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thread-9476 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9476 | Add acknowledgments and self citations to paper only after the blind review? | 2013-04-19T04:45:46.717 | # Question
Title: Add acknowledgments and self citations to paper only after the blind review?
I am writing a conference paper of the first time, and the conference I am targeting requires anonymized submissions for the peer review. But at the same time, we (as in, my research group) are required to acknowledge the grants and support of our funding agency in all our publications. Plus, I also need to refer to a previous work of our group.
Is it appropriate for me to *leave out* the acknowledgements section and the reference to my work while sending the paper for review, but *add these details later on* if and when the paper gets accepted?
Is appropriate to add details (the acknowledgments section, for instance) which were not a part of the paper when it went for review?
I could think of this as the only way to satisfy all concerns. Are there better suggestions from more experienced people in academia?
# Answer
You're required to acknowledge grants and grant agencies in your **publications**. Right now, all you have is a **submission**. If and when the submission becomes a publication will be the time to add the grant information in, especially if the venue has a strong anonymization policy for submissions.
> 23 votes
# Answer
I would go about it slightly differently. I would write the manuscript as you wish it to appear and then redact any identifying information. The redaction process should given a sense of what has been redacted without revealing the identity of the authors. See for example: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/41995/efficient-ways-to-anonymize-a-document.
In summary I would not leave the acknowledgement section out, but would rather do:
> Author XXX was funded by XXX and Author XXX was funded by XXX. We thank XXX for help with the fancy piece of hardware.
> 14 votes
# Answer
To your best ability, you should remove all identifying information for the blind review. This includes removing author names and affiliations, avoiding phrases such as "in our previous work," and removing acknowledgements. During the camera-ready portion of the review process (should your paper be accepted), you will add in that information. You'll almost certainly have to make some changes to the paper, so if you are concerned about leaving space for an acknowledgements section, don't be, as you can't really predict the exact text right now.
As for referring to your previous work, make it as anonymous as you can. In general, you should refer to your other work as if it was any other work--i.e., don't link it directly to yourself at all. Although it may sound odd for an author to talk about himself/herself as if he or she was a different person, it's acceptable and expected in academia.
> 9 votes
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Tags: peer-review, paper-submission, acknowledgement, anonymity
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thread-12865 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12865 | How to deal with a procrastinating (student) collaborator? | 2013-09-21T01:19:54.370 | # Question
Title: How to deal with a procrastinating (student) collaborator?
I am just beginning a research project with a fellow student. She is always 10-20 minutes late to scheduled meetings and has a very hard time making any sort of deadline. She freely admits that she is a procrastinator, and acknowledges that chronically being late is a problem which she has never effectively dealt with.
We are going to be working together for several months, perhaps longer, and I know that her chronic lateness will eventually become irritating. (I am always at least 10 minutes early, and consistently complete tasks before the deadline.) I enjoy working with her in a more casual setting, but I am concerned that her procrastination may become an issue in an academic collaboration. How should I approach her about this? Are there any ways to work around it? The collaboration was her initiative, so I am hesitant to confront if there are more diplomatic options.
**How should I deal with her procrastination and lateness?**
# Answer
As you are both students and she approached you, then the answer is simple: Walk away nicely. Explain to her that your working styles do not mesh and therefore the collaboration is becoming too burdensome. Then you need to work with her to setup an exit strategy where you clearly agree on what it is you will do. You also will probably want to (re-)discuss authorship of any possible publications.
As a fellow student it is not your place to try and change her behaviour or working style. As you were not asked to collaborate with her by your supervisor, you are only letting her down and realistically it is her who let you down.
> 12 votes
# Answer
There are a couple of options that you could consider:
* You may have to put your foot down (in a nice way), and gently remind her that it was her idea to collaborate and that such collaboration is difficult unless you both adhere to the deadlines set. If it still persists, **tell her** that the procrastination, particularly with the tasks are making the collaboration untenable.
* If this is not a critical aspect of your work, take a more relaxed attitude yourself to it - in terms of punctuality and task-completion. The rationale for this is that if she does not place the collaboration as a high priority, then why should you? This second one you would need to be careful about, the approach would be to put your other work before it.
> 16 votes
# Answer
First an optimistic scenario, maybe it turns out to be a non-issue in the end. You can find something else to do while waiting for her to turn up. Who knows, maybe not everybody has to be organized. It is up to you to decide. But it seems that pessimistic scenario is much more likely to happen. There is nothing more disturbing in your work than a collaborator you cannot rely upon. In short. The quicker you seriously talk about your worries the better. And certainly being late yourself when the other person is late is not a solution.
> 2 votes
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Tags: collaboration, interpersonal-issues, procrastination
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thread-12814 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12814 | In text listing style - how to use? Any downsides? | 2013-09-18T10:47:38.367 | # Question
Title: In text listing style - how to use? Any downsides?
I'm currently considering to use a in line (in text) listing style, such as:
'Some things are quite good. **(i)** Thing A can do this and that, which is awesome because of this and that. **(ii)** Thing B can do, ... . **(iv)** Some people also say that this and that, therefore thing Z is great.'
I've got more important points already highlighted through bullets, therefore I don't want to use bullets again for this minor information, plus I want to logically link the single points through sentences, but still provide an easy way to pick out the key words quickly.
**First question:** I've seen this style in quite a few papers. Is it considered to be a "good" style, or are there any downsides to this approach? Should I not use this style? Does the reader get confused by this?
**Second question:** Shall the brackets and latin number be bold, only the number, or nothing?
**Third question:** Should I place the enumeration element right infront of the keyword, or at the beginning of the sentence containing the keyword?
# Answer
> 3 votes
* If the numbers are never used, or if the technique is overused, then this can be considered bad style. I would not use it in the example above, for instance.
* You can use whatever style you want. There is no reason that they are bold. Sometimes the leading parenthesis is dropped, sometimes both. It's best to consult the style guidelines for the relevant publishers.
* Put the enumeration element in front of the sentence or phrase under consideration. Try it out, if you put it near the keyword, then you'll have spurious sentence elements in illogical positions.
# Answer
> 4 votes
1. Yes it is a good/acceptable style. At least in the fields where I have looked the format is standard. in fact bullets or numbered lists should be used more sparingly and I think the following is a good guideline: use bullets/itemization when there is a lot of text going into each. 'Lot' in this case is a complete sentence or more. Use the format you mention when you need a word or partial sentence for each item.
2. there are several ways to do this you can use 'i)' or '(i)' or (1)' or '(a)' etc. The choice may differ depending on what else you have in your paper. If you have figures that contains several panes, for example, a, b, c, d, you may decide to use Roman or regular numerals for your lists. if you have several lists you should avoid repeating the same item descriptor and, for example, use Roman numerals for one and Arabic for another.
3. This depends on the context. you should place them where it is appropriate to read them. this means before each part of the construction. In your example you have divided everything into separate sentences but I think you should make a construct with semicolons instead: "There are three things of importance: (1) thing A; (2) thing B; and (3) Thing C."
# Answer
> 1 votes
You probably want to check your sytle guide about seriation rules. The APA style manual defines rules for
* sentence seriation without a hierarchy and elements not having internal commas,
* sentence seriation with a hierarchy and elements not having internal commas,
* sentence seriation without a hierarchy and elements having internal commas,
* sentence seriation with a hierarchy and elements having internal commas,
* paragraph seriation without a hierarchy, and
* paragraph seriation with a hierarchy.
The previous sentence is a properly formatted example of sentence seriation without a hierarchy and the elements not having internal commas. If there were internal commas, then the comma at the end of each element would be replaced by a semicolon. Sentence seriation with a hierarchy follows the same rules except there is no line break between elements and the bullets are replaces with a letter within parentheses. Paragrpah seriation without a hierarchy follows the same rules as sentence seriation without a hierarchy except the element ending comma is replaced with a period and the list is "introduced" with a colon. Paragrpah seriation with a hierarchy follows the same rules as paragraph seriation without a hierarchy except the bullets are replaces with an Arabic numeral followed by a period.
Since each element of your example is a sentence, you would need to apply paragraph seriation and hence your formatting is not compliant with APA (and I believe MLA and Chicago).
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Tags: publications, writing, reading, writing-style
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thread-12886 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12886 | Is a student with weak written examination skills also a weak candidate for PhD? | 2013-09-22T05:11:16.390 | # Question
Title: Is a student with weak written examination skills also a weak candidate for PhD?
A friend of mine is enrolled as a master's student in Computer Science and considering to convert to a PhD at the same university. My guide acknowledges that he has excellent interpretation, understanding and deduction skills. He is also very good in implementing ideas as code.
He has been able to score just around average grades in all the subjects primarily owing to class projects. The problem he attributes to is that he is not at all good at reproducing things during the examination. In fact, while studying, he tends to ignore all the information like names of techniques, methods etc and just focus on what and how things work. In fact, he doesn't like to write the exam at all and usually just focus on the most tempting or the most thought provoking questions in the paper. (and just writes something to other questions for the sake of writing).
Now, he is just falling short(by 0.2) of the CGPA criteria set at our university to convert to a PhD. So, not being able to properly write examinations and not being able to score good grades, makes him a weak potential candidate for a PhD or does it affects his chances of successfully completing a PhD ?
# Answer
Let's map what you've written about your friend, onto the sort of things we might look for in a promising PhD candidate, to see why, although exams and PhD research are very different beasts, we **might** learn about one thing from another.
* Meticulous? No.
* Demonstrates good grasp of the substance and relevance of theory? No.
* Can perform under pressure? No.
* Can follow protocols? No.
As you can see, although you say the grade point average is only just below what is needed to convert to a PhD, there are a few warning signs that this student might not be appropriate PhD material; **both the student and the decision-making body should pay heed**.
I appreciate that this may not be easy for you to hear, as they are your friend. But really, PhDs aren't for everybody: there are lots of domain experts who are not PhD candidates; and there wil be lots of successful Computer Science PhDs who will never be such good programmers as your friend. A PhD is a measure of academic research skills, not of industrial skills or life skills.
Computer science and software engineering are two different disciplines, though they are related. Different institutions will teach them with varying degrees of overlap. But they are distinct. Maybe your friend is a talented software engineer who needs to specialise there, rather than in computer science.
> 11 votes
# Answer
Some people have a specific weakness with exams, for example because they don't work well under time pressure. It sounds like the issue here isn't exams themselves, though, but rather your friend's approach (not learning what things are called, being unwilling to work on any exam questions except the most thought-provoking ones, etc.). As an advisor, this would worry me and I would want some evidence that it won't be a problem in other areas.
The problem is that a successful scientific research career requires more than just scientific ability. You have to be willing to do things that are necessary even if they aren't fun. (If you are sufficiently brilliant, you might be excused from doing things that are required of other people, but this is not something one can or should count on.) Some people have plenty of scientific ability but are not temperamentally suited for a research career and are not likely to be as successful as their ability suggests.
For example, you have to read other people's papers and cite them appropriately. You have to work out details carefully, rather than just giving an impressionistic account of the main ideas. You have to write down and publish your work, not just keep it in your head. You have to publish the papers you can write, rather than holding out for years waiting for the perfect paper you might someday be capable of.
Most people are fine with all these things, but some people just hit a psychological wall and can't bring themselves to do something. This is a major career impediment. It's not worth preparing someone for a career they are going to derail, so it's important to try to predict who can do what they need to and who can't.
To return to performance on exams, getting high scores is partly a demonstration of knowledge, but also partly a form of jumping through hoops. Hoop jumping is of no value in its own right, but it's a demonstration that you are willing to do what you have to do. When a student refuses to jump through hoops, I sort of admire the stubbornness, but at the same time I wonder what else the student will be unwilling to do.
Supportive letters are critical for grad school admission. You mention that your guide has a high opinion of your friend's work, which is a good sign. If your friend can find letter writers who make a compelling case for why he will be successful, then I expect many admissions committees will admit him despite the exam grades. Otherwise, getting admitted will prove difficult.
> 10 votes
# Answer
I agree with EnergyNumbers's top-level conclusion—bad performance on written examinations **can** have a detrimental effect on a graduate student's career—but I will disagree with most of his lower-level arguments.
Examinations at the graduate level do show some correlation to the ability to do well in a doctoral research program, but it's only a weak correlation at best. Having a perfect GPA indicates that you are good at taking tests, and that you might have the *aptitude* to be a good PhD student. But that is by no means a perfect correlation: I've seen students who can ace exams who would make horrible graduate students, and I've known quite a number who are not so good at taking tests, but are outstanding researchers!
The reason the poor performance is a problem is that it means additional "intervention" is required to save the student's candidacy. That is, someone within the faculty will probably have to speak out actively to defend the candidate's record. "X is not a good test-taker, but she's been doing an outstanding job on her mini-project in my group, and I'd like to act as her PhD advisor. Keep her!" Without that internal support, the record is all they have to go with; when that's weak, the odds of doing well are *not* good.
> 6 votes
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Tags: phd, research-process
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thread-12902 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12902 | How many reference letters to submit? | 2013-09-22T17:44:20.277 | # Question
Title: How many reference letters to submit?
My question is related to, but not a duplicate of How many recommendation letters are enough?
In that question the job requires 4 letters and the applicant has 5 good letters. I am applying for a TT faculty job that requires 3 letters of reference and allows up to 5 letters of reference. I have 5 people who have and would be willing to write letters for me. While I have never seen the letters written by my references, I believe that 3 of them write much better letters than the other two. My question is how many letters do I submit?
Potentially useful is that my three "primary" references know my research and teaching inside and out. They are also excellent writers with effusive personalities and well respected within the field (and department) that I am applying to.
My secondary references also know my research, but not my teaching. Their writing and personalities are less effusive. I have never collaborated with them or worked directly with or under them. I feel like they have less "invested" in me and that this probably reduces the quality of the letter. They are also in a "competing" field and would potentially sell me as the "wrong" thing. I wouldn't expect their letters to be bad or saying anything negative. I am just worried that they will not be positive enough.
# Answer
Definitely, having more recommendation letters can prove the popularity of applicant among his/her colleagues in workplace, but **just a negative (or even less positive) recommendation letter can destroy a possible recruitment**, as it can strongly affect the impression and judgment of search committees.
A negative (or not-positive) recommendation letter can attract the attention of review committee to weak points (even if they are imaginary induced by the recommendation letter).
It is not bad that a recommendation letter emphasizes on teaching or research only. This is somehow the reason that several recommendation letters are needed (by people who knows the applicant from different perspectives).
*Just keep in mind that a search committee always try to foresee any drawback in prospective recruitment*. If a recommendation letter states negative points, then, **the search committee must consider this risk** (for bad recruitment), as there is an evidence for that in the application under review.
NOTE that recommendation letters normally should assist search committee to discover what they have NOT already found in resume. ***A tiny negative point has more effect on search committee rather than many recommendation letters stating an evident point***, they already knew from resume.
> 8 votes
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Tags: recommendation-letter, faculty-application
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thread-12885 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12885 | What percentage of admitted phd students have peer-reviewed publications? | 2013-09-22T04:46:26.033 | # Question
Title: What percentage of admitted phd students have peer-reviewed publications?
I'm interested in knowing what percentage(a rough estimate) of **admitted** phd applicants in top-60 university have peer-reviewed papers.
I'm particular interested in theoretical computer science.
# Answer
I don't have statistics on that particular number, but my **anecdotal evidence is that most PhD students in my field (chemical engineering) have zero publication when they start**, while a small (but nonnegligible) fraction has one paper.
However, **you can gather such statistics yourself!** Publications are, by definition, public... And you can sample admitted PhD students by looking at current PhD students. So, take a random sample of CV from PhD students in your field (from the web) and look for publications prior to PhD start in their publication list.
> 11 votes
# Answer
Having publications when you apply for graduate school is typically unusual. The reason is that it takes time to get something published (review process). What I have experienced is that students may have a publication in preparation based on their bachelor or masters work. It is rare that these are more than manuscripts by the time they apply for a PhD program (they get published during the first year, perhaps). It is only those who may have worked between their earlier degree and the time of their PhD application that may have something. It is, however, easy to see if that is the case (a year of work rather than going straight from one to the other) so it is easy to understand why someone has come a little further than someone else. I therefore doubt it has a major impact.
To widen the perspective: In the application process, the fact that someone's earlier degree might result in a paper can be covered in a personal reference/recommendation letter. Keep in mind that all studies done at a lower level may not be publishable (because of time constraints for the work). It is hence important to have someone evaluate your efforts since the quality of the research at lower levels may not necessarily be best judged by a publication alone and a good word is always taken seriously.
So published papers are rare and when they occur there is usually a clear reason for why this has been possible to achieve when moving from one stage to the next in the education.
> 3 votes
# Answer
While there might be reasons for wanting this data, I am not sure what it will tell you. There may be some data out there (I don't know where) that may show a correlation between the number of publications and the chances of getting admitted to a PhD program. While publications may correlate with admissions, I doubt that it is causative. The Phd admissions process is all about trying to assess the ability of an applicant to conduct research. A publication goes a long way towards demonstrating that ability, but there are many other ways (e.g., strong reference letters).
> 2 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, graduate-school, united-states, computer-science
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thread-12907 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12907 | What should a good theoretical physics PhD progress look like at the beginning of 3rd year? | 2013-09-23T05:36:14.527 | # Question
Title: What should a good theoretical physics PhD progress look like at the beginning of 3rd year?
Obviously I am asking this because I am worried!
I am a theoretical physics grad student at one of the top places in the US. The following is a brief history of my last 2 years and I would like to know of opinions and suggestions regarding the path ahead.
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I did the most advanced courses (relevant to my interests) during my first year and worked on some project ideas through very high-profile external collaborations (but the projects didn't work out and I had to can the drafts) During my second year I tried working with some other profs but the projects were never really interesting.
\[..though I have a (single author) paper on arxiv from my 2nd year work and may be I will get one more...\]
Towards the end of second year I started meeting with a very brilliant scientist who will be joining my institute as a faculty in January 2014. With him the projects are very exciting - but interactions are difficult since he is still mostly not in campus.
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Of course this unstable path happened since I had to join a grad school which didn't have people in my subject of interest. But over the last 2-3 months things have been looking up as this new person came in...
# Answer
> 3 votes
**"but the projects didn't work out and I had to can the drafts"** — this sounds weird to me. It is not rare at all for a project/idea not to work ou the way you would like, but for it to fail so utterly that you cannot get any work published out of it, i.e. that there is nothing for the community to learn from it, is rather rare. That it happened multiple times *might* be an indicator that you threw the towel too early, or that you could be looking harder into how to extract something useful from your failed attempt. Helping you out with that would typically be the job of your advisor, because it is not the easiest part of the job...
Other than that, your account does not look particularly worrying: as others have noted, you have already built a good network of collaborations, have one publication, and advanced your course requirements... Sounds good to me!
# Answer
> 3 votes
I don't think you have much to worry about. I recently obtained my PhD in physics from one of the top universities in the country and then went on to my current position of postdoc at another of the country's top universities, and I didn't get my first publication until my 3rd year. Hell, I didn't even start research until early on in my 3rd year, so you really seem ahead of where I was at this point.
With regards to the comments on having to abandon the fist projects you worked on, that doesn't seem particularly worrisome either, especially as you get started in research. Your ability and speed with which you can do research will increase dramatically over the next couple years, and your ability to choose good problems will do so perhaps even more. Perhaps the reason your projects previously didn't pan out has to do with problem selection (I'm assuming the external collaborators were largely involved in the project selection here); PIs can sometimes be pretty poor judges of project quality, since some don't know the literature as well as they used to, but this varies from PI to PI.
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Tags: phd, publications, graduate-school, advisor
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thread-12918 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12918 | My PhD went over time - advice for explaining this on a CV | 2013-09-23T15:28:40.210 | # Question
Title: My PhD went over time - advice for explaining this on a CV
**It is a concern to me that I may look unattractive to potential employers because I went so far beyond the original budgeted time for my PhD (50% over time)**. I am currently searching for a job in industry, where there may be no understanding of the difficulties of my research and I expect to recieve no sympathy from prospective employers.
I feel that on my CV I must somehow find a way to hide that it took me so much time to finish my PhD. However I will not blatantly lie on my CV. **Does anyone have any advice? Or any suggestions as to how I could explain this extra time on a CV? I hope I am not the only one to have ever been in this mess?**
The time I studied for my PhD went to 6.5 years, which is far beyond the typical 4 years for PhD studies in Europe (I study in London). In growing desperation (for applications to jobs based in Europe) I consider replacing the first two years of my PhD with a job, possibly titled "research assistant" or something similiar, and placing it under employment history. On the CV it would then appear my PhD took 4.5 years, a more typical length. Any thoughts on doing this? Is it correct that in the United States and Canada that 6.5 years is close to the typical length (or time required) for a PhD and therefore I would not be discriminated against?
Any advice and suggestions are appreciated.
PS it genuinely took 6.5 years to finish this PhD, it was impossible to finish in 4 years.
# Answer
> 11 votes
Whatever you do do not fabricate or conceal the truth. I am not sure someone would worry about finishing "on time" as much as looking at the quality of the work you have achieved. In my system there is also a 4-year research time limit (in terms of calendar time it can be extended by including teaching, maternity/paternity leave or whatever is applicable). Regardless of whether you apply for a job in academia or industry the criteria for the employment will be much more than finishing on time. So issues like quality, number of papers published, social skills, other relevant skills will be measured. If you have a reasonable explanation for the extended period of your PhD, just spell it out. Do not make a big story about it, just cleanly provide an explanation that makes the period understandable and reasonable.
# Answer
> 10 votes
I'm not sure I understand (and this might be a US centric thing). What does it even mean for a Ph.D to go "over time" ? It takes as long as it takes, and that's pretty much it. While taking inordinately long (8+ years) might raise some eyebrows, 7 is still within the "normal" range, albeit on the higher side.
In fact, I've often suggested to students that the benefit of staying an extra year to strengthen their CV (if there's a path to doing so) far outweighs the potential cost of taking "longer" to finish, in terms of future job prospects.
I suspect Europe (or parts of Europe) is different.
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Tags: ethics, job-search, cv
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thread-12874 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12874 | Why are recommendation letters highly relied upon? | 2013-09-21T14:53:00.250 | # Question
Title: Why are recommendation letters highly relied upon?
For any kind of academic application (from graduate admission to professor position), recommendation letters have a major impact on the outcome. The basic idea is understandable: *discovering what others think about the applicant*. It can help the review committee to decide about the applicant.
However, recommendations letters cannot be statistically reliable. For instance, when all recommendation letters of an application are highly positive, this cannot guarantee that all colleagues think highly of the applicant. Instead, it can be the result of only a few friendships.
In a typical example, if someone has three socially close friends (including current colleagues, coworkers, past professors), then, his applications are always supported by strong recommendation letters. For example, one could have conflict with his entire university, but having close social connection with three persons who can recommend him.
So, why are recommendation letters relied upon so highly, given these limitations?
**UPDATE:** I do not mean friendly recommendation letters. I mean influence of friendship on a professional recommendation letter. As an another example, Applicant A who has good relationship with 20 professors of his department is an ideal academic with professional relationships at workplace. BUT applicant B who has serious conflicts with most of his colleagues (professors of his department), but having only three friends among his department professors will get better recommendation letters. Those three professors will write recommendation letters based on the applicant strengths by ignoring his weakness in the light of their friendship.
# Answer
> In a typical example, if someone has three socially close friends (including current colleagues, coworkers, past professors), then, his applications are always supported by strong recommendation letters.
No, that's not what "strong recommendation letter" means.
First, strong recommendation letters do not simply state the author's high personal regard for the student, but provide **specific, personal, and credible detail** supporting the applicant's potential for excellence. I don't just want to know that someone thinks you'll succeed—I assume they wouldn't write you a letter if they thought otherwise. I want to know **why**. I want **compelling evidence**, not mere opinion.
Second, **recommendation letters have more weight if they come from credible sources.** At a minimum, the author should work at a credible academic institution. The best letter writers are themselves experienced, visible, active researchers, with documented experience mentoring and/or selecting candidates for admission/hiring/promotion at departments similar to the candidate's target. For faculty promotion in my department, letters are essentially *required* to be from full professors, preferably in named/endowed positions, in top-10 computer science departments, and there is a strong preference for ACM/IEEE Fellows, NAE or NAS members, and major award winners (Turing, Gödel, Dijkstra, Gordon Bell, etc.).
The intersection of these two aspects of strong letters is **direct comparisons with the applicant's peers.** An ideal PhD recommendation letter for my department includes sentences like "Among the 13 undergraduates I have mentored who went on to top-10 PhD programs in computer science, I would rank \[applicant\] roughly 3rd, well below \[famous person who proved P=NP\], but on par with \[successful person\] at MIT, \[successful person\] at Stanford, and \[successful person\] at CMU."
> 41 votes
# Answer
The fact that applicants choose their letter writers definitely means the letters are a biased sample of opinions. In certain cases departments take big steps to address this issue. For example, promotion and tenure committees ask for some letters from people not suggested by the candidate, precisely to avoid this source of bias. Nobody worries quite as much about graduate admissions, but there are still several safeguards:
1. If someone writes recommendations that seem unreliable, biased, or misleading, they will lose credibility and their letters will carry less weight for everyone. This is a strong incentive to keep bias in check, since professional reputation is a critical aspect of academia, and nobody wants to be thought of as a fool or scoundrel. Of course there are still some bad recommendations, but admissions committees really keep track of credibility: when we evaluate an application, one thing we discuss is what we thought of students recommended by these letters writers in the past and what we think of their judgment.
2. Having multiple letter writers also helps. Finding one recommender who is strikingly biased is easier than finding three.
3. Admissions committees sometimes solicit opinions from other faculty members at the applicant's university. If the applicant's letters seem questionable or difficult to interpret, or we're concerned about credibility, then it's easy to call or e-mail to get a second opinion.
Overall, I believe the system does a good job of minimizing conscious bias or manipulation. It's not perfect, but I think you are underestimating the strength of the incentives. If an applicant can find three people with a lot of credibility who are willing to hurt their reputations by writing unreliable letters to help the applicant get admitted, then they can take advantage of the system, but this is not so easy.
If anything, I'm more worried about the safeguards being too strong. One severe drawback of the letter of recommendation system is how it handles unknown letter writers. If the committee knows nothing about a recommender, has never seen a letter from them before, and doesn't expect to in the future, then the recommender has very little credibility. If an application includes only letters from unknown recommenders, then the chances of admission may be low even if the letters all say wonderful things. This isn't fair, since some applicants just don't have access to any other recommenders, but it's unavoidable under the current system. (It's not just a matter of bias or honesty, but also of whether the recommenders are even capable of judging who would be a good candidate for admission.)
> 28 votes
# Answer
While it may be redundant to write an answer after 3 people already have, I think the other answers have not actually tried to answer the question, but to disprove the OPs hypotheses. I agree that the OP overstates the degree of bias and favoritism in the system of using recommendation letters, but those are serious issues. As the other answers point out, a letter written largely on the basis of warm personal feelings will not be very convincing, but I think the personal attitude of the letter writer will influence the reader (does anyone doubt that it's easy to write a letter that spikes almost any candidate's chances that it is still professional and accurate?). If you read a book like "Thinking Fast and Slow", and then look at how people actually make decisions about academic hiring, you will slightly horrified at how much we ignore the plain facts of social psychology.
People rely on recommendation letters because they are monkeys (OK, actually apes, but for rhetorical purposes give me this one) whose brains evolved in one sort of social situation that encouraged certain kinds of mental heuristics. One essentially universal fact about humans is that we prefer to make individualized judgements based on intuition rather than rely on any kind of impersonal rule. We are overly confident that we know when to make an exception, and we feel better seeing a mistake made based on human misjudgment, rather than some sort of numerical calculation. This is evidenced in lots of places: for example, people actually try to actively invest in the stock market when any look at the facts shows it is essentially impossible to beat passive investing in the long run.
That said, I think for academic positions, it's also probably true that there is important information in recommendation letters which is hard to get anywhere else. In a lot of cases, I'm not sure what we would look at instead. I doubt they are going anywhere, and people will strongly resist switching to any "harder" metrics, as doing so just "feels wrong."
> 15 votes
# Answer
Recommendation letters for associate and full professor positions (both in hiring and promotion) do not come exclusively from writers that the candidate selects. Instead, the department will solicit letters from independent sources in the candidate's field. Furthermore, the references named by the candidate cannot have close personal or professional ties to the candidate.
> 4 votes
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Tags: professorship, university, recommendation-letter
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thread-12931 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12931 | Open access journal for water resources | 2013-09-24T07:32:06.857 | # Question
Title: Open access journal for water resources
I would like to know about journals on water resources/contamination. Is there any? I cannot afford to pay for publication, although I have some work which I believe can be published. Also, what if I'm not associated with any university, can I still publish?
# Answer
> 1 votes
Open Access (OA) is not necessarily free for authors (but free for readers). OA concerns free access to the publication. Many OA journals charge for submitting a manuscript, see for example HESS which could be an OA journal for your paper. It is possible to publish without an affiliation with a university.
Along with OA has appeared a darker side, often referred to as predatory OA journals. So choosing a journal should under any circumstances be made with care. If you are uncertain, I suggest you contact a professional at your (former) university to get some advice.
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Tags: journals, open-access
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thread-12934 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12934 | Are there any downsides to receiving BSc, MSc, and PhD all from the same university? | 2013-09-24T11:06:28.843 | # Question
Title: Are there any downsides to receiving BSc, MSc, and PhD all from the same university?
Like the title says, are there any downsides to receiving BSc, MSc, and PhD all from the same university?
My university is not very well known outside my home country. I did not enter the PhD program yet. If I would stay here, I would already have many good contacts (~10 professors/academics). Also, because I perform quite well, I assume I could get to do exactly what I want. On the other hand... I think I could get into Europe's top-ten universities.
# Answer
> 33 votes
There is an obvious downside of staying at the same university—you will only work with one set of advisors and contacts throughout your career. That will mean that you may not benefit from the experience and diversity of viewpoints and philosophies that comes from working with different groups of people across the length of your career.
However, if there is a *compelling* reason to remain at your school, that's a different situation. This could be financial, personal, or educational. For instance, a family member may have a job that makes it difficult to relocate, or a new project may be starting up that provides a unique educational opportunity.
Beyond that, though, I would lean towards going somewhere else for your PhD program!
# Answer
> 6 votes
A top university has many advantages. Better universities provide better Professors, better academic environment, better scientific connection, better equipments, better laboratories, they can get better grants, they can give better scholarship, etc. You can find better friends and get better reputation.
@aeismail has very good points on the reason you may or may not stay in the same university for all your academic carrier.
Some universities has large department and so many professors. there is a chance you don't even know them yet after 6 years being there. They work on different fields and you can work on different field if you want. but that's not true for all universities.
Despite all of this, consider that you will carry your university names forever in your CV! This will affect your feature job opportunity a lot, in industry and mainly in academic world.
But as one my professor says: "*sky is the same color everywhere*" ;)
All said I suggest you going to a better university. At least try to.
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Tags: phd, university
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thread-12936 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12936 | NSF grant proposals after earning PhD | 2013-09-24T12:41:06.043 | # Question
Title: NSF grant proposals after earning PhD
I am a fresh mathematics Ph.D who has begun a three year postdoc at University X. I applied for an NSF postdoctoral grant last year with University Y (with Y not equal to X) and did not get it. This year I want to re-apply. I like where I am and so I am planning to apply for the NSF with a mentor at University X. I have two questions.
1. Are there examples of a postdoc at an institution being awarded an NSF grant to stay at that institution (before their postdoc runs out)?
2. Are there any particular pitfalls I could find in applying at an institution that is already planning on paying me for three years? That is, if the NSF funds me then the job market "lost" a job in the sense that my postdoc position won't be replaced by my institution.
# Answer
> 11 votes
> Are there examples of a postdoc at an institution being awarded an NSF grant to stay at that institution (before their postdoc runs out)?
Yes, it does happen.
> Are there any particular pitfalls I could find in applying at an institution that is already planning on paying me for three years? That is, if the NSF funds me then the job market "lost" a job in the sense that my postdoc position won't be replaced by my institution.
Assuming you are talking about the MSPRF program, it can be combined with your postdoc at University X. One common pattern is to use the NSF postdoc half-time for the remaining two years of your current postdoc (to reduce teaching) and then full-time for one more year after that. This is called the Research Instructorship option in the MSPRF instructions.
Combining NSF postdocs with university postdocs is very common in mathematics, so you shouldn't worry that it will be viewed as strange or problematic. The only case I'm aware of in which the job market clearly "loses a job" is that if you are offered an NSF postdoc and do not accept it, then the position disappears for that year (there is no waiting list of backup candidates). So if you decide it's not what you want before the awards are made, you should withdraw your application.
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Tags: funding, mathematics, nsf
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thread-12910 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12910 | Is it ethical to share the knowledge for free that I've learned at the university? | 2013-09-23T12:25:46.867 | # Question
Title: Is it ethical to share the knowledge for free that I've learned at the university?
I can see an enormous amount of videos on Youtube about helping to learn high-level knowledge that is usually taught at universities. Even though I'm only at the beginning of the time I'm going to take at the university before graduating, I have a desire to teach what I've learnt to others - for free, through the internet.
I believe that knowledge is global and free; however, I think sharing my knowledge wouldn't be fair for my teachers, or any other university teachers and professors.
Is sharing this knowledge fair - or ethical?
# Answer
> 43 votes
I do not see that sharing your knowledge would in any way be a problem *per se*. What could become a problem is if you also share copyright-protected materials. It is virtually impossible to list what might or might not be such materials but to take other persons presentations, images, data and then sharing it would be clearly illegal (and unethical) unless they are provided with a "license" stating they are free. If you take the knowledge you gather and then put it together somehow (including making your own presentations on your own material), it should not be such a problem. In any circumstance where you want to use other peoples materials, it is always best to ask for permission. Not only does it save you possible future problems, you may find friends in the process. Watch out for materials published by commercial interests and use open source material (but do give credit to those who made it - attribution is required by licenses like CC-BY-SA and it is also a nice gesture to acknowledge the work and time by the original authors). Much material is given out for public (but not commercial) use.
A final advise, attach an open source license to your materials. I am not fully aware what licenses may apply but am sure many has good suggestions for you (check Academia.sx or ask another question on that).
So to sum up. I think it is a nice idea and perfectly fine, but be aware that you must be 100% sure you do not publish materials so that you break copyrights or abuse licenses (protect the open source practises).
# Answer
> 22 votes
> I believe that knowledge is global and free
That is essentially academia in a nutshell. ;-)
I believe – *strongly* – that anything that runs counter this freedom also fundamentally runs counter academia, and humanity’s best interest (or, economically, the country’s best interest).
From a more legal perspective, (University) teachers are paid for *teaching*, not for the knowledge they posses. So you are fine, as long as you don’t disseminate copyrighted material.
This used to be different, when much knowledge was coveted, closely guarded and only handed down from teachers to their apprentices, under an agreement of privacy (see for instance the Hippocratic Oath, which regulates this, among other things).
Nowadays, knowledge cannot generally be privatised. Instead, we have the concepts of copyright and patents, but neither prevents the dissemination of knowledge. Exceptions only exist in certain circumstances, e.g. for a method that is currently being developed, where you may be asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement; for classified governmental documents, dissemination of which may make you liable to prosecution, and the publication of know-how that falls under weapons regulations.
# Answer
> 11 votes
I think I understand the point: you spent $50,000 (or whatever) on college, and you worry that if you teach others for free, you are depriving someone else of income.
Simply put, it doesn't matter. People don't go to college to learn things. *They go to college to get a piece of paper that says they learned things* so that they can get a job in their chosen career.
Anyone can learn libraries, the Internet, and their own research. When I went to college to get my Computer Science degree, a good 90% of what I was taught was stuff I already knew. So why did I go to college? To get the paper that says I know how to do what I already knew how to do.
Yes, it's true that people actually do learn things in college. However, people pay for college because a degree makes them more employable. That's not something you can deliver through YouTube, and so your free education efforts will not replace the college system and will not put college professors out of work.
# Answer
> 6 votes
You are paying the university for instruction and access to materials and facilities not available to the general public, not knowledge. As long as you are not violating any confidentiality agreements, copyrights, etc., you are not doing anything wrong from a legal standpoint. From an ethical standpoint, I think you would better support an educational institution's mission to make the world better by sharing your knowledge than by keeping it to yourself.
# Answer
> 6 votes
I'm a university professor who puts lots and lots of time into developing course materials and trying to figure out better ways to explain ideas to my students. Other answers seem to cover the point that you should be careful about redistributing the materials from a course.
I would like to recommend that you contact the professor who taught you the course and tell him/her of your plans. I would be very glad to hear that my course motivated one of my students to want to teach the material to others. **In fact, if the student does a very good job, I might want to see about using the videos/explanations/examples in my own course or at least pointing future students towards the videos.**
# Answer
> 4 votes
What you have learned in the Academia is your knowledge, and you can do whatever is pleases you.
The material that you had access in the academia is copyright of the producer, except for those that were blessed with some form of *copyleft*. So, unless you have some authorization, you cannot use it, in some countries. (For example, in some countries you can reproduce part of some material, for learning purposes, given that all credits are given to the proper authors, and so on. Example: reproduce some piece of some article to analyze it and study it with some students).
In some countries it's possible to have a patent on a *idea*, and so some ideas might be patented, and that patent might or might not be valid in your country.
And, finally, it's possible that you signed some non-disclosure agreement, and then what you learned that's covered by that contract might not be transmissible to someone else.
# Answer
> 4 votes
I disagree with some of the answers, only when asserting that you are primarily paying for instruction and materials. Typically, you are paying for a document that states you understand a specific subject, often with the intent of proving to a future employer that you understand said subject. Your school is responsible for helping you to pass the required exams to demonstrate this understanding, which in part involves access to instructors and materials to help you learn. A school that consistently fails to produce document holding students will not be a strong school for long.
Watching YouTube videos will not give you a document, so while you may have gained the instruction and materials for free, you still lack the main reason people attend higher education -- paperwork. Producing a list of your recently watched videos will also do little to entice future employers.
Unless you're directly releasing information that was obtained as part of a research project through the facility itself or (as stated previously) copyright materials, without permission, it's doubtful you are conflicting with the interests of the school. In fact you may encourage people who get interested in a subject to sign up at your institution, and be good for business. (MIT did quite a bit online for free)
When in doubt, get permission. This IS your future at stake.
*Not to discount self learning, you could learn the equivalent of a doctor as far as I'm concerned, if you were driven enough, and bright enough, by simply reading publicly available information. However I won't know if you were driven or bright enough, so I'll stick to people that proved it on an exam -- for now.*
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Tags: teaching, ethics, open-access
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thread-12675 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12675 | How to read 2 academic papers a day without confusion? | 2013-09-14T15:30:36.970 | # Question
Title: How to read 2 academic papers a day without confusion?
Assume you are reading two academic papers every day. What strategies can I use to decrease the possibility of confusion between the two?
# Answer
I do of course not know what your current work strategy looks like so I can only provide what I think are generally helpful tools.
Note-taking should be a priority, not only to avoid confusion but also to help you get an overview. set a target to summarize the paper in a about a page and try to capture the following:
* What is the major question covered by the paper?
* Why is it important?
* What was done (experiments observations data)?
* What are the major conclusions of the paper?
* Did you find any new information of particular interest to you?
You may come up with similar or different key questions depending on th epurpose of your reading. The point is to make such short summaries of the papers.
Once you have the summaries you could consider organizing them in some fashion. There is no exclusive model to use and in fact the organization may depend on the purpose of your reading. You may find that after reading a number of papers a possible way to organize them can become clear. The main purpose of this step is to bundle papers that have specific points in common.
You should also sort your papers (printouts or files) with your notes. There are many ways of doing this rom the analogue to data bases. Try to use a free reference data base system to get everything organized.
> 6 votes
# Answer
As JeffE has suggested, some confusion with reading papers is both expected and desirable - I can always tell which paper's I've read closely, versus skimmed for a little bit of information, because they've got scribbles in the margins.
And therein lies my recommendation: Thoroughly, carefully interact with each paper. You're not just "reading" them in the same way one reads a good novel. Annotate. Take notes. Find places where the author seems to have taken a leap and make sure you agree with them. If they don't show the steps for something, see if you can puzzle them out for yourself. If you don't understand a bit of math, etc. work it out until you do.
It may also help to read from two related but distinct fields, so that your papers don't feel "the same". For example, one empirical and one theoretical paper. Or a wide scale review and a single study.
> 1 votes
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Tags: publications, reading
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thread-12956 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12956 | How to verify authenticity of submitted assignments | 2013-09-25T05:51:41.150 | # Question
Title: How to verify authenticity of submitted assignments
When teaching 250 students in the same subject, knowing each student can be quite difficult. In smaller classes, it may be possible to learn enough through classroom interaction that when assessing the assignments it may be easy to tell if it is their work or not. For example, if a student can never form a coherent argument when asked in class, but that same student submits extremely high quality work, the teacher might want to dig a little deeper to see if the student is just better at writing or if they are hiring a ghost writer to produce their reports for them. However, in large classes, there is too little interaction with each student to form a strong opinion of everyone. Those who can 'hide' in class are the least likely to be 'caught.'
I see one option as incorporating an oral exam into the overall mark and using that mark as a basis from which to judge the student's future work. It's not perfect but it's something. One problem is that with 250 students, oral exams end up consuming so much class time that little time remains for lectures.
Running through something like TurnInIt will only catch if they are taking from an existing work but it will clearly not catch ghost writing.
What are the most effective ways of verifying authenticity of student assignments?
# Answer
> 31 votes
I'm going to give you an answer you may not want to hear: **it isn't worth it** for a class that big.
The pedagogue in me doesn't like my own answer, but as they say, you have to choose your battles, and I believe there are more important issues when teaching a class that large than to worry about catching the homework cheaters. Mitigation can include reducing the impact that homework has on the overall grade (but this leads to other issues, such as students wondering why homework is necessary if it isn't worth much in the final grade). Another (probably less successful) method is to instill the fear of \[insert deity of choice\] into your students when it comes to cheating. If you do catch a cheater, make an example of that person that the other students won't forget -- I threaten to fail any cheater instantly if I can prove they cheated in any way, and I say it as matter-of-factly as I can on the first day of class: "Look, if I catch you cheating, I'll fail you, end of story."
If you have a balanced set of assignments that includes in-class exams, then poor performance on exams should produce final grades that indicate that the student hasn't learned the material.
If you can work out the oral exam, that might help balance out any poor knowledge, but beware that some students are absolutely terrified of oral exams, and they might know the knowledge as well as anyone else on paper but not be able to perform out loud.
I suggest not losing sleep over a few cheaters in a class that big, and to ensure that you're giving good assignments that are challenging and provide a good means for learning the material.
# Answer
> 21 votes
I agree with Chris Gregg's answer and want to add some additional thoughts and strategies to it.
**Make cheating irrelevant**
> 1) Homework becomes a collaborative venture.
Students can work individually or in groups on all out-of-class assignments. Every student needs to turn in their own copy of the assignment. Every student has to list whom they worked with on the assignment. Homework is a tool for me to give the students to help the students learn the material. Why should I care if they do it in groups or individually? If you encourage students to go to each other for help, then only the most diehard cheaters (whom you cannot stop) will keep going to the faceless masses on the internet. All involved learn more through the interaction. Most "real-world" work is done collaboratively anyway. When I give these kinds of assignments I work very hard to come up with questions and prompts that are not internet searchable - because they must use specific resources, the questions are opinion-based, or the questions focus on specific narrow local events, etc.
* Which of the two figures on the accompanying handout best explains the observation that carbon-carbon single bonds in strain cyclic molecules are weaker than those in unstrained cyclic molecules? Provide a brief rationale.
* Use the data in Table 8.1 on page 115 to determine which of the the following is growing faster: China's population, China's per capita GDP, or China's per capita energy consumption. Do a similar analysis for the US 100 years ago (use the data on the handout). Comment on any similarities.
* What are the three key points of the speech given last week by the Dean of the College? With the information I've given you about the budget of the College, which of the Dean's action priorities for this year are financially feasible? Which action priority are you most interested in seeing completed?
The third one on my list would be very challenging for someone to get outside the institution help on.
If the out-of-class projects are significant, then you can encourage the students to keep each other honest. On big collaborative projects, I have the students rate (not grade) each other on the following questions. Trends appear when someone has not pulled his/her own weight:
* This person contributions to the project were (less than, the same as, greater than) mine.
* This person deserves a grade on the project that is (less than, the same as, greater than) mine.
* This person's greatest contribution to the project was ***_*\__*_*\__*_***.
* The hardest thing about working with this person was ***_*\__*_*\__*_***.
> 2) As Chris Gregg said - make exams worth much more than homework.
For example:
* Homework 20%
* Midterm Exam 1 20%
* Midterm Exam 2 20%
* Midterm Exam 3 20%
* Final Exam 20%
In this scenario, exams count for 80% of the grade (and so cheating on homework will not have a huge impact), but homework still counts for something. If you phrase your grading descriptions as "homework counts as much as an exam", then you get students to take it seriously. One instructor I know even goes the extra step to rename his homework assignments as "Take-home Exam Part 1, 2, 3, etc." (and then treat them like the collaborative homework I described above. If a student has been cheating on the assignments, then he/she will not do well on the tests, and course grades will follow.
Both of these strategies focus on the purpose of the homework (to guide student learning and studying) which is different from the the purpose of tests (to assess student knowledge, skills, etc.). If homework is a guiding assignment and exams are an assessment assignment, then worry about cheating on exams (easier to spot and control) and ignore cheating on homework. Some students will not be guided the way you want them to be. Just as you cannot make an individual student learn, you also cannot make an individual student learn in the fashion you choose.
# Answer
> 1 votes
I've never seen it done before, but in theory, it could work...
The day you collect the assignment in class, hand out a surprise quiz that is identical to the assignment the students completed at home (or maybe just a couple questions from the assignment to make it faster/easier to compare). Have the students complete the quiz during the class period.
If a student completed the assignment legitimately, they will likely have very similar answers on the quiz. If the student did not complete the original assignment legitimately, they will likely struggle with the quiz and their answers will not even remotely match the answers they "provided" on the assignment.
The key is to look for quizzes whose answers are significantly worse than those provided on the assignment.
Two problems with this method
1. It is kind of insulting to students that didn't cheat. FIX: Don't tell the students until afterwards, but don't count the quiz for normal credit. Instead, just give students who didn't cheat a few extra credit points.
2. It does nothing to catch cheaters that don't show up to class. FIX: Make a big deal out of requiring students to hand the assignment in in-person on the day of the quiz to make sure whoever hands in an assignment takes the quiz.
I admit, this is a pretty wacky idea, but it seems feasible, although a bit elaborate.
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Tags: teaching, plagiarism
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thread-12965 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12965 | Citing low quality papers (solutions) in surveys? | 2013-09-25T16:42:42.960 | # Question
Title: Citing low quality papers (solutions) in surveys?
I sometimes find papers that aim to solve the same problem that I am working on, but these papers are of *terrible* quality. Some of these papers:
1. introduce wrong solutions,
2. re-introduce a solution that is already published, or
3. are just very hard to understand because of the low quality of writing.
**Should I cite these papers in my "related work" section when writing a paper?**
Would it be offensive to tackle these papers and prove that they are wrong (especially as the most of these papers are published in not very good conferences)?
Or is it perhaps a waste of time to pay any attention to these papers?
# Answer
Speaking from the perspective of a no-longer-quite-so-young mathematician, this is a serious question. I think one *should* acknowledge "prior art", even if one disagrees with many aspects of it. That is, to pretend that something doesn't exist when one is aware of it is dishonest. (I do not think that one's bibliography must only include things one has *used*... that can be subverted to argue, as I have heard a distinguished mathematician say, that one need not cite anyone else's work \_if\_one\_is\_careful\_not\_to\_look\_at\_it\_.)
Yes, there is the awkward issue of giving an opinion on "prior art" that one finds deficient. As @Shion comments to the question, one probably should hesitate before being too sure. The universal non-commital (therefore slightly dismissive, which is the right amount) comment is something like (at the end of introduction) "Compare \[A\], \[B\], \[C\]." Not saying that they're crap, or failures, or anything else. Just admitting one is aware of them, and pointedly not *endorsing* them... if that's one's intent.
That is, *I* think that published papers should not just be update-reports, but have sufficient scholarly context-setting to orient a genuinely interested reader not already completely expert, for example. I realize that the literal function of many "published papers" is merely "making a living", but it is not profoundly difficult to do somewhat better.
> 9 votes
# Answer
In general I cite a paper in two cases:
1) I use something introduced there (from the problem statement to some theorem) in my work.
2) I think it would be a good idea if the reader takes a look at that paper when reading mine for some reason (historical, mathematical, whatever).
I don't think I am either able or obliged to put even *everything good* related to my current work into the literature list: I don't know the whole history myself and nobody will be able to navigate through the whole history anyway. Beyond certain length, the "additional literature" part of the list becomes equivalent to the empty one: if I am suggested to read 3 papers, I'll look at all 3; if 10, I'll look at 1-2, and if 50, I'll look at none, and I suspect that most other people have similar attitudes.
The only case in which I would put any reference to a terrible (in your sense) paper into my work is if I choose to write the sentence "There is a lot of junk written on this subject as well, see, e.g., \[\]\[\]\[\]" in the main body, but I usually prefer to make enemies in more sophisticated ways :-).
> 5 votes
# Answer
I would:
* Not cite them in your related works section as you clearly do not build on top of that work because of the bad quality.
* If these papers do not have a lot of citations or attention, I would not waste my energy on writing responses to these as they will remain obscure. I would recommend putting your energy into writing papers yourself and reading quality material.
> 4 votes
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Tags: citations, writing, literature
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thread-776 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/776 | How to acknowledge a deceased advisor’s contributions to a paper? | 2012-03-16T22:07:44.350 | # Question
Title: How to acknowledge a deceased advisor’s contributions to a paper?
One of my advisors suddenly passed away while I was in graduate school. We had some discussions and ideas about future publications, but he passed away before any of the work was completed. When the work was finally completed and published, I and my co-authors were therefore presented with an ethical dilemma about how best to acknowledge his contributions to the ideas behind the paper. Should we list him as a co-author? Put him in the acknowledgements? Listing him as an author would give credit for the original idea, however, we would have no way of knowing if he actually approved of—and would want his name attached to—our methods and writing.
In the end my co-authors and I decided to list him as a co-author with a footnote stating that he passed away before publication.
I’m interested to hear from others who have been in similar situations and/or suggestions on what constitutes “co-authorship” when one of one’s collaborators passes away before the publication or work is complete.
# Answer
> 37 votes
I had a similar situation. In this case, we did exactly what you did: we indicated that the participant (not a team leader, but a team member in this case) was a co-author, but that he was deceased. I think this is the only fair way to recognize substantial contributions.
Of course, the difficult comes if there is a challenge to the work of the deceased. In our case, however, we had a very substantial paper trail which was audited and reviewed, so the individual work could have been sorted out and dealt with appropriately.
So, I think the best defense is generally to keep good working notes and use version control.
# Answer
> 33 votes
aeismail's answer is definitely good advice, but I'll add two more bits:
* **Check the journal policy** and author guidelines. There may be something in there that can guide your choice, like the *Journal of the American Chemical Society* has:
> Deceased persons who meet the criteria for inclusion as coauthors should be so included, with an Author Information note indicating the date of death.
* **Check with the editor**, if in doubt. They have the final say in the matter, and these things are probably best run by them if no official policy is established.
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In terms of papers with deceased authors, I think the record holder is probably this one:
Can you spot it? One author died in 1919, and one had her PhD in 1911: while no date of death is provided for her, I don't think she's still around. (Also, it was probably quite an achievement for a woman to get a PhD at the time.)
As we say: old chemists don't die, they just reach equilibrium!
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Tags: publications, ethics, authorship, death
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thread-12959 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12959 | Who should write a recommendation letter? | 2013-09-25T09:09:42.557 | # Question
Title: Who should write a recommendation letter?
When applying for a faculty position (from assistant to full professor), the search committee asks for 3 - 5 recommendation letters by people who know the applicant professionally (and probably in person).
The first factor for choosing a reference is his/her relationship with the applicant, but another important factor is the (academic) position of the writer. Possible references can be:
* **Past PhD student/post-doctoral fellow who is now an assistant professor**: probably he is the best person to describe the applicant's attitude towards students and education (something that is critical for the search committee).
* **A faculty colleague**: closely witnessed the applicant works, but not directly involved.
* **Department chair**: supervised the applicant, but probably his view is just the standpoint of a boss.
* **Dean**: had less connection with the applicant, but can provide a top view about the applicant.
* **Provost/Vice Presidents**: very little direct connection, but can show the applicant's relationship with senior people.
***The point is that how to balance the level of relationship and the reference's position?*** Normally, recommendation letters by people with higher positions are more reliable, and can be trusted search committee, as a colleague may bias the letter for a colleague, but a provost will not do this for an employee.
Is the position of a reference more important than his/her direct connection with the applicant (considering the fact that a senior person has no reason to write a recommendation letter for someone he does not know personally)?
**UPDATE:** Some commented that references should be not-related peers, not people who know the applicant. It seems I'm a little bit confused.
1. Do you list references who do not know you at the end of CV/resume? References named in the applicant CV can be contacted for a job application.
2. Some job ads ask the applicant to arrange submission of three letters of recommendation to the search committee (for example, see a job ad at UC Berkeley). Do you ask people who do not know you to submit a recommendation letter about you?
3. Nowadays, most job applications are via online systems. When the online system requests a recommendation letter just send an email to the named reference to submit his/her recommendation for Mr./Mrs. X (but will not attach his/her resume or works). How one who does not know the applicant can then submit a recommendation letter.
# Answer
Your letters should come from experts in your field who are familiar with your work. They should be written by professors who are substantially more senior than you are, and who will be known to the people reading your applications.
A typical situation for someone applying for a first job out of graduate school would be one letter from your advisor, one letter from someone else in your dept. who is also an expert in your field, and one letter from an expert at a different school who saw you speak in a seminar or at a conference and who has read your papers. It is not necessary, at the new-graduate level, to have had more substantial interactions with outside letter writers than their having seen you talk and read your papers. If you can get two good outside letter writers, then do that instead, but in my experience it's common to have only one outside letter writer at this stage. At least two of these people should be at the associate or full professor level, and all should have excellent tenure-track jobs. For someone a few years out of Ph.D. one would expect, in addition to the Ph.D. advisor and postdoc advisor, letters from well-known experts in the field who have interacted more substantially with the applicant.
> 16 votes
# Answer
I agree with the commenters above: none of these would be a good reference. If I was on a committee that received a reference letter by a dean, president or former student, I think it would probably be immediately dropped from the pile as someone who plainly has no idea what they are doing (I say think, because in hundreds of applications, I don't think I've ever seen anyone do this). I can imagine having a letter from the department chair, but that would still be pretty weird, unless it was specifically to address the candidates teaching. A letter from a colleague of comparable or greater seniority is reasonable in some circumstances, but unless you're a postdoc and they're your supervisor still probably not the best choice.
In general, you seem to have a lot of weird ideas about how search committees work. I think you should try to find a senior colleague in your field who can advise you about applications; asking deans for letters is not going to help you get jobs or make you a popular person with deans.
**EDIT**: To address the new questions you've added: first, I think it is even more clear from this that you need have a personal discussion with an older colleague/person in your field who knows your situation well and can give you advice, as you are clearly incredibly confused about how academic job applications work.
Recommendation letters should come (typically) from people in your field senior enough to have tenure; your former supervisors, either in a graduate or postdoctoral capacity, are good people ask, as are any more senior collaborators or more senior scholars who have shown an interest in your work. Typically, you do want to ask people you personally know, but there are exceptions; that could be because you worked in the same department, but that's not a factor I would weight highly.
1. It's fine to list references on your CV, but this is not a substitute for getting letters. The committee does not have time to contact that many people. They will just ignore your application if your letters aren't there.
2. You want to get people who are familiar with your work. So, it's unlikely you'll know someone is familiar with your work if you never met or corresponded with them, but it is conceivable. I would only go ask people with whom you've had no contact if you have no good options amongst people you've personally discussed your work with. (Note, the important thing here is not your personal acquaintance with them, but how that allows you to judge how they feel about your work).
3. Basic politeness dictates that you contact your letter writers long before you are ready to submit your application to ask if they are willing to write a letter and to share your materials like your CV with them. It is not a good strategy to sent a request from an online system to them cold, whether you know them or not.
> 12 votes
# Answer
For assistant level positions your PhD supervisor and any postdoc supervisors should be included as reference writers. Even if they are not willing to write you a stellar letter, I believe it is better than the questions that are raised by not having them. If you cannot include them (e.g., they are deceased), I would address this in the cover letter and ask one of the other letter writers to explain why in his/her letter. For more senior positions (e.g., associate and full professor) you may replace some of your former supervisors with people more familiar with your recent accomplishments.
Additional letters can be sought from thesis committee members (especially for first jobs), more senior research collaborators, a teaching mentor (either someone you TA'd for for someone who has observed your teaching), or colleagues at your current and past jobs. A letter from a past department chair can be useful in saying that the department was really sad to lose you and that you are a great colleague. A letter from your current department chair is a little trickier in that the letter may be read as a means of pawning a bad apple off one someone else. Then again it can explain why you are trying to leave your current position.
> 5 votes
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Tags: university, recommendation-letter
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thread-11405 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11405 | How are instructors compensated for teaching a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)? | 2013-07-26T08:59:40.087 | # Question
Title: How are instructors compensated for teaching a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)?
This question prompted me to wonder what compensation comes with teaching a MOOC. Most of these seem to be sponsored by universities, but my university doesn't offer them and neither did my PhD institution so I have no first-hand experience on the instructor-side.
Obviously, most participants do not pay for them (some do, I guess, but I have no idea how many and they're obviously paying much less than university tuition). So, it seems unlikely that teaching such courses pays for the instructors time.
Thus, I ask: does teaching these come with compensation of any kind? Salary/bonus? Teaching load reduction? Release from service? Teaching assistants for the courses? I'm interested in compensation either from one's university or from the MOOC provider (Coursera, Udacity, edX, etc.).
# Answer
As @JeffE said, every department is different. There is remarkably little information available on the compensation offered to the instructors teaching the courses. A quick search revealed this article which states that this professor at Duke University doesn't receive any compensation for teaching MOOCs, including no reduction in teaching load, or any teaching assistants. See also this scathing article which states that professors teaching MOOCs are grossly underpaid--no hard numbers anywhere though.
> 7 votes
# Answer
It's a matter of contract (or agreement) between the teacher and her employer. Options include:
* no compensation, no appreciation for the job you do
* encouragement in the form of teaching load reduction, or financial compensation
It could also happen that the online course provider would directly pay the teacher for her time, but that odds not happen (as far as I know) in the current model of MOOC, where the course provider deals directly with institutions rather than individual teachers.
> 3 votes
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Tags: teaching, salary, online-learning, mooc
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thread-12981 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12981 | When suggesting referee names, where do you draw the line for conflict of interest? | 2013-09-26T01:15:13.137 | # Question
Title: When suggesting referee names, where do you draw the line for conflict of interest?
Journal submission guidelines in my field typically require the submitting author to provide the editor with a list of potential referees. The journal guidelines ask to suggest people with whom we have no collaboration, no joint publications and no conflict of interest.
Given how competitive academic research is, I sometimes wonder how conservative one should be in choosing potential referees. After a long career, if I am to exclude all people whom I have collaborated with over time, there will be few experts left qualified to judge the work! On the other hand, someone with whom I am just starting a project with, and has nothing published with me so far, would not be seen as a violation by the editor, yet would not be rally fair (if we work together, he has a vested interest in my success).
So, I am asking here what guidelines or principles can be proposed in this gray area.
# Answer
> 10 votes
The National Science Foundation in the US has clearly articulated guidelines for what constitutes a conflict of interest for reviewers of grant proposals. These are probably safe — and certainly defensible — guidelines for you to follow. Specifically (and for the reason you mention), research collaborations are considered to be a conflict only if they occurred within the last 4 years (there are other rules as well, please see the document).
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Tags: publications, editors, peer-review
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thread-12948 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12948 | In Computer Science, does a presentation of findings at a conference constitute a "publication"? | 2013-09-24T18:04:50.547 | # Question
Title: In Computer Science, does a presentation of findings at a conference constitute a "publication"?
Most of the research I have done so far is in Computational Chemistry, where the major emphasis is on publishing in journals. But I also research aspects of Computer Science,and I have read here that in Computer Science the standard for publishing is different. I have recently created a data structure, and will be presenting my findings at a regional Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference later this year. Is this considered a publication in Computer Science? While I do not mind presenting my findings--I've done similarly with posters in my Chemistry research--I would prefer to have my research published in a printed journal. Does the conference lead to a journal publication?
# Answer
There are two types of publications in Computer Science:
1. Publications in peer-reviewed conferences **with published proceedings**
2. Publications in journals
If you present your results at a conference or workshop but don't publish them in the conference proceedings — it's not a publication.
In general, publications in top tier conferences are much more important than journal publications for computer science researchers. Usually you can first publish your paper in conference proceedings and then submit it to a journal but not the other way around (though, of course, that depends on conference and journal policies).
> 18 votes
# Answer
Just to add to concise and to the point answer by Yury:
* there are also books, and if you publish a chapter in an edited book, it normally does not influence your publication record much (a paper in the proceedings or an article in a journal would value much more).
* however, if you publish a book all alone or with couple of co-authors (monograph, handbook or textbook) then it is valued even more than a journal article or a proceedings paper
* if you publish an edited book (a collection of chapters collected by a group of people - editors, and possibly peer reviewed) it is also valued, but normally less than a monograph
> 3 votes
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Tags: publications, journals, conference, computer-science
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thread-12987 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12987 | IEEE Conference Paper: Different Author Blocks, Different Information? | 2013-09-26T05:54:34.570 | # Question
Title: IEEE Conference Paper: Different Author Blocks, Different Information?
I am currently preparing my very first paper. Since the conference to which I am going to submit my paper to requires the authors to use the IEEE conference paper template.
The template says that if the authors have **no more than 3** affiliations, we should adopt **this** format:
If the affiliations are **more than 3**, **this** format should be adopted.
The 2nd format is quite clear about the order of the authors, but as for the 1st, the 3rd and 4th authors are grouped together. So is there any distinction between the authors who are grouped together? Do these two formats convey the same contribution information about the authors?
# Answer
> 5 votes
In the IEEEtran\_HOWTO (available in the template you link), they seem to actually mix a bit between the number of affiliations and authors. They actually write (Section IV.2):
> If there are more than three authors and/or the text is too wide to fit across the page, use an alternate format:
which corresponds to the second format you put. So, basically, there are three possibilities:
* You have 3 authors or less, in which case you use the first format. If the first and third authors are from the same affiliation, then you can just repeat it, to keep the author ordering.
* You have more than 3 authors, but you can split the list of authors in 3 affiliation blocks. In this case, you use the first format.
* Otherwise, you can use the second format, even if you have only two affiliations, but the author ordering is somehow interleaved.
In case of doubt, you can use the format that makes sense to you, you will be contacted by the editor if there is any problem.
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Tags: authorship
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thread-12988 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12988 | How "submitted", "to appear", "accepted" papers are evaluated in a CV? | 2013-09-26T07:13:00.710 | # Question
Title: How "submitted", "to appear", "accepted" papers are evaluated in a CV?
Assume a search committee is reading my CV and in the publication section they notice some of my papers are only submitted or claimed to appear in a journal (or accepted for publication in a journal). Sometimes the journal which has accepted the paper for publication lists the title of accepted articles before actually publishing them, but in the rest of cases there is no evidence to prove that the referee process of the paper is over and the journal has accepted the paper for publication. Also assume preprints of my papers are available in ArXiv. So, my questions are:
> 1. How a search committee interprets and evaluates those papers which are just submitted or are claimed to appear?
> 2. Does a search committee consider these types of publications less valuable than the published ones (assuming the same quality)?
> 3. Does a search committee refer to my preprints in ArXiv to evaluate my submitted or accepted papers?
# Answer
It's a tiered system:
1. **Peer-reviewed published articles**. Published means published in any form, so it includes papers in all states published online on the journal's website, including “in print”, “ASAP papers”, “just accepted papers”, etc.
That's top notch: it demonstrates your ability to perform research, write it up and publish it. Those are key requirements for the job.
1b. **Peer-reviewed accepted papers**. All search committees I know will assume good faith, and accepted papers not yet published (thus without proof) are considered as good as published papers. If you want to (and the application format allows for it), you can actually join a copy of the manuscript (not as proof, but for committee members who may want to read your paper to judge its quality).
2. **Submitted papers, non peer-reviewed papers**. This has some value, as an indication of your recent activity. It is especially useful to the committee if you have few papers (junior researcher) or have not published much recently (so that it is clear you are still active). Again, you may want to join manuscript(s) to your application, or give a link to arXiv if you deposited it there.
3. **In preparation**, **in writing**, … There is no clear standard on threshold for what is a paper “in preparation”, so these are usually worthless on a CV. The only exception is if you have very very few (or no) published papers: applying for a PhD position, or early application for post-doc position, with 1 or 2 published papers. Otherwise, my advice is simply not to mention manuscripts you have not finished writing.
> 32 votes
# Answer
First you need to distinguish between publications that have passed the review process (accepted, in press) with those who have not (in prep, in review etc.). The first group are just as published as those that are printed and should/could be listed among the published. The others have not received the accept decision and despite their quality are not yet officially approved by peers and journals. Hence they are equated with manuscripts.
You can divide your manuscripts and papers in as many categories you like in the CV but the bottom line is that those that are not through the peers review will not be counted as highly since no-one yet knows of their deemed quality. But, that said, manuscripts (of all forms) indicates activity so they are not a complete loss in the CV. Unfortunately people have very wide views on what can be included. One person stated that a manuscript existed if it had a title, an abstract, some text and some references. With experiences like that it is perhaps not difficult to imagine that a list of manuscripts in different stages may not count for much other than an indication of activity (no matter the reality).
As for manuscripts in public archives, there will be a middle ground. They obviously exist but have not been peer reviewed. An evaluator should be able to check its quality fairly easily, even if they are not necessarily an expert on the topic. It is also doubtful reviewers search for papers on their own, commonly what they receive to review is what they look at. So the value of such papers is less clear but I would definitely set up a separate category for these sorts of papers in the CV between published peer reviewed and unpublished manuscripts.
> 17 votes
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Tags: publications, job-search, cv
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thread-12983 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12983 | How much data should be shared in the collaboration? | 2013-09-26T03:23:18.700 | # Question
Title: How much data should be shared in the collaboration?
Well, I am interested to know how much data, code, results, etc needs to be shared in a successful collaboration. For example: when engineers collaborate with AI researchers to optimize an engineering problem using specific algorithms, should engineers have access to the whole optimization dataset? Even optimization code should be shared among different parts of a research team?
# Answer
> 10 votes
All of it. If I don't trust you with my data, why would I collaborate with you?
Note: I'm in favor of sharing all the code and data with the whole world, not just my collaborators. Once you make intellectual property public, it cannot be stolen.
# Answer
> 3 votes
The more you limit the information exchange between the two teams, the more you also limit the best possible outcome of the project: without the information about the other group's work, you won't be able to achieve more than rather blindly applying some optimization algorithm to some kind of problem.
But successful collaborations are not something that pops up at full strength: the different groups have to learn the others' language, get to know each other etc., and the trust that enables sharing the data is something that will grow over time (carefull: destroying the built up trust takes no time at all).
As for the intellectual property: that should be clear already before you start the collaboration.
All in all, I think the normal human behaviour is that the collaboration partners adjust the level of cooperation to each other. I'm usually very open to sharing data and code. But if I find that other people want me to send them my data without even allowing me to read their code, neither will I give them my data. Neither will I help people understanding my code\* who would not give me their code or data (but sometimes I tell them that I run a freelancing side-job, so they can *buy* consulting time - and then we can specify non-disclosure conditions and it's completely their problem if my advise is not optimal *because* I didn't have the details. However, this doesn't work for scientific publications, as I have to take care that *my* name is not pubicly on a bad paper).
* I have published code that is e.g. GPLed, so there is no question about not sharing the code.
> when engineers collaborate with AI researchers to optimize an engineering problem using specific algorithms,
>
> should engineers have access to the whole optimization dataset?
Yes: they will be the ones who can check the optimization process with "common engineering sense", which the AI team usually won't have.
> Even optimization code should be shared among different parts of a research team?
Yes: and the AI should explain the heuristics of the optimization to the engineers. Not only the AI researchers, but also the engineers need to judge whether these heuristics are appropriate for the application. I guess the AI people are better at checking the "formal" part (e.g. numeric properties), whereas the engineers can say whether a certain strategy makes sense from an engineering point of view.
IMHO the AI team should also have early access/particupate in the setting up of the DoE of the engineering team, as optimization approach must be appropriate for the DoE (and vice versa).
# Answer
> 2 votes
If by withholding data one part of the collaboration has made the other part draw false conclusions, then you have broken the trust in the process, and if you're going to publish based on this collaboration, spoilt that as well.
On the other hand, you don't want to bog them down in stuff which is irrelevant - so some material should be made available (perhaps on request) rather than pushed to them. You wouldn't want to see all their preliminary work, and your code may be meaningless to them.
I assume you have properly defined your optimisation and other datasets, so there's no need to hold anything back for testing.
Some industrial collaborations are affected by issues of commercially sensitive material being kept back, usually this can be sorted out, and if the collaboration is purely academic, this issue doesn't arise.
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Tags: research-process, collaboration, intellectual-property
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thread-13010 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13010 | What to include for a strong research statement for a faculty position? | 2013-09-26T16:45:45.663 | # Question
Title: What to include for a strong research statement for a faculty position?
An application for a faculty position normally needs a strong research statement, but what is included in a good research statement?
* Highlighting the past successful research projects evidenced by publications?
* Giving novel ideas for future research, although there is no evidence that the applicant can be successful in this field?
* Including technical descriptions and graphs or writing for a broad range of readers?
* Emphasizing potential collaborations for prospective research projects?
In general, what are the eye-catching points of a research statement? What does the search committee look for in a research statement, and what can extraordinarily impress them?
# Answer
What a hiring committee for new faculty is looking for is evidence that the applicant will be able to continue a strong research trajectory over the course of (at least the) next 6 years, and become an established leader in his or her chosen field.
To make a convincing case for this, you need to include evidence both that:
a) you have succeeded so far in doing this: that is, you have a track record that if it were extrapolated linearly over the next 6 years would result in tenure. So you should spend a good deal of your statement explaining what you have done, and why it is important/influential.
b) You can plausibly continue your trajectory. To do this, you should express a cohesive research agenda that ties in with your past work, and plausibly leads to a large number of meaty, interesting, unsolved questions. The more closely related this is to things you have already worked on, the more plausible it will be that you can carry it out. But it should also be different enough that it is new and exciting, and not merely a rehashing of your thesis work.
As in all statements, what you write about should form a cohesive story. If you work in several disparate areas, or would like to branch out to new areas, try and find something that ties them together, or some reason why your experience in both areas gives you an edge.
> 22 votes
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Tags: application, career-path, faculty-application, research-statement
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thread-13020 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13020 | What author affiliation to put when you work for one university and study at another? | 2013-09-27T06:35:09.833 | # Question
Title: What author affiliation to put when you work for one university and study at another?
I am an author on a poster, but I am unsure of what to put for my affiliation. I am a graduate student, but the poster and corresponding project is in no way connected with my university. I work for another university and the project relates to materials from that university, however they are not sponsoring the project. Any suggestions?
# Answer
Traditionally, affiliation address must be where the research has been conducted therein (this is the statement given by some scholarly journals in Guide for Authors).
Professors normally use their official affiliation for any publication/presentation even if their university has not supported that research. Probably, because their secured salaries let them to work on an external project. This is different for graduate students, but still can be applied.
In any case, nothing stops you for using both affiliations in your poster. Normally, a graduate student is gaining credit from his/her affiliation. Then, two affiliations can be indicative of your research potential, as you have not stuck to your academic project.
> 9 votes
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Tags: affiliation
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thread-13018 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13018 | Should a Database Update be sent for publication in same journal where previous edition was published? | 2013-09-27T05:45:04.137 | # Question
Title: Should a Database Update be sent for publication in same journal where previous edition was published?
My lab published a database (db) two years back in Nuclear Acids Research. Now looking at the increasing data and new features we are planning to update the db. but the db admin is leaving now and I have taken full charge over it.
1. Is it mandatory for us to send the update to same journal (*so as to increase chance of acceptance*)
2. What authorship may I expect? (*1st or 2nd*)
# Answer
Nothing ties you, neither ethically nor legally, to publish your new work (your database update) in the same journal as earlier work on the topic. However, if the journal was a good venue for this particular publication some years ago, the same reasons probably still hold, which means it's still a good place to publish your update. If, however, you feel like changing, just go for it!
Regarding authorship, this should be discussed right now. If you have full charge of the database, did important work on it yourself, and write the paper, then **you have strong arguments to be first author**. On the other hand, if you're the new admin but contributed little to the recent improvements, your position is weaker. In the end, it will be the result of a negotiation.
> 4 votes
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Tags: publications, authorship, databases
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thread-13022 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13022 | Why is headhunting uncommon for academic positions? | 2013-09-27T07:23:20.357 | # Question
Title: Why is headhunting uncommon for academic positions?
In scientific conferences, there are usually many headhunters who come to offer newly graduated scholars jobs in the industry sector. As a matter of fact, the recruitment in industry mostly works with the headhunting system.
However, academic recruitment is mainly application-based, and they are stuck with *Equal Employment Opportunity*, in which even when planning to appoint a Vice President to a vacant President position, they need to follow public call for application.
**Why doesn't a department chair offer faculty position to exceptional scholars to attract extraordinary people?**
In an application-based system, only those who are looking for new jobs will apply, but in a headhunting system, headhunters tempts satisfied employees with attractive offers.
In general, when someone is averagely satisfied by his/her job will not check current job ads.
# Answer
> 16 votes
> Why doesn't a department chair offer faculty positions to exceptional scholars to attract extraordinary people?
Ah, but they do. For high profile academics, there are many behind-the-scenes discussions between department chairs, deans, and other faculty members. If a department really wants a particular academic for a particular chair, they'll have discussions about it with the candidate. I imagine that certain faculty get calls rather frequently asking if they want to move universities. Some professors can pretty much move at will; see, for instance, Cornell West's move between Harvard and Princeton -- West got in a tiff with Harvard President Lawrence Summers, and then he up and moved to Princeton, where they were happy to have him.
The networking system within academia is broad enough and the number of open positions small enough that hiring headhunters is not really necessary, although for really high profile positions -- presidents of universities and the like -- a headhunting firm may be hired to make sure certain protocols are met.
For run-of-the-mill assistant professor and associate professor positions, and for other candidate-search positions such as department chairs, the application process works well. But don't think that there still isn't any wrangling between various faculty members and possible candidates -- if you're an excellent researcher that has been making a name for yourself as a graduate student or as a junior faculty member, you may be asked directly to apply for positions that are open.
# Answer
> 9 votes
> However, academic recruitment is mainly application-based, and they are stuck to Equal Employment Opportunity, in which even when planning to appoint a Vice President to a vacant President position, they need to follow public call for application.
>
> **Why a department chair does not offer faculty position to exceptional scholars to attract extraordinary people?**
At least for public universities in the US, you've answered your own question. Public universities cannot directly offer jobs to anyone; they must follow Equal Employment Opportunity laws, which require open applications. Even with an open search, department chairs often don't have unilateral power to offer a job to anyone. At my university, all faculty appointments must be approved by the dean of the department's college, who among other things, is supposed to verify that all EEO procedures have been followed.
But as Chris writes, less direct headhunting does still happen. For senior positions, especially endowed chairs and department heads, most applications submitted in response to the public ad are hopeless; the only strong applications come from candidates that faculty identify, contact directly, and convince to apply. (That's the explicit reason my department has a faculty *recruiting* committee, and not just a faculty *search* committee.) But even for assistant professor positions, faculty do contact promising PhD students—by email, by phone, or in person at conferences—and strongly encourage them to apply.
For even higher-level positions like deans and university presidents, universities often work with professional search firms to identify and contact promising candidates, but my impression (having worked with such a firm in one search) is that those firms are mostly good at identifying people who aren't interested. Strong candidates for those positions—the ones that are actually invited for public interviews—are almost always people that the university faculty and administration has been courting for months.
Departments do sometimes identify people they'd like to hire even before they've advertised a position. In that case, the university may *create* a position specifically for that person, with a very narrowly tailored job description. But then sometimes the department gets an even stronger application in response to their narrowly tailored ad, so they don't end up hiring their original target after all.
# Answer
> 8 votes
In order to answer this question it is important to understand what a head hunting firm does. For a substantial fee (potentially in excess of 25% of the annual salary) head hunters use their networks to identify (and convince) people to apply for a job. They talk to the contacts they have, plus individuals identified by the hiring department, and try and get names of not only potential applicants, but also people who might know potential applicants. They may also use web resources, but in general I believe they like to use named introductions instead of cold calls.
In industry where HR firms often do not have networks in the area of expertise of the job, outside consultation is necessary. Industry jobs tend to also be less worried about costs. Additionally, it is harder for potential applicants to find out about job openings at smaller companies and figure out if they are interested in working for the company.
For academic position networks in the required area of expertise already exist. Search committees and most faculty in the department will email their colleagues when a search opens and try and attract candidates to apply. Additionally, even small colleges would qualify as a large company and are much better advertised and described. This means departments don't really need head hunters to reach potential applicants.
The second issue with head hunters is that the candidates they identify didn't respond to the open call and are therefore either less interested or feel the are less qualified. In general academic searches do not have a problem with attracting qualified candidates to apply.
Which brings us to the final issue. It is often difficult to make an attractive enough offer to candidates to get them to accept. Adding 25% of the annual salary onto the search costs means less money for recruiting and start up package. This makes it less likely to get the candidate of choice.
Head hunters do have a role in academic job searches. Sometimes a department is trying to expand in an area they do not have expertise/networks or are looking to make an unusual interdisciplinary appointment.
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Tags: professorship, university, job, faculty-application
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thread-13031 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13031 | How to highlight the importance of past positions in CV? | 2013-09-27T14:34:13.320 | # Question
Title: How to highlight the importance of past positions in CV?
When addressing the past positions in a resume, although titles somewhat describes the role, they cannot clarify the importance of positions.
For example, listing a past position of `department chair` indicates administrative duties at department level, but it depends on the department. Definitely, chairing a small department with a few faculty members and annual enrollment of 30 undergraduate students is different from a well-funded department with tens of senior faculty members and several PhD programs. However, if a reader does not know that specific department, the term `department chair` is the same.
This is even more serious when it comes to differences in terminology. In a university, a faculty can be equal to a department, and somewhere else a faculty can be in the size of a university hosting several large departments. Even terms of mid-level administrative positions in academia do not always have the same meaning: e.g., dean, director, chair, head.
**How do you fairly clarify the importance of the job you had?**
It is possible to add a description, but as it is not very common, it may cause an impression of overestimation.
# Answer
If a title or position is unclear, or an institution is possibly not well known, just explain it in a few words:
> * Director of Supersonic Operations department (15 researchers) at Small U.
> * Time-management officer, Funny Inc. (in charge of scheduling company-wide meetings)
> * Information officer, U. of North Virginia (CTO-like position, managing computing resources for 10,000+ students and staff)
Be as concise as possible, but give the reader some idea of the scope of your activities. And if the position is clear or well-known, just don't add any details.
> 9 votes
# Answer
You can put a short (maybe four or five word) explanation in the CV item itself (or more if you think it's really important). You can also give more details in your cover letter about exactly what responsibilities you had. Another option is to ask one of your letter writers to explain; this is a common approach for things like personal reasons for wanting to leave a job, etc.
> 6 votes
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Tags: professorship, university, job, cv, administration
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thread-12733 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12733 | When can a museum be considered an academic institution? | 2013-09-16T09:26:15.610 | # Question
Title: When can a museum be considered an academic institution?
I must admit that although I deeply believe museums, no matter how small, play a very important role in almost any sort of research, proving their scientific character can be sometimes quite awkward. Is there any set of fixed criteria that would allow a museum to be considered as an academic institution if met?
# Answer
> 1 votes
The OED definition of academic
> Of, relating to, or characteristic of an educational institution or environment; concerned with the pursuit of research, education, and scholarship; scholarly, educational, intellectual.
has a focus on education. The wikipedia definition of academic instituion
> Academic institution is an educational institution dedicated to education and research, which grants academic degrees.
also has a focus on education and a requirement to grant academic degrees. To me degree granting is critical to being an academic institution. I do not think of any non-degree granting institute as being academic. Places like the German MPIs and US National Laboratories are cutting edge research institutes, but not academic-institutes.
Non-academic research institutions often have a grants office, just like their academic counterparts. Further employees at non-academic institutions that wish to conduct research can often get a research appointment at a local university.
# Answer
> 2 votes
My answer is "localized".
* In France there is a distinction between museum of arts (arts in a broad sense, antiquities being arts for instance) and museum of natural sciences (biology, paleontology, etc.). The latter is considered an academic institution: part of the people working there have the title of associate or full professor, and they can have PhD students.
* In some european countries (France, UK, belgium at least), some museums are part of a university, so I think we can say that they are academic places.
The real question may be then "are you an academic if you work in an academic institution", and I guess the answer is no.
# Answer
> 1 votes
I think a better definition of an academic institution is whether they contribute to peer-reviewed research.
If museum staff often have *academic* input to peer-reviewed research, then perhaps they could be called an academic institution (in a pragmatic, not legal, sense). However if the museum staff merely serve as a repository of knowledge rather than a source of original ideas, then I would hesitate to call the museum an academic institution.
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Tags: research-process
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thread-13042 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13042 | How to cite from a paper using a different citation style? | 2013-09-27T21:50:48.243 | # Question
Title: How to cite from a paper using a different citation style?
When writing a paper where you are citing from another paper which uses a different citation style, how should one cite portions of text that contain in-text citations? For example
> > “Malnutrition has often been referred to as “the skeleton in the hospital closet”, as it is often overlooked, under-diagnosed, and untreated \[69,70\].Despite this, the negative consequences of malnutrition have been widely reported..." (Barker, Grout & Crowe, 2011).
An alternative format would be
> > "Malnutrition has often been referred to as "the skeleton in the hospital closet" , as it is often overlooked, under-diagnosed, and untreated (McKee, 2011; Busby, 2008; in Barker, Grout, & Crowe, 2011). Despite this...."( Barker, Grout, & Crowe, 2011).
This seems an awkward and redundant solution. Would this be considered correct for APA style? What about other citation styles; MLA,etc.?
# Answer
> 7 votes
Echoing the other good comments and answer, I'd encourage you to think in terms of "forthrightness", rather than compliance to semi-random formal criteria. Think of the *function* of your citations, and thinking of the idealized version of scholarship and such. The goal is not conformity to style guides, but useful contributions to human knowledge, blah-blah-blah, ;) But, yes, that should be the way to think about such questions.
To my taste, citations in-line should be sufficient so that the reader does not have to "flip to the end" to see what "\[46\]" is. The space spent on fuller references is a good investment!!!
That is, yet again, if one thinks that the *function* of one's writing is to *help* the reader, all in-line references would be optimally helpful, as opposed to "proper-and-possibly-unhelpful".
# Answer
> 4 votes
Why not rephrase it, and quote each source properly? Like this:
> McKee (2011), Busby (2008) and in Barker, Grout, & Crowe (2011) wrote that “Malnutrition has often been referred to as 'the skeleton in the hospital closet', as it is often overlooked, under-diagnosed, and untreated". To this, in Barker, Grout & Crowe added that "Despite this, the negative consequences of malnutrition have been widely reported...".
In a way, you are quoting McKee at al., so it is only proper to cite them properly, and thus have them in your references.
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Tags: citations
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thread-13007 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13007 | How long the curse of bad education remains in academic career? | 2013-09-26T14:47:23.713 | # Question
Title: How long the curse of bad education remains in academic career?
It is understandable if considering the educational record (where s/he has studied and how is his/her transcript) of an applicant applied for junior academic positions such as postdoctoral fellow or assistant professor. BUT, for senior academics, the factors for judging a potential full professor is his/her research, teaching, publications, and other academic achievements.
I read *in a few job ads for full professors in Europe (mainly Scandinavia), one of the application materials is unofficial transcripts.* It seems that the initial review is substantially based on the applicant education achievements two decades ago.
I wonder how much the education of an applicant affects his/her chance to be appointed as a full professor? Does a bad education (having low GPA at PhD level) always affects someone's academic career, even at highest levels?
# Answer
From a European perspective: the only time I was ever asked for transcripts was for PhD admission. After that, nobody every asked me for transcripts.
* Administrative people asked me for a proof of my degree (a copy of the degree itself, without grades, is what I gave). They only wanted to check I was eligible for the position's formal requirements (having a PhD to become post-doc or assistant professor).
* Scientists asked me for my publications, my thesis, the list of topics I had taught, etc. They did not care the least about my grades in undergrad or graduate education.
So, I think the ads you saw asking for transcripts, especially for senior positions, are by far a minority. **Once you have a PhD, most people won't care about your earlier educational record**, since it is not a good predictor of how awesome you will be as a researcher.
> 7 votes
# Answer
Combining the various comments that this question has elicited:
In some countries and at some institutions, the transcript is the official record certifying completion of the degree. When an institution asks for an unofficial transcript, they are really asking for verification that you earned the degree you said you did. Unfortunately, certain events make some institutions feel justified in asking for proof. You cannot very well mail your diploma! Unofficial copies of your transcript are easy to come by in the digital age.
> 0 votes
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Tags: professorship, job, transcript-of-records, gpa
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thread-13048 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13048 | Will excellence in professional career be considered for admission or financial aid | 2013-09-28T08:06:32.003 | # Question
Title: Will excellence in professional career be considered for admission or financial aid
If I have strong professional IT skills but average educational background, will a university consider me for admission or financial aid?
I have looked through Stanford's site, including application procedures, admissions requirements, and GRE/TOEFL testing, but I cannot find a mention of anything other than TOEFL/GRE scores required.
# Answer
> 6 votes
Professional IT skills have very little to do with graduate-level work in computer science. While such skills may lead to a positive letter of recommendation, it is unlikely that you will receive either admission or financial aid (in the form of a teaching or research assistantship) solely on the basis of your record as an IT professional. There may be exceptions to this (for instance, if your professional work is in a specialized area that maps closely to an existing research area at the school to which you are applying), but in general, but that would be more the exception than the rule.
In other fields, such as bioinformatics and chemistry, where "professional work" may be more similar in nature to ongoing academic research, this is more of a possibility—I know several people whose work careers did have an influence on their admissions to graduate programs.
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Tags: graduate-admissions
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thread-12947 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12947 | How much do patents impact an academic career? | 2013-09-24T16:43:37.110 | # Question
Title: How much do patents impact an academic career?
Patents are not normally considered as publications in scholarly journals, as they are not subject to peer-review. They are actually new ideas, but patenting does not guarantee the impact and importance (whether good or bad idea). However, academics tend to patent inventions and discoveries for the sake of possible commercial benefits.
I wonder if they have any considerable impact on academic career? e.g., promotion, getting academic jobs, and in a different context, impact on proposals for getting grants and research funds.
# Answer
> 10 votes
The answer will clearly vary by institution, and in particular by field (Your average English prof wouldn't be expected to hold any patents but a materials scientist might) but yes, it certainly can. Patents and publications are measures of productivity and it would be silly not to note them. It should be pointed out, however, that patents correlate to jobs closer to industry, so a particularly high rate might be indicative of someone *not* in academia.
# Answer
> 5 votes
FWIW my university's promotion and tenure guidelines were revised recently (April 2013) to explicitly include consideration of patents and commercialization activities:
> "Promotion and tenure require excellent performance and the promise of continued excellence in 1) teaching, 2) service, and 3) research, creative work, and scholarship. The University values an inclusive view of scholarship in the recognition that knowledge is acquired and advanced through discovery, integration, application, and teaching. Given this perspective, promotion and tenure reviews, as detailed in the criteria of individual departments and colleges, will recognize original research contributions in peer-reviewed publications as well as integrative and applied forms of scholarship that involve **cross-cutting collaborations with business and community partners, including translational research, commercialization activities, and patents**."
I think we may see more of this sort of thing as the funding landscape changes and the share of state funding for universities decreases further.
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Tags: university, funding, patents, career-path
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thread-12996 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12996 | How to effectively address conflicting suggestions from reviewers | 2013-09-26T09:46:27.947 | # Question
Title: How to effectively address conflicting suggestions from reviewers
A bit of background, I am doing research in atmospheric physics and detection systems
Recently, I received a paper submission back with revisions suggested by a couple of reviewers. For the most part, the revisions were definitely constructive, justified and most importantly, helpful.
That is, except on one particular crucial aspect of the paper where both reviewers made suggestions, that they labelled as critical for the paper's success. However, the suggestions were directly opposite. i.e. Both suggestions are mutually exclusive, but equally feasible.
What is an effective means to address this conflict?
*I have spoken to my academic supervisor and he is not sure how to proceed either and we have double checked and both suggested paths are feasible.*
# Answer
In my capacity as editor for a journal, I see this quite frequently. I think it is a pity that you are left on your own to try to resolve the problem. An editor should provide some indication of possible solutions in tricky situations like this. So my first advice is to contact the editor and briefly explain the dilemma and ask for some advise on how to proceed. If you can, you should also provide your opinion on what you think is reasonable. After all, you have made your study and knows its strengths and weaknesses better than most.
In some cases, I have experienced how authors have used conflicting reviews to swing their paper in one or the other direction. This is certainly also possible since the reviews, and this is important, constitute peer's views and opinions, not an absolute and definitive truth to be followed.
Lacking the necessary insight into the details of your work and the issue at hand, I would also add the following. If you think you can bring up the conflicting views in the discussion, you may perhaps add both to your paper and simply arrive at a conclusion that the jury might still be out concerning the burning issue. I realize this may not be applicable in your case, but could be one way to acknowledge the existence of several, seemingly valid views.
> 31 votes
# Answer
Often, but not always, reviewers try and be helpful. For example, a reviews that simply says that "crucial aspect of the paper is broken/wrong/needs to be reworked", tends not to be as helpful as "crucial aspect of the paper is broken and would be improved by doing X". Of course when you get a second review saying to do Y and X and Y are incompatible, then you have an issue. I would think about X and Y (and possibly Z) and decide which you want to do. Then respond to the reviewers and acknowledge that you improved crucial aspect with method X (or Y or Z) for the reasons you decided to use it. Hopefully, the reviewer will be happy that you improved crucial aspect and not upset that you didn't use method Y. If after the second round of reviews you still have conflicts, explain the problem to the editor and ask for advice.
> 19 votes
# Answer
**Reviewers' suggestions are just that: suggestions.** So, read both of them, make your own idea on how useful each of the suggestions would be, then depending on available resources, **you may choose to follow one, the other, both, or none**.
* If you can do both, then of course do it, compare the results, and that will vastly improve your paper!
* If you cannot do both, then decide in advance on which seems more likely to you, and follow this course (X). Then, add mention of the other method (Y) in the revised paper, saying something along the lines of *“it would also be interesting to see how doing Y improves the results of Z, though we do not expect it to be as efficient as X because of …”*. And explain in your letter to the editor that you have followed the avenue which seemed best to you, out of the two suggested by the referees. If your case is convincing (yet concise), you should not have a problem with the editor: you're the expert, after all!
* If you think both have value, but (i) you don't have the resources to do it, and (ii) though the suggestions are valid, your current results already bring something new and significant to the field, you may decide not to follow the suggestions. Include them, with some background for each, in the revised manuscript and explain that it may be useful for future work to consider those. In the response to the editor, make your case that though it is interesting, it would be out of the scope of the current study, and your work meets publication standards as it is.
> 14 votes
# Answer
What I would probably do is:
In the appropriate section, acknowledge that two routes had been suggested, and then explain why you chose to take the route you did.
edit: sorry, didn't fully read through the answer above mine before posting (which says much the same thing).
> 0 votes
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Tags: publications, peer-review, review-articles
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thread-13062 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13062 | Including desired rank in a cover letter for an open-rank faculty position? | 2013-09-28T17:54:17.603 | # Question
Title: Including desired rank in a cover letter for an open-rank faculty position?
I'm an assistant professor in my fifth year and have decided to go on the job market this year. Obviously I prefer tenured positions to pre-tenure positions, but I'm interested in either one. Would it be weird to leave this ambiguous in a cover letter, that is, to simply say "I am applying for a position in your department" without specifying the rank? It seems to me that if I say I'm applying for an associate position, then some departments might say "oh, she's not ready for an associate position, too bad, we would have hired her at the assistant level", whereas, if I apply at the assistant level, I might be passing up opportunities for a tenured position.
# Answer
> 6 votes
I suspect this is one of these questions where there is no truly "correct answer" as you can't predict what's going on in any given search committee, but I think you're unlikely to do any damage by leaving it open. At least my understanding of these things is that a department would rather hire you w/o tenure (note that this is not quite the same as the associate/assistant distinction) as it is less of a headache with the administration; you'll get tenure if they really want you, and don't think they'll get you otherwise. I don't think it will matter much what you wrote in your cover letter. Concentrate on making them want you, and then worry about what they have to do to get you.
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Tags: job-search, tenure-track
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thread-13067 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13067 | Is a paper that takes existing techniques to solve a practical and more specific problem valuable enough to get published? | 2013-09-29T05:25:34.863 | # Question
Title: Is a paper that takes existing techniques to solve a practical and more specific problem valuable enough to get published?
Let's consider a paper that uses many different techniques to solve a **practical** problem. *The techniques that the paper uses have all already been published by others*. This paper only **modifies or customizes these techniques a bit to fit the particular question** that the paper is solving.
The techniques used are from different disciplines. So the paper is more or less similar to **an integration of these techniques**. These different techniques were proposed or published for a general purpose with no specified applications before. Now this paper integrates them together and solves a rather specific and practical problem.
I understand that this kind of very-specific-problem-solver application paper will get cited less often than those algorithm papers that may be applicable to many applications. However, let us leave the impact factor issue aside first.
Is this integration and application valued by the peers? Is this paper valuable enough to get published? (not considering its impact first)
# Answer
In my opinion, yes.
You paper will prove that those techniques are useful and usable by using them to solve a practical problem. I consider it a contribution to human kind, thus valuable to get published.
Whether or not it will be accepted by journal/conference is another issue. You should try. Please send it to be peer-reviewed.
> 11 votes
# Answer
Regarding the way you described your work, it certainly worth writing it up and submitting it as an article to a journal. However, there are several factors that can add more value to your work as follows:
1. If the problem you have solved is an important problem and has been addressed by well known experts in the literature and if you write a very nice introduction to your paper and explaining the importance of the problem.
2. If the way you use these techniques explores more applications and benefits of them. In this way, it is like you have invented a brand new technique.
3. If the way you use these techniques from different disciplines shows interconnections of these disciplines and suggest more interrelationship for further investigations.
I am sure that if you explain carefully all the above points in your paper and highlight the advantages of your approach to the problem, it won't be difficult to publish your result.
> 4 votes
# Answer
I wouldn't have any doubts about this. It is the essence of *applied science*, where theoretical techniques get to be tested through their application on practical problems. And as you write, it is usually found that some modification and customization is required, or even, that some techniques actually don't work with some sub-class of problems, or that some techniques are better suited to some sub-class compared to others. Further, a paper that *compares* the application of different techniques on the same problem, is even more valuable.
> 4 votes
# Answer
Definitely!
Such publication will not only be helpful to the community whose focus is on the particular problem under investigation in your paper, but, will also be instrumental in spreading the knowledge of the techniques you employed from other fields.
In order to improve the technical quality of your manuscript, I would even suggest that you elaborate on the techniques used. Often analysis techniques originate from complex mathematical treatises. Applied research employing such techniques help in making the techniques popular and useful for practical applications.
> 2 votes
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Tags: research-process, publications
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thread-12774 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12774 | Publishing a comment or contacting the authors privately? | 2013-09-17T13:55:29.020 | # Question
Title: Publishing a comment or contacting the authors privately?
I have just read a recent paper in a well-respected journal. The work is technically sound and the results interesting. However, the authors comment their main results as unexpected and “extraordinary” (in the abstract and in the text), while it is an instance of a very generic and well-known phenomenon, which has been experimentally confirmed (and theoretically explained) in a large range of systems in the last decade. The author do not seem aware of the literature on this phenomenon.
Now, I am somewhat conflicted between two courses of action:
1. Raising the matter with them privately, making them aware of the literature they have missed so that they do not repeat the mistake, and telling them (nicely) that their claims of extraordinary behavior are not valid.
2. Doing the same thing, but through a formal “Comment” published in the same journal. This does not only bring the matter to their attention, but also to other readers of the journal. *Right now, I favor this option, because I think it improves the scientific record.*
The journal in question does publish comments, its policy on the matter is the following:
> These are a medium for the discussion and exchange of scientific opinions \[…\] For publication of a Comment or a Reply, they must be judged by the referees to present new insights and be of interest to our readership.
Moreover, a Comment in the journal will necessarily include a “Reply to the Comment” by the original authors, as per journal policy.
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So, **how do I choose between contacting the authors in private, or submitting a formal “Comment” to the journal?** What factors should guide my choice?
# Answer
> 8 votes
I believe that these two choices are not mutually exclusive.
Authors should be given the benefit of the doubt. Contact them privately first, to see if they are aware of your concern, and if so, whether they have a reasonable response. You should say, in that first contact, that you think it's enough of a concern that you're preparing a formal comment to submit to the journal. Perhaps it's a bit too nice, but I would rather be allowed the opportunity to publish my own comment or even a retraction, rather than being publicly "called out" without warning.
However, I believe that if your faithful attempt to privately contact the authors fails—if they do not respond within a reasonable amount of time, or they blow you off without a satisfying explanation, or they say that they'll do something but don't—then you should move onto publishing a formal comment.
I agree that something needs to be put into the public record, and the sooner the better, but it doesn't need to be so quick that you don't even attempt to contact the original authors. Everyone should get the benefit of the doubt.
# Answer
> 8 votes
There is nothing stopping you from contacting the authors directly. In fact that might be polite. It may, however, be unfruitful. Submitting a comment is not considered less polite than contacting the authors directly first. Remember, the authors have, in your view, published poorly referenced/researched work (reviewers and editors are partly also to be blamed). By writing a letter/comment, you perform a scientific debate where you wish to correct a problem with said paper and that is clearly within the realm of what we can and should do as scientists without feeling impolite.
Before you do anything you should perhaps solicit colleagues to discuss the matter over. Since the results have been published, some form of publication discussing the problem must also appear in a publication. It is for this reason you should carefully discuss the matter, start writing a "letter to the editor" of the journal where it was published. The letter should contain the information that puts the "novelty" in perspective. Under such circumstances the authors will have the possibility of a rebuttal which typically is published at the same time as your letter, it is their opportunity to "defend" themselves. This is what typically is done.
Now several things might happen, for example, the authors get angry, the editor refuses to publish your letter. This is why you are better off not being alone behind anything you write. If the letter is refused, then publish it elsewhere. But, remember, the point of writing a letter is to set the faulty perspective of the paper in a more correct one so that the paper is not taking credit where not credit should be had. Do not stray from this endeavour.
# Answer
> 3 votes
I'll add here, for the record, what I ended up doing. After reading the advice here, and discussing with a few close colleagues, I decided to write and submit a comment, without first discussing it with the authors.
The reasons behind the choice are the following: I assume good faith on their part, and that they simply didn't know that the phenomenon they observe, and which might seem counter-intuitive, is actually a specific manifestation of a quite common behavior. They didn't know the literature well enough, or didn't realize it; at least two reviewers also didn't realize that. Thus, it is really good to “educate” the community on this, and publishing a comment in the same journal appeared to be the best aim to achieve it.
The reason I didn't contact them privately first is two-fold:
1. They will get the well-polished comment for them to reply, through the editor. A journal editor who is a friend of mine suggested that **she (as editor) would prefer to see all communication go through her,** rather than come at a later point and have to “referee” a dispute he hasn't seen half of.
2. If I wrote to them first, and they then wanted to write a correction to the paper themselves, I couldn't be sure exactly what they would say, and **my message *as relayed by them* could be less clear than what I intended to say**.
# Answer
> 0 votes
I would advice you to be careful. Not citing other sources is **quite** common in the academia as a mean of making your result look more innovative, more important, and more appealing. Then, if you tell these researchers "Oooooh, I know your dirty tricks!" (even if you do it in a polite way), they might feel offended and could probably take revenge when they come across one of your manuscripts as referees.
I understand your frustration since I often come across papers like the one you mention, written by reknown researchers and published in important journals, while they are basically reinventing the wheel. I have also come across papers where the authors do not cite their previous *extremely related* papers. *C'est la vie*.
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Tags: publications
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thread-13079 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13079 | What corrections can you make on galley proofs? | 2013-09-29T18:37:22.640 | # Question
Title: What corrections can you make on galley proofs?
When I receive galley proofs of a paper, I look at possible errors introduced by the copy-editing team. But while I proofread the article, there are sometimes small mistakes I'd like to fix, which were not introduced by them (i.e. they were already present in the accepted version of the manuscript).
Usually, the proofs are accompanied by instructions saying that **extensive changes should not be introduced at that time, and any such changes would have to be approved by the editor** (hence, I suppose, delaying publication). However, the limit is not very clear to me. **What is considered extensive changes?** In particular, what do you think of the following items (from my experience):
* Slight changes in wording, to improve clarity
* Updating a citation, because an “in press” or “ASAP” article now has page numbers
* Adding an important (but not crucial) citation one had missed, in the introduction
* Adding a citation to a paper that has been published since the manuscript was submitted; possibly adding a short sentence to the text
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What I have done so far is change everything that I think should be changed to improve the paper (including all the above items), and let the typesetter decide whether he wanted to send it back to the editor. I never received any complaint or comment on my changes, which could indicate that it was the correct course of action.
# Answer
> 25 votes
A galley proof should primarily be proofed for typos or mistakes made in the type-setting process. It is not the time to change phrasing, exchange figures, add or remove blocks of text or anything else substantial.
Adding references might seem like a useful addition but the problem is that it would then be possible to add references without the knowledge of the editors and of course the reviewers and hence possibly make changes that could have affected reviews etc. The case of adding anew paper is a similar problem since it may change the paper in ways that the editor and reviewers have not seen and therefore ok'd. If such changes are wanted (they are probably seldom needed), it would be best to at least check with the editor if that would be appropriate. In short, no changes should be made that alters the content of the paper. All such details should have been checked and if necessary corrected before submitting the final revised manuscript for copy-editing and proof production. Any corrections called for by the copy-editor and editors after submitting the final version is of course to be made.
Updating of references are usually also acceptable, to, for example, add the publication year (from e.g. "in press") or adding doi, page numbers etc. if these were not known at the time the final version was submitted.
The proofing stage is not a stage where many changes should be made. The manuscript that is submitted for proofing should be considered the last chance to make any substantial changes. What many do not realize is that all changes done after a type-set proof has been produced may cost the journal money, apart from the extra time and trouble it causes. So, as an editor, I often have the feeling authors just send in their final manuscript without checking figures and text properly and then waiting for the proof to make final changes but is, in fact, an abuse of the system.
Regarding your last paragraph, the type-setter is usually not a scientist and has no idea of what changes might mean so to think that the type-setter would act as some form of intermediate editor is not right. In cases where type-setting is done in-house it might be a professional doing the type-setting but I would still say this is not the way to handle the type-setting/proofing stage.
So, anyone, make sure the final submitted manuscript is checked, complete and correct.
# Answer
> 12 votes
All the cases you mention (minor wording changes, updating/adding references) seem entirely fine to me. It's best to do this only when it's important, but in my experience it's standard and acceptable. Peter Jansson's answer suggests what's acceptable might vary between fields or journals, however. (His point about making changes after reviewing is valid, but I'm not so worried if the changes are relatively minor.) All I can talk about is my experience in mathematics as an author and editor.
The book Mathematics Into Type (first published by the American Mathematical Society in 1971, and last updated in 1999) says the following on pages 53-54:
> If an author makes changes in first proof amounting to more than 10% of the original cost of composition, these changes are usually considered excessive. Many publishers ask authors to bear the costs in excess of 10%. These excessive correction charges may be the result of large sections of text being deleted or of changes in wording or notation.
This agrees with my memory of the traditional standard for excessive changes. It's not clear what, if anything, this 10% figure means nowadays, or how widely it's used (although web searches lead to some mentions of it in guides for authors). I wouldn't take it too seriously, but it does give an indication of what was considered acceptable in the past. Note that it didn't mean you could rewrite 5% of the article, since those changes would require resetting a lot of the surrounding text as well, but it meant you had some flexibility for making a few small changes.
Going back further, in 1943 the AMS said this:
> It is important that galley proofs be carefully read and corrected by the author, since it is only the author who can detect errors which are due to an imperfect manuscript.
So at least back then the official AMS position was that authors should correct their own mistakes when reading proofs, and not just new mistakes introduced by the typesetter. (I don't know of more recent references that discuss this explicitly.)
Of course I agree with Peter Jansson that articles should be carefully checked at the time the final version is submitted, with changes to the proofs being considered a last resort rather than an opportunity to delay the checking.
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Tags: publications, editors, copy-editing, proofreading
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thread-13084 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13084 | About multiple applications for graduate programs to the same school | 2013-09-30T05:59:43.290 | # Question
Title: About multiple applications for graduate programs to the same school
Suppose I applied to a Master's Degree Program when I was at my last year in undergraduate. I got accepted but I couldn't enroll at this school because I failed to finish the undergraduate on time, and I need to spend one more semester in undergraduate.
I want to apply again when I'm finished so what I want ask is how my previous application will affect my next one? Will it affect positively since I got accepted last time, will it affect negatively because I rejected the previous one or will it have no affect at all and they will consider my next application independent than previous one?
# Answer
This is a very good, but very difficult question. The problem is that there's no definitive answer here.
What we do know:
* **You turned down a previous offer.** This is never helpful for future admissions at a given school.
* **You were not able to accept because you weren't qualified to start.** So long as you clarified this with the school in question, this may be a mitigating factor.
What we don't know:
* **How the school evaluates candidates.** Is it a "rolling" admissions process, in which candidates are considered year round, or is it done on an annual basis?
The last point is probably the most important. If it's a rolling admissions, and you were a high-quality candidate in the previous cycle, you'd probably have a good chance of getting admitted, provided you explain what happened and why you couldn't get in.
On the other hand, if the admissions process is done once a year, then you will have to compete against all of the other candidates in *this year's* pool. Then, it's not necessarily a given that you would get in having gotten in previously. If you were a "bubble" applicant last time, You may be below the "cutoff" given a different pool of candidates—or you could be a clear admit.
> 3 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions
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thread-12695 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12695 | How to apply for a research internship at the master's level? | 2013-09-14T23:51:38.640 | # Question
Title: How to apply for a research internship at the master's level?
I'm a master's student doing research in the field of the cognitive psychology of language and I would like to do an unpaid 4-month research internship in a different university. I am preparing cover letters to send to different professors within whose projects I would like to work. I want to include in my cover letter a description of what I plan to do during my short internship, so I want to know what research interns usually do. How can they contribute to an existing research project? Also, can I say that I want to learn how to use a specific research technique (like for example a neuroimaging technique) even if I have no experience with it?
Do you have any general advice on how to best ask a professor to accept me as an intern within their research project?
# Answer
> 6 votes
**Networking is key**--check out F'x's answer to this question. Find people in your university who are willing to recommend you to the other researchers in the field, whom you would like to work with. Take advantage of the connections your faculty members have developed.
Then **write a killer cover letter**. aeismail notes that a compelling 'cover letter' email was the only reason he even considered an individual for a research internship. Research the PI and tailor your letter to his/her interests and current project.
# Answer
> 1 votes
You need to have an insatiable hunger for learning and adding knowledge or contributing to the society. If you have bad grades, you need to present yourself well and prove to your professors that you've got more that good grades to offer. Be inspired and work your way to the top without getting gunned down by pressure.
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Tags: research-process, masters, internship
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thread-13099 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13099 | How to efficiently print the image of a whiteboard? | 2013-10-01T05:00:14.267 | # Question
Title: How to efficiently print the image of a whiteboard?
I often brainstorm research ideas on my whiteboard. I then run out of space and want to store and print the contents of the whiteboard. In general I have a system of taking a photo of the whiteboard with my phone, which is synchronised to dropbox, which then creates a copy on my computer. Now I can print the image, on my computer, but it is not optimised for printing. It is possible to open it up in photoshop and manually make it black and white, and try to optimise the contrast and so on.
However, I'd ideally like it to be a one click process for printing a whiteboard image. The whole point is that the process shouldn't disrupt the brainstorming process.
**How can I efficiently print digital photos of a whiteboard that are optimised for printing?**
Naturally, the procedure might vary under different computing or phone operating systems. An ideal solution would be (a) extremely efficient, (b) minimise printing toner usage, (c) maximise readability. Useful automated steps would include: (a) optional conversion to black and white; (b) arrangement of image into a size and layout designed for printed paper, (c) optimising contrast so that the whiteboard is white and only markings print. Some form of auto-cropping might also be useful.
**UPDATE:** A few options I've discovered since posting:
*Given that using whiteboards is fundamental to teaching and research, I hope people don't mind that I have used this site for asking the question.*
# Answer
For this I use TurboScan on my iPhone. It's designed for scanning and there are many similar apps.
It takes 3 photos and combines them to get one with good contrast and resolution. It optimizes for readability. It automatically detects the edge of the whiteboard and crops there; you can easily adjust the crop to be smaller if desired. You can easily adjust contrast.
Here is a photo of what's on my whiteboard right now. This was taken in extremely poor lighting conditions (dim, with lots of glare). Also, TurboScan outputs a PDF, so you can zoom nicely without it becoming pixelated, but SE would only allow me to upload a JPEG, so what's below is lower quality. Right-click and open in a new window to see it better.
> 4 votes
# Answer
Optimizing a photo of a whiteboard is similar to optimizing a scan of a page. On Linux, I use scantailor -- it usually does a great job for what I want. It's not automatic, but it's way faster than trying to tweak curves in Photoshop.
> 3 votes
# Answer
How much money are you willing to spend? If the answer is around $400 $900<sup>*</sup>, you can get a whiteboard capture system like this:
MimioCapture System
You would have to change your workflow to make sure your computer was up and capturing, but you use regular whiteboard markers (albeit inside the electronic case).
<sub>\*educational pricing, I think, although you may have to buy additional software; I couldn't tell from the product's website</sub>
<sub>\*It looks like the pricing is much more steep for a standalone system. I am not 100% positive, but it looks like the $400 system does need other expensive components. Darn. This one seems to be completely standalond:eBeam Edge</sub>
> 2 votes
# Answer
It would not be too difficult to set up for an "almost" one-click operation. With a little bit of Unix shell scripting you could set up a process on the print server which could do the job. E.g. you could email a photo from your phone to a special email address on the print server (to make things simple on the phone side). On the server the process could look like this:
saving attached photo upon receiving email -\> processing it with e.g. ImageMagick to optimize for printing -\> send to printer
P.S.
It seems the scantailor can also be used for batch processing, haven't tried it myself, though.
> 2 votes
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Tags: tools
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thread-13098 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13098 | Should I submit a conference paper (extended abstract) to this chemical engineering conference? | 2013-10-01T00:18:45.290 | # Question
Title: Should I submit a conference paper (extended abstract) to this chemical engineering conference?
The deadline for uploading conference papers (extended abstracts) for presentations at the AICHE conference (http://www.aiche.org/conferences/aiche-annual-meeting/2013) is tonight. I have already been accepted to present on the basis of my abstracts submitted a while ago. (I wasn't invited to this conference; it requires registration and submission of material).
I emailed the event organizer and received the reply: "We strongly encourage a paper (synonymous with extended abstract) submission. However, it is not a requirement to present."
I *can* submit something today, but I would prefer not to. For one thing, some of the material needs a little more polish. And for another, I'd rather not reveal research results before the presentation date in November. I meant to ask my advisor his opinion earlier when I met with him today, but it slipped my mind. I've just started year two of grad school and this will be my first conference presentation.
Is there a good reason to go ahead and submit anyway? Having no conference experience, I am not even sure what/who these papers/extended abstracts are for. Am I skipping something that I really should be doing?
Thanks
**EDIT**: Checking the online presentations, it appears that *most* people have not uploaded an extended abstract. Not sure if that makes a difference...
# Answer
> 5 votes
**As a chemical engineer,** I would recommend *against* submitting an extended abstract. The primary reason for this is that, unlike proceedings of the Materials Research Society, the extended abstracts of the AIChE annual meeting are **not** peer-reviewed. Therefore, any such publication will automatically be of lower weight than something that has been published in a venue that provides peer review.
In addition, because the work has effectively been "published," you will find it harder to secure publication for fuller versions of this work later on, as many journals could view the extended abstract as a "prior publication" and reject a paper on those grounds.
Moreover, as David Ketcheson suggests in his answer, the dissemination of your research will be greatly hampered by the relatively low circulation of the extended abstracts.
So, for this conference in particular, and more generally for *any* conference whose proceedings are not peer-reviewed, I would avoid submitting extended abstracts and conference proceedings.
# Answer
> 3 votes
The main thing you get by submitting something is a publication on your CV. The value of a conference publication varies heavily by field; except in computer science, they are usually of much less value than a journal publication. But since you are a student, presumably even this is a substantial addition to your CV.
Unfortunately, conference papers are usually published in a book that is later impossible to get a copy of. Usually a conference publication is a limited, preliminary version of work that will later be published in a journal. It can also be a good place to publish work that is interesting but that you can't/won't pursue far enough to make it worth a journal publication.
Speaking as a professor, **you should not submit anything to a conference without first having your advisor review it**. So I think at this point you're better off not submitting anything, but I recommend planning in advance to submit something to the next conference.
# Answer
> 1 votes
Let me chime in advising against submitting an extended abstract submission.
In my field (analytical chemistry/biospectroscopy) we joke that such proceedings (including the mandatory ones e.g. with SPIE conferences) are quite good if you need a publication, but at the same time want to make sure that noone will ever read it.
Most of our conferences do not have their "own" proceedings any more, but instead papers can be submitted to a themed issue of a proper journal, undergoing the usual peer-reviewing process for a paper.
Maybe you can ask the organizer whether any such issue is planned, and for what journal?
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Tags: conference
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thread-13100 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13100 | Should one list incomplete degrees on a CV? | 2013-10-01T05:38:48.707 | # Question
Title: Should one list incomplete degrees on a CV?
When applying for jobs after my PhD, should my CV include an incomplete degree I read towards years ago? It's a field completely unrelated to what I'm doing now. However, before my final year when I started getting sups and failures by the dozen (my reason for quitting) things actually went swimmingly. I worked with a renowned professor as an undergrad research assistant for a spell and even published a paper (on my own) during that phase of my academic journey. I didn't get a certificate out of it, but I nevertheless feel I honed some valuabe skills then (and of course I have a transcript listing the passes and failures).
I have since moved onto a completely unrelated humanities field. Should I mention the incomplete degree on my CV? If I ignore it, prospective employers might wonder what I did for three years of my life, surely? Should I list my science publication on my CV when it is irrelevant to what I'm doing now? Does quitting and switching tracks make me look flighty?
# Answer
**Don't omit it**. Changing your mind at some point during your education or your career is nothing to be ashamed of. Just make sure to put it in a way that does not imply that you actually got the degree.
Not listing it would be an error in three ways at least:
* experience even in unrelated fields is always valuable;
* if you omit that stint, there will be a hole on your CV, and you will have to explain it (so you'd better mention it upfront);
* you got a publication from it, so it was actually a successful experience, even if you didn't complete your degree
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In fact, my advice would be to always list what you've done on your CV, even if it is not an academic activity. **Even if you spent two years traveling and selling onion rings on Australian beach grill house, put it in your CV.** The pros outweigh the cons (and if that experience leads a potential recruiter to turn you away, ask yourself: would you have wanted to work with someöne who has such as narrow view of life?)
> 11 votes
# Answer
Changing fields in and of itself does not make you look flighty—many faculty members have changed research fields and even academic departments during the course of their careers, and it doesn't make them look flighty!
What would be a problem is not having a valid reason for making the career switch. Struggling with a major in a science field is not a big deal; however, the fact that you managed to publish a scientific paper in that area actually represents a significant degree of accomplishment (*particularly* if you were an undergraduate at the time).
Moreover, ignoring the degree on your CV could come back to haunt you if it is discovered later on, as "fudging" the CV is often grounds for termination for a position, even years afterwards. So I would not try to "hide" this. Instead, I would make sure that I have a logical and convincing explanation for that period of your life: why did you choose to start in that field at that time, what led you to leave it, and what lessons did you take from the experience.
> 4 votes
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thread-13111 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13111 | Paper stuck in “ASAP” status: what does it indicate? | 2013-10-01T11:52:40.387 | # Question
Title: Paper stuck in “ASAP” status: what does it indicate?
I am looking at a paper by some colleagues, that has been in ASAP status for 4 months now. In that particular journal, “ASAP” indicates accepted papers after the authors have corrected the proofs: i.e., they are just like the final paper, except they have not been attributed an issue and page number yet (and have thus not yet appeared in print).
Most papers in that particular journal only stay 2 or 3 weeks in ASAP status, before being assigned an to an issue. This paper stands out, being the only one so old on the website. Yet, no indication additional information is given on the publisher's website.
What can cause a paper to be stuck so long in ASAP queue? Would it be impolite to ask the corresponding author what's going on? (I admit it would only be to satisfy my own curiosity…)
# Answer
As was mentioned in the comments, one possibility is that the editors are waiting for a better time to publish the paper, perhaps as part of a special issue or to highlight the paper on its cover.
Another possibility is that the authors have not fulfilled some requirements for publication like signing a copyright transfer form or paying the page charges.
Or perhaps there are some problematic issues about the paper. Maybe the topic is controversial and some members of the board don't want it published, or perhaps the editors suspect some unethical publication practice. (If it is this last reason, then perhaps it would be impolite to ask the authors about it.)
> 5 votes
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Tags: publications
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thread-13126 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13126 | How important are GRE analytical writing scores for graduate admission in STEM fields? | 2013-10-01T16:41:03.693 | # Question
Title: How important are GRE analytical writing scores for graduate admission in STEM fields?
What is the importance of scores in Analytical Writing section of GRE for graduated admission in STEM fields?
Does a score below 3 means that the applicant will be rejected by all good schools?
# Answer
Poor GRE scores are a warning sign, not a stop sign, in most graduate admissions. Essentially, the GRE is only a weak predictor of ability to do graduate-level research, and therefore doesn't get all that much weight, at least in the STEM fields.
Now, that said, you don't want to have a 1 out of 6, either. But there are often mitigating factors with respect to the writing section. Given that you have questions like this one:
> Some people believe that government funding of the arts is necessary to ensure that the arts can flourish and be available to all people. Others believe that government funding of the arts threatens the integrity of the arts.
>
> *Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely aligns with your own position and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should address both of the views presented.*
I would argue that the writing section is a test that reveals more about the capabilities of students in the humanities than it does students in STEM fields. So do the best that you can, and don't worry too much about this writing sample.
It's **much** more important to worry about the research statement you send to graduate schools!
> 8 votes
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Tags: graduate-school, graduate-admissions, gre
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thread-13129 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13129 | Increasing speed of paper peer-reviewing | 2013-10-01T18:50:07.240 | # Question
Title: Increasing speed of paper peer-reviewing
When reviewing a paper for peer review, I consistently find that I spend **way** more time on a paper than if I were just reading it for understanding.
How can one increase the speed at which they review papers, without compromising on the quality of the review?
# Answer
I think speed primarily comes with experience. Reviewing will nevertheless take lots of time for good reasons. Unlike when you read a manuscript (MS) for referencing in a MS of your own, you need to read everything. You also need to think about what has been referenced in detail and evaluate if omissions have been made in the referencing. You need to look at figures and tables for errors or problems, or just to suggest improvements. If you can, you also can or should comment on the language and structure of the paper. To cap off, you probably need to read the paper more than once, perhaps not in the same detail but one read is not enough. In all, this takes time. With each review this may become easier and you will be able to expedite the review.
I personally probably spend around a working day on a normal MS. Early in my career it may have taken twice the time. Some MS may take even longer. I don't think there exist any dependable short-cuts apart from being well read-up on the subject in general, and being experienced in reading and commenting on MS and reports. I am, however, convinced that the larger reductions in time occur early on since the benefits of experience comes quickly.
> 11 votes
# Answer
You will get better at this as you gain experience… but it will/should never be a blazingly fast process. The two reasons you will become faster at it are:
1. You gain more experience in the process itself, as Peter says.
2. As time goes by, you will probably give up faster on very bad papers. I remember one of my first reviews, where I wrote 2 pages of minute review of a paper, concluding that it should be rejected without a doubt for lack of originality (giving a reference to earlier work which the authors had re-discovered). Now, I would not bother with the in-depth review when it has become clear that the manuscript should be rejected.
> 1 votes
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Tags: publications, peer-review, reading
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thread-13140 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13140 | Are learning by reading from a textbook compared to listening to lectures different roads to same goal | 2013-10-02T10:48:47.703 | # Question
Title: Are learning by reading from a textbook compared to listening to lectures different roads to same goal
I have seen few people who learn better(or mostly) by reading textbooks themselves in private as that gives them more time to think back and forth about the material. While there are other students who are quick at grasping things transmitted orally like in a lecture and despise reading it through books. Few of the former even have this habit of not being able to learn at all sitting in a class as lesser time is devoted to discussion on a particular topic and the lecturer tries best to move to the next topic as quickly as possible(not always though). So should those who like to learn on their own through books be guilty for not attending classes(mandatory like in bachelors or masters programs) since they are anyway not going to assimilate much and it will be waste of time?
# Answer
You are operating on the false assumption that class time equates to "lecture". There are other things to do with class time, which may be valuable to the book-learner.
In the lecture-based undergrad classes I teach, I do not take attendance (which becomes impractical anyway as class sizes increase). Students are paying for my time, and they can do with it what they want. They have assignments that need to be completed by certain due dates - some online and some that need to be submitted in class. If they are earning good grades, I let them do whatever. If they are doing poorly, I intervene, but one-on-one.
If the course in question is discussion- or activity-based, then the students should not be excused. These types of courses are not content-based (think General Chemistry), but issue-based (Racial Inequality in American Politics) or skill-based (Introduction to Public Speaking). Again, I would not take attendance, but a majority of the students' grades will be for in-class activities - discussions about case studies or issues, group presentations, individual presentations, peer-lead team learning, active and hands-on learning, demonstrations by students, etc. In these cases the student is heavily penalized by not attending class. In the class on public speaking, perhaps each student is graded as follows: 1) three short in-class oral presentations (20% of the overall grade each); 2) a written critical reflection on their presentations as a final paper (20% of the final grade total); and 3) critical analysis of presentations made by 2 classmates (10% of the final grade each). This student needs to be in class, or he/she will be unable to do 100% of the graded work!
In all cases I firmly believe in placing the responsibility on the student. Just as the student needs to be responsible for the assignments, for studying, and ultimately for earning the final grade, the student needs to be responsible for the decision to come to class. If the student wants to skip class, the student can skip as long as the student knows that there will be real (missed assignments) and implied penalties (missed opportunities to comprehend the material better). The instructor's responsibility is not to ensure that students learn. It is to create an environment where learning can happen and to provide guidance and feedback about how successful that learning is.
> 2 votes
# Answer
"Readers" and "Listeners" is a well-known categorization regarding the main method through which a person learns. But it is one thing to acknowledge this fact, and it is a different thing to argue that any person that is learning mainly through one method, should altogether abandon the other. To take your example, if I am a "Reader", then participating in oral presentations will shed light on aspects of my reading that will never illuminate themselves. I will listen to questions that otherwise I wouldn't realize that I also had, and maybe when I would, I could not be able to answer them myself and through my books. I will listen to interpretations that I hadn't thought of. Etc, etc, etc: live interaction with other human brains does not substitute for deep reading - but it can not be replaced by the latter either. They are, simply, fully complementary.
> 2 votes
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thread-13133 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13133 | Should I leave my PhD in year 6 or just take a bit of a leave and try to regroup?/ What is an "appropriate" level of angst to go through with a PhD? | 2013-10-02T02:19:49.973 | # Question
Title: Should I leave my PhD in year 6 or just take a bit of a leave and try to regroup?/ What is an "appropriate" level of angst to go through with a PhD?
So, to start with my question... PhDs/research are undoubtedly hard/stressful, but how much is too much? Should I leave my PhD in my 6th year or just take a bit of a leave to try and regroup? (I'm 31 if that makes any difference.)
As with most, my path through grad school has not been straightforward and I apologize in advance for the lengthy background/question.
I received my MS and was planning to continue for a PhD at University A (contingent upon me getting funding + suitable project). Got both of those figured out, but my advisor was told my project would not help her tenure case and had an awkward advisor switch. Got fed up with politics at A then transferred to University B (in year 4) where I have a fantastic and super supportive advisor.
I just started my 6th year, but have not yet taken my qualifying exam. Many reasons for this, but mostly the program at Univ A was more interdisciplinary (better matched to my research) while the program at Univ B is much more traditional/focused on fundamentals. I need to relearn a lot of material which is not really relevant to my research and have been at a complete loss of motivation for months now. Being daunted by oral exams certainly plays a role, but also feel that a PhD is no longer required as my career goals have also shifted.
All of this, switching schools, etc. etc. has taken its toll on my emotionally/mentally to the point where my research progress is practically non-existent. This has all triggered pretty severe anxiety/depression (yes, I am getting help elsewhere too), but even so, I am seriously questioning whether it is really worth putting myself through this any more.
I love my research topic (on good days), but at what point is the stress of a PhD not worth it anymore?
# Answer
> 9 votes
I have just completed my PhD, so the angst you speak of is still fresh in my memory. I will say that it is good that you are thinking about your options instead of making a rash decision. We can not answer whether or not you should leave your PhD, that decision is yours and yours alone to make.
Having said that, a few things to consider (some of which you have alluded to already):
* Your enjoyment of the research topic - is it stronger than the frustration hat you feel? You mention that the move between schools and the internal politics has had a negative effect on your research productivity, reflect on what is causing that.
* Your career goals have shifted, so is the PhD relevant to what you are planning to do? More so, is the PhD in any way holding you back from achieving the career goals?
* An important question with regards to your PhD, is what is it leading to? What is the 'end game' of it all, so to speak?
* Will taking a year off having a negative effect on your funding etc? Conversely, will the year off allow you to, as you say, regroup - and also perhaps explore that career path.
I am 36, and just finished my PhD - so your age is not that important, you're still young. Never feel that you are 'obliged' to complete the PhD in a certain time frame, if at all - you have to look out for what is best for you.
# Answer
> 4 votes
I was in a similar situation where I had to transfer from Univ A to Univ B which is in a different country! Making that decision took a toll on me for months since my adviser was pressurizing me too. Finally I decided to move with him, but after a year and half at my univ I realized he was a total jerk and ignorant who did nothing for me but help destroy my career for 5 years. I understand you like your adviser and subject which is a plus.
My suggestion to you is that to take matters in to your hands! Work on subjects you like, avoid the negative comments and people (very important), forget about the number of years you spend, send papers out and you will be fine. I have done much much better in the last 6 months of PhD than the rest. From the point where I thought had no research at all, now I feel somewhat confident that I will pass the defense next month! Try to read inspirational books to get yourself going. This website helped me a lot http://www.marcandangel.com/ or find some other self-help books and get your inspiration back because it is very vital.
Good luck
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thread-13146 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13146 | Is it advisable to mention rejected publications in resume? | 2013-10-02T13:02:39.043 | # Question
Title: Is it advisable to mention rejected publications in resume?
I have two publications submitted but rejected in top conferences. Is it advisable to mention and list them in my CV/resume to show that the work was submitted for publication?
# Answer
You can certainly list them as manuscripts. I'm not sure what you are asking exactly: it would be a poor idea to list them as "Rejected from Prestigious conference A", or even "Submitted to Prestigious conference A" if Prestigious conference A has already made its decisions, and it is clear from the non-appearance of your paper that it was rejected.
> 21 votes
# Answer
You should not say that they have been rejected from Conference X.
The common practice in my field (mathematics) is to post a preprint (on arXiv or your website) at the same time as you submit a paper. In that case, it would be appropriate to list it on your CV as "Preprint" (and include a link). Of course, people may be able to read between the lines and guess that you are trying to get it published, but haven't succeeded yet.
Hopefully you will soon be revising your papers and submitting them somewhere else, at which point you can list them as "Submitted to Conference Y".
> 14 votes
# Answer
Until you have them accepted, you can list them as "Technical Reports" on your C.V. Once they are accepted, you can switch out the reference to the conference or journal where they will be published.
> 3 votes
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Tags: publications, cv, rejection
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thread-13151 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13151 | Should each substantive chapter of a PhD dissertation be of similar length? | 2013-10-02T16:23:39.280 | # Question
Title: Should each substantive chapter of a PhD dissertation be of similar length?
A professor told me once that the chapter sizes (measured in number of pages) in a PhD dissertation should be coherent. That is, the number of pages in each chapter should be somehow close to each other (to the average). Note: This does not include the Introduction and Conclusion chapters.
Is this really an important factor when writing a dissertation?
# Answer
It's just a general guideline, don't worry about it too much. Aside from the fact that there are many ways to lay out a thesis, there are many reasons this would be violated. I would venture that a better way to state this rule would be, "A chapter should be of medium length." If a given chapter is too short, it's likely an indicator that it can be combined with some other section. If a single chapter is too long, split it up into parts (experiment 1, exp 2, discussion, etc).
In any event, you should first check into how your advisor wants the thesis laid out. Consider asking your advisor to see some dissertations of other previous students to get a feel for how he likes to have things laid out; that'll be a good way to get a feel for how to lay out your own.
> 11 votes
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Tags: thesis
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thread-13157 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13157 | How to avoid the repetition of "I" while writing a cover letter for an academic job? | 2013-10-03T09:19:34.930 | # Question
Title: How to avoid the repetition of "I" while writing a cover letter for an academic job?
I use active voice for cover letter and while doing that I end up with too many "I" and most of the sentences in my letter also begin with "I". This makes my letter quite boring. I would appreciate if you share your suggestion/tips to avoid this while writing a cover letter.
Since cover letter is the first thing that the potential employer notices, I want to write a concise and attractive cover letter. It will be also helpful if you share a link of a well-written cover letter.
# Answer
> 50 votes
Because it's a cover letter, I think it's quite natural that you say a lot about *you* in it. That's actually not to be avoided, because you want to give the addressee a good idea of your background, your motivations, your interests, etc. In short, you want to show them who you are, so they *want* to work with you. This is a totally different exercise than usual academic writing.
Now, regarding the redundancy of *I*, it is a matter of writing style. It probably wouldn't bother me much, but if you want to diminish it for some reasons, here are worthy alternatives:
* Instead of *starting* your sentence with *I*, just push it somewhere down in some sentences. That way, you avoid the pattern of *I* as the first word of every sentence.
> Looking at your group's wide range of research, I must confess a certain attraction for your recent groundbreaking work on the correlation between beer-drinking and publication rate.
* Use constructions that, while retaining the first person, shift from the subject pronoun to other cases:
> It has been my intention for a few years now to shift my research interests from pure psychology to experimental psychohistory, and I have thus taken in 2009 a post-doc position at the University of Trentor (group of prof. Seldon)
instead of *“I decided a few years ago to move to the field of psychohistory…”*. Similarly, you could say
* The standard techniques of academic writing… introduce the pronoun once, then shift the discuss to avoid being the actor, e.g. using passive voice.
> During my thesis, I introduced a new data reduction technique called XXZ. This algorithm, when applied to large datasets, was used to univocally establish whether data was being manipulated. In particular, results obtained on the 2000 election showed systematic bias against a specific candidate, highlighting its power as a diagnostic tool for real-life applications.
Be aware that there are downsides, though: most of these alternatives are longer than a direct sentence starting with *I*, which means overusing them could make you sound windy.
# Answer
> 10 votes
One possibility is to use "my" now and then: instead of "I am experienced in ...", write "My fields of experience include ...". Another possibility is to use references to previous sentences: instead of writing "I developed the method of ... . I applied it to the problem of ... ." write "I developed ... . Its application to ... resulted in ... .". Also, instead of writing "I'm interested in the position because ...", write "This position will allow me to ... and benefit my ...". The idea is always the same: look at all other words in the sentence and think of whether one of them can be made the subject without changing the meaning or diluting the "importance" of the sentence. If it can, do it. If not, resort to passive voice and other techniques suggested in this thread. If it is still not satisfactory for some reason, just use "I" and go to the next sentence.
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Tags: writing, application-cover-letter
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thread-13160 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13160 | Can an article "in press" (available online) be withdrawn/retracted? | 2013-10-03T11:45:22.863 | # Question
Title: Can an article "in press" (available online) be withdrawn/retracted?
Nowadays, many journals publish articles online ahead of print, in a state that is given various names by the various publishers: in press, ASAP, just accepted, ahead of print, etc. The final printed paper will be identical with the online one, except maybe for page numbers and color figures… They can be cited through their DOI.
But if somebody, author or reader, were to find a fatal flaw with one such article, what should happen? Would the article be withdrawn (or retracted) before printing, or would it be printed nonetheless, then retracted later? And in any case, would the resulting paper be considered part of the scientific record, or not?
# Answer
> 4 votes
In your question you say "fatal flaw" and the answer will strongly depend on the meaning or intent with using these words. A fatal flaw might mean a figure is wrong; you may have submitted an earlier version of a figure you later revised. A fatal flaw may also mean you discover something that negates your results; you used the wrong equation or based your conclusions on the wrong data, both in ways that would pose serious risk. A third way to interpret the term is by personally simply disagreeing with what has been published, but my guess is that this is not what you are primarily thinking about and it is of course not grounds for any actions.
In the second case, retraction could be the only way forward. You should of course make the journal aware of this as soon as possible and ask for their suggested solution. If you have your paper published online but not yet printed, the journal (publisher) might retract it and it will never be printed. If it is printed they might retract it and probably print a note in a following issue to that fact. See examples for why in The New England Journal of Medicine
In the first case, the journal will likely publish an erratum, publish the correct figure to follow up on the example. Anything that is of a technical nature and can be rectified by providing the correct version will be done so through errata,. In print this will be included also in a subsequent issue.
Elsevier, for example, summarizes their rules and provides the following grounds for retraction:
> * *Article withdrawal*: Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.
> * *Article retraction*: Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Occasionally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication.
> * *Article Removal*: Legal limitations upon the publisher, copyright holder or author(s).
> * *Article Replacement*: Identification of false or inaccurate data that, if acted upon, would pose a serious health risk.
In essence, if something is officially published with a doi, there is no way to get corrections made in the pdf or in print. The online version must correspond to the printed and so the solution becomes providing a correction later on.
Anything that has published will be possible to see. A paper that has been retracted will just be associated with a clear sign that a retraction has been made. The paper might live on through older copies on peoples computers or in their desk drawers.
There is an article in PLOS one that provides a perspective on retractions in general and which may be of interest.
# Answer
> 2 votes
I think that unless you're talking about a quarterly or annual journal, the investigative process for a retraction would probably stretch past the point where the journal would have to be sent to press. The only exception I can see is a clear-cut plagiarism case.
Therefore, I'd expect most plagiarism cases to proceed as if it were a standard case.
For online-only journals, you might be able to stall publication while you figured such issues out. The article, once accepted, should go through the same treatment as a published article, so a formal retraction should be done. Otherwise, it could look like nothing was ever submitted in the first place, which is wrong.
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Tags: publications, ethics, retraction
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thread-11660 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11660 | Seminar on How to Behave At University | 2013-08-05T09:53:22.940 | # Question
Title: Seminar on How to Behave At University
Many students arrive at University and struggle with the transition from school.
Has anyone run/attended a lecture in which some or all of the following topics - or similar - were covered? Note - I am envisaging a mandatory single lecture for first-years which is independent of course/faculty.
**How to behave in class**
e.g. little/no talking while the lecturer is talking; what to do if arriving late (go in through a rear door, and/or apologise),
**How to ask help of a lecturer/tutor**
e.g. make an appointment and arrive on time if you want to ensure you get attention; don't arrive unprepared - show that you've done some reading and/or attempted to solve the problem yourself; have a series of well-defined questions ready, rather than just "can't do it"; don't show up 24 hours prior to a deadline set a month ago asking for help that should have been sought weeks ago and expect miracles;
**How to engage with lecturers**
e.g. forms of address - initial formality (e.g. "Hello Dr/Prof. X") is very likely to be appreciated and then met with an invitation to be more informal (call me "Phil"). Remind that lecturers are often engaged in other teaching and/or research and may often be too busy to chat if you just drop by their office.
**How to engage with students**
Remind the students that they are adults, this is not school, there are now serious consequences for breaches of behavioural codes.
Note, this subject material is not course or subject specific, nor am I envisaging the lecture as part of a lecture course, where only a subset of the year group attends. I envisage a mandatory class that all first-year students must attend at the start of the year. Furthermore, it sets out only the basic requirements of behaviour - specific lecturers might have their own additional policies on behaviour that they follow in their class.
# Answer
> 10 votes
I attended such a course during my first semester at a community college. It was mandatory for all incoming students, in all fields/majors. This course covered most of the topics you mentioned, plus effective study habits, time management, basic computer and research skills, and brief experience with PowerPoint and givng a presentation. A major focus of the course was introducing students to resources they could use if they ran into difficulties with studies or life experiences. For me, the course was not very useful, since I already had a strong foundation in those essential life skills. However, to other students, the course proved very useful.
# Answer
> 8 votes
These are four very different topics, with distinct answers for each.
> How to behave in class
This is typically deliniated by each professor on a class-dependent basis, as expected behavior will vary from course to course.
> How to ask help of a lecturer/tutor
This is pretty low-level etiquette, and these sorts of things are typically tacitly conveyed through interactions with the community rather than being formally discussed in a lecture.
> How to engage with lecturers
Again, varies from lecturer to lecturer.
> How to engage with students
I've seen this discussed in a wide variety of settings, including seminars, course lectures, lab meetings, and individual advisor discussions.
# Answer
> 1 votes
I set up an introductory lecture for students. Some of it was along the lines you outlined but there were some additional points which I will mention.
I had the possibility to run a short written anonymous survey asking for (up to three) keywords about their (1) expectations, (2) reason for studying in general, (3) reason for choosing the topic, (4) what they are elt uncertain about with their coming studies, (5) what they considered most important about studies, (6) listing differences and similarities between higher ed. and lower ed., (7) their roll as student, (8) the lecturers roll, and (9) what they look forward to the most. This was collected and could be summarized in an an hour before my lecture so I could use the outcome to discuss their answers directly.
First, I had students discuss in groups of four in the lecture hall to briefly answer the questions: why get an univ. ed.? How does a univ. ed. work? and what distinguishes university from lower level ed.? This formed the basis for going into, and this could possibly differ slightly between systems, the very clear differences between school and university. In school teachers are there to teach you and it is their job to make sure you understand. At the university, lecturers are there to present, help explain and structure material. The learning is the job of the student, not the lecturer. The lecturer facilitates learning. So, bluntly speaking, the difference is that if you do not learn in school it could be blamed on the school but if you do not learn at a university, you need to primarily blame yourself.
I also pointed out the importance of skill such as the written and spoken word, study habits and computer skills (many other specific to the particular education could be mentioned). These skills are usually not mentioned anywhere but are outcomes of almost every course in one way or another.
Second, I outlined the many rolls of someone working at a university: teach, develop teaching, teach and advice graduate students, research (including writing proposals), administration, maintain national and international contacts, and research information to society (please add if you can think of more tasks. It is important to understand the conditions under which the lecturers live.
Third: *Professional attitude*. Pointing out that studies are serious but also that they should be fun through good social interactions and that students and lecturers in a way are colleagues in a common project, to complete a successful and useful education.
I also re-ran the survey once they were done with the course (which ran a full term) and could then repeat and highlight the differences in their answers. The main point of this is to get everyone to at least have heard the same "truth" about what they were about to embark upon. For some it was no news but many expressed that they received a better picture of what it is all about. There certainly was a lot more understanding for the lecturers reality than earlier.
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Tags: undergraduate, seminars
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thread-13169 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13169 | Switching majors | 2013-10-03T17:33:45.333 | # Question
Title: Switching majors
I am an undergraduate student studying mathematics. I am thinking of switching to engineering for masters or phd programs. The problem is I do not have a single engineering course. I do have knowledge of programming in C. I do not know if it makes difference, I have a few physics courses as well. I however have more than one year before I graduate.
Which engineering fields are possible to go from the background I have? How can I strengthen the possibility to go into good programs despite such programs?
# Answer
> 2 votes
There are a few things that you would need to do (and a few rhetorical questions to ask yourself):
* Talk to the admissions people relevant to the graduate studies you are wishing to do. A key question here is: Do you have the prerequisites they require?
* Go to the profiles of any professor in that faulty, particularly looking at their research interests and read some of the research papers they have completed. Also, pay particular attention to the titles of the research degrees they have supervised (sometimes, this is available). A key question here would be: Which engineering field of research matches your interests, expertise and background?
* Last, but not least, what is your 'end-game'? What is the overall career/research plan?
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Tags: graduate-school, graduate-admissions
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thread-13167 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13167 | Strategy for teaching in a room that is laid out "wrong" | 2013-10-03T17:28:19.620 | # Question
Title: Strategy for teaching in a room that is laid out "wrong"
I teach a mixed undergrad/grad course that has lecture (300 people) and seminar (15 people) components. Thankfully for me, only the grad students get seminars. I have 2 TAs that assist with the seminars allowing us to break into 3 five-student 1-instructor discussion groups. The problem is that thanks to the miracle of central time tabling this year I have been given a tiered lecture hall that seats 25 people for the seminars. How do you run discussion groups in a cramped lecture hall?
# Answer
This is more of an opportunity to change the scenery, as F'x mentioned in a comment — going outside or in the student union building and such could be a great alternative. If you do not have to stay in the assigned seminar room, then why stay there?
To expand on this further, I need to share an example — I used to teach a Physics class, literally in a storage room, it was cramped and did not really help in their learning, my teaching or any of our sanity, so here are a couple of examples of what we did:
* Split the class and did the lesson via a basketball match, we were doing projectile motion — the point here is that we moved location and did an activity within the context of what is being taught at that time. The activity need not be directly related, but doing a drill (such as basketball shots) of sorts could help students' focus.
* We 'walked and talked', this worked only with small groups — we had a topic, and went for a walk discussing the topic. This proved to be very effective (for me anyway), as all my students were checking for information of the topic on their phones etc.
> 4 votes
# Answer
In a tiered lecture hall that has the long continuous tables with chairs, rather than auditorium seats, was the gather students around one end of the long tables and basically have students on one side sitting backwards. The room I did this in has chairs that swivel 360 so this was not actually uncomfortable for them. And then you sit on the end of the table with 2 or 3 students on each side from your point of view. This generally works for small enough groups like you have.
> 4 votes
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Tags: teaching
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thread-83 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/83 | Good practices for organizing notes | 2012-02-15T10:35:05.727 | # Question
Title: Good practices for organizing notes
As a PhD student I generate a lot of pages with calculations, ideas and lecture notes.
Most of them are useful only for a short amount of time, but some may be important for much longer (when writing a paper, or when having new ideas to continue a once abandoned project). Typically I work on a few project simultaneously.
The question is, what is good practice for taking and keeping notes? (With or without computer apps.)
Writing on single sheets (even if adding date and title) makes it easy to organize by topic, but also easy to lose. Keeping them in one notepad makes it harder to collect useful things of one topic in one place.
# Answer
> 20 votes
You should keep a research notebook, regardless of whatever other system you have for notes. The format of the notebook is up to you; it can even be public (see Carl Boettiger's as an example of an electronic lab notebook). it can be created in programs such as an iPython or Jupyter notebook, or even a more specialized program such as Findings.
If you choose the pen-and-paper route for your research notes, and want to have the added flexibility/security of taking your notes with you (and also because it's good practice to do so), you should consider getting a scanner and making regular backups. You can then import these into a product like Evernote, Onenote, or MacJournal, If you are using LaTeX, your options are somewhat limited, as most of the major tools for notebooking really don't support "live" LaTeX. Then you'd be better off using something like Aquamacs as a holder for your "notebooks" (LaTeX documents), and then using one of the above packages (or something like Papers or Paperless to organize the resulting PDFs.
# Answer
> 14 votes
I would definitely recommend a research notebook.
There are several different ways you can go about it.
* The old school method of just using a paper notebook, where you enter data and computations sequentially by date. One is often encouraged to start a new page if one is moving to a new topic (and label the topic at the top of the page); but another possibility is to make use of the margins for noting the topic at hand.
* An electronic notebook would be more searchable. On the other end of the spectrum from a paper notebook is a lab wiki. Some universities even have a university-wide Wiki platform available (for example, here's EPFL's wiki portal). In those cases you won't have to worry about administration issues, and many of those services are regularly backed up, and come with access control system so that you can limit your lab notebook to be only viewable by those in your research group.
* An intermediate method is to just keep a private electronic notebook. I use a customised document class that I wrote for this specific purpose. If you use a good indexing package in LaTeX and make the effort to keep good indices, such a notebook can be very easily searchable. It also has the advantage that when preparing lecture notes or papers for submission, you can just copy and paste directly from your notebook.
If you prefer not to have a single notebook, what you'd need then is a sophisticated document managing system. For paper documents this will generally involve a filing cabinet, folders, and sticky labels. For electronic documents (say you digitize all your notes either by typing them up or scanning them), a lot of the citation managers, especially those that support multiple databases, can easily be co-opted for organising notes. On the even fancier side, you may want to use some sort of mind-mapping software.
Another option if you do not mind "showing how the sausage is made" is to follow the initiative of the Open Science Project and blog about your research as you go along.
# Answer
> 7 votes
For some pretty well-thought suggestions about organizing your notes (without being specific to any application, and dealing with both electronic and paper notes), you can refer to this link.
A summary of what methods are discussed:
* Keeping Track of Information Online: How to organize your notes in a sensible directory structure on your computer.
* Version Control: Using the power of SCS packages (Mercurial happens to be my favorite due to its ease of use) to store multiple revisions of your notes.
* Keeping Track of Paper: Finally, how to keep your office clutter-free.
Bear in mind that the link is a bit dated, so it doesn't refer to online services like Google Docs which can be effectively used to keep a back-up of your notes online!
# Answer
> 5 votes
I like to keep the paper option, since most initial ideas are usually a waste of time to typeset using LaTeX or any other computer system. I really hope that does not sound like advertising, but I find the combination of Atoma notebooks (picture below) and sticker tabs quite efficient. You don't lose sheets, and you reorganise them as you wish, as many times as you wish.
# Answer
> 1 votes
If you have Microsoft Windows Office 2010, I would recommend OneNote as a really handy way of tracking your notes, images, miscellaneous ideas etc.
For a non-MS cross-platform app, you can try Evernote \- it is similar to OneNote, with the added advantage of syncing your notes over multiple computers/tablets etc.
# Answer
> 1 votes
Part of my answer in this question applies here as well; when reading papers, I've found it useful to write down notes on paper, and then put the notes in a 3-ring binder, along with the paper itself. A similar technique can be used electronically using either Papers or Evernote... take notes on each paper and attach the notes to the paper (or the to paper if using Evernote). Personally, I found it much better to take notes by hand, as you can scribble in margins, write equations, draw out plots, MUCH faster than if done by hand.
I've also made it a point to keep all notes from classes I took. I've found numerous instances where I referred to notes from a course I took a while back. It's much easier to re-read your own notes (assuming you take good notes) than to learn it from a book where you're unfamiliar with the layout and presentation style.
# Answer
> 1 votes
I find that using Endnote (or a similar reference software) kills two birds with one stone. I find typing up references correctly very very tedious, but absolutely essential. You can import a lot of the references from databases (less typing needed) and then add your own notes, keeping it all in one place. You can add files or scan your paper notes or photos. It is also easily searchable. Plus when it comes to collating your reference list or bibliography, it automatically inserts and formats the articles in the style you selected. That alone can save days when finalising papers.
Endnote works on both macs and pcs and also has an online version. http://www.endnote.com/
I also found that universities usually buy a site licence for Endnote or another similar reference software that both staff and students can use for free.
# Answer
> 0 votes
I find that a mix of both worlds (physical and digital) works best for me. People have different ways of retaining and processing information.
Productivity apps are quickly becoming a popular and efficient choice in managing note, documents and other information. You may want to try applications like Evernote, Dropbox or Google Drive or a mixture of the three.
Also recognizing this growing problem of information overload and how to address it, there are many new and improved data capture applications that cater to the myriad of problems stemming from the need to organize information efficiently while making it accessible no matter the age of the info. You may want to try new apps around like Doo or Phoenary to enhance your note-organizing and information capture.
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Tags: note-taking, workflow, document-organization
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thread-13164 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13164 | How do I change schools/advisors without making my advisor angry? | 2013-10-03T15:40:26.397 | # Question
Title: How do I change schools/advisors without making my advisor angry?
I am currently a PhD student in a program that I do not find challenging. A part of that may be due to the fact that my advisor has an EXTREMELY hands off approach. He will not return my emails for weeks on end and rarely gives me things to do, despite the fact that I am being paid as an RA.I worked with him for two years as an RA during my masters and I am currently in my first year of a PhD agree.
I also don't know if the program I am in is good for my career. I am generally unhappy with the required coursework I am taking and just weary of my future career options. Given the previous internships I have done at renowned institutions, I think I can do better. I have been toying with the possibility of switching schools for quite some time now. Here is my problem: How do I apply to a new school without burning bridges with my current advisor? The problem is my advisor is NICE and so amiable. The hands off approach just doesn't work with me. Sometimes I get the feeling that I am not important or the least of my advisor's priorities.
I know that any program I apply to would want a recommendation from my advisor. I just don't know how to proceed! I want to apply to top tier programs in my field -- but want to retain a good relationship with my current advisor just in case I don't get accepted.
1)What is the best way to proceed without burning bridges?
2) Is it possible to apply to a new program without my previous advisor's recommendation?
# Answer
Since you received your Master's degree from the same institution, it is understandable that you would want to pursue other options even if you were not having difficulties with your advisor. This might be a good way to approach your advisor without causing unnecessary tension. Ask for a meeting, express your concerns tactfully, and ask for opinions on what your options are (both including going elsewhere, but also discuss what measures you can take to get more out of your program). Hopefully is your advisor is as amiable as he/she seems, this won't be a problem. I do not know how not having your advisor's recommendation would be received for applications, but it could lead to questions.
> 3 votes
# Answer
This is the answer to everything, but **talk to your advisor**. If he is, as you say, very nice but hands off, you should talk to him. Express your concerns, that you really feel you need a more hands-on approach and that right now you feel like you are floundering. If you're honest and direct without blaming him, asking for help, he may change his behavior or work with you to find a better fit. Either is good for you, but you need to talk to him. He knows he's being hands-off, he just may not know that it is not working for you. You need to communicate that.
> 11 votes
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thread-13186 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13186 | How to handle being removed from a paper for (perhaps) unethical reasons? | 2013-10-04T16:11:48.937 | # Question
Title: How to handle being removed from a paper for (perhaps) unethical reasons?
I was recently replaced in my role of analyzing data in a project by another person on the project. It's not clear that the person has the authority to do this. He is a resident in neurosurgery with no formal training in research.
This removal came nearly immediately after I communicated to him unequivocal null results that a colleague of mine confirmed. When I asked, he offered no explanation for this removal. He will replace me with a statistician who works for the device whose efficacy we were testing.
If I learn that he publishes observation on the current data set that completely contradict my findings, do I have an ethical duty to make this known?
This was a side project for me. My removal from it has no adverse professional impact for me. Nor do I think that speaking up will have an adverse impact for me, it may even not for him.
# Answer
> 9 votes
The story you tell certainly leaves off a certain fragrance. The key question seems to be whether or not you have been replaced in order to get more "friendly" results. It is clear that it is possible to have an opinion about how data should be analysed and that opinions may deviate. It is also possible to interpret results differently. But, all within reason. If your analysis is sound and provides a certain outcome while a new analysis provides the basis for a different there can be either a matter of academic disagreement or that one or the other is flawed. I cannot judge this of course.
Depending on which case you are facing the necessary, or possible, action would be to write a letter to the editor providing your analysis and view of the results to be published in the same journal, or to write the editor pointing at the error on the publication. In the latter, worse case, you of course need to be able to show without question that your view is correct and that the other is flawed (beyond just opinion). If the results are seriously flawed and may cause serious harm, the paper may even be retracted (see e.g. policy from Elsevier and examples from the New England Journal of Medicine).
So in short, the way forward depends on the seriousness of the flaw. An alternative option is of course to simply walk away and find better collaborators and more interesting vistas. But, if there are serious ethical problems you need to take action. Where you draw the line is not clear but usually a person with questionable behaviour has a history so you may be able to assess the over-all seriousness of the problem.
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Tags: ethics, authorship
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thread-13170 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13170 | Must an "academic reference letter" be from a university-employed researcher, or will other researchers do too? | 2013-10-03T20:17:01.747 | # Question
Title: Must an "academic reference letter" be from a university-employed researcher, or will other researchers do too?
I'm applying for a post-doc where they ask for two "academic reference letters". Does the adjective "academic" strictly mean they must be from people working in academia? In my field, a good deal of research is performed at meteorological agencies, and I've co-authered several papers with a researcher employed at such an agency. Would a letter from a researcher who publishes lots of papers (5 1st-author articles in 2 years), but is not associated with any university, be considered an "academic reference letter"? Said researcher has a PhD, but further academic titles.
# Answer
> 10 votes
Better safe than sorry: check with the institution you're applying to, they may have formal requirements about this.
However, I don't think it's likely to be very narrow. The important points are that the recommendation letters come from **people with a good track record**, i.e. people who clearly perform high-quality research, and that **they have worked closely with you** in the past. Whether they're affiliated with a university, a meteorological agency, the NASA, a museum, or even (may God have mercy on your soul) The Industry… it doesn't matter much.
# Answer
> 3 votes
I've never known of an academic program that didn't accept letters from employees at research laboratories. Depending on the field, demonstrating such contacts can be a significant plus. Of course, some academics are only impressed by other academics.
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Tags: recommendation-letter
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thread-13196 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13196 | What are evaluation criteria for NSF postdoctoral fellowships? | 2013-10-04T21:33:05.083 | # Question
Title: What are evaluation criteria for NSF postdoctoral fellowships?
I am currently working on applying for an NSF postdoctoral fellowship and I was wondering if anyone had insight into the following questions:
* Is it practical to have a proposed research project that is not directly in line with the applicant's previous research (I'm thinking of a research project that in some way falls within the same subspeciality but none of the work I've done before naturally segues into this work)
* Is it disadvantageous to apply to work under someone who already has numerous postdocs (say around 4)? The worry would be that a panel would think that this would reduce the sponsor's ability to be an involved mentor
* When it comes to Broader impacts, in particular things like educational outreach, is it all right if this occurs in another country if I am applying to be supported by the NSF while at a foreign institution.
# Answer
1. I think this depends to a large degree on how intelligently you can write about this subject. If you have a carefully thought out research plan, and can point to how your previous experience prepared you for it, I don't think it should be a huge problem. That said, there's no reason to really go out on a limb in the description. It's not like you're required to do the research you propose, so I would be more inclined to suggest doing a mix of problems from the new and old areas. Also, talk to your recommenders about it. If they're enthusiastic, it will really help.
2. I wouldn't over think this stuff. It's just impossible to know what people will think. I would concentrate more on what you think is best for you.
3. You should discuss anything cool you've done with educational outreach. If it was in another country, I don't think it's a problem at all.
> 2 votes
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Tags: career-path, funding, nsf
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thread-13185 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13185 | How will the 2013 US government shutdown affect NSF postdoc applications? | 2013-10-04T15:44:14.213 | # Question
Title: How will the 2013 US government shutdown affect NSF postdoc applications?
**Does anyone know if there will still be NSF postdocs offered (the current deadline is the 16th), given that the NSF website is currently down due to the government shutdown in the US?**
Also, in case it is still open, if anyone has the PDFs that could previously be found at
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm\_summ.jsp?pims\_id=5301
regarding the information, application process, and forms to be submitted, perhaps they could mirror a copy on a website, and post the link here?
# Answer
> 13 votes
Documents are posted here. Extra text so I can actually post this.
I should note that some of the documents are specific to the Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, but some of them are general-purpose (I came to this question from MathOverflow).
# Answer
> 3 votes
I think the answer that we don't know. It depends on when and how the shutdown is resolved. As long as the NSF gets back up to its previous funding levels, presumably it should be OK. I think it's quite likely that the deadline will be pushed back given how close it is, but it's hard to know until something happens in Washington.
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Tags: funding, application, postdocs, united-states, nsf
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thread-13208 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13208 | Why do researchers in areas requiring minimal resources apply for grants? | 2013-10-05T15:30:34.413 | # Question
Title: Why do researchers in areas requiring minimal resources apply for grants?
I heard that many researchers spend a lot of their time (maybe even a half) writing the grants. I understand the researchers that need to purchase some equipment or fund their PhD students, although does not the department fund PhD students anyway?
But what about pure mathematicians and researchers who need a pencil and paper, a personal computer. Do these apply for grants, what for?
# Answer
> 55 votes
I am a theoretical computer scientists in a top-10 US computer science department. To first order approximation, the *only* reason I apply for grants is to fund PhD students.
* My research does not require PhD students, but it's part of my job as a university professor to advise them, I enjoy working with them, and I am considerably more productive when I work with them.
* Students in my department that are not funded by research grants or fellowships are funded instead by teaching assistantships. Being a TA requires a significant time investment, decreasing the time that these students can devote to research. Being a TA can be incredibly valuable experience, especially for prospective academics, but the first-order criterion for judging the success of PhDs in computer science is the quality of their research output.
* My department competes with peer departments — and I compete with researchers in those departments — to attract strong PhD students. If we/I want to attract strong students, we have to make credible promises of future funding to do research, because that's what our peer departments do. Prospective PhD students understand the previous point.
* I work in a public university in a state with rather significant budget problems. TAs are paid from state money, which is limited. Thus, my department can only support a limited number of TAs. So if I want the department to admit more than a small number of students into my research area, I have to demonstrate that we can fund a majority of those students through grants.
* Students need funding to travel to conferences to present their research results, because they need to build a reputation in the research community. I could pay for my own travel out of pocket if I really had to, but most PhD students don't have that luxury.
There are a few second-order concerns as well.
* The day-to-day functioning of my department requires a steady stream of incoming research grants. Grant overhead pays for a lot of basic infrastructure in my department, including the salaries of all the staff our business office, half of the salaries of most other administrative staff, support for non-instructional non-research computing resources like our graduate admissions database. Grant overhead is also the source of startup packages for new faculty (for which we are again competing with our peers).
* The only equipment I need is "pencil and paper"—or more accurately, a laptop with a stable LaTeX distribution and a drawing program, and basic internet access. NSF no longer allows research funds to be used for general-purpose computing equipment, so I can't include that in my grant budgets anyway. But my university returns a small fraction of overhead directly to PIs, and I can use that to buy new laptops, to pay for additional travel (by me, my students, or visitors), or even to help fund RAships.
* Tenure and promotion decisions, and to a smaller extent raises, do depend in part on professors' proven ability to attract funding, especially in a department (and college) like mine where most faculty are extremely successful.
* Oh right, I almost forgot. I can pay myself an extra month or two of salary over the summer from my grants. The university pays me for only 9 months of each year (although that pay is spread over 12 months), so each month of summer salary is actually more than 10% of my annual pay.
# Answer
> 34 votes
Speaking as a pure mathematician, there are still plenty of reasons to apply for grants:
* grants contain supplementary salary, the appeal of which should be obvious. It also includes travel funding, so one can travel to conferences one otherwise couldn't get funded. (Also, the funding for conferences comes from grants).
* generally the funding for graduate students is tied to teaching and comes from a fixed pot. So having grant funding allows one's students to concentrate on research more.
* there's an aspect of "keeping score." It's generally hard for say a university administrator to judge the quality of a research program, so a grant is an outside stamp of quality. If one might be interested in getting a different job, it's especially important.
* pure mathematicians actually don't spend a huge amount of time applying for grants; they maybe average one every two years or so. NSF grants last 3 years, with a few extra applications for conference or big group grants thrown in.
# Answer
> 9 votes
Generally speaking, the competitiveness for research money is a way to "ensure" that there is scrutiny of projects so that well founded studies get funded and less so may not. Like all systems there are flaws but the general principle is to extract the best proposals as seen by peers).
The funding for researchers through their departments varies substantially between systems and even between universities within any system. Some departments may fund PhD students, some may rely on external funding. Researchers need to go to conferences and publish papers (which may involve costs) so even if you only need paper and a pencil for the research itself, there are other activities that must be covered and the examples I gave are probably not covered by department finances. For most experimental research, costs for equipment, labs or field visits can be substantial.
In my system, partly due to credit crunch and a general interest in cutting costs everywhere, more and more must be covered, even office costs for performing the research and office costs for PhD students.
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Tags: funding
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thread-13216 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13216 | Discreet way to establish priority | 2013-10-06T01:56:32.600 | # Question
Title: Discreet way to establish priority
After finishing a paper, I'd like to show it to a few people for review. I'd like to establish publication priority somehow. The site arXiv won't do because my paper hasn't been reviewed to that level of quality. On the other hand, viXra won't do because I don't want to look like a crackpot.
Here are some desirable functions. The site:
1. Lets me upload a file
2. Lets me share the URL so that anyone can see it who has the URL
3. Shows the time I uploaded the file in a trustworthy way
4. Prevents others from modifying it-- it's view only
Bonus: 5. Shows versions of the file, together with their upload times
How many of these can be satisfied? Would a file sharing site suffice? Thanks for your advice.
# Answer
> 21 votes
You cannot establish priority without circulating your paper widely. Or, more precisely, you can prove that you had the idea first, but that won't help you much. Academic credit is awarded for contributing to the research community. If you have an idea and don't publicize it (so few people find out or learn from it), and someone else rediscovers the idea and tells everyone, then they will get most or all of the credit, because the community will have learned far more from them than from you. Even if you can prove you made the discovery first, you may end up as a footnote or side comment in the background sections of future papers.
This is not always fair, but it's a pretty good system. In particular, it avoids the nightmare scenario of researchers trying to establish priority while deliberately telling as few people as possible (to preserve their head start for follow-up work).
The fact that the arXiv has time stamps and keeps old versions available is potentially useful for resolving disputes, but the important aspect is that papers on the arXiv get noticed. That's why the arXiv is a good way to establish priority: the community doesn't consider "Oh, I had no idea that paper was on the arXiv" to be a good excuse. By contrast, if you post the paper somewhere much more obscure, then not noticing it would not be surprising or frowned upon.
How to handle this depends on the threat you are worried about. If you are concerned that someone you ask to look over the paper might steal your ideas, then you could cc a trusted mentor who could vouch for you if there were a dispute. On the other hand, I wouldn't worry about this too much: outright theft of ideas is rare, and why would you even want advice from someone you think might plausibly be a thief? If you are concerned about staking out credit in case someone else is independently working on similar ideas, then there's nothing you can do except get your paper in good shape and then distribute it.
> If my paper is wrong and I put it on arXiv, I'll look like a crackpot. I want something a lot more obscure than arXiv while my paper is in its formative stages.
Of course it's hard to say without more information, but these comments suggest to me that worrying about credit may be premature. I'd recommend revising/polishing the paper until it is no longer potentially embarrassing or in a state of flux, and then posting it to the arXiv.
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Tags: publications, peer-review
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thread-13224 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13224 | Can I switch grad schools early in MA? | 2013-10-06T17:00:39.663 | # Question
Title: Can I switch grad schools early in MA?
I am currently almost one semester into a graduate program at a school in Michigan. However, I just heard back from my dream school in Florida. **Am I able to stop my program at one school and start at another?** I don't even mind starting fresh seeing as I'm only 2 classes deep into my MA. Any help/suggestions/opinions will be greatly appreciated!
# Answer
You can do whatever you want. If another school accepts you into their program and you'd rather be there, I don't see a problem. Of course, there exist circumstances in which switching might have downsides, but you haven't told us enough about your situation for any of us to judge them. Sounds like you just want someone to tell you it's OK to switch, which I'm fine with doing.
> 3 votes
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Tags: graduate-school, graduate-admissions, masters
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thread-13143 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13143 | How does the US government shutdown affect academics? | 2013-10-02T12:40:28.737 | # Question
Title: How does the US government shutdown affect academics?
I hope this question does not offend our American fellows.
I've read in news that the US government is partially closed and many agencies and services run by US federal government is no longer available, for example national parks, many websites, etc. I was wondering if this temporary government shutdown has any negative effects on academic life in US?
# Answer
> 34 votes
It definitely has. And by that, it has an impact even on academic life outside of the US. One of the most important data and literature resource in medical and life science is the US National Center for Biotechnology Information, running for example the literature database PubMed. Now it has a statement on its website saying
> Due to the lapse in government funding, the information on this web site may not be up to date, transactions submitted via the web site may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted.
Concerning the National Institute of Health, the website http://www.usa.gov/shutdown.shtml states that
> Research into life-threatening diseases and other areas will stop, and new patients won’t be accepted into clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health
I'm not sure how to interpret this, but it could mean that the research personnel is on unpaid leave.
# Answer
> 18 votes
In the US most academic institutions are not run directly by the Federal Government and so are not shut down. That is even public universities are run by the states, not the Federal Government, and so are not shut down. So the teaching side of academic life in the US is not really impacted unless the shutdown lasts long enough to interrupt student loan and grant payments.
Research is another issue and it depends on how exactly you are funded. If all of your federal grant money has been transferred to your university then it is there and you can use it. But you won't know when the next installment will come. If you work directly for a federal research unit then you have been shut down and sent home.
# Answer
> 8 votes
It appears that the shutdown may result in the cancellation of a whole year of research in Antarctica.
Update: The NSF just shut down all Antarctic research, though they have left open the possibility of restarting some of it if the shutdown ends very soon.
Update 2: Antarctic season is "open" but some projects will still be cancelled this year due to the delay.
# Answer
> 5 votes
Just as an example:
Today I tried to download this paper from NASA, but failed. It was only then when I realized the US Government has been shut down.
# Answer
> 3 votes
This affects people outside the US too: some databases maintained by US institutions, like NIST, have been effectively shut down. In the case relevant to my work, I don't have access to the NIST Chemistry Webbook and related databases, which is a royal pain in the buttocks.
# Answer
> 3 votes
The Wonder database containing the surveillance data that the CDC collects has been shut down.
Epidemiologists worldwide use these data.
If anyone is searching for the data that was in the morbidity tables from the National Disease Surveillance Survey (NDSS), that data up to May 2013 is available on github.
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Tags: academic-life
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thread-13180 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13180 | Good responses to "Ivory Tower" accusations? | 2013-10-04T10:59:59.327 | # Question
Title: Good responses to "Ivory Tower" accusations?
Recently I have come across a few articles on Google that are really distressing.
I typed in "professor real world" and it just mentions how professors have lost touch with the real world, how they need to step down from their ivory towers, etc.
Why is all that bad? It doesn't make me reconsider my dreams a little, but it does hurt.
Is it ultimately subjective from the pessimists' point of view? I have come to terms with the fact nothing ultimately matters, we are just grains of (smart) sand in the universe. Whether I did industry or not wouldn't matter, since I love academia.
**How can I help others see that academia is a 'real job' too?**
# Answer
There is no point talking to people about the job they cannot do themselves or about the parts of reality they cannot even see, not to say enter. Most of them are, probably, just envious (that's why the words "easy life", "good salary", and "tenure" appear in such articles more often than not). The rest are frustrated that our work doesn't provide any immediate personal benefit for them. As to "stepping down from ivory towers", in Soviet Union the students and professors were sent for a month to collective farms to help with harvesting every year. It turned out that we could do the farm work. Sending help in the other direction wasn't considered practical.
> 14 votes
# Answer
Firstly, you **do** matter, we all matter in our own way and we have no idea just how far our influence will extend. Never let yourself otherwise.
Secondly, as JeffE said in the comment, some people are just jerks - for whatever reason, the authors of those articles are venting, and as they can not possibly know every professor - they probably have had an awful experience and are venting, generalising across the board. (or they can just be jerks).
*They obviously do not know my professors - the most dedicated educators I have ever had the privilege of working with.*
Ignore those remarks, follow your ambitions, be the best you can be in your field.
Fundamentally, you do not have to prove yourself to anyone, but yourself. So, be yourself.
> 9 votes
# Answer
I can only speak to my personal experience, but it stems from the fact that professors are supposed to be training in a new generation of productive people in the work force. If they have not spent a significant amount of time being productive themselves, they are at a disadvantage when it comes to passing on useful education to future productive people. This is not to say that such education is impossible, or even uncommon, simply that the education is typically based on applied theory as opposed to experience.
As an example, I once was in a lecture about computational complexity. My professor had said that if I could take an algorithm from `4n^2` to `4n` that my boss would be happy, but if I could take it from `4n^2` to `2n^2` that he would not be happy. I told her the entire business model of the firm I interned at relied on running our computations as fast as possible, and that if I could cut the time in half, my boss would be thrilled out of his pants. She immediately dismissed this as naive, as such a performance gain would be insignificant: only a reduction in the *order* of complexity would be noticed - simply reducing the coefficient would not.
I called my boss after the lecture, and he said if I could cut our simulation time in half, he would fly me back to work and double my pay (since it would still be cheaper than the expansion of our beowulf cluster we were planning). We looked up the professors credentials, and despite having a PhD and over 20 years experience in academia, her only real world experience was a 6 month internship that, according to the description, consisted mostly of paperwork.
Now, is this representative of most people in academia? I don't think it is. But it does happen, and it's more common than it would seem from the inside looking out. And because it does happen, it feeds the *stereotype* of academics who couldn't engineer their way out of a paper bag. There are stereotypes all over all industries. Software developers have a stereotype of being nerds who couldn't possibly get a date, and yet in North America 70% of developers are married, with only a 3% divorce rate (compared to 40% of the population). While I certainly know some nerds in my line of work, and yes they do feed the stereotype, they really aren't represented by the majority of the population.
The conclusions I would make is that the concerns raised by those yelling about "Ivory Towers" I think are valid concerns. They do not apply to all academics, and of course, research should be judged on the actual research, not the researchers. But you should keep in mind that the there are certain individuals who speak with authority based on experience, while others speak with authority based on the assumption that they have the experience. When it comes to published, peer reviewed research, it's easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. In the classroom settings, where such authority is not to be questioned, it can be very dangerous for young, impressionable students.
So how do you respond to an ivory tower accusation? Well, clearly if you have industry experience, put it forth. If you lack industry experience, make it clear that you have no intention of trying to pass off your education as being backed by industry experience. When it comes to your research, encourage skeptics to review your research on its own merits. If they're true scientists, they will.
> 9 votes
# Answer
I typed in the same Google query, read the article I think the OP was referring to (this one?), and was filled with a similar hot burst of indignation. (How *dare* they!) But while the author of that article paints with a broad brush, I think it might not be inappropriate for us, as scholars, to examine ourselves with the same brutal honesty that we take to our intellectual disciplines.
Some of the complaints I've heard about ivory-tower academics simply reflects a misunderstanding of what higher education is about -- for example, as a computer science professor I've heard students complain about not being taught how to use Excel spreadsheets and the like. But I've also seen colleagues who have grown complacent and uncaring, whose courses really do shortchange the students. So yes, the author of that article paints with a very broad brush, but I think that we'd do ourselves a disservice if we just blithely ignored him.
I think it's important for us to be able to articulate *why* we do what we do. I routinely explain to my reviewers why my research matters -- I should similarly be able to explain to my students why they should study what I'm teaching;\[\*\] and I should similarly be able to explain to my neighbors why their tax dollars should pay my salary. (I may not *have* to do these things, but I should be *able* to.) Whatever explanation I come up with -- and it'll be different for different people -- that's the "good comeback" the OP asked for; and if I can't come up with any explanation at all, then maybe some deeper introspection would be in order. :-)
\[\*\] In my grant proposals I say what difference I think the research will make if it's successful. In my classes I tell the students what I want them to remember of the class five years later. I've found this sort of exercise very helpful for distilling out what I think really matters.
> 6 votes
# Answer
Jossie, you are a scientist, right? Define the 'real job' for us first, please. "The real job is a job in which..." what happens? You get a real paycheck, that's for sure, and if that's the main indication of the 'real job', then you definitely got one. If, on the other hand, you define a 'real job' as the one from which you can be fired, then a tenured professor is not a real job.
Aside from that, there are several layers of complications that your question uncovers. Apparently, you are a smart person with a dedication, given that you were able to finish your Ph.D. It is, however, also apparent to me that you cannot really explain what you do to a layperson. You are not alone in this: the portrayal of academia as the ivory tower stems from this same lack of communication between professors and the general public that just cannot understand the value added that academia provides.
I have worked as an assistant professor on a tenure track for three years, was booted from it, and found home in industry. I can tell very specifically what the value of academic research is for me in my position: it can produce new efficient ways for me to make the product that my company delivers better... where better may include concepts like "more accurate" (I am a social statistician, so that's a relevant dimension of my work), "faster", "more robust wrt various uncheckable assumptions", etc. Unfortunately for me, academic research produces hell of a lot of noise that's irrelevant for me: from ~100 papers in the top general interest journals, I would find 1 to be of relevance to my work. The ratio is of course higher in specialized journals, where it can be 3:1 or so. (*Nature* or *Science* or *PNAS* are out of my league; they may publish statistics papers on a cute little topic from time to time, but generally the ratio will be what, 1:10000?) So I am the natural selection process: out of all the random mutations that academic researchers publish, I am selecting the relevant traits that need to be preserved because there is a survival value in them.
Now, the question that I keep asking myself is, "How much of that random noise does need to come out so that in the month of October 2013, I will read up something that will change the way I work?", and apparently the answer is, well, several hundred papers (out of which I will get may be 10 or so to read). That's a costly enterprise: if an average professor is paid $120K, and they publish three papers a year, then that's $40K per paper (we can ignore teaching: first, nobody really cares about it, and second, you can buy a teacher for $5K/course, way below the cost of a research paper that I just derived). So the total for one usable academic result is \[drum roll\] $4M for the hundred papers that need to be published. That's A LOT of money... although I would humbly hope that for each disgrunteld StasK, there are hundred other statisticians who would find the other 99 random papers useful for them.
If the ratios are better in other disciplines, that's great. For what I heard in education research, the ratios are about the same: at some point, that depository had reviewed ~300 papers, and found only 6 of them to be usable.
> 2 votes
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Tags: professorship, career-path
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thread-13221 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13221 | Group/lab guide for new students and post-docs: what should it contain? | 2013-10-06T14:05:46.403 | # Question
Title: Group/lab guide for new students and post-docs: what should it contain?
Large research groups have guides for newcomers, which contain both important information, both high-level and practical, on their new position and the group. I don't have such a large group, but I can see the value in keeping all important information in one central place.
So, if I get to writing such a document, what information should one put in a group guide for new group members?
# Answer
> 5 votes
You can find a lot of good examples on the web, written by professors with a lot more experience, but here is mine. It includes guidelines and advice on:
* How to approach group meetings and individual meetings with advisor (me)
* Finding a thesis topic
* Planning and recording research
* Reading the literature
* Writing papers
* Publishing papers
* Giving talks
* Programming
* Recommended software tools
* General conduct
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Tags: management
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thread-13220 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13220 | What is a better word for 'code' when taking about programming code? | 2013-10-06T13:34:34.923 | # Question
Title: What is a better word for 'code' when taking about programming code?
Im writing my project thesis in Computer Science and I want to make sure I am using correct and non colloquial terminology.
Is there better word for `code` when talking about your `program code` in programming. Is it acceptable to use `code` or `program code`? I remember my programming lecturer had a go at a few students for using the word `code` when to describe there program, but I just can not think of a better word.
# Answer
It depends what you want to refer to. For instance, if you were to implement an array sort in Java, you could refer to:
* the sorting algorithm, as Paul mentioned, which could be described in pseudocode, and is independent from the language you used (note that it could be more readable to include within your thesis only the pseudocode of your algorithms, and then attach the actual code at the end, or provide it in a different file).
* the program, which is the binary executable that takes an array as input and returns the sorted array.
* the implementation, which refers to the way you defined the sorting algorithm in Java.
* the data structures you manipulate, such as the array.
* the source code, as Anonymous Mathematician mentions, which is the textual representation of your implementation (note that if you include the file at the end, then you can also refer to it with "the Java file", or "the file sort.java"; in this case, you can even include line numbers, which can be helpful to point to a specific part of your source code).
> 6 votes
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Tags: thesis, computer-science
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thread-13235 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13235 | What could be the effect of mentioning a student's weakness in the recommendation letter? | 2013-10-07T08:47:27.010 | # Question
Title: What could be the effect of mentioning a student's weakness in the recommendation letter?
I am going to request a letter of recommendation for higher studies (PhD) from one of my faculty (I took two classes and did 3 very good course projects). I have never been good (just above average) in any of his written examinations and has admitted this to him in several discussions. Though in the projects, my score was the highest and I also got praise from him for writing excellent research quality articles for those projects.
I am pretty sure that he would certainly mention my weakness in the letter. I don't think (not really sure) that he has doubt over my research potential. So does that give any negative impression on the reader of such recommendation letter ?
So, if I generalize my question, how does specifying weakness of a candidate affects his chances of admission (if they do) ?
# Answer
> 10 votes
Honesty is the best way. When you admit a student, one of the things you dread is if you find out someone is not what you thought. The issue is not easy to deal with of course.
If you think someone has a weakness, it should be mentioned. The first thing I think one can do is to point out that it is ones own opinion and possibly also describe the circumstances for why the weakness has become evident. The main point is provide the recipient of the information with as much information as possible to make a well-founded decision. After all, a persons positive traits are easy to describe and it is only the negative that cause problems.
One aspect that weighs heavily is if you would take on the person yourself, and if so, would you then deal with the weakness in some way? *Provide possible solutions*.
If a candidate has a weakness that you think may affect the persons ability to be considered, you should probably bring it up with the person. This can of course be very difficult and may result in bitter feelings but the question is, are the weaknesses something that can be compensated? If the person does not know about them, then the situation will seem inexplicable when he/she gets a rejection. A constructive discussion may make it possible to elaborate more in a letter to defuse the negative aspects.
In the end, writing negative aspects about a person is very difficult but it is also vital that a letter of recommendation has value. You may not be the only person writing a letter so the picture you provide may be one of many that has to be weighed in at the other end. If the person ends up not being appointed, you cannot take it personally as long as you have tried to provide an as objective appraisal as possible and that includes both positives and negatives. I have included what I sometimes have thought were damaging (but true) comments in letters and found the person was appointed despite them. I have then carefully explained why I think the way I do and tried to see how the negatives could possible be worked around. I have never written a letter where I had to just say, don't employ this person. I have then avoided the task altogether.
So, in summary, be honest, be objective, be constructive, and the opinion will be much valued by whoever reads your letter.
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Tags: research-process, recommendation-letter
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thread-13244 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13244 | How to avoid overly extensive introduction of otherwise unnecessary preliminaries for a minor result? | 2013-10-07T14:08:49.437 | # Question
Title: How to avoid overly extensive introduction of otherwise unnecessary preliminaries for a minor result?
For my PhD thesis I have proven a minor result but with the help of a theory that is far apart from my actual subjects.
To have my work self-contained up to a certain level and to make my proof understandable, I should introduce like one page of notions, which I will never use again.
The result is quite different from others. But even if it was just a modification of a known result, I don't think the line
> "... can be obtained by a modification of the proof of XYZ to our needs..."
is appropriate in a PhD thesis.
How should I proceed in such cases?
# Answer
> 7 votes
An appendix, if allowed by your university style/guidelines (and it usually is), is the best option. It strikes a balance between two legitimate concerns:
* you want your thesis to be self-contained, and you want to showcase the work you've done (as well as convince others of your work's quality)
* in the main text, it may make your message less clear and burden the reader's mind with new notations
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Tags: citations
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thread-10999 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10999 | How long is reasonable to wait for reply from an editor? | 2013-07-07T01:49:56.837 | # Question
Title: How long is reasonable to wait for reply from an editor?
About 5 months ago I submitted a paper to a journal. The editors assigned a reviewer. In the meantime I sent a couple of revised versions, which did not help matters, but the editor ultimately wrote back and asked me to complete my revisions and re-submit the document. I did that within a couple of weeks. The editors did not acknowledge receipt of this submission, but I did not want to ask for one since I felt I had already been pestering them too much. A couple of weeks later, I notified the editors that I wanted to post a couple of graphs from the submitted paper on a blog, although I hoped to make it clear that only a very small component of the whole paper was being posted on the blog. The editors did not respond to this notification. More than two months went by after the re-submission, and I sent a message to the editor asking for a status update, just to be sure that the paper was still being considered and under review. It seemed to me that a very simple "yes, it is still being reviewed", or "no, we have considered your paper withdrawn and it is not being reviewed" or something like that, would suffice. About 10 more days passed with no response, and I thought I would telephone the editor with my question, on the off-chance that my emails were not getting through. I left a message for him, and another week has gone by with no response. At what point do I take the non-response from the editor as a message that my paper is no longer under review and that I should re-submit it elsewhere? The journal is otherwise a reputable journal, and I would like my paper published there, but there are many others that interest me too. I feel like I made a mess of the whole process, and am to be blamed for over-communication and confusion, but am I not owed the courtesy of a response from the editor?
# Answer
There are good reasons to expect communication with an editor to be slower than many other e-mail exchanges. Editors are busy, especially since editing may be a minor but time consuming part of their job. And responding to questions from authors often involves contacting referees, who may in turn be unresponsive.
I'd say that it's reasonable to wait a couple of weeks for a response to a timely request for a status update (two months after a revision strikes me as a bit early---I'd expect it to take longer---but not unreasonably early to ask for a status update). If it gets lost (for instance, the editor is waiting for a response from the referee, and hasn't remembered to tell you that's what's happening), a polite reminder and a few days to another week or so of waiting might be appropriate.
After that, though, you can rightly begin to worry that you aren't hearing back. If there are other editors, especially a chief editor, you can contact, I'd start there. I'd be very reluctant to unilaterally withdraw the paper, since that might cause complications if the editor returns and feels you resubmitted while it was still under consideration. Before resorting to that, I'd try to talk to one or two senior people in the field for advice about the specific paper.
(Just to emphasize, I'm talking about communication with an editor about the status of a paper. Of course the refereeing process as a whole can take a year or more.)
> 7 votes
# Answer
You are right in both that you have made a mess and that you should get a prompt reply.
First, to see what usually happens: A paper is submitted, the editor takes a look (reads) the paper to decide if it is appropriate for the journal and if it is ok then either sends it out to reviewers directly or assigns the papers to co-editors who will send it out. This process can vary greatly in length but will be on the order of weeks to a month depending on workload. Remember that editors usually work for free or with little pay and working out of their spare time. Assigning reviewers means contacting reviewers, waiting for their reply and in some cases getting negative replies. Each request might use up 2 weeks and so if you are unlucky it might take month just to get enough reviewers to accept the chore. Reviewers usually have something like three weeks to do the review (it will vary though) but often reviewers are not on time so a month can easily go by. Upon getting the reviews back, the editor has to scrutinize the reviews and make decisions on the recommendation to send back to you. Several weeks to a month are typical times for this depending on a situation. The editor will then contact you with a "verdict" varying from accept to reject through revisions. During all this time you will not hear much unless the journal uses an electronic submissions system in which you can usually monitor the progress yourself.
So, if you contact the editor with questions during the process, I would say it is fair to get a reply within at least a couple of weeks unless it is a holiday season. The fact that you for some reason submitted a manuscript which probbaly was sent into above process and then followed up by sending revised manuscripts which would have caused quite a lot of extra work for everyone concerned at the journal, was a mistake and would make me as editor really irritated. Don't send a manuscript unless it is completed. If you need to add or change anything wait until the manuscript is reviewed or withdraw it.
Despite the problems you may have caused, you are of course still entitled to get a response on direct questions. The fact that many months transpired without contact about your manuscript is not out of the ordinary but if you ask for a status update after 4-5 months, I would think it would only be fair to get a quick reply such as you mention. As a side point, a rejection is usually communicated quite quickly so a lack of contact is usually a good sign. Now, I do of course not know why the correspondence is slow, if it is the norm with the journal or if it is just an accident. As a final point I would say that even if you messed up, it doesn't entitle the editors to treat you any worse than anybody else. It is always difficult to know if sending additional mails will help, most likely not, but at some point, give it another month, then a response should have come forth. If not then another mail is in order.
> 5 votes
# Answer
From reading this it almost seems like the paper is not actually submitted. By submitting revisions (via email? were you uploading them? withdrawing the original? submitting via the submission systems as if they were new submissions?) AFTER the manuscript had been sent out to reviewers, you threw a wrench into the system. The editor was polite and told you to resubmit a final version of the manuscript. They probably WITHDREW your original manuscript and pulled it from review. The clock now resets for this submission. How did you do it? Via email to the editor? If you did that, it is not submitted. If you have no acknowledgement email, manuscript number, control number, it is not submitted and probably not under consideration. I would not recommend contacting the editor further and log into the manuscript submission system and check the status of the manuscript. You will probably have at least one submission withdrawn by the editor, but it is unclear to me how you submitted the unsolicited revisions and whether they will appear in the system.
> 3 votes
# Answer
This depends on the journal, as there is no set time, in general, for journal editors to publish research. No doubt you have read up on the relevant sections that pertain to timeframes on the publisher's website - those are usually a guide. I have had a paper submitted and published online within 2 months and another took 8 months.
There has been, somewhat ironically, a research paper written about this: "How Long is the Peer Review Process for Journal Manuscripts? A Case Study on Angewandte Chemie International Edition" (Bornmann and Hans-Dieter, 2010).
A very pertinent point is that as the editors are reviewing a lot of papers, they are under considerable pressure to reach quick publication decisions and that the majority of the time is waiting for reviewers to get back to them. This may go some of the way to explain why there is a lack of communication and the length of time.
> 2 votes
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Tags: peer-review
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thread-13237 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13237 | Mentioning student name changes in a letter of recommendation | 2013-10-07T09:14:58.937 | # Question
Title: Mentioning student name changes in a letter of recommendation
What is the best protocol for handling a student whose name has changed from the time when a letter writer knew the student. For instance, suppose Pat Jones has become Pat Smith. Do we write
> Pat Smith (*né(e) Jones*)
or is this unnecessary? I would think that the name should match what's in the rest of the application, but I would imagine it would also be helpful to make sure that the name change is noted, just in case there's some inconsistencies in the overall record (for instance, I doubt that all universities would change transcripts of alumni).
# Answer
> 12 votes
Why not ask the student what they would prefer? I can imagine situations (for example, if the student changed what gender they identify with) where they might not want the name change mentioned too much, or they might appreciate you explaining the circumstances. You're writing the letter for student's benefit, after all.
# Answer
> 10 votes
In the specific case of an undergraduate who has gotten married after graduation, I think it would be unethical to mention the name change unless the student specifically asks you to. It's emphasizing information (marital status) which the people receiving the letter should not be considering when making their decision, and in fact are legally barred from considering in the US. In places where it's not illegal (and where marital status is mentioned elsewhere on the application) letters should still be concentrating on data relevant to the job and not things like race, appearance, or marital status. Furthermore, given many people's prejudices (both conscious and unconscious) it is likely to actively harm female students. Even if the student you have in mind is male, mentioning marital name changes in general will be harmful to women.
In the case of someone who has a publishing record under a different name, the issue is more complex, and I think it would be reasonable to ask the candidate if they'd like you say anything.
# Answer
> 9 votes
Your suggestion of using the `né(e)` construction is the traditional solution in English, i.e. the solution suggested in etiquette manuals. I would do it once at the beginning of the letter to avoid confusion then revert to the current name. Just because the student should mention it elsewhere does not mean your letter should not contain all the information you can reasonably provide.
As a side note I would doubt that any American University would retroactively change transcripts. However, being a person who has never changed his name I have no relevant experience to back that up.
# Answer
> 5 votes
If the student is clever enough, he has both names written on his CV. In some systems, it may even be built into the application software (in France, universities online applications typically ask for both *family name* and *birth name*).
So, I wouldn't bother with it, unless the student asks you to do it. And yes, I would use the student's current name, even though he may have been named differently when you first met him.
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Tags: recommendation-letter, personal-name
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thread-13250 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13250 | How to write a practical computer science research? | 2013-10-07T18:21:02.423 | # Question
Title: How to write a practical computer science research?
I'm currently a computer science student at the 3rd/8 level, and there is a competition in scientific researches, including computer researches, at my university for financial aids and I'm thinking of getting involved.
I'm not a fan of theoretical stuff or things can't be applied, instead, I think of writing about Unix and Linux debuggers development and debugging techniques basically something practical that helps to provides the bases and guidelines for someone who want to build Unix debugger starting with the basics of debuggers and then build a proof of concepts small debugger.
I never done such thing before and have a few ideas about writing researches from high-school.
Can this be a research? what type (I need the term so I can look it up) of research is it and it's general structure?
# Answer
I think you are thinking more of a tutorial than a research object. You may be interested on this.
Research is about obtaining some new knowledge. This knowledge can be simply a compilation of some things that are already done and existing but were never put together to compare them (a survey) for instance. IMHO survey papers get a good number of citations because they are in fact quite useful.
There are a number of things to do research in that field, for instance you could
* put something new in that small debugger (beyond the state of the art) or
* try a set of different things in that small debugger to compare them and obtain that comparative knowledge (being new) or
* do a survey of the debuggers that exist, or evaluate them wrt something new (e.g. usability)
* find open questions in the field of debuggers, define a problem that was not being considered before
Basically it boils down to
* finding and defining a problem (which is open in the state of the art (SOA))
* finding or creating solutions (and adding them to the SOA)
* evaluating and comparing solutions (in the SOA to know better how is it)
I'd say all of them are quite pragmatical, focusing on solutions. The point is to
* solve something new (it's quite pointless solving something that is already solved, right?).
* evaluate properly (so that we can understand why is it a solution and what properties does it have, when is it useful and when may not be so useful).
* finding problems (because the first step to solve a problem is identifying it)
Depending on the approach taken then the research and the paper will look in different ways but basically you need:
* an introduction
* an explanation of the background that may be required to understand everything else (this is optional)
* a description of the state of the art, what is out there that is relevant for the proposal
* the proposal (for definition, solution or evaluation of the problem at hand)
* the results obtained with that proposal
* the conclusions obtained from the results
* acknowledgements
PS: If that fails you can simply forget about the state of the art and do research on this as if it was new, without checking properly the literature on the topic before. If you apply the methods correctly and do a good work that could be ok in some contexts (I'm not sure about the context of this question, though). This would not be very practical, because most probably someone did that already decades ago.
> 3 votes
# Answer
Take a look at ACM Crossroads.
It is a student journal. You can start submitting an small article to be published as a column like this. I have not seen other research journals letting these sorts of tutorials get published. They are usually towards publishing papers that solve an issue, done an experiment, provides recommendations, etc. If you want to write a research paper in those sort of categories, then you will have a lot more choices.
> 7 votes
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Tags: research-process
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thread-13247 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13247 | How can I best use my time as a Mathematical sciences PhD student in the UK | 2013-10-07T15:27:18.503 | # Question
Title: How can I best use my time as a Mathematical sciences PhD student in the UK
I would like some useful advice regarding pursuing a PhD in mathematical sciences in the UK. I've just started my PhD in mathematical modelling and would like to know as much as possible about how to make the most of the entire journey. I have some ideas here and there but I want to know what things to do and things to avoid, planning ahead, useful websites etc.
Topic/Question have been edited to broaden scope of question.
# Answer
> 1 votes
As a recently-started science PhD student myself, I can recommend:
```
The Research Student’s Guide To Success
Pat Cryer
Pub Open University Press, 2006
ISBN: 0 335 22117 3
```
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Tags: phd
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thread-13270 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13270 | Is it better to write "Related Work" at the start or in the end? | 2013-10-08T13:26:45.540 | # Question
Title: Is it better to write "Related Work" at the start or in the end?
As per title, **which** one is a **better** way to go:
to write the `Related Work` part right after `Introduction` and before `System Architecture`
**OR**
to write the `System Architecture` right after `Introduction` and dump `Related Work` in the end just before the `Conclusion`?
In my field, I have read both ways. I personally find `Related Work` a bit unnecessary and I usually skip them while reading a paper. It is reasonable in the sense that a researcher would have already read nearly all the related work within his or her field. So he or she may not bother to read those sections of the similar papers.
In this sense, I prefer to adopt the latter that dumps this part at the end. However, I see most of the papers that I have read adopted the former.
**What are the pros and cons of these two approaches? How do I choose wisely?**
*I am in **EECS** field, but any generic advice is also very much welcomed*
# Answer
The main advantage of putting related work near the beginning is that it allows you to very clearly define what is new in your approach. I like to do that when I'm attacking a very well-defined problem and my contribution is closely related to what has gone before; e.g., if I've modified algorithm X so that it runs twice as fast, then I must review prior work on algorithm X. I try to work the review into the flow of an expository structure -- i.e., introduce prior work as you move naturally through the introductory and motivational concepts.
The disadvantage of putting related work near the beginning is that the reader must wade through it before getting to the important part of the paper -- your contribution. It also may interrupt the flow of exposition. So I put the related work nearer the end when possible; for instance, if I'm solving a problem nobody has considered before, or exploring some newly discovered phenomenon.
> 14 votes
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Tags: publications, writing
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thread-13243 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13243 | How to find one or two good recent PhD theses (that are internationally recognized as best) in your chosen area | 2013-10-07T13:59:08.280 | # Question
Title: How to find one or two good recent PhD theses (that are internationally recognized as best) in your chosen area
I am finding it difficult to select a topic for my masters thesis (my advisor is unwilling to offer suggestions on the matter). I intend to do thesis in the field of internal combustion engines. To get some good ideas about finding a good topic I want to study some recent PhD theses in internal combustion engines but I don't know where to find them. Also I would like to know about modern research trends in that field.
# Answer
In general, doctoral theses do not receive much recognition outside of a university, let alone on an international scale. The reason for this is that nowadays the thesis is nowhere near as widely circulated as the papers that can be extracted from the thesis.
Moreover, if you want to find out about good thesis topics, look up what's going on in the scientific literature of the area you're interested in—in this case, internal combustion engines. Find the most highly-respected journals, and see if they've published recent review articles in different areas related to your topic. That might give you a sense of where recent work has been, and provide you with a good body of reading material to work from.
> 6 votes
# Answer
Many disciplines have prizes and awards for the best thesis in a given year (or longer period). For instance, in our field there is a well-recognized one called *Householder award*. There are many more if you restrict to the national level, often funded by privates or industries.
If you look for past winners, you can be fairly sure that they are outstanding theses. (After that, getting your hands on the actual document might be more difficult, though).
Unfortunately I am not familiar enough with Engineering to suggest you a good one in your topic; you may try to add "thesis award" to your google searches, but sometimes they are tricky to find without knowing the exact names.
> 2 votes
# Answer
My answer complements the other answers.
While writing my dissertation proposal, I felt the need to look at some other published dissertations in my area (~HCI/privacy). I realized that one of my committee members, who dissertated very recently (2007) has an incredibly relevant dissertation in my area and also won the best dissertation award from her alma mater.
So, that is one strategy. In general, look at the best works in your field and find out if any happens to be the primary work of a PhD student. Chances are, that work will be incorporated into his/her dissertation and if you look at their CV's, often, you will find that they won a "Best Dissertation" award or something similar to that.
> 1 votes
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Tags: research-process
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thread-13272 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13272 | US Graduate School without subject GRE | 2013-10-08T15:46:12.530 | # Question
Title: US Graduate School without subject GRE
So here is the situation:
I am a Math student in a very well ranked French university, and I am going to finish my degree (i.e. 2-year MSc, after a 3-year BSc) in August. Therefore, it is time to think of the future: graduate school. In particular, I have been thinking to apply in the US, where many very good groups in the field I'm interested in are located. I have the highest possible GPA, followed advanced courses, research and teaching experience, potentially very good recommendation letters from well-know professors, received awards, and I'll be writing my MSc thesis at a well-known university on the East Coast.
However, I haven't been able to register for the GRE subject test soon enough due to personal reasons, and when I look at the US math graduate school, **they almost all require the GRE subject test**. Most of them even say that the applications without the GRE and Subject GRE will not even be reviewed, or will be very disadvantaged. The next session is in April, and the results must be submitted in December.
What is the reality of the graduation admissions system in the US? Should I try to apply anyway without the GRE Subject (i.e. **are applications without GRE automatically rejected**)? Should I wait one year to apply, until I can pass the GRE?
# Answer
I'm afraid there's not really a lot you can do. Your best bet is, as always, to contact the departments you are interested in attending, and explain your situation to them. You'll need to have a very convincing reason why you weren't able to take the GRE subject test, and would need a waiver. They may be willing to make an exception; they may not.
Beyond that, I'm not sure what else you can do; the policies and deadlines are all well-known and published, and the departments are *not* required to give you special treatment.
> 6 votes
# Answer
Apply anyway.
If you come from a well-ranked university, and have top grades and excellent recommendations from professors there, it shouldn't matter that you are missing a subject GRE; this may disadvantage you slightly, but excellent grades, research and recommendations should easily make up for it. If you came from a less well-ranked university, the lack of a subject GRE would be a much more severe disadvantage.
There may be some universities where bureaucratic requirements will keep you from being considered, but I suspect this is not true at most private universities. The admissions office should be able to give you this information; email them, explain your situation, and ask.
> 5 votes
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Tags: graduate-school, graduate-admissions, gre
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thread-13256 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13256 | Is it worth it for me to get a masters in CS? | 2013-10-08T02:15:32.270 | # Question
Title: Is it worth it for me to get a masters in CS?
let me explain a bit about myself before getting to the question. I graduated recently in May with a Computer Engineering degree and a minor in CS. Originally I wanted to go into embedded development, but after a few courses in it I decided that it wasn't for me. At that point it was a little late for me to switch so I went with getting the CS minor instead, and took all the CS related engineering courses that I could. Naturally there is a lot of overlap between the two disciplines, and if all of my classes mapped over I was only two classes away from double majoring, but due to departmental reasons the CS department wouldn't accept any of my courses.
I've been working for the past four months at my job and performing very well. My work has a tuition reimbursement program that covers 8k per year of schooling/books. I've noticed that I have some gaps in knowledge compared to new computer science graduates such as with compilers, databases, and machine learning.
**So here's my question:** Do you think it would be beneficial for me to enroll in a part-time masters program? Should I just learn these things on my own? Now that I have cash coming in I don't want to go full-time. I'm asking this now because Georgia Tech just opened up registration for their online Masters program and it seems like I'm the perfect candidate for it. Am I really going to earn that much extra or get a better position than I would with normal work experience that would justify the extra 20 hours of work per week this would give me (2 classes a semester for 3 years)? With my work reimbursement this program would be free and simply a time investment. My manager at work recommended doing it now before I have a wife and kids to deal with later. I would love to continue learning and I guess I could stretch it out longer than 3 years if I needed to, or stop at any time and have no financial loss.
# Answer
> 2 votes
If you are merely trying to fill in gaps in your education, then a Master's is probably overkill, and almost certainly not worth it for CS. You can fill in your stated gaps "compilers, databases, and machine learning" with equal effort in personal projects and reading. CS is a well documented field on the internet, especially for your three stated gaps. Compiler construction, while daunting, is an achievable task, and databases are very well represented online, being the foundation of most online software. Machine learning is also very popular lately, with lots of new and not so new resources available.
Having said that, if you are like me, and suck at the whole 'autodidact' thing, then a Masters degree might help provide the focus and structure you need to succeed at learning these fields. Your financial incentives certainly make this an appealing option.
From my perspective, completely ignorant of the standards and expectations of American CS masters, an MS.c in CS should be deeply focused on an area, taking you close to the edge of human knowledge. Who knows, you could produce something novel, but in your area, at the end of a Masters you should know where the boundaries lie. For me, this means that course based Master's programs that are broadly scoped aren't as valuable as a deeply focused Masters, be it course or thesis based.
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thread-13265 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13265 | Are there any measures to ensure "academic honesty"? | 2013-10-08T09:29:09.050 | # Question
Title: Are there any measures to ensure "academic honesty"?
I have been reading some reflections on research and academia lately, and it has gotten me to think more critically towards what we do, and what the life we are pursuing has in store for us.
Some of you might remember another recent question of mine, where I was inquiring about the right way to set up projects based on an open-letter I read about how academia is not what it claims to be. Now I have stumbled upon this blog entry which focuses on the shortcomings of the single-blind peer review process overwhelmingly used in biomedical research publication.
Now it all brings me back to a disturbing idea that I had some time ago; that the quality of the research and the truth to all we do is essentially hanging on a rather fragile virtue, what one could call "academic honesty". We count on the reviewers and editors objectivity, we count on publishers **and** researchers naive and good intentions with their work, we count on people not putting their personal benefits before that of the society.
As anyone out on the streets will tell you, we do not live in an ideal world and \[*call me a pessimist if you will*\] thus I don't believe in the inherent good of the people (at least I do not rely or count on it). I don't see how academics should be exempt from a degeneration in the society that affects everyone else.
That brings me to my question; what measures exist to ensure this "academic honesty" we seem to rely so heavily on? How do we know/ensure:
* that the reviewers do not lose their objectivity, for instance when looking at a manuscript of a competitor
* that there's no collusion between high-profile PIs and editors of "high-impact" journals?
* that academics (at varying stages of their career) do not consider/prioritize "pushing up" the numbers (e.g. "h-index" or "impact factor" etc) when they set out with their research projects?
* that grants/prizes/titles are actually given to the better projects/people from the perspective of the greater good, and not based on how well-connected the applicants are? (after all such committees *need* to have or be composed of other researchers, who else is going to be able to judge the impact and importance of cutting edge research than other researchers?)
I realize that it's a broad question, but I have tried to give a thorough background story to give you an idea about how I got to this idea. Likewise I tried to narrow my concern to one over-arching question (rather than to seek discussion), with a couple of example follow-up questions to make my point clear. I can ask them separately if-need-be, but I think they sit better together, as is.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Let me throw in a few points in addition to @Peter Janssons great answer:
There are "tools" that help with some of your concerns
> that the reviewers do not lose their objectivity, for instance when looking at a manuscript of a competitor
* For one thing, most journals I know not only ask for suggested reviewers, but you can also ask that particular persons are not asked to review your paper.
* The journals I know have at least 2, usually 3 reviews. So a firm "reject" means that several reviewers did agree that the paper is bad. While one may have a biased opinion, with 3 rejects it is maybe time to stop and think whether the paper really is good or not.
* Bias in peer-review is one thing, but variance is another. And, from my experience, variance is high. IIRC there are studies about marks on texts by different school teachers which were found to vary between good and barely passed for one and the same text. My guess is that peer review is similar.
* Personally, I'd prefer if peer-reviews were done openly (both sides named, some journals do, though none in my field) as opposed to one side more-or-less blind.
> that grants/prizes/titles are actually given to the better projects/people from the perspective of the greater good, and not based on how well-connected the applicants are? (after all such committees need to have or be composed of other researchers, who else is going to be able to judge the impact and importance of cutting edge research than other researchers?)
I think this is fundamentally impossible, because that would imply that it is possible to know which project will be a good project beforehand\*. This may be possible for very applied projects, but those would typically be industry projects, not basic research. The "interesting" projects always imply a risk that the thing doesn't work out, no solution is found. Otherwise no research would be needed on the topic.
Sometimes, the huge importance of projects is clear only years (or even decades) after they are finished.
* On the other hand, I think it is possible to find out in advance that a project is poorly designed, so it should not be funded.
> that there's no collusion between high-profile PIs and editors of "high-impact" journals?
Of course that can happen. Corruption exists, and I don't think science is fundamentally different from other fields of human professions.
(see below for my thoughts on how to deal with that)
> that academics (at varying stages of their career) do not consider/prioritize "pushing up" the numbers (e.g. "h-index" or "impact factor" etc) when they set out with their research projects?
* In a way we cannot, and IMHO it *has* to be expected that scientists are intellectually quite able to understand how to optimize a given measure. Thus, the assumption that e.g. bibliometric measures do not influence the measured system will not hold.
* Whether they actually do it, is another question.
* There is one very important point: the papers are not kept secretly, you can read them. As a scientist, you can, should and do judge the quality of the papers. IMHO peer review does not allow you to switch off your brain when reading paper - I think peer review is meant to be a sieve that gets the "failed" papers out of the system - while what I want to read are not "barely passed" but "excellent" papers. However, there is a tradeoff, and if you push up the rigour of peer review you'll inevitably throw out also good papers, or papers whose importance will become apparent only later on. That is, too strict peer-review may pose a restriction on the publishing system that disfavors really new ideas, and allows to pass only predictable results.
However, you won't be able to help realizing who publishes by salami-slicing and who publishes lots of studies with e.g. very low numbers of patients, poorly designed experiments, and OTOH, which groups take the effort to get meaningful numbers of patients, publish on relevant controls, do their homework validating their findings and so on.
* Also the authors are of a paper are named clearly. And taking together your judgemen of the quality of papers and maybe some citation network tool, you can get an idea who optimizes e.g. citations.
* Attending conferences and workshops and talking to people you'll get to know people personally so you can judge their character. In addition, you'll hear a fair amount not only of "rumours" and "stories" which also tell about people.
All in all, I think this works as "real life" does: how do you know a company is honest you consider dealing with? You put some advance trust in them, and you use your judgment, including what you hear by your peers about them: e.g. were they recommended by someone you consider reliable.
# Answer
> 3 votes
I will start by stating, that we probably cannot ensure that any of these problems cannot occur. Doing so will probably mean enforcing structures that are far from democratic and open, it is the downside of the sort of openness we are used to and so we need to learn to live with the system. That, however, does not mean we are without means to work against bad, unethical, behaviour.
*Reviewers*: The vast majority of reviewers do a good job. Some may be socially challenged to provide criticism in polite ways but have the knowledge to provide critical views. Journal editors will play a vital role in not only selecting reviewers but also screen and evaluate the reviews and provide authors with a balanced view based on the two or more reviews that typically are gathered for each manuscript. The same also applies to foundations evaluating proposals. The review process has two levels where things must go wrong to severely affect a manuscript and the role of editors should not be underestimated.
*"Collusion"*: This problem may be more difficult to spot if the issue originates at "top level". I am not sure I see a patented solution in this case but am convinced that publishers will not support such behaviour and the scientific community will most likely pick up on the problem quickly. There is in other words a social control that will sooner or later make an impact on such problems. This does not prevent them from occurring and since the research community consists of humans we have all the human fallacies found elsewhere in society as well. Removing the illusion that we are of equal moral views and chivalry is a good start.
*"inflation"*: There are good services that calculate, for example, the *h*-index for you and in a way that others can double check them. I use Researcher ID but such calculations can be done directly in Web of Science and elsewhere. The main point is that by using such a service, the calculation is open and reproducible and it is possible to trace what has been entered. Hence the indicator indices used should preferably be of this kind so that one can double check the value without any effort.
*grants*: This is similar to the \*"Collution" point above. I cannot see any simple solution that would not involve significant costs for the funding agencies (and hence less money given to research. Social control is probably the strongest point here but it also involves openness so that the public has insights into who gets money and why (I am assuming we are talking governmental funding in one way or another; industry and private sources are different)
So I understand and can share some of your pessimism but the alternatives to our current system are in my opinion worse and likely heavier from, for example, bureaucracy. Openness and good guidelines for and continued discussions on ethical behaviour among all are necessary. It is what occurs behind closed doors that starts rumours and may also initiate the problems you describe.
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Tags: research-process, publications, peer-review, ethics
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thread-13289 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13289 | How to find out which math departments have a research group in mathematical logic? | 2013-10-09T00:52:02.937 | # Question
Title: How to find out which math departments have a research group in mathematical logic?
I'm thinking to apply to PhD programs in math. I want to study mathematical logic. So I need programs that have mathematicians who do research in this area. I've searched the internet, the results were not satisfactory. The only list I've found find is this one
But this list contains only 9 schools (which are very difficult to get into!). I was wondering if anybody can guide me to some longer lists of schools and PhD programs that have expert(s) in mathematical logic?
# Answer
I guess some logician is me. I don't know of any list of schools that have programs in logic, and it would be hard to keep such a list anywhere close to comprehensive---very few schools have more than one or two people in mathematical logic, so the list would change frequently based on whose hired/moved/retired recently.
Steffen Lempp keeps a list of logicians which, while not comprehensive, is pretty large, so the institutions those people are at is a good place to start. Another idea is looking at whose spoke at recent logic conferences (for instance, the program for this year's ASL annual meeting, or the European equivalent, the Logic Colloquium).
Always, of course, if you know any faculty who are familiar with your interests (not necessarily logicians themselves), they may be able to point you towards some schools.
Also, note that there's no school with anything like a "generic" logic program---anywhere you go, your specialization within the field will be limited by whose present there. You likely have some narrower idea than generic logic that you're most interested in, so looking for people working in that area (or who've done work you think is interesting) is a good way to find schools. (You shouldn't obsess about this, though; you don't have to work in exactly the same area as your advisor anyway, and your interests are likely to shift at least a little over time.)
> 13 votes
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Tags: phd, mathematics
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thread-13297 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13297 | Scantron Tests For Math Courses | 2013-10-09T14:03:53.633 | # Question
Title: Scantron Tests For Math Courses
I'm a student at State University of New York. My math professor gives scantron exams which consist of true/false questions for calculus and graph theory courses. Each question presents a problem and a solution, and all I have to do is just mark it right or wrong (by doing calculations on a separate sheet that won't be collected). I'm a transfer student, so I've seen how real math exams are written. The first time I saw it I was quite surprised.
Is this kind of testing typical for math courses?
**UPDATE**: after taking 2 exams this week, one in graph theory and one in calculus 3, I can say with certainty that scantron exams are useless. Why?
In calculus 3 I got 11 correct answers out of 12, and I was guessing 5 questions. Together with the curving that my professor did, I got 95. I didn't know the answers for almost half of the exam, and yet I got an A!
In graph theory I got 19 correct answers out of 25, and I was guessing about third of the questions. After curving, I got 86.
End of proof.
# Answer
> 2 votes
Multiple choice exams certainly do get used in math, by many people and at many places. (At the university I'm at, we use them for the calculus sequence, and then move to short answer exams after.)
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Tags: undergraduate, exams
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thread-13293 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13293 | Pure vs Applied maths, and combinatorics, in American universities | 2013-10-09T07:11:07.490 | # Question
Title: Pure vs Applied maths, and combinatorics, in American universities
I'm in my last year of an undergraduate degree in pure maths, doing my thesis on probabilistic combinatorics. In Australia (at least at my university), Hungarian-style combinatorics is classified as "pure".
I'm currently thinking about PhDs and where to apply. One thing that I've noticed is that combinatorics is often classified under "applied maths" (for example, this is the case at MIT).
One important reason I'd consider pursuing a PhD at an American university is for the coursework component -- I'd like to broadly improve my foundational understanding of mathematics, and I like the possibility of changing my area of focus after deeper exposure to different areas of mathematics. However, I have comparatively little interest in applied mathematics coursework (other than combinatorics, of course).
I have a submitted paper in combinatorics, my undergraduate thesis will be in combinatorics, and by far my strongest reference will be from a combinatorialist. Other than my supervisor, my strongest potential references would come from areas that everyone seems to agree are "pure". The higher-level classes in my transcript will also be almost entirely "pure".
1. For American universities which have both a pure and an applied math program, which one does one typically choose to study combinatorics? Is it flexible? With a cursory search, I wasn't able to find a university quite so explicit about it as MIT.
For universities that classify combinatorics as "applied":
2. Given my situation, would my application be stronger to pure or applied maths?
3. Can one do a PhD in pure mathematics with the (tentative) intention for the research component to actually be "applied" (combinatorics)?
4. Can one do a PhD in applied mathematics but actually take mostly pure coursework?
# Answer
If you come here for "general advice", I am afraid you'll be disappointed.
1. You should choose based on the people there. For each school you apply to, look through both the applied and pure departments and see where the mathematicians who work in combinatorics fit in. Most large research universities will list their faculty by research interest, or have dedicated research group webpages. For example, based on this page you probably do not want to apply to Princeton's pure math program.
Note that many schools do not, at least on the graduate admission level, differentiate so strictly about going into applied versus pure mathematics.
(For choosing the school, since you already have research experience, you should look up articles which you find interesting and find out where those authors currently reside.)
2. It really depends on the school. If a school has no combinatorialist in its pure maths department, and you apply there with an intention of studying combinatorics, your chance of admission is practically 0. Similarly in reverse if all the combinatorics is done in the pure maths department for the school you are applying to.
There is no "one size fits all" solution.
3. This again depends on the school. Some schools allow it, some schools don't. In many departments it is expected that you find an advisor from within the department and do your dissertation research on a subject that your advisor is interested in and/or an expert on. In other departments more leeway are given to students interested in more interdisciplinary subjects to be jointly advised by two advisors (possibly from different departments with different expertise). But remember, if you are going for a PhD you will need to find an advisor in any case. Shoehorning yourself into a situation where it maybe difficult to find a professor in your own department who is willing to advise you is, in my view, generally not recommended.
4. This again depends on the individual policies for the schools. Some departments have very strict requirements on what the students must learn for their comprehensive exams; some, not so much. Most schools with graduate programs have very clearly written information on their websites about what is expected in their degree plans. For example, here's Harvard's version for the Applied Maths degree, though it seems they are a little bit short on the exact details.
The only "general advice" I can give is this:
> Don't apply to graduate schools blindly, especially since you have a confirmed research interest. Do your homework and find the experts with whom you would like to study, and apply to study with them. Write to them in advance to confirm that they are interested in taking on students, and possibly solicit advice about other possible individuals if they are not.
A good research school may not be strong in the field of research you want to do. Always, always check before applying.
> 9 votes
# Answer
I think you are overgeneralizing from an example here; the placement of combinatorics in applied math at MIT is due to ancient historical department politics, and regarded as an amusing quirk by those of us educated at other schools. While I completely agree with Willie's answer that you should carefully research schools you want to attend, at most schools combinatorics is regarded as a perfectly fine branch of pure mathematics. If you want to do the pure math coursework, and you see yourself as wanting to do pure mathematics, then probably you should just apply for the pure math programs at places with some strong combinatorialists (Berkeley, Penn, Davis, San Diego, Michigan, Minnesota, etc.)
> 6 votes
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Tags: phd, graduate-admissions, application, mathematics
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thread-13313 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13313 | GRE scores per section and their importance for PhD admissions in CS/E.Engineering | 2013-10-10T09:32:53.530 | # Question
Title: GRE scores per section and their importance for PhD admissions in CS/E.Engineering
What scores are generally expected *per section* (AW/quantitative/verbal) to get my applications evaluated in top/good grad schools? Also, would achieving even better scores be a "plus" or it won't matter at all/that much?
# Answer
My top-10 CS department does not require GRE scores at all.
For applicants that send them in anyway, the only scores that provide useful information are low scores. Anything below about the 50th percentile is a red flag.
You are aiming at the wrong target. Top grad schools are looking for strong evidence of promise as an independent researcher. Test scores do not provide that evidence.
> 6 votes
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Tags: phd, gre
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thread-13305 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13305 | When you reference an article, is it always expected that you have actually read it? | 2013-10-10T05:18:05.320 | # Question
Title: When you reference an article, is it always expected that you have actually read it?
Naturally I would say "of course", but my current situation makes me doubt.
In my paper I'm *briefly* covering various alternative cryptographic constructions. I am (of course) familiar with all of them, but I have not (nor have the time to) read the full papers I'm actually referencing. The reason for this is that they contain lengthy specifications complemented with cryptanalysis.
I'm in doubt whether it's acceptable to reference said papers without having actually read them. Is it acceptable to do so?
# Answer
> 21 votes
Let me answer your question by means of an example. In my on-going research I am using a notion called "Schlichting completion" which is originated from a paper written in German by a mathematician called Schlichting. I can't read German, but using a dictionary, I've found some clues about this notion in his paper. So I cited this paper, even though I have only read about one page of it. The reason is sometimes we have to cite a paper, because some fundamental notion has originated from that paper and we have to give credit to the person who invented that notion. Other reasons for citing papers are:
1. They have a nice review of the subject and/or contain relatively a comprehensive list of references related to the work.
2. They have done some parallel or complementary works.
3. They have some results which are used in my papers.
4. They contain reasons which motivate my work. For example, they ask or suggest a problem which is addressed in my work.
5. They give more examples, applications and/or ideas related to my work.
etc.
So you do not have to read all contents of a paper before citing it. But make sure it is relevant, useful, some how necessary, interesting and/or important paper with respect to the work you are presenting in your paper. As a final remark, it is always nice to point out where in the paper you are citing is related to the discussion, for example specify the theorem number, the page number, etc.
# Answer
> 8 votes
When you reference a paper within whatever your context may be, you are possibly doing several things. First, you may make claims and use other authors names and reputation in support. Second, you may take "facts" from a paper and propagate these facts through yours.
Nothing wrong with that? Not generally. But, what happens if a paper makes a claim that is not at all well supported by the study? You run the risk of propagating errors so that when somebody uses your paper as a reference the original paper is still further away and after a few such iterations the source may be completely forgotten. There are many instances where either errors have been propagated or where "truths" have slowly been misquoted so that they turn into errors. This is clearly not what we want in our papers.
I would therefore say that one needs to (critically) read a paper enough to make oneself sure that the facts can be trusted and that no misinterpretation has occurred in the paper to be referenced or earlier. Hence relying on, for example, other authors references is a very weak link in the chain. One has to try to back-trace vital information as much as possible. Misunderstandings may not necessarily be born out of malice but just by oversight, but the end result is still the same. To therefore, for example, simply gloss over the abstract and use whatever seems to support some idea or vice versa is far from satisfactory.
# Answer
> 2 votes
Here is my take. This is not high school and nobody is going to check whether you've read the papers. The idea is to provide references for the readers for further research not to show that you've read all the literature. Naturally, of course, you don't want to cite a paper that has nothing to do with the subject at hand so you need to have a grasp on its content but nobody expects you to be an expert on every detail in the 100 publications that you reference. Sometimes I only read an abstract to decide if I want to reference the paper or not.
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Tags: ethics, citations
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thread-13328 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13328 | Is a Master 2 Research (Europe) a University or Postgraduate Degree? | 2013-10-10T21:30:01.837 | # Question
Title: Is a Master 2 Research (Europe) a University or Postgraduate Degree?
I am currently applying for post-docs and for one of them, I should provide the "category" or degree/educational establishment where I have the choice between:
```
University degree
Postgraduate
PhD
```
My question is: what is the right category of a Master 2 Research (in Europe) ? Is it a University degree or a Postgraduate degree ?
# Answer
> 1 votes
While I would recommend you to confirm, normally a 'university degree' is an undergraduate degree.
A postgraduate could be a postgraduate certificate, postgraduate diploma, or a postgraduate degree (which is a master degree)
I think you know what a PhD is.
In short, as master is a postgraduate (the middle of your three choices).
It seems a little strange because normally post-docs are **post** (after) **doctorate** (PhD).
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Tags: postdocs, degree, administration
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thread-13316 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13316 | How should I cite presentation slides? | 2013-10-10T13:01:34.317 | # Question
Title: How should I cite presentation slides?
A friend has made some nice slides that I could reuse (similar topics). He sent me the slides and commented that if I use them and could cite him that would be nice, I asked him how should I cite the slides but he said that whatever suits better to me he said "Just add my surname in some place where it's not very intrusive".
I'm not sure if he doesn't care or he doesn't want to be too picky, but I'd like to cite him, to each one his own.
AFAIK, they are related to a paper (but not in the paper) and to his thesis, where they could be as a diagram but definitively not animated. The slides (as such) may be available at some URL, he said they will be but they are not available yet (so I don't have the URL yet). If citing by the URL I guess I could use this: "How to cite a website URL?"
Should I cite slides? If yes, how?
# Answer
There are two practical purposes to scholarly citations:
1. acknowledging scientific contribution of others, the borrowing of ideas (mainly) and content (sometimes, in the form of quotes)
2. helping people find relevant content if they want to read it
3. bookkeeping, for scientometric/bibliometric purposes
In your particular case, you cannot fulfill #2 and #3, because your friend's slides are not available for others to read, and even if they were, random documents on the internet are not really used for bibliometric purposes.
So, you want a solution that will achieve #1, i.e. make sure his contributions are recognized by people who will read your slides. To do so, you don't need to give your citation any specific format. I suggest you simply write, at the bottom of slides you borrowed from him:
> *Slide courtesy of John Doe*
or
> *Slide modified from John Doe, with permission*
In addition, you can thank him in your acknowledgements at the end of your talk.
> 17 votes
# Answer
In practice, what I've often seen is to just stick in a footnote saying "slide from \[name\]" or something similar. To do otherwise could be considered plagiarism. Admittedly, people are not picky about this with slides the way they are with papers; it seems to be tacitly accepted sometimes to borrow figures or entire slides without always acknowledging the source, but still, unless you want to be the kind of person who doesn't care about academic integrity, I think you should strive to credit the sources of your content.
If you want something more formal, you could have your friend upload his slides to figshare, which will archive them and allow him to claim a DOI. You can then use that DOI for a more standard citation.
> 5 votes
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Tags: citations
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thread-13324 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13324 | Can I publish a paper that doesn't have a specific question to answer? | 2013-10-10T19:21:21.003 | # Question
Title: Can I publish a paper that doesn't have a specific question to answer?
I have created a new data structure, and I intend to submit a paper about it to an ACM conference later this year. However, in writing the paper, I realize there is no specific "question" the research answers. I was simply curious if such a structure could be created. Can I simply write the paper, describe the structure and how it works, and then give a pseudocode example and perhaps comparisons to other data structures? The structure has some rather interesting properties, and I can see specific applications for it in statistical analysis. But beyond that, as far as I can tell, it's just a neat structure with some weird properties.
# Answer
> 10 votes
I would suggest that you investigate those interesting properties further and then have a paper along the lines of "this structure has this useful property, more-so (or less-so) than these other structures." That is justify why someone would actually use this structure.
Think about it from the editors' point of view. Why should this paper be published? If you can't provide an answer with a straight face then maybe you should wait until there is a purpose for it.
# Answer
> 5 votes
I think "theoretical" papers are welcome! Just make sure to clearly present your contributions to the field, even if they are incremental. Ex: place a table with other related structures and show that your data structure improves on some operation, (retrieval, insertion, or whatever operations you have) operation on which other structures have a higher O().
State your advantages clear in the discussions section but mention them in abstract, introduction and conclusions.
Please make sure that your mathematical argument on why you get the specific O() is sound! It also could be helpful to collect some experimental data with your proposed structures and current "state of the art". The experiments doesn't need to work on some real problem. It is enough if you can generate some data having a distribution similar to what you might encounter in the real world.
Submit it and remember, reviewers are always right :( Don't give up if you get rejected, try a conference, or another journal instead.
Hope it helps!
# Answer
> 4 votes
If you can see some useful applications then I think you have your question: What is the best data structure in ***_*\____** (situation).
If it is not the best data structure in any situation then perhaps it is better to improve it so that it does something important better than anything else that is out there.
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Tags: publications, conference, computer-science, publishability
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thread-13319 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13319 | Do we ever, in a research paper, mention methods we tried but did not get a satisfactory result? | 2013-10-10T16:36:25.983 | # Question
Title: Do we ever, in a research paper, mention methods we tried but did not get a satisfactory result?
I have been working on an application where we have tried two alternative methods. Both methods are used for the same purpose, but the first one had several problems. Despite getting results we had to look for another method that solved those problems to some extent.
Can I mention the rejected method along with the accepted method in a research paper?
# Answer
I cannot see any reason not to mention what could be labelled "negative results". If you have tried a method and it failed there can be two reasons, either the choice of method was bad (which is likely a trivial unpublishable result) or the method is in some way not appropriate due to reasons not before understood. In the latter case, there are clear advantages to convey this result to others. This may spawn new research or simply help others avoid using the method. Hopefully you will be able to provide deeper insights into why things did not work out as you first thought. In essence, anything that progresses our understanding is worth bringing forth in a publication.
> 30 votes
# Answer
Yes, especially if most people **would expect the method to work**, but you can clearly describe why it does not work. It has to be done carefully though, because the focus should be on actual results, not on failed methods (this is not a negative result, it's really a failed attempt to get any result).
In my opinion, the **best place to put this** is the introduction. After you state your problem, say which method one would try in a first step, then argue why it doesn't work, and then present you approach to the problem. This approach works especially well if someone suggested the method as a feasible approach to your problem, and you cite that in your introduction.
But **keep it short**: I would think that two to three sentences should be sufficient to describe it. If the failed method is so little known in your field that it requires careful explanation, it's probably not worth being mentioned at all.
> 22 votes
# Answer
Firstly I will qualify this by declaring that I am not strictly an academic.
I have, however, overseen research for a number of years. This has been government-private partnership industrial research that has been done under full scale production processes of construction - perhaps the largest contiguous experimental research work ever undertaken in hot and tropical climates. This was a 20+ year project involving a number of programmes - some 120,000 data elements and a team of analysts to PhD level.
Needless to say, it is important that this information be published, presented and disseminated - otherwise it is of no value. What is paramount in this process is the benefit that this information and message can give to the audience.
Above all each and every statement must be supported by logic and the data. Try to let the data speak for itself. Try not to wander into speculative territory - some things cannot be explained. And the reader must have enough information to make their own informed decision. We take the view that the researcher has a lot of power - the power to persuade and change an audience and industry to new and better ways. This is research in action.
This brings us to the question posed. For the audience to make an informed decision, it is essential to report on aspects that did not turn out as expected. Often we learn more from things that did not work than from those that did. For example, we established a procedure to carry out full scale temperature monitoring in one experiment, but found, to our surprise, that we still encountered significant ambient (environmental) effects, which prompted us to redesign the experiment until this phenomenon was effectively eliminated. This type of information, to your audience, is quite valuable. It also will build more confidence in your work.
However, it should not be something that one dwells on. Address it, and move on to more important things. Our work tends to go to practitioners, whereas yours may go to other academics. In this situation speculation, although I personally stay away it, may be warranted because it may lead you to new research avenues. These are matters your supervisor or associates will better understand.
Ultimately, research is about objectively seeking the truth - truth, like perfection, being something we may approach but never reach - with successes and failures along the way. Research is amongst the highest of human endeavours, in my view. Try to let your work and your writing convey these principles.
> 7 votes
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Tags: research-process, publications, independent-researcher
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thread-13267 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13267 | Why does the Nobel committee not award prize to collaborations? | 2013-10-08T10:51:34.730 | # Question
Title: Why does the Nobel committee not award prize to collaborations?
The 2013 Physics Nobel prize went to François Englebert and Peter Higgs, for their discovery of the Higgs boson. I was wondering why the CERN, as an institution, or the ATLAS collaboration, are not co-awarded the price with Englebert and Higgs. Apparently, “collaborations” cannot be awarded the Nobel prize. Is it a tradition, or something written in the rules of the Nobel foundation? Has there ever been an exception?
# Answer
> 13 votes
In paragraph 4 of the statutes, it restricts the price to be only awarded to two works and to a maximum of 3 individuals. But it also says, that it can be awarded to an institution or organization. Which has been done with the Nobel Peace Prizes to the EU.
> A prize amount may be equally divided between two works, each of which is considered to merit a prize. If a work that is being rewarded has been produced by two or three persons, the prize shall be awarded to them jointly. In no case may a prize amount be divided between more than three persons.
>
> \[…\]
>
> Each prize-awarding body shall be competent to decide whether the prize it is entitled to award may be conferred upon an institution or association.
# Answer
> 8 votes
Apparently, there might have been an internal dispute behind Nobel physics delay, on the possibility of including the CERN as a recipient. However, according to this article, some members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science hint that it was not possible with the current rules:
* > “It was discussed a lot. But we must follow the (Nobel’s) will as I see it. There is nothing in it about institutions so in that way the decision was dead simple,” said Hans Ryde, professor of physics at Lund University.
* > The chairman of the prize committee, Lars Brink, defended the decision, saying it was a “theoretical prize”.
* > “Research is changing. If you go back a hundred years it was about a single person doing experiments and making discoveries. And today it’s 6,000 or so people – a sort of collegial research situation,” said Academy member Per Carlson, professor of elementary particle physics at the Royal Institute of Technology.
>
> “I don’t know if the Academy will open up the possibility to give the prize to organizations in the future – it’s a possibility,” he suggested. “In my view it should be possible.”
So even though a Nobel Prize can be awarded to an organization, it seems that the Royal Swedish Academy of Science does not consider this possibility yet.
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Tags: collaboration, academic-history, awards
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thread-13330 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13330 | How difficult is it to get a paid PhD studentship in physics in Germany? | 2013-10-10T23:55:40.240 | # Question
Title: How difficult is it to get a paid PhD studentship in physics in Germany?
I would like to ask about the possibility of getting a paid PhD position in Germany. I am going to defend my thesis in Physics after a few days and I am thinking of applying for a PhD. My specialization is in nano-science and surface physics. The average of my Master's degree will be at most 2.7, which is between good and satisfactory. Does the average play a pivotal rule ? Is it difficult to get a paid PhD position?
# Answer
Good grades can help, but they aren't the be all and end all. If you put together a great CV and have positive references then you've got a good chance of gaining an interview.
More important than grades I think is simply showing that you are, and will be, a good researcher. Not every great academic was a hotshot from Harvard in their undergrad years. And not everyone with a perfect GPA from Harvard would make a good academic.
I can tell you from personal experience that you don't *need* amazing grades to get a PhD scholarship. Just put your best foot forward in proving that you're an excellent researcher and go for gold.
> 1 votes
# Answer
> Is it difficult to get a paid PhD position?
In Germany, most PhD positions are paid. In physics, you would typically get a half to three quarters full-time equivalent position as a university employee. I don't think it's particularly difficult to get such a position, if you have the right qualification for it. This will also depend on the place where you got your Master's degree.
> Does the average play a pivotal rule?
A lot of professors that I know do care for good grades. And many university regulations ask for at least a good degree for admission as a PhD student (in my place, that translates to 2.5 or better, though there's a tolerance for students from abroad to take care of differences in the grading systems).
My suggestion would be to look for position being announced through for example in:
and apply or get in contact with the person there to see how far you can get.
Also try to use your personal network: Ask your supervisors whether they know good labs to apply to, or whether they could even throw in a word for you.
> 6 votes
# Answer
From my personal experience (just started a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in Hannover), it is not difficult. As @silvado mentions, most Ph.D. positions are paid with about 75 % equivalent of a university employee (corresponding to about 1500-1600 EUR after tax per month). You can look at the Internet for open positions or try and contact group leaders that you would like to work with (possibly after a consultation with your current supervisor). The latter, however, might require some time as the professor will need to find funding.
Regarding grades, some professors might care. In my case, that was not the case and only my research results (i.e., my master thesis) were important. Nevertheless, that is just a single experience and it might be different elsewhere. Anyway, I guess you can always ask about this and, if you can reasonably explain why your grades are not better, this might not be a serious issue.
> 3 votes
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Tags: phd, germany, international-students, job
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thread-13349 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13349 | What to say to one PhD offer when still waiting to hear the result of a different and preferred PhD application? | 2013-10-11T17:26:23.500 | # Question
Title: What to say to one PhD offer when still waiting to hear the result of a different and preferred PhD application?
I have had two PhD interviews. One of the position (position A) I like more than the other (position B).
Now, I have gotton a reply from position B saying that they will offer me the PhD. However, before replying yes/no, I would like to know what the response is from position A.
Will it be good practice to let position B know that I will answer them once I know what the status is of my other application? Or is this sharing too much information?
# Answer
The usual thing to do in this situation is to ask B when they need your response. If that isn't enough time to hear back from A, then it's fine to ask B if you can have more time to decide (you don't need to say why). Of course, they might say that they cannot give you more time, in which case you'll have to make a decision on B without knowing about A.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to consider all your options, and the people from B will undoubtedly read between the lines and understand that this is the situation, but you don't need to rub their nose in the fact that you'd rather be somewhere else.
To echo Pavel's answer, whatever decision you do give to B, you should stick with. If B gives you a short deadline, and you decide to accept their offer before hearing from A, you're committed, and you need to immediately contact A and withdraw your application. It's not appropriate to accept B while planning to back out if A later says yes. Doing that would burn your bridges with people at B (and anyone who they talk to), and it could even be cause for A to rescind your acceptance, leaving you with nothing.
> 32 votes
# Answer
Our research group has an experience of dealing with students who accepted the offer and then declined it because of the better offer received. This is often considered as an impolite behaviour and I will explain why.
Supervisors and heads of a research group usually have ideas of projects to propose to new students before they arrive. When you accept the offer, supervisors are making plans already how to integrate you in the work of the group. When it suddenly appears that you are not coming to the group, because you received another offer or whatever reason, this requires substantial resources for a group to recover and to change their plans accordingly.
* The group needs to start recruiting process again, what is time-consuming.
* If too much time passes, it often happens that the position can be lost, what literally means that the group wastes money and reputation.
To sum up, don't underestimate people. Everyone understands that you can look for positions in many places simultaneously. Be honest, and accept the offer conditionally. If possible, provide the final decision date when you should know application results from all other places. The research group will plan their projects accordingly. Also this will help you to save the reputation.
P.S. Industry is more tolerant to people who change their mind. Usually they have a team of recruiters and their daily business is to solve this kind of problems. Research groups usually don't have so much resources.
> 22 votes
# Answer
I have been in a similar situation in the past. I told the people concerned very honestly about my choices and that I was waiting to hear back from other programs. They were, in general, very understanding about them.
I did make sure to note down the formal dates by which I would have to notify each such department and stuck to them.
> 10 votes
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Tags: phd, interview
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thread-6059 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/6059 | When is a research question "closed"? | 2013-01-06T13:52:27.830 | # Question
Title: When is a research question "closed"?
I am in Computer Science. I read a survey today. The author gave such a good result by the end of the article that I think the research question can be called "closed": the result performance is ideal and I think the problem is not worth researching any more; future developers can simply use the algorithms proposed and things should be fine. However, the **author of the survey** did not say so -- they did not say that the problem is solved, nor did they said anything about future work.
I believe (in this specific case), that the problem is solved:
1. The research goal is to reduce network latency. By the time the survey was written (year 2008), the result latency was 100ms. With such latency, human users won't notice a network delay, because that only happens when the latency exceeds 150ms.
2. The authors of the survey did not publish any paper on optimizing the algorithms after that survey.
Does these mean that the problem is safely closed? If so, why didn't the survey authors say that? If not, why didn't they continue working on it? How would I know whether a research question is solved or not?
# Answer
I don't think a research question is every “closed”, as you say, though it's of course a matter of vocabulary. In the example you mention, it seems clearly that there is **no current incentive to design better solutions**, but unless it is actually proven that there can be none, it's not a solved-and-closed question, it's a “we don't actually need to do better” question. This makes all the difference in the world.
> 17 votes
# Answer
I'd like to expand on Pieter Naaijkens's answer, because your question and his answer bear on a more general problem: when is a problem worth solving? Or viceversa, should one care about a paper solving this problem? I'll present the answer I've grown up with (as a PhD student), though I've seen wildly different opinions on this, so I don't think there's a fully objective view (though characterizing the spectrum of opinions is what matters here).
I've learned that it's up to the author to motivate the reader to care about the paper ("sell one's research"), though others might disagree; nowadays this is necessary because of the research-literature overload we live in. In applied fields, a common motivation is a set of (possibly indirect) applications. Different kind of motivations exist, but I'll conjecture that even good theoretical work should matter to other theoretical work to be good, and then leave other motivation out of scope.
Would you accept a paper (1) solving this latency problem for websites interacting with users? By your reasoning, I wouldn't (at least, not at a top venue). But let's assume that again Pieter Naaijkens submits a paper (2) on the topic. It first convinces readers that better latency matters by describing some application (say high-frequency trading, assuming this actually applies). Then, paper (2) solves the problem exactly like paper (1) above. The second paper could get past the same reviewers. I might even argue that with that motivation (assuming it's good), he might create a research question. And in some cases, simply motivating well a research question might be enough for a paper.
To demonstrate that wildly different opinions exist, I'll offer two opposite examples.
* I've seen a reviewer explain that a paper was good research but he wasn't sure whether it addressed any relevant problem; the reviewer concluded with a strong accept judgement. (Of course I won't share details).
* On the other hand, Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems book explains that some research had the only point of keeping otherwise unemployed graph theorists off the streets, because (it is hinted) the problem lacked actual applications.
Other examples of researchers questioning the motivation of other research abound, but I won't add further anecdotical evidence.
> 0 votes
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Tags: research-process
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thread-8529 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8529 | Finding a research group where I can work remotely? | 2013-03-11T15:04:37.990 | # Question
Title: Finding a research group where I can work remotely?
I've not seen this question before, so I'll ask it after feedback I received on this question.
I've finished my MBA in the UK and was awarded distinction but would like to find a research group to work with. I'm no longer in the UK (or even Europe) and would like to find a research group with which I could work on a telecommuting / remote basis.
My goal here is not for income (though it's OK if it led to some). My goal is to build my research experience with the thought of pursuing a PhD (business / intercultural management / something in that general area). My MBA didn't result in a lot of research guidance for me so I feel like there are so many things that I don't know and I want to 'fix' that.
Any ideas how someone can find a research group who would be interested in working with someone remotely for free (obviously there is a time and attention commitment from both sides, which is not exactly free)?
# Answer
It is actually of mutual interest, but really hard to find an opportunity. Although, you are offering your time for free, group leaders are reluctant to take this risk to leave their research somewhere that they do not have direct (everyday) control. Note that you should work on a research project currently funded at that research group. In other words, the group leader should complete that project in the corresponding timeframe. Thus, too conservative to put the project completion at risk in favor of having a researcher free of charge.
Sorry for this negative answer, but IMO (maybe others have better approaches), the only possibility is to directly contacting some research groups and negotiating about this possibility. Remember that the judgement will be merely based on your experience and potentials. Once again, IMO, the only chance is if the group leader can find your profession useful for a part of the project, which is not critically sensitive.
Conclusion: there is no system for this, you need to convince the group leader personally.
Note: Another solution can be finding an independent researcher like yourself for starting a personally funded research project, but I think this is not what you are looking for.
> 8 votes
# Answer
Are you referring to this answer on how to gain research experience after a masters? That changes things. That answer suggests to do menial work for some research group. That's one of the few things where people might care less about you being remote, as long as you do the job — after all, they'd likely try to get students to do it. Especially if you can get (with some luck) to coauthor a publication, but that's often hard to discuss upfront.
But is that relevant? I'd disagree with the poster there. But you should ask a professor in your field — possibly one you'd want to apply for; a bit like this other answer suggested. If they think this experience might count, then go ahead.
If you don't have research experience, it's hard for you to know how to approach research. That's what you're supposed to learn in a PhD (or to a little extent in a research master).
If you're not followed often enough by a supervisor, I believe you're unlikely to learn enough research skills.
I'd probably recommend some book like "The Craft of Research" to get started; the problem is, there's tons of stuff you can only learn from a good supervisor.
> 0 votes
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Tags: research-process
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thread-13373 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13373 | Status regarding co-authorship for a computer science research paper | 2013-10-12T18:49:00.413 | # Question
Title: Status regarding co-authorship for a computer science research paper
I am employed as a student in a theoretical computer science research group and part of my job was to assist my supervisor with a scientific paper he has been working on. Concretely, my job was to implement the software that was used to conduct the experimental part of the research paper and also to gather and put together a dataset in order to empirically test the theoretical framework developed by my supervisor using real-world data.
Before the first submission attempt, I was mentioned in the list of the co-authors. However, the paper was not accepted on the grounds that the empirical results only weakly reflected the theoretical claims.
My supervisor thought that the rejection was due to a bug in the code I've developed and afterwards he removed me both from the list of co-authors and from the project. I am very sure that the code didn't contain any bugs.
Afterwards, my supervisor contacted a fellow student who was already working on a different topic, and asked for his permission to use the data from this different topic in order to test the theory.
The second submission attempt of the research paper was successful and the paper was accepted. My fellow student appeared in the list of co-authors but I didn't.
The version of the paper that finally got accepted differed from the first one that got rejected, in that it contained only an extra experiment, using the data from my fellow student. However, the initial empirical experiments that I put together were still there. They have not been removed, nor modified.
Regarding this situation I have a series of questions:
* Is it normal to feel that I have been treated unfairly? I feel that the only reason why I have been removed from the list of co-authors is because the dataset I have compiled simply didn't confirm the expected theoretical results and me getting fired was simply a way for my supervisor to vent his frustration about being rejected.
* Is it legal to publish a paper that uses data and software that some other person developed and not mention this person as a co-author (or at least as a reference)? Are there any laws or rules of conduct regarding such situations?
I'm aware that a variation of this question may have already been answered before:
What to do when principal investigator publishes your work without putting you down as a coauthor?
My research work stolen and published as his own by the co-author without my consent
My work was published and my name was nowhere to be found: how should I handle this?
Most of the answers suggested that I should try to approach and discuss this problem in private with my supervisor or with some other member of the research group. I have tried doing exactly this and both my supervisor and 2 other senior members simply refused to discuss this issue with me. The only response I've got was: "what's done is done, let us focus on the future now".
What can I do, or what would be ethical to do in this situation?
# Answer
> 5 votes
To answer your questions:
Based on what you say, it does sound like you were treated unfairly.
Leaving you out from the paper given the circumstances is at least unethical. I don't know about legal.
Your collaborators don't sound like nice people. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon in academia, where abuse of junior people is certainly not uncommon, though for obvious reasons statistics are hard to come by.
An obvious option is to write to the journal's editor explaining the situation. If you have contributed significantly to the paper, you certainly have a claim to be considered a co-author. Obviously, make sure you have documentation backing up your claim. If you don't, it is just your word against theirs, and you will quite likely get nowhere. If you have good documentation, it will be more difficult for the journal to ignore your claims, though it is obviously hard to predict what people will do. Given that you were on the first submission attempt, I think that first submission should count as part of the documentation, and should really help your case if you appeal to the journal. It would be easy enough to compare the two versions of the paper. In the first submission, is your contribution described? Also, were the two submissions to different journals?
It is not completely clear from your posting whether the paper has been officially published. If it has, it may be too late to add your name to the list of authors.
Bear in mind that your collaborators will quite possibly try to find a way to get back at you, for any number of reasons. People who behave in the way you described can get extremely petty and unpleasant when they perceive you as "going against them". They also have a remarkable capacity for not taking responsibility for their own actions, and in their own minds will find a way to blame you for the situation. This is not meant to discourage you from standing up for your rights, but just pointing out the reality of the situation.
Personally, I think people *should* stand up for their rights, but at the end of the day it is your decision.
# Answer
> 1 votes
*Assuming that you are giving a totally impartial and accurate account of the facts*:
To your first question: Your Supervisor has a "right-to-manage" in this project since it was his project and you functioned as his assistant. "Right-to-manage" is an euphemism for "authority to fire". Namely, he has the (moral, even) right to "fire" you from the paper, if he believes (rightly or wrongly) that it was your fault that the paper was rejected the first time. Naturally, he wouldn't want faulty work to continue to be present in his paper, now would he? So he went on and scrapped your contribution on which you have labored so hard... but wait: he didn't scrap your work from the paper, but he *kept it in*, without your name. This leads us to your second question: what he did can be legally characterized as "grand theft", I believe, at least in the US legal system.
What to do? The "cosmic-joke" scenario (but I am not joking here) would be to *actually find* a bug in your code and send a letter to the paper that published the paper, challenging the empirical results (and you will be in an excellent position to challenge them since you know all the details).
The sensible thing to do, given that you have already futilely tried to discuss the issue with the defendant (which was the civilized thing to do), is to indeed "focus on the future" -*your* future this time. With *all* that such a vague phrase may silently imply.
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Tags: publications, authorship, copyright
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thread-13357 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13357 | Does some degree of stubbornness help for a researcher? | 2013-10-12T00:01:55.617 | # Question
Title: Does some degree of stubbornness help for a researcher?
Doing research requires exploring a tree of different ideas and then, upon failures, tracking back to some extent, up to giving up on the whole project and changing topics (or even quitting your PhD). You might err on both sides: change approach too much, give up too early, or too late. (See for instance this answer or Half good and some not good results in a research paper?). Most importantly, though, often you won't know that you'll actually succeed until you did, and things might look bleak until then.
Does some degree of stubbornness help being a researcher (I couldn't extract an answer so easily from )? Lacking that, do you know any metaheuristics to approach this decision?
EDIT: I read this idea off the mention of "stubbornness and self-delusion" in this rant \- and I've observed this trait in at least some researchers.
EDIT 2: an answer suggested that I talk about persistence instead. And probably that's the right compromise and what you actually should have. But I prefer the more provocative phrasing, also because I've anecdotical experiences of stubbornness as a "professional risk" of the profession.
# Answer
> 10 votes
Although I understand what you are getting at, I would like to say that stubbornness is perhaps not a good trait for a scientist. My dictionary provides the following: *Stubborn: Having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, esp. in spite of good arguments or reasons.*
Clearly a scientist needs doggedness and stamina to endure long and hard experiments, field work, often monotonous work on data and theory, as well as other issues met in the workplace. To be able to change footing in light of new evidence is, however, an important trait. So being stubborn, in the sense of the definition, would be very counter productive in our effort to have science progress. **Persistence and perseverance** are perhaps synonyms that better reflect the traits you aim for.
So, yes it is important to be able to endure. Being a scientist is usually based on a deep appreciation for the subject and the research, which is why it is possible to endure the pressures that exist. It is a bit like being a top athlete, very few will excel without a deep love for what they do. As soon as you lose the drive it is difficult to continue because of the demands. Maintaining the drive is therefore a very important aspect of academia and the workplace in which you act.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Yes, you've got to be stubborn in order to get results, because everyone encounters failures and roadblocks. Giving up too early can withhold good results, but aimlessly slogging towards a dead end can be a waste of time.
I only give up on something when I can justify *why* I should give up.
1. Identify the cause of the difficulty.
2. Find out what you need to do to solve the roadblock.
3. Assess whether it is feasible to solve the problem with the available time and resources.
Most failures are still useful to you, because you can usually find out why those ideas did not work. Learn from your mistakes, and (if appropriate) publish why a method did not work as expected (as a prelude to a subsequent method that did) so that others can learn as well.
# Answer
> 2 votes
As @Peter Jansson makes clear in his answer, stubbornness may not be a good quality to have, but tenacity and perseverance certainly are. See this post by Matt Might for an insightful look at why PhD students need persistence and tenacity in order to survive and thrive in what can be an exercise in long-term frustration and failure before reaching success.
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Tags: research-process
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thread-13178 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13178 | Correlation between personality type (MBTI or other) and success in academia? | 2013-10-04T07:43:51.507 | # Question
Title: Correlation between personality type (MBTI or other) and success in academia?
When you meet new people entering the world of academic research, it is often tempting to try and guess what “sort” of researcher they'll be, based on their personality, character, known qualities, and defects, etc. You'll sometimes hear people say things like *“he's not cut out to be a researcher”*.
But I wonder: **are there any studies that have probed the link between personality/character and success in academic life (and academic research in particular)?**
The sort of studies I imagine would be possible are things like assessing researchers' personalities (e.g. by the well-known Myers-Briggs classification) and comparing the distribution against that of the general public… But I could not find anything serious through Google, though I imagine researchers in behavioral sciences, psychology, or other related fields must have tried to address this question.
# Answer
**1)** Psychologists on Psychologists:
Helmreich, Robert L.; Spence, Janet T.; Beane, William E.; Lucker, G. William; Matthews, Karen A. (1980), "Making it in academic psychology: Demographic and personality correlates of attainment". *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, Vol 39(5), Nov 1980, 896-908.
**ABSTRACT**: Examined personality, demographic characteristics, publication rate, and citations to published work in a sample of 141 male and 55 female academic psychologists. Reputational rankings of their graduate schools and current institutions were significantly related to citations, as were components of achievement motivation. Mastery and work needs were positively related to citations, whereas competitiveness was negatively associated with the criterion. Large sex differences were found in citations, with men receiving significantly more recognition and producing at a higher rate. A model of attainment in psychology is proposed, and possible explanations for the differential attainment of the sexes are explored. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
**2)** A more general review paper that includes a discussion and literature on psychological factors:
Fox, M. F. (1983). "Publication productivity among scientists: A critical review". *Social Studies of Science*, 13(2), 285-305.
available at
**http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/68920/10.1177\_030631283013002005.pdf**
> 10 votes
# Answer
I recently stumbled across this study, which postulates that modern science selects for sociability and perseverance at the expense of creativity and intelligence. The successful academic will be agreeable and persevering, but will not necessarily be very intelligent or creative. (These traits are derived from Eysenk's Personality Questionnaire.) In short, dull people are preferred!
I'm not sure I agree with the authors' analysis, since I've met many interesting, creative, and highly intelligent academics, including many in positions which are indicative of *success*--however, as StasK pointed out in a comment, perhaps these individuals are just more memorable. My subjective experience in no way indicates that the majority are not of the dull and agreeable sort. :)
> 9 votes
# Answer
There are some small studies that examine the role of personality in academic success. You should search academic databases, if you can.
Here are a few:
> 3 votes
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Tags: psychology
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thread-13354 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13354 | How much time do researchers spend on writing grants? | 2013-10-11T21:10:54.293 | # Question
Title: How much time do researchers spend on writing grants?
As a potential future researcher I would like to know how much I could focus on my research and how much distraction grants cause. My research interest lie in theoretical cs and logic, however the answers should include other areas so that they may be useful to other readers too.
Specifically, how many hours of your working day on average is dedicated to grant related issues - searching a grant, writing a grant proposal, writing the final report for the funded projects, etc.
I heard in an informal talk that this can be as much as half of the time of the researcher, say 5 hours, Monday to Friday. In such circumstance, I do not think I would be able to focus on the research.
# Answer
In my case (pure mathematics) it is about two or three weeks of hectic activity before the October 1 NSF deadline once every 2-3 years. I cannot say that I do nothing else during that time but it definitely distracts me quite a bit. What helps is that we (I and a few my colleagues and friends) often apply for collaborative research grants (so we have well-established separation of labor when writing, which increases the speed noticeably).
The reports are easy if you have something real to show. I would say it takes me at most a couple of hours to write mine. Recommendation letters and reviews usually take much more time.
> 6 votes
# Answer
It very much depends on the field, the researcher, and the grants. To give you a picture of someone who works in public health - in a soft money position - here's some things that occupy my time. I am however not faculty (I'm a postdoc) so if anything this is an underestimate.
* Several weeks a year, almost everything else comes to a halt. Even when I'm not the PI on a grant, if I'm in charge of a section theres reading to do, figures to make, etc. Also often rigging up preliminary data etc., because working on mathematical models of infectious diseases means that for grant applications you have to outline the model itself - a substantial amount of work is already done.
* I've spent probably a good month of productive working time managing a particular grant I have. This grant has been a problem child from day one - issues with the contract, issues paying things, issues, issues...it's depressingly not even for all that much money.
* Usually then per-paper I spend about an hour making sure my acknowledgments point to the right grants, make sure things that should be in PubMed Central end up their, etc.
> 7 votes
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Tags: research-process, funding
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thread-13375 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13375 | Do non-English academic journals pay for a translated paper? | 2013-10-12T21:14:39.380 | # Question
Title: Do non-English academic journals pay for a translated paper?
I am currently a PhD student in mathematics with a very strong interest in foreign languages (native language English), and I would be interested in translating math articles in foreign languages into English on the side.
Is this something that academic journals are generally willing to pay for? How would one go about finding work in this area?
# Answer
> 6 votes
I think you'd have a better chance of getting more reliable information if you go to popular online forums for translators like ProZ and TranslatorsCafé, where you can talk to professional translators and browse job ads. A very quick search already gave me one recent (but already closed) ad that seems to be looking for a translator for an academic journal:
http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/job146043.htm
> I am currently in search of French to English Translator with a mathematics & engineering background to translate an academic journal.
Also, AMS seems to have a list of translated journals here:
http://www.ams.org/msnhtml/trnjor.pdf
Anyway, there seems to be a demand for that kind of job, so you might be able to find a job if you know where to look. So, maybe the question is more about how to become a professional translator (and find jobs) than about academia.
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Tags: journals, translations
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thread-13345 | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13345 | Any ideas how I could get people to participate in my live Internet application experiment for my thesis? | 2013-10-11T14:42:51.577 | # Question
Title: Any ideas how I could get people to participate in my live Internet application experiment for my thesis?
I have developed an Internet application that I need people to run across the Internet to collect statistics to see how well the program works. So far, I have used LinkedIn to reach out to my friends from my university and I started an open group. I also have a Git page where the program can be downloaded.
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Andrew-Stantons-WSU-Masters-Thesis-6518497?home=&gid=6518497&trk=groups\_guest\_most\_popular-h-logo
https://github.com/acstanton515/ThesisLiveExperiment
I don't think the participation is going to be what I would like, so I need a way to find more users willing to run the program.
Any ideas on how to reach others in academia or elsewhere on a broader level?
# Answer
If you are ready to invest a small sum, Amazon Mechanical Turk https://www.mturk.com/mturk/ might be a good place to look.
> 0 votes
# Answer
First: If you intend to do research, you have to pay attention to how you pick the participants. If you just take everyone willing to participate, there could be age/gender/etc bias in your results.
Answer to actual question: Standard way to do this is to pay your participants (though not necessarily in cash). Try movie tickets etc.
> 2 votes
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Tags: research-process, computer-science, thesis, collaboration, networking
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