignment, etc. they usually either print at home or they go to a printing store where their work gets printed and bound properly (for a fee).
Honestly, I'm a little surprised that some schools support students printing for free. First, it's not very eco-friendly. Second, it's wasteful. Everything should be left in its digital form.
That said, my school does tend to print a lot and they require students to submit printed copies of their assignments. Still, we should be moving towards less printing, not more. One way to do this is to add a disincentive to printing (having people pay for it).
# Answer
> 3 votes
I have been to graduate school (MS) in India (one of the better known schools) as well as graduate school in the US (PhD, also, one of the better known schools)
I have never heard of printing charges. We have always had **unlimited** printing. And I have really tested these bounds. :) Sure, there are reminders not to print more than needed in order to save trees but there is and to my knowledge never has been any printing charges in any of the schools that I have been to.
# Answer
> 3 votes
Printing costs can add up to a *lot* of money in a hurry (recall that they include primer cartridge, maintenance on the machines, *and* people time to replace the cartridges and perform the maintenance). Various features such as color, duplex and transparencies cost more.
Depending on the discipline and the work culture of your department this can take a real bite out of the budget. When that happens the cost have to be contained *somehow*.
As other people have noted this generally involves tracking the number of print jobs and charging for some or all of them. Often students get a free allocation.
My most recent department had IT under a separate budget, and they charged print jobs to the work unit (high-energy physics group; attosecond physics group; Physics education group; the department for TAs; etc) who then did what they saw fit to get their people to conserve on it.
My work unit had a "don't print if you don't need it" culture and provided generous displays to help you get along without paper. We also tended to send *only the pages with figures* to the color print if we were printing journal articles (color cost ten times as much a B&W).
# Answer
> 3 votes
In our department (in the USA) you have 50 free pages per semester, 5 cents per page after. I used to think this is ridiculous so I asked about it. Our department used to have problems with students (undergrad or grad) abusing free printing in order to print out entire books, etc. Indeed, I am aware of students who do this at other universities.
Once a grad student joins a research group in our department, however, the research group usually has its own dedicated printer for its grad students to use.
Similarly, if you're a teaching assistant, you should certainly get free printing privileges for printing that is related to the job.
I will also point out that there are often ways to get around the printing regulator, and indeed this is done often in our department -- so in the end mostly the honest lose out with such a system.
# Answer
> 1 votes
I am at a university in Australia, at my particular University, I am entitled to approximately 200 printouts/copies before I need to pay, but the cost is not huge (less than 10c for a black and white sheet).
Just like what has been suggested here, this is a good way to eliminate waste. However, one could take this a bit further and suggest some limits may encourage students to be wiser in their research - only printing what is vital.
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Tags: research-process, productivity, workplace
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thread-11213 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11213 | Should I still try to publish this paper I wrote after it getting rejected? | 2013-07-18T09:14:57.877 | # Question
Title: Should I still try to publish this paper I wrote after it getting rejected?
I had submitted this paper of mine to a reputed springer journal some time back. There are reasons for me to believe it is a good journal although it has an impact factor of only 0.941 since most of the original work on the problem ( I will describe that in detail below) I'm working on was published in that journal. A few days back I received a decision from them which said that they wouldn't be considering it for publication and this was the reviewer's comment - "*I am afraid i do not see a contribution by this paper valuable enough for publication in the Journal. Neither regarding the problem setting nor regarding the solution method any new insights are provided*".
Now, I do admit that my work isn't something path breaking or completely novel (I shall give a detailed description in the end). What I have essentially done is that I have used existing algorithms and techniques and have applied the same on the specific problem I was working on and have got significant results (please see the complete detail of the problem in the end).
So post rejection I have actually been in a complete dilemma on whether I should actually try publishing my work again with some other journals and I have also begun to wonder if journals actually accept such work. The problem is that I have no prior experience of publishing papers and I'm an undergraduate student. So it would be really nice if someone could help me with this.
---
**More on the Problem:**
The problem I have been working on is the Traveling Tournament Problem. So what I have done here is that I have taken existing techniques and algorithms for this problem and I have applied it to a very popular sports league in order to schedule it. And doing so has actually given me some "significant"(?) results like reduction in the travel distance in this league. I am also pretty sure no one has actually worked on this particular league before, so this would be the first instance of the same.
# Answer
In publishing there is a phenomena called "me too" publications (see for example Day & Gastel: How to write and Publish A Scientific Paper) where one takes existing methods and apply them to a new area, data set, whatever context is applicable. Although not wrong, these types of studies usually do not contribute much new knowledge except resulting in the understandng that the method(s) work in (yet) another circumstance.
What can then be done? As I alluded to initially, there is nothing really wrong with such studies. What is necessary is to convince the editors and reviewers that by applying the method(s) to the new area, you have actually achieved something new (in the sense of scientific discovery). For example, applying a formula to a new set of numbers is not a discovery unless the new numbers themselves contain something that can be set apart from what has been done before. So it boils down to what might sloppily be called "packaging"; you need to package your study so that it is evident what new discovery is achieved. It is not sufficient to just say that it is a new data set but you need to convince that applying the method(s) to the new data set shows results that expand our horizon beyond the obvious and also be explicit why one, for example, would not expect the result you obtained (or equivalent).
I have deliberately kept this answer as general as I can because the issue you bring up applies to many if not all fields. I would give the manuscript a hard work over and really think about what truly scientifically (intelectually) new aspects you bring forth. It may be that your writing has not been clear enough to bring the message through. It may be that you are too involved to see the bigger picture that needs to be explained to others. Or, in the worst case, it may be that your study is too trivial. Avoid falling into the "me too" trap, it easily happens and the remedy is usually to make sure the perspectives of the study are re-written carefully to highlight the core research problem to be solved.
So to answer, yes you should try again unless you find you are stuck in "me too" land.
> 25 votes
# Answer
Peter Janssons answer is good. I would like to add something specifically on the venue.
If you develop or apply a new method, submit to a journal that focus on methods.
If you apply an existing method to a field where it hasn't before, submit to a journal that focuses on the application. This can be very enriching, perhaps nobody in this field thought of using this method before, maybe they didn't know it existed. Such a paper can be rather short and won't be prize-winning, but can certainly be publishable.
So, perhaps all you need to do is sit with your advisor and reconsider the venue where you're publishing, in addition to some *packaging* as Peter Jansson describes.
> 19 votes
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Tags: publications, journals
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thread-11217 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11217 | How good is the International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics? (http://www.ijpam.eu/) | 2013-07-18T12:49:10.590 | # Question
Title: How good is the International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics? (http://www.ijpam.eu/)
I had recently submitted my paper to this journal on the advise of my guide and quite fortunately, I received an email a few days back saying that the paper had been accepted for publication. So before I pay the requisite fee of $165 (what is your opinion? is this too much?) I just wanted to know how good the journal was (the website says it has an impact factor of 2.13) and how much value such a publication will have. Would be really nice if someone could guide me on this. (This would be my first publication and I'm an undergraduate student)
This is the journal's website link: https://ijpam.eu/
# Answer
To try to make this answer generalizable, here's how one can investigate in general:
The first thing to do is to ask more experienced researchers for their opinions, which is exactly what you've done here. But you may run into the problem that you can't find people who know the journal. For example, I don't recall having heard of IJPAM before, but it's not clear what that means. IJPAM is certainly not a famous or prestigious journal, but there are a lot of journals out there and nobody has heard of all of them.
Beall's list is a list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers." The publisher of IJPAM (Academic Publications, Ltd.) appears on this list, which is a bad sign. You have to decide how to interpret it - maybe Beall has made a mistake, or maybe your criteria are different from his - but it's an important sign that you should investigate further.
You can then take a look at the actual papers and see what you think of them (or ask faculty members at your university). In the case of IJPAM, I found it quite worrisome. I looked at the most recent issue and found several papers that don't look like research papers at all: Sudoko: the new smash hit puzzle game and Odd and even number cultures. This suggests IJPAM will publish nearly anything. If you've written a research paper, having it appear next to papers with no research content would look bad, so I recommend against publishing in IJPAM.
> 8 votes
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Tags: publications, journals, undergraduate, research-undergraduate, mathematics
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thread-11219 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11219 | Should an Editorial be considered as a regular paper in CV, or should it be put in another section? | 2013-07-18T15:05:12.297 | # Question
Title: Should an Editorial be considered as a regular paper in CV, or should it be put in another section?
Me an other colleagues organized an Special Issue of some Journal (indexed by ISI) and after having accepted some of the submitted papers (10 in total), we wrote an editorial, which will also appear in the Journal. Do you think such effortless papers can be considered or cited in a CV as a regular paper or should be put into another section?
# Answer
> 13 votes
I am editing an ISI listed journal and have also noticed that the editorials I or others write end up as if they were regular publications and obtain citations. I do not think they should be considered as such but believe it simply is a flaw in the system. The persons entering data or who made the system that scans published papers simply cannot distinguish between editorials and papers, despite the word "Editorial:" occurring in the title of such contributions in "my" journal. Since these editorials are not reviewed by others than the editors-in chief (in my case) they are not fully peer reviewed and would definitely not pass a regular review since they were never intended as journal articles.
So, do one want to put an editorial "paper" in the CV? I do not think it belongs under the heading of papers published in refereed journals. But, having written an editorial means you have been instrumental to produce a thematic journal issue and so you can list it in conjunction with "meriting academic missions" (or whatever you might call it). It will represent the journal issue and the work done there which, in my opinion, is probably worth more than a paper. The fact that it might also be cited can be taken as indicating interest in the jorunal issue that you have summarized in the editorial, but should be kept separate from regular papers.
I should add as a final note that the key for me is whether or not the contribution has been properly peer reviewed. I doubt many editorial receive proper peer review.
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Tags: publications, cv
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thread-11222 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11222 | Submitting course work report as research paper? | 2013-07-18T16:46:35.823 | # Question
Title: Submitting course work report as research paper?
In one of the coursework at my university, I submitted a very detailed project report done for the course. It later turned out that the work contributed some value to the field as well. Is it right to submit the report reformatted as a research paper ? Do we need to provide any special mentions to the coursework or any other related disclosure ?
# Answer
> In one of the coursework at my university, I submitted a very detailed project report done for the course. It later turned out that the work contributed some value to the field as well. Is it right to submit the report reformatted as a research paper ?
So long as the results are novel and you meet the other necessary prerequisites for publication (acknowledge main contributors as authors, acknowledge secondary contributors in acknowledgements, reference and discuss related work, meet level of technicality/significance required, etc.), I don't see any problem of submitting course-work for publication, and if as you say the work has had some impact in the field, I think it should be encouraged!
> Do we need to provide any special mentions to the coursework or any other related disclosure ?
You should ask your professor or other senior staff member for advice, but I don't believe any special mentions would be required other than what's mentioned above. You could mention it as a footnote or as an acknowledgement if so desired. Also, if your work was (even indirectly) funded through a specific research grant, they may require acknowledgement as a condition of the grant. Again, talk to a staff member involved.
> 9 votes
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Tags: research-process, publications
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thread-11221 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11221 | How novel should conference papers be? | 2013-07-18T16:34:44.523 | # Question
Title: How novel should conference papers be?
This is probably field specific. I'm mainly interested in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields and psychology/neuroscience.
So, like the title says, how novel should conference papers be? I'm early in my career and find it difficult to judge if my work is yet publishable or not.
Suppose my advisor says nothing about the work I have done, and I have to decide myself.
# Answer
> So, like the title says, how novel ideas should conference papers present? I'm early in my career, and find it difficult to judge is my work yet publishable or not.
This is extremely field specific and even specific to different conference venues. But conference venues, by offering (supposedly) quick turnaround of papers, do emphasise novelty of results.
Speaking as a reviewer, in judging novelty, I look at four main things:
* **Is novelty made clear:** Have the authors clarified what methods have been presented in the literature and clearly argued how their work differs?
* **Does the novelty make sense:** Oftentimes, authors strap things onto previous works or make unusual design choices (seemingly) just to be novel, and then they adapt their evaluation accordingly. If you say, for example, you have designed a new "hexagonal" wheel that's different from the round wheels in the literature and you show that it's less inclined to run away down hills, that's obviously problematic. (Though the analogy is a hyperbole, this case is quite common in my experience.)
* **Did I learn anything:** If the results are new but are already quite obvious, or are trivially derived as a synthesis of existing results, novelty is poor. As a reviewer, I need to learn (or at least *confirm* with solid data) something non-trivial!
* **Could this lead to further research:** It is certainly a boon for the paper's novelty if it could lead to a new line of research; i.e., if it's novelty warrants further investigation, and could lead to further publications, particularly by other authors.
> 4 votes
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Tags: phd, publications, conference
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thread-11195 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11195 | Can something published on arXiv or optimization-online.org be mentioned in my CV? | 2013-07-17T17:04:18.113 | # Question
Title: Can something published on arXiv or optimization-online.org be mentioned in my CV?
I was thinking about submitting one of my papers in arXiv or www.optimization-online.org and hence I was just wondering if mentioning the same in my CV would be appropriate. Is it done usually? If yes, how should I actually mention something like this in my CV? Kindly guide me (I have no previous experience in publishing papers and I'm an undergraduate student).
# Answer
> 13 votes
Putting non-peer reviewed publications on your CV is perfectly fine, but you should be aware that for research-oriented jobs and admission to academic programs you will be primarily judged by your peer reviewed publications. I have seen CVs that separately list peer-reviewed works and non-peer reviewed works, and sometimes the non-peer reviewed works are simply listed as "technical reports."
If you believe that the papers you write are worthy of being mentioned on your CV, then list them. But don't think that by putting a bunch of low-quality non-peer reviewed works will do you any favors when looking for work or when applying for academic positions (whether graduate school or employment). Obviously, you should avoid putting them on your CV if you are doing so simply to demonstrate that you can write a paper.
# Answer
> 10 votes
This only pertains to mathematics since that's the only field I can speak for, but there it's normal for people to list preprints on the arXiv in their publication list or CV **making it clear** that it is listed as a preprint. I think people understand perfectly well that there are long lead times on getting things published.
That said, I would say that you should think carefully and get advice from more experienced people in your field before submitting to a preprint archive. At least in the case of the arXiv, once something is posted, it can never be taken down.
# Answer
> 6 votes
Depends on your field. If in it arXiv is not popular, make a separate list named "Preprints".
If it is popular (i.e. people are expected to post on arXiv along with sending to the journal), then it is common to have a single list (where, naturally, papers from last months or a year are only on arXiv, other - both have the journal reference and arXiv ID). If older papers are peer-reviewed then it is somehow implied that the new ones are likely to get into journals/conferences as well.
However, if you have only arXiv preprints (e.g. as you are only starting your career) it is not implied that they will get accepted. Anyway, listing them is way better than listing nothing - just make a list of "Preprints".
In any case putting preprints may give you an edge - especially if your preprints are related to research they are interested in (for me, quite a few times, they were a starting point of a specialistic discussion).
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Tags: publications, cv, research-undergraduate, arxiv
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thread-11229 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11229 | What are acceptable criteria to select publications for a (systematic) review? | 2013-07-18T21:35:01.807 | # Question
Title: What are acceptable criteria to select publications for a (systematic) review?
I'm in the very beginning of my scientific career, so I don't yet know the standards for (systematic) reviews very well. I feel I don't have so much experience that I could publish my own research in good journals (I have now just two conference papers), so I'm considering to pay close attention for 6-12 months in other peoples' works.
I have a clear research question, but given the massive amount of related papers it's difficult to choose which ones to pick. Of course, I will select papers related to my research question as the first criteria. However, could I narrow the range of included papers more by
* publication date (e.g. only take papers published during the past five years),
* impact factor or citation count,
* type of publication (conference, journal),
* sample size (e.g. number of subjects)?
Or, if not these, what criteria are commonly used? I guess the answer is different for reviews and systematic reviews, so please cover both if possible. thank you!
EDIT: I'm considering this so that it would be possible to try publish my results.
# Answer
I do not find any of these points very relevant. The publication date couldbe useful if your topic is such that older references are indeeed obsolete.
To write a review you want to collect papers that describe your topic as well as possible. A review is usually a good point for others to see the depth and breadth of a subject so being complete is usually a sign of quality.
Given that you have a topic, you need to consider how you should organize your information. Is there any new that can come out of the way you organize your review? A review is not just a collection of older results, you need to provide a synthesis. Often the outcome is to made limitations in older work visible or to identify gaps in knowledge or point at directions for new development. Depending on what the purpose will be you may end up chosing papers differently. However, often you do not know the structure until you have read enough and come to realize how the knowledge in th earea is distributed.
So for me there is no real difference between review and systematic review. A review is simply a way to orgnaize and sort older information in a new way so that new patterns emerge and hint at directions for further research or other forms of new ideas.
> 5 votes
# Answer
In health related fields there is a huge difference between a review and a systematic review. The point of a standard review is to summarise an area of research possibly identifying areas of future research, but not necessarily. A standard review is often conducted in conjunction with a meta analysis or leads to a meta analysis to determine if a particular Patient population is helped by an Intervention more than a Comparison intervention on a set of Outcomes. This leads to the PICO search strategy. There are a number of different frameworks by which systematic reviews can be conducted. A Cochrane review is one such system. There is a whole field of literature associated with conducting systematic reviews.
The goal of a systematic review, and a review in general, is to find all the relevant papers. If you want less papers you need to narrow your question. PICO can help with this.
> 2 votes
# Answer
The point of a review of a field or subfield (IMHO) is to **tell the story** of the development of the field, leading up to explaining **what are the major open questions?** and **why are they important?** Often (though not always), you should focus on **big ideas** and which developments they have lead to. If there was a sequence of 10 papers that repeatedly applied roughly the same ideas to larger data sets, because they got bigger and faster computers, that is probably not very interesting, and something you will likely gloss over (or completely omit) from your review. So you need a way to determine which are the *most important papers* and start with those.
**It's hard to write a review before you know the field.** Here are a few possible ways to get that knowledge quickly:
* Read an old review in the same area. See which papers it claims are foundational, then check to see which more recent papers cite the foundational ones. Iterate.
* Go to lots of seminar talks and see which results always get mentioned in the introduction. Start by reading those papers.
* Ask a more senior student or faculty member where to start.
> 1 votes
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Tags: research-process, publications, review-articles
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thread-11228 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11228 | Job search when coming up for tenure | 2013-07-18T21:18:46.547 | # Question
Title: Job search when coming up for tenure
I notice that coming up for tenure/getting tenure is often an opportunity to move to another institution (even if tenure is granted). How does this work in practice? Is it common for assistant professors to formally go on the job market the year that they are up for tenure? Do they do it only informally, by asking around? Do schools just make offers to up-for-tenure APs without prompting?
I'm curious how this works, because it seems that often times these moves are worked out shortly after tenure decisions are made, so it seems like they must have been in the works before hand.
I'm most interested in highly ranked US based research universities.
# Answer
> 16 votes
This is a manifestation of game-playing, and is completely understandable once one starts thinking in such terms.
For example, if a person is in an excellent situation to get tenure at their current institution, they are probably in an equally good position to get other jobs, perhaps with tenure.
Another feature: if a person has done good-enough work that they've got outside offers, this can set in motion the getting-tenure process at their current institution.
(Shallowly enough, the "best" certification of one's academic virtue is outside offers.)
At the same time, I think most up-for-tenure assistant profs in the U.S. are not really looking for outside offers as they come up for tenure, so even if they could generate them, they'd not try. For that matter, despite the "rewards", many people find this game-playing obnoxious so don't do it.
To answer another part of your question: yes, most formal job offers only arise after informal inquiries and back-and-forth, because... as with high-school dating... getting turned down is embarrassing. :)
The people who are interested in gaming the system continue to do so after tenure, typically...
# Answer
> 9 votes
I cannot think of any assistant profs in the US who did not actively go on the job market when they were coming up for tenure. This seems to me to be reasonable behaviour even if you have no desire to move because
* Getting tenure at your current institution is a bit of a crap shoot. It is obviously influenced by how good your past work is, but there are a lot of other factors at play. The success rate is not particularly high.
* I also believe, although have no data to back it up, that having a tenured offer from one university increases your chances of a tenured offer from another university. This of course could be correlation and not causation, but I am not convinced.
* Being up for tenure is not a black mark on your CV, being turned down for tenure and then going on the job market opens up a big question mark.
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Tags: job, job-search, tenure-track
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thread-11137 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11137 | What are the benefits of getting a PhD in statistics? | 2013-07-14T14:48:35.947 | # Question
Title: What are the benefits of getting a PhD in statistics?
I've been working as a statistician in the marketing world for two years, and I have an M.S. in applied math. I want to change industries a bit (maybe epidemiology or engineering) and I also want to live overseas (ideally, a job where I'd live in one country for a few years and then move on to another).
So, my question is: to accomplish these life goals, does it make sense to get a PhD? Or, is there some other route that would be more beneficial?
# Answer
> 13 votes
A doctoral degree is a credential signifying largely that you are capable of doing independent research at the highest possible level. It is not, in an of itself, a ticket to working in a particular industry or in a particular location any more than a bachelor's or a master's degree. In fact, PhD holders may have substantially more challenges in those aspects, because the additional qualifications make them unattractive for many positions in conventional businesses and industries. (You are unlikely to find a PhD working in a sales division of a multinational conglomerate, for instance.)
The reason to get a PhD is because you are interested in problem solving and doing original work. If this doesn't describe your motivation, I would recommend against pursuing a graduate degree, because it will be a very long few years of your life which are *not* guaranteed to achieve the objectives you've laid out.
# Answer
> 6 votes
A PhD in statistics is more flexible and useful that PhDs in some other areas. The usual issue with PhDs one hears about is that one becomes over-qualified for non-academic work once one has a PhD. Additionally, there is a lot of time spent getting it.
However, statistics is intrinsically an applied science, and one that is in big demand across lots of areas, because it can be applied to lots of areas, unlike most academic disciplines. Specific anecdote: I was once told by a Statistics Professor that the head of a clinical trial is required to have a PhD in statistics (by the NHS, possibly). I don't know if this is true, but it sounds like something that is probably true. As he put it, this creates jobs for PhDs.
With computers being used more and more, and lots of data being created that needs to be analysed, new methods need to be invented to handle all this data. This is the kind of quasi-research work which is quite well suited for someone with a PhD.
Areas like data visualization and graphics are quite hot right now. Having a PhD in an area like that will probably not hurt you. See Hadley Wickham's thesis for example.
Of course, it is possible to get a PhD from a Statistics Department without learning any statistics, for example if you write a Probability (Mathematics) thesis. You probably don't want to do that.
My personal experience (I have a Statistics PhD) is that to get an interesting work, even in industry, a PhD is helpful. Much of the work so-called statisticians do is to mindlessly apply standard algorithms from some software package to data using things like SAS, and then package up the (machine produced) results. If you have a functioning brain, you don't want to do that.
BTW, it seems such questions are not on topic at stats.sx, but you could ask people on chat there - perhaps point to this question.
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Tags: phd, travel, statistics
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thread-11232 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11232 | Suggestions for an alternative grading system | 2013-07-19T03:04:39.617 | # Question
Title: Suggestions for an alternative grading system
I'm designing a leadership development program for a graduate college at a research university. As part of the project, I've designed a summary sheet which each participant will receive. The summary is designed to give them an impression of their overall leadership development. It includes an "overall leadership score," which is currently shown as a number on a 1-10 scale.
My intent is for all students to begin the program at a baseline level of 5. Students who demonstrate multiple positive leadership traits will raise their score above a 5. Students who show a lack of these traits will lower that score.
However, I'd like to replace the 1-10 scale since it will be difficult to keep the baseline or average score of 5 from being equated with a 50, an F, etc. For the same reason, I've avoided the use of a letter scale.
Does anyone have suggestions on an alternative grading system that is well suited to this type of grading task? I'm also trying to find something that won't be too discouraging for students whose leadership scores are below average (seeing a 0 or an F would not get the right message across).
# Answer
I would suggest a rubric that includes the desired qualities of each category. If you're really worried about the scale, don't include the numbers or letters at all, or change to something like Roman Numerals. I would not include more than four or five categories, unless you can really break down differences. E.g.,
> I. Not making progress. The student needs to improve his/her leadership skills, to include participating in mentor/mentee relationships with junior students, or actively seeking out lead roles in the lab.
>
> II. Pre-leadership. The student is new to the lab, and has not yet developed leadership roles. The student should start looking for opportunities for leadership, and should begin considering the type of leader he or she wants to be. The student should thoughtfully observe other leaders and their leadership styles.
>
> III. Making progress. The student is actively engaged in a leadership role in the lab and/or has made mentor/mentee relationships with junior students. The student should continue to develop his/her leadership skills in these roles.
>
> IV. Excellent leadership development. The student has actively developed his/her leadership opportunities, and is capable of independent leadership in the lab. Other students view him/her as a quality leader and are comfortable going to the student for guidance.
>
> V. Phenomenal leader. The student is qualified to independently lead large groups of other students, and is able to mentor others in leadership roles.
In this example, I would start everyone off at (II). Everyone will know they should look for leadership opportunities, and it should be relatively easy to get into the (III) category. Obviously, this is only an example, and can be tailored to your situation.
> I'm also trying to find something that won't be too discouraging for students whose leadership scores are below average (seeing a 0 or an F would not get the right message across).
I do think having some sort of forcing function is necessary; otherwise, what is the reason to improve? In my example, you could tone down "Not making progress" (or take it out), but if you do want to show students who aren't improving that they need to, you should have at least one negative category.
> 3 votes
# Answer
It is not clear what you are trying to accomplish with your grading system. If the point is to evaluate/rank the students then 1-10 is probably as good as anything else. If it is to be used as a formative tool then using an absolute scale is probably less helpful and what the students need to know are their relative strength and weaknesses and areas that they can improve on. What this means is that a student who gets a 9 out of 10 still can improve his/her leadership, similarly a student with a 2 out of 10 likely has leadership areas/traits that can be improved more than others. It is not clear to me that the competition aspect of ranking the students will be beneficial in this case. If you go with a relative scale you could just make the total of the numbers sum to 10 (or 1 or 100). Better would probably be a stacked bar or pie chart so it is clearer that comparisons across individuals are meaningless.
I think the best "grading" system for leadership is probably one that doesn't assign presence/absence of leadership traits, but rather one that characterizes in positive terms the type of leadership each individual is most suited for (e.g. the managerial grid model).
> 3 votes
# Answer
It's a challenging question. I believe your goal is to measure progress and not overall leadership-levels. That is, Student A could enter with strong leadership skills and would start at a 5. Student B could enter with weak leadership skills and would also start at a 5. If Student B shows more progress in improving their leadership skills, then Student B should end up with a 7 (for example) while Student A who was a bit lax and did not improve might end up with a 4 or even 3. The goal, as I understand, is to measure **improvement** only.
If my understanding is correct you have a challenge in that if students know this, they will try to corrupt (by under-performing) the baseline. Then they will naturally appear to have improved more than they really have giving them a better grade not by improving but by gaming your grading system.
You could structure it by *learning outcomes* whereby points of improvement are each an outcome. For example:
* Outcome 1: Improve ability to communicate to those in subordinate positions
* Outcome 2: Improve......
By this, you do not fix the levels but show what areas in which each student should actually improve. This also makes it extremely clear what the goals are. You could assign a certain number of points per outcome (10 for outcome 1, 5 for outcome 2, etc.) to sum up to a total score as well.
I know this is not a discussion board but I'd love to hear what you ended up doing.
> 3 votes
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Tags: grades, grading, evaluation
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thread-11240 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11240 | What should an undergrad CS student know to publish to a conference? | 2013-07-19T10:44:15.017 | # Question
Title: What should an undergrad CS student know to publish to a conference?
I'm a junior looking for insights on intro to academia. My GPA is considered low (~3.2), but I believe I have a reasonable understanding and experience in the field I'd like to study and would like to try to submit a paper to a conference to aim for top-10 CS grad schools and see if I really have research interest and potential.
I'm not sure what I should expect and how to plan for the next 1~2 years. Grad school applications are usually due before the spring semester, so I have roughly ~1.5 years to prepare, right? I noticed that the first deadlines for a lot of conferences in the field are between April~June. Will I have enough time to write one? How long does it usually take to publish a first research paper?
I'm planning on asking professors if I can join a project when the semester starts (or ask for a review when I write one? I'm not sure what the options are). I wasn't planning on going to grad school until recently, so I'm not very familiar with this process, and I'd like to hear what you think.
# Answer
> 5 votes
> *How long does it usually take to publish a first research paper?*
That question depends on a lot of factors. Here are a few of them:
* What is the significance of your research?
* How much of your research is unique, novel, and relevant?
* Will other computer scientists be interested in your findings?
* How well can you write? How well can you organize your paper?
* Where do you intend to publish?
Some conferences and publications are more competitive than others. (Put another way, some have a lower acceptance rate than others.) Much of that depends on who sponsors the conference or publication.
First, you have to do the research (this is not trivial). Significant findings need to come from that research (this doesn't always happen). You have to write that in a way that will appeal to the community (the community can be rather fickle sometimes). Lastly, you have to find some venue where the work can be presented (it's not always easy to find a good match).
If a paper gets rejected, it could be because:
* The research doesn't report anything new or significant
* The research doesn't report anything of interest to the community
* The paper is poorly written
* The paper doesn't cite other related research, leading to a credibility problem
* There simply wasn't room for your paper in the publication, or it wasn't a good match for that venue
Getting back to your original question, you might be able to publish in a year, if everything goes very smoothly. However, that's a huge "IF." Even established researchers can spend years getting ready for a publication, only to see it be rejected by a committee.
Publication can be a long and arduous process, with plenty of opportunities for obstacles, setbacks, and dead ends. It can be very hard to estimate a timetable, particularly for a first-timer going from start to finish.
Your best bet might be to see what's going on at your university, and see if you can get involved with an established, ohgoing research effort. Before you do that, it might be worth doing a self-evaluation first, so that you're prepared to tell a faculty member what you can offer the research team. For example, perhaps you're a crack programmer, and a research project at your institution needs some software written, in order to complete an experiment or simulation. That might be a more realistic way to get started as a researcher.
# Answer
> 3 votes
First things first -- generally, you do research with the intent to learn something and/or to solve an open problem, not with the intent to publish a paper so you can get into graduate school. This relates directly to your question:
> Will I have enough time to write \[a paper\]?
Without knowing what you're planning on researching, or how it will turn out, this is unanswerable. Writing a research paper for publication isn't as simple as saying you're going to do it -- you have to have a legitimate problem to work on, the tools and ability to produce a novel contribution regarding that problem, and the drive to make it happen. Then, of course, you have to actually write and edit the paper, put together any graphs or other figures that demonstrate your contribution, find a suitable conference (or journal or workshop, etc.) to publish the paper in, and then actually submit it by the deadline.
All of that said, your idea to ask professors about joining their research groups is a good one. With this plan, you have the potential to:
1. Find out if you enjoy and have the temperament for research.
2. Get mentorship from a professor, grad students, or other more experienced undergraduates.
3. Find out what problems are interesting and worth pursuing.
4. Practice the steps of going from idea to published results.
Once you find a professor to work with (and again, I suggest phrasing your request in terms of why you are interested in computer science research, and not on the means to getting into graduate school), you will start getting answers to the other questions, like what specific conferences you might want to shoot for. Obviously, it behooves you to plan ahead in order to meet conference deadlines, but until you start the research, you won't be able to determine whether you will eventually have enough good results to put together a paper.
As a general guideline, it would not surprise me if you can find a good problem to work on and submit it to a workshop or conference within a year and a half. You might also be able to work on an ongoing project and end up as an author on a paper or two that come from this work. Good luck!
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Tags: undergraduate, research-undergraduate, computer-science
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thread-11250 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11250 | When submitting a research paper as an independent researcher, is it advisable to have a professor look at it first? | 2013-07-19T21:02:09.550 | # Question
Title: When submitting a research paper as an independent researcher, is it advisable to have a professor look at it first?
Is it advisable to have a professor from a university look at your paper before you submit it to a journal, since they might want partial credit? and would it take the journal a longer time to referee your research paper if you have no affiliation?
# Answer
> 8 votes
I'll try to answer you two specific questions:
* *“Is it advisable to have a professor from a university look at your paper before you submit it?”***Yes, if you have no previous experience of publishing papers** (as a principal author). Academic publication is a game with a set of written rules and some non-written expectations. You can find the rules indicated on the publisher's webpage (guidelines to authors, editorial policy, etc.). If you have read a good number of papers, including many papers from the specific journal (or conference, or …) you are submitting to, then you may have inferred some of the non-written expectations. But otherwise, having someone to help you with the more formal part of academic writing will enhance your paper's chances.
* *“Is it advisable to have a professor from a university look at your paper before you submit it?”***Yes again, if you do not have a very good understanding of the field, its advances and its directions.** To be somewhat brutally honest (and in line with paul’s comment): from experience, newcomers to research, or to a specific field, have a natural tendency to reïnvent the wheel or overestimate the impact and novelty of their work. It's okay, judging these correctly involves a very good grasp of the overall field, both in-breadth and in-depth.
* *“Would it take the journal a longer time to referee your research paper if you have no affiliation?”***No**. For two articles of the same quality, with an unknown author, I don't think the presence of an affiliation would impact review time.
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*Edit to answer question in comment: “Would a professor who reviews the paper want credit?”***It depends** on the amount of work required and the ethics of the person you ask. If reviewing the paper requires significant amount of time, especially because there are many faults with the paper that need to be fixed, you could see that there must be incentive for the professor to invest in it. In all cases, **discuss this issue upfront!**
# Answer
> 2 votes
The question is a bit vague since you have not provided your own level of education or within what framework you do research.
Since it is generally possible for anyone to publish a paper, you will not need to go through an academic. It may, however, be a very good step to take since essentially no-one can write a fault-free paper and if you do not have the experience or research eucation, you will find it almost necessary to stand a chance with a journal. Such a "review" will most certanly weed out any major problems with your paper. A problem here may of course be that your inexperience may make the task to improve the paper very time consuming (again, not knowing your own background makes it difficult to assess what help you may need) and hence make persons less likely to take on the job.
The journal will as I can see ot spend more or less time your manuscript than they would any other of similar quality. If the journal accepts it for review (general quality check) it will be sent out to reviewers for more careful scrutiny (scientific quality check) after which the paper is recommended for either revisions or is rejected. none of this would be different in your case unless one taes into consideration that you may not be as fluent in scientific writing (which means rejection is more liekly than otherwse).
So a good plan is to try to contact persons at an academic institution, present your work and see if they would consider helping you. It is not certain you will be helped because your manscript will be extra work done in addition to everything else. If you cannot get help then you can hopefully try to submit the manuscript anyway, but I strongly recommend you to spend time looking at how papers in the field are written and also pick up a good reference book on scientific writing to make sure you avoid basic mistakes.
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Tags: publications, paper-submission, independent-researcher
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thread-11264 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11264 | Is there a reliable way to measure how difficult it is to be admitted to a PhD program? | 2013-07-20T10:02:57.823 | # Question
Title: Is there a reliable way to measure how difficult it is to be admitted to a PhD program?
If I wanted to check how competitive it is to get into a school's PhD (or MS/PhD track) program, what should I look at? For undergraduate, I usually search for the incoming SAT/ACT scores and the acceptance rate, and I found that pretty reliable. Is there something like that for grad schools?
# Answer
> 2 votes
I am not aware of any absolute measure for this. However, you can have a general idea by:
1. Some schools provide last year(s) statistics about their programs (usually in the prospective student section). For example, program A has attracted X number of applications and Y applications were accepted.
2. Also, some programs have a fix limit (i.e. due to number of equipments available) for number of applications to be accepted.
3. Sometimes online admission results like the one in Grad Cafe give you a sense on how strict the school is.
# Answer
> 1 votes
Although not entirely accurate, due to the high variability of individual applicants and admissions committees, UT El Paso created an "Acceptance Estimator" for Computer Science applicants. The Estimator provides an ordered list of schools the applicant is likely to be accepted to.
UTEP CS Acceptance Estimator
My gripe is that it largely ignores the most important component of one's application: Research Experience.
This Estimator is designed to help you find schools that match up to your skills, and by no means is 100% correct.
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Tags: phd, graduate-admissions
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thread-11097 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11097 | Ethics of publishing received peer reviews | 2013-07-12T12:54:37.757 | # Question
Title: Ethics of publishing received peer reviews
What are the ethics of publishing (on the web, etc.) peer reviews received for a paper? Does your answer change if the paper was accepted or rejected?
I am specifically interested in the "one-shot" case typical of computing science conferences, without rebuttals, where there is no or limited dialogue between an author and the reviewers.
This is quite distinct from Can I publish the reviews I write? as here I am talking about reviews I have received, not those I have written - the reviews' authors retain their anonymity, and presumably the paper would be included alongside those reviews.
Vijay's response below includes a summary of much of the other responses and my comments on those.
# Answer
> 8 votes
Let me add some data points to this discussion. Some items below are about discussing reviews and editors in a public forum and not about publishing reviews.
* Jens Teubner makes available the reviews to his papers online. I do not know him but I have heard from someone who does that he said he has not received negative feedback about doing this. Maybe you can ask him for more information.
* Doron Zeilberger has published reviews in Opinion 87 and for his paper Automatic CounTiling.
* Doron Zeilberger's Opinion 61 is about rejections and accountability (it has a response from Luca Trevisan) and his Opinion 81 is about rejection and snobbery.
* Peter Clark's mail to Doron Zeilberger about some material Zeilberger published online. This is only tangential to your question, but I think it's good to keep in mind that when you go down the road of open publication, you should be ready for others publishing material about you or your reviews.
* The Writings of Leslie Lamport chronicles in very direct terms the stories behind his papers including some notes about editors and reviewers (for example papers 62, 122,129, ).
* In The Writings of Leslie Lamport Paper 132 he talks about having written an '*unkind review*'.
I have been meaning to publish my reviews for multiple reasons and I am glad to see that other people have been thinking the same and some have done it. I do not think the result or answer should depend on whether the paper is accepted or rejected. If reviews are published, I believe that one should also publish the version of the article that was used to make the reviews. Otherwise, the reviews are like quotations taken out of context. If there are coauthors, one should obtain their permission first, or at least include a disclaimer that you are publishing your reviews on your behalf only. As an example of a disclaimer, see Lamport's page:
> Some of the stories read like complaints of unfair treatment by editors or referees. Such cases are bound to arise in any activity based on human judgment. On the whole, I have had little trouble getting my papers published. In fact, I have profited from the natural tendency of editors and referees to be less critical of the work of established scientists. But I think it's worth mentioning the cases where the system didn't work as it should.
The notification of acceptance is usually signed by the editor of the venue, even in the case of anonymous review, so one should ideally obtain their permission if you will reveal who the editor is. The same applies for reviewer permission in signed reviews. I cannot tell whether people in the links I give above obtained editor permission first so there may be precedent for not doing so. Publishing reviews intended for private circulation still takes them out of context. I would add a disclaimer that the reviews and notification letter were written as private communication and if published without permission of named entities, I would note that too. The latter is in case your intention is to protest the status quo by subverting standard conventions.
I haven't answered your question because I don't have a clear answer. Publishing reviews is not conventional academic behaviour. Doing so can be construed as unprofessional depending on how you publish them and what additional commentary you add. Calling it "unethical" seems a rather heavy handed judgement to make. There are things an anonymous reviewer can do that are clearly unethical (steal research, suppress publication, circulate the manuscript) or questionable depending on context (force citations, comparisons, reject without reading, write ad hominem reviews etc.). There is very little an author can do to wrong a reviewer that is remotely comparable and publishing a review does not seem remotely on that scale to me.
There are multiple reasons to publish reviews including accountability for all parties involved (including authors) and as a form of protest. I believe this intent is important to consider because forms of protest do subvert what may be considered acceptable behaviour. A useful thought exercise might be to put yourself in the reviewer seat and ask if you would be fine with similar treatment. I would not have an issue if the reviews I have written were made public (even if I knew that stylometric techniques could be used to identify me). I do not think all reviewers feel that way.
Finally, let me point again to Jens Teubner's page, which comes across to me as a model of how to publish reviews while retaining professionalism and dignity.
# Answer
> 8 votes
In the journals where I have been invloved as editor, author or reviewer (except in ones where the review process is open on the web), the implicit understanding has been that the communication is closed between the author-editor-reviewer. I have not seen any explicit rules stated by these journals to control against any such public dissemination but I have not looked for it either. I think that, particularly in cases where it is not explicitly stated that reviews are public, posting reviews without consent from the reviewer would be similar to publisihing someone private letters wihout consent. It is not illegal but ethically very distasteful. I do not think it matters whether or not the review was anonymous. Whether the paper was accepted or not would not matter either. I would consider posting without consent just as bad under all circumstances.
# Answer
> 7 votes
As argued in the answer by Peter Jansson, it is ethically not acceptable to publish peer reviews that you receive for your paper, and I agree with that.
But there is also a legal aspect to it. The review is an intellectual work and as such will typically be subject to copyright. And that holds even if you don't know the author. So publishing a review will be a copyright violation, unless you get permission from the person who wrote the review.
If you want to highlight bad review practices, instead of just *publishing* the review consider *citing* from it. The actual difference may be marginal, but from both a legal and an ethical perspective, you should fare much better with this approach.
And my answer doesn't change depending on whether the paper is accepted or not.
# Answer
> 2 votes
If the question is "Should the author publish the reviews he got for his paper(s)?", then I'd say no (**maybe** with some exceptions, but this would have require a per-case discussion). I believe the other answers have more or less covered that.
But, if the question is "Should the journals publish the reviews?", then I believe it would be both ethical and useful to publish the final positive reviews, and I have several reasons for this.
First, giving a positive review is like giving a positive grade on an exam. The person doing so should stay behind his "verdict" with his professional reputation. The review is one of the results of the work that the researchers do, so publishing positive reviews doesn't seem to me much different from publishing the results of the research in papers.
Second, and quite related to the first, I've read some really crappy papers, with nonsense, obvious errors, misquotes, etc. Reviewer cannot "catch" everything, but some of the papers get bad enough that it is obvious that the reviewer didn't do his job. If the reviewers knew their names would forever be publicly associated with such paper, I believe some of these might actually try to do their job.
As for the negative reviews, I see no point in "shaming" the author if his paper was too bad (in whatever way) to be published. If this was not the case, but the reviewer is to be "blamed" (i.e., for misunderstanding the paper), the issue can be resolved with the editor, or the paper can be submitted elsewhere, again giving no reason to make the negative review public.
One might argue that the negative review is also like *publishing the results of the research in papers*, but I see it more like a failed research, which is not something that one usually publishes.
# Answer
> 1 votes
The ethics are the same as publishing any other communication that is assumed to be in confidence: if the content contains critical information about an illegal activity, you may (depending on the nature/severity) be morally obligated to turn it over as evidence to an appropriate party; if it is otherwise urgent or critical for others to be aware, you may be morally encouraged to find a venue to publicize it (as "whistleblower"), and in pretty much all other cases, you should keep in private.
You can complain to editors and others responsible for the conference or journal; you can commiserate with colleagues and try to find out whether this is systematic or not. But trying to shame reviewers in public is very unlikely to accomplish any valuable goal. (It may provide a satisfying revenge at the cost of other of your goals; I encourage you to think very carefully before deciding that this is worth it.)
There are all sorts of reasons you might have a bad review (covered in other answers); assuming one that makes you the most angry and/or feel most self-justified is a very natural reaction, but probably isn't the best way to a productive conclusion.
Instead, when you find things like this, you are probably much better off applying to other conferences, publishing in other journals, and maybe quoting (anonymously) the worst parts of the review in a blog or somesuch explaining why you're no longer going to whichever conference or considering publishing in whatever journal. There are options in some fields for publishing with open reviews (the Frontiers life science journals, for instance).
Publishing the full review and naming names is a good way to make people angry, make other reviewers not want to review your work, and to not get anything to change. Adding your voice (and papers!) to existing movements that seek to improve the peer-review process is much more productive, even if it's not as viscerally satisfying.
To be completely clear about the ethical implications: you are breaching the trust of the editor(s)/organizer(s)/reviewer(s) that reviews are confidential information. Breaching trust makes people less likely to trust you in the future, and is (in most ethical frameworks, including intuitive ones) unethical unless perhaps there is a very compelling case why this must be done. In your situation you have not articulated such a compelling case, especially given that are a variety of other avenues to take if you're actually concerned with the quality of the reviews. If you are working in academia, presumably you know how to quote tiny sections of a full work to make your point--that's much more acceptable.
# Answer
> 0 votes
As said before, publishing reviews breaks convention but this, in itself, does not make it unethical. Publishing anonymous reviews does not really affect reviewers—reviewers could do much worse to authors than what authors could do to reviewers. (See Vijay's answer for examples.)
In my opinion, the confidentiality of reviews is to protect the author: the fact that a paper got submitted remains confidential prior to publication. Thus, authors may considerably rework their paper after receiving peer reviews, resubmit to another conference or even completely abandon it.
Reviewers are protected by their anonymity -- such that a young researcher can openly state his opinion about the paper of a renowned academic without fearing bad consequences. I'd assume even stylometric analysis cannot reveal a reviewer's identity without doubt.
Despite all that, publishing reviews might still be regarded as unprofessional, depending on circumstances and context.
# Answer
> -2 votes
This might be related to your question: http://www.peerageofscience.org/
The concept is that 1) you peer-review your paper *before* submitting it to a journal, 2) peer-reviews are peer-reviewed, 3) participating journals send you publication offers if they like your paper, 4) you may submit your peer-reviewed paper to any journal you like
I'm not sure are the reviews public themselves, I did not use the site yet, but at least there are peer-review scores appearing on the main page
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Tags: peer-review, ethics
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thread-11247 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11247 | Having Public Consumption on my record to greatly affect my PhD applications? | 2013-07-19T17:40:10.690 | # Question
Title: Having Public Consumption on my record to greatly affect my PhD applications?
I made a really stupid mistake. Me and some other graduate students were playing Dungeons and Dragons in my lab after hours (9 pm) this summer and we each opened up a beer and the cleaners called the cops on us. I think I'm going to get an academic censure because of it, which means I think that it will go on my transcripts. This is the only case of my misconduct, and I feel really stupid that I did it. My question is will this greatly affect my ability to go into a PhD program? I joined this masters program as a stepping stone, and have done very well academically and with my thesis in this program. I'm worried that all the progress I have made will go away because of one lapse of judgement.
# Answer
I would do everything I can to prevent this going on my transcript. The first thing I would do is write a letter of apology to the cleaning crew for my misbehaviour. Do not approach the cleaners directly, but rather through their boss. Then I would contact the head of the MS program to explain what happened. While waiting for that meeting I would schedule a meeting with an alcohol counsellor so I could demonstrate I do not have a problem drinking. You may also want to enrol in a workplace sensitivity training course.
I cannot recall seeing an application with anything like this before. I don't think people would really hold it against you and you could explain it in your cover letter. That said graduate school admission is competitive.
> 8 votes
# Answer
I don't think you need to worry unless there's something more to the context. Drinking a single beer in a computer lab seems pretty harmless; the university might legitimately object to the risk of spilling your beer, but this should not be a career-ending mistake. On the other hand, drinking in a chemistry lab could be a very serious safety violation, especially if you were tending to an experiment during the game.
Assuming the only problem is a technical violation of the "public consumption" rule and that you retain the full support of your letter of recommendation writers, I doubt it will do you any harm even if it does end up on your transcript. You should look at your transcript before applying to see exactly what it says. You can then include a few sentences somewhere in your Ph.D. application addressing this issue and explaining that the "academic censure" was only because you had a single beer in a campus location not specifically permitted. This is very important, because to me the term "academic censure" sounds more like cheating or plagiarism.
Assuming you aren't applying to Brigham Young University or KAUST, I can't see why anyone would care about this sort of technicality. It would lower my opinion of the university, rather than the applicant. (On the other hand, if there's more to the story, such as safety violations, then you'll have to work harder to sort it out.)
> 4 votes
# Answer
Daniel’s and Anonymous’ answers are great, and I want to emphasize that they are not mutually exclusive. I’ll also add some tidbits:
1. Fight as much as you can to avoid it getting on your academic record. It may not matter much for admissions later on, or it may, you can never know for sure. It sure is easier if there is nothing to explain. You can tell the admission committee that “it was just a single beer”, but that's still just your word: all the official information they have is less informative and, probably, scarier than that. Also, being known from the start as “the guy with the beer-drinking record”, even if you get the position, may not be so good.
However: fight nice! Don't create stronger hostility than you already have…
2. If it does get on your record, be upfront and address it straight on in your cover letters. Doing so, people may not care so much. If you aren't upfront with it, they will definitely not take the risk.
> 2 votes
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Tags: graduate-school, graduate-admissions
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thread-11282 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11282 | Publishing while changing institutions | 2013-07-21T09:28:13.707 | # Question
Title: Publishing while changing institutions
I'm submitting an mathematics article concerning research that was done entirely while I was an undergraduate at University A. This August I will be a graduate student at University B. The only funding I received came from NSF through a ten week program at University C at the very beginning of the project, after which I finished the research on my own while attending University A. On the other hand, while University B has nothing to do with the publication, it is the most up to date institution as far as contact information goes.
Should I put University A or University B as my affiliation (or both)?
# Answer
> 2 votes
The standard solution for your question is to indicate your current address in a footnote:
> Alexander Gruber <sup>a,†</sup>, Another O. Tor <sup>a</sup>
>
> <sup>a</sup> University A, Department of Criminology, 221B Baker Street, London (UK)
> Currently at University B, Logic Department, Whitehaven Mansions, Sandhurst Sq, London (UK)
If you didn't use any of the resources of University B, that is the way to go. Otherwise, University B should be listed as an affiliation.
The situation regarding your University C is less clear to me: if you were affiliated with them, you need to list them. If they only “handled” the money given out by NSF, then simply mention them in the funding or acknowledgments section:
> **Acknowledgments**
> A. G. is grateful to NSF program #132-1237 for funding, administered by University C.
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Tags: publications, mathematics, affiliation
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thread-11287 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11287 | Why am I worrying when I read a paper? | 2013-07-21T18:28:53.727 | # Question
Title: Why am I worrying when I read a paper?
I'm beginner in research and I'm doing my PhD. I would like to know why when I read a paper I worry as if I have exam tomorrow and I have to prepare for it. How can I ignore that feeling and increase my productivity?
# Answer
> 16 votes
Perhaps one little "therapy" often relevant is to try to remind yourself that *you* are the authority in reading papers critically, and the goals are about *progress*, not evaluation of *you* by some third party.
It is understandable that "school" has left one with an excessively paranoid concern about being attacked, being "checked-on", being examined, being doubted, and so on. Indeed, "school" often includes exaggerated measures that express very clearly an antagonistic, adversarial attitude of "teachers" toward "students". Naturally, many negligent students are able to ignore this pressure, while students who were already doing the right thing are the ones who feel that somehow they're not doing enough. A similar dynamic exists in many human enterprises.
So, again, the thing to repeat to yourself over and over is that now *you* are to function as an authority, *you* are to assess these papers. The point is *not* so much any more someone *else's* assessment of *your* "performance" (often on meaningless, contrived, artificial tasks).
In particular, the common "teaching-examining" devices of "trick questions" should be forgotten. When encountering a new idea, don't immediately be worrying how someone could use the idea to trip you up, but, instead, what *constructive* use *you* could make of it. In particular, if it does not (at least for the moment) seem useful to you, then don't spend a lot of time on it just for the sake of self-defense against trick questions! Nevertheless, one should often keep a "pointer" to seemingly useless ideas, because their utility may be discovered only later.
But don't study things whose utility seems null. Move on, just keeping a "bookmark", so if/when something percolates into your head later, you can go back and look a second time.
# Answer
> 6 votes
We cannot tell you *why* you are worrying: the best person to understand the *why* is you. But we can tell you that there is no need to worry. Reading a paper is one of the everyday tasks of research, and while it is an important part of the job, you will have plenty of time to learn the ropes. If you're a beginner, just read through the paper, takes notes of the main points you understand, and the points you don't understand that seem important. You can then research those, or ask to your advisor or colleagues.
In the end, reading papers is a statistics game: there are very few papers that are so crucial to your own research that you positively have to understand every single last idea and word in them (I would say, less than 10 during a PhD). Most of the time, some ideas are usefuls, some are not, plus there is a lot of redundancy between papers… I used to be quite scared that I would have missed some important paper in the bibliographic search, but quite frankly it's rare for an important idea to exist in a single place and never have been reüsed or quoted.
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Tags: research-process, reading
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thread-11297 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11297 | Optimizing a thesis writing workflow for Bachelor and Master theses | 2013-07-22T09:01:20.403 | # Question
Title: Optimizing a thesis writing workflow for Bachelor and Master theses
We are at the moment designing a document which we can hand out to Bachelor and Master students to give them a general idea on how to efficiently write a thesis. We also do this to make correcting easier for us. We are working in the field of cell biology. A thesis in our field is usually structured like this:
1. Abstract
2. Introduction
3. Materals and Methods
4. Results
5. Discussion
6. Acknowledgements
What we've come up so far is the following list of best practices. This is based on our experiences with previous students and our own theses.
1. You can already start writing your materials and methods (M&M) section during your regular lab schedule. This will save you time later on.
2. You will have discussions with your supervisors on your results, in which you will decide on what to include in your thesis.
3. Start by making the figures for your results and a corresponding caption. Lay out bullet points of your results. Afterwards, start writing the text around these bullet points. After finishing, send this part to your supervisor for proofreading.
4. Proceed with the discussion. Again, lay out bullet points, but this time, before writing, clarify each point with your supervisor. This will prevent you from having to rewrite large parts.
5. Continue with the introduction and, if you haven’t written it yet, M&M. The introduction should contain everything the reader has to know in order to understand why you did what you did and what the results mean. Be brief and clear.
6. Finalize by writing an abstract (“Zusammenfassung”). This has to be written and edited very carefully because it will be the part most people read. Your thesis also needs to include an english abstract which is an exact translation of the german one.
7. Don’t forget the acknowledgements (“Danksagung”). This is the second part everyone will read, and it’s extremely unpolite if you don’t have one. It doesn’t have to be formal and can be personal.
My question: Is there something important missing and would you recommend things differently? Maybe you could elaborate how you handle this in your lab.
# Answer
It is a very good set of advice. There are two very practical areas that seem unaddressed and that are, in my experience, somewhat… *problematic* with some students:
1. **Proof-reading**. Find someone, other than yourself, who will do a final proofreading of the thesis for language and clarity. Not necessarily someone from your field, but checking typos, missing figures, acronyms that are never defined, that sort of stuff… That person should not be you, because when you've spent so much time writing the thesis, you won't even see these details any more when you read it.
Also, check with your supervisor what are his expectations regarding proofreading/corrections. It depends on your university and the supervisor himself, but in many cases they will want to read it themselves, and possibly offer some remarks and corrections.
2. **Scheduling**. You are aware of the submission deadline, but mind that the final stuff takes time. In particular, if your supervisor has to read it, make sure to give him enough time to do so. So, start with a clear set of intermediate deadlines, and if you start to miss them, take action! Nothing's as bad as procrastinating ’til the last day thinking *“I can still write that in 24 hours if I get to it”*.
> 7 votes
# Answer
I think your list looks great, but I would suggest adding a couple of "soft" recommendations; e.g.,
> If you are struggling with a certain topic, idea, or way forward, ask for assistance as early as possible after you have exhausted your ideas. Do try to solve problems on your own, but don't let that take too much time that you fall behind.
I don't know much about the cell biology field, but do your papers normally have "Related Work" sections? I assume they must also have a References (or Bibliography) section?
> 5 votes
# Answer
For me, the difficulty was that the research part was too interesting, so I ended up writing papers, trying new techniques etc., but neglected the thesis writing. If you have students like me, *make* them to write some parts of their theses before they are *allowed* to do more research in the lab.
> 5 votes
# Answer
This is impressive, very impressive.
The only thing I can suggest adding is a point for students to continuously update their bibliography as they proceed with their research. Alongside this, they ought to continuously include the subsequent in-text references on each part they paraphrase.
Perhaps, and this is a bit of an 'out there' suggestion, but maybe suggest that the students upload drafts to a plagiarism checking program such as Turnitin.com on a regular basis.
Hope this helps.
> 3 votes
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Tags: writing, thesis
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thread-10963 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10963 | Citing a Youtube video in New Hart's Rules style? | 2013-07-05T06:10:45.073 | # Question
Title: Citing a Youtube video in New Hart's Rules style?
I'm preparing a paper for publication with Taylor & Francis Group. The journal follows the **TF no. 1** style but there is no mention on how to cite a source such an online video. Rather, at the end of the style guide they say to refer to **New Hart's Rules** for usage that is not specified in the guide or uncertain. However, New Hart's Rules seems to refer to **Butcher’s Copy - editing 10.6**. So, I'm rather confused on how to cite such a source.
The citation in APA Style would be as follows:
> Sesame Workshop. (Producer) (2010). Sesame Street. Journey to Ernie: Beach \[Web\]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnRnxkX2U2U&feature=plcp
Does anyone know how should be adjusted to meet *Taylor & Francis no. 1 / New Hart's Rules / Butcher’s Copy - editing 10.6* style?
# Answer
> 4 votes
I would take your best shot at getting the citation style correct and then let the copy editor deal with it. I cannot imagine a manuscript being rejected because someone used the wrong citation style for an "esoteric" entry type. Part of taking your best shot would be to scan the reference lists of the past few issues or a through electronic search for someone else who has cited a youtube video.
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Tags: publications, citations
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thread-11311 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11311 | Paper with editor for longer than two and a half months | 2013-07-22T19:13:31.797 | # Question
Title: Paper with editor for longer than two and a half months
I have submitted a paper to a journal 2 and a half months ago. Its status remains "With editor". From your experience, is this normal? If not, how should I deal with that?
# Answer
One of my papers took well over two *years* to get published, thanks mostly to two review periods lasting around 10 months (IIRC). So 2 1/2 months is not that outlandish.
But it does not hurt to ask politely about the status of your paper! It may be well down on someone's list of things to do, and a polite reminder that you are interested in its fate may be all that's needed to bump it up near the top. Presumably, if you ask, the editor will give some indication as to approximately when reviews might be ready, and then you'll know when to send another polite reminder if nothing has happened.
> 5 votes
# Answer
The time frame you mention sounds long to me. But having said that, there can be several reasons why this is the case. I assume that the journal you have submitted to uses an electronic submission system?
Reasons can be:
* The journal is crowded with papers
* The editor(s) has/ve difficulties finding reviewers for the paper
* The time frame is "normal" for the journal, "with editor" includes review time.
I suggest you try to figure out how long the time from submission to accept/reject (turnaround time) is for the particular journal you submitted to. If it is possible to see more details that would be good but knowing the average turnaround time allows you to assess if 2.5 months is long even for this journal.
Since I edit a journal I can mention our time frames as an example:
* Choice of editor 10 days
* Choice of associate editor 10 days
* Chose reviewers 3 weeks
* Reviews 3 weeks
* Editor decision 3 weeks
* Revision 3-6 weeks
* Editor evaluation 3 weeks.
This puts the theoretical turnaround at 18-21 weeks (around 5 moths). What usually makes significant delays are reviewers not returning reviews on time and authors not providing revisions on time. But the bottom line is that for me 2.5 months is long and if you suspect your paper is held up too long you should contact the editor.
> 3 votes
# Answer
Expectation of review time and time taken for the editorial decision vary widely depending on the field.
In my own field, chemistry, 2.5 months is about the time when people would start to send an email to the editor and ask about the status of the manuscript. A review of the reviewing process for Angewandte Chemie, one of the field’s flagship journals, shows a median “submission to editorial decision” time of 5 weeks, with an average of 6.8 weeks. I recommend this paper, because it's full of statistics, and contains many links to data and reviews for other journals in various fields:
> How Long is the Peer Review Process for Journal Manuscripts? A Case Study on *Angewandte Chemie International Edition*
> Lutz Bornmann and Hans-Dieter Daniel
> Chimia **2010**, *64*, 72–77
You can find plenty of similar statistics for journals in various fields, by a simple web search: biomedicine, medicine, statistics, philosophy… This confirms my initial point that **review times** (and thus author expectations) **vary widely on your field and the specific journal**: the average review time in the *Journal of Philosophy* is 12.6… **months**!
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*Edit:* oh, and I have to disagree with your comment below Peter’s answer… ***“with editor”* most often includes the time spent in review**. I would say *always*, because it has never been any different in my experience. Many web submission interfaces actually don't allow you to know the internal changes of status between the editor and the reviewers (apart from the American Physical Society system, where you can track every correspondence the editor and reviewers have exchange)
> 3 votes
# Answer
The turnaround time for a paper submitted to a journal is dependent on the journal and the time it takes to have for the editor to receive the feedback from the reviewers and for them to review the reviews. I have had to wait 5 months for feedback, some have to wait far longer.
Have you read what the turnaround time should be? This information is usually available on the journal's author information website.
> 0 votes
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Tags: publications
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thread-11317 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11317 | What is a “capstone track” in a Master’s program? | 2013-07-22T20:15:29.483 | # Question
Title: What is a “capstone track” in a Master’s program?
I've read in this other question:
> The Master's program (Software Engineering) I'm enrolled in offers both a thesis track and capstone track.
I'm somewhat familiar with the overall US academic system, but I've never heard of a “capstone track” before. I web-searched it, and found quite a few institutions that offer it, it seems a sort of more practice-oriented or business-oriented way of completing a given degree. It does not appear to be universal.
So: **what is a “capstone track” in general, and how is it different from a Master of Engineering degree?**
# Answer
Many software engineering programs offer the option of a "capstone" software project instead of a thesis to complete the degree. This is typically a project that stretches over a full semester, or year, or even longer. In my department, these projects are designed in cooperation with local industry, so there are real "customers". The intention is that the project will force the student to synthesize all the skills and knowledge acquired in other classes in the program, and will give them something closer to real-world experience that a typical class project.
As for "how is this different from a Master of Engineering", I have no idea. Everybody gives their degrees different names; there is no standard. (My department offers a capstone project only for undergrads; the degree is a Bachelor of Science whether you do the project or not.)
> 6 votes
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Tags: united-states
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thread-11323 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11323 | How do PhD admissions committees view double majors? | 2013-07-23T06:26:47.483 | # Question
Title: How do PhD admissions committees view double majors?
I have read and heard conflicting opinions on this topic, and would like to see what some of you have to say, particularly related to CS.
Does earning two bachelor's degrees as an undergrad, considering all other things equal, provide any advantage over another applicant? That is, saying that this person earning two degrees is still able to participate in quality research throughout their undergraduate degree and is not slave to the curriculum.
Would, say, a MechE/CS student maintain a leg up applying to a CS program related to robotics? A Math/CS applying to theory-based CS? Does it vary between fields?
# Answer
> 5 votes
> Would, say, a MechE/CS student maintain a leg up applying to a CS program related to robotics? A Math/CS applying to theory-based CS? Does it vary between fields?
All else being equal, **YES**. Speaking specifically for theoretical computer science, I am much more likely to recommend a PhD applicant for admission if they have a strong mathematics background. A second major is not the more important thing, though; majors are just administrative hurdles. I look for *which* advanced math classes the applicant has taken, how the recommendation letters describe their mathematical ability/maturity, and how fluently they use mathematics in their research statement.
Yes, the effect varies significantly between fields. For example, my robotics colleagues are much more likely to recommend applicants with strong **mathematics** backgrounds, and my software engineering colleagues are much more likely to recommend applicants with software industry experience.
Of course, as Daniel points out, ceteris is never paribus.
# Answer
> 4 votes
A double degree/major (or even a minor) makes it easier to see what areas a candidate is interested in. Understanding this, along with the relevant classes taken, can be useful in assessing the research potential of a student (which is really what PhD admissions committees are trying to do). Apart from making my job a little easier, the way I look at it is if I have two identical candidates, which you never do, apart from a single class and this class leads means candidate A is a double major and candidate B is a single major, but I think the class candidate B took is more valuable then I will go with B. That said, there is no formula for admissions so things like this come down to the individuals on the committee.
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Tags: graduate-admissions, undergraduate
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