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thread-12336 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12336 | Is it normal to spend a whole day reading and writing about a single paper for a literature review? | 2013-08-31T18:30:26.287 | # Question
Title: Is it normal to spend a whole day reading and writing about a single paper for a literature review?
I'm not native speaker and I'm doing a lit review at the moment. My Question is it normal to spend a whole day reading and writing about one paper? So I read the paper deeply and then write about it. The process takes more than 6 hours. Is that normal or should I try to double that?
# Answer
Just to expand on Peter's answer, there is a saying on the University of Canberra's Academic Skills Centre: Reading and Remembering regarding academic papers:
> Academic material is not meant to be read.
>
> It is meant to be ransacked and pillaged for essential content.
Particularly, some of their advice for reading academic texts may be of help in helping you with the time taken to read and summarise the texts that you have, specifically before you start reading, have a question already that you want answered and very importantly, to optimise your time in reading academic papers:
> If there is a summary, a conclusion, a set of sub-headings, or an abstract, read that first, because it will give you a map of what the text contains. You can then deal with the text structurally, looking for particular points, not just reading ‘blind’ and so easily getting lost.
I always have a subject-based dictionary on hand as well.
> 16 votes
# Answer
I disagree that academic papers are not meant to be read (although many are unfortunately written that way...). But usually not every part of every paper is equally relevant for *your* work.
So how long reading and digesting a paper does/should/can sensibly take depends on
* how familiar you are with the field
* how much/which parts of the paper are relevant for your research
* the kind of relevant information: is it a bunch of facts that you need (prevalence of disease X was fount to be Y in population P - here a day would be very long) or do you need to understand a method including what the idea is behind, what assumptions are made, what caveats exist, how it behaves, and so on (a day would be very fast)?
* (how familiar you are with the language).
As to the actual reading skills, I like to mark important parts, and that will later on also tell me what parts I read thoroughly and what parts I just skimmed. And, while I also go over abstract and conclusions first, I'm a bit wary of accepting statements from there *only*: often, the detailed discussion or the description of the experiments give (explicitly or implicitly) important limitations. So that may need double-checking.
> 10 votes
# Answer
Reading efficiently takes practise. I think it is reasonable to spend such time on a paper in the beginning. I am sure the speed will improve over time. that said, however, you probably need to check on how you read. It is normally not necessary to read every word in a paper. There are parts that you could skim to get an idea of what is going on and then focus on the stuff your really need to know. You should start making notes about the parts you skim so that you easily see if you have read it in detail later on, and if need be return to it at a later stage. In the end you will get more skilled in reading efficiently and the key lies in evaluating what is key and what is not.
> 8 votes
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Tags: writing, reading
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thread-12359 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12359 | CV for post-docs: PhD vs PhD student? | 2013-09-01T19:28:13.853 | # Question
Title: CV for post-docs: PhD vs PhD student?
As a PhD student who starts his last year, I will soon start to look for post-docs. In this process, I will update my Curriculum Vitae. But as a title of this CV should I put "PhD in XXXXXX" or "PhD Student in XXXXXX" ?
# Answer
> 18 votes
Until you have your PhD officially, your CV should list "PhD Candidate" or "PhD Student," depending on your proper status. In your education section, you should list the month you expect to graduate (and you should say "(expected)" or similar next to the date).
# Answer
> 8 votes
(+1) to Chris Gregg's answer. In addition to that two points:
1. If you claimed to have a PhD (at the time of application) and you don't officially have the degree one can claim you are making a "false statement" and disbar you from the selection process.
2. \[Assuming you want to finish your PhD first and then take up a job\] You want your possible employer to consider you for a position after you finish your PhD. Saying you are a "PhD" already means you are ready for immediately employment. Furthermore you might want to have you employer know you might need a couple of days off for your viva, etc. Given that this might take place in the first couple of months of your employment and probably you are not allowed "vacation-time" yet, it is good to let them now early on.
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Tags: phd, job-search, postdocs
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thread-11979 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11979 | How to write a graduate study personal statement for a technical field without related bachelors degree? | 2013-08-19T18:41:17.697 | # Question
Title: How to write a graduate study personal statement for a technical field without related bachelors degree?
With the desire to obtain a master's degree in Management Information Systems, IT Management, or Computer Science, how do you proceed writing a personal statement when your bachelors degree is unrelated?
With minimal previous technical experience (basic knowledge on programming, some collegiate participation in software club), is it possible to be considered seriously? What can be added to the statement to strengthen your impression?
I ask because a lot of the graduate ambassadors at DePaul have bachelors in different fields.
Related: How does one change to engineering for graduate school after undergrad in a science field?
# Answer
> 4 votes
I was recently accepted to a MS program that is different from my undergrad and graduate training. In my personal statement I tried to relate my experience to the field I was pursuing. I had field research experience in public health, but I was applying for a MS in biology. I still used my research experience, but I focused on the general research skills that I developed, things that would be useful in the lab. I mentioned things that are universal to all research.
I think if you convey passion and direction for the new field, you'll be alright. It can be an advantage too. Think of ways you can incorporate your previous field if possible. If not, show them your maturity and passion. It seems like admissions committees can tell who is going through the motions and who is genuine. Make your voice heard.
# Answer
> -1 votes
Recently I applied for an MS in electrical engineering. I wrote my sop on my own.
Firstly you have to mention how you got interested in this field. Then you mention all about your academics and activities from your schooling to present day. Then you mention about your area of interest and your academic projects and internship(s). At last why you want to do graduation in the area you prefer to and conclude. Regarding your projects you have to give brief explanation about the project and the things that you used in the project .
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Tags: graduate-admissions, application-cover-letter
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thread-12369 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12369 | Elsevier actions following US sanctions on Iran | 2013-09-02T06:50:44.563 | # Question
Title: Elsevier actions following US sanctions on Iran
Elsevier has started circulating this letter as a consequence of the sanctions taken by the US against Iran to the editors of their journals:
> Subject: US editors and reviewers can no longer handle submissions by authors employed by the Government of Iran
>
> ---
>
> Dear Dr Bruno Granier,
>
> The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions. As a result of OFAC sanctions we have been made aware that US editors, US Elsevier staff and US reviewers are now unable to handle scientific manuscripts where any of the authors are employed by the Government of Iran. This includes the research departments of the various oil and gas companies which are deemed to be entities of the Government of Iran. We realize that this OFAC regulation will cause some inconvenience in your role as an editor but Elsevier is legally obliged to ensure that all reasonable efforts are made to avoid submissions from Iranian government agencies and companies being handled by US editors, US Elsevier staff and US reviewers. Please be aware that editors, Elsevier staff and reviewers from outside the US may still handle these manuscripts and that this OFAC regulation does not pertain to manuscripts where the authors are based at Iranian academic and research institutes. Manuscripts originating from a clinical setting that are not government run, for example, a hospital or clinical practice are also exempt from this regulation.
>
> To view the official OFAC regulation, please click here. In practice the result of these sanctions will mean that:
>
> • Submissions where any author is based in Iran, and is not at an academic and research institution, cannot be handled by US-based editors, US Elsevier staff, US reviewers, or any US citizens based outside of the US.
>
> • If an Iranian author has dual affiliations (eg. university and government), their submission cannot be handled by US-based editors, US Elsevier staff, US reviewers, or any US citizens based outside of the US.
>
> • Affiliations of Iranian authors should therefore be checked, and any manuscripts which fall under this OFAC regulation delegated to a non-US editor, before handling.
>
> • When assigning reviewers, affiliations of Iranian authors should also be checked, and any papers which fall under this OFAC regulation should only be sent to non-US reviewers. (As an editor you should do what is reasonable to determine the nationality of a reviewer e.g. check their email address. This check does not extend to emailing reviewers directly to confirm their nationality or location). Unless there is specific knowledge that a non-US-based reviewer is a US citizen, editors can send such submissions to reviewers based outside the US.
>
> • If your journal workflow involves all submissions being handled by US-based Elsevier staff, they will reject these manuscripts outright before they reach you.
>
> • Should there be no suitably qualified editor or reviewer, please reject the manuscript outright.
>
> When rejecting manuscripts which fall under this OFAC regulation please use the new EES Decision Term "Reject - OFAC Sanctions" and the following text:
>
> "As a result of OFAC sanctions all editorial staff who are US-based/US nationals are unable to handle scientific manuscripts which are authored by Iranian scientists, employed by the Government of Iran. Based on this OFAC regulation we are unfortunately unable to handle your manuscript. We wish you success with your submission to another Journal."
>
> We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause. If you do have any questions please contact your Publisher.
>
> Sent on behalf of Dan Lovegrove
>
> Cretaceous Research
Has there been any public response, by US editors or reviewers, stating whether they will obey (or not) the instruction? Also, does this letter conflict with the Code of conduct and best practice guidelines for journal editors of the COPE (all Elsevier journals are members of COPE as of January 2008)?
# Answer
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is an agency of the US Treasury that is empowered by US federal law to edict and enforce embargoes and economic sanctions. Thus, **US journal editors are bound by its regulations**, whether they like it or not. Violating them would expose them, and their employers, to liability. If they violated them willingly, the employer might also turn against them. **I don't see how deference to the law is in violation of COPE guidelines** (or academic ethics in the broader sense): though important in publishing, they do not have force of law (and specifically defer to the law in many areas).
Elsevier is not the only publisher affected by these sanctions, and as others, they are not happy with it:
> We stand by our belief that generally speaking, restrictions on publishing are inappropriate, and any exceptions should be narrowly crafted. We will work with our other publishing house and industry colleagues, along with research communities and institutions, to analyze recent changes and continue to pursue appropriate balance in the laws.
Some other publishers, however, either have a different understanding of the law or are willing to (potentially) go to court over it:
> A spokesperson for the American Geophysical Union, which has a dozen members in Iran, says AGU does not consider publishing to be a trade issue and "accepts paper submissions from anywhere in the world." The American Society of Mechanical Engineers echoes that view, as does AAAS, Science's publisher. **"We do not put any restrictions on submission or publication of papers based on economic or other sanctions," says Monica Bradford, executive editor of Science.**
> \[source: Wikipedia and references therein\]
> 30 votes
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Tags: publications, united-states, elsevier, iran
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thread-11989 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11989 | How to write an academic paper for the first time? | 2013-08-20T07:29:13.853 | # Question
Title: How to write an academic paper for the first time?
While writing an answer to that question, I realized I don't really have a good list of resources that could be useful to first-time authors, like MSc or PhD students who write their first paper. I often direct my own students to these two papers:
I also make sure that they read the journal's editorial policy and authors guidelines.
What are other sources of good information for students and first-time academic authors?
# Answer
> 30 votes
A book or paper on writing is a good introduction but can usually not solve everything. Reading a book does not mean you can reproduce what it teaches, particularly with writing since it is something that needs lots of practise. One problem is that writing is a question of both knowing how to structure the science but also a question of building and formulating the text, the latter being a language issue. So it is usually relatively easy to teach students how the technical side works and provide explanations for why. Teaching students how to be concise and precise is another question and without lots of practise it is quite difficult to get anywhere. During a thesis much of the language issues are ironed out by constant revisions sugested by the advisor. I also point out to all my students that writing is a life-long learning process and thatit is never to late to develop and change your writing.
However, I have some sources I fall back to:
> Katz, M.J. From research to manuscript. A guide to scientific writing. Springer
>
> Day, R.A. and Gastel, B., How to write and publish a scientific paper. Cambridge
The Purdue Online Writing Laboratory OWL is also very useful.
For language (English) I have (aside of Strunk & White) found
> Glasman-Deal, H. Science research writing for non-native speakers of English
of use.
There are of course lots of books around but all are definitely not good.
A final gem is a short paper on abstracts
> Landes, K., A scrutiny of the abstract. Bulletin Of The American Association Of Petroleum Geologists. 50 (9), 1992-1999.
Which provides an excellent description of the abstract.
# Answer
> 9 votes
Specifically for mathematics, good resources are N. Higham's very comprehensive *Handbook of writing for the mathematical sciences* and (for non-native speakers) a nice booklet by J. Trzeciak, *Writing mathematical papers in English*.
# Answer
> 9 votes
A nice article for writing your first mathematics paper is How to Write Your First Paper by Steven G. Krantz in the December 2007 *Notices of the AMS*.
# Answer
> 8 votes
I wish I read this book before writing my first paper: The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking, & Problem Solving. It explains how to better organize and articulate ideas.
Also it is always worth re-reading On Writing Well.
# Answer
> 7 votes
A blog entry, written by Terence Tao, specific for mathematics but with some points that can be used in other scientific branches:
On writing
Another reference, by Paul Halmos,
How to write mathematics
# Answer
> 4 votes
**Computer Science**
For CS, there's a pretty well-written book that addresses the art of writing for a CS conference/journal.
> Writing For Computer Science
>
> Justin Zobel
I'm reading through it now, and its really an eye-opener for me - as it quotes examples from actual published papers to illustrate its points, which are quite succinct and easy to incorporate once you've read the book! I would enthusiastically recommend it to any CS grad student!
# Answer
> 3 votes
Daryl Bem has a short, accessible piece on writing articles (in psychology). He gives concrete examples of good and bad choices in writing, often using the paper itself to illustrate his points.
> Writing the Empirical Journal Article
>
> Daryl Bem
# Answer
> 2 votes
A resource for writing a paper in natural sciences can be
> Scientific Writing: My Approach and Irreverent Opinions
>
> Mark Yeager
It has several good resources listed in the bibliography, which I haven't gone through but looks promising!
# Answer
> 2 votes
***How to write an academic paper for the first time?***
By reading different papers in your field. Pick one good paper which you know very well, Look how the authors organised their ideas into set of pages. How the contribution flows from one section to another in the paper.
Once you are about to write your first paper, try to list the key messages (i.e. contribution) you want to deliver. Start by writing the key messages as sections in your paper. Fill-in these sections. Read it over and over and ask yourself: is this easily understandable to the reader? should I add additional sections/subsections? can I better organize the paper?
Give yourself one or two days break and then ask yourself the same questions. Hand it to your supervisor. Let him/her comment on it and start again the cycle.
# Answer
> 2 votes
Your best start is probably either *A Manual for Writers* or *The Elements of Style*.
I regularly look into those books. Either to refresh my knowledge or just for the pleasure of reading *The Elements of Style*.
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Tags: publications, writing, online-resource
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thread-12372 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12372 | What should you ask an applicant's reference? | 2013-09-02T09:29:33.650 | # Question
Title: What should you ask an applicant's reference?
When recruiting a student or post-doc to join my group, I trim down the list of applicants to a few names (3–5) by looking at CV's, research/teaching statements, existing publications, etc. Then, I will write to the mentors/professors/teachers/PhD advisors they listed in their list of references. I will also write to people who would be obvious choice as a reference, but aren't listed (fresh PhD who doesn't list his advisor, e.g.).
But **what do I ask these people?** My “standard” email would be something like:
> A former PhD student in your research group, Dr XXX, is applying for a position in my group. I wonder if you can give me a frank and confidential appraisal of his abilities and working style. How efficient is he, how quickly does he get things done? Is he able to communicate clearly, both in writing and orally, at a level you would expect from an good researcher? Does he interact well with other scientists, and work in a team?
At least one senior professor whom I sent such an email replied with a rather negative tone, saying *“Dr. XXX is a good scientist. I don't want to comment on your other questions.”* So, I am wondering: am I asking something I shouldn't? Or not in the right manner? **What should you ask of applicants' references?**
# Answer
> 11 votes
This may well depend on the country. In the US, being the litigious society that it is, there have been some people going after (legally and non-legally) people who give negative references. The candidate can have a stronger case if you are contacting someone they didn't approve. Now, there is freedom of speech and many, many other issues but simply put, some people in the US are scared to give candid assessments unless the assessment is positive.
So, I would tend to take the response you received as an *implied* negative but I would also have to keep an open mind that the referee simply did not want to answer and it might not reflect at all on the candidate.
As for the questions you ask, they seem quite standard and I don't believe anyone would be taken by surprise by them. However, they might not answer out of fear.
On a side note, when it comes to reference checking, you need to be sure you are getting are response from the proper person. Emails get hacked, fake accounts get created. I personally prefer doing my reference checking over the phone. This may also come across as a casual conversation without written evidence, making the referee more comfortable in being candid.
# Answer
> 2 votes
I can not see anything wrong with your questions at all. The professor who responded was probably pressed for time and felt that the quick summary would suffice (or they were having a bad day).
A couple of suggestions that I found were helpful when I was recruiting (albeit for a very different field) are:
* Write the questions so that they are a yes/no response.
* Set up a form where the response could just be selected.
Both of the above could have a box for optional additional comments.
This may help when they are pressed for time.
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Tags: citations, recruiting
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thread-12386 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12386 | Should I list talks on my CV given by co-authors? | 2013-09-02T18:31:07.040 | # Question
Title: Should I list talks on my CV given by co-authors?
On my CV, I have a few talks listed where I was not the presenting author (though I am a co-author on the work).
I have left them on my CV because as a graduate student, my CV is pretty slim. However the work in question was recently published in a journal, which now appears on my CV.
Should I delete all the talks where I was not presenting author? I'm not sure adding length to my CV is really appropriate since the information is fairly redundant (all the same line of research and similar talk titles, just different conferences).
# Answer
> 23 votes
The simple answer is no. You should not list items that you have not performed. In this case it would be listed under "talks" (equivalent) and that would be wrong. On th eother hand it represents work that you have done and as such it can be listed but probably under a different heading. The important thing is that it represents what has actually happened. I can see a heading called, for example, "Other work presented at conferences" and then list the talk and state that you was part of the work but that it was presented by someone else. Again, the importance lies in formatting it so that the actual conditions are very clear.
When the CV is short, I think such additions may make sense, later in a career these posts will lose their importance relative to other headings.
# Answer
> 10 votes
I agree with Peter: **unless you're at a very early stage in your career, don't list talks given by others**. It clutters your CV, and it looks like you're desperate to lengthen the list (at best), or you're claim credit for others' work (at worst).
However, in this age of scientometrics, **you need to keep a list of these things, separate from your CV**, as they may be required of you in the future (as I learnt to my misfortune): by your employer, by a funding agency, etc.
# Answer
> 7 votes
In general **no**, but the main issue is that the information in your CV is transparent and accurate. Therefore, you must clearly separate talks where you were the presenting author from those where you were not, so that there is no ambiguity.
To add talks where you were not the presenting author would be largely redundant, especially if the work is included in published articles. However, on a short CV it can make sense, and (to me) it can also be reasonable if you e.g. contributed a lot to producing the actual presentation (writing, constructing graphs, poster layout etc). But as the previous answers state, adding these talks could also be seen as you trying to pad your CV
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Tags: cv, presentation, authorship
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thread-12378 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12378 | Am I aiming too high if I am applying to physics graduate schools in Canada? | 2013-09-02T13:36:12.420 | # Question
Title: Am I aiming too high if I am applying to physics graduate schools in Canada?
So I'm in the start of the process of applying to graduate school in Canada for a Masters in experimental physics, and am kind of overwhelmed and wondering about some things:
* I'm not from Canada and didn't study there, but have Canadian citizenship. How much help, if any, will this be?
* I have somewhat bad overall grades in my undergrad degree (GPA just over 3/4 in a B.Sc(Hons) of 3 years normal undergrad + 1 year higher level courses & research, a high B+ in my uni's system, or 2nd class (1st division)), but am reasonably confident I can get a decent physics GRE score, having done okay on a practice test with no prep. How much would a good GRE score make up for poorish grades, and should I be limiting the schools I'm looking at to less respected ones based on this?
* Between 3rd and 4th years of my undergrad, I did a 10 week summer research project, as well as the whole year project in 4th year. Would this amount of research experience be typical for students from north American universities, or not?
I was looking primarily at the University of Toronto, U of Ottawa, and Simon Fraser University, and then just sort of started feeling like maybe I'm wasting my time & money even applying for them. Any help or suggestions are appreciated.
# Answer
> 12 votes
Let me start with the cheat code of Canadian admissions: in Canada, the professors in the department you apply to look at your application package and decide if they, personally, want to take you on as a student. This means that the decision is up to the professor: if they want you, you're in; if they don't, no GPA or GRE score can save you. So the secret is to decide who you want to work with at each school you're applying to, contact them, and convince them you would be an awesome student.
More specifically, for each university, look at its website to find out who works in the area you're interested in. Look for a list of research groups, such as this one for Toronto. There will usually be a small number of professors per group; for each professor, get a list of their papers from their website. (If they don't have such a list, which sometimes happens, try Google Scholar, but make sure you're finding the right John Smith.) Pick the professor (or two) whose work seems most interesting to you and look at their papers in a little more depth. Don't worry if you don't fully understand them -- if you did, you wouldn't need to go to grad school -- but try to get the general idea of what the authors did and why. Then email the professor, briefly and politely covering the following points:
* Ask if they are accepting new students this year. (They may be low on grant money, going on sabbatical, etc.)
* Describe your research interests. If you wrote a paper or gave any talks about your research, mention it. Good communication skills are essential in research.
* Describe how your research interests fit with the professor's own interests (which you're familiar with from their papers).
* Reaffirm your interest in their work and show off your preparation by asking a question about one of their recent papers.
This is obviously time consuming, but it will greatly increase your chances of getting in. Most professors will be impressed by your interest and level of preparation. (I say "most" because there is one professor in my department who complains bitterly about getting emails from prospective students. You may encounter one of these, if you're unlucky, but the good news is that you wouldn't want to work with them anyway.) Use your institutional email address to minimize the chance of getting caught in spam filters.
One other point: in Canada, at least, many STEM fields have two kinds of master's degrees:
1. A terminal or coursework master's, which you get by taking a certain number of courses (8 in my department). You cannot enter a PhD program with this degree (hence *terminal*) and you usually don't get any funding. They can be often be completed in a year or sixteen months.
2. A non-terminal or thesis master's. These are intended to prepare you for a PhD, so you get the degree by taking a smaller number of courses (4 in my department) and writing a thesis. These are usually fully funded and take two years to complete.
Now, let me (finally) get to your actual questions.
* *How helpful is Canadian citizenship?* Somewhat helpful if you're applying for a non-terminal degree. I mentioned that these are usually funded, which means you get a stipend to cover your tuition and living expenses. However, the tuition you pay depends on your citizenship. Canadian universities are subsidized by the government, so citizens (taxpayers) are charged less than non-citizens. This in turn means that international students need a bigger stipend to cover their higher tuition. *All else being equal*, a professor will choose a cheaper citizen over an expensive international student. Being a citizen will also make it slightly easier to win scholarships, since many require citizenship or permanent residence.
* *How important are grades?* Most programs require a minimum undergraduate average of 78%/B+, so you're definitely borderline. Stay above the minimum if at all possible, and if there is an explanation for your grades (e.g. illness), include it in your application. If you did better in later years or courses that are core to your degree, mention that. Nobody cares if you failed underwater basket weaving, but if you failed calculus, you're in trouble. Finally, make contact with the professors you want to work with; if they want to accept you, grades will be much less of an issue.
* *How important are GRE scores?* Practically irrelevant. Students with a non-Canadian bachelor's are sometimes (not always) asked to submit scores for the general test, but as far as I know no program asks for scores on the subject tests.
* *How helpful is research experience?* All honours undergraduate programs in Canada require a thesis or a capstone project in the final year, so this isn't special. Fewer students do summer research, so that will help your application. The main issue is that "research experience" is a fairly meaningless term, so when you write your application letter, be as specific as possible about what you did and learned. "I have research experience" is not nearly as powerful as "I learned the standard technique for measuring XXX and applied it to a project exploring effect YYY. I then presented the results at conference ZZZ."
Final disclaimer: I'm in computer science at Waterloo. As far as I know, everything I said is true for physics departments and other universities, but I can't guarantee it.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Let me address each of your questions.
* *How helpful is Canadian citizenship?* I'm guessing the answer is *maybe a little, but not a lot.* This is reasoning by analogy from the United States. I think typically applicants to grad schools in the U.S. are grouped by "where they went to undergrad" more than "where they have citizenship". I believe that often the standards for applicants from the U.S. may be at least *different* from those for internationals, but it's still a very competitive pool.
* *What about my GPA?* You're right that just over 3/4 is not great. In this case I would encourage you to take the GRE. Good GRE scores could help convince admissions committees that you know more than your grades show.
* *Does my research experience make me stand out?* Over the last 15 years or so, it's become much more common for grad school applicants in north america to have research experience. Over this time, we've seen a dramatic rise in the number of REUs (research experience for undergraduate). While it's by no means universal, I think you will *not stand out* for simply having a summer of research experience (or having completed a senior project). However, you could stand out based on what came out of that experience. Did you publish a paper? Give a presentation? Convince your mentor that you are the greatest thing since sliced bread? If so, then your application should highlight this aspect of your experience.
You asked about U of Toronto, SFU, and U of Ottawa. These schools are all pretty highly rated, especially the first two. I would guess that getting admitted to grad school there would be a stretch for you, but I don't say that to discourage you, just to encourage you to apply elsewhere, too. (Once you're putting together an application for one school, it's typically not too much work to apply to another school. You're right that it costs money, but it's a relatively small cost, when you consider the potential impact it could have on the rest of your life.) You may want to read an answer I wrote recently to the question: How should I choose which graduate programs to apply to for the PhD?
Finally, let me comment on something you didn't ask about. **Your recommendation letter writers** can dramatically impact your chance of being admitted to a given school (and getting a desirable job later on). You should choose these people carefully, and do all you can to help them do their job well and on time. Remind them how they know you (whether it's through a class, or some extracurricular activity). Remind them of some of your accomplishments, and make sure to give them information about why you're applying. Speaking as someone who's written a number of recommendation letters, I am more comfortable writing a stronger letter when I feel like I know more about the students. Obviously, you have to have impressed me (or in your case, your letter writers) with your performance already. But that is only part of it.
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Tags: graduate-admissions, masters, university, application, canada
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thread-12383 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12383 | Is it worth it to print a copy of the syllabus for each student or it is better to have it on my course's website? | 2013-09-02T15:54:27.593 | # Question
Title: Is it worth it to print a copy of the syllabus for each student or it is better to have it on my course's website?
This is a question that has plagued me for a couple of years now. Is it worth it to print a copy of the syllabus for each student? Or, is posting it on my course website good enough? My syllabus contains a good deal of information. I have the homework schedule, online video schedule, office hour info, etc. But, the class is close to 30 students. And printing that many three page syllabuses seems extreme. To make the question more specific, has anyone noticed that printing the syllabus has had a greater effect than not?
EDIT: In response to the comment below, all the students have access to free printing of the syllabus in any number of computer labs.
# Answer
First, you should check that your school doesn't have a policy that says instructors must hand out a paper copy of the syllabus to their classes (those policies exist...). Second, you have to think about whether there is anything they need that you can guarantee they've read been handed (e.g., some laboratory students have students sign that they've read the syllabus, for safety reasons). If you don't have to hand out the paper, you should feel confident these days that they can get the syllabus on your class web page.
My current strategy is to forego printing the syllabus for large classes, but to explicitly email the class with a link to the online version (along with a very short introduction). If you want to ensure they get the syllabus, attach it to the email.
For small classes (\<20), I have printed out a 1-page "highlights" of the syllabus (my contact info, *address for the online version*, due dates for assignments, etc.). I may not even do that any more, as I just figure the students are perfectly able to get the information online.
One more thing: on the first day of class, I do go over the important parts of the syllabus, and I also put a copy on the projector as I go over it.
> 12 votes
# Answer
I know some here will consider this too extreme but I never print my syllabus. If I were in an area where students really had no reliable access to the internet then I might consider it.
Better to get students used to keeping things electronically (and save the environment one page at a time). Of course, some students will want it printed and they can do that for themselves.
I do NOT find that giving a student a printed copy guarantees they have read everything on it. I have read recommendations that teachers should not talk too much about their syllabus in class in order to encourage students to go get a copy and read it. I don't find that to be a good idea either. If there is something you want to make sure they know, by all means put it in your syllabus but **actually discuss it in class**. However, try to minimize the printing. It really creates a lot of waste.
> 4 votes
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Tags: teaching, website, syllabus
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thread-12391 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12391 | How to reference studies mentioned in a paper without having to read the original papers? | 2013-09-02T20:21:07.643 | # Question
Title: How to reference studies mentioned in a paper without having to read the original papers?
I'm review the literature at the moment. Now I'm reading a paper that mention other studies. How can I reference them without reading the original papers?
# Answer
> 24 votes
Let us assume, for example, you read Doe (2011) and find Smith (1966) referenced therein. Technically, you can say something like "Smith (1966, cited in Doe, 2011)", or alternatively "(Smith 1966, cited in Doe, 2011)." The exact format depends on the format of the journal (it is also possible to phrase it "cited by" instead of "cited in").
That said, however, it is *very dangerous* to provide such quotes since you do not know if the person(s) citing the paper has understood it correctly. It is not unheard of that people cite for very odd reasons and not double-checking works cited may just propagate such errors.
So, it is possible but not recommended.
# Answer
> 23 votes
If it is relevant to your work, why wouldn't you read them? If they are not relevant, why would you cite them?
The only case I can think where it might make sense is if you are reading a review paper, and want to actually cite them as a collection rather than individually. Because there are a large number or for other reasons. Then you would write
> Doe et al. collected in their recent reviews a large number of earlier work in **(Doe, 2012 and references therein)**
or
> Doe et al. collected in their recent reviews a large number of earlier work in **(Doe, 2012 and references 15–73 therein)**
# Answer
> 12 votes
I wrote a post on writing literature reviews in psychology. Here's my advice:
> **Cited In**: Good literature reviews do not use "Cited in". Literature reviews which summarise Author B’s citation of Author A’s work write: "as Author A (1999) says as cited in Author B (2002) …" . However, good literature reviews, when they see that Author B cites Author A, go and get Author A’s article, read it , and draw conclusions about it directly.
So it is only in rare occasions that you need to indicate that an article was cited by another author. Just because you learnt about a study because it was cited somewhere is generally not relevant. Read the original so that you know enough about it to incorporate it into your literature review.
Of course, there are many less common exceptions where you may wish to indicate the relationship between two papers:
* You want to discuss how Paper 1 uses Paper 2. For example, you might want to draw attention to how various papers have mis-used a citation in order to justify some misguided methodological practice.
* You are performing a meta-analysis and you want to indicate that you used a previous study to find references.
There is also a potential plagiarism issue around over-reliance on a single paper to generate your literature review. If for example, you took 95% of your references from the one paper, this would be questionable in general, but at least by using "cited in" you are being honest. Of course, I think this strategy of reviewing the literature should be avoided in general.
More generally, finding literature by following the citation trail backwards (by looking at references) and forwards (using tools like Google Scholar) forms part of a general set of strategies for finding literature.
# Answer
> 10 votes
As JeffE above said, "Don't". When you make assertions in your published work, they should be based on either
1. Something that you have demonstrated yourself in the work
2. Something that another person has demonstrated (so you cite them)
3. Something that is sufficiently well known to the intended audience that no citation should be necessary (you don't need to cite Newton for his law of gravitation for example)
To consider the bigger picture for a moment, something that is published does not suddenly become a part of scientific dogma, even if it's published in a top tier journal. The motto of the Royal Society is "Nullius in verba", that is, "take nobody's word for it". If you are relying on established results for your work, then reading these results is the very minimum you should do. In an ideal world where you would then proceed to replicate the results that you are depending on.
Of course, this is usually not practical because of constraints on your time but at the early stages of your studies you should at least consider replicating some results since:
1. It will give you a far greater familiarity with the domain
2. There's a very high chance that you will expose some misconception that you had held about the work you are citing
3. There's a reasonable chance that you will expose a deficiency in the original work
In closing, you should consider that every time you publish something, you have added to mankinds knowledge. Every time you cite a paper without reading it, you dilute that knowledge.
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Tags: writing, citations, literature-review
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thread-12401 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12401 | Research paper about an enhancement to algorithm | 2013-09-03T07:17:21.540 | # Question
Title: Research paper about an enhancement to algorithm
A question that has been bothering me for so long about research work is, *what level of work can be called research and is worthy of publishing in a research paper*?
Let's say I am working with JPEG compression, if I make some may be *a little* enhancement in the algorithm for the compression, can it be given the title of research.
So my question is:
If I make a little enhancement or added a little new stuff to an already existing work, can it be called a research and can I write a research paper for it?
# Answer
> 3 votes
The question I would ask is: *"Are there people working in this area who would learn something interesting and useful from what you've done?"* If the answer is yes then your paper makes a contribution and so is potentially publishable. At that point you could consider some secondary questions, e.g.:
* **Length of the paper:** this should be commensurate with the extent of the contribution (i.e., how much someone would learn) -- a small contribution merits a short paper.
* **Venue of publication:** some place (conference, journal, forum) typically accessed by the people who would learn the most from your paper. For example, a theory journal would not be the right place for systems-oriented paper about the guts of a compiler.
# Answer
> 2 votes
I would definitely say yes, if you researched your field thoroughly and found a solution to a problem, why not? But just to make sure: I would discuss my ideas with a supervisor, or colleague first. A lot of people made improvements on existing algorithms and wrote about it. I have read a few papers about compiling mpeg on the GPU using OpenCL.
Check out Erich Marths Paper: **"Parallelization of the x264 encoder using OpenCL" at ACM** he did improve some aspects, but interesting is rather what was researched. We tried his code and approach years in 2012 to find: CPUs had outgrown the improvement already and the approach could not be followed any more without significant work put into it.
Just make sure your research effort becomes clear. If in doubt, hand the draft to a "mentor" or colleague to judge the degree of research effort.
# Answer
> 2 votes
What matters most is the time and memory complexity of the algorithm. The crucial step is having the improvements repeatable (reproducible) by another person.
E.g. if instead of **O(n<sup>2</sup>)** your algorithm offers **O(n log(n))** execution time, it is worth publishing and you may well expect your name to be remembered for a long time.
If your **implementation** of the algorithm has lower startup time, or spends 5% less time on each iteration, it is not altogether clear that this is an advance in the field. With another compiler or with error-checking on, these results may not be valid.
There are important **exceptions**: self-tunable, configurable, hardware error-resistant, hard realtime algorithms, to name a few. Adding valuable properties to algorithms is a very nice result.
# Answer
> 1 votes
Actually, you are not necessarily required to show any improvement in performance.
What journals typically require of a publication is for the results to be novel, sound and withing the scope of the journal's area. More prestigious journals also judge how interesting your results are to their readership. However, some journals will accept any work as long as it is novel and technically sound (e.g. PLoS ONE).
As an example, if you find an algorithm that has performance that is similar to current state-of-the-art algorithms but gives some new insight about the structure of the problem it could be interesting enough for publication.
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Tags: software, research-process
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thread-12374 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12374 | Application of standard techniques to new data: is it publishable? | 2013-09-02T10:11:35.407 | # Question
Title: Application of standard techniques to new data: is it publishable?
I have been working at an internship this past summer, and have applied a relatively standard technique (formal analysis of a security protocol) to a new (company internal) protocol. The company are pushing me to try and get the analysis published in an academic journal. The results do not highlight anything of particular note (a few caveats and gotchas but nothing with substantial security implications), but simply provide a rigorous mathematical underpinning for their security assertions.
Is this something publishable? I feel it isn't because the only new bit is the protocol which was simply given to me (and is being published in its own right). If not how do I make the results of the analysis available? Obviously the analysis needs to be made public and peer review is vital (because otherwise nobody would trust the security claims). Do I just put it on the company website and hope people in the know stumble across it? Can I email appropriate people and hope they look at it?
# Answer
> 3 votes
You might consider sitting down with the people arguing for publication to try and understand why they consider it to be (potentially) publishable. It's possible, for example, that this new protocol addresses some issues not addressed by existing protocols; or addresses them more efficiently, or robustly, or is otherwise better in some way. In other words, it's possible that the protocol by itself (without your security analysis) is not publishable, and your security analysis by itself (without the novelties of the new protocol) is not publishable, but the two taken together may possibly be publishable.
# Answer
> 0 votes
I would not recommend just putting it on the company's website or emailing it to anyone - if you sent it for publication, you would get:
* peer review and feedback of your algorithms, assumptions and conclusions.
* potentially, validation for your application of the underlying rigorous mathematics.
Potentially, you could publish as an internal company white-paper.
Unless this is proprietary information, I would suggest that if you have had the work verified internally, perhaps ask them to be a co-author.
Being published would bring it to the attention of those in the same field, potentially allowing more valuable feedback and allowing further development and research to be performed on the work you have completed.
Finally, why not get published recognition for your work.
# Answer
> 0 votes
Obviously, without the details, I cannot say for sure, but I'd guess that *Yes, it is publishable*.
1. If more senior people think it is publishable (and it seems they have some experience with the scientific process even though this is an industry setting), then I tend to trust their judgement over yours. Often, when starting out, people tend to think that only major breakthroughs can be published; when it is very much not the case. This is a fairly common occurrence with young researchers: that they are too publication shy. (Others are too quick to think something is ready to be published).
2. It is obviously novel that this particular protocol has these properties even if the protocol itself has been published already (or is published separately) or the techniques to get to the result are also not novel. The question is whether it is interesting and non-obvious enough. If it is really a trivial thing, then it may not be worth publishing even if it novel. Alternatively, if the protocol itself is not very interesting or used, then it may be deemed *not interesting*, which is a different criterion from non-novel.
3. Given the above, the quality of the actual paper (as opposed to the raw analysis) will also need to be taken into account. It is more publishable if you can tie these particular results to a wider framework so as to locate it into a larger body of work. Again, it is hard to say for sure what this might be without knowing more details.
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Tags: publications, etiquette, industry
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thread-12406 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12406 | Why are the German professors addressed as Prof. Dr. XXX? | 2013-09-03T13:24:34.507 | # Question
Title: Why are the German professors addressed as Prof. Dr. XXX?
I notice that in Germany, basically all the professors are addressed as Prof. Dr. XXX, say Prof. Dr. Mueller.
However, in other parts of the world, only Prof. would be sufficient, ~~since a non-doctor can never be a University professor.~~
So why are the German professors addressed this way? Isn't it kind of redundant?
# Answer
> 8 votes
In Germany, professorships and doctorates are considered to be "legal" titles, and have special status not accorded to other degrees and professions. In particular, university professors in Germany are *Beamte* (appointed civil servants, sg: "Beamter"/"Beamtin"), which places them in a relatively small class of government employees.
It is to be noted that a professor in a German university can be called "Herr Professor" or "Frau Professorin" only so long as he or she is actively working as a professor. Following retirement or leaving the university profession, it is technically not permitted to use the title.
Thus, in this sense, the appellation "Professor"/"Professorin" is legally part of someone's name, and should therefore be used in formal greetings and salutations. (This can sometimes be annoying—for example, in a physician's waiting room, you can hear them call for "Frau Professorin Schmidt!")
# Answer
> 20 votes
In Germany, in rare cases also non-doctors can become a professor. Then it's just "Prof. Müller". Regarding Doctors, we don't have a "PhD" title. "Dr." is the official title for a doctor which is traditionally a prefix to the full name.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor\_(title)#Germany
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Tags: professorship, etiquette, germany
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thread-12428 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12428 | European BS - American PhD (Graduate Admission) | 2013-09-03T23:24:07.317 | # Question
Title: European BS - American PhD (Graduate Admission)
I posted something similar a while back and it was closed, but I believe this post will be more suited for discussion.
I'm heading to Europe from the U.S. to complete my BS in physics. I intend on returning to the U.S. to complete a PhD (ie. no masters degree in-between). I'm aware that the European system has a three year BS program, as compared to the four years that are done in the U.S.
**The central question is**: *Does having a three year BS affect admission into a competitive American graduate program?*
From where I sit, I can't help but feel PhD programs will raise an eyebrow at applying with only two years of experience. All of the graduate application deadlines available online (Princeton, Cornell, Columbia) have a deadline of the 15th of December, which correlates to a little over two years of undergraduate education.
I've been lucky enough to have a huge head-start on the material (few formal credits, however), which means I could start research within my first year of study.
# Answer
> 1 votes
I don't think there will be a huge problem in taking a European bachelor's degree to a US institution, so long as you do a little explanatory work in getting ready to apply. The reason for this is that in those first two years, you will often have more major-specific work than most US students will have completed in three years!
So, I would recommend contacting the graduate admissions of programs you're interested in applying to, and explaining your situation to them. Take a look at the undergraduate programs they offer—and in particular, the list of required courses, and show that you have a similar amount of preparation (or more!). Then ask if there's anything else that you need to do.
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Tags: graduate-admissions, undergraduate
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thread-12430 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12430 | Acknowledgements in an industry-sponsored dissertation | 2013-09-04T00:25:51.130 | # Question
Title: Acknowledgements in an industry-sponsored dissertation
I am a doing a dissertation funded by a company and my dissertation is basically a report of my progress on the problem they have given me. I have an **academic supervisor**, an **industry contact** who has given me occasional guidance and basically the company itself who sponsored it, to acknowledge.
* Should I acknowledge the industrial sponsorship the same way one would acknowledge a government grant?
* Also, Since this is a mathematics dissertation, It is written in First person plural: "We do this we do that". For the acknowledgements section, should I use 3rd person to keep it formal: "The author would like to..." or first person singular: "I would like to thank"
* Finally, I think the order should be sponsorship, academic adviser, and lastly the industry contact. Is that the right order?
# Answer
> 1 votes
I can speak from a similar experience. Many moons ago, when I was completing my Honours research (yes, this was and still is considered postgraduate), I was sponsored by a company (mining and economic geology). With the acknowledgements, I was told to give my thanks in the order:
* Academic and industrial supervisors by name and affiliation. These are your first points of contact and did the most of work with you.
* The company for the sponsorship.
* Then friends, family and/or pets.
This is not an opinion, but experience.
But, having said that, I would *strongly* recommend that you ask both advisors what is expected as @seteropere suggests.
# Answer
> 1 votes
I would say generally there are no perfect settings for acknowledgements. It all depends to your university dissertation rules. If the thesis/dissertation booklet does not cover the way acknowledgement should be stated then its up to you.
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Tags: mathematics, industry, thesis, acknowledgement
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thread-12411 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12411 | Adding a faculty as a co-author | 2013-09-03T15:11:12.900 | # Question
Title: Adding a faculty as a co-author
I and two other student, did a course project and it has been accepted for publication in an international conference. I am confused now that whether I should add his name as a co-author or acknowledge him in acknowledgements ? I would like to share that though, the entire implementation and writing the paper was done by us, we were student of his class and the work was produced as a part of course project.
My field is Computer Science.
Edit: As F'x suggests, that I should ask the instructor. What would be an appropriate way to do so given that his name was not added as co-author before acceptance.(We were confident about the work but were not sure about the acceptance. The conference management software was EDAS and it spams email of all co-authors which we wanted to avoid in his case)
# Answer
Regarding *“given that his name was not added as co-author before acceptance”*: **ask him ASAP**. Be honest, be apologetic, explain clearly the situation and the reasons you did not want to add his name beforehand, but also be very clear that you realize now it was a mistake not to discuss it at the time, and that you made the mistake due to your lack of experience in academic publishing.
> 7 votes
# Answer
If he/she supervised your work, and/or read your paper, and/or somehow gave his/her contribution to your paper, **I think that yes**, you should add his/her name as author.
> 2 votes
# Answer
Co-authorship depends on the person and (sometimes) internal rules. For instance, during my PhD it was common for the professors to consider reading a paper + giving feedback as contribution worth authorship. Some of them even thought that they deserve authorship just because they talked to you about your idea:) During my Masters (at another university) my supervisor did not only read the paper, but also corrected some errors in the formulas and checked the experimental results. When I put him as a co-author, he asked to remove his name motivating this as "I just did the work a normal supervisor will do".
So, as others suggest - do ask the professor ASAP. P.S. Many professors will not fund your trip to a conference if their name is not on the paper unless explicitly agreed beforehand:)
> 1 votes
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Tags: publications, authorship
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thread-12446 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12446 | How to address a Dr. des.? | 2013-09-04T09:29:28.263 | # Question
Title: How to address a Dr. des.?
How do you address a **Dr. des.** (Doctor designatus), for example in e-mails?
* Dr. John Doe
* Dr. des. John Doe
* John Doe
* …?
# Answer
> 9 votes
While the formal title is **Dr. des.**, there are good reasons to simply use the form of address you would use to a “final” doctor: the title is only temporary, and the person will eventually have the title or *Dr.*; moreover, PhD candidates having freshly attained their goal will probably enjoy you using it.
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For those who wonder what *Dr. des.* is, it's a temporary title, like US presidents are “president elect”:
> Following a successful defence, the title of *Doctor designatus* (*Dr. des.*) may be used until the doctoral degree is gained.
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Tags: etiquette, germany, titles
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thread-12437 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12437 | Citation or inclusion of name in conference paper | 2013-09-04T07:49:03.253 | # Question
Title: Citation or inclusion of name in conference paper
I am part of a team working on the second phase of a project. The project hasn't been published in any journals or conferences yet, mainly because not a lot of work has been done completely. Practical work of a certain significant part has been done by a previous team. My team started two months ago and we have enough exposure to write a conference paper proposing the design and the theoretical work completely.
My project guide asked us to start writing a publish-ready paper encompassing everything, including the previous years practical work. He says, cite their term project and use their data. He was the guide of their term project too. I'm unsure as to whether it's right to just cite their unpublished thesis work. I think maybe they should be co-authors too since their work does comprise a significant part in the paper.
Am I right and should I bring it up to the professor? If so, how should I do it without offending him? If the question is vague, I could give more specifics.
EDIT: The field is control and robotics. The practical work is calibration of the equipment in question. The overall paper does include control strategy, dynamics and other sections that the previous researchers have not touched upon.
# Answer
That's a delicate question. My own rule is to offer a co-authorship to anybody with whom I discussed the problem unless I use only the results they have already published and took the official credit for. However I don't insist and if they decline, I just give them extended thanks in the paper. So, I would definitely contact the (leader of) the previous team and offer to include all the names in the author line.
As to ow to approach your professor, it is not entirely unlikely that he is reading this very thread at the same time as you already, so once you decided to go public with it, just show him the replies you get here and ask what he thinks and what his arguments are. If he is a good man, he'll be straight with you and hold no grudges. If not, well, then you are in trouble already...
> 4 votes
# Answer
You said "their work does comprise a significant part in the paper". The question is to judge the nature of their contribution: if their work is a scientific contribution (by opposition to a technical contribution), then they indeed deserve to be co-authors of the paper. If their work is considered a technical contribution, then they should be left of.
It is a judgment call and what you say about their work ("the practical work is calibration of the equipment in question") makes it borderline. Sure, calibration is crucial, but is it an intellectual contribution, or is it something any technician with access to the apparatus user's manual could have done? In short: did they design the calibration procedure, or did they just follow an established (standard) procedure?
In all cases, you may want to bring that issue to the other authors' attention, in a diplomatic manner.
> 1 votes
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Tags: publications, ethics
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thread-12439 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12439 | Joining a group for PhD, how do I judge the atmosphere before I sign? | 2013-09-04T08:03:08.047 | # Question
Title: Joining a group for PhD, how do I judge the atmosphere before I sign?
I am looking to start a PhD project soon and I have almost decided on the group in which I will apply. But I know that I am a very sensitive person when it comes to any work atmosphere. I have to feel comfortable where I don't work alone in the corner of a room for 4 years.
What are telltale signs of the academic work atmosphere? When I visit the group with the professor, will he let me ask questions to students already there? What should I ask and to whom?
# Answer
> 29 votes
1. First off, if the professor is reluctant to have you talk to members of the group, this is a huge red flag.
2. When you visit, ask if you can sit in on lab meetings or seminars (some group setting) and observe the dynamic. Does everyone seem engaged and happy to be there? Is the mood collaborative and friendly, or authoritarian? Basically, put yourself there and ask yourself if you'd be comfortable.
3. Ask the professor about their advising style and philosophy. Some like to be very involved, some want their students to be independent. Make sure their answer works for you.
4. Most important one, in my opinion: contact a few of the other students independently, tell them you are coming to visit, and offer to take them out for a coffee or beer. This is an opportunity to ask them, in a relaxed non-work setting, about what they like and don't like about working in the lab. Do not tell the professor what the students are thinking, in any case.
# Answer
> 19 votes
Contact the people who left the group, either by graduating with a PhD, finishing their post-docs, or through getting tired of it, and find out about their experiences. You can find their names on the group/professor website either explicitly under "students" / "post-docs", or by looking through the list of co-authors/publications. In all likelihood, they will be more independent in their judgments than the current members of the group who are financially dependent on the leader -- at least those doing their PhDs and post-docs. There is no point whatsoever in asking grad students about how they feel in the group in the presence of their adviser -- you will get them in an awkward position, and the leader will definitely raise a brow about you. Besides, the grad students usually don't have any other experience, anyway, so they have no reference point to say whether their atmosphere is better or worse than the average across the field. The "graduates" of the group will have at least one more work group to relate to.
# Answer
> 8 votes
1. Did you decide on which project you will be working on? Did you propose it (freedom, at the cost of being on your own), did you get assigned to it (as a worker), or did you plan it with the professor (teamwork)? Chances are that whatever happened during this phase will carry on during the PhD.
2. How central to the supervisor's own work is the question you are going to work on? This will massively influence how much support you get from him, especially when competing with other team members for resources.
3. It is very important to find out how the team handles results that go against their main hypotheses/theories/assumptions. Do they pour in resources to discover whether they should abandon their preconceptions, do they assign you to another less threatening line of research, or do they put pressure on you until you give them the "right" result?
4. Do people help each other to conduct their work, or do every person concentrate on their own work?
5. Check the order of authors on their papers. Do the people who actually worked get first authorship, or do the most senior post-doc get first authorship, the head of the lab gets last, and everybody else gets authorship in order of seniority (BAD!)?
6. On conferences and social occasions, does the team hang together (whether alone or mixing with other teams), or does the lab head leave the students aside and goes looking for "important people" to talk to?
7. Do the team enjoy their own time together? Do past team members still nurture personal friendships with the lab head/team members? Do you know of closet skeletons, team mates turned enemies?
8. The most important: Do people, including the professor, look **happy**? If they don't, run for your life!
# Answer
> 4 votes
In our group, potential new starters are more than encouraged to talk to current postgrads - for example we normally take them out to lunch when they come to interview/present, without the academics in the group present. This works both ways - a group that works as a team will want members that fit into the team. If you are asked to present to the group at interview, that's inherently a good see (IMO), but the tone of a question session after that is a good gauge - not the supervisor's questions, but how the rest of the group ask questions in front of him/her.
You can get a feel for the dynamic of the group without asking directly - find out about whether they do stuff together out of work, for example.
Checking the order of authors as suggested by dmvianna is a good idea, but you need to do that in the context of the field - e.g. in my area of applied physics, postgrads generally do experiment+analysis+writing and are first author. My perception of particle physics is rather different.
Your worry about being isolated is certainly valid, I feel very lucky in the group and department I'm in, when talking to people elsewhere in the university they are often quite lonely in their work.
# Answer
> 3 votes
You also need to realize that your behavior during the tour of the group is also a way for your potential advisor to see how you interact with other scientists. It will also be (if you take the position) your first contact with your future team mates! So be sure to show interest, take your time, ask questions… don't rush it!
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Tags: phd, group-dynamics
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thread-12450 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12450 | How can I cite a workbook? | 2013-09-04T12:56:43.320 | # Question
Title: How can I cite a workbook?
I want to cite someting from this workbook. How can I cite it? The year is 2009 but what should I put between brackets if there is no specific author?
# Answer
> 2 votes
I would treat it as an online resource since it is not published and might be replaced by a newer version at some point. To cite this, you don't need an author but make sure you state the date when you retrieved the resource. In BibTeX it is done using `@misc` entry for example.
Another, but less formal, possibility is that instead of a reference, you use a footnote where you will place an URL and the date you retrieved the resource.
# Answer
> 2 votes
As this is published by IT services and not an academic part of a university, I would treat it the same as a sales brochure from a company. The author is the institution.
Note that if you follow the guidelines for getting a copy + associated documents as in the document, you get to this page, which states "The publicly accessible documents on this page are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. **Their "original author" is the University of Bristol which should be acknowledged as such in any derivative work**." (my emphasis)
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Tags: citations, writing
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thread-12470 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12470 | Acknowledgement: non-academic persons | 2013-09-05T00:44:07.667 | # Question
Title: Acknowledgement: non-academic persons
In my industry-sponsored dissertation, I want to thank my industry contact and some non-academic persons in the acknowledgement section of my dissertation. How should I refer to them:
* John Smith
* J. Smith
* Mr. John Smith
Considering the slightly informal nature of the acknowledgement section, yet keeping in mind that these are industry folks who wouldn't mind a bit of respect.
# Answer
Acknowledgments usually skip formal titles, i.e. no *Prof.*, *Dr.*, *Mr.* or *Ms.* Some journals even insist on it in their authors guidelines (here for J. Chem. Ed.):
> **Acknowledgment**
> Include acknowledgment of grant and other financial support, technical assistance, colleagues’ advice, and so on. Do not use professional titles or honorifics in this section.
If your journal has guidelines on the topic, follow them.
Otherwise, just refer to the person as you would if you were giving his name to a colleague, i.e. omit the titles and honorifics unless you barely know them. But if you think they will like it, use their titles, it doesn't hurt!
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To give a few examples from Nobel-prize winning papers:
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> 7 votes
# Answer
You should refer to him in the precise manner in which he wishes to be referred to, which you can only determine by **asking him directly**.
In other words: The same way you would refer to an academic person.
> 3 votes
# Answer
As you're talking acknowledgements rather than co-authorships, you need to take into account journal style and be sensible and polite. If someone in industry has helped you, in company time or with company resources, you should acknowledge that. So "... would like to thank J Smith, XYZ corporation for ...", but if that doesn't fit with journal style guides, you could try "...would like to thank XYZ corporation for support, especially J Smith for valuable discussions".
A company may not get anything for helping you, except that a mention in the literature is good for their profile. Of course if you paid them for work, they could end up anywhere from not mentioned to co-authors depending on the contribution)
> 2 votes
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Tags: industry, thesis, acknowledgement
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thread-12442 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12442 | What kind of papers do economics and finance students write? | 2013-09-04T09:09:06.633 | # Question
Title: What kind of papers do economics and finance students write?
I teach a writing course that has many students who plan to study economics or finance in graduate school. I am not so familiar with these disciplines, but want to make sure these students finish the semester with the skills they need to succeed in graduate school. What kind of writing assignments can they expect to see?
# Answer
> 4 votes
As a teacher of graduate-level finance classes, the main writing they are expected to perform are business reports and essays. I find that writing essays is easier for them but it is quite common for students to have challenges writing business reports (using bullet points properly, using graphics properly, using section headings and very concise writing properly).
As far as key skills you should be thinking about, the biggest ones are:
* How to construct a proper argument using academic evidence (reasonable sources as opposed to some random person's blog
* The ability to properly cite the work of others (related to the point above)
* Including counter-arguments in their work (another extension of the first point)
If all my graduate students had these skills, my life would be much easier.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Economical Writing is one standard reference for economists. An economics paper usually has a lit review, an economic model, analysis of what this model predicts, and how the data supports this model. A great outline is provided by the Toilet Seat Equilibrium paper.
Your students might want to look at the Research Papers in Economics archive, pick some papers there, and critique them from the intensive writing perspective. This collection has both published and unpublished versions, so with some luck they might be able to trace as the paper is getting into a more publishable state as it moves between versions and revisions.
# Answer
> 3 votes
I ma sure someone can write a more thorough answer, but the following are some resources that may help:
Duke University's "A Guide to Writing in Economics"
Charles Sturt's "Business and Report Writing Skills"
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Tags: writing, economics, finance
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thread-12458 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12458 | What if I may not have research experience for math PhD application? | 2013-09-04T15:10:38.457 | # Question
Title: What if I may not have research experience for math PhD application?
I am a master student of some engineering (other than EE/CS) in a decent US institution who will apply for a PhD in mathematics in Fall 2014 (possibly in PDE / applied analysis, but not sure). I finished with three A's and five A+'s in eight upper-undergrad / grad math courses, along with four more to come this fall. Since my intention for a math PhD came pretty late, I am only able to look for supervisor this semester. The sad thing, as expected, is that all three potential supervisors declined my request softly. My previous engineering research experiences are mostly experimental, with little to do with math.
So I have roughly one full semester left, and my questions are:
1. Is it possible to gain any sort of research experience in this semester without a supervisor?
2. If not, then how can I show my research potential by other ways?
3. Will the three LORs solely from course lecturers be convincing, even if the lecturers are well-known, and I did pretty well in their courses?
4. In addition, is abstract algebra a must or at least very important in math PhD application? Since I have to make a choice between Algebra II and Dynamical systems, and I don't have Algebra I.
Thank you for your responses and criticisms.
# Answer
Firstly, I should mention that I am a 3rd year math PhD student at Brown. So I have a hint of knowledge, but not as much as a professor who has been to more institutions, and certainly not as much as someone who has been on an admissions committee.
Firstly, many starting PhD mathematicians have no real research experience. The reason is simply that research mathematics is so far from most undergraduate mathematics. This is also why doing research is so hard without a supervisor (for that matter, it's hard with a supervisor). Many candidates have done REUs, which look generically good but often don't usually result in a publication or anything.
What I recommend to you is that you:
1. Identify what you're interested in and pursue it. You say you maybe like applied analysis or PDE. Maybe see what some people are doing, read some of their stuff, backtrack if you need to. In this sense, you *can just do research* without waiting for someone else's permission. I'd like to mention that there is a polymath project you might be interested in, Polymath 7 on the Hot Spots Conjecture (here is a link to the most recent progress page). It's slowed down, but they've done some interesting things and the polymaths are generally good about leaving a clean trail of breadcrumbs.
2. Ask about showing research potential and getting letters of reference. Instead of worrying about what's the absolute best thing, I think you should worry about doing the best that you can do. You've tried to set up some research with professors and that fell through. You haven't done math research before, and you're probably not going to get far in the next 4 months. In particular, it's unlikely that you're going to come up with a result great enough to inspire someone you haven't worked with to write you a letter of reference. This is all to say that you should get your letters of reference from those best able to recommend you. If these are lecturers, then so be it. But I hope that you've been attentive, proactive, and inspired in those classes. For that matter, if you're inspired, you might be able to ask your dynamical systems professor for an interesting project - approachable projects exist. It might not be new research, but at least it would be something you, and others, could talk about. As a final note, you should talk to your math professors and ask them for advice - I suspect that at least one of them will be able to say something, and they're more familiar with your situation.
3. Have you done any research in your 'some engineering?' Conceivably, a great letter of reference could come from your advisor/a great teacher/I don't know these details. You should talk to them about this, and get their advice.
4. Determine what schools you're interested in applying to (apply to many), and their requirements. Brown's Applied Math department does not require algebra. But they do (essentially if not officially) require the math GRE, which does require algebra (though for less than 1/4 of the test). On the other hand, Brown's Pure Math department (the one I'm in) has a severe algebra requirement. Interestingly, PDE is done in both, though in different directions. Many schools require algebra, or require it in the sense that they will have qualifying exams and one of those is in algebra. My undergrad, which I'd say has an applied bent, had quals in algebra and both real and complex analysis. So you could consider taking algebra if you needed to or wanted to, based on looking into what universities you want to apply.
However, algebra II without algebra I sounds incredibly perilous, especially as the fall semester is upon us already, or is about to be. Perhaps possible with a lot of pre-work. If you are going to attempt to hop into algebra II, I recommend getting a copy of Dummit and Foote's algebra book (clear exposition at a low level).
Finally, plan on taking the math subject GRE. It's only offered 3 times each year, and you've missed the summer one. You should take it both times this fall, and those signups might already be occurring.
> 10 votes
# Answer
To supplement what @mixedmath aptly observed: your experiences in engineering departments will have been misleading about the expectations of mathematics grad admissions, almost universally. That is, it's not so much "research record" as getting up-to-speed on the very basics of the vast established literature in mathematics. Usually this is done by coursework, but not necessarily, though having a paper trail is useful. Taking the GRE subject test is a sign of awareness of how the game is played, if nothing else.
I am frequently surprised at the apparent possibility in engineering and CompSci to do meaningful research at an undergraduate level. Perhaps "research" refers to a different thing than it does in mathematics... I think we have a severe shortage of labels, insofar as there seem to be only two valid/understood descriptors: "coursework" and "research", with some belief that the former is just gatekeeping and unrelated to the latter.
In any case, unless one tries awfully hard, the very most-basic topics in mathematics are used and useful throughout mathematics, despite much gossip and mythology to the contrary. E.g., the central notions of abstract algebra arise everywhere... although, sure, one can struggle to "get by" by reinventing crappy versions of "wheels" without ever knowing that the technology had been perfected 100 or 200 years ago.
Yes, it is toooo often true that courses and exams are conducted in a nearly-punitive fashion, and perversely emphasize separation from other subject matter, but one should try to ignore this exaggeration and caricature.
> 4 votes
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Tags: phd, graduate-admissions, coursework
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thread-12461 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12461 | Is there a quick way to search for a given researcher's past collaborators/co-authors? | 2013-09-04T16:20:57.917 | # Question
Title: Is there a quick way to search for a given researcher's past collaborators/co-authors?
Is there a website or software for one to search for all the past co-authors/collaborators of a given researcher?
I can of course go through the researcher's publication and get the names one by one, but just wonder if there is a shortcut way of doing this.
# Answer
> 7 votes
For researchers in computer science, another approach is to use DBLP, which is free. For example, this is the coauthor list for me on my DBLP page. It is reached by going to the researcher page at DBLP, and then clicking the little 'people' icon on the right hand side.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Yes, you can do this with many scientific indexing service. Personally, I like Scopus. It is subscription-based, though.
First, find the author page. I find this easiest by searching for the title of any publications by the said author, because most names are far from unique.
Here, you can click on co-authors. This will give you a list. For example, I currently have 31 co-authors, here sorted by number of publications:
Note that this doesn't state how many documents in particular I have in common with this co-author. To get that, click instead on Documents, then, under *Author Name*, on *More*:
You can get similar information through the Author Evaluator → co-authors.
Needless to say, 100% of my publications have myself as an author ;)
# Answer
> 1 votes
Google scholar tries to do this, but it looks as though the author needs to have a profile, and so do the co-authors, and either both authors need to have added the publication to their record, or one author needs to have added the others (in addition to them being named on the paper's author list).
ResearcherID can apparently do the same, again, if the author has a profile, but the search doesn't appear to work (I can't even find myself without the ResearcherID), and it can only cross-populate the author list from papers which the author has added using web of science.
So if your target person has a google scholar profile that they maintain nicely, and that's common in the field, you might do quite well.
Otherwise, can you automate scraping their publications page?
# Answer
> 0 votes
It is widely assumed that Web of Science is the most comprehensive citation index. It is also true that it is not the most intuitive web interface available, but it is very powerful.
As an example, you can create criteria such as counting the number of citations for an author excluding past co-authors. This one is great to measure impact outside one's own circle of acquaintances.
*I would have included a link to the search page, but unfortunately I don't have institutional subscription for that service anymore.*
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Tags: collaboration, authorship
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thread-12475 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12475 | Not being a first author diminishes the contribution of co-authors? | 2013-09-05T04:25:37.293 | # Question
Title: Not being a first author diminishes the contribution of co-authors?
If a group of students (say, 3 students), produces a work which has been accepted to a reputable conference. All of them contributed equally to the project,from implementation to writing and proof reading of the paper. How should one decide who should be the first author. Even if the names are listed in alphabetical order, so by not being the first author, does it affect the prospects for the other two in any means ? My field of research is computer science.
(This question has been partly inspired by the flurry of questions on ASE, regarding the importance of being the first author)
# Answer
> 23 votes
It depends on the subfield of computer science. For example, if the paper is in theoretical computer science, then author order is alphabetical, and the equal work put in by the authors is not negated by the author ordering. If in a discipline where author order is meaningful, then it's standard practice to (say) order the authors alphabetically and add a footnote saying that all authors contributed equally to the work.
# Answer
> 15 votes
It may be advantageous to be the first author even in disciplines where author names are ordered alphabetically. In a study by Einav and Yariv (emphasis added):
> **proxies for success** in the U.S. economics labor market (tenure at highly ranked schools, fellowship in the Econometric Society, and to a lesser extent, Nobel Prize and Clark Medal winnings) **are correlated with surname initials**, favoring economists with surname initials earlier in the alphabet. These patterns persist even when controlling for country of origin, ethnicity, and religion. We suspect that **these effects are related to the existing norm** in economics **prescribing alphabetical ordering of authors’ credits**. Indeed, there is no significant correlation between surname initials and tenure at departments of psychology, where authors are credited roughly according to their intellectual contribution. The economics market participants seem to react to this phenomenon. Analyzing publications in the top economics journals since 1980, we note two consistent patterns: authors with higher surname initials are significantly less likely to participate in projects with more than three authors and significantly more likely to write papers in which the order of credits is non-alphabetical.
# Answer
> 10 votes
Yes, since the order of authors is often used to convey meaning, it can. As an example, in Neuroscience (my background), the conventional order of authorship is:
1. The **first author** is the one who did most of the work, and who is responsible for writing the paper;
2. **Second authors** are listed in order of contribution to the work. Usually the people who contributed work come first, and the ones who contributed with ideas come last.
3. Last comes the **mentor**. This could be the head of the lab, the supervisor, or a senior researcher who might have assigned the first author to this study. This person is usually a reference in this field, and the one who would provide general guidance to the project or line of research.
However, often it is difficult or impossible to order authorship with fairness. Some journals (not all) accept footnotes telling the reader all authors (or which) contributed equally to the work. But the footnote will not be visible in bibliographies, and the second authors will be forced to indicate their equal contribution in their resumes and applications. So coming second, even in these circumstances, is a handicap.
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Tags: publications, research-process, authorship
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thread-12488 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12488 | Research "employment" options for students graduating midyear? | 2013-09-05T16:04:34.777 | # Question
Title: Research "employment" options for students graduating midyear?
Some students, particularly in the US, face the dilemma of graduating at the end of a fall semester or quarter, but then have the prospect of not having a PhD position start until the following fall. For students for whom working would be an important means of trying to support themselves, what options are available? Companies are typically reluctant to hire someone for a few months (not enough return on investment in such a short period of time), and there aren't a lot of academic programs available. What's a prospective PhD candidate to do in such a case—particularly with reference to students entering science and engineering fields?
# Answer
> 3 votes
My experience is limited to anecdotes. What I have generally seen is that students usually attempt to get either a paid industrial internship or an paid/unpaid research internship with a particular research group.
In fact, I have been mentoring an undergraduate who is graduating in the middle of the semester and is preparing to spend the next 6 months working as a research assistant (paid ~$15/hour) for a research group in our university before joining a prestigious PhD program in another university.
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Tags: job
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thread-12467 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12467 | Who writes Nature’s “News & Views”? | 2013-09-04T20:18:23.687 | # Question
Title: Who writes Nature’s “News & Views”?
Nature’s “News and Views” articles summarize high-impact research published recently in other journals. The News & Views articles are typically *not* written by the authors of the research paper, but by other researchers in the same field.
However, the topic of News & Views articles are not covered at all in Nature’s information for authors. So, how are people writing the News & Views chosen? Is it only by invitation of the editor? And who chooses the articles written about in the first place?
# Answer
> 8 votes
From the Nature guide on Other Submitted Material:
> 1. News & Views
> These articles inform nonspecialist readers about new scientific advances, as reported in recently published papers (in Nature and elsewhere). This is a commission-only section.
So the articles are selected and commissioned by Nature editorial staff, and written by invited authors. A quick look through recent News & Views articles finds contributions from scientists and science writers (including former Nature writing / editorial staff).
# Answer
> 2 votes
In addition to EnergyNumbers' answer:
Many of the News & Views are about Nature papers published in the same issue. Sometimes the editors will ask one of the reviewers to write about the paper they reviewed. This makes some sense since they should be experts in the field and have already read the paper (which hasn't been published yet) thoroughly. There is a chance though that this will reveal their identity.
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Tags: publications
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thread-9454 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9454 | Capitalisation of "Section" and "Chapter" in a Ph.D. Thesis | 2013-04-17T18:48:48.670 | # Question
Title: Capitalisation of "Section" and "Chapter" in a Ph.D. Thesis
I am submitting a Ph.D. thesis fairly soon and my supervisor has flagged my use of capitalisation in "Section" and "Chapter" as possibly incorrect. I have googled about a bit and I see mixed opinions.
So my question is, when writing a computer science Ph.D. thesis, what is the correct way to capitalise "Section", "Chapter", "Appendix", "Figure", "Table", ... ?
For example, what is the correct capitalisation for the following:
* "In Chapter 3, it was shown that..."
* "In the previous Section, a method was presented to..."
* "The graph in Figure 3 shows..."
# Answer
> 65 votes
> "In Chapter 3, it was shown that..."
This seems correct. "Chapter 3" is the name of the third chapter. Names are capitalised.
> "In the previous Section, a method was presented to..."
This seems wrong. "Section" is not referring to the previous section by name, therefore no capital.
> "The graph in Figure 3 shows..."
Correct. Same as the first example.
So the rule (I use) is, if it is a proper name, then use a capital. This means, if it is of the form "Section $n$", where $n$ is a number, then it needs a capital.
# Answer
> 20 votes
It is a question of style. The most accepted custom is that given by Dave: you capitalize logical divisions if you refer to them by number.
However, I've never believed that there is any real logic behind that rule, other than emphasis. Identifying things by a number doesn't make them proper nouns: as an example, you don't commonly capitalize “page” as “see Page 10”…
# Answer
> 5 votes
A search on Google Scholar reveals that both the forms
> in chapter/section 3
and
> in Chapter/Section 3
exist in published scientific articles.
For "chapter" the capitalised version seems to be a little more common. For "section" the capitalised version is much more common.
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Tags: thesis
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thread-10932 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10932 | Is index required for a PhD thesis? | 2013-07-03T19:49:04.383 | # Question
Title: Is index required for a PhD thesis?
Nowadays, since (almost) all of the submitted works are usually available in an electronic format (e.g. PDF or Word) besides the printed version, is it recommended to add an index to a PhD thesis in order to facilitate search within the printed version? Was it required in the past?
# Answer
You may if you want to, but it is not generally required. Of course, check your local regulations. It is recommended to plan on having an index or not when you start, rather than adding it later.
Indexes were not required in the past, though check historical local regulations.
> 10 votes
# Answer
Whether its required is probably field/institution dependent. However, just for the sake of those who (we hope!) will be reading your thesis, **include an index**. Even in electronic versions, an index is a useful tool for the reader; it allows them to see what the author(s) thought important enough to index, if nothing else! And if your PhD thesis turns out to be good enough to be printed and bought by university libraries, you will definitely increase the ease of use for those who access the print version (and yes, some people, myself included, do still wander the physical stacks when researching!See this book for reasons why this is a good idea).
> 4 votes
# Answer
Ideally, I recommend having an index with hyperlinks (both from keywords on the text to the index, and the other way round). The difference with in-text search is that you select the most relevant occurrences of the selected words; this is especially useful with terms that you use at all pages, e.g. to point out where they are defined.
If you think it ahead, it is not that much work to do (at least with LaTeX and the right packages). Otherwise... I remember a few hours spend with two other people on this question for a PhD thesis in biology, where the index contained both abbreviations and complete names of a lot of molecules.
> 1 votes
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Tags: phd, writing, thesis
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thread-332 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/332 | How much should I worry about British spelling when submitting to a U.K. journal? | 2012-02-22T05:28:37.897 | # Question
Title: How much should I worry about British spelling when submitting to a U.K. journal?
I'm in the U.S. and have always written in American English. I will be submitting a paper to a U.K. journal for the first time. To conform to British spelling, I've changed the Microsoft Word dictionary to U.K. English, which has caught most of the obvious differences . Even so, I'm worried that it will miss some of the differences listed here and here. **Is this even worth worrying about? Will being lazier about spelling hurt the chances for my paper's acceptance?**
# Answer
The answer depends very much on the journal. Some expect UK spellings; others will permit either American or British spellings. You should check with the journal in question.
Of course, the other option that you have is the following. Since you know what the major differences between the two sets of spellings are, and you have a sense of which one's won't be caught by your spell checker, you could always do a final search-and-replace after you've completed work on the paper to make sure you've switched everything over. (Or at least, everything you know should be switched over.)
That should satisfy most journals, and as shan23 said, I don't think a journal will reject your paper for writing "meters" instead of "metres"; the most you'll get is a referee report telling you to switch spellings.
> 13 votes
# Answer
A lot of US spellings have come to become accepted internationally - at best, some of the reviewers might point out the words which they don't feel are spelled correctly in their review. But, I strongly believe it would not affect the chances for your paper's acceptance in the least - its the content/idea that matters most in journals.
> 4 votes
# Answer
Read your journal's guide for authors. That will usually tell you.
Anything that makes the paper look unlike the papers in recent issues, will hinder acceptance. It may be blatant, it may be subtle, but it's there. Dialect of English is one of those things that may or may not matter. Skim through three or four recent issues: are there a mix of US English and UK English articles in there?
That's only a small part of the consistency-checking you should be doing before submission. Indeed, it's part of the checks you should be doing before you sit down to write. Along with: what sort of breakdown of sections do your target journal's papers have, typically? Do article titles include a colon (always, usually, rarely, never)? How many paragraphs per section, words per section, how any words in the title, and so on.
Editors are usually very very busy. Anything you can do to make their life easier, will help your article get published.
> 3 votes
# Answer
As long as you get your meaning across efficiently, it won't matter.
We 'Brits' (as the previous contributor so brashly refers to us) are a cosmopolitan lot and we are well used to reading materials in US spelling.
Why do people use the word 'Brit' anyway? It's derogatory and offensive.
> 3 votes
# Answer
Practice between publishers (and indeed, between individual journals put out by the same publisher) would be different. It is best to consult the **Author Guidlines** for the journal you will be submitting to. Occasionally there will also be certain idiosyncrasies that do not agree with the dictionary included in Microsoft Word.
For example, take a look at the publishing guidelines for Institute of Physics which is based in London. It stipulates that
* `ize` endings should be used instead of `ise` endings. (I know a lot of spell checking software will tell you that 'colourise' is perfectly fine British English, so be careful there!)
* British spelling is compulsory ... with the exception of a list of journals where both American and British spellings may be used. (So if you submit to one of the journals in the list of exceptions, you should just aim to be internally consistent with your choice of spelling.)
For the most part: if there is anything specifically listed in the author guidelines, make sure to follow them. For everything else, especially since "British English" is a bit of a moving target (as evidenced by the second link you provided in the question), that's what copy-editors are for. (And unless you have a very good reason, don't fight with them. House style almost always trump your personal preferences.)
> 1 votes
# Answer
It will matter. The brits will think you are misspelling if you don’t do it their way.
I use this to help me get it right. I would look at the “don’ts section”. I think it applies. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/lawre035/SocSci/Writing%20Journal%20Entries.pdf
Then again you can just browse through the many online dictionaries. My favorite one is thefreedictionary. It has so many ways to choose. http://cognitiveanomalies.com/my-quest-for-the-best-online-dictionary/ Good luck
> -2 votes
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Tags: publications, writing
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thread-12508 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12508 | How many recommendation letters are enough? | 2013-09-07T03:12:42.967 | # Question
Title: How many recommendation letters are enough?
If I apply to a job, and it asks for 4 recommendation letters, is it good if I submit 5 or more letters? Why and why not?
# Answer
> 10 votes
In the US in math my understanding is:
* For the NSF fellowship follows the rules to a T.
* For other postdocs there's probably no harm in submitting an extra letter, but there's also rarely a compelling reason to do so.
* For tenure track positions it is common, and not frowned upon, to submit 4 or 5 research letters instead of the requested 3 research letters. If you have a compelling reason to submit more (for example, you work between two adjacent fields) then go ahead, but if you don't have a compelling reason you're also not going to be penalized for sticking with 3 research letters. It's better to have all the letters be great than to have more letters.
There's a lot of discussion about this in the comments on this thread.
# Answer
> 6 votes
The search committee, or whoever it is who is reviewing applications, asks for 4 letters because that's the number of letters they want. For a postdoc, four is logical because that is typically the size of a doctoral committee.
Unless you have a very good reason (which, off the top of my head, I can't think of), don't send more letters than they ask for. (1) They don't want to read them. (2) They will think you don't know how to follow directions and will toss your application (which is what I would do, if it wasn't clear why I was getting \>4 letters). In my field of biology, there might be over 100 applicants for a position (particularly a faculty position; I've heard of 200-300 in some cases). I've been on numerous search committees, and I really can't fathom some of the materials that get sent in with applications.
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Tags: job, job-search, recommendation-letter
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thread-12505 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12505 | How to stop a researcher cutting corners in research? | 2013-09-06T19:38:17.660 | # Question
Title: How to stop a researcher cutting corners in research?
Some avenues of research require time-intensive research and experimentation (e.g.m sciences). For example, in my case, each experiment took 3-12 hours and I had to perform over 30 of them.
Often, this type of research is performed as part of a group, where group cohesion and harmony are an important factor. If you caught a member taking "short cuts" in their research: for example, doing one trial of an experiment instead of several or, as an extreme case, slightly altering the results to better fit their model.
It is always good to speak to the person in question discreetly, but what if the behavior continues? Also speaking to them can cause disunity.
How would this behavior be remedied, while maintaining group harmony?
(*Please note, I am not after opinions, but practical solutions, particularly if people have confronted this issue before, and I have heard of this happening before, but was not privy to the details.*)
# Answer
I find this question very interesting but difficult to tackle. It will be difficult to provide specific answers to a general hypothetical situation since one is left with too many unknowns. First, one could wonder what the policies at the university are like? Do they have a panel for scientific fraud, misconduct etc.? Are there guidelines in place? Then, we deal with persons and each situation is unique. People cheat for a variety of reasons from fear and feelings of inferiority and inadequacy, through stress and peer pressure to the narcissistic or psychopathic. Thirdly, the severeity of the problem is on a continuous scale and the response depends where you are on that scale. This also holds for the reverse problem, what works in one place may not work in another for these reasons.
In your question you state you wish to keep harmony but in essence the fact that "you" are uneasy with someones less than adequate research methods is already disharmony. So regardless if you do or do not do anything, there will be disharmony, either you will feel bad or someone else will. So there is no painless way out.
As for the case. I can see that you describe a sliding scale for what I would call poor science (overinterpreting results) to actual falsification of results. In the latter case, it is clear, one "must" pursue the problem. How this is done will vary but I am sure there are guidelines in place either at the university level or at a national level (on my home turf the national science foundation provides such services).
In the case of someone producing poor science by either, for example, being too lazy to do the work or by jumping to conclusions, there can be only one way forward: to try to confront the person and have open discussions around the science (or lack thereof) to bring out the problem in the open. It may be possible to start a discussion group where you read and discuss each others manuscripts. Such discussions are useful under any circumstances to help improve the manuscript and spot problems before submitting to a journal. Under such circumstances the problems can be discussed (if they become solved is a different matter). My sense is that a person who is aware of their shortcomings is not generally fond of talking about them so you may end up having these discussions with everyone but the one you want to target.
> 4 votes
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Tags: research-process, ethics
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thread-12521 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12521 | Can I keep items purchased out of my startup funds? | 2013-09-07T22:48:14.437 | # Question
Title: Can I keep items purchased out of my startup funds?
I am a new faculty in US based university. Surprisingly, when I arrived to my new office, there was no computer in it. I wonder, if I will buy a computer with my startup, would I be able to keep it for myself when I will leave the university?
# Answer
In general, equipment purchased with university-provided funds belong to the university, rather than the individual faculty member who ordered the items. On the other hand, items procured through individual grants (where the university did not directly provide funding), can often be transferred from one institution to another.
However, it is also true that such property is **not** normally something that you can normally keep for yourself! The primary exception to this might be if the property has been in service long enough to be declared "obsolete," and no longer needs to be inventoried. Then, the university will typically have some sort of policy on the disposition of such equipment, and that is what you should follow.
> 12 votes
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Tags: funding
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thread-12524 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12524 | How extended must my extended paper be? | 2013-09-08T09:40:54.907 | # Question
Title: How extended must my extended paper be?
I have been approached to submit an extended version of a research paper in a journal. The original paper is already published in a conference proceedings by publisher A.
What "degree of extension" do I have to provide so that publisher B will (legally?) be able to publish my work?
Also, does "extended version" in this case mean additional results, or purely textual extension?
# Answer
> 4 votes
In most subareas of Computer Science having the paper with "at least 30% of new material" would be acceptable. This is particularly true of conference-\>journal paper transition, for instance when a conference version of the paper is extended with new results, more thorough description of the research contribution (and/or methods, materials, related work) and then submitted to a journal. Sometimes this also happens when a conference organizes a special issue of the best papers in a journal.
Nobody will measure how many words/letters you added, but you should be able to convince the reviewers/editors that the paper is extended. Pointing out the differences between the previous publication and the extended paper in the introduction would normally help to reviewers to assess if the extension is enough. Basically, what you want to avoid is Salami Slicing or Least Publishable Unit (see comment by BlackPudding at Is it unethical to submit for review multiple articles which overlap in some respect?)
# Answer
> 4 votes
I don't think there's a single "default" answer here. However, I would suggest that if you are planning to publish in B's journal, that you do *both* kinds of extension: provide both additional explanations that were in the original material, plus present different results (if possible) than what was in conference proceeding A. You should also avoid direct repetition of material, where possible.
However, before agreeing to this, I would also consider asking the journal editor to provide you some examples of what he or she considers "extended versions" of other proceedings, and review them to see what you think of the extensions. If you're not comfortable with the changes (in that they're not expansive enough to be a "new" paper), then you're free to tell the journal you're not interested.
# Answer
> 4 votes
As pointed out by aeismail, every journal have different policy. Usually, the journals/conferences accepting extended papers mention such things in there Call for Paper as well.
For example, this is a quote from CFP of *Special Issue on Emerging Systems and Applications for Wireless Health Computing*
> All authors who presented papers at Wireless Health 2013 are invited to submit extended versions of their papers to IEEE TETC for inclusion in this special issue. Given that the Wireless Health 2013 proceedings will be published, it is required that submissions to the special issue have **at least 30% new content**.
Though, it is not very clear what exactly 30% new content means here, but it does indicate that your extended paper should have at least some new significant observation from may be at least the same results of your original paper.
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Tags: publications, conference, writing, copyright, publishability
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thread-12539 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12539 | Citing ideas but extending information | 2013-09-09T12:00:32.810 | # Question
Title: Citing ideas but extending information
Imagine the following situation: Mr. Expert writes that it is important to have A,B & C. Dr. Smart writes it is important to have A, Y, Z. As both are using the arguments to lead to different topics, their list is not exhaustive and {A,B,C,Y,Z} do not contradict.
I think all points are important, but I would also like to add that A may be red or blue. Hence I think:
`Red and blue A, B, C, Y and Z are important.`
But how do I cite them correctly?
`Red and blue A, B, C, Y and Z are important [Mr. Expert; Dr. Smart].`
This is the only form that doesn't make the sentence contain more citations than actual words. Is this a bad citation style, e.g. might Mr. Expert complain that he never said A should be red or blue or that he thinks Z is completely irrelevant? Or am I just noting that some ideas might be copied from one (or maybe multiple) listed sources?
# Answer
> 7 votes
It seems to me you should simply expand the text to provide the background that "Expert (cite year) has shown that A,B & C are important and Smart (cite year) has shown that A, Y, and Z are important. Based on circumstances I postulate that also Red and Blue A are important along with B, C, X, Y, and Z". I hope you get the point? In other words describe the findings of Expert and Smart and then add your own "hypothesis" or ideaand make it clear that (a) it is your idea and (b) on what you base the idea. It is not clear fom th equestion whether it is a hypothesis to be tested or a result of your own research. Depending on which the way you present things will be slightly different, of course.
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Tags: publications, citations, authorship, quotation
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thread-12537 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12537 | Exactly How Important Is The Quality Of My Degree (Grades, GPA)? | 2013-09-09T09:25:38.393 | # Question
Title: Exactly How Important Is The Quality Of My Degree (Grades, GPA)?
I don't want to bore anyone so long story, very, very short:
* This is for the Computer Science / Software Engineering industry.
* I am combating laziness and extreme procrastination due to depression.
* Not doing very well in my studies as a result.
Based on the two above I wonder if a degree with some tainting in the first year of my units would still be enough to get me a good job (in the industry).
Is experience worth more than my grades alone?
I say this because I often find that I do better by doing than just by reading the course material for Discrete Structures or Databases etc....
Should I not worry about my (past) bad grades and make the best of the situation and just develop a good portfolio?
I want to fix what I have gotten myself into, and I hope someone in the industry or with some kind of related experience can give me some insight.
# Answer
> 9 votes
Of course, it's no problem to tell people "Hey, I was lazy in school but I'll work super-hard for you." Unfortunately, people won't buy it.
From my time in the software industry, hiring quite a few people, I would actually not normally even look at their grades, unless they were borderline in the interview. Even then, if there was another candidate who was better in the interview, that borderline candidate would not even get a callback.
Some people will care about grades but for computer science 'guys' I find that what most people in industry really care about is what you can do for them. Can you help them more than someone else can help them? If so, then you'll likely land a job.
If you shape up, pull out of your 'funk' and get down to actually learning, you will likely be OK. If you let depression pull you under water, you'll drown.
You've started your degree, you should finish it. However, don't let the past dictate your future. This is the first day of the rest of your life. It's always darkest before the dawn. I'm sure there are more sayings along this line but in the end, depending your area of IT, you can do fine even if you had a bad start to school. If you have a strong finish, it's easy to explain that you should be judged on your 'exit velocity' rather than the start.
# Answer
> 1 votes
The answer might change from a country to another, but you have to remember that when applying for a job in the industry, you will meet the HR first. Most of the time, that particular person would not know anything about the technical aspects of the job you are applying for and would probably not ask you for your grades.
However, it is still your first contact with the company and you should not neglect it. Indeed, what he/she will do is to ask about your previous work experience (or at some point when you just freshly graduated, about your school projects) and your ability to work in a team. If you are not aiming too high, your human skills are sometimes more important than your technical ones because it is easier to learn new technical knowledge than to learn how to behave.
Last point, in any kind of job application process, always remember to ask as many questions as possible regarding the company, the team you might join. You always want to know where you will be working everyday for quite some time.
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Tags: job, undergraduate, grades
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thread-12546 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12546 | How to inform/attract more candidates for a postdoctoral position? | 2013-09-09T16:39:12.343 | # Question
Title: How to inform/attract more candidates for a postdoctoral position?
When having fund for hiring postdoctoral fellow, it is tricky to find highly qualified applicants, since they can get aware of the opening position by chance. For almost any postdoctoral position (it should apply for any position, but more severe for post-doc), there are better candidates who were also interested, but did not hear about the opening.
Possible approaches are not very effective.
* Spreading by word of mouth through colleagues is very limited.
* A few applicants may browse research group websites for checking opening positions. Moreover, search engines do not index and rank them quickly to reach the deadline.
* Posting on academic job websites is good, but most of them are paid websites. For faculty positions, universities have enough fund to pay for advertisement, but it is difficult to cover the advertisement cost by the limited fund of a postdoctoral position.
* Free job websites are not very common for academic positions.
How to find more effective ways to inform and encourage more potentials candidates to apply for a postdoctoral positions to have a better chance to select a highly qualified applicant?
# Answer
> 11 votes
Possible outlets I can think of include:
* Field-specific e-mail lists
* Department email-list forwarded through collegues at other departments
* Adverts inserted in talks/presentations held by people at your department (e.g. at invited talks, conferences etc.)
* Job ad websites (national and global)
* Advert at research-focused web communities/forums, such as Researchgate and Academia.edu, as well as LinkedIn.
# Answer
> 5 votes
There are sometimes subject-specific mailing lists available on which one can post job advertisements. Examples that I am currently subscribed to are All-Acad.com (mailing@all-acad.com) and allstat (allstat@JISCMAIL.AC.UK).
I can't say whether this is a more effective way to advertise, though.
ADDENDUM: Actually, I think it would be useful to expand the question in the following way, that would be useful for both prospective employers and job-seekers. This could be a community-wiki style question. So, the question could be: what resources are available for job advertising? And each answer could be for one subject, and divided into free and non-free sections, and within each could be web sites, mailing lists etc. I don't know whether such a question would fall within the scope of this site. I do know the SE sites vary in their policy wrt such "list" questions.
# Answer
> 2 votes
In some departments it is common practice to publish available postdoc positions in other institutions via the departmental mailing list. You can try mailing administrators/faculty in relevant departments.
# Answer
> 2 votes
I second both Faheem and Bitwise's options of **mailing list**, in two different manners:
* Each field (and subfield) has its own “go to” places for vacancies advertisements. In my field, people typically subscribe to CCP5 and CCL mailing-lists (the first one offers a choice of UK-only, Europe-only or worldwide postings). Some of these mailing-lists include a fee, but it may be reasonable (shelling out $50 is not much compared to 12 months of salary).
* You can send it to group-, department or institution-level mailing lists in places where you know people who will act as a local relay. I personally find that this is the best way to advertise a position, and I got great candidates this way in the past.
Other options available, both of which can have good efficiency:
* Some countries have national website, such as jobs.ac.uk (UK) or ABG (France). Sometimes, advertising through them is even mandated by your funding agency or institution!
* Post it to job sections of high-level journals, such as Nature Jobs or some highly-read journal in your field.
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Tags: postdocs, job-search, recruiting
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thread-12529 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12529 | Dangers of allowing students to resubmit assignments | 2013-09-09T06:38:03.223 | # Question
Title: Dangers of allowing students to resubmit assignments
There are two closely related questions here:
1. If a student submits their assignment and is unhappy with their mark, are there any dangers (which I might not be seeing) in allowing the students to do so? If I would offer for one, I would offer for all, but **should I be offering it in the first place?**
2. If resubmits are unavailable, some students ask me to 'pre-read' or 'pre-mark' their assignment. The end result is that when they submit officially, that may actually be the second submission. Clearly doing any 'pre-marking' or the like takes time and energy and, so far, very few students have taken advantage of this until right before the submission deadline (at which point I stop because I don't have THAT much time to offer them). **Are there dangers in 'pre-marking' assignments?**
Note: These assignments constitute either 50% or 100% of their total mark.
One of my concerns is that the student would have lower motivation to maximize the quality of their original work and just correct what was marked as a problem area - like a production worker depending on a Quality Control Inspector and not paying as much attention to the quality of their work the first time around. Are there other issues as well?
**EDIT:** I should add that these are business management subjects so student answers are not easily right or wrong but more about how they justify their analysis. Therefore, there is not an issue of "giving the right answer."
# Answer
> 15 votes
> Should I be offering it in the first place?
Dangers:
1. You spend even more time on assignments, limiting your time for other endeavors.
2. Students might get into a "grade grubbing" mode where they simply re-submit marginally better answers in order to improve their grade.
3. Students do a poor job initially because they know they will have a chance to re-submit, and they might as well take their chances that you'll give them decent marks for inferior work.
Benefits:
1. Overall, students spend more time on the assignments, leading to better knowledge and ability to do the work.
2. You can provide helpful information to guide them to better answers (because you're seeing first-attempts). This level of grading also takes more time.
3. Students are happier because the stress of a hard deadline isn't so bad.
I think the benefits outweigh the dangers if you're willing to put in the extra time to re-grade. As I've said in other threads, I've used auto-grading homework for a some classes (probably not relevant in your case), but I've used the strategy that I'd have deadlines for all the assignments but that the week before the final I'd re-open all the assignments and tell the students they can re-do any questions they missed. I don't tell them I'm going to do this until I do it, in order to keep students from simply waiting until the end to do all the assignments.
> Are there dangers in 'pre-marking' assignments
I think it's great that you're being creative with the assignments (e.g., pre-marking, resubmittals, etc.). Again, it comes down to your time -- if you have motivated students who want pre-marking and you have the time, I can't see a problem with it. It wouldn't surprise me if the best students are the ones who want pre-marked work, but then again I've had some less-capable students jump at chances like that to do better.
# Answer
> 9 votes
A suggestion that I have used quite successfully in regards to your point no. 2: premarking. This would depend on the dynamics of your class, but if at all possible to have the students perform a peer-review pre assessment of each other's work.
With peer-reviews, the students become more aware of is needed to fulfil the criteria and requirements. Alongside that, each student can also do a self review with a criteria based self-review pre-assessment.
There is always a risk of copying, but I have found that this to be no more than what would occur with the normal procedure (and tools such as turnitin can help with this).
# Answer
> 8 votes
It's certainly tricky! There are a number of pitfalls, I've found, that usually end up making it not worth the effort:
* A lot more work for you. Grading twice may be no biggie in a class of 10, but a class size of 200 or 300 would be prohibitive.
* The students will, in all likelihood, not try as hard the first time around, since they know they automatically get an extension.
* Grade inflation. This may not be a big deal to some (it's a minor crusade of mine) but it can be a major issue. If the entire class is getting \>90%, your superiors may be suspicious.
* Similarly, the more successful kids are liable to get annoyed. What's the point of busting your hump to be an A-student if the B- and C-students can resubmit and do just as well?
That being said, there are some good work-arounds; nothing you can do about class size, but here are some ideas:
* Don't tell them beforehand! This is a bit devious, and you can only do it once and not on the final, but most people will, after a hard midterm or something, appreciate that hugely. This will ensure most everyone works their butt off instead of slacking first time around.
* Give them half credit for resubmitted answers. That is, if a student gets an 80%, but the resubmit is 100%, give him/her a 90%. This can be a good (enough) balance: The poorly-performing students get a sufficient boost, but not enough to threaten or annoy the high-performers. This also reduces the overall grade-inflation risk.
* In the vein of pre-marking, since there's no "right answer," you can accept "drafts" and then spend some time going over some of the more and less successful avenues students chose. Everyone may end up doing something similar, but students will end up thinking more about their answers.
# Answer
> 7 votes
Since the field you're in is different from mine (mathematics), what I am about to describe may not work for you, but perhaps some variant of it could work.
I am quite fond of allowing students to make corrections to assignments (especially quizzes and exams), with the following rules:
1) Students may only resubmit an assignment once.
2) The corrected solutions must be flawless. There is no partial credit on resubmissions.
3) The students can earn back half of the points that they lost on their first submission. So if they scored a 4/10 on a problem the first time around, and if they submit a flawless corrected version, they will improve this to a 7/10. They cannot do any better, and there is nothing in between.
It has been my experience that this is a great way to get students to correct and learn from their mistakes, and I cannot find a downside to it. After all, my goal is to get the students to learn the material!
Since your assignments do not have clear-cut answers (as you describe in your edit), this might need some tweaking. You may need to replace "flawless" with "would have earned very high marks" or something to that effect. But the point remains: I think that allowing students to resubmit assignments is a valuable tool.
# Answer
> 6 votes
Occasionally, students will ask me to pregrade or review an assignment prior to submission. I am always happy to do so, but I don't give them a grade, just feedback on what is good, what is lacking, and what needs improvement. I find this is a good compromise.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Regarding the first scenario: if you give out solutions, there's obviously a problem. But if you hold off on giving out solutions, then the remaining students have to wait longer than might be reasonable.
# Answer
> 4 votes
I think the problem lies in what expectations the students have. With a clear set of grading criteria (c.f. rubrics) you could probably avoid some or many problems. In the second case, you could say that pre-grading provides a preliminary grade which. at best, will be raised by one notch upon successful resubmission. Then, the student will get feedback and know where they are and make a decision of putting the effort it worth it. Clearly, this simple example is not thought through so I believe this case may need a serious think and discussion with peers on possible side effects. But, the point is that if you make the grading clear then there will be less complaints.
Your first case is perhaps trickier. The same idea applies, you need to apply some clear rule of what happens with a resubmission. It is possible that if your design of the criteria for case 2 is good, then as a side-effect case 1 disappears. You should also consider reducing grades for late arrivals etc.
Although this reply is not very precise, I think setting up criteria that makes the grading process clear will help. By putting in an optional pre-assessment, you make the students decide what they should do. Note that the criteria for the assignment also have to be clear so that the grades you set can be explained in terms of learning objectives.
# Answer
> 4 votes
One advantage of allowing resubmits that hasn't been pointed out is that it allows you assign more challenging material without scaring the students too much.
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Tags: teaching, assessment
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thread-12561 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12561 | Citing in two connected sentences | 2013-09-10T08:41:05.630 | # Question
Title: Citing in two connected sentences
I read the answers to this, however I'm searching for an elaborated answer on how two (or more) sencentes are obviously from one source, and hence can be cited with one citation at the end of all sentences.
Example to reduce a really long sentences:
> The thing varies in dimension A, because of . Consequently, it is categorised as 1,2 or 3 \[Mr. Twit, 2013\].
Are linking words like *consequently*, *therefore* and so on enough to signal that is originates from one source? Can I swap the dot (.) and the citation \[Mr. Twit, 2013\] to indicate that the citation does not only belong to the last sentence?
Bonus question: If I write a whole paragraph and add one citation at the end, does this imply that the whole paragraph is quoted?
In general I'm trying to reduce he-said-she-said structures, as they are akward and hinder the information flow.
# Answer
Read what you have written, and check. Altering the order of punctuation and citation might seem a logical way to do it, but many style guides actually impose the respective order of those elements, and not logic.
In the end, I'm afraid you have to choice of either:
* accepting ambiguity of your example
* using the author's name to make things clear: *“Twit et al. demonstrated that \[…\]. As a consequence, it is categorised as X, Y or Z \[Mr. Twit, 2013\]”*
> 5 votes
# Answer
Every "idea" you introduce that is not your own needs a reference. It doesn't matter how many sentences it takes to express this idea, you only need to add the reference at the beginning/end (depending on your citation style) of the idea. If it takes more than a couple of sentences to express the idea, you may want to use a quotation.
In your example it seems like you have two ideas so you need to reference each idea. Often, it is better to provide context of each idea you introduce so the ideas are generally not back-to-back. Sometimes you have to have a list of ideas, in which case you put a reference after each idea.
> 3 votes
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Tags: citations, writing-style
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thread-12569 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12569 | What is the etiquette for CCing faculty in eMails? | 2013-09-10T11:29:58.300 | # Question
Title: What is the etiquette for CCing faculty in eMails?
I'm working in an international collaboration (Germany and Netherlands). It happens quite often that I'm asking technical questions to fellow postdocs by email, just sending the email to this single person. When I receive the reply, I almost always see that the head of the group has been put in CC.
I'm wondering why this is done. Is this some kind of etiquette I'm not aware of? I imagine that as a group leader you get flooded with emails, so why would you request more?
# Answer
> 11 votes
Yes, that sort of etiquette (CC'ing the PI of each involved partner in a collaboration, even for exchanges at lower level) exist in some groups. It is particularly true of recent collaborations, either because they have been established recently or because the research is still in its infancy. In both case, I suppose it is nice to help PI's stay on top of how things are progressing, both on the science and on the interpersonal relationships (like, is everyone acting professionally).
It's not universal, but it is common. It depends a lot on the nature of the relations between the PI's and their groups. I tend to ask students/post-docs to keep me in CC of the first few emails to our collaborator after they arrive/we start the project, then after sometime I tell them to drop me when it's evident things are going well.
In your situation, the safest course of action is to keep people on the CC list. You didn't CC them, but someone did, so don't drop them unless they ask for it. Also, ask *your* own boss how he likes to do things.
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*“I imagine that as a group leader you get flooded with emails, so why would you request more?”* — Whatever you do, you will be flooded with emails. You don't read them all, but you may skim those for tone/content, keeping an eye on things.
# Answer
> 6 votes
It is a fairly normal practice to cc: your boss on correspondence that is outside the organization, especially if he or she has a vested interest in the response. As you note, though, it does require some judiciousness to keep from overpopulating your boss's inbox. I'd say it is more rare in the case of technical back-and-forth, but I have seen it before.
I have also seen the "cc the boss" mentality from people who want the boss to know they're keeping busy -- I wouldn't suggest this kind of toady behavior, but it does exist.
The bottom line is that you shouldn't be concerned to see others do this on their correspondence, and you could certainly ask the head of your group if he or she wants to be cc'd on correspondence from you.
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Tags: etiquette, collaboration, email
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thread-2428 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2428 | Can one's PhD work be an extension of their Masters research? | 2012-07-13T09:03:19.460 | # Question
Title: Can one's PhD work be an extension of their Masters research?
I am currently pursuing a Masters degree in Literature, and I see potential in further research on the current topic of my dissertation for a PhD in the future. I have been told that an Honours thesis cannot be used as a foundation for a Masters dissertation, so i am wondering if a Masters dissertation can be used as a base for a PhD dissertation later on.
# Answer
> 8 votes
Seeing your question, I guess this can vary from field to field, but the practice I've seen (engineering, neuroscience, and psychology) is that the PhD work *often* is an extension of the masters research. The masters work explores one facet of the research problem, and the PhD thesis explores two or three more. This is often a practical matter, as sometimes the masters is one step towards the eventual granting of a PhD.
# Answer
> 7 votes
What defines a PhD dissertation can change from one field to another, from one university to another. However, in my case, one chapter of my PhD thesis corresponds to a condensed version of my Master thesis, and as far as I can tell, it's not an unusual practice from where I come from (computer science, france).
It makes sense when the PhD is somehow an extension of the Master thesis, that is, the Master thesis is used to study a particular aspect of the PhD research problem. That being said, the better for you is probably to check some PhD dissertations coming from your department, and check the intersection with the corresponding Master thesis.
# Answer
> 1 votes
In general the master's thesis and the doctoral thesis should not be on exactly the same topic. On the other hand, it is entirely rational for earlier theses to provide the inspiration for later work in one's career.
What you can't really do is retread the same ground—you will need to develop a different topic, with different literature citations and original research. But the move doesn't have to be radical—in literature, for instance, you don't have to go from Sophocles to Virginia Woolf. But you probably shouldn't do *The Winter's Tale* for your master's thesis and then *Cymbeline* for your PhD thesis, either.
# Answer
> 0 votes
I have never heard of any institution imposing a restriction such that your doctoral research is in a different field to your Master's research.
As long as your PhD research is a significant body of original research that greatly extends your Master's experience and appropriately cites any previous findings, there should not be a problem.
Indeed, in some countries it is possible to *convert* your Master's research into a PhD. For instance, if you are 6 months into a project and decide you want to greatly extend the scope of your research, you may be allowed a conversion. Bear in mind that where I live, a Master's degree is not a requirement to begin a PhD (you only need an honours degree, which is 1 year of postgraduate lectures and a small research project).
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Tags: phd, masters, thesis
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thread-12583 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12583 | How to read Eigen factor and AI for a journal in specific field? | 2013-09-10T21:31:51.313 | # Question
Title: How to read Eigen factor and AI for a journal in specific field?
I am trying to understand the reputation of a journal in specific field of science. I am looking at this journal CHI Paper. How do I read the information from the graphs and figure out how this journal compares to other journals?
# Answer
> 1 votes
Look at the entire list of journals in the field **Information theory**, where this journals belongs. There you see that *ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction* is at place 53 out of 248, ranked by AI. By combining this number with knowledge of the field you can probably draw some conclusions.
In general, both *eigenfactors* and the *Article influence score* (AI) are reported by Thomson ISI as well, so they are well known. Look at the FAQ at eigenfactor.org and read the wikipedia article on eigenfactor for more info. In general, AI is more comparable to the impact factor, while the eigenfactor scales with the number of papers published in the journal. Also have a look at SNIP and SJR if you are interested in journal metrics, info can be found at journalmetrics.com.
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Tags: research-process, journals, bibliometrics
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thread-12501 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12501 | Applying for post-doc, how to mention mutual acquaintances? | 2013-09-06T16:42:05.073 | # Question
Title: Applying for post-doc, how to mention mutual acquaintances?
I am applying for post-docs, and there is a professor I would very much like to work with. I would like to e-mail him and see if he has any open positions in his lab.
I have never met the professor before, though I am friends with several of his former and current graduate students. I feel like this is an important thing to bring up. What is the best way bring this up in a brief e-mail?
# Answer
I'll answer with a view from the other side (I.e. as a recruiting professor). Getting mention of a mutual acquaintance in an application email (or cover letter) is not so common. Most often, I find out about those from reading the CV (former student of mine was PhD advisor, for example) or by getting a separate recommendation (or follow-up) by email directly from our mutual friend.
But, I did recently receive such an application mentioning a common acquaintance, and I must admit it was a nice touch. I definitely will bring up the subject with said acquaintance in the net future, checking for his views on the candidate.
The wording was "light": "I heard a lot of good things about your research group by XXX, who is an officemate in my current group".
> 3 votes
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Tags: postdocs, email
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thread-10931 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10931 | Planning for grad school | 2013-07-03T19:48:34.943 | # Question
Title: Planning for grad school
I am a second year under-graduate student in mathematics. My school (3 years under-grad) has a great history of sending its under-graduates to top graduate level math programs of the US universities. However, I do not know to what extent top universities expect an under-graduate to have done graduate level courses.
The math courses I will have done in my under-grad are: Calculus I-II-III, Analysis I, Analysis II, Linear Algebra I, Linear Algebra II, Complex Analysis, Real Analysis, Intro to Algebra, Discrete Math, Introductory PDE, Stochastic Processes. I do not know if I will have done Topology and Number Theory as they are not offered in a regular basis.
So, my question to those who are studying or working in graduate level math departments is: Are there any specific (number or name of) graduate level courses that a student should have done to be accepted in top math schools for PhD? I know that many things other than the transcript would be considered by admission committee. But just looking at the transcript of an undergraduate, which graduate level math courses would the committee like to see in applicant's transcript?
# Answer
**Disclaimer**: This is all vicarious based on professional mathematicians' advice (from MathOverflow and the like). Take these words with a grain of salt. . .
Graduate schools (especially the "top-tier" ones) judge more based on your ability to do research rather than your ability to get an "A" in a class or the quantitative aspect of your CV (referring to how many graduate-level classes you took). In other words, what matters most is your potential ability to become a producer of mathematics, rather than a consumer. After all, your PhD thesis won't come out from that (necessarily). So here's what I think you should be focusing on at the moment, for your final year (not in order of importance):
1) **Getting glowing letters of recommendation (at most 3) from professors who know you well. They'll probably be able to accurately asses your research potential assuming you've done some type of research project with them. If you have not, get to it. The key is to develop a close relationship with someone (or a couple of people) in your department who'll be able to get a good word for your potential as a research mathematician.** Try to look for someone whose area of research coincides with your potential speciality in grad school.
2) **Start on a research project (independently or otherwise) if you have not already ASAP. Something like a senior thesis. Research that result in publications look awesome but are definitely not necessary (I don't think anybody expects much out of undergrads). As long as admission officers can say "Hey, this guy/gal is motivated enough to do research on their own, and hey look at that work they're doing, there might be hope for them yet."**
3) **If you're planning to apply to places like Princeton, high GRE scores are preferred (shoot for the 90th percentile and above).** I hate to think of the admission process as a bureaucracy but just put up with it. Just remember, these exams are definitely important, but they are only one part of your application to be considered.
4) **Challenge yourself**, and keep your **GPA optimized** (I do *not* mean taking "easy" courses that just fluff up your GPA. Try to take the relevant math, which probably means at the upper or graduate-level). Though coursework at this point should not be your main concern (research should be), if you think you can handle it, and you think you'll have time for it, take a few graduate-level courses. Also, fill in the topology gap. Graduate admissions will look for a solid undergraduate background in mathematics (real analysis, abstract algebra, and topology are probably the "Big 3" for an undergrad to take, in addition to other classes). **note**: the fourth point seems repetitive now that I'm re-reading but I'll keep it like this for now for informative purposes.
Other qualities that'll help (more tongue-in-cheek than actual advice) is the ability to persevere and have genuine curiosity for whatever field you're going in when writing your personal statement. Do not puff up your application with courses just to "look good". General knowledge helps, but this is something you can do on your own time. Focus on optimizing your GPA and standarized test scores (GRE); most importantly, focus on establishing a professional relationship with a professor (letters of recommendation) and research. Other than that, good luck to you.
You may also want to browse these threads. I've pretty much reiterated most of the points, but you should still see their different points of view.
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/15848/what-to-look-for-in-applicants-to-graduate-programs-in-mathematics
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/27299/on-starting-graduate-school-and-common-pitfalls
> 10 votes
# Answer
I am a professor in a top ten math dept. in the US. I have sat on admissions committees for many years, and talked to colleagues at other top tier institutions about admissions.
First: admissions is not done by a "bureacracy", or "officers". It is done by some subset of the math dept. faculty, who read the applications, including the letters, the GRE scores, the transcripts, and the essay, and then rank order them.
Second: To get to a top institution, high GRE scores are essential. These don't guarantee admission by any means, but if someone can't get high scores on this exam, it calls into question their understanding of all the basic undergrad math they've learnt. It's true that different schools (and different faculty members, even at a given school) place different weights on this exam, but doing well on it is something you have some control over in the admissions process (by preparing well), so it makes sense to do so.
Your GPA in your math courses is also very important. Presumably you are doing your best in your courses, and getting as high a GPA as possible. So there is no real magic to this; you just have to work hard at learning math.
Third: Assuming that your GPA and GRE scores put you in the ball-park of being a credible candidate for admission, people will read your letters carefully. So you want to get letter writers who can write about your achievements and abilities in as much detail as possible.
Fourth: No-one expects undergrads to have done real research; REU experience certainly helps, but one main reason for this is that it provides a way to meet professors who may get to know you quite well, and so can (hopefully) write a strong letter for you.
Fifth: Graduate courses certainly help, if your grade in them is good and meaningful. It is often the case that undergrads in grad courses will be given somewhat inflated grades out of sympathy on the part of the instructor. This makes sense from the point of view of not destroying someone's GPA because they took a challenging class, but an admissions committee will look for evidence that the undergrad really did master the material in the grad classes they have taken. One way to show this is to have the instructor of the graduate class write a (hopefully positive) letter.
Again, different schools have different expectations about what incoming students will know. At the absolute top places (Harvard, Princeton) essentially all the incoming students will know essentially all the material in basic graduate courses (measure theory and functional analysis, basic algebraic topology, basic commutative algebra, and so on). At other places this is not the case, but most incoming students at most top schools will be familiar with a reasonable percentage of what would be regarded as basic graduate math.
Sixth: In terms of preparation for grad school, writing a senior thesis is great. It teaches you about a topic in much more depth than you would normally investigate it, normally leads to learning some grad level math, and also again builds a closer connection with a professor (your advisor) who can then hopefully write a good letter for you. And at a more fundamental level, since mathematicians spend most of their time writing about mathematics, this is pretty good preparation for that.
As far as applications to grad school go (rather than as preparation for succeeding in graduate school, where as I've said it's great), my sense is that the real pay-off for writing a senior thesis is the letter from the advisor.
Since this is a bit harder to quantify than entries on a transcript, often students are advised to take grad classes rather than write a senior thesis (if this option exists). I can see why this advice is given, but I do think writing a senior thesis (if you put your heart into it) is an invaluable mathematical experience.
A related option is to do independent study on a topic with a faculty member. Again, from the pragmatic point of view this doesn't do much for your transcript, but the benefits for your mathematical education are similar to those of writing a senior thesis, if you have a good advisor and take the independent study seriously.
Finally: Remember that there are lots graduate schools in mathematics. What I've written above more-or-less reflects admissions experience at top ten institutions, but obviously there are many more very good math programs out there, and they are not all as competitive as the top ten.
So overall, the most sensible thing to do is to work on learning as much math as you can as well as you can, and interacting with your professors enough that they know what you're learning and can write about it. I think the only things that are really worth thinking about in terms of "gaming" the admissions process are attending an REU or doing independent study or writing a senior thesis, something that gives you a chance to interact with a professor, and a specific topic, in more depth; and making sure you study well for the GRE before you take it.
> 11 votes
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Tags: graduate-school, graduate-admissions, mathematics
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thread-12607 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12607 | What is an endowed chair exactly? How does it compare to a “normal” position? | 2013-09-12T08:26:26.490 | # Question
Title: What is an endowed chair exactly? How does it compare to a “normal” position?
US universities have a tendency to name chairs after people. Just to give a few examples from Harvard: Hollis Professor of Divinity (love that title), Steven and Maureen Klinsky Professorship of Practice for Leadership and Progress (too long to fit on business card), Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. Professor of Teaching and Learning, etc.
I understand that the people whom the chairs are named after are rich and donated money to the school in the past. What I do not understand is in what aspects it changes the nature of the position. Are these chairs more highly regarded that just being "Professor of Divinity" for example? Are they better paid?
# Answer
Chaired positions are generally *endowed*, in that the money provided for the salary, and some other benefits (e.g., a dedicated assistant) or increased research funds comes from the interest on principal donated by the person or people the chair is named after, which is part of the school's overall endowment (UC San Diego has a more broad definition, as does Wikipedia). Being named to a chair is a prestigious award, and in many cases it is a lifetime (or at least, until retirement) position. Some chaired positions are given on a rotating basis (e.g., for five years), but nonetheless it is prestigious to be named to an endowed chair.
While it is not strictly true that professors in chaired positions are paid more (because in most cases pay is negotiable), because universities use a combination of pay and incentives such as an endowed chair to lure highly sought-after candidates, the pay is probably on average higher than the average non-chaired full professor would have at the same institution and department.
Finally, some schools use chairs at the university level (versus the departmental or school level) that they dole out throughout the university. The positions can therefore be used as an enabler for some departments with less money to attract particularly important faculty members that they might not have had an opportunity to attract otherwise.
For a specific example of the policy for endowed chairs at one university (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), see here.
> 35 votes
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Tags: united-states, career-path, titles
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thread-12578 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12578 | What makes a good chalkboard? | 2013-09-10T18:36:41.363 | # Question
Title: What makes a good chalkboard?
I've encountered lots of chalkboards through my career, and they vary widely in quality. Some write smoothly and erase cleanly; for others, the chalk squeaks and the eraser just smears.
I assume there are differences in the materials they use, the construction techniques, how the surface is prepared or treated, and so on. But I'm clueless as to what these differences might be, and how they affect the quality. If I'm looking for a "good" one, what questions should I ask?
(Academics are one of the few groups these days that use chalkboards on a regular basis, so I hope this question is suitable for this site. Please note that I'm not asking for specific product recommendations, just general information.)
# Answer
> 15 votes
The good chalkboards appear to be made of porcelain enamel fused to a steel core. See this site for more details on the manufacturing process. As JeffE mentioned in a comment on another answer, cheaper chalkboards are made by painting wood or chipboard with a special chalkboard paint. Although these are good for crafts, they are NOT the kind you want to have in a classroom. They have to be primed with chalk before the first use and after being cleaned with a damp cloth. Also they will often have to be given another coat of paint after being used for a while.
For non-squeak writing, break long pieces of chalk in half--this will **usually** take care of the problem! I have noticed that regular, i.e. daily, sponging with an all-purpose cleaning solution also helps to prevent smearing while writing/erasing.
# Answer
> 6 votes
Just a partial answer, since I am not discussing materials and building techniques but only giving a couple of tips.
Chalk squeaking should depend on its length; break it into two parts to avoid it. Not sure if this has been studied rigorously, but it seems to work in my experience.
As for erasing, I am personally a fan of using a damp towel rather than dry-erasing. It takes some more work and preparation, but the results are much better.
# Answer
> 6 votes
The best chalkboard, if you can afford it, is slate. It is the combination of grain consistency and durability that allows the consistent accretion of chalk on the surface of the board. The only reason it is not used is that it is prohibitively expensive and either heavy or fragile, depending on the depth of the slate. I suppose this could be improved with a non-flexible backing.
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Tags: teaching
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thread-11749 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11749 | Easy going advisor versus expert advisor and research experience | 2013-08-08T13:15:09.897 | # Question
Title: Easy going advisor versus expert advisor and research experience
I am fortunate to have a very nice, easy-going advisor (the last because I have seen some horrible PhD advisors). He respects me and my work (I did my master degree under his guidance). Then, I went to another university and returned to him again last year. I am a first year PhD student now. However, I have some issues regarding **my research**.
**First,** my advisor does not know much about my area even though he's encouraging me to pursue on it. To make it clear, I can't consult him in my specific area (I do consult him on other things though).
**Second,** he's not aiming high (top conferences) on publications. He mainly publishes on mid/ lower mid conferences and happy with that.
On the other hand, I have met a professor who is a ***big name***, ***expert in my area***, ***affiliated with a top university*** and ***my work is highly influenced by his research***. He also seems to have a very nice personality (I have chatted with his students). I met him several time on different occasions. and he showed an interest to work together for a joint paper.
**Most importantly,** I believe changing university will result in a better research experience **for me**. In particular, I will join a lab with different enthusiastic grad students with critical guidance unlike my current situation where it is only me and my advisor.
About funding, I have external funding and will continue regardless where I am. I am really wondering which path to take. I am addicted to what I am doing but need the guidance and research experience which I am greatly lacking with my current supervisor.
Update:
**The question is: How to approach this professor for acceptance ?** specially without saying anything bad about my current advisor.
# Answer
> 5 votes
How you approach the professor for acceptance would be very similar to how you speak to your current advisor (should you choose to\*) about your decision:
* Be objective, there is no need to mention anything about either academic in a personal way, this decision is purely one for an academic reason - you want to be 'closer' to where current *active* research is happening and amongst those *actively* involved in research in your field.
* Related, be polite and direct to the point.
The fact that the professor has expressed interest in writing a paper with you is a strong indication - perhaps accept this offer and at that stage mention that you wish to pursue your research under his guidance and to work within his labs.
Once it is definite that you'd get in and although you are not obligated to explain to your current advisor, it is advisable to explain clearly and positively about the opportunity to work directly with one of the top researchers in the field - I am sure your advisor would understand.
# Answer
> 2 votes
Maybe you can ask your current advisor (the easy-going guy), to be your co-supervisor. This is done by many Ph.D. students and sometimes the co-supervisor is even from a university in a different country. It could be a good solution to work under the supervision of this expert in your area and at the same time maintain the collaboration with your current supervisor with whom you get on so well. That's what my supervisor suggested for my future Ph.D.
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Tags: phd, advisor
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thread-12614 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12614 | Is having a specialised PhD topic a pitfall when applying to be a lecturer of STEM education, even with relevant practical experience? | 2013-09-12T19:15:45.930 | # Question
Title: Is having a specialised PhD topic a pitfall when applying to be a lecturer of STEM education, even with relevant practical experience?
This is in a similar vein as What are the potential pitfalls of having a PhD, but where that was specifically targeted as entering industry, this is targeted at becoming a lecturer of STEM education (effectively a 'teacher-trainer').
Is having a specialised PhD topic a pitfall when applying to be a lecturer of STEM education?
To give an actual example\*, I have completed a PhD in atmospheric physics (with a bit of programming thrown in) and 14 year high school teaching experience, I have applied to be a STEM Education lecturer - will that PhD be considered too specialised?
\**note: this is just a real life example, not a self help question.\*
# Answer
> Is having a specialised PhD topic a pitfall when applying to be a lecturer of STEM education? \[with teaching and research duties\]
I would not call it a "pitfall," per se, but rather you'll have to do some convincing that you're qualified to research in the field of education. I applied for a couple of similar positions (with somewhat similar experience and education as you, though with about half the number of years teaching high school), and the guidance I received was that I needed to demonstrate that I had a "research arc" (or research strategy) that was consistent with the research goals of the position. Having a good deal of teaching experience may have given me an edge as far as the teaching duties were concerned, but I only had one publication in the education pedagogy realm, and that (among other things, presumably) was not enough to make me competitive for the positions (i.e., I didn't get the jobs). In fact, it probably was the case that most applicants for such a position spent time teaching at the secondary level, and my experience there was a wash.
Bottom line: if you are asked to write a research statement, make sure it is highly targeted towards the position, and try to have a long-term approach to the research question or questions you discuss. Relating it back to your hard-science degree may be difficult, so leverage as much of the teaching experience you can to inform the statement.
> 2 votes
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Tags: phd, teaching, stem, lecturer
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thread-12620 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12620 | Self-endowed chair in the US and Europe | 2013-09-13T04:18:37.853 | # Question
Title: Self-endowed chair in the US and Europe
Endowed professorship is very common, but the financial endowment normally comes from external sources. Is it also common that a professor/research endow his/her position to establish a research group in the target university?
It should be an excellent approach for mid-level professors/researchers who can establish a research group in a top university (where it is normally hard to get that position) and get research fund from external sources such as industry and funding agencies.
This is of mutual benefit for both the university and professor, but I have not heard about such positions. Is it uncommon or just through private contracts?
UPDATE: Apparently, I confused endowed and named chair with research professor. I asked the question about research professor here. However, I still do not see a contradiction between research professor and self-endowed professor. Does a endowed chair must be necessary result of a huge donation to university? or a foundation can merely fund a professor position. If it is the latter case, one should be able to fund his own endowed position too.
# Answer
> 6 votes
Endowed professorship typically are the result of a large donation of money to the university that allows them to fully fund a position in perpetuity based on the earnings on the initial donation. This is generally much larger than what an individual can bring in from external sources. If you manage to bring in that type of income, you will likely have little problem obtaining a permanent position.
I am aware of one independently wealthy individual who made a large enough donation to establish his own professorship. Basically he spent a small fraction of his wealth (which would be a large fraction of the wealth of most academics) to become a full professor with minimal teaching and service duties. His research was funded from his charitable foundation and I believe the foundation paid the standard overhead rates. He was reasonably productive throughout his entire career and probably could have obtained a professorship without using his personal wealth, but given the competitive nature of the job market and limited availability of positions, probably not at the institution of his choosing.
# Answer
> 2 votes
What you describe sounds like a **research professor** in the US system:
> A professor who does not take on all of the classic duties of a professor, but instead focuses on research. At most universities, research professors are not eligible for tenure and **must fund their salary entirely through research grants**, with no regular salary commitment from internal university sources. In parallel with tenure-track faculty ranks, there are assistant and associate research professor positions.
The obvious drawback is that it puts enormous pressure on grant finding, with no tenure and thus no job security.
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thread-12627 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12627 | Nomenclatures and symbols expansion in text | 2013-09-13T09:19:36.473 | # Question
Title: Nomenclatures and symbols expansion in text
In my thesis there are 7 chapters. Each chapter contains many nomenclatures and symbols.
**Nomenclature:**
Chapter 1
`Monte Carlo (MC)` simulation is wonderful. `MC` is a stochastic process.
Chapter 2/3/../7
Do I need to re-expand the nomenclatures at the beginning of each chapter or expanding at the chapter 1 (or first occurrence) is enough?
**Symbol:** Same question applies for Symbols also. For example, `Temperature (T)`
(Note: Apart from the above, the list of abbreviations and symbols is a must in the thesis as per institute guideline.)
# Answer
> 3 votes
Unlike papers, theses are longer and typically not read in full (someone is going to say “typically not read at all”, but if you are writing yours, please don't listen to these people!). So **expanding acronyms for the first time in each chapter makes sense**. On the other hand, people who will read chapter 4 of your thesis are probably experts, and so **they already know the common acronyms in your field**.
For example, Monte Carlo (MC) is trivially used by anyone who knows molecular simulations and wouldn't need to be expanded more than once. On the other hand, acronyms of less common methods might warrant expansion once per chapter: Transition Matrix Monte Carlo (TMMC), Self-Learning Adaptive Umbrella Sampling (SLAUS), etc.
Another solution is to include **a list of abbreviations and symbols at the end** of your thesis!
# Answer
> 3 votes
In addition towhat has already been said, you should consider whether all abbreviations are necessary. Some are part of jargon but sometimes you see something abbreviated only to be used, say, twice. In such a case it is unnecessary. My advice is to be relatively restrictive with new abbreviations and ones that are not used very frequently.
I personally think there is a tendency to over-use abbreviations and making wise decisions of when to use them and when not to use them should be part of all scientific writing. In the days when papers were printed on paper there may have been an incentive to make the text shorter but with digital publications, this is no longer really the case.
Whether you should re-introduce some abbreviations in each chapter, I think it is a matter of style and taste. The purpose of reiterating the explanation would be if you think the use is rare so that the reader would forget about them between occurrences. Then it may be useful to drop them altogether.
Variables are slightly different. You should only need to provide an explanation once. That in addition with a list of variables should be sufficient.
As a comment, in your example you abbreviate Monte Carlo simulation as MC and in the second sentence you essentially say "Monte Carlo is a stochastic process" (it is a place). You should use MCS to make the abbreviation full and not subject to misinterpretation.
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Tags: phd, thesis
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thread-12635 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12635 | How do I cite a result that I've only seen stated without a proof, and I prove myself? | 2013-09-13T14:22:11.533 | # Question
Title: How do I cite a result that I've only seen stated without a proof, and I prove myself?
I am writing my PhD thesis in mathematics.
It happens frequently that I use results that I don't have a reference for except
* textbooks stating "it is easily seen that ..." or "it is well-known that..."
* it is stated on Wikipedia (without proof)
* I have derived it with colleagues or people from Q&A sites
Then I try to find a source for some time, before I write down a proof by myself. However, most probably, there has been an earlier mention of this result that I could reference instead.
How should I proceed in such cases?
# Answer
If it's a textbook-level result, you could just **cite a textbook**. Otherwise, if you derived it yourself or with colleagues, no citation is required unless you published that proof earlier (not likely if it's a minor one). But you should definitely **thank the people who helped** in acknowledgments.
Finally, note that **there is a threshold for citation**: if a result is trivial, and as such is likely to have been independently demonstrated by many people over time, with no clear historical/seminal work, then you do not need to cite it.
> 15 votes
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Tags: citations, mathematics
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thread-12481 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12481 | Are there available corpora of academic works? | 2013-09-05T10:20:38.453 | # Question
Title: Are there available corpora of academic works?
There are many different corpora<sup>\[1\]</sup> for the English language:
However, one may want to do an analysis of the evolution of English as used in written academic works (theses, journal articles, etc.). This came apparent to me while I was trying to research usage of passive vs. active voice for this question.
So, are there any available corpora of academic works in English language?
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1. corpus: *collections of written or spoken material in machine-readable form, assembled for the purpose of studying linguistic structures, frequencies, etc.* \[New Oxford American Dictionary\]
# Answer
Yes, JSTOR provides a corpus for linguistic (and other) analyses of academic literature, at JSTOR Data for Research
See this Language Log discussion of one such analysis done on that corpus.
> 8 votes
# Answer
Someone will no doubt provide a better answer for you, but here are a couple of resources that may be of interest/help/use:
"Applying corpus methods to written academic texts: Explorations of MICUSP" (Romer and Wulff, 2010).
"Looking at citations: Using corpora in English for Academic Purposes" (Thompson, 2001)
> 5 votes
# Answer
I'll self answer, because I realized just now that COCA (The Corpus of Contemporary American English) actually includes academic texts (a subpart of the corpus they refer to as COCA-Academic). It even allows one to search by section, for example restricting the search to academic works:
(and it was right under my nose the whole time!)
> 3 votes
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Tags: publications, writing, language, databases
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thread-12640 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12640 | How to get a research professor position? | 2013-09-13T15:22:48.920 | # Question
Title: How to get a research professor position?
Since universities do not normally pay the salary of a research professor, and salary along with research funding comes from external resources, this not a paid position. On the other hand, a few people are interested in a job without a secured salary (or a few researchers are confident enough to get enough funding to secure their salary too).
As a result, universities do not advertise for hiring `research professors` (at least, I do not see in job websites). Therefore, it should be based on private negotiation. Logically, universities should not have limitation for the number of research professors, as they do not pay their salaries. If they can obtain fund, it is good for them, if not, the university loses nothing.
In the aforementioned circumstances, I guess, potential researchers should start this negotiation. If yes, how this negotiation is normally started? A potential research professor contacts the university President, Vice President for Research, Dean, Department Chair with a proposal?
What is the procedure for hiring a research professor?
# Answer
The first thing to realize is that within the same department a tenure track/tenured position is usually more desirable than a soft money position (what you are calling a research professor). Soft money positions tend to have less responsibilities (e.g., teaching and service) but at many research oriented universities TT staff can use grant money to buy out of teaching and service. In fact those on soft money positions often pick up the residual work thereby making their grant money go further.
Also realize that most departments do not want lots of soft money staff. There are often physical space constraints. Soft money staff can potentially push a department in a direction it is not interested in which can lead to social and political issues. There is also the issue of graduate students. Most people on soft money positions want to have access to graduate students but this can syphon off students and funds from TT staff and provide less security for the students (e.g., when the soft money runs out).
Finally, realize that most departments actually care about their staff. When soft money positions have a gap in funding, the members of a department often try and cover the shortfall. The ability to attract the best soft money candidates depends on the past history of how soft money staff have been treated.
Now to answer you question, at the highest I would contact the Department Chair. No Department Chair wants to hear from the Dean that they should consider someone. No Dean has the time to read CVs of candidates that are not good enough for a TT position. Even better is to contact a TT staff member in the department that you would like to work with. the best soft money positions are ones in which the individual is not isolated from the rest of the department.
> 11 votes
# Answer
Different institutions will have different procedures. Some of them handle it case-by-case, but in other places there are actual formal recruiting procedures and call for applications. See, for example, Texas A&M’s guidelines on hiring research professors.
> 3 votes
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Tags: research-process, professorship, university, funding
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thread-12645 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12645 | How do people manage recommendation letters? | 2013-09-13T19:42:21.010 | # Question
Title: How do people manage recommendation letters?
A good academic job normally needs excellent recommendation. Due to the rapid growth of higher education, there are too many vacancies (in new or expanding universities) and too many applicants (growing number of graduates). As a result, each vacancy receives many applications, and each applicant need to apply for many positions.
This is how the matchmaking system works: keeps submitting applications.
Although, online systems are replacing hardcopy applications, still many universities prefer application by mail, and more often, they ask for recommendation letters to be submitted by mail. I have seen this very common in Europe.
Thus, each job-seeking scholar must ask his/her colleagues, professors, etc to submit tens of recommendation letters by mail. Owing to the fact that every famous scholar has/had many students/colleagues. Therefore, a part of this schedule must be devoted to writing recommendation letters for others.
Considering that people need recommendation for other purposes such as grant proposal, admission application, fellowship, etc; this matter must be more serious.
Even in online systems, a busy scholar may receive emails for completing recommendations on a regular basis.
*My questions are:*
1. From the applicant part: isn't it bad/rude/harsh to ask a colleague/professor to write tens of recommendations for you to find an academic position. And keep asking for recommendations for prospective proposals?
2. From the reference part: isn't it annoying to deal with repeatedly recommendation requests? Ignoring a recommendation request may have bad consequences for the applicant, but it is not easy to see recommendation request every day checking the emails, as an old student/colleague is strongly seeking a new position.
# Answer
> 8 votes
1. No it is not rude but there is a matter of fatigue in the end. the professor might just say "enough" at some point. Usually the letters will also be fairly similar so that each is largely composed of the same text but with smaller alterations tailored to the specific job application. Another trick is to ask the applicant to write a basic text covering what the applicant wishes the letter to cover. It is then easier to use that text and make modifications as one pleases.
2. Hopefully the applicant has more than one person to ask for references. Writing such letters is, at least in my sphere, something you are supposed to do, unless it inflicts severe effects on other activities. Yes, it is annoying at times,particularly if the request is such that one needs to complete the letter "yesterday". Hence providing some time will alleviate the discomfort.
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Tags: professorship, job, university, recommendation-letter, colleagues
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thread-12650 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12650 | Journals similar to Journal of Chemical Education in style | 2013-09-13T21:23:35.957 | # Question
Title: Journals similar to Journal of Chemical Education in style
What are the journals similar to *Journal of Chemical Education* which are helpful from middle school through graduate school? I mean the journals which publish articles which are good resources for learning the basics (complementary to books).
\[Note: The journals need not be necessarily in the field of Chemistry\]
# Answer
While I am a regular reader of *J. Chem. Ed.*, I wouldn't really say it's a good journal to read for learning the basics. It is more a journal of *educators in the field of chemistry*, and while I think some articles may be useful to chemistry students (including lab experiments and activities), overall its goal is to be a forum to discuss how we teach chemistry, rather than a place to *learn* chemistry.
For other journals about chemical education, you can find a very short list on Wikipedia. Also, as stated there, most such journals (especially for junior or high school chemical education) are localized, i.e. limited to a specific country (because of differences in curricula). Among the international ones, I would recommend *Education in Chemistry*, which is more readable than its sister journal *Chemistry Education Research and Practice*
> 3 votes
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Tags: journals, education, online-resource
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thread-12663 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12663 | Is listener's fees in a conference justified? | 2013-09-14T04:11:25.827 | # Question
Title: Is listener's fees in a conference justified?
In a conference, where I am an author, I noticed that there is a substantial fees for registering as a listener for the conference.(10-30% less than the fees for professionals, students etc but it is still on higher side).
Is this justified given that as an author I would like my work to be presented in front of as many people as possible and receive comments for the same. Is this common practice in conferences across Computer Science or any other field ?
# Answer
> 12 votes
The main reason for fees is that there is a cost for renting the auditoriums and perhaps other services (refreshments, facilities etc.). Under such circumstances all participants need to pay to support the conference. Exactly how the pricing is done differs widely but in most cases it is based on costs divided by a certain number of projected participants in different categories. There are conferences which I have attended that seem horrendously expensive and are held in luxurious places with organizing services and then there are those run by a smaller society where making a cheap efficient meeting for the members by the members is a priority. In all cases you pay just to get in.
So pricing will vary depending on venue and organiser. Depending on how the conference is organized you may be able to gain some insights into how the costs come about and then make constructive comments to the organisers on how it should change; particularly if the organisers are a membership organisation where you are a member.
# Answer
> -2 votes
Is it justified? Well, if people pay it, then yes. If they don't, then no.
I don't think it's any more complicated than that.
Conference organisers want to earn a living by doing their job. Just as you do.
Some will seek to make as much profit as possible. The market will decide whether or not they are succesful in this.
It's just the economics of the private sector within a mixed economy. So looking for a moral dimension is like dancing about architecture.
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Tags: conference, fees
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thread-12668 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12668 | Are faculty applicants hired at a level based on their current position? | 2013-09-14T07:55:05.430 | # Question
Title: Are faculty applicants hired at a level based on their current position?
When a university appoints a faculty applicant, the rank is based on his/her current position or the university will judge about the academic rank independently?
I understand that each university has its own regulations for academic rank/promotion, but how much they consider the current position of an applicant?
This should be a serious issue when an applicant comes from another country with a different academic system.
Is it (even rarely) possible to appoint a currently full professor as assistant professor or vice versa?
# Answer
> 8 votes
Details may vary but in essence the following applies (assuming it is a research/teaching university):
1. *Scientific publications*. The list is judged on quality, usually determined by h-index, number of citations and publications per year in some combination.
2. *Funding*. The ability of the applicant to attract funds.
3. *Academic experience*. This could be anything from teaching through administrative tasks, within a university or in international circles. the latter may be important since the person brings in a network of contacts.
Clearly, it is possible that a department may look for a younger promising scientists to build a new environment and many positions may be strategic to expand a department or to strengthen it uncertain ways. Hence the current position may have very little influence on the appointment. It all boils down to what the department is looking for.
Whether it is possible to employ a full professor as assistant or *vice versa*, is difficult to answer. generally, yes, but the meaning of full, associate, assistant professor varies and does not exist everywhere. So the picture is more complex here and I believe the search criteria is what is looked at. I can imagine, that being full professor may be a disadvantage if the position is looking for someone to be assistant but then it is up to the applicant to accept (or not) the conditions.
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Tags: university, job-search, professorship, tenure-track
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thread-12670 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12670 | Management after Software Engineering undergraduate degree or separate management masters degree? | 2013-09-14T09:35:14.637 | # Question
Title: Management after Software Engineering undergraduate degree or separate management masters degree?
I am currently an undergraduate student studying BEng (Hons) Software Engineering at University of Greenwich. I want to do masters but I am not sure what to do. I am a very talented software architect and programmer. I have two years worth of industrial experience (1 year at IBM and 1 year at NHS).
I am interested in technical side of things in industry which is why I have been considering to do MEng Software Engineering. However, in future I want to move into management side of things while staying technical at the same time. My ambition is to become a CTO. What would you advise?
Would you advise me to do MEng Software Engineering and then MBA? Or shall I do MBA straight away after my software engineering undergraduate degree?
Thanks a bunch in advance. Manthan Dave
# Answer
> 4 votes
IMO, MEng Software Engineering.
You need to stay on technical side. Do MBA after you have more years of industrial experience if you think you need to.
The CEO depends on CTO for technical decision. CTO needs to have a lot technical knowledge. For example, you need to be able to tell one software architecture is better than the other.
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Tags: career-path, software, engineering, management
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thread-12673 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12673 | US School System | 2013-09-14T14:49:29.033 | # Question
Title: US School System
I live in Sweden and I'm currently in the second last year of "Gymnasiet" (Senior High School), years 16-18. In Sweden, the next step is "Högskolan." Is that the same as undergraduate education in the US? Do I first need undergraduate education to attend a graduate school? Is there any difference between graduate and post-graduate education?
Thank you.
# Answer
1. The stages of Gymnasiet and Högskolan correspond to the German Gymnasium and Hochschule, respectively. These do work out to the US high school and university.
2. Graduate education normally requires an undergraduate degree as a prerequisite. However, unlike in much of Europe, there is not the requirement that the bachelor's is required for a Master's in the same discipline. (That is, in the US, someone with a BS in chemistry can do a master's in chemical engineering; this is not normally possible in much of Europe.
3. Graduate and postgraduate both mean more or less the same thing in the US: education past the bachelor's level.
> 5 votes
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Tags: graduate-school, undergraduate, education, united-states, sweden
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thread-12674 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12674 | How many co-authors are enough? | 2013-09-14T15:27:16.427 | # Question
Title: How many co-authors are enough?
I am doing research in an industrial organization. Now, I have written a paper describing my work and outcomes. The idea was completely envisaged by me and the paper was written solely be me. It was an outcome of a funded research project, but the research done was no where in the scope of the work, and I managed to squeeze time to do this work.
Now, I am confused on whom to include in my co-authors lists. I have only one teammate, with whom I worked in the project but didn't take any help for doing this area of work and writing the paper. But I think he deserves to be a co-author since we discussed various related things. I also gave the paper for review to my reporting officer who gave a few grammatical suggestions and tips on paper writing.
Now, the problem is, I have two more level of hierarchy above my reporting officer one of them being the director of the organization. Would it be ethical to include their names as co-authors when no discussion was made with them regarding this or should they be acknowledged ? Note: The usual practice in my organization is to keep your superiors name before yourself(some red tapism probably), and I have already violated that by keeping myself as first author(thanks to ASE).
# Answer
People who have made no intellectual or scientific contribution to a paper should not be listed as authors. So, unless your upper-level supervisors have had an active role in designing the project, carrying it out, or writing the papers, they should be excluded. This is the practice normally carried out in corporate environments.
> 3 votes
# Answer
Regarding your teammate, it seems that you had exchange of ideas with him, and it is up to you to consider whether that consists of a scientific contribution to the final paper. Regarding your reporting officer, the description your currently have (*“a few grammatical suggestions and tips on paper writing”*) do not sound like **significant scientific contributions** (which is the commonly-used threshold for authorship determination; check with the journal or publisher's guidelines for your specific case). Your hierarchy, well, this doesn't sound like they contributed at all.
That being said, there is real life to consider, your organization's policies and customs, and your own contract. In a way, it might actually be easier for you not to have your teammate as co-author, in which case it is clear that the paper is *yours* (while the outcome of the work itself was the company's).
> 2 votes
# Answer
The guide lines suggested by the vancuver Protocol lists what should be the norm. It is evident that not everyoone abides by this protol and in some cases deviations may be fine. Take some time to study the protocol (the one linked or some other version) and make your mind up how you should abide. It is not always easy to know who to include and excluding peoplemay be evenharder because of a variety of reasons from personal to financial. The protocol at least provides a platform against which any such decision can be judged.
> 1 votes
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Tags: publications, research-process, ethics
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thread-12681 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12681 | Internship report - any way to request discretion from reviewers for a to-be-published paper? | 2013-09-14T17:28:40.573 | # Question
Title: Internship report - any way to request discretion from reviewers for a to-be-published paper?
I'm required to submit my internship report in my university. Since the work involved is a work in progress and is yet to be published, is there a way I can mention somewhere that it is not for reproduction?
# Answer
I think it would be fair to say something like
> This report concerns work in progress and should not be freely distributed pending publication of the results
I also think it would be wise to talk to somebody in a position with insights into how the reports are handled. You may not be the first to have this issue. I am sure such reports are not circulated anyway unless specifically stated they will be from the beginning. But it is better to be safe than sorry so do not hesitate to ask around to get the necessary information you need.
> 2 votes
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Tags: ethics, intellectual-property
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thread-12686 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12686 | High impact journals GIS and Remote Sensing | 2013-09-13T18:34:22.933 | # Question
Title: High impact journals GIS and Remote Sensing
I am searching for Journals in the area of GIS and Remote Sensing in agriculture and water management, with a high impact factor. It is important that these journals pay authors for their articles ... thanks in advance if you can share even one journal's link.
# Answer
I agree with the comments above—the idea of journals *paying* authors for articles guarantees that you will not have a high-impact journal. A trade publication might pay an author, but a reputable journal should not.
On the other hand, there are very likely good journals which do not require authors to pay "page charges" to get the article published. But you'll look in vain if you want high-quality and profit!
> 3 votes
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Tags: journals, impact-factor
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thread-10379 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10379 | Graduate Student Co-authorship Etiquette (Dissemination of Student Papers Not For Publication) | 2013-06-01T20:32:08.493 | # Question
Title: Graduate Student Co-authorship Etiquette (Dissemination of Student Papers Not For Publication)
I recently finished my masters degree and co-authored a lengthy paper (It was my idea and I took the lead on the research and writing). The paper is not for publication but provides valuable information and research for the the department faculty and dean.The paper is a program development proposal that our academic department would like to implement. Our group discussed sending the paper to the Dean in conversation with her, and one of the co-authors brought it up with her again at the end of the semester and offered to send it to her individually without consulting our group.
I'm okay with her sending it, however, I felt that she acted independently and did not consider the time-lines of the other co-authors for doing final edits, or offer to CC us when she sent it.
My name comes last on the paper (alphabetically) even though I wrote and researched more than the other two authors combined. I have the sense that my co-author is taking more credit than she is due on this project since her name comes first and because she acted independently.
I requested that I be provided an opportunity to review the paper and to be CC'd on any future sharing of our work with others.I think my co-author was offended.
I am interested in asking my two co-authors if it is okay to have my name as the first author on this paper (then she can send it).
Please advise if I am being petty or if this is a reasonable concern on my part. I would like for the Dean and faculty to remember my contributions. The co-author who offered to send it has already made her mark on the program in other ways and I am not sure I have stood out as much.
# Answer
I understand why you are a little peeved that she offered to send it to the Dean without checking with you first, but I think you need to swallow your frustration on that point.
Instead, you need to figure out what your goals are. Right now you are reacting: you are letting your emotions control your reactions. Instead, you should figure out what end goal you want to achieve.
Do you want to make sure that the paper is in good enough shape, before it is sent to the Dean? Then negotiate a timeline with your co-authors. This might mean you both have to give a little: you might have to work extra hard to get your revisions in; and they might have to be willing to delay sending the paper a little bit until you've all had a chance to revise to your satisfaction. That's a perfectly reasonable request.
Do you want to be listed as first author? If so, why? You said the paper is not going to be published. So why do you care? If you think your contribution means it is appropriate for you to be first author, and you care about it, then raise the point with your co-author. But approach it with humility and gentleness. Remember that we're human; we have a tendency to overestimate our own contribution and underestimate others, so you need to correct for that. Also, definitely do *not* ask to be first author as a way of getting revenge; that is petty and beneath you. Take the high road.
And, take this as a lesson. Generally, it is best to discuss authorship early in the project, not wait until the very end. In my collaborations, there is often an understanding from the start about who is the lead on the project; the expectation is that the lead has the overall responsibility and will most likely put in the most work, and in return will likely end up as first author. These discussions about authorship are often easier to happen earlier than later.
Anyway, bottom line: Figure out what you want to achieve (what you want the end state to look like). Then, figure out how to ask for that. Set aside your emotions and your negative reactions to your co-author's initiative in moving things forward without checking with you first, and focus on what end state you want to achieve. I suspect you might find that you share pretty much the same goals as your co-author, and there's no need to get upset or strain your relations with her.
> 7 votes
# Answer
D.W.'s answer is great advice. I just want to add something for the (your) future.
What counts in the end if you intend to continue in academia are hard publications. Since this seems to be a soft "publication", I think you should ask yourself; can the material be re-written and actually published? If the answer is yes, then you have to ask yourself, should you take on the job as first author (you have already done a lot). Most often the one who takes the initiative will be spearheading the work.
> 1 votes
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Tags: graduate-school, etiquette, authorship
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thread-12688 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12688 | How should a Phd student deal with rude professors or faculty? | 2013-09-14T19:58:59.030 | # Question
Title: How should a Phd student deal with rude professors or faculty?
I am a phd student in IIT Bombay. I have found sometimes that professors or faculty behaving rudely especially with phd students. The situation being the student demanding better guidance on his research or while reporting complaints on unavailability of research facilites(infrastructure). Partly it seems the reason for the professors behaving so is because of their own frustration with their job which they pass it on to the students when they raise questions for which they don't have answers. And partly some professors think behaving rudely is the right way to scare students away so that they don't come back and trouble them. Also often the faculty feel they are being embarassed by being compared to their peers elsewhere and are being looked down upon, so have a bellicose attitude and start fighting at the slightest provocation. This is extremely frustrating for graduate students and they ask themselves why they made this grave mistake of joining for graduate studies here. But since few years already pass off by the time they realize this, they just try to finish a half hearted unhappy phd and try to run away from this place quickly with a wounded heart. Many of my seniors have experienced this who are now doing postdocs in US. How does one not let one's heart wounded in such a situation and how does one deal with such unpleasant rudeness on part of faculty?
# Answer
> 10 votes
There may be more happening with the professors to make them as rude as you say. However, having said that, there is no excuse for incivility and rudeness - it is not professional and certainly not conducive to a productive academic environment.
On to your main question, on how to do deal with the day-to-day rudeness, I was in such an environment when I was completing my honours in geology. This situation is similar to an unpleasant workplace.
This is how I got through the honours year:
* Focus on your goal, not on the personalities - by this, I mean always 're-focus' your thoughts to be task orientated (not easy to do).
* Form a friendship group amongst your fellow students, not to complain what is happening, but to mutually re-focus your attentions to your work.
* Don't take anything said to you personally (also sometimes not easy to do).
Is it at all possible to transfer to another research group/university? it does sound that the academics' frustrations are being taken out on the graduate students.
I hope this helps.
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Tags: phd, research-process, professorship, india
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thread-12633 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12633 | How to properly reference a source when almost exact copy? | 2013-09-13T13:22:57.637 | # Question
Title: How to properly reference a source when almost exact copy?
I am currently writing a piece of work, mainly studying some theory developed in a particular article. I did my best to be clear whether it was one of my own comment concerning the subject or material, eventually rephrased, coming from the article.
But now, I *need* to copy a large section from the article. There is no point in modifying the section, it is actually a list of hypothesis written in a mathematical fashion, and rephrasing it would be unclear. So well, maybe I changed a bit the formulation of a few things, or changed the order of the list to fit the way I present the things, but really cosmetic changes.
How should I cite that ? I guess (as it is not exactly copy/paste) no "", but then what ? I already mentioned that the whole work was closely related to the article, but I feel uncomfortable copying the section without knowing how to reference it.
# Answer
> 3 votes
You likely will need to check the copyright requirements of the journal, and contact the publisher and/or author. Very often, quoting or copying more than a few sentences or one or two figures will require direct permission.
Permission may not be necessary, but you don't want to open a big bag of trouble by publishing something that violates copyright - better safe than sorry.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Copying is of course not good. But, it is always possible to use a quote. This can be done by either use quotes or in your case to state that you are providing a copy of the list provided by the author.. In your case I think you can easily say something like "Following "cited author" (yyyy) we can define the problem as ..." and then follow up by rewriting the list you mention. It should then be very clear that what you write follows what the cited author has written. The exact phrasing might be slightly different but along the lines I outlined.
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Tags: citations
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thread-12692 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12692 | Why do universities have a reappointment process before tenure? | 2013-09-14T22:27:55.967 | # Question
Title: Why do universities have a reappointment process before tenure?
US universities seem to have assistant professors go through a reappointment process before tenure. It seems like a similar review, complete with letters. Except unlike tenure, almost 100% of people get reappointed. In fact I do not know of a case in which a professor failed to have their contract renewed at reappointment.
Since it seems pro-forma, why do it at all?
# Answer
> 16 votes
It is not totally pro-forma; I do know of examples where the contract was not renewed, though it certainly does happen less often than a tenure denial. I think the standard is basically "is it reasonable to hope this person gets tenure?"
I think the purpose is to try to get people ready for their tenure review by having a look at their case early, and trying point out where they are doing OK and where they could do better. If nothing else, it focuses the minds of people in the department who might have let things slide otherwise. It seems pretty logical to me.
# Answer
> 14 votes
As Ben Webster points out, it is not entirely pro forma (I know a couple of people who did not get their contracts renewed). I agree with his points, but here's another aspect:
In departments where tenure denials are common, it's extremely valuable to get a preview of how strong the letters will be. If they aren't compelling enough, the department will probably still renew your contract, but they'll warn you that tenure isn't likely. This gives you several years to find another job, which is valuable because job hunting is more difficult after a tenure denial: universities that might have been interested when they thought they were competing with University X may not be as excited about taking what they perceive as University X's rejects. So the information from the reappointment process may be very useful in ways that are intentionally invisible from the outside.
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Tags: career-path, tenure-track
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thread-12703 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12703 | What does YEAR: NNff means in research papers? eg 1965: 47ff | 2013-09-15T09:49:22.643 | # Question
Title: What does YEAR: NNff means in research papers? eg 1965: 47ff
I am reading a book called *Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing*, in which there is a section called further reading. It states the following:
> Chomsky (1965: 47ff, 1980: 234ff, 1986)
I am not able to find any paper of Chomsky written in 1965! Any help?
# Answer
"ff" stands for "and following" so in your case it is page 45 and following pages that are indicated. It should be used when no stop page can be given. The abbreviation comes from the latin for page *foilum* plur. *folia*. Originally one would write page 45f to indicate just the following page, i.e. "45-46". The two f's indicate more than one page so "45 and on".
> 13 votes
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Tags: research-process, citations, formatting
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thread-1317 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1317 | Does one get academic credit towards a degree for open online courses? | 2012-04-30T12:01:10.207 | # Question
Title: Does one get academic credit towards a degree for open online courses?
Lately lots of courses like udacity, coursera, and MITx are provided online. I attended most of them; also I have attended courses in OCW provided by MIT. Now I desire to earn some credits for whatever I have learnt so far, so that I can apply for a degree (in electronics and computer engineering).
* Could anyone suggest some place where I will get accredited for the courses I do?
# Answer
> 10 votes
Most of the courses that I've seen explicitly state that you obtain no credit for doing the course. More explicitly, they may offer certificates of completion, but these certificates do not convey academic credit. For example, from Coursea's Term's of Service:
> This Letter of Completion, if provided to you, would be from Coursera and/or from the instructors. You acknowledge that the Letter of Completion, if provided to you, may not be affiliated with Coursera or any college or university. Further, Coursera offers the right to offer or not offer any such Letter of Completion for a class. You acknowledge that the Letter of Completion, and Coursera’s Online Courses, will not stand in the place of a course taken at an accredited institution, and do not convey academic credit.
So the short answer is that you will be unlikely to obtain such credit. Certainly, read the terms of service to be sure. Nevertheless, you could add such things to your CV to demonstrate your interest in a particular field.
# Answer
> 4 votes
There are ways to get accredited for completing online courses on Courses as of 2013.
Coursera now offers *Signature Tracks* for some courses, on completing which you get a *Verified Certificate*. In a Signature Track, on submitting each assignment, you are asked to submit some written text as well, which is verified against a handwriting sample given by you at the beginning of the course. There are other techniques used too, such as facial recognition via webcam, etc.
Also, some courses have started to provide an option to give the final exam at a certified Testing Center to earn a similar Verified Certificate.
Each of these, of course, cost money.
# Answer
> 2 votes
There are no services to help you get that coursework accredited. However, Degreed.com helps you validate that you have taken those courses so you can let employers know.
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Tags: degree, online-learning, mooc
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thread-12697 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12697 | Should a postdoc apply for a tenured position? | 2013-09-15T04:35:12.017 | # Question
Title: Should a postdoc apply for a tenured position?
I have two related questions, which are similar to my other question
Should I simultaneously apply for multiple jobs in different ranks at the same university?
The first one is say a school is opening a tenure position in the Associate Professor rank. I like to know how the job committee will view the application from a candidate who is currently a postdoc?
The second one is that say the school opens both a tenured-track Assistant Professor and a tenure Associate Professor. Should a candidate who is a postdoc apply to both or only to the tenured-track position? If he/she applies to both, whether that affects his/her application negatively?
# Answer
> 20 votes
Under most circumstances (not an exceptionally brilliant candidate or a field that is very difficult to recruit in), if a postdoc applies to what is advertised as a tenured associate professor position, then I would interpret the application as asking whether the university might consider hiring at the assistant professor level instead. That's not unreasonable, since job openings do not always get filled the way the department had in mind. The chances are lower if the department is hoping for something else, but it's not impossible.
I'd recommend being explicit about this. If you are actually trying for tenure straight out of a postdoc, you should say so, but it will be a waste of time unless there are unusual circumstances (and it may make you look arrogant or out of touch). If you would like to be considered for a tenure-track position should the department decide to hire at that level instead, then you should make that clear.
# Answer
> 17 votes
No. Unless you have proved the Riemann hypothesis or cured cancer, you won't be hired into a tenured position straight from a postdoc (in the USA). You should apply for tenure-track assistant professor positions.
# Answer
> 12 votes
I actually do know of examples of postdocs being hired with tenure. They were people with very strong records, though certainly not solving the Riemann hypothesis (or even necessarily future Fields Medal) caliber. However, I don't think applying for the tenured in addition to TT job will increase the probability of this happening. This something that a university will do if they really badly want you and are worried you will get a TT position somewhere "better," not because you asked politely.
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Tags: job-search, job, tenure-track
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thread-12711 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12711 | Is using an answer I posted online on Math.SE considered plagiarism? | 2013-09-15T14:52:28.883 | # Question
Title: Is using an answer I posted online on Math.SE considered plagiarism?
To expand on the question, I recently (as in yesterday) posted a question on Math.SE and also wrote my answer in the post, claiming that my answer was wrong. One answerer pointed out that I was correct, but simply needed to do a quick deduction step, after which I edited that question with that deduction step.
So if I use this answer now in my assignment, will it be considered an academic offense? None of my university's resources are helpful at all in this regard. I'm a student in the sciences, and all the 'resources' of the university are towards arts students. I'd like a clear cut answer because informing my instructor that I posted my own interpretation of a question on an assignment is really out of the question, since I don't know if consequences exist for that.
I'm already looking for an alternative answer, but I'd like to know if using my current answer would be an academic offense. Thanks.
# Answer
> I'd like to know if using my current answer would be an academic offense.
It's impossible to determine this without more information about your university and course policies. If you're honest about what happened, then I doubt you could get in a lot of trouble for this, but of course I don't know the policies and potential consequences in your case. At my university different courses can have different policies on collaboration (regarding what's allowed and what sort of acknowledgment must be given), but they should be explained at the beginning of the semester.
If I were teaching the course, it wouldn't bother me that you got advice on this problem, since it looks like you did most of the work yourself and learned something from the feedback you received. However, I would be unhappy that you posted the homework problem and a complete solution online, thereby making it easy for other students in the class to copy your solution if they know about math.SE. If the grader detects several solutions with nearly the same wording as the one you submit, then you may all be accused of cheating.
If you can't find a clear statement of the relevant policies on your course or department website, then I strongly recommend asking your instructor how to handle this. In theory that could end badly, but I don't expect it to. Bringing it up yourself is almost certainly better than letting the instructor discover it, and it would mean you could stop worrying.
> 14 votes
# Answer
**Only your instructor can answer this question.**
If you were a student in one of my courses, consulting Math.SE and using the comments/replies you received would be fine, provided you cited them properly and you rewrote them in your own words. But I believe I am in the minority. Most faculty in my department would consider consulting a StackExchange site in the first place to be cheating. You just have to ask.
> 7 votes
# Answer
The offense lies in taking material without consent or proper acknowledgement. In your case, you can simply acknowledge the comment so that it is clear that you received feedback to improve or correct your work. I think this help can be equated to peer review. Hence I do not think consent is necessary as long as the person providing the help is explicitly acknowledged.
> 4 votes
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Tags: plagiarism
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thread-12717 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12717 | How to review similar academic papers for a literature review? | 2013-09-15T20:54:40.517 | # Question
Title: How to review similar academic papers for a literature review?
In writing a literature review, assume you have the paper X and the paper Y. The two are similar in the study and the results. How can I write a review in this case?
# Answer
> 4 votes
It looks that it is an example of two independent studies that obtained similar results so you might comment that this reinforces the claim that the reported results are correct. However, most probably the studies weren't exact replications so it might be good to mention the differences between the studies.
It is also a good idea to investigate the journals they were published in - maybe the earlier paper was published in some obscure journal and the second one appeared in a high impact factor one? Have you looked at 'cited by' numbers (in Google Scholar)? Which paper got more citations? Maybe there are some publications that mention both papers? This might give you a clue how the community finds both papers and which one made more impact. It is also plausible that one paper got bigger publicity simply because of more known authors/research group.
# Answer
> 4 votes
I would just say "We have the following result in the following setting", tell the scientific part of the story, and finish with "see \[\] and \[\] for details". No matter what you do, my advice is not to try to claim that someone "did it" and the other one "repeated it" or "did it later" or that the results were "obtained independently". With a three year difference in publication time (some papers take longer to prepare and to review and it certainly takes more for an average paper to get "widely known"), you never know what exactly happened and it is neither your duty, nor your right to make any "educated guesses" on that account unless you have some tangible evidence at your disposal.
This is basically the same as Peter said (only in stronger language). You may launch a small "private investigation" along the lines Rabbit indicated to satisfy your own curiosity, of course, but it is definitely way beyond your reviewer duties and nobody really expects that.
# Answer
> 2 votes
Without knowing all the details it is not possible to provide equal amounts of detail in an answer. Since we (you) do not know the background of these papers it is also problematic to try to say anything to separate them. It is, for example, possible that they were mde independently bt one wtook much longer through review. we simply do not know. We cannot therefore cast judgement. I think it is ffair to simply list them both in a citation without saying anything about who was first, the publication date will definitely put one before the other.
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Tags: writing, literature-review
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thread-12718 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12718 | Biological data being used by an unpublished research paper is considered proprietary | 2013-09-15T21:26:08.297 | # Question
Title: Biological data being used by an unpublished research paper is considered proprietary
This question may be too specialist to be on topic here. If it is off topic, please feel free to transfer it to another SE site, or close it, as appropriate.
I am planning to publish an applied statistics paper. This paper develops an algorithm and then applies this algorithm to some data. I obtained most of this data from the site http://www.imgt.org. The data I am using are immunoglobulin and T cell receptor nucleotide sequences, in the form of FASTA files. I'm using around 200 of these.
Here is an random example of the data I am using (click on \[6 Sequence (FASTA format)\] to get the FASTA file).
Now, I have a problem. In Warranty Disclaimer and Copyright Notice, is written
> The IMGT® software and data are provided as a service to the scientific community to be used only for research and educational purposes. Individuals may print or save portions of IMGT® for their own personal use. Any other use of IMGT® material need prior written permission of the IMGT director and of the legal institutions (CNRS and Université Montpellier 2).
I just heard from Prof. Marie-Paule Lefranc and she replied:
> I have no objection that the data you retrieved for your work from IMGT/LIGM-DB be made available to the reviewers, but unfortunately we cannot authorize a script or a distribution of the IMGT/LIGM-DB files with your code to the users.
>
> You can provide the users with the list of the IMGT/LIGM-DB accession numbers you used, with the source of the data clearly identified: (IMGT/LIGM-DB version number) and reference to NAR 2006.
Well, this just made my life more difficult. To start with, I'm puzzled by this. Isn't biological data like this public domain? Is it really possible to treat immunoglobulin and T cell receptor nucleotide sequence data as proprietary information?
I just wrote back and asked Prof. Lefranc what license the data was published under, which I had not done earlier.
Additionally, how does one make data available to reviewers and not to users? That is awkward, to say the least.
Also, the data is inconvenient to download. As you can see from the example above, the FASTA file is displayed in a web page, and is not downloaded by that button. One needs to clean the web page to get the FASTA file, which is a pain. As you can see Prof. Lefranc also disallowed the use of a script for doing this. What this most likely means in practice is that no user will ever actually test the code, because obtaining the data is too difficult.
I realise that the users of this site may not be comfortable offering what is essentially a legal opinion, and if so, can anyone suggest a more authoritative source to ask about the legalities of this? Thanks.
# Answer
The copyright is probably on the full database release flatfile and the formatted entries ... you will find similar conditions for UniProt/SwissProt so it is not so unusual.
The restrictions on scripts are common to prevent server performance hits from a large number of requests.
You can simply invite reviewers to download the data from some other server, for example from the EBI SRS server. The URL for entry A00673 would be
"http://srs.ebi.ac.uk/srsbin/cgi-bin/wgetz?\[IMGTLIGM-ID:a00673\]+-view+FastaSeqs+-ascii"
You can also use a list of accessions, for example A00673 or A01650
"http://srs.ebi.ac.uk/srsbin/cgi-bin/wgetz?\[IMGTLIGM-ID:a00673|a01650\]+-view+FastaSeqs+-ascii"
If downloading many entries you should pause between requests, but putting lists into the URLs may reduce it to few enough not to cause a problem. I doubts EBI would be upset by 200 requests - they would be concerned about thousands.
There are various fasta formats available for IMGT data, you need to find a server that produces fasta files compatible with your input requirements.
Alternatively of course your reviewers could download the whole database from IMGT or any of the other servers (including ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/imgt/) and generate their own fasta subset from the list of accessions/ids
Hope that helps!
> 10 votes
# Answer
Yes, **it is making your life a little harder, but it doesn't mean publication of your work is impossible, nor does it make IMGT's action unethical**. I cannot comment on the legality of IMGT's copyright claim on the data, but contesting their claim doesn't sound like a great idea in the first place. In any case, talk it through with **a lawyer from your university's legal department**, before you do anything that deviates from what IMGT asks for.
Now, how can you move forward? Well, separate your existing code (which does the scraping and the analysis) into two separate parts:
1. The IMGT website scrapper/parser, which will download data and write it to files named after each query (`M38103.txt` for query “M38103”).
Do not publish that part (but keep it around, it would be a shame to throw away code that you have already written, and that works: you never know, IMGT's policy may change in the future).
2. The bulk of your analysis code, which takes these query results as text input files.
You now publish #2, and give the referees access to the files (journal submission websites have an option for *“supporting information for reviewers only”*, although it may be called differently). In the paper, you indicate clearly (but not aggressively) that “because licensing restrictions do not allow us to redistribute IMGT data, we provide a script that requires query results as text input files”.
You're not the first person to publish valid research results that come from analysis of a proprietary data source. There is no ethical issue here, because **the reviewers have enough information to accurately review the validity of your work**. Moreover, even the readers will be able to reproduce your work, though it will require a separate download step (and definitely depends on IMGT keeping its database online and freely accessible).
So yeah, **it makes your code is little harder to use for others, but it doesn't diminish the values of the results you have obtained with it!**
> 7 votes
# Answer
As F'x already said, from a scientific perspective there is no problem.
The data is available, just not automatically and from you, but from the original source (via the ID numbers). So editor, reviewers and readers can get the data, given they are not too lazy to download it from the original web site. That is much more than is common in many fields of physical/experimental science.
Considering that you are talking about biological data, not having an automated download is so much more convenient than trying to reproduce experimental data (although I have to say that it is a sensible and under-used mid-way checkpoint) ...
However, here are a few more thoughts:
> Isn't biological data like this public domain? Is it really possible to treat immunoglobulin and T cell receptor nucleotide sequence data as proprietary information?
* *Facts* cannot be copyrighted. But the measured *data* is subject to copyright. If I go through the effort of doing these measurements, I'm the owner of that data. Just as you are the author of the program code you wrote and the paper you wrote.
But, as you cannot forbid that someone else to write another program doing the same, or another paper on the same subject, just because I have the rights to *my* measurements, I cannot forbid you to make your own measurements.
Of course I could donate my data base to the public domain, just as you can put your program under a FOSS license.
* Copyright varies considerably depending on jusdiction. So IMHO this question cannot really be answered without taking into account where the database comes from (EU) and where you are located.
Now, in the EU we have a database copyright given you put enough effort in making the data base (it is not enough to grab an old encyclopedia and scan pages from that. But carefully curating a nucleotide sequence database is clearly enough). Again, this copyright is for the database, not for the facts stored in the database.
For your nucleotide sequences that means: if you choose to use *their* nucleotide database, you have to stick to their rules. But again, you are free to measure the nucleotide sequence yourself and use that data set instead.
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> how does one make data available to reviewers and not to users
You can use the letter to the editor to tell the editor that you'd be happy to supply the reviewers with the curated data set you acutally used for the analysis.
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> the data is inconvenient to download. \[...\]
> I realise that the users of this site may not be comfortable offering what is essentially a legal opinion
While it is certainly a good idea to learn about copyright, I cannot recommend going for legal loopholes against the database owner's expressed wishes. They do allow enough for you and other scientists to do science. Why would you want to upset them?
I think it would be better to talk to them. What about this instead of asking them to allow scripts, you could offer to produce for *them* a second version of the data base that is suitable as machine-readable input, and kindly ask them whether they would be willing to make that version available via their server.
In addition to learning about copyright, maybe you could ask them for their reasons for their download policy. There may be a whole lot for you to learn in that answers as well.
I come from one of the physical sciences where good measurements take lots of effort. Here are some reasons why a data base ownder may say that people should download the data base from the original source:
* The name of "owner"/author of the database is associated with it. As author you may not want to run the risk of getting associated with derivatives that do not follow your strict high-quality policy.
* One very simple way to ensure that people actually get *your* data base when they think they do is to tell them always to download the original
(there are alternatives, such as signing a version for distribution etc.).
* In addition, the owner may want/need to have at least a rough overview of how many people use the data base. Such information is at the very least extremely helpful when you need to show that you are not doing useless stuff for your wages.
> 5 votes
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Tags: publications, data
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thread-9122 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9122 | Is it possible to obtain a second PhD degree in Europe? | 2013-04-04T09:03:36.953 | # Question
Title: Is it possible to obtain a second PhD degree in Europe?
As I have heard it is not possible to get a second PhD in Europe if you have obtained first PhD in Europe. Is it true? My 1st PhD is in Theoretical Physics which I won't find a fair job related to that. so I am trying to apply for second PhD in Mechanical engineering or applied Physics.
# Answer
I am most familiar with the situation in Germany. There it is in fact possible to get more than one PhD degree. Different departments award different types of PhD degrees, depending on the academic field. In physics, you will typically earn a "Dr. rer. nat." (PhD in science), while in engineering you will get a "Dr.-Ing." (PhD in engineering). While most dissertation regulations will explicitly exclude the possibility that the same degree can be awarded twice, it is of course possible to earn a "Dr.-Ing." degree even if you already have a "Dr. rer. nat." or vice versa. Then you would have two PhD degrees.
In addition, there are honorary PhDs, which are awarded independently of and in addition to real PhD degrees. But I assume that your question wasn't aimed at those.
However, that it is possible to get two PhD degrees does not mean that it is a wise thing to do. To others, it may just be a sign that you didn't take the next steps in an academic career after getting your PhD, but didn't leave academia either.
> 10 votes
# Answer
I encountered multiple people who refer to "Habilitation" as a "second PhD". It is very typical that you go for a "Habilitation" after your PhD in many countries in Europe and Central Asia. It is not a PhD though, earning a Habilitation degree will change your title to Dr. habil. XXXX YYYY
Unlike a PhD thesis, a Habilitation thesis covers a topic in breadth rather than in depth. Typically it is in the same field but covers a different topic than the one covered in your PhD.
> 0 votes
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Tags: phd, europe, second-degree
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thread-12747 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12747 | What are the advantages of publishing work in progress as a working paper? | 2013-09-16T14:45:57.987 | # Question
Title: What are the advantages of publishing work in progress as a working paper?
Some fields like Economics and Maths have their work in progress published as "working papers" with notes like "work in progress, do not cite or quote without the author's permission."Sometimes they upload these to their own websites or to their universities websites. I don't see much of this going on in my own field (sociology). I have heard from people that are afraid of having their work scooped or that fear that work published in this way will not be considered as "unpublished" by journals and conferences.
What are the advantages of making work in progress available in this way?
# Answer
> 8 votes
The advantages are that you get to stake a claim to some sense of ownership of the work; it's a way of inviting feedback and collaboration from others by showcasing your work in progress; and it's a quicker way to publish your work than submitting to a journal or conference.
So when do you publish your work as a working paper?
When the following conditions are met:
1. You've done some work.
2. **And** some combination of:
* you want feedback on it from a wider group than your immediate colleagues;
* you want to showcase your work to get new collaborators, new funding, or improved career prospects
* you want to publicly stake a claim to the work you've done
3. **And** some combination of:
* the follow-up work is something that you've already got sufficiently far advanced that it is very unlikely that you will get scooped by your competitors;
* you're not bothered about being first to publish the follow-up work yourself.
4. **And** publishing your work in a working paper won't prevent it from appearing (possibly in modified form) in a journal.
# Answer
> 3 votes
Your first paragraph's implied question and your formal question are different. The first concerns an already finished work, which is just unpublished, and the second a work in progress. I'll comment on the second one as the more interesting one to discuss.
When you make your work in progress public, you just let people see your ideas and use them or comment on them. I perceive a publication of unfinished work as an invitation to take a look and try to answer questions like
1) What else can be done this way?
2) Can you do it better (find some shortcuts, generalize, whatever)?
3) Do you see how to finish the project or why it is a dead end?
4) Are there any mistakes in what is done so far?
etc.
The advantage is, of course, getting a few more brains engaged, which has the potential of enhancing the quality of the final product drastically. The "disadvantage" is that you agree by default to share the credit with anyone who contributes something of value. Which one is more important for you is up to you to decide.
Outright scooping is not something I would be particularly afraid of; not in my field at least (my usual mode of operation is to send what I know to a few "experts" and ask what they think rather than to put unfinished works on arXiv but that is primarily because I do not want to clutter my arXiv list of papers with half-cooked stuff some of which will never be finished and some of which makes little sense). Most people who get interested in your project share their thoughts with you on exactly the same basis you share yours with them: if you go open and supply your ideas for free, they pay back with the same coin.
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Tags: publications, intellectual-property
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thread-12466 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12466 | When applying for postdoc funding, what are the consequences of backing out if I can get another position where funding is already secured? | 2013-09-04T19:56:30.120 | # Question
Title: When applying for postdoc funding, what are the consequences of backing out if I can get another position where funding is already secured?
When looking for a post-doctoral fellowship, I have, in a nutshell, two alternatives:
1. Apply to open positions, where money is already secured (at least for the beginning)
2. Apply together with a potential supervisor for funding agencies, such as NASA NPP, UCAR VSP, NRC, or one of the more generic funding agencies.
With option (2), I'd need to first convince a potential supervisor, then write a funding proposal to convince a funding agency. From a candidate's point of view, (1) is easier. On the other hand, there are a lot more options in (2) to try, than in (1). My question relates to option (2).
Two relevant calls for me close on 1 November and 10 January. Results are announced in February and March. I could apply to both, with different projects and different supervisors. While waiting for results, other opportunities, where funding is already secured (such as point (1)) may come along, and I'd apply to those too.
**Is it unethical, unprofessional, or otherwise unwise, to apply to different programmes, with different supervisors, and still apply to immediately available positions while awaiting the result? Suppose that I find a postdoc elsewhere before even knowing the result of either funding application; can I then simply back out of the still-open funding applications without consequences, or should I expect this to cause severe annoyment with the host scientist I'd be applying with?** After all, he or she would have invested a non-neligible amount of time in the proposal. I find it different then simply applying for different jobs, because time invested is much less. On the other hand, I don't want to have to wait until March, before hearing a negative result and having to start all over again.
I'd like to hear from senior scientists how they would look upon a fresh PhD who they'd spend time writing a post-doc proposal with, but who'd then back out for another position before the result is even announced.
# Answer
> 6 votes
The key is to be open and honest. To answer the question lets define some terms. Let Prof X be a potential post doc supervisor who already has funding and Prof Y be a a potential post doc supervisor without any funding.
Prior to working on a funding application to Prof Y you need to discuss whether he expects you to put all your eggs in one basket or if he is okay with you applying for different jobs. There may be applications that Prof Y will not make with you or it might change the application strategy. For example, Prof Y may not list you as a named post doc so as not to cause problems with the funder if you do not take the position. The key is to be honest and up front.
If you have a application in with Prof Y and Prof X offers you a job, then you have problems. If it is close to the decision deadline for the funding with Prof Y, you may want to wait before starting with Prof X. Again you need to talk with Prof X. Maybe Prof X X needs you to start right away but instead of a 12 month commitment he only needs a 6 month commitment and maybe you can delay the start of the funding with Prof Y, if you get it.
In general, most people understands that a guaranteed job is important and will try and be flexible. That said if you have funding, you need to deliver the work you promised, and you don't want to apply for funding you cannot use.
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Tags: job-search, postdocs
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thread-11412 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11412 | Detailed navigator for UK Computer Science Master's? | 2013-07-26T13:37:23.620 | # Question
Title: Detailed navigator for UK Computer Science Master's?
I'm trying to choose the best university in the UK for a computer science master's course, leaning in a more theoretical direction. But sites like prospects.ac.uk are too broad, I don't want to filter 350 results which consist of basically the same buzzwordy text about carreer opportunities manually.
My current approach is checking out universities I've heard of in the field, trying to find the actual course listing and guessing from that the actual direction teaching might take (currently Glasgow is my first choice because it's the only one to list a "functional programming" course, which is at least a first step into the direction I want); but even the course descriptions in the listing are quite fuzzy…
The problem of looking at publications from areas I would like to work in and choosing a university from that (hoping that a master's there might set me on a PhD route) is that, at least in undergrad studies, there's little connection between the researcher's work and teaching. But I haven't nailed down an exact direction to go in either, so directly finding research groups I'm interested in and working backwards from there would be hard, too, since there would probably be more than 350 of those as well.
So, is there a specialised computer science master's course ranking website with a column for “philosophical direction” or some kind of “business vs academic career” weighting?
# Answer
> 2 votes
> So, is there a specialised computer science master's course ranking website with a column for “philosophical direction” or some kind of “business vs academic career” weighting?
No. While it would be nice if there was a system that you could enter your definition of "best" and it would spit out the school for you, it just doesn't exist. While it probably is not a fair system, if you want the "best" according to your grandmother's definition, you probably want to limit yourself to the Russell group. You could also look at the 2008 RAE for what HEFCE thinks is the "best". You can also use league tables. The best approach would be to actually define what you mean by "best". Factors you may want to include are location, course size, research component, course work, faculty, and reputation.
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Tags: graduate-admissions, masters, computer-science
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thread-12050 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12050 | Supervisor and GRA roles in submitting a grant | 2013-08-21T23:43:33.570 | # Question
Title: Supervisor and GRA roles in submitting a grant
I am required to complete 300 practicum hours to fulfill my requirements in a Masters program. I decided to fulfill these hours by creating a practicum experience with my GRA (graduate research assistant) supervisor. This experience was designed for me to develop skills in tasks that I would not normally do in my GRA. We decided to work on a few different projects- I was to submit an letter of intent after taking a course on grant writing, help develop a couple of publications in the works, and work on a presentation for our group.
I took the grant writing course, developed some general ideas with my supervisor on paths that we might pursue, and we submitted the grant. I was told that I would take the lead on this grant as part of my experience. And I have for the most part. We did a lot of editing together, we met with the grant coordinator of our school, and I did most of the research for the grant. It was a continuation of an earlier project, but the application was novel and it was something that I created and took ownership over. I was excited as this was my first grant and I worked very hard on it. I wanted this to happen.
Months go by and we are working on the other parts of the practicum, mostly working on some publication work. But it felt like I was being excluded from the main discussion and I was not receiving much support. It is an area that is not in my background, but I wanted to get experience in this area. It felt like I was wasting hours sitting there with no support, so I did not count my hours towards the practicum. I would try to get her to help, but it always seemed like I was bothering her or she didn't have time or was frustrated. When I told her that I have not counted my hours recently, that I was just doing GRA hours, she seemed frustrated and told me that I need to get this over with. I didn't think I was getting enough out of the experience. At this point I started regretting doing my practicum experience here because I would have had a chance to develop real skills elsewhere. Then, I thought that I probably should have been given more tasks in my GRA hours. I was horribly underworked to begin with, and my practicum was an attempt to gain more meaningful experiences out of this group.
Recently, we get the word back that the letter of intent was accepted and there was a very good chance that we would get the grant. I reply back to the grant coordinator like I had done before, since I was taking the lead on this grant, and instead, my supervisor gets in and starts coordinating things. I keep trying to set up meetings and figure out the next step, but she took over the project. No discussion, no email at all. Now there is a lot of work going on with this grant and I feel excluded. She has not assigned me a task to work on for this and I have not heard anything. I feel like I am left in the dark. I know she has a lot more experience and skill with these things, but this feels like it would be a big opportunity for me. To be honest, I would like some recognition from department. I feel like I helped the department score funds with a practicum and grant idea that was mine. I feel pushed away on both the grants and the publications.
Can you think of a way to approach this? I really do like her and I don't want to cause any issues. I just think she is a poor leader and supervisor. I viewed it as a team effort to begin with and I was hoping to continue this way, but it does not feel like it is going this direction.
# Answer
> 3 votes
You seem to be having two issues. The first is you are not happy with your GRA experience and the second is you are confused about the grant. It is important to separate these issues when talking to the supervisor and only bring one issue up at a time. Sicne you questions focuses on the grant, so does my answer.
While it is too late now, before starting to work on a grant or any research project it is important to define the roles of each team member. You then need to review these roles frequently as the project progresses.
There are two possibilities for the grant. The first case is that the grant includes funding for you (or someone like you). In this case you need to have a friendly chat to discuss what your role will be if the grant gets funded. This should be fairly painless since you (or someone like you) is listed on the grant. The second case is that the grant doesn't include funding for you (or someone like you). If this is the case, then it is pretty clear that you are not really included on the grant. If the grant could have included funding for you, but you were not included, you should have raised the issue as soon as you realized. This is potentially problematic and it is worth discussing with the supervisor why you were not included. If the grant could not have included funding for you, then it is not clear what the issue is.
Whatever happens, you should have a nice civil conversation with the supervisor.
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Tags: funding, research-assistantship
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thread-11727 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11727 | Transitioning from a BS in CIS to an MSE in Software Engineering | 2013-08-07T18:22:27.123 | # Question
Title: Transitioning from a BS in CIS to an MSE in Software Engineering
I'm considering an attempt to gain admittance to an MSE program in Software Engineering but I realize that most of my education may not be fully relevant. My BS is in CIS where the focus was real world application and lots of management type stuff, so there wasn't much math and I know that is going to be be a problem. I was looking at ASU's MSE program which implied that the only pre-requisite was Calc I. However, when I was looking through the pre-reqs for each individual class, there were things like Intro to Embedded systems and such; subjects that were obviously not included in CIS. I currently work as a Software Engineer, but our focus is pretty level in that it's typical information systems type stuff (just moving data in and out of databases). I have a true passion for it, I'm not terrible at math, and I really do want to get deeper into the matrix so to speak, so motivation won't necessarily be a huge issue.
So, I'm wondering if anyone had any experience with this or could give me some info on what to expect or what I'm going to need to do in order to make this happen. For instance, am I going to end up getting a second BS (in CS) before I can make the transition or should I still be able to make the switch outright? I haven't contacted ASU yet because in my experience, they push you to apply without actually providing guidance first.
# Answer
Most MSE programs in the US do not require you to have a BSE in the relevant field. The listed prerequisites for the courses are often requirements that undergraduates need to fulfil before being allowed to enrol in the graduate class. That said, you may need to take some undergraduate classes to get up to speed and you may need to work harder to make up for starting slightly behind. If accepted, it is likely that the admissions committee thinks that your previous background is enough to be able to succeed in the program.
In summary, admissions committees do not accept students that they think will be unable to complete the program.
> 1 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, changing-fields
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thread-12769 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12769 | Considerations for transitioning from a teaching to a pure research position | 2013-09-17T07:56:06.723 | # Question
Title: Considerations for transitioning from a teaching to a pure research position
Understandably, there would be some adjustment needed, particularly if the academic had been in the predominantly teaching role for a long time (or it is the only academic role they've had).
What practical considerations are there that would help an academic currently fulfilling a primarily teaching position to seamlessly and effectively transition to being in an all-research position (any job that is all research, no teaching)?
# Answer
> 3 votes
Some issues that will need to be considered are:
* getting up to date with the current developments in your field – this will involve intense and selective reading
* finding new topics to work on
* justifying in grant applications the gap in publication record and demonstrating potential to produce results
* attracting students to work with you – this may be easier if you've been teaching a lot, as you've put yourself in a position where students can see you.
Good luck.
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Tags: research-process, teaching, job
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thread-12595 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12595 | How to show proof of publication? | 2013-09-11T16:59:18.607 | # Question
Title: How to show proof of publication?
I have just got my first paper accepted to a reputed IEEE (say X for generality) conference. Now, one of the authors have registered for the conference as a student member of X. I have applied for student membership, but probably won't receive the member card before registration deadline. In that case, I have been informed that only the author attending the conference would be getting the certificate. So I have the following question:
1) Do I need the certificate to proof that I have this publication in future ? (My dept has procedure of submitting copies of all certificates that you earn during the semester, and my co-author would definitely be submitting his there.)
2) Is it worth to register without availing student discount so that I may get the certificate ?
# Answer
1. You don't get a "certificate" for publishing something. The fact that it is available online at the journal's website (which can take a while, depending on their publishing speeds) and has a doi (which you should receive soon after acceptance), is sufficient proof.
2. Most societies don't have a membership card either. They might send you a welcome letter, which you could use as proof of membership.
Most places accept different forms of proof of claim when a formal one doesn't exist. In your cases, the following should be just as valid:
1. An email from the editor, accepting your paper for publication (you should have this)
2. An email from the society, thanking you for your interest and membership
3. A screenshot of your member page, showing validity
4. A screenshot of the web copy of your paper (some journals throw a rough version on the web which serves till the final version is typeset).
> 9 votes
# Answer
As the previous answer speaks about journal, I just wanted to clarify for conference. The proceedings are prepared by the Programme Committee and submitted to IEEEXplore library. They can appear there before the conference or after the conference, depending on the arrangementes chairs made with IEEE. Once the proceedings are there, you'll be able to locate your paper and print a screenshot and/or the paper in case you need to proof the publication. The e-mail from the PC you received should also serve as a proof of publication, as long as it mentions the authors of the papers.
> 1 votes
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Tags: publications, research-process, research-undergraduate
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thread-12725 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12725 | Is it better to have no publication than having you as second author? | 2013-09-16T03:46:29.650 | # Question
Title: Is it better to have no publication than having you as second author?
I am a post graduate engineering student (computer science). I have only one conference publication (not very good) as a first author.
One of my senior labmates worked on a very good research project a few months ago and wrote a paper. I have been approached by him to generate a few more results for his paper and proof reading and extending his paper with a literature survey and elaborate explanation of results. I have been offered co-authorship (second author) for this paper.
Now, though I can dedicate some time to do that work, I wonder whether being the second author is worth it.
I would like to ask in general as well, that is: Is it worth it to put effort in papers to become the second author, given that the paper is not related to my primary area of research or rather work, as opposed to dedicating time to one’s own research and getting papers as a first author?
Note: I have seen that in academia (where I want to go), usually advertisements call for applications from people having some number of papers as a first author.
# Answer
> 45 votes
If the paper is well-written, contributes non-trivial knowledge to a particular field, is peer-reviewed, and you contributed significantly enough to the paper to be listed as an author, you should put your name on it. In the case of fields where pre-prints are common (i.e., it won't be peer-reviewed, at least initially), it is also worthwhile.
What you don't want is to be an author on a poorly written paper. In other words, you should be proud to list a publication on your CV even if it isn't exactly in your primary research area. Especially at this stage in the game, having a few good papers will help your case, even as a second author (and keep in mind that some fields, such as theoretical computer science, should have the authors listed alphabetically and all authors are considered primary).
# Answer
> 23 votes
In my opinion, I would evaluate the quality of that paper (so far) first. If the quality is good, I would join him and become the second author. If the quality is poor, then walk away.
You have only one publication thus far. Have another one, even the second authorship, is definitely better than nothing. Not to mention your first authorship paper is not very good by your own evaluation.
# Answer
> 16 votes
In the end, each paper counts. I would not hesitate to get second authorship unless I felt I deserved to be first author on the paper. What you need to consider is if the time you spend is worth it. If the paper is going to a good journal then is more acceptable than if it goes to a low rank journal. When your cv is evaluated, number of papers, journal impact, and citations on the papers are most frequently looked at. First authorship is an important factor as always but having second authorship (I am assuming among several co-authors) shows that you have been instrumental in the paper (I am again assuming authorship order reflects contribution). As long as you have first authorship on a sizable fraction of papers no-one will think twice about coauthoships, particularly not early in ones career.
# Answer
> 3 votes
I think you have to do a cost/benefit analysis. It's always good to have another paper, even if you are second author. A hiring or review committee may ask you to describe your own contribution to the paper. As long as you can do that honestly and point to some substantive contribution to the paper, it will be to your benefit. If it will take you a significant amount of time then it is probably a substantive contribution. The fact that it is not completely aligned with your own research may be an asset...it shows that you can collaborate and are willing to get outside your comfort zone.
So, what would you be doing instead if you did not contribute to your colleague's paper? If you have another paper that is at a critical stage then it may be reasonable to turn down your friend. Otherwise, I'd say go for it. It's hard to say what will catch the eye of a hiring committee.
# Answer
> 1 votes
It always depends on how much effort you need to put relative to the quality of the paper. HOWEVER -
This may be an urban myth, but I keep hearing from faculty that not having any second author papers is seen as a slight negative (this is in biology). Both in academia and in industry, the ability to collaborate and work in groups is seen as important. The only method they have of guessing what your teamwork skills are is - second author papers.
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Tags: publications, authorship
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thread-12802 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12802 | Are generalized recommendation letters bad? | 2013-09-18T03:57:36.010 | # Question
Title: Are generalized recommendation letters bad?
Sometimes online application systems ask for uploading recommendation letters as supplementary documents (scanned copies). In this case, it is possible to get general recommendation letters (addressed as `To Whom It May Concern`) and submit them for different applications.
1. Is it bad to submit a recommendation letter, which has not been addressed for a specific application? Assume that the content will be the same.
2. If it is OK, is it bad to attach some recommendation letters for an application when it is not requested?
# Answer
> 8 votes
I'm actually surprised that whatever system you're using has you upload the letters yourself. Typically (maybe this is field specific?) an applicant should not even get to look at the letters, since any negative (or neutral) comments the writer includes might strain their relationship, and so excluding the applicant means the writer can, in theory, be more direct and honest.
That said,
1) This is bad. A generic letter is obviously better than no letter at all (if one or more is required), but not always by much. It indicates that you are interested in a position *somewhere* rather than interested in a position *there*. If your other qualifications are superb this might not matter, but you can give any application a really significant boost by showing the people who will be reading it that you are interested in them and will be a good fit. This doesn't mean totally different letters for each application, but you will have to help your letter writers to tailor small changes, for each letter, that "personalize" your applications.
2) This is probably bad too; if they didn't request letters, then they don't want them. At best they'll ignore them, at worst they'll be annoyed that you don't follow directions.
# Answer
> 10 votes
First, as wsc says, you should not be uploading the letters yourself. Usually there's someone in your dept. who can accept letters and send them out if there's no way for the letters to be uploaded directly.
Second, senior letter writers already spend a lot of their own valuable time writing letters for dozens of people. Asking them to write separate letters for dozens and dozens of applications for each person is completely unreasonable. In Math for research jobs in the US, letters for job applicants are not school specific. (Though they do usually say "postdoc" or "tenure track position" since obviously a strong postdoc candidate would often be a weak TT candidate.)
(For teaching letters for liberal arts schools my impression is that the situation is somewhat different and some specialization may be expected. But I don't have first-hand knowledge. Of course, for those letters, it's less likely that one person is writing 50 letters a year.)
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Tags: university, application, recommendation-letter
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thread-12804 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12804 | How do I choose an appropriate scope for a master's thesis in mathematics? | 2013-09-18T04:28:06.230 | # Question
Title: How do I choose an appropriate scope for a master's thesis in mathematics?
I am a new Master's seeking student in Mathematics, and I'm trying to get a jump on my research focus/concentration for eventually writing my Master's Thesis. My interest is primarily prime, perfect, and Mersenne numbers. When I try to formulate a plan though, my ideas are always too broad and vague, or are way too specific. Does anybody have advice on how to decide on a topic? How long is the average such thesis? Perhaps what I thought was too vague and expansive would be a perfect length and I was just second-guessing myself too much.
# Answer
> 3 votes
To expand on scaaahu's very valid comment, consider the following:
* what specific topic(s) interest you the most.
* which of these do you have some level of confidence in pursuing at a Master's level.
* Who has the expertise to be able to advise you, are the willing to do so (they may be overloaded).
* Are their enough resources available to start research in the chosen field.
* Finally, what is the 'end-game', where do you hope to go with this qualification?
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Tags: research-process, masters, thesis, mathematics
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thread-12796 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12796 | Why are all authors credited equally with authorship regardless of level of contribution? | 2013-09-17T22:55:15.317 | # Question
Title: Why are all authors credited equally with authorship regardless of level of contribution?
Normally, the credit of a scientific paper is equally distributed among authors. In the real world, it is almost impossible to write a paper with equal contributions of all authors. Usually, one author is the main one who is the idea maker or discoverer by subtle analysis of data.
In most cases, contributions of some authors are trivial, e.g., consultation on a specialized area, analysis of a part of data, etc. With this system, there are many famous professors who are co-authors for tens of hundreds of papers.
Why when judging the research records of a researchers, only the quantity and quality of papers are considered, and no one cares about how much s/he has contributed to those papers?
# Answer
> 5 votes
I agree that using simple publication or citation counts is prone to a range of problems. One important class of such biases relates to differential levels of involvement of an author.
In terms of some basic corrections for this, there are ways that individual papers are evaluated to assess relative contribution.
* In some fields being first author (and to a lesser extent, subsequent positions) suggests a greater level of involvement in a given paper.
* In a few cases, proportion of contribution is explicitly stated.
* In some contexts, some form of proportional analysis is performed such that if you are one author among two, then the paper is weighted more than one author among ten (I've seen this in some university workload models).
However, generally, when evaluating the publication achievements of a researchers, a more holistic approach can be taken.
* An overall program of research will be evaluated in order to assess a sustained contribution.
* To some extent, over time researchers would be expected to play a range of roles from lead to secondary contributor. Therefore, often an overall sum of papers may balance out such varying levels of contributions. In particular, if you have a reasonable balance of first author papers and the number of authors per paper is similar to other researchers in your field, this may reinforce such a perspective.
# Answer
> 10 votes
My opinion is that, contrary to what you say about "one main contributor", in most cases, it is absolutely impossible to judge "the level of contribution" from any objective standpoint. Let's consider a (not hypothetical, just missing real names!) example.
A and B spent about a year thinking of a problem and devising a scheme for solution they could not make work.
A discussed the question with C.
C, who wasn't much interested in trying it yourself, passed it to his collaborator on a different project D.
D found an approach that gives fairly good result but not quite what was wanted and told it to C.
C passed it to A and B and during the two week visit of D arranged that A,C,D have a few discussions about it that resulted in some extra ideas but not a full solution yet.
Meanwhile B tried to combine what he knew himself and what he was told by C and obtained an even slightly better result than D (though still short of the exact statement wanted) but under more restrictive assumptions. He sent it to D.
D, upon reading B's draft, realized that the initial scheme of A and B could be made to work after all (what he was missing was in that note from B and what B was missing was a part of D's "general knowledge"), finished it off, and sent the solution to A,B,C, who have read and verified it.
Now, I suggest you try to tell the "level of contribution" of each person keeping in mind that
1) If not for C, D would most likely not hear of the problem at all and it is doubtful that he would come into direct contact with A,B.
2) It is possible that A and B would make their approach work eventually without D.
3) What was a "general knowledge" for D and allowed him to finish the problem off, would hardly come into the mind of A,B,C at all.
4) Without B's draft, D would, most likely, stop at the "partial result" he obtained first.
5) Both A and C participated in the discussion during D's visit and, while everybody remembers all the ideas that surfaced, nobody remembers (or cares much about) who said what.
6) A,B,C,D all argue that the rest 3 could surely do the problem without him, just in longer time, so the current idea of "author credit" C and D have is to publish the whole thing under the name AB CoD.
# Answer
> 0 votes
I have to disagree that all authors are credited equally. Since there are several ways in which authorships are counted, the position of your name will provide different signals. In my realm, first authors are simply assumed to have done the most, such papers count higher. Other authors are considered to have done less in falling order, unless stated otherwise. In some fields the last author is the "important" one. In some fields authorships come through contract, e.g. CERN consortia authorships (see link in the reply on coauthorships, the answer there may also be of help). Hence authorships are treated differently.
Ideally everyone should follow the Vancouver Protocol) in which it is clear that some contributions simply should not warrant authorship but rather a mention in the acknowledgement.
So in the end when judging the authorships of papers, each field applies their own "standard".
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Tags: research-process, publications
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thread-12789 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12789 | reviewing a review: Referencing | 2013-09-17T19:53:20.433 | # Question
Title: reviewing a review: Referencing
I have been reading a paper and in the Background section the author said something like:
Recent studies suggest that...
and then gave a citation.
I went to that references section, took the name of the other paper and downloaded it.
what was a surprise for me is that this paper also in the literature review section refer to the same studies.
I thought that the first paper refer to this second paper. So, is this allowed on literature review without considering secondary citation?
# Answer
> 3 votes
I don't think there's anything too unseemly going on here, *unless* the cited paper that also lists the other papers does not actually produce the results that follow "Recent studies show." In that case, there's a problem.
Otherwise, however, you do have to give some deference to the fact that there are only so many papers out there on a given topic.
# Answer
> 2 votes
I agree with aeismail in that there is not anything out of the ordinary going. On. To have two chronologically separated papers citing the same material and the later also citing the older is perfectly fine, in fact I would say necessary. What is not ok, is if the author of the later paper read the older paper and simply took the references from that without actually reading the original papers. This is far from unheard of and the main problem is that the later author relies entirely on the formers judgement and interpretation. The risk is that errors in interpretations propagate without proper critical scrutiny of original studies. So one question you should ask is whether the later author have cited everything with or without such critical review. If the papers are separated by years and you know more papers have been published but are not referenced by the later author, then there is a chance (but not a certainty) the later author may have been just lazy. But if more papers are added then it is less clear. To make the case even worse, that two authors cite the same sources for the same conclusion(s) can also be seen as sound, that both have found and read the pertinent literature.
So, what you should do is to make sure you have critically read all the papers so that you can judge if the formers interpretations are sound. If they are sound then none of them have contributed anything negative to science. If they are not sound then you have the opportunity to rectify a problem by doing better or in this case suggest improvements in the review. The problem is tricky and requires quite a lot of work from a reviewer to possibly rectify if a problem really exists. this is likely why some errors propagate through scientific literature for sometimes quite a while.
# Answer
> 1 votes
I wouldn't say that this is wrong per se, but I think it's bad form.
What I try to do is to cite either the first paper to show a particular result, or at least a seminal paper in that area, then then point to the review explicitly. For example:
```
Then people were like, hey, maybe timing matters?
STDP was born (Bi & Poo, 1998; see Sjöström & Gerstner, 2010 for a review).
```
If the paper's already been published, well, not much you can do. If you're reviewing a paper, I might suggest they change it.
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Tags: citations
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thread-12812 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12812 | Appropriate response to sexual misconduct 'joke' made against an academic | 2013-09-18T09:06:47.490 | # Question
Title: Appropriate response to sexual misconduct 'joke' made against an academic
This happened quite recently to a friend and colleague of mine.
Another colleague made an off-hand 'joke' about a friend (an academic) potentially behaving inappropriately with his students. This was said in front of my friend's students (over 20) and within hearing range of his students, as my friend heard them laughing soon after the 'joke' was said (his own students apparently had shocked looks on their faces).
The situation was that he was setting up an experiment demonstration that required the lights turned off and curtains drawn (physics - lasers). Understandably, my friend was very angry, hurt and terribly embarrassed and could not bare to even look at his colleague who 'triumphantly went back to his own class' soon after.
Just a point I want to make here, the reason I am saying 'joke' in inverted commas, is because this kind of infantile rubbish can and does cause unwarranted mud to stick - and is potentially a lot more damaging for male teachers/lecturers. Also, it is a lame, disgusting, low-brow attempt at humour. (I have been a butt of a joke like that myself a few years ago and it inadvertently caused quite a bit of trouble, despite being 100% innocent and proven so).
There is no question of his innocence of any wrong doing, and being the true professional, he redirected his students back to the demonstration and completed the lesson.
He is the kind of person that does not like to make waves and does not like to make a fuss.
In summary:
* Lecturer X about to start his class requiring the lights to be off and curtains drawn for an experiment. Lecturer Y comes in unannounced and made the 'joke' about X potentially doing something inappropriate with the students in the darkness. This was in front of both X's and Y's students.
* Lecturer Y went back to his class.
* Lecturer X was justifiably insulted, but continued his lesson.
What course of action should he (Lecturer X) do? Particularly to protect himself from any potential future trouble regarding allegations etc from this 'joke'? (Which as I said, can occur).
# Answer
> 15 votes
This is a very unfortunate event for your affected colleague. Usually the proverb "where there's smoke, there's fire" has some truth, but when artificial smoke is generated without the fire, it is very detrimental. As you state the comment may stick and through the grapevine it may attain any proportion.
What then to do? Well, first, I think the teacher should tell his (in this case) students that he feels the 'joke' was totally inappropriate and the he was hurt by it and also explain that this sort of action is not to be tolerated by anyone. This will set the record straight with his own class. It could spark a short discussion about political correctness and even if it takes time out of the subject teaching it will be worth it. It is a good lesson that should be taught.
The next step is to actually step up to the person who made the 'joke' and explain that it was uncalled for and inappropriate, particularly in public and at his expense. I understand that this may be difficult to do but unfortunately the choice is to do it or let it be and face the fact that the issue is unresolved.
A third step is to bring it up at a departmental level and try to turn it into a general discussion to eventually also involve students. The university/department probably has rules about (mis-)conduct and correctness. It can be fruitful to provide an opportunity to have a discussion on how people (faculty and students) should conduct professionally,it does not even have to bring up this 'joke' in any way.
Finally, being affected by a situation like this is about the worst that can happen, particularly if the 'joke' propagates without any control. It may be that there are officers within the university that can provide advice on what can be done and help defuse the situation in case it will propagate into rumours, etc. The students will therefore also be involved and can be good support if brought in to discuss the matter from a correctness point of view.
# Answer
> 6 votes
Depending on the local laws and policies, that joke itself might constitute harassment of you and of your students, thus, the "jokester" might already be culpable. Certainly they are visibly culpable, but/and possibly so depending on the incisiveness and (in a good sense) subtlety of your local laws.
The usual counter-argument that "oh, it was just a joke, don't be so uptight", is just a disregard and attempted dismissal of the issue... which might have been orthodox and acceptable "back in the day" when the opportunity for various bonus intimidations of subordinates was an understood "perk" of senior positions.
To the students, one could comment that that exemplified the reasons such behavior is against policy: not that anyone was immediately injured, perhaps, but ... here's the point ... it was a *distraction* from the real goals of the situation, namely, learning/education/teaching. Even if everyone in the room knew that there was no chance of the "joke" being relevant, certainly most would know that there is a potentially very serious issue there, and, thus, raising a fake-serious issue burns far too many mental CPU-cycles. A big waste!!!
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Tags: ethics, sexual-misconduct
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thread-12825 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12825 | External advisor for graduate students? | 2013-09-18T22:27:02.920 | # Question
Title: External advisor for graduate students?
Some graduate students (MSc and PhD) have a second advisor from outside the university (and even outside the country). In most cases I've seen, the second advisor is a collaborator of the primary supervisor.
Is there any institutional attitude towards having a second advisor from outside the university (and probably internationally)?
What are the terms of working with an external advisor? Does it need an HR contract, or institutional agreement? Who approves the qualifications of the external advisor to meet the university standards/regulations?
# Answer
I believe this is an institution-dependent issue. Different departments and schools may have very different approaches as to what is formally allowed. In this day and age, however, collaborations, particularly between different departments or institutions, is generally looked on favorably. Whether it rises to an "official" arrangement or not, however, is clearly a different matter.
I don't believe that this is normally done via an employment contract; I think this is handled according to the regulations of the department—so the chair or graduate officer (or whoever normally approves student-advisor matches) would have to sign off on the arrangement. The responsibility for making sure all appropriate procedures are followed, however, lies with the advising team. (In general, this only matters with respect to the thesis committee and matters related to the thesis defense itself.)
The only other situation which might complicate matters is if both advisors are jointly funding the student; then the situation is certainly thornier. However, for such purposes, usually one advisor is the "hosting" advisor who has the primary responsibility for the student, which normally obviates the need for a complicated contract.
> 3 votes
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Tags: phd, professorship, thesis, advisor
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thread-12837 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12837 | Where can I find statistics on the average number of papers published while working on a PhD? | 2013-09-19T07:10:41.173 | # Question
Title: Where can I find statistics on the average number of papers published while working on a PhD?
I'm interested in this, because I want to know if there is something like an average number that we might find.
I am looking for statistics on the number of papers published while working on a PhD, preferably by general field of study (e.g. Physics, History, etc., not "Quantum Electrodynamics") and the country where the PhD was completed. If possible, the duration of PhD and amount of course work should also be parameters.
# Answer
Byrnes (2007) found that for tenured faculty in top departments of psychology in the US there was a correlation between the publication rate during the first 7 years following a PhD and the number of publications during the PhD.
> individuals in the bottom quartile published an average of 1.03 predoctoral articles, those in the middle 50% and top 25% published 2.00 and 3.03 predoctoral articles, respectively
Note that the quartiles refer tot he number of articles published during the 7 years following the awarding of the PhD and not the number of predoctoral articles.
This study obviously includes only a small subset of all Psychologists (those who have gotten tenure at top Psychology departments), but may provide a hook into relevant literature.
> 5 votes
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Tags: phd, publications
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thread-12829 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12829 | Is it normal to feel impatient in lectures when a lecturer explains material that could be obtained from textbooks? | 2013-09-19T04:27:39.633 | # Question
Title: Is it normal to feel impatient in lectures when a lecturer explains material that could be obtained from textbooks?
I am a senior PhD student who greatly appreciates learning about allied fields. I had been a huge fan of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and I believe some of them steered the course of my life towards grad school. However, I am more and more getting impatient in lectures. I am a Mathematician but I like to study Economics and Computer Science for fun. My university pays for any courses I would ever want to take as a PhD student so I try to enroll but I am losing my patience. I feel the instructor is taking up too much time explaining things that I could grab off the textbook in much lesser time and in the process, form the connections better. Is this normal?
As someone who has had 20 years of schooling since kindergarten, is it normal to get impatient and want to do things by myself. I know I am implicitly making the assumption that one is motivated enough to stick by routines but that's fine.
# Answer
You have to take into account that many of the courses you attend are not made for you. They are probably made for people that have a lot less experience. Even though you might not have a lot of knowledge yet regarding the topic you are attending a course in, you have much more general knowledge and acquired learning skills throughout your PhD.
If you want to learn these new things through courses, I think you just have to suck it up as the focus of these courses is probably on less experienced people. Alternatively, you could pick up some text books and start learning like that.
> 22 votes
# Answer
> Is it normal to get impatient and want to do things by myself?
*Autodidacticism* is a cornerstone of being a successful academic, and hardly surprising for PhD students.
There are number of goals of classroom teaching, e.g.,
1. Directed learning from an expert in the field (professor, lecturer, etc.)
2. The opportunity for students to ask questions about the material, and to have discussions about the material that goes *beyond* what is in a textbook or online.
You would presumably benefit from point (2), but unfortunately, you have to be patient with point (1), especially if the other students are expecting a lot of guided learning.
Instead of enrolling in courses, I suggest seeing what *seminars* are available in the fields you are interested in. You may have to prepare to get the most out of the seminars by reading up on current research, or learning a lot of the background material independently, but I think you'll get more out of the experience than sitting through formal classes.
> 13 votes
# Answer
In my experience as a professor I have with some regularity encountered students that are impatient with my classroom lectures and exercises.
**The Problem**
In virtually all of these cases it was because the student was missing the point of what we were trying to do in the class. In most classes, content delivery is only one of the learning goals (and not even the most important one, since as you point out the information is available in texts and other sources).
The other learning goals typically are associated with trying to help students think critically about the content consistent with the best practices of the field. Students with a experience in another field can find this frustrating because it requires that they relax their comfortable assumptions about how information is acquired and evaluated. (True learning is always disruptive because it requires that we reconcile our current understanding in the face of new information, not just stockpile facts).
**Suggestions**
First, I would look at the syllabus of the courses that you are taking. The learning objectives of the professor are probably listed. If they are not, just ask him or her about what they want you to get from the course. My guess is that it goes beyond simply understand the material in Chapters 1 - n.
Second, relax. Don't be in such a rush to simply acquire content. It sounds like you are good at picking up new material but you may be too quick to assume you "get it". I am a biology professor and I regularly encounter this with the teaching of photosynthesis and other "elementary" processes. Students get the details quickly because they have heard it since elementary school but they rarely delve into the deeper implications. You may be missing some of the more subtle aspects of the subjects because you are in a rush to move on to new material.
> 7 votes
# Answer
If your level is far beyond the level of the other students in class, then this is hardly surprising.
Or perhaps, the teaching methods of the professor need to be improved.
> 3 votes
# Answer
You sound like a fast learner who grasps concepts easily. It also seems like you have a fair amount of self-discipline and initiative.
Assuming those are true, it makes sense that lectures wouldn't be an ideal way for you to learn something new, and that you might thrive in an online environment, where you have a bit more autonomy and can dictate your own pace through much of the learning.
Lecture halls have a lecturer – who tends to teach at a certain pace – along with a group of students. Some students may find the instructor's pace a little too slow for their liking, and a few who might find that pace excruciating slow.
A good lecturer should sense when the general mood of the classroom dictates a change in pace, slowing down when students are getting lost, or speeding up when students are getting bored. Unfortunately, there are plenty of lecturers who don't process the cues very well, or are simply not interested in doing so. Still, the students are individuals who make up an aggregate; it's not unusual for a classroom to have some who would prefer the professor speed up sitting alongside others who would rather the professor slow down.
I always enjoyed lecturers who taught at a relatively fast pace. Those who didn't got me multitasking; I often doodled in my college notebooks.
To answer your question, I think your restlessness is indeed "normal," particularly for students with your abilities, and your learning style.
> 2 votes
# Answer
You are impatient in lectures because they are fundamentally not a good way to teach. If universities were about teaching then lectures would already be nearly obsolete - MOOCs are orders of magnitude more efficient. But, for students, universities are about *certification* and MOOCs aren't trusted enough in that capacity.
This has nothing to do with your being a PhD student - the vast majority of lectures add nothing beyond what can be found in the textbook. Well, perhaps a little, as a PhD student I would assume you actually read the textbook, and therefore have no need for the lecture.
This is not a popular point of view among those who must give lectures, but it is *far* more widespread among those who must attend them. And, really, who are you going to believe?
> -2 votes
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Tags: motivation
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thread-12696 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12696 | How to organize my papers and notes from the beginning of my PhD? | 2013-09-15T00:05:52.850 | # Question
Title: How to organize my papers and notes from the beginning of my PhD?
I'm a first year PhD student.
I'm in my first stage (doing a literature review) but I face problem in organizing the papers I read and the notes I take for all papers. Should I put all that in one MS Word file for example, or different MS word files, or maybe use a different software?
I don't want to come after month from now and get confused about the way I organize my papers and notes in.
So, any helpful ideas?
# Answer
> 21 votes
First of all, a graduate *school* is a learning process so finding what is perfect from you from the start is a valiant endeavour but not necessarily sure fire.
You should start to use a data base system, some (mentioned in comments) that come to mind are Mendeley (free), EndNote (commercial), RefBase (free) to mention a few. If you consider going into LateX (which many of us swear by) then I can recommend JabRef (free; BibTeX format). There is also a Wikipedia comparison page that can be of assistance.
To sort your references concerns managing some form of structure where you group or "mind map your articles. In the old days you simply kept them in piles. With a data base software you can start providing key words in the data base and also keep some short notes for each paper which makes everything searchable and ready for sorting. I think the process or sorting articles is one that changes with different tasks and also persons so you are best of taking some advice from others and looking into it. Hopefully you also have peers around who can provide their insights. In the end you will develop your own set of tools that suit your needs and to keep trying different ones at an early stage, and discarding many of them, is far better than trying to do it later when the mass of information is much larger. Another option is to simply start using something and sticking with it regardless of weaknesses.
The bottom line is that with experience you will rely less and less on note-taking and be more efficient at seeing structure in what you read and so keeping a reference database is the main tool you will use. Even if this may not sound very constructive, I also say that the time you spend now on testing different solutions will pay back later, putting it off is only pushing problems forward.
A final personal note. If you want a free, platform independent, and completely versatile way to author documents you should look into LaTeX-writing (for example through TeX.stackexchange). I recommend it to everyone unless you are in a complete Word-environment, being alone with a different system can be hard. You should nevertheless look into it.
# Answer
> 3 votes
I'm a first year myself, so I can't say "this works" so much as "this is what I'm trying"... But what I'm trying is using Zotero & Zotfile to hold notes on individual papers, and after reading each one I to try to fit it into a structure in a mind map (I use X-Mind).
# Answer
> 2 votes
I electronically highlight and comment my papers in the program Xournal. I used to then organize them somewhat in a program called Zotero (in some ways similar to the Mendeley mentioned above I believe). However, I recently stopped using Zotero because it was an additional hassle.
So currently I just mark up papers in Xournal and then organize them into different directories within my Dropbox account. I'm happy with this, and have been doing it for about 4 years now.
# Answer
> 2 votes
I used to use a journal to keep track of my readings as I could take the journal to the library with me. If I were doing a similar thing today, I'd use a wiki to keep track of my notes and research as that would let me re-organize things as needed, host PDFs of the journal articles when available and allow for searching.
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Tags: phd, document-organization
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thread-12847 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12847 | Does Canada have similar tenure-track system as the USA? | 2013-09-19T18:49:27.167 | # Question
Title: Does Canada have similar tenure-track system as the USA?
Does Canada have similar tenure-track system as the USA? Does it have around 6 years in a tenure-track position before getting tenure?
# Answer
This study reviewed tenure-track positions across Canada. The time range from first probationary appointment to tenure is 3 to 7 years, with an average of 5 to 6 years.
Simon Fraser University's tenure track policy states that professors and associate professors shall be considered for tenure no later than the 4th year of the appointment, with options for early consideration or extensions. Assistant professors are considered for tenure no later than the 6th year of the appointment, with automatic promotion to Associate Professor if tenure is granted.
> 8 votes
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Tags: professorship, united-states, tenure-track, canada
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thread-12852 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12852 | Why a certain period of time is needed for promotion of qualified applicants? | 2013-09-20T04:01:21.190 | # Question
Title: Why a certain period of time is needed for promotion of qualified applicants?
The main criteria for academic promotion to associate/full professor includes, research projects, publications, grants, administrative services, and such things. These are achievements that one can obtain regardless of timeframe. Logically, one with required achievements must be able to be promoted. However, most of universities need a certain period of time before promotion application (usually 5 years).
Why one must wait for promotion, when he is already qualified?
One who is associate professor for two years but qualified for full professorship must wait another 3 years to send application for promotion. Strangely, if that person apply for a full professor position in other university, he will be appointed as a full professor (if qualified) without waiting for another 3 years.
NOTE: the only criterion which seems to need time is teaching, but I think a strong/outstanding teaching records for different courses over 2 years is comparable with teaching the exact same courses over 5 years.
# Answer
> 7 votes
From my experience and what I have observed, the time frame is time for the academic to "*earn* their stripes", so to speak.
Some more factors that I have noticed that are considered, that *do* take some time to notice, namely:
* The person's character - how well do they work with colleagues and/or students.
* How the person performs under pressure and during 'down' times.
* How much initiative the academic shows can only be observed over a period of time.
*note: the above is not usually formally documented, but are important in any profession for someone going for promotion.*
Also, as the university will be making a considerable investment in the academic, it would seem that they would like to see that the academic is willing to make a considerable investment (time, expertise etc) in return.
# Answer
> 6 votes
Exceptions are generally possibly, and there are many examples of people who have been promoted faster than the usual timeframes at their universities. Often the easiest way to achieve this is via a counteroffer to an offer from another university, but that's not always necessary.
On the other hand, standardizing the process with an expected timeframe makes some sense. Implicit in your question is the assumption that the required achievements for promotion can be judged objectively, but that's not always the case. For example, it's not easy to quantify the difference in scholarly perspective and experience between an associate professor and a full professor, and there's no way to measure this objectively without distorting it. One approximation is to say "for most people, the difference amounts to seven years of experience." This is far from perfect, but it's not clearly worse than the alternatives. Ultimately, any workable policy is going to be a patchwork of several approximations, and a sensible department will allow exceptions in cases where the approximations are clearly inappropriate.
# Answer
> 4 votes
First of all, in all places I worked so far you could apply for "early promotion" if you felt like you were strong enough to qualify for higher rank before the official consideration time and some people were even encouraged to do so.
Second, it takes two things to be a good scientist: brilliance and persistence. If someone is in my field, I can usually estimate the former pretty accurately after looking at just one paper of his. However, to estimate the latter, I would need at least a 5 year record, which is pretty close to the standard "probation period" before promotion.
Third, the university administration, like any other management, wants to keep us on our toes for a while before loosening the reins. Whether that is beneficial or detrimental varies from case to case but one can hardly deny that it is more or less universally accepted management policy used almost everywhere from WalMart to NASA, so you'll need to put together quite a convincing argument to explain "why not in academia".
Fourth, even if one is a good scientist (according to the above definition), one still has to prove that he is a "good department citizen". In 5 years, you will actually face all "reasonable" situations and take most "normal" roles in the department except some extreme cases when one cannot predict anything about anybody anyway and establish stable (whether good, or bad) relationships with most other department members, so you'll become a "known evil" rather than "a cat in the sack" at the very least.
The only remaining question is "Why a cleverer person who is just hired has much lower salary than a less clever person who's been there 20 years?". In the European system, it is, indeed, almost always so but I should say that the US contract negotiating system is quite flexible here and I've been in the situation when the chairman recommended to several full professors on the hiring committee not to tell the (unusually high) salary that would be offered to a coming assistant professor not only to other department members but even to their colleagues on the committee itself with lower salaries to avoid unnecessary frictions, so the life is not so bad here as well.
These are the arguments "in favor" of the waiting period. I realize that there are ones against it too and can bring up a few myself but since the question was "Why is it there?" rather then "List all pros and contras", I'll hold the other half of my 2 cents in the pocket for now :).
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Tags: research-process, professorship, teaching, university, career-path
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thread-12858 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12858 | How much is the teaching duty of university administrators? | 2013-09-20T16:13:00.107 | # Question
Title: How much is the teaching duty of university administrators?
Due to the time-consuming nature of administrative jobs, university administrators normally reduce their teaching duties. This reduction is normally proportional to the level of administrative job: Chair/Dean/Vice President/Provost/President.
I am curious if it is only matter of personal preference or there is institutional regulations for minimum and maximum teaching tasks?
In general, how university administrators are involved in classroom teaching, supervising graduate students, and academic research projects?
# Answer
> 7 votes
You are right that professors in various administrative positions typically have a reduced teaching load. However, this is hard to quantify and depends mostly on the institution's policy and maybe even the specific agreement (or contract) negotiated. The full range is possible: from no reduction in teaching load (position with little time requirement) to full “exemption” from teaching (e.g., dean or university president).
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Tags: teaching, university, advisor, administration
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thread-11546 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11546 | A MD-PhD in Oncology | 2013-07-31T05:12:40.733 | # Question
Title: A MD-PhD in Oncology
I am about to finish my Bachelor Degree in Computer Engineering and Computational Biology, and planning to apply for a MD-PhD with focus on oncology. After talking to my academic advisers, I had very bad impressions about MD-PhD Program ("such a waste of time", "please just focus on one thing at the time"). However, it seems that such critiques are targeting the general approach of MD-PhD programs, and I still think that for the case of cancer research, it would benefit me a lot to gain the experiences in both.
To that extent, I have one question with two sides: Does earning an MD help improve my research as a PhD (for example, identify more significant and meaningful problems), and does earning a PhD side help me become a more skilled practicing oncologist?
# Answer
> 3 votes
Since you indicated that you are focusing on oncology, it seems likely that a PhD will enhance your oncology practice. This thread on The Student Doctor Network explores the pros and cons of an MD-PhD in Radiation Oncology. The general consensus is that it is worthwhile if you plan to be active in research as an MD, otherwise it may be a waste of time, money, and energy.
As Shion mentioned in a comment, most MD-PhD's become medical research professors, while it sounds as though you will be in active medical practice. There is a possibility that having a PhD may exclude you from consideration by the hiring boards at non-research-focused institutions. At research-intensive insitutions, the PhD will probably help your case, and certainly can't hurt. It appears that many practicing physicians at top US cancer centers are MD-PhD's. See here, here, and here.
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Tags: phd, graduate-admissions, medicine
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thread-12866 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12866 | Borderline on appropriateness from teacher | 2013-09-21T02:53:08.577 | # Question
Title: Borderline on appropriateness from teacher
Being a western (white) teacher at an Asian university I constantly have to worry about being the subject of gossip and rumors between students (and others). So, I do need to be more careful about my actions with students and how my intentions are viewed by others.
What if I see a student has a strange blink pattern? Should I consider that (potential need for glasses) integral to the learning process and pull that student aside to tell them or is it generally considered that teachers in my situation should only consider issues directly related to the subject matter?
# Answer
> 3 votes
First of all, I am answering this question from my own point of view. My opinion may not represent the majority of Asians (although I am an Asian myself).
I think one of the reasons your school invited you to teach there is for internationalization and diversification besides your excellent academic credentials. They would like to have not only your expert knowledge but also the views you can bring to them.
@UV-D gave an excellent answer. The strange blinking pattern could be a medical issue, so you need to take it to somebody else’s attention. I think he is right. However, as you noticed, you need to take care of the issue carefully.
Fairness and consistency would be the keys. Suppose you are a male professor and the student happens to be a female, there is a possibility this could become a gossip, something like “Our teacher likes that girl”. The gossip would spread until the next time you do the same or similar thing to a male student. Everybody would then say “Ah, he is just a very nice teacher, take care of everybody”.
I think people (not only Asians) would like to be treated fairly. Consistent actions between multiple events will make people think you are being fair. So, my point is, you’ll be fine as long as you keep your actions fair and consistent and do whatever you think is right.
An important note. Be extremely careful when dealing with the students outside the classroom. I noticed in your question, *pull that student aside*. This could potentially become a harassment case. Talk to an authority may be a better way to handle it. A western white lecturer in an Asian university is always the focus of the students and the faculty.
# Answer
> 6 votes
Strange blink patterns are not necessarily a sign of a need for glasses, one of my students has similar symptoms as part of Tourette's Syndrome - there are a myriad of other reasons what this could be a symptom of. Having said that, asking the students how they are individually as they enter class may give some insight.
Beyond that, I would ask your supervisor or someone in administration first if something has already been documented about the potential condition the student may have. If not, then it is your superior, the nurse or someone in administration that should be informed of your concerns, this will do 2 things:
* save any potential embarrassment for you and the student.
* provide evidence of you chasing-up the concern through official channels
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Tags: teaching
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thread-12870 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12870 | How should we sort the names of the authors of a paper (with two authors) when they have the same contribution? | 2013-09-21T07:58:02.503 | # Question
Title: How should we sort the names of the authors of a paper (with two authors) when they have the same contribution?
Me and one of my friends have recently written a paper and we have almost the same contribution. Is there any conventional way to express this and show this ? How do we sort the name of the authors in such a case?
# Answer
> 7 votes
The most common is to list in alphabetical order (in fact you can decide whatever you want) and then write a statement in the acknowledgement to the effect that "both authors have contributed equally to the paper".
In one (odd) example I know of names were listed in reverse alphabetical order. The "first author" was the senior and the second his (in this case) graduate student. They then stated in the acknowledgement that contributions were equal. So in this case the senior scientist wanted the publication listed under his name although it would have been more logical with the students name first. So it is obvious there may be several "reasons" to list other than alphabetical but I think alphabetical should be the way to go. At least in my subject order typically signifies contribution and an inverse order would be a very strong signal.
I have also seen authors who have taken turns to be first when they frequently publish together. That could be a reasonable (fair) alternative when it happens.
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Tags: citations, authorship
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thread-12872 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12872 | Are grad school acceptance rates skewed? | 2013-09-21T13:58:21.520 | # Question
Title: Are grad school acceptance rates skewed?
Take grad schools for instance. Their acceptance rate is 8%, or seems to be so. Basically, suppose you have 100 randomly selected across the USA grad school applicants. 50 don't know what to do with their lives, so really the acceptance rate goes up to 16%. Then the other 25 will be out for unusual circumstances, so roughly, there is a 33% chance, or 1 in 3 chance of getting in. (yes, even my numbers are a bit skewed, but reasonably better)
So is grad school really that hard to get into (If you are on top of your game)?
# Answer
Acceptance rates are nearly meaningless as isolated numbers, for exactly the reason you describe. They are averaged over the entire applicant pool, and therefore they imply very little about any particular applicant's chances.
If you are trying to estimate your own chances of admission, then you need more information. If you attend a school that regularly sends students to a given university, then you can form a decent estimate based on feedback from faculty and comparisons with your peers. Otherwise it's harder to predict. At top grad schools, it really depends a lot on what your recommenders say, how seriously the admissions committee takes their letters, etc. You may have a faculty mentor who can help you arrive at a good estimate, but you'll get at most a crude approximation from grades, GRE scores, counting REU publications, etc.
> So is grad school really that hard to get into (If you are on top of your game)?
For people who are genuinely on top of their game and have made sensible decisions about where to apply (based on their accomplishments), getting into grad school is not that hard. They might not be admitted to their dream schools, but they'll be admitted somewhere reasonable. On the other hand, thinking you're on top of your game doesn't imply that you are.
This makes it difficult to give universally applicable advice. Some applicants should stop stressing out and have faith that it will work out OK in the end, while others need to start worrying and rethinking their plans. We end up back in the same situation as with admission rate statistics: it all depends on your personal circumstances.
> 26 votes
# Answer
You are missing a fundamental aspect of probability theory. The acceptance rate tells me what the chances are that if I randomly select an application, from all the applications to my program, that it will belong to a student that gets accepted. What you are interested in is more like the probability that an applicant applying to a randomly selected school gets accepted. The two probabilities are NOT the same. Going back to your question
> So is grad school really that hard to get into (If you are on top of your game)?
If you are talking about getting into a top graduate program with funding, then the answer is still "yes". Top grad schools only accept students at the top of their games and they always have more applications than spots.
> 11 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, application
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thread-12879 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12879 | Is there an upper limit on the number of students interested in a particular specialisation that a university will admit? | 2013-09-21T16:36:05.907 | # Question
Title: Is there an upper limit on the number of students interested in a particular specialisation that a university will admit?
I am applying to an MS in CS program. I know most people apply for AI and Machine Learning. Does a university have a fixed number of slots for AI students? Or is this true for the Ph D program and not the MS program?
# Answer
> 4 votes
Admissions are **always** limited, because students consume finite resources: classroom space, lab and computing equipment, advising and grading time, funding, and more generally faculty attention. Even in online professional masters programs, admissions are restricted to students with a certain expectation of success, because failing students make the program look bad. For research oriented MS and PhD programs, money and advising time are probably the most limited resources.
Different departments approach the limits differently. Some define strict quotas in advance, depending on number of faculty and available funding levels. Others (like my department) have softer quotas, which are influenced by prior belief that specific students will accept admission offers. Others accept every student with a high enough GPA and GRE scores, and let the students fight each other for advisor attention. But there are always limits.
# Answer
> 0 votes
This depends largely on the admissions policy of the program to which you are applying. If the program directly admits candidates to the PhD program, and has them go through the master's program first, then there is quite likely a cap on the total number of students who can be admitted. On the other hand, if the master's program is functionally separated from the doctoral program—that is, if students can apply to the master's program without any connection or expectations for applying to the doctoral program until later—then it is much less likely that admissions will be limited.
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Tags: graduate-admissions, masters
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thread-12884 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12884 | PhD Physics Europe vs. United States | 2013-09-22T02:23:56.877 | # Question
Title: PhD Physics Europe vs. United States
I've just finished my undergraduate education in Physics in Europe and as I want to stay in academics I want to pursue a PhD, which means either a master and then PhD in e.g. UK, Switzerland or Germany or a PhD in the United States. I have now heard that for postdoc positions especially in the US it is generally better to have a US PhD. Is that true?
As the higher education systems are quite different and I have already attended courses like advanced quantum field theory or general relativity and the core courses like qm, classical mechanics, statistical mechanics or e&m on graduate level for my bachelors degree, is it generally the case, that I would have to take those courses again?
# Answer
International experience is always a good thing these days; but in general I don't think that a US PhD is inherently superior to a European PhD. (This may be highly variable within different disciplines, however, so physicists might want to weigh in on this particular point.)
As for the repetition of coursework, that is *entirely* department-dependent. Different programs will have entirely different means of handling this:
* All students may be required to complete the entire set of coursework requirements, regardless of past experience;
* Students may be granted placement out of courses they have already completed, but not given a reduction in the number of courses required;
* Students may be granted both placement and credit for prior equivalent coursework.
In the second case above, the student would replace the core courses with more advanced electives in different areas.
However, the only way to find out which policy a department uses is to **contact the department directly.** (Sometimes this is publicly stated on the webpage; other times, it's not. And sometimes special cases arise, which is why it's best to contact the graduate office of the departments you're interested in and ask them directly!
> 7 votes
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Tags: phd, europe, united-states
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thread-12878 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12878 | Can not having any research papers be a reason for rejection for an MS program? | 2013-09-21T16:27:52.290 | # Question
Title: Can not having any research papers be a reason for rejection for an MS program?
I am applying to an MS program in CS. I have not published any technical papers, mainly because I had little opportunity to do research and I did not want to write a paper just for the sake of it. Will I be rejected for this reason? Also, do I stand a less chance of admission than my friend who has written an average technical paper (dumb topic IMHO)?
# Answer
> 7 votes
There is no way to predict whether you will be accepted or rejected from any graduate program. Graduate admission is a random process. You have some influence on the expected outcome, but the variance is set differently by each department, and you only get one trial per department per year.
That said, as far as I know, there are no CS MS programs that restrict admission to applicants with prior publications. There **are** PhD programs where most students in some research areas had published (or at least publishable) results as undergraduates—algorithms at Princeton, for example. But even in those programs, and in those research areas, publication is not an actual requirement for admission.
# Answer
> 2 votes
It is a little bit of a simplification (and an avoidance of your actual question), but in general the only reason applicants get rejected from a graduate program is lack of space and funding. Being rejected generally doesn't say anything about you or your application. All you can take away from a rejection is that the department ran out of space and funding before they got to your excellent application.
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Tags: publications, masters, graduate-admissions
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