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thread-27923
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27923
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Do we actually need more PhDs?
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2014-09-02T16:31:07.973
|
# Question
Title: Do we actually need more PhDs?
A few months ago I attended a panel discussion on non-academic future careers for physics PhDs. The panel was made up of two senior physicists, a science communicator and freelance journalist, and a CEO of a finance corporation with a degree in physics. At some point I raised the question of whether the PhD program is functioning properly, and maybe we should do something about the PhD program before lecturing senior graduate students in theoretical physics on the importance of acquiring skills suitable for non-academic careers to get a job after grad school. To be more concrete, I referred to a Nature article that I had come across a few years earlier. The two physicist panelists blatantly dodged my question. The CEO, who I suppose had received his degree in early 2000s, added a comment along the lines that it is better to have more highly educated people in the society rather than fewer.
Are advisers hiring more graduate students to get more research done and compete better in getting grants, or there is an actual need for more PhDs, at least in natural sciences?
# Answer
We can make the same conversation for BSc or MSc degrees. There are probably many unemployed people with BSc degrees, as well. We cannot suggest that people should not go for higher education, because there are actually fewer jobs than university graduates.
Your question seems to neglect an important, yet simple truth. That sometimes, certain people want to go for a higher degree, regardless of their job outcome. Education (PHD included) is more than filling resumes or getting a better job but a fulfillment in itself. In this sense, it is the same as learning to play the guitar. Does the world need a new guitar player? No it does not. But you do not learn the guitar to benefit society. You learn the guitar to benefit your soul.
If the few lucky PHD holders manage to get the job they wanted that is fine. If they did not, at least they tried. Life is not linear and you cannot predict by your actions on what job you will land, even if you do everything perfectly. But at least, you must be provided with a chance to try. In that sense, it is better than there are actually more PHDs available than the available jobs for PHD holders. More people have access to an even higher education and that is (as aeismail said) a benefit in itself.
So to directly answer your question: Do we need more PHDs? No, we don't. Would the world be a better place if you or I get a PHD? No, it won't. Would we get the job we want with a PHD? Probably not. But that does not mean that I must not have the right to do a PHD and try my chances.
> 43 votes
# Answer
I've discussed this topic with my advisor on several occasions. His rather logical viewpoint was that if there were a serious glut of PhD's in a given field, you would see this because there would be a spike in the unemployment rate of PhD's in those fields. At least in the natural sciences and engineering, there does not seem to be any evidence that PhD graduates aren't finding jobs.
Certainly there is a glut of PhD's if the only possible destination were to remain in academia. However, especially for PhD's in so-called STEM fields, there are many other career options that do not involve staying in academia.
> 15 votes
# Answer
EDIT: This answer doesn't address the question whether we need more PhDs. It's pretty clear we don't. Instead, it addresses the issue why faculty members are so reluctant to admit this.
I'm not surprised at the dodge. There are enormous social and professional pressures on faculty members in the US to never ever admit that there are problems with their PhD programs. Here's one such article explaining the reasoning from the point of view of a humanities department, but the issues seem comparable.
> 8 votes
# Answer
In the middle ages, if you wanted to do scientific research, you had to pay yourself the career, meaning no salary, just living on your savings, which meant only the wealthiest could afford to dedicate their life to scientific research.
That's why there were so few inventions and discoveries.
In the renaissance, people become aware that there was 1,000 years of dark ages, and that science had been forgotten. They studied old classics and were able to re-create science. It was continued refinement of ideas by carefully testing them. But only the wealthier could afford.
At the same time the ideas of the illustration were born. Men should be free. Ideas should be free. People should be free to express their ideas. Science advanced so much in 200 years that vapor machines were invented. Then the american revolution happened. Ten years later the French revolution happened.
It was thought at the time that democracies could not exist, because Plato wrote in "Res Publicae - The Republic" that democracies would convert into demagogic governments, which meant that governments would invent enemies in order to keep in power and destroy democracy. Because of that several european countries wanted to re-conquer the americas. Americans decided to:
1. Educate their people for free.
2. Have everyone have guns.
The result is that the USA has more than 200 years, but the education system is failing. The main reason is that sometime in the past it was decided to follow the "no child left behind" policy, which meant no selection in the public system, so the students are mingled, good and bad, and of course the good have no incentive to study, since the tests are dumbed down for the stupid.
Do we need more PhDs?
If that were the case, then PhDs would make a lot of money, at least following the economic theory. The only problem is that it is very hard to make money on science, and even if you do, it takes several decades of research, so it is a very expensive and very risky investment. No rational investor would invest in science. Only if the result of the research is already proven and you just need to produce the thing, sure, some investor would be interested. We can't call that science though.
So I guess the answer is no. If you pursue a PhD is not for the money, but because you are interested in learning more about a subject. If you study computer science, maybe you go work for Google, Yahoo, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter and the like, and recover your investment of time and money, but otherwise it is a rather risky investment.
> -1 votes
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Tags: phd
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thread-27974
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27974
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How much time should one spend refereeing a paper?
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2014-09-03T13:27:00.780
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# Question
Title: How much time should one spend refereeing a paper?
I finished my PhD about a year ago and every now and then I get asked to referee a paper (perhaps once every two months from a reputable journal). I tend to accept as many as possible (except from crappy so-called "predatory" publishers, which I decline immediately) because I find refereeing papers is a good way to force myself to learn new things. There is also the moral obligation to referee a peer's paper to compensate for the time your peers spend refereeing yours.
My problem is that, at this early stage in my career, I'm familiar with the work I did during my PhD and little else. Since I try to be as fair as possible (I hate it when I get a report from someone who has clearly not understood the paper or just skimmed through the text), this means I spend a lot of time reviewing literature and trying to understand a paper before submitting a report. For something very close to what I have done in the past, I could finish the report in half a day. For something further away, I could be looking at anywhere from one to three days, depending on how familiar I am with the methods used and the length of the manuscript. As everyone in the academic world knows, it sometimes gets *very* busy (just "normal" busy otherwise), and these breaks tend to disrupt my "paid" job routine (I understand reviewing is also part of my unpaid duties).
I guess reviewing will get easier and quicker as I gain experience, but is it usual to spend so much time refereeing papers? What would be an acceptable compromise between a rigorous review and reconciling it with your paid duties?
# Answer
The slightly unsatisfactory answer is "enough time". You should provide a constructive review and that might take time. How much, depends on, for example, the quality of the paper, the complexity of the paper and, of course, your own experience. As new to reviewing, you probably spend longer than what you would with experience. Having said this, I would say that between close to a full workday to maybe two might be expected from an average research article.
Since you are a beginner, I would also recommend that you take your time. A common beginner's "mistake" is to focus on details more than the larger perspective. You need to focus on both. A paper may be poorly written but contain good science (and *vice versa*) so attending to all perspectives of an article is necessary, and that takes time.
This may all sound like a chore no-one would want to do but reviewing can be a really positive experience since you get to read a paper in such detail as you would probably not do otherwise, you see new science and you get to contribute to science with your expertise in ways other than producing your own papers.
> 18 votes
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Tags: publications, peer-review
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thread-27995
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27995
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Can participation in online academic competitions destroy patent rights?
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2014-09-03T20:44:53.767
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# Question
Title: Can participation in online academic competitions destroy patent rights?
I have developed an algorithm/software that does a specific task. I want to let the algorithm compete in an academic competition, where the code is run on a password protected server on a secret test set by another researcher. I will describe my research vaguely in the few lines that each researcher must submit about their work to be able to compete.
Will any of this destroy my chances of acquiring a patent for the algorithm afterwards?
# Answer
It very well could. Talk to a patent attorney. If you can get the contest runner to sign a non-disclosure agreement, then you might be able to protect your patent rights.
That being said, algorithms are not patentable in most jurisdictions, and software is quickly losing its patentability in the US.
> 5 votes
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Tags: computer-science, copyright, patents
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thread-27988
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27988
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Student registration fee at conferences for ex-students for work done as a student
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2014-09-03T19:28:33.920
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# Question
Title: Student registration fee at conferences for ex-students for work done as a student
I did some work as part of my final year undergraduate project and wrote a paper which has now been accepted at a conference. Though I am now working in the industry, I have listed my affiliation as my University because that is where I did my work as a student. So, for registering in the conference, do I have to pay the full registration fee (because I am currently not a student) or can I pay the student fee (because I did the work during my undergraduate days)?
# Answer
> 20 votes
## You're not a student now
The fees are based on the status of the participants, not the status of the papers. Often, organizers will require some evidence of student status (such as a current student ID) in order to be eligible for the reduced price.
It may be reasonable to get the student fee if you're a student at the time of registration but graduate before the actual conference - as the process often takes multiple months, but if it's something earlier, then you're out of luck.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Conferences usually grant discounts to financially disadvantaged participants, such as students or attendees from developing countries, because they want to enable as many people as reasonably possible to attend the conference. From another point of view, discounts are a social redistribution of wealth, with the rich attendees supporting the poorer ones. In theory, the organisers could negotiate each of this discounts individually, as there usally are no constraints regarding this imposed by some higher authority¹. Of course, this would cost more time (and thus money) than it saves and thus you usually have discounts for certain groups, such as students.
So, it’s up to the organisers whether they regard you as a student or not and to be really sure, you have to ask them. Given that falsely registering as a student could be considered fraud, you certainly should clarify the situation before doing this. However, you might want to take the reason behind those fees into account and just pay the undiscounted fee, if you are doing well financially, which also saves the organisers some time. On the other hand, if you aren’t, this might be worth mentioning when applying for a student discount, though you technically aren’t a student anymore.
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<sup> ¹ apart from anti-discrimination laws and similar </sup>
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Tags: publications, conference, fees
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thread-27987
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27987
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Will getting a PhD close doors for working as a software developer?
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2014-09-03T19:10:00.177
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# Question
Title: Will getting a PhD close doors for working as a software developer?
I am trying to decide whether I should continue with a PhD (in a field closely related to computer science) after my MS. I will be finishing my MS soon and have an opportunity to continue for a PhD.
My question is will getting a PhD close doors for working as a software developer? Are the opportunities for PhDs' only based on research? Even after a PhD will I still be able to compete with people with BSs and MSs for Software Engineering positions? Finally, during the PhD will I be able to apply for internships that deal with software development than pure research?
# Answer
> 9 votes
Q: Will getting a PhD close doors for working as a software developer?
A: It depends on the position you are looking for. Certain employers will not want to hire you because they may have the perception that hiring someone with a PhD will be more expensive than hiring someone with a bachelor's, and if someone with a bachelor's can do the job, they aren't going to want to pay extra for the PhD training.
Q: Are the opportunities for PhDs' only based on research?
A: No, there are a number of PhD graduates who go into industry and end up doing development-focused work.
Q: Even after a PhD will I still be able to compete with people with BSs and MSs for Software Engineering positions?
A: Yes and no. If the job can be done by someone with a BS or an MS, then companies will not want to pay more to get a PhD to do the job. On the other hand, there are development-focused positions where a PhD is beneficial. Having a PhD opens those doors for you. Some of this will be very dependent on what you spent your PhD doing. For example, if you spent your PhD developing systems and publishing papers on those systems, that will be much more desirable for companies with software development positions than if you spent time doing non-implementation research. At some software development companies, having a PhD is considered equal to some amount of experience, so you may enter at a higher position/pay scale than someone with a BS or MS and potentially get promoted more quickly.
Q: Finally, during the PhD will I be able to apply for internships that deal with software development than pure research?
A: Absolutely. This will be somewhat subject to your advisor, but there are a number of internships for CS graduate students that are very development-centric.
There are a lot of different reasons for getting a PhD, for example, your own personal gratification, to do research, to teach, to get a job that you can't get without a PhD. The question I think you should ask yourself is, "What do I want to get out of doing a PhD?"
If the answer to that is to make more money/make a bunch of money doing software development, you should stop at your MS and go into industry. If you are doing it for other reasons (as listed above) then definitely go for it.
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Tags: phd, job
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thread-28003
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28003
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Is it unwise to repeat portions of a successful grant proposal?
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2014-09-04T01:17:36.890
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# Question
Title: Is it unwise to repeat portions of a successful grant proposal?
Three years ago, I applied for and received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation in pure mathematics. Now I need to prepare a follow-up proposal for continued funding.
There is, of course much that I have to say that is new. However, I am interested in the same family of research problems, and it seems to make sense to repeat some of the text from my previous proposal, since I thought very carefully about how to describe the background and motivate my work.
Will it make a poor impression if I reuse some parts of my previous proposal verbatim?
# Answer
> 19 votes
Ask the program officer (PO), because he/she will be able to back you up if the permission comes from him/her, should the reviewers criticize so.
However, slightly recast your question. For instance, ask if the proposal will be reviewed with your previous proposal side by side or by the same reviewers. Tell the PO that you ask because you intended to frame the background with some similar information you presented in the last version, but worried that it would create redundancy. And emphasize that you will be more than happy to transfer the background to the continual application if that would make the application process smoother.
In the mean time, evaluate the magnitude of the intended cutting and pasting and what information is being transferred. Historical findings are unlikely to change and can understandably be worded similarly; but if what you want to paste were things that you would set off to explain/learn, and after three years the unknowns remain, then it probably will not go too well. Also, critically review the literature. If the parts to be cut and pasted are more contemporary literature review, it's hard to believe nothing can be added in three years. Anyway, don't use them just because you don't have time to revise the background and the last one seems still pretty good.
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Tags: funding
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thread-27965
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27965
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Are postdoc salaries in the USA adjusted for cost of living?
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2014-09-03T10:36:16.543
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# Question
Title: Are postdoc salaries in the USA adjusted for cost of living?
I'm a life sciences Ph.D. student preparing over the next few months to begin applying for a postdoctoral fellowship. Several of my potential advisors are on the coasts--California, Boston, Seattle--where the cost of living is quite high. Others are in the Midwest where the cost of living is much lower. I've lived a lot of places myself, so for the sake of argument we can assume I'd be equally happy moving to any of these places.
Although I don't want money to be a factor in this decision, I do have a wife and children and (insert salary here: $45,000 for example) allows a much different standard of living in the Midwest than Boston or Long Island. For those of you who received multiple postdoc offers--is this something that they take into account when setting your salary, or can I expect more or less flat offers across the nation?
# Answer
> 12 votes
There is a wide variety in the range of post-doc salaries. In the biomedical sciences, the NIH's salary guidelines hold sway, as the NIH is the largest source of funding for such positions. So there's relatively little cost-of-living adjustments.
However, I think many institutes set their own scale according to "what the market will bear." Popular schools like MIT could pay somewhat less and still be competitive because of the "prestige factor."
# Answer
> 8 votes
There is no fixed "postdoc salary", so by extension there is no way to inherently adjust for cost of living.
The NIH postdoc salary level (which is probably the closest thing to a 'fixed' postdoc salary in the U.S.) is adjusted for years of experience, but isn't necessarily adjusted for cost of living. There are ways around this, for example institutions in very expensive parts of the country (New York comes to mind) may be able to provide subsidized housing to postdocs to help offset the expense of living there, but this is far from assured. They may also find additional "pots" of money, provided by the institution, non-NIH grants, etc. for which they can pay a postdoc more.
But it's not the only factor under consideration - the institution may know they're in a position to not pay much because of the prestige and perceived career benefits, or on the flip side may need to pay more because they know they're potentially competing against private industry.
# Answer
> 3 votes
This is not the most direct answer, but you might find the glassdoor website useful. You can see salaries for postdocs by institution and see how locations you're considering might vary. It's hard to fix everything you might want while making the comparison, but I think it will be useful to you.
# Answer
> 3 votes
Stanford University, whose housing market is in the top 2 or 3 worst in the country, sets a minimum salary for postdocs. Currently, a beginning postdoc is guaranteed $44,310, which rises over time (e.g. to $51,830 in one's fifth year). This page states:
> "The San Francisco Bay Area is an expensive region. ... Postdocs who are considering offers of appointment at Stanford are encouraged to consider the cost of living in this area in light of their lifestyle, needs, and where applicable, financial obligations towards spouses or family. ... The minimum funding levels for postdoctoral scholars at Stanford are perhaps the highest in the country for trainees, and they are designed to support a stipend-level income for a single trainee."
(We don't generally have postdocs in mathematics, so I can't say whether it's common for postdocs to be paid this minimum salary.)
More generally, everyone in the administration is aware of, and concerned about, the problems that the housing market creates for postdocs. For example, a new program began two days ago through which postdocs are eligible to purchase highly-subsidized Caltrain passes; this program was designed specifically with the aim of mitigating the cost of living, by making it easier for postdocs to commute from more affordable towns in the area.
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Tags: postdocs, united-states, salary
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thread-14276
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14276
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After PhD in Aerospace Engineering, could I be admitted into a top university for a second PhD in Computer Science?
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2013-11-21T07:33:14.767
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# Question
Title: After PhD in Aerospace Engineering, could I be admitted into a top university for a second PhD in Computer Science?
I currently work as an Aerospace Engineer for the Department of Defense for nearly 6 years now, and I have a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from a top-10 university in the United States. I am seriously thinking of doing a 2nd PhD in Computer Science, because I want to eventually own an Algorithmic Energy Trading Firm and need to become an expert in Machine Learning algorithms.
As of now, I am working on a few journal papers to publish and I am not going to have any problems getting strong letters of recommendation from my employer and professors on campus. I ought to be able to get a letter from the Dean of my college as well. So, I am thinking of a second PhD in Computer Science because I really want to immerse myself in Machine Learning and figured a PhD was the way to go.
Question for everyone: Would it be a challenge for me to acquire entrance into a top 5 school in Computer Science for a PhD?
I ought to mention that my PhD research was in Computational Fluid Dynamics, Turbulent Flow and I had to develop my numerical solver and turbulence models in Object-Oriented C++.
# Answer
A major part of doing a PhD is learning how to do research and handle working on problems which sit on the edge of what is known. You've done that already. Doing it a second time is unnecessary, expensive and time consuming.
If you've been doing aerospace engineering then you almost certainly have the necessary calculus under your belt already. And if you have a PhD you can teach yourself stuff. Buy a few good textbooks - I recommend "Pattern recognition and Machine Learning" by C.M. Bishop; "Information Theory, Inference and learning Algorithms" by D.J.C. Mackay (this one is free to download on the author's website because he's nice like that). Look up material universities and other insitutions put online - e.g. https://www.coursera.org/course/ml is a free course, whose description sounds like it covers a lot of the necessary basics. A lot of machine learning conferences make their proceedings available for free - ICML and NIPS I think both do this, and the work is good quality.
Start getting up to speed on all this stuff. If it still interests you and you want to go the academic route, go looking for postdoc positions and then try to find a couple of talented people you can form a startup company with.
> 44 votes
# Answer
I received my PhD in Mathematics 40+ years ago and considered getting a second PhD in Computer Science. Spoke to a professor at a University about my plans and the advice he gave me "You have a PhD from an excellent University. Take a sabbatical come here for a year, publish a few papers and join the club". Ultimately I went into the medical instrumentation industry where I have been for the last 31 years and I am now planning to semi retire and start my own business.
My advice to you, *why bother with the second PhD*. **Get more focused on your goal**.
> 12 votes
# Answer
You gain nothing from doing a second PhD in a professional capacity. If you want to do some type of algo trading work the best thing to do is get a job in the algo trading world. Given your background they are likely to hire you.
> 4 votes
# Answer
I think you should study Machine learning by yourself instead of going for a second PhD, which is a huge task! You can learn a lot about any subject by yourself specially when you already have a PhD that proves you can do research by yourself. There are free online lectures from MIT almost about anything related to AI, including Bayesian inference and machine learning. I don't know what your needs are specifically but I suggest you try to research by yourself first and then decide if you need more.
I will give you a personal experience that may or may not be relevant to you, so don't laugh. It seems your interests are similar to mine if not exactly the same (according to your last paragraph c++,turbulence,CFD..). I presume you frequent CFD-online too? Anyway I recently got a PhD in CFD related engineering field, but before that I was very interested in artificial intelligence. So I have acquired a lot of knowledge about it by myself as to even write a top-10 computer chess program that can beat almost any human. Computer chess is not really AI but there are other games like GO where many machine learning / data mining techniques are used to write the best programs. I have been doing this as a hobby, but anyone can learn anything programming/AI related, and you don't necessarily need a degree in Computer Science even for AI.
> 3 votes
# Answer
You do *not* need to be an expert in machine learning to own an Algorithmic Energy Trading Firm. If you had a choice between (i) going as a junior researcher to an existing firm right now, or (ii) spending 3-5 years in a machine learning PhD; well, (i) will take you much faster to your end goal.
It is also not just about machine learning. You also need to be good at signal processing, econometrics, object oriented programming, have great domain knowledge, big data experience, linux programming skills, scientific programming ability (R,Matlab), scripting experience, etc. The best way to get good at all areas at the same time is just to go into a firm right now.
What is most important is research experience. It matters far less what type of research you did (as long as it was heavily quantitative) than the fact that you actually have good research experience.
> 2 votes
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Tags: phd, graduate-admissions, computer-science, changing-fields, second-degree
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thread-28009
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28009
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To what extent may someone use the content of a published paper in an expository piece on that paper?
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2014-09-04T05:11:50.757
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# Question
Title: To what extent may someone use the content of a published paper in an expository piece on that paper?
If someone *s* has a paper *p* published, and if *s* wants to write up a piece explaining the contents of *p*, then to what extent can *s* use the contents of *p*? Or, the person *s* has no right to mention the contents of *p*?
That is, if someone writes an article explaining the ideas in one of his published paper by rephrasing the published paper, then to what extent is such rephrasing legitimate?
# Answer
From an ethical point of view, you must cite your original source appropriately. Clearly indicate
* when you are using ideas, words, or figures from another work by citing the source
* when you use something verbatim (typically by putting it in quotation marks or blockquotes)
As long as you attribute your sources properly, there isn't really an ethical problem with excessive use of a source.
From a legal perspective, it can be trickier. In summary,
* Copying large amounts of text verbatim: may violate copyright
* Copying small amounts of text verbatim, for academic purposes: typically allowed under fair use, though like everything legal, this varies by jurisdiction
* Paraphrasing text: does not violate copyright. The intellectual content of a paper is not subject to copyright (as opposed to the words used to present it, which are).
* Reusing figures: may violate copyright. Check the policy of the source's publisher.
From a "best practices" standpoint, work that involves an *excessive* amount of paraphrasing is often lacking original intellectual content. Even if your work is expository, you're supposed to be adding some value for the reader, not just stating the content of the original source in other words. So be careful of this, too :)
> 7 votes
# Answer
It would be better to avoid the abbreviations 's' and 'p', which is probably why @ff524 was confused.
Regarding the question I think it will depend on what you want to do with the material and the copyright conditions of the paper. Sometimes the copyright belongs to the publishers and each journal has specific guidelines for reproducing some content (even some allow to download figures in powerpoint format to be used for presentations under some conditions). Other times (e.g. open access journals), the copyright belongs to the authors. Either way, if in doubt the best would be to get in contact with the appropriate person.
Personally, for journal club and similar activities, I use the material without asking. In conferences, when I want to highlight someone's else research, I may include a figure of their paper. In that case I always add the appropriate reference to the paper.
> 1 votes
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Tags: publications
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thread-28013
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28013
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What salutation to use for someone with a PhD who is a Lecturer or Reader in the UK?
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2014-09-04T07:50:00.587
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# Question
Title: What salutation to use for someone with a PhD who is a Lecturer or Reader in the UK?
What is the correct salutation to use when writing to someone with a PhD whose academic title is Lecturer or Reader in the UK?
(A related question addresses the case of a Lecturer *without* a PhD.)
# Answer
> 17 votes
The person's title in this case is (almost always) Dr, so "Dear Dr Last-name" would be the standard salutation for a first correspondence. If they sign their reply with their first name, then you can consider yourself welcome to write "Dear First-name" in future.
Academics in the UK are very used to receiving email addressing them as Professor, so it's not a big problem if you do this, but there is probably a slight increase in the chance that they might view your email as spam (I say this because the overwhelming majority of emails I get which address me as Professor are at least somewhat spammy). If someone's title is Professor, this will always be listed on the university website, so if you've done your research and found out that they are not a professor, it's probably best to use Dr.
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Tags: etiquette, titles, united-kingdom
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thread-13
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13
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Scientifically meaningful sources of bibliometrics
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2012-02-14T20:42:28.417
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# Question
Title: Scientifically meaningful sources of bibliometrics
Whether we like it or not, modern academia is increasingly being measured, in some vain attempt to get objective measures. Although it is unwise to fight 'being measured', it is at least possible to steer the measures away from meaningless ones, backed by peer-reviewed research that establishes this unrefutably.
There are a lot of different metrics that have been defined - I am not looking for those. What I want is pointers to the research behind the scientific validity of those metrics.
So the question is: where should I look for scientific assessments of bibliometrics?
# Answer
> 11 votes
Johan Bollen and Herbert van de Sompels are two researchers to follow in this area. Bollen did an analysis of 39 different citation-based metrics which is a good place to start. However, it's crucial to note that there are serious errors in trying to use citation-counting methods as some sort of ground truth. Citation counting is problematic because:
* Different fields have different citation practices. In biology it's common to have 10 or more authors on one paper, whereas in math you often have only one or two.
* Citations take a long time to accumulate, penalizing early-stage researchers.
* Citations only tell part of the story, leaving out the useful contributions made by researchers in the form of code written and datasets released.
* Citations often mutate over time.
It's now possible to get more information about a paper than just who cited it, and it's possible to get this information before several years have passed and before the information about the impact of the paper becomes old and less useful. The Public Library of Science makes detailed article-level metrics available and Mendeley has an API from which you can collect real-time data about how many readers a paper has, as well as social metadata such as tags and annotations and reader demographics. These metrics are being consumed by services such as Total Impact and combined with data from Github, Twitter, and traditional citation metrics. My bet is that if you're looking for a meaningful set of measures, you're going to find it in these richer sets of aggregated data.
# Answer
> 19 votes
Although just a start, we had a "journal club" over at the stats.se site on such bibliometrics, and had a chat over this particular article;
> Arnold, Douglas N. & Kristine K. Fowler. 2011. Nefarious Numbers. *Notices of the AMS* 58(3): 434-437. PDF link from publisher
>
> Abstract from initial ArXiv print:
>
> We investigate the journal impact factor, focusing on the applied mathematics category. We discuss impact factor manipulation and demonstrate that the impact factor gives an inaccurate view of journal quality, which is poorly correlated with expert opinion.
As far as scientific assessments the authors in the above article are pretty negative of such rankings, and give a few examples of editors having citation practices that intentionally inflate their journals rankings.
I'm sure more literature on the topic exists than this though (so I look forward to any other suggestions).
---
Unfortunately the transcript from the chat is currently not linked to in the applicable thread on meta stats. But I will update here if it becomes available.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Concenrning mathematics as in the answer of Andy W, the International Mathematical Union has a report on possible policies to measure and rank journals.
# Answer
> 2 votes
I'm against "productivity-based measures" like the *h*-index, to the point that I wrote an article on an alternative measure. This measure is based on impact, and it tries to remove productivity as a factor for evaluating scientific work. The article is open, and you can find it in Scientific Reports.
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Tags: bibliometrics, productivity
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thread-42
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/42
|
What are the common productivity measures of a scientist, like h-index?
|
2012-02-14T22:07:37.457
|
# Question
Title: What are the common productivity measures of a scientist, like h-index?
I am aware of h-index. I was wondering what other types of scores are both widely and rarely used to measure the impact of a scientist?
# Answer
The h-index is common (and the g-index, which corrects for self-citation), as is the Journal Impact Factor. Johan Bollen has a good review of the various metrics.
However, it's important to point out that all those measures are just different ways of counting citations. They don't account for things like code you've written or talks you've given and they can't address systematic bias in citation practices such as coercive citation or citation mutation. Also, any citation-counting metric will penalize younger researchers simply due to the time it takes to publish one paper and for other papers to get published citing yours. In order to keep academics from having to publish a paper just to describe some code they've written or a dataset they've accumulated, aggregators have been built to pull in these various metrics and consolidate them. Total Impact is a good example of such a system. The general field of study looking at incorporating these broader metrics is called #altmetrics, and you can find a collection of research on the topic here.
> 13 votes
# Answer
Beyond the h-index, I don't think there's any definitive parameters used in practice. However, some other common factors used to evaluate research faculty:
* Publication count
* Quantity of funding
* Number of invited talks & invited journal articles
* Lab size
Note that these apply to the fields I'm familiar with, neuroscience and engineering. I suspect that these answers will vary according to field.
> 6 votes
# Answer
There's the g-index and the h-b-index. Another thing is (in conjunction with the number of publications) the number of coauthors, i.e. has somebody only worked with one group (perhaps at the same university) or have they collaborated with lots of people from different institutions.
> 6 votes
# Answer
To add to other answers:
How often one publishes in the most prestigious general journals (e.g. Science and Nature) and most prestigious journals in their field (e.g. Physical Review Letters).
> 6 votes
# Answer
Take a look at this open article in Scientific Reports for a measure that attempts to discard productivity as a factor in evaluating the output of research.
> 4 votes
# Answer
I believe the answer to your question depends very strongly on the field. In mine, mathematics, the most used quick proxy for quality of research is the prestige of journals one's publishes in (which is not measured by impact factor, although there is a correlation).
In some humanities fields, books are the most prominent research outputs.
For a PhD student in biology (especially molecular and cellular, at least in some labs in France), time spent in lab in the evenings and week-ends seems to overweight everything else.
> 3 votes
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Tags: bibliometrics, productivity
---
|
thread-28024
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28024
|
What are some techniques to get some work done during the Christmas period?
|
2014-09-04T13:08:42.687
|
# Question
Title: What are some techniques to get some work done during the Christmas period?
Given the fact that at the moment I am working with no strict time frames and I can manage my time and other activities on my own, I wonder **is it possible for someone to maintain the concentration during the Christmas period and keep working on important tasks? And what are some techniques to enable that?**
I am asking this, because I want to plan my vacations during December, but I am not quite sure if it is a clever idea to do the vacation in the first half of the month (so I can save some flight costs, because prices go up as the end of the year approaches), and keep the latter part to work, having in mind that everyone gets into the festive atmosphere and it is hard getting things done?
# Answer
> 9 votes
A major perk of being an academic are the long breaks between terms, when we have the freedom to travel and make our own schedules. However, this comes coupled with the responsibility to keep being productive during these breaks, and this is harder than it sounds.
You are wise to be thinking ahead about how to manage this. I'm not sure exactly what you have planned, but I'm going to guess it may include extended visits to see friends and family. Here are some things I have found useful:
* Explain to them that, although you are glad to get to spend time with them, you're not on vacation from work the whole time. (Non-academics often don't realize this and assume the entire break is free time for you.)
* Look ahead to set aside specific times in your schedule for work. Ask your hosts to check with you before planning any family activities, to make sure they don't conflict. Again, they shouldn't assume that all your time is free. ("Oh, but you can't work on your paper tomorrow! I've just arranged for us to go on a picnic with Uncle Jürgen!")
* Consider going somewhere else to work, such as a library or cafe. Trying to work with relatives around is often distracting, especially if some are children.
* Set specific goals for what you want to accomplish during the trip. If you share them with your family (and can convince them that they are exciting) they may be able to help encourage you to work toward them, and to arrange things so that you have the time to do so.
---
Tags: academic-life, productivity, working-time
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|
thread-28007
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28007
|
Which is considered more valuable for faculty job applications, teaching experience or participation in conferences?
|
2014-09-04T03:31:26.047
|
# Question
Title: Which is considered more valuable for faculty job applications, teaching experience or participation in conferences?
As a PhD student from top university, I have the opportunity of having a minor called "teaching minor". For me, I am personally mostly interested in mathematical application into material science while I am very interested in getting tenured faculty positions.
Actually, I am more interested in going to a lot of conference and trying to advertise or publicize the result of my research and I am worried that committed teaching during the teaching minor program would render me less experience in conference or slows down my research progress....
Any suggestion on my situation? Shall I pursue the teaching minor, or minor in mathematics as it is my research and personal interest? Or shall I do exhaust myself trying to do both?
# Answer
> 4 votes
Where do you want to work? Research universities want people who do research, publish, go to conferences, and can tolerably teach, in that order.
Small liberal arts colleges want people who can teach and who do enough research to keep up with the field.
These are rough generalizations. There's no right answer here.
---
Tags: career-path, teaching, conference, tenure-track, faculty-application
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thread-27835
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27835
|
How to assess the proportion of post docs in a lab that go on to become PIs?
|
2014-08-31T03:04:51.740
|
# Question
Title: How to assess the proportion of post docs in a lab that go on to become PIs?
Is there any good resource to figure out the track record of academic success of research lab’s alumni (e.g. how many of postdocs became a PI)?
I'm a grad student in the US who will finish PhD next spring, and I've just started to find a postdoc position. I realized it's crucial to find an postdoc advisor who has a good track record of alumni's getting job in academia, since I want to be a PI in the future.
It looks like many famous labs with big papers actually have too many postdocs and grad students so that not many of them have successful career. Productivity per person is diluted too much in those labs. I also doubt one's publication record is the only factor for success in getting a PI position as far as I hear from people around me. (Of course, I know that if you have a big paper in a big lab, that is the best way to get a position)
I am open to go to any country for work if the working environment is good. My field is biophysics with some flavor of materials science.
# Answer
> 3 votes
One approach is to simply ask the potential post doc supervisors. That said, if I received a random email from someone asking how many of my post docs have gone on to get academic positions, I would probably ignore it. If however, that email came from someone I had previously talked to about doing a post doc with me, I would be happy to tell them about my past post docs and where they went. You should then talk to former members of the lab and see if the PI's view of the world matches their views. While a single descriptive statistic like percentage of students who went on to get academic positions might seem like it is easier to interpret, it likely only provides a portion of the story.
# Answer
> 2 votes
This is not an answer to your question, so feel free to downvote me. But I'm going to answer the question you should have asked rather than the one you did ask. The implicit question here is
> **Should I use a lab's track record of getting academic positions for its postdocs as a surrogate for what my own chances will be (if I take a postdoc in that lab)?**
In other words, the implied assumption is that if 50% of the postdocs from a given lab go on to get faculty positions, and if you go to that lab, then you will have a 50% chance of getting a faculty position. I believe this is poor statistical reasoning:
1. Averages are not very useful in predicting the outcome of a single realization.
2. Some postdocs may not desire an academic position. Therefore, their failure to get one has no bearing on what you are trying to assess -- but it will skew the measure you are using.
3. Labs may not have had enough postdocs to provide a statistically significant sample. For every PI, there was a *first* postdoc who got an academic position. Unless she was the first postdoc that PI ever had, she went in with 0% odds by your measure.
In deciding where to go, I think **talking to the PI and to current and former postdocs** will be much more useful to you than computing this statistic.
# Answer
> 2 votes
I have a suggestion regarding the assessment (the actual question), not saying if this is a good or bad idea, along the lines of what was done here.
Write some code that:
1. From a certain paper database, say, pubmed - gets all the papers in which your prospective PI is the last author. This is a pretty good estimate of all the papers from his lab (he might have joint work with other PIs in which he's not last, but let's ignore these).
2. Gets all first-third authors as prospective graduate students from his lab. We can't really tell (automatically) if they were postdocs, and let's assume that papers in which you weren't on the first three authors don't mean much to your chances of becoming a PI. You also want to limit those papers to be a few years old (so we can assume that they finished their time in said lab).
3. Look for papers in which those prospective graduate students are last authors. This suggests that they've become PIs.
Now you can get an estimate of the number of PIs out of number of students that published papers for each lab.
There are APIs to pubmed in many programming languages, and the researchers from the first link I posted have their code in github
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Tags: advisor, postdocs, job-search
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thread-28039
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28039
|
Should I list on my CV research assistantship positions under grants&awards?
|
2014-09-04T19:16:42.970
|
# Question
Title: Should I list on my CV research assistantship positions under grants&awards?
Background of person is: first year Phd student, no publications, no research grants, but I have received a fellowship for my first semester that paid my stipend and tuition, so should I list the total amount with stipend and tuition?
Also during my MS I was hired as an RA and received stipend+tuition? Can I list that as a total amount per year, or total amount for the two years, or should I separate the different amounts (tuition/stipend). Isn't this a fellowship/scholarship/grant of some sort since rarely do master students get this kind of RAship?
edit: while RA's are common in the US and the fact that they pay stipend/tuition is well known, in other countries people might think that if I list it only as a job they might not realize it also paid my tuition, which for foreign students in the US can be quite high. I want to convey the importance of this achievement and monetary importance to a crowd outside the USA.
# Answer
Although merit is certainly a factor in the hiring of research assistants, most people don't consider assistantships as "grants or awards". They are jobs. List them under "Positions Held" or "Academic Appointments" or the equivalent heading on your CV. Do not list your salary or the amount of your stipend - that's not anybody's business except you and your department.
Some fellowships might be considered awards. They would usually be explicitly competitive in nature, and given by outside agencies. "Named" fellowships from endowed funds might also count, even if awarded by your department. But a research assistantship is not a fellowship.
> 7 votes
# Answer
> should I list the total amount with stipend and tuition?
No, don't list this because it's irrelevant and sooner or later you'll remove it as your CV grows. You can just add it in the `Honors and Awards` section of your CV, but don't put numbers.
> Also during my MS I was hired as an RA and received stipend+tuition? Can I list that as a total amount per year, or total amount for the two years, or should I separate the different amounts (tuition/stipend).
Same as before.
> Isn't this a fellowship/scholarship/grant of some sort since rarely do master students get this kind of RAship?
In this case I would just put it under `Research Experience`.
> 3 votes
# Answer
In general, one can include anything in a CV *as long as the "target" of the CV would be interested in it*. This raises the question why exactly you are now compiling a CV in the first place.
**Are you looking to change programs? Apply for a grant? Just wanting to show off on your web page?**
Whatever the answer to this is, ask yourself the question whether whoever is supposed to read the CV would really care about your funding sources. In most cases, I would assume that the answer to this is *no*, unless the funding sources are particularly competitive and known outside your university.
Finally:
> Isn't this a fellowship/scholarship/grant of some sort since rarely do master students get this kind of RAship?
Nope. If it's a RAship it's a RAship. That you got it earlier than others does not "upgrade" the prize in any way. Generally, resist the temptation to upsell your various prizes / grants / fellowships.
> 3 votes
# Answer
I disagree with the other answers. At least in fields where a substantial number of students self fund their PhD, having any funding is a big deal. I think you should put the fellowships and their amounts, under "grants and awards", although it might be reasonable to change the title to something like "funding" or "fellowships, grants, and awards".
While a departmental fellowship (or funding from someone else's grant) is not particularly prestigious, it is important. For example, a student with guaranteed money from his/her department or advisor has little incentive to apply for external money (and in many cases might even be ineligible). In evaluating students as potential post docs, I look at students who have had to self fund their studies very differently from those who have had funding. That said, it is important that you do not make too much of a departmental fellowship as it is generally the least prestigious type of funding you can get.
> -1 votes
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Tags: cv, research-assistantship, awards, funding
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|
thread-27918
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27918
|
How do I find the standing of a journal or conference for an academic CV?
|
2014-09-02T15:20:01.050
|
# Question
Title: How do I find the standing of a journal or conference for an academic CV?
I'm writing an academic CV for a PhD application and they have asked for the standing of journals or conferences of published articles.
> **Research publications**
>
> Include articles published or accepted for publication (with the three most significant marked with an asterisk). Please specify the publication details, your contribution as an author to multi-authored publications, plus the standing of the journal or conference.
I'm really not sure what they are looking for or how to express this. Is it the impact factor of the journal? And what about conference proceedings which don't have impact factors?
# Answer
> 4 votes
Seems it isn't actually that important. I sent them an email to clarify and they replied:
> Don’t worry too much about the standing of the journal or conference, as long as you list any publications and conferences that you have.
# Answer
> 3 votes
For applications to Australian universities, I suspect they want the ranking from the Ranked Outlets list produced by the Australian Research Council.
# Answer
> 1 votes
Use something that the selection committee can easily verify. I would use Google Scholar Metrics and provide the h5-index and h5-median values. The good thing about Google Scholar is that it also automatically generates these numbers for most major conferences. Be sure to mention the following Google disclaimer in the footnote:
*"Dates and citation counts are estimated and are determined automatically by a computer program."*
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Tags: phd, publications, cv
---
|
thread-27823
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27823
|
Is it OK to use the content of my own paper which is not yet submitted, in my other paper?
|
2014-08-30T15:58:47.163
|
# Question
Title: Is it OK to use the content of my own paper which is not yet submitted, in my other paper?
I have finished writing one paper, but have not submitted it yet to a journal. I am working on a related but not identical subject, though many of the definitions and theorems are same (but they are true in a very different context compared to the first paper). Now, is it okay to use the same figures that I had used for illustrations in my first paper? What about the theorems and definitions? I feel like changing the theorem statements is not worth spending time on, but is this correct?
# Answer
> 3 votes
Most journals require that the submitted manuscript has not been submitted total or partially to any other journal. Of course different policies apply to open access journals. If I were you I would check the journal's policy regarding this issue and contact the editors if necessary to get their opinion (probably they will require details on what will be duplicated). To the very least discuss this with your supervisor. You can find yourself in a very unpleasant position if you are not careful (not to mention having your papers rejected), as indicated by @Enthusiastic Student
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Tags: publications, research-process, plagiarism, self-plagiarism
---
|
thread-28045
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28045
|
Finding a field of interest for my PhD
|
2014-09-05T00:17:51.607
|
# Question
Title: Finding a field of interest for my PhD
I'm a fifth year pure mathematics student and after this year I should get a Master degree (I'm from Europe). As you might know, this should be the time I decide (or at least seriously start thinking about) whether I should pursue a PhD or go work in the industry.
My main problem with pursuing a PhD is that I haven't found any topic particularly interesting or passionate about, and I think I have quite a wide mathematical education. I can easily get into some area when I'm studying for exams and such, but nothing more than that. I have to admit that I'm indifferent regarding most stuff in my life. While I was in high school, I had interests in number theory and prime distribution, but that has slowly gone away.
Having said all that, I did somewhat enjoy tutoring/helping younger students and explaining stuff to them. I'd also like to think that I would enjoy doing research in mathematics, but not sure.
So my question is: How should I find out what is the field of my interest (and whether it exists at all)? Is my lack of interest a red flag for pursuing a PhD?
# Answer
> 11 votes
> Is my lack of interest a red flag for pursuing a PhD?
Yes, I think so. PhD programs are for people who are so passionate about an academic subject that they are willing to endure the *certainty* of a long, hard period of apprenticeship and training for the *possibility* of a secure, moderately well-paid lifelong career in that subject.
In some academic fields, there is a good shot at parlaying a PhD into a lucrative career in business or industry. (In others, this is really not the case.) However, in the current job market there are few if any fields in which a PhD is a guaranteed paycheck. A student who knows that she wants to take her mathematical skills, for instance, to business/industry, would probably have an easier, more pleasant life by starting work with a bachelor's or a master's degree and building her career sooner rather than later. There are exceptions, but they would be better planned in advance: e.g., if you have a specific job in mind for which you specifically know having a PhD would be necessary or beneficial.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with liking a subject and being good at it but not being passionate about it. You should then find what it is that you are passionate about. It need not be career-oriented: many, many people work to live rather than live to work. Just because you have a master's degree in mathematics does not mean that you need to pursue a career in which you use mathematics in any way! I hope you find your passion...whatever it is.
Finally: one option that you haven't mentioned is to *teach* mathematics at the pre-university level. In the US, a master's degree in your subject area makes you competitive for very strong high school teaching jobs, e.g. at amazing public high schools in desirable cities or elite private institutions. The difference that an excellent school teacher can make has got to be at least as much as most academics, business people or industrialists. In the unlikely event that Europe has a glut of excellent high school teachers, please consider coming to the United States, as I assure you that we do not.
# Answer
> 3 votes
A lot of the comments and answers I see here are orthogonal to my experience. Subject matter? Career path? Both irrelevant. I entered graduate school with the intention of getting a Master's degree in Computer Science and left with a Ph.D. in Algebraic Geometry. That happened because I met an inspiring professor---he could have been doing almost anything technical and I would have chosen him, not the subject matter. I find my inspiration in people: Number Theory, Fluid Dynamics, Adaptive Algorithms---ist mir wurst, as they would say in Germany (I'm American). Working with a great professor trumps the subject matter.
You have a strong technical education already. If you are looking for direction, take a cue from it: where is your life gradient pointing right now? Mapping out a career path is great for some folks, for others it is the death of serendipity. You never know. I chose my graduate school because my girlfriend attended it. The girlfriend didn't last, but the professor did. And (serendipity) I met my wife there.
Good luck!
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Tags: phd, mathematics
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thread-27447
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27447
|
Should I publish my software independently or publish it along with a case study in higher journal?
|
2014-08-21T06:41:40.620
|
# Question
Title: Should I publish my software independently or publish it along with a case study in higher journal?
I have built a software that handles protein clustering data in specific format. It is able to draw several plots on that basis along with many other analyses. It has more options than its existing competitor. Should I just try to get it published as a software/technical issue, or try some
case study data (research work on a logical data) produced by the software
+
the software,
in a better journal?
# Answer
> 6 votes
In my discipline (political science), one would typically do both. Write an applied article that uses the software for an actual research project and submit that to a substantive journal. Then, separately, describe the software and write it up for a software journal (e.g., Journal of Statistical Software, R Journal, etc.).
# Answer
> 2 votes
In my field (Bioinformatics) you would need to test that the software works as intended. Many researchers use simulated data to evaluate performance under controlled conditions, and then apply the method to a case study to demonstrate its validity with real data. Although not explicitly required for (most?) journals, if I was reviewing your paper I would most likely request that you demonstrate its utility with real data. That, however, does not require a lengthly study, any appropriate dataset would suffice. That being said, if you include some real data some referees may ask you that you demonstrate your software in a broader set of (real) conditions. That has happened to me before- referees are insatiable :-)
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Tags: publications, research-process, software
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thread-28054
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28054
|
Responding to a reviewer who misunderstood key concepts of a paper
|
2014-09-05T09:35:28.407
|
# Question
Title: Responding to a reviewer who misunderstood key concepts of a paper
How do you respond to a reviewer who is very critical about your paper but from whose comments you can easily see that he/she has misunderstood the key concepts of the paper?
In my case, the first reviewer had no issues with the paper and suggested only a minor revision. But the second reviewer seems to have not spent too much time on understanding the paper. This reviewer's misunderstanding made the editor suggest a major revision of the paper.
In my response to the reviewer (not sent yet), I used the sentence "This comment completely misrepresent the methodology described in the paper." Is this too much?
UPDATE: I am glad to inform you all that after the second round of reviews, the paper was accepted with minor revisions. I followed the general advice given in the accepted answer for this post. Instead of being too defensive, I agreed in my response to the reviewer that the misunderstanding may be due to wording of certain sentences and changed them. Specifically, I used the following sentence:
> "There seems to be a misunderstanding about the methodology, which we hope to clear through our responses below and by revising the text in the manuscript. Contrary to what the reviewer states, ..."
Hope this update helps someone in future.
# Answer
> 58 votes
> This comment completely misrepresent the methodology described in the paper.
While it may be technically correct, it is unnecessarily undiplomatic (at least all by itself), as it implicitly places blame on the reviewer for not correctly understanding your paper. Again, if the respective points were made unmistakably clear in the paper (which is something that you can easily overestimate), this blame may be justified, but still you risk unnecessarily disgruntling the reviewer.
I would suggest to assume in good faith that the reviewer did not fail to understand your paper due to incompetence or laziness, but because you failed to clarify a certain aspects. Try to improve your paper regarding the explanation of everything that the reviewer misunderstood and reply with something along the lines of:
> This comment seems to be based on the assumption that we were proposing a method to transmogrify apples. However, the goal of our method is the transmogrification of bananas – an aspect, which we have failed to make sufficiently clear. We have amended our manuscript accordingly and now write: \[…\]
Do not worry, if the respective revision turns out to be only minor.
To be prepared if the reviewer insists on his or her misunderstandings, I suggest to explicitly state in your response letter that something different is the case. This way you hopefully have some good argument for the editor in this case.
<sup> I once had a similar experience with a reviewer who criticised that we made several claims which were not supported by our studies. However, we never made any of these claims. In a first revision we reformulated a few sentences that the reviewer had presumably misunderstood and explicitly stated in the response letter that we did not make those claims. The reviewer criticised again that some of the same claims were unsupported. We responded again that we never made those claims and reformulated a handful of sentences. Then either the reviewer finally understood or the editor was fed up with this and the paper was accepted. In both cases, major revisions were requested. </sup>
# Answer
> 12 votes
No one ever seems to talk about this but sometimes... reviewers are terrible.
Not terrible like "Ugh they made me revise my paper" but terrible like "Did this person even read the paper?" I once had a paper where a reviewer made lengthy complaints about the terrible user studies and lack of clarity in user studies for an object. There were no user studies in our paper, there were several clear statements about how there were no user studies in the paper, the 'future work' section detailed the user study collaborations. It was a paper on the method of integrating physical and automated controls, not a paper on user studies. One of the reviewers just... lost the plot. I don't know if they read a different paper, I don't know if they wanted a different paper. The other two reviewers made some excellent revision suggestions which we followed.
It wasn't the first time either. I can't speak for all fields or conferences, of course, but sometimes you just get a terrible review. Terrible not negative, terrible as in makes no sense. Sometimes you respond, sometimes you try to work it in and sometimes you just politely ignore the bits that make no sense. Some fields lend themselves to a wide variety of subject matter experts. Consider, for a moment, robotics. A submission to a robotics conference or journal could be about the mechanical engineering aspect, the automation(AI and Machine Learning) aspects, optimization, computer vision, sensor integration... No single person is going to be an expert in all of these things and some of the most interesting, to me, projects involve some blending of these subjects. It can be hard, then, to find a reviewer from the pool who best fits a submission.
This is the case in many subfields in Computer Science, this may be the case in the field you are working in. When you're talking about research on the bleeding edge sometimes you're talking about stuff that has a limited or restricted audience and, thus, a limited or restricted reviewer pool. There are a fair amount of similar questions about academic research reviewers and reviews here. Typically the benefit of the doubt is given that the reviewer is bringing up legitimate complaints and, to be honest, that is the best policy for everyone to have. But sometimes it's ok to accept that a reviewer is totally out there and the review is unhelpful or inappropriate(in that it does not apply.) In those cases I would respond to the other reviews as appropriate and respond, tactfully, to the review in question with statements directly reflecting how the review does not apply to your work.
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Tags: peer-review
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thread-28076
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28076
|
How can I find out which digital libraries include a given journal?
|
2014-09-05T20:32:19.707
|
# Question
Title: How can I find out which digital libraries include a given journal?
When I am looking for a journal online, I have to do search for it in every electronic database one by one.
Is there an easy way to find which electronic databases provide that journal?
I am doing legal research.
# Answer
Worldcat.org will give you this information. Search for the journal by name, click on it in search results, and look under "Find a copy online".
For example, "International Construction Law Review" appears to be available in two digital libraries:
> 2 votes
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Tags: journals, online-resource, literature-search, digital-libraries
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thread-28082
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28082
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Ill Recommender Gave Me Letter To Submit
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2014-09-06T02:49:41.650
|
# Question
Title: Ill Recommender Gave Me Letter To Submit
I'll be on the job market this year for teaching positions at very small schools or lecturer positions at large schools. I took a class about two years ago now that was focused on teaching pedagogy. It was great, and I had good rapport with my teacher. After the semester, I asked her if she would mind writing a recommendation letter for me in advance, despite almost two years until I would be on the job market. The intent was that I could contact her when I was actually on the market, and she would already have something prepared from when I was in more regular contact with her.
My professor did write me the letter. However, she also let me know that she had recently received a diagnosis for a debilitating illness that would be demanding her time and attention, and sent me the letter she completed. She's still alive, although on leave indefinitely from the school to concentrate on her health and spending time with family.
I'm wondering what the protocol is for whether I should use her letter or not, particularly given that many schools prefer to contact the letter writers directly. I come from a big research school, and while other professors would be a great testament to my character and research, none have any real awareness about my teaching. A few schools I'm considering applying to actually specifically ask for one letter that focuses on teaching.
Given how teaching-centric my job search is, I think her letter would be a great asset. But I'm not sure whether I should use it, and if so, the best way to get the letter to schools.
Note: This is for the US academic system.
# Answer
> 11 votes
This is always a very tough situation. Ideally if you had known of her sickness ahead of time, you could have asked her to use a dossier service (such as interfolio.com; note that I have no connection with this service except being a user). She could send them a single letter and they would send this to other schools on your request. This way the contents of her letter would remain confidential from you.
It would have also been great if the letter contained language such as "I apologize for not sending a personalized letter but my current health conditions preclude me from doing so, please do not take this as any indication of my high regard for this candidate."
But this would have been an ideal situation. If she's still healthy and you have good relations, you can ask her if you can set up something with a dossier service (your university might have one itself) with a letter with an apology for generic language.
Otherwise, you could add a similar note to your list of references:
References
1. Prof. John Doe
2. Prof. Alice Smith
3. Prof. Jane Roe
* Prof Jane Roe apologies that due to medical issues she is unable to send personalized letters. A signed generic letter will be sent with her sincerest apologies to the search committee. Verification of the contents of the letter may be made by contacting the department chair, Prof. Bob Ajar, at xxxxx@xxxx.edu
\[Aside: I have used letters with similar language when I have been engaged in field research and unable to write personalized letters for my students. So it's not just for sickness but for other conditions where letter writing is difficult.\]
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Tags: professorship, etiquette, job-search, recommendation-letter, health
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thread-23198
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23198
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Are extended periods of unpaid leave compatible with an academic career?
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2014-06-10T17:21:53.800
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# Question
Title: Are extended periods of unpaid leave compatible with an academic career?
In Academia, a sabbatical means a leave to do only research, as opposed to an unpaid leave to do anything you want.
A recent question over on The Workplace SE raises the situation where someone *has too much money and just want to have more time.* — like working for 6-9 months per year, which would earn one enough to spend the rest of the time travelling. Regardless of the relatively low pay in parts of Academia, the same situation may apply, in particular to DINKs.
The answers mostly boil down to: *be a consultant or freelancer.*. That may work in the software industry or other private sectors, but it doesn't translate very well to academia.
Is a career which includes one or more extended unpaid leaves, such as sabbaticals in the classic meaning of the word, or unpaid leaves in the order of 3 months or more in a row, compatible with working in academia at all? If yes, how?
**Clarification:** I am interested in answers considering *either* a career that contains specific gaps (such as a year to see the world, either between jobs, or interrupting a job), *or* a fixed job that contains less than 12 months per year (minus holidays) of work.
# Answer
Frequent, extended periods of unpaid leave are easily compatible with certain types of academic careers, such as teaching as an adjunct on a course-by-course basis. However, this involves low pay and no prestige or job security, so it's far from an ideal solution.
There will be a lot of obstacles to doing this with a tenure-track job. Your collaborators will be unhappy when you put the collaboration on hold to go do something else. You colleagues will be unhappy when you aren't available to teach courses or supervise students (thereby making the department work around what they consider to be your eccentricities). Wanting to take substantial amounts of time off will be considered a bad sign, and everyone will worry about what you might do once you have tenure. Your chances of getting tenure will go down.
Taking time off can also make you a less productive researcher, even normalized by the amount of time you spend on research. The problem is that keeping up with the field takes a certain amount of time and effort. If you work on research for only six months per year, you still need to keep up with twelve months of progress by others, so it's as if the rest of the world were moving twice as fast.
It's not impossible that you could find a flexible academic job. You might end up with a specially negotiated soft-money position (funded by grants under whatever terms the funding agency will agree to), you might take a job at a less prestigious university than you could have (who are so eager to hire you that they are willing to make a deal), or you might happen to find an unusually accommodating department. Unfortunately, this isn't something most people can reasonably expect to work out. I don't know what the chances are, but I expect they are pretty low on average. The academic job market is tough, and adding non-standard constraints makes it even tougher. If you can't be happy without frequent, extended leaves, and you have good non-academic employment options that fit your needs, then that might be the way to go.
Another theoretical option is to take advantage of tenure: work hard, don't tell anyone your plans, and then quit doing any academic work over the summer once you get tenure. You shouldn't do this. Your colleagues will feel resentful, the administration will be upset, and you'll be manipulating the system in a way tenure is not intended to support (and thus weakening the case for having tenure at all). If you're too extreme, you could run into trouble with a post-tenure review, depending on your university's policies.
\[I'm assuming you intend to use the leaves for something entirely unrelated to your academic career. If it's more closely related, such as applying your scholarly expertise to government service, then you may have better luck. However, it doesn't sound like that's what you're talking about.\]
> 19 votes
# Answer
One case when this does happen in an academic setting is when faculty get on a glide path to retirement. In such cases, it's possible to negotiate a reduced workload (and pay). The incentive here is that the department can sometimes use this (along with other funds) to support hiring a new faculty member: since faculty slots are expensive commodities, such an arrangement works for everyone.
Your question doesn't indicate the level of the person who might want to do part-time academic work. I think it goes without saying that doing this before tenure is a BAD IDEA for reasons already outlined above. But if someone is tenured but far from retirement, it might be possible to pull off such an arrangement if the department sees an opportunity to cash in on it via new hiring.
> 13 votes
# Answer
I think the previous answers were focused on academic positions focused on research. However I know of colleges and some universities where the teaching load drops off dramatically in the summer and during certain summers it's possible to be off for at least 8 weeks without pay. To me this is very acceptable considering that you will also get 3 weeks around Christmas.
You can also consider working remotely for some periods, if your research allows you to do so. I think also that traveling hard every year for 3-6 months might be hard to pull off, physically and mentally for many years. But if you could rent a house for 2 months on the beach of Fiji and work from there, that doesn't sound too bad :-)
> 1 votes
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Tags: career-path, working-time
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thread-28094
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28094
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is it good for academic path if I publish too many papers in arxiv
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2014-09-06T14:48:29.253
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# Question
Title: is it good for academic path if I publish too many papers in arxiv
Currently, I am a PhD student from material science and I wish to become a TT professor in the future. When submitting papers, we see an option to submit it in arxiv and it seems to me that the acceptance to the arxiv would probably be much faster than usual journal. I want to ask if publishing articles in arxiv instead of usual journals would make my career less promising or not.... thank you:)
# Answer
> 44 votes
No, you shouldn't just submit to the arXiv instead of journals.
Articles in the arXiv are not considered published in the traditional sense, and they are not peer reviewed. In fields that use the arXiv, papers are typically submitted there and to a journal (but you can do this only if the journal's policies permit it, so you should check if you aren't sure). The role of the arXiv is then to provide access to preprints before publication and "green open access" to published papers.
You don't have to submit an arXiv paper for publication, and occasionally people use it to distribute papers they don't intend to publish (and for which they aren't looking for publication credit). But you should be careful to avoid getting a reputation for putting mediocre papers on the arXiv.
There have been a few high-profile cases of great arXiv papers that were never published, like Perelman's work on the Poincaré conjecture. However, you can't get away with that when starting an academic career (unless you are revolutionizing your field). If you just submit papers to the arXiv and not to journals or conferences, it will destroy your career. They will count for far less than published papers, and search committees will wonder about all sorts of explanations. Are you profoundly eccentric? Do you have no idea how academic careers work? Are your papers just not good enough for journals? Is there something you are hoping nobody finds out via peer review (e.g., that you plagiarized or rediscovered something already known)? Basically, everyone will make uncharitable negative assumptions, in addition to considering the papers themselves as worth less.
The question you've asked is a perfectly reasonable thing to wonder about, but I find it a little alarming that you've basically proposed career suicide with no indication that your advisor has warned you. This suggests that talking with your advisor more about career issues could be helpful, or attempting to find another mentor if your advisor is not so helpful. Academic career paths can be narrow and demanding, and good advice is essential.
# Answer
> 17 votes
Submitting a paper to arXiv.org is not equivalent to publishing. There is no peer-review process and no acceptance (well, apart from a lax moderation policy).
The arXiv is a preprint server. It is not good practice to upload documents that you do not intend to submit (at least in my research area).
It will look rather suspicious if you have only a string of arXiv papers in your CV that have not been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal of good standing.
# Answer
> 10 votes
As the other posters have suggested, you should not rely exclusively on arXiv uploads as "publications."
However, if I understood your question correctly, the arXiv "option" is not an option to publish *instead of*, but rather *in addition to*, your submission. In effect, many journals allow you to upload to public repositories like arXiv while *simultaneously* submitting the article for consideration to the journal. For example, all of the APS and AIP journals allow for this option. This allows you to reach readers who may be interested in your journal but who do not have access to those journals for whatever reason. This can be a very effective strategy for maximizing "views" of your article.
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Tags: publications, tenure-track, arxiv, online-publication, materials-science
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thread-28096
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28096
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How to determine compensation for developing new course for community college?
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2014-09-06T15:23:42.723
|
# Question
Title: How to determine compensation for developing new course for community college?
I am a startup entrepreneur in Chattanooga TN. A few days ago, I was approached by a representative of Chattanooga State community college to teach a community course and/or course series on 3D printing and product branding. This will be a new course, unlike any other that they have taught before, so I am sure that there will be plenty of developmental work involved.
When I asked about the compensation, the representative told me that the pay varied from instructor to instructor, and that I needed to come up with the amount. I have never taught a course like this before, so I was wondering how I should gauge this amount.
Should I base it on hours taught in class, total hours material covered, students involved, or is there another standard?
# Answer
> 9 votes
I think you're going to find that they want to pay you their adjunct rate for teaching the course, which might be $3,000 or so. If you want to be paid more, you will probably need to negotiate a list of deliverables, which would then allow someone else to teach the course next time.
I believe there are two motivations for being an adjunct instructor. Some people make a living at it by piecing together adjunct appointments from two or more institutions. Others do it for the love of teaching; they have to have day jobs to support their teaching hobby. I got paid about $2,500 to develop and teach a course in web applications in 1997. Now I am retired from the day job I had then, have a full-time faculty appointment, an office at school, and everything!
Edited to add: I missed that it is a community education course. You might get a few bucks more for that, or extra pay for classes over a certain size. It will still be a four-figure amount.
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Tags: teaching, salary
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thread-28105
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28105
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How do CS graduate school admissions weigh an unrelated master?
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2014-09-06T17:50:09.890
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# Question
Title: How do CS graduate school admissions weigh an unrelated master?
I am a Computer Science graduate living at a developing country and I have two options to choose,
Option I: Pursue CS masters at a reputable, but not leading, national university with a limited alumni, a few of whom in the past has CS Ph.D. admissions from top 40 US graduate schools.
Option II: A very prestigious scholarship provides me an opportunity to pursue a one year master's in sociology at a well known UK university. Then I can still continue with Option I. This will have a positive impact on my career at work too.
My final goal is getting a CS Ph.D. from a US university, but option II allures me. Will Option II have a negative effect on my future career from the perspective of an CS admission committee member ? Is it viewed as a total waste of time ?
# Answer
> 1 votes
If your final goal is to have a CS Ph.D., getting a masters in sociology first will in no way help you reach that goal. Doing option II may be viewed as a "waste of time" by CS admissions committees, though it probably won't preclude you from getting into a masters program afterwards. I'm guessing the net effect will be slightly negative from the point of view of a CS admissions committee.
However, it doesn't mean you shouldn't do option II, especially if you think you'll enjoy it. You might even find your career plans changing after getting a masters in sociology.
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Tags: graduate-admissions, career-path
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thread-28108
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28108
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How do you evaluate the potential for getting funding of post doc applicants?
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2014-09-06T18:50:21.237
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# Question
Title: How do you evaluate the potential for getting funding of post doc applicants?
This answer of mine, in which I advocate listing internal funding of your PhD studies on your CV, is not well liked. When evaluating potential post docs for my lab, I am interested in if the applicant is going to be competitive for external funding. I take self funding a PhD as being an indication that the applicant was unable to obtain external funding. I give applicants who were funded internally by a department or someone else's grant a big pass since the need for external funding was absent. Is the no funding/internal funding distinction important for a potential post doc supervisor to know? If not why?
# Answer
> 3 votes
Do you mean fellowships and other PhD-student only external awards, or are you OK with listing "I helped write this larger project grant that covered lots of people but I was not listed by name in the application"?
I think that in the last couple of years of a PhD, students should be helping to write the project proposals, but there are lots of reasons besides failure and lack of trying that might explain why they did not. Well-funded supervisors may, in my opinion misguidedly, shield their students from grant writing so that they can focus on the research. I think that this is a failure on the part of the supervisor to properly prepare a student for future research work, but it happens all the time. Some people don't get this training until the are a postdoc. You shouldn't hold the actions of the supervisor against the candidate.
Also, some applicants may believe that if they were "only" part of the writing team but not a co-PI or Senior Personnel (in NSF-speak) on an application, that they should not list it on their CV.
Finally, even for external grants which only cover a single student (fellowships and the like), having not applied for one doesn't mean much. There are many, many more PhD students than there are fellowship opportunities.
If you are trashing CVs for any of these reasons, you may be missing out on good postdocs.
Edited to answer the question (sort of): I don't hire a lot of postdocs, but I have directly or indirectly hired 20-30 PhD-level research staff. Some of them are expected to participate in proposal writing. We gauge their ability to write proposals by looking for it on CVs, asking them about their experience when it's not on their CVs, and talking about it during interviews. Then, we throw them in the deep end and see what happens. In my organization, we have large-scale projects that fund people's time, but if they want to work on their personal research projects, they need to write proposals. Those who do, get to work on things besides the center-wide projects. Those who don't, don't.
# Answer
> 3 votes
Firstly, our environments clearly vary. Personal grants are uncommon around here, and almost *every PhD student* is funded by somebody else's grant. Nobody lists how they have been funded, and those who do are not regarded overly well (hence also my answer to the question you mention).
To answer your actual question:
> How do you evaluate the potential for getting funding of post doc applicants?
Not directly, really. We do not expect a track record in grant proposals for a fresh PhD gradudate. Hence, we try to infer from her/his research vision whether the graduate actually has enough ideas of sufficient scope to get some projects accepted. We assume that actually forging those ideas into grant proposals will require some help at first.
Having some experience as co-writer of proposals is a plus, but frankly it's not something very important to us. Whether or not the candidate has written the state of the art section for somebody else's grant proposal is less interesting than whether he actually has ideas for proposals.
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Tags: postdocs, cv
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thread-28055
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28055
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How to ensure that putting a product's photo in a paper does not violate copyright?
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2014-09-05T09:37:05.210
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# Question
Title: How to ensure that putting a product's photo in a paper does not violate copyright?
I have put into my paper a photo (available here) that I have collected from the company's website available for free. There is no copyright note, except the one at the bottom of the website and product is available for sale (probably patented). I have contacted the company seeking permission, but they did not reply after a week and I cannot wait anymore.
The paper will be published in an IEEE magazine.
So here are my questions:
1. How to make sure an online photo carries copyright?
2. Is citing to their website sufficient to avoid copyright violation?
3. If received copyright permission, how to use the permission in the paper? (I received permission from another company for another photo). Write it on the image or write "courtesy of ..." (I have seen this phrase quite a lot).
**UPDATE 1:** Thanks all of you, referring to your answers, I decided to stay in the safe side by removing the photo from the paper. I did not criticize anything and did not admire it either (but it could be a free publicity for them which is ignored despite second email to the company). I just discussed its functionality as an encouraging innovation for particular domain.
However, almost **NO ONE** yet commented on **3rd question**. Can any one help in this regard?
# Answer
> 27 votes
## Photography and other creations carry copyright by default
The answer to your part 1 - the exclusive copyright of a photo belongs to someone from the point of its creation, even if no explicit copyright note is attached.
If *you* had made the photo of that product, then it would be an entirely different question, but redistributing a photo someone else made is legally almost exactly as redistributing a Hollywood movie.
## Available for free doesn't imply a permission to redistribute
If something is freely distributed by it's owner, it doesn't come with an implied permission for you to do the same thing. Unless it comes with a licence that explicitly allows you to do so (e.g. the various Creative Commons licences), you don't have a permission to copy that image further. Citing the source doesn't change that.
## Lack of response means lack of permission
If you don't have an explicit permission, then you don't have it regardless of reasons - if an author chooses not to communicate with you, then tough luck. It also may be that the company doesn't have free hands in licencing the image - it's quite possible that the copyright is owned by some photographer, and the company has a licence to use it in their website but not in print.
## The journal may want clarifications
The journal submission documents will likely include either a statement that all images are your own, or that you have licenced them appropriately. They may leave the licences as your responsibility or require you to send them the documentation.
# Answer
> 14 votes
Without reading the paper, are you sure that the photo is necessary? It looks to be purely decorative, so perhaps you could sidestep the whole issue and leave it out of the paper.
1. Just because the owner does not reply to your request **does not** give you implicit permission to use the content. These guidelines by Colombia University lay out the situation well.
If the licensing situation is not clear, *assume it is copyrighted*. Private companies may get a little prickly if their products are conveyed in anything less than a glowingly positive light. Nevertheless, they usually can't do much if someone posts a bad review on a blog. I don't know for sure, but perhaps fair use will apply.
2. If there is an attribution license, yes. For example, content posted on Stack Exchange has a CC license with attribution required. Otherwise, nope.
3. Whichever is common in your field, or specifically requested by the owner of the copyrighted content, should be fine.
# Answer
> 3 votes
As there have been good and extensive answers to your first two questions and you explicitly asked for answers to your last question, I will only address question number 3.
How you can use an image in a paper depends entirely on the type of license/permission you have received. Basically, you and the copyright holder are free to negotiate any type of attribution or none at all. But even if they do not explicitly mention attribution it is still a sign of good manners to include at least their name somewhere close to the image. In case you are unsure, ask the copyright holder how they would like to be attributed and suggest a manner which you think might be suitable for your paper.
Some images are available under free licenses, e.g. all the images on Wikipedia (with some fair use exceptions) and Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia's image repository. These licenses specify what you need to do when you want to use an image. Usually, they require that you attribute the author and name the license under which the image was used. Some licenses might also require that you release derivative works of the original image (i.e. when you edited the image in some way) under the same license.
# Answer
> 1 votes
A quick answer if you are subject to US law:
> 1. How to make sure an online photo carries copyright?
*All* online photos (and text, videos, etc.) "carry copyright." That is, someone holds the copyright on anything you find online. You are not allowed to redistribute it unless the copyright holder *explicitly* does something to grant you the right - for example, if they specify a license. (Though under certain circumstances the fair use defense allows you to "get away with it.")
> 2. Is citing to their website sufficient to avoid copyright violation?
No, citation is completely irrelevant to copyright infringement. Copyright law says you cannot copy and redistribute the content, regardless of whether you cite its source.
Exception: if the content is under a license that makes citation relevant. For example, the Creative Commons Attribution licenses say something like "You are allowed to copy this as long as you credit the author."
> 3. If received copyright permission, how to use the permission in the paper? (I received permission from another company for another photo). Write it on the image or write "courtesy of ..." (I have seen this phrase quite a lot).
Follow the conventions of your field, of course, but the typical way is something like "Figure from \[source\], used with permission." This question of mine addresses the case of open access content.
# Answer
> -8 votes
The other answers are technically correct.
However you ought to think about it practically.
Every company wants to sell their products, and unless your article is saying bad things about the product or company, they're going to be happy for whatever publicity they get via your article.
Unless the company is run by morons (does happen sometimes), they are NOT going to sue you for helping them by giving them free publicity. Even tho they could, technically, if they wanted to.
Just credit the source of the photo properly and you're done.
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Tags: publications, copyright
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thread-28062
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28062
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Why do academics work only nine months of the year?
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2014-09-05T11:59:31.127
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# Question
Title: Why do academics work only nine months of the year?
I'm wondering how best to respond to queries from non-academics along the lines of "Why should you be paid during the summer holidays?" This is the sort of question I hear a lot in this economic climate here in Ireland, though I strongly suspect that one encounters similar questions and opinions elsewhere.
There is a subtext that public money is scarce, that people in "real" jobs work themselves to the bone and pay high taxes, while some people get to spend a significant proportion of the year on a sun lounger at the tax payer's expense. I like to think that we academics do earn our crust, but as somebody paid public money I think it's a reasonable question, and one I would like to answer better.
There are a couple of obvious responses.
1. It's nothing like nine months, especially when you factor in exam marking and processing, dealing with appeals, Autumn repeat exams, lecture preparation for the following year etc.
2. Did I forget to mention research? That's a full-time job in itself! And there are secondary activities such as applying for grants, judging grant applications, and supervising (post-)graduate students.
However these points don't apply to all academics. For example, I work in an Institute of Technology, possibly akin to a liberal arts college in the US, where there are typically 18 teaching hours per week in term time, but research is a bonus activity, and we have 10 weeks' summer holidays. So the core point seems to be that it's near-universal practice to have a teaching break during the summer months (exactly when this break is, and its length vary of course). But why is this? Are there good reasons that might satisfy somebody who is not already steeped in the academic life?
It's tempting to say that teaching is particularly intense, and this period of estivation is needed to avoid burnout. But is this true of teachers and academics more than, say, junior hospital doctors or care workers?
Presumably this question is tied to the question of why school teachers have summer holidays: I realise that this latter question may be off-topic for this site, but to the extent that answers to it have a bearing on my question, I would like to hear them.
Finally I am aware that not all academics are paid during the summer months. Many have temporary contracts that don't span the summer vacation. I hope that this situation remains the (in my opinion, disgraceful) exception rather than the rule.
EDIT: Thanks to Oswald Veblen and Dave Clarke for pointing out the general practice in US academia of being paid for only 9/12 of the year. In Ireland, and I think in much of Europe, academics are usually paid for 12 months. So some of the motivation for this question ("Why are we paying you academics during the summer?") may not apply in the US, although the basic question still stands ("Why don't academics typically have to teach during the summer?" or, in the more provocative (and inaccurate) terms that this is sometimes put: "Why don't academics work during the summer?")
# Answer
The following applies to a previous version of the question: "Why do academics get paid to work only nine months of the year?". The question of whether academics *do work* work in the summer, compared to whether they are *paid to* work over the summer, is more difficult. Most faculty in the U.S. have 9-month contracts, but in my experience most faculty nevertheless work on their research and teaching during the summer.
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In the United States, it is very common - nearly universal, in fact - for a standard academic contract to span 9 or 10 months. There are several reasons for this:
* It allows the university to pay less. The standard rule of thumb is that a 9 month contract pays 9/12 of what the corresponding annual contract would pay. Many (most?) faculty have their 9 months of pay split up into 12 months of paychecks -- but this is an accounting fiction, not a sign that they are paid for 12 months of work. If few students are around over the summer, there is less reason for universities to pay salary to their faculty for that time - having a break in the contract balances the university income and expenses.
* It allows faculty to be paid more. This is the flip side of paying 9/12 of an annual salary: the faculty member can, in principle, take another job during the summer.
+ Many grants, for example, are able to pay "summer salary", which is really just extra income. But these grants do not allow the faculty member to take salary from the university at the same time they take salary from the grant. The "9 month contract" resolves this: the faculty member can state they are actually only paid for 9 months of university work, so the grant can pay 2 or 3 months of extra salary during the summer.
+ Similarly, some universities pay extra to faculty who teach during the summer - that would not be possible if the summer was treated as part of the basic contract.
+ A smaller number of faculty use the summer for consulting work, or other jobs genuinely different from their university position.
* Faculty like to travel over the summer. During the academic year, it is hard to leave for personal reasons, because of class. By claiming that the summer is "off contract", academics can travel however they like during that period of time, without having to justify their time. So having the contract pause during the summer makes the job more attractive to job candidates, allowing the university to attract some people who might otherwise take higher-paying jobs elsewhere.
The reason I just cited are all purely economic - they can be justified solely in terms of saving money for the school, increasing pay for the faculty member, or attracting better candidates. There is also "tradition" as a reason for the summer break, as is also the case at lower levels of education.
However, the "9 month contract" is fictitious in a few ways:
* Most faculty still have access to their office, library, email, and other university resources even when they are technically not "on contract" over the summer.
* Research faculty usually continue to work on research during the summer, and travel to conferences (which may even be reimbursed by the university, even though the faculty member is technically not on contract!). This often happens even when the faculty don't have grants or other summer funding.
* Many faculty use some of their summer time to prepare for their classes, even though they are not being paid to teach over the summer.
* There are other activities during the summer: committee meetings, advising, etc. Some faculty participate in these, for various reasons, even when they are off contract.
> 23 votes
# Answer
As someone who works in Asia (teaching for a British university), I get paid 11-12 months out of the year (depending on my yearly negotiations). I had one student ask me why I don't teach 40 hours a week since that is a full-time job. So, I took a moment to explain to the student that standing in front of students is only one part of my job. Yes, it is the most visible but there are many, many other things I do and my work does consume 12 months out of the year (even when I'm only paid for 11 of them).
There is always prep, which includes research (identifying what should be taught based on the latest literature). Of course, there is marking, resits, special classes, along with a host of general administrative tasks which need to be done.
While it is possible for someone to work less than I do, it is only possible by producing lower quality, quickly outdated content for the students.
So, in short, I do not believe teachers work only 9 months out of the year. Those in the US might only work 9 months and take 3 months off but that is more related to the lack of appreciation (and sadly the lack of pay) for the efforts that go into properly educating the next generation.
> 9 votes
# Answer
```
"Why do academics work only nine months of the year?"
```
As pointed out, we don't. I work year-round; for instance, this summer, I revised an online course that was introduced in Spring 2014 at my university. Without being paid. (However, the paycheck issues mentioned elsewhere might make this last sentence "not quite true".)
```
"Why don't you work 40 hours a week?"
```
Working is not just teaching. There's also:
preparation for class ("what will I talk about today, and how will I do it?"),
creating preparation materials (the PPT Fairy doesn't create Powerpoint presentations),
responding to emails (homework questions, excuses for absence, policy questions),
choosing homework exercises (you can't use anything from a book that's a few years old, because all the solutions have been worked out and posted somewhere online),
grading tests (at my university, we have graders for homework, but tests we have to do all by ourselves),
and probably a few other things I can't think of off the top of my head.
Final note: I've always respected my high school teachers \[well, the good ones; my Phys Ed teacher nicknamed "Bobo" is an obvious exception\], but after realizing how much grading they do overnight for more classes than I teach, I have a new-found respect for them.
> 8 votes
# Answer
In the Netherlands, I get paid 14 months (one of those is called “holiday allowance” and another one is called “end-of-year bonus”). One way or the other, it's a fiction, the most relevant comparison is between yearly income. Whether it's excessive or not is an entirely different question.
Academics are not the only ones to have a regular salary, paid holidays or flexible time. What sets them apart is that there is relatively little oversight compared to many occupations. To some extent, you can show up, read, write, etc. whenever you decide. And you do get two to three months without many concrete obligations or schedule constraints.
Note that at my university (and I guess at many places), you have to officially take holidays and you “only” get about 6 weeks (a couple weeks more than the mandatory legal minimum). During the rest of the summer, you are supposed to work and account for your time in the usual ways.
> 4 votes
# Answer
Having been in Academia in both the US and in the Netherlands, I can safely say that academics work the full 12 months and dedicate most of the summer to "real work" (i.e. research) when they are less distracted with teaching responsibilities.
> 1 votes
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Tags: teaching, job, academic-life, working-time
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thread-28117
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28117
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How do you convince students that it's OK to teach them "how to think?"
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2014-09-06T23:09:13.013
|
# Question
Title: How do you convince students that it's OK to teach them "how to think?"
Often in a Calculus or Linear Algebra class, my students may ask - when am I ever going to use this? The answer I try to give them is "You're not. And that's totally OK. But you do need to learn how to think logically and solve problems. Mathematics provides a safe place to learn these thinking skills."
But increasingly, the focus of the students is still "Is this going to be on the test?"
They seem unhappy when questions they haven't seen before end up on the test. My thought is that if they learn the process for solving problems, then they should know how to approach a new (but similar) problem.
I'm not interested in seeing them regurgitate facts, but I want them to develop their thinking skills and use them to solve new problems. This often causes backlash. I get it - learning how to think is harder than memorizing facts.
How do I effectively communicate that it's not the individual questions or ideas that are important, but it's the learning and thinking processes that are key?
# Answer
I disagree with your fundamental premise: that the concepts *won't* be used, and therefore the main benefit of learning calculus is to hone a student's problem-solving skills.
Many engineering problems *do* require an understanding of calculus. Perhaps not all your students are destined to be engineers or physicists, but, if you explain that there are people who *do* need and use this knowledge to advance in their career field and solve real-world problems, you might get them to sit up and realize they aren't trudging through their homework as a mere academic exercise. Fact is, some of these courses are taught to freshmen and sophomores because they *will* need those problem-solving skills as juniors and seniors – not just to know how to solve a problem, but to also understand the underlying theory and mathematics. If all the students in a particular demographic will never use calculus in the future, then they probably don't need to take calculus now.
I'd try to find some real-world problems that require the knowledge taught in your course to solve. Perhaps that might spark an interest and help students realize that the are not just solving integrals for integrals' sake.
If I was at your university, and I taught an upper-level engineering course in heat transfer or thermodynamics, I'd be disappointed to learn that my students' calculus teacher thought the main reason to teach my engineers calculus was to provide a "safe place" for them to "learn how to think logically and solve problems."
> 12 votes
# Answer
While it's indeed likely that many of your students will not extensively use the material they learn in your class, it may not be encouraging to them to hear that they won't use it. And indeed, they do learn important critical thinking skills, but they may be wondering what is special about the sort of critical thinking in calculus and linear algebra that they couldn't get out of another course.
In this vein, one solution may be to present real-world examples of how calculus and linear algebra are used today, get the students involved as you present, and *relate the topic to the students' lives*.
For instance, after you present a basic optimization example (maximize fence perimeter given the area it contains) you might present a slightly more complicated problem (building a window of a particular shape that maximizes the amount of light coming through with a fixed amount of building material, for instance), and get the class involved in trying to solve the problem. Ask them what's different about it, maybe have them briefly discuss a strategy with the person next to them. (This is not usually done in a large class, but at least one very popular professor at my school does this in his large classes.)
Continuing with the example of optimization, there's a great topic on matheducators.stackexchange about real-life optimization problems here. In particular, I've linked to a problem that video-game players might find to be really cool and related to their everyday lives. Of course, it may also help to branch out and briefly discuss some current, advanced applications of calculus and linear algebra. An excellent example where ideas from calculus and linear algebra are essential is the story of how UPS route optimization involves the minimization of left turns. This last example might inspire a lively discussion in your classes, because it shows how calculus and linear algebra can trump everyday intuition... and how pushing beyond a basic understanding can lead to new, interesting ideas! (I'm sure if you asked students in class, they could come up with reasons for why UPS's strategy might make sense.)
On the other hand, some students might not be moved by industry applications and might benefit from seeing mathematics as the kind of "safe place" you suggest where perfect formulations lead to perfect results. Strogatz has some interesting words in a Math Horizons article about the importance of enabling others to experience the beauty of math, and he provides a great example of why math is beautiful. I also just found a TED talk discussing the use of calculus in some parts of modern architecture. Though this last one is admittedly again an industry application, it at least sheds some light about how aesthetics and mathematics can interact in interesting ways.
> 5 votes
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Tags: teaching, learning
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thread-28103
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28103
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Applying for a PhD with two undergrad degrees in different subjects
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2014-09-06T17:37:52.647
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# Question
Title: Applying for a PhD with two undergrad degrees in different subjects
I completed a BA in philosophy, but then my interests changed and I did a BSc in mathematics. I am currently finishing my MSc in mathematics and applying for a PhD in maths. I have the following questions:
1. Does the fact that my very first degree was in philosophy put me at a disadvantage in terms of applying for a PhD? Could it potentially be interpreted as a sign of indecision or inadequate motivation?
2. Should I refer to my philosophy degree at all in my personal statement? Does my change of academic interests call for an explanation, or is it better to leave it out?
# Answer
The way I see it (but I am not in any admissions committee), the career choice that you did being 18 should have very little impact now. At that age, most people are immature.
For me, having those two degrees tells me:
* You have had the persistence to finish the Philosophy degree, even knowing that that was not your cup of tea; and then pursue your real desire.
* You have the flexibility to work on very different intellectual environments.
* Your experience is broader than most people that start their Maths degree at 18. Also, you are in Mathematics after a concious decision, and it was revalidated when you pursued a MSc, and now applying for a PhD.
In any case, I think you should absolutely mention it, otherwise you would have a 3 years gap to explain. Having been studying is definitely better than doing nothing.
> 8 votes
# Answer
Let me add on to Davidmh's answer above. The major issue is that you're **not** switching from philosophy to mathematics at this stage; you already made the switch a long time ago. As far as the graduate schools are concerned, you will be evaluated *as a mathematics major would be*.
If you believe your study of philosophy will help make a case for your admission as a mathematics graduate student, then you should mention that in your statement of purpose. However, you need not obsess over it; no one will say that you're unable to pursue graduate studies in math just because you started out in philosophy.
> 5 votes
# Answer
I must say I find this question quite odd in light of the two undergraduate degrees you have: philosophy and mathematics. They have been linked for thousands of years, and some of the most prominent mathematicians of the past two hundred years were philosophers. And some of the most prominent philosophers were also mathematicians. They have gone hand-in-hand for a really long time.
George Boolos, author of *the* textbook on mathematical logic, Computability and Logic (I'd be surprised if you hadn't used it during your undergraduate studies), started out with a degree in mathematics from Harvard, did a masters at Oxford in philosophy and mathematics, and particularly the philosophy of mathematics, and went on to do a PhD in philosophy at MIT.
People like Hilary Putnam, one of the most famous philosophers alive, have made major contributions to mathematics even *outside* of the philosophy of mathematics. Putnam published major works on the Boolean satisfiability problem and Hilbert's tenth problem, for instance.
Another prominent mathematician, Solomon Feferman, is also a philosopher.
While certainly there are not a lot of Fields or Abel winners who are philosophers, there is no doubt that the two fields compliment each other immensely.
More relevant is the fact that there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that there is *no way* having an undergraduate degree in philosophy could somehow negatively impact your application. It can *only* improve it in universities where they understand the links between the fields, and in departments where it doesn't, it's going to have no impact at all given you also have a masters in mathematics.
I must say that I am surprised, however, that someone considering doing a PhD in Mathematics would be so oblivious to the obvious, though.
> 5 votes
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Tags: application, mathematics
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thread-28116
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28116
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Why is the prospect of external funding driving hiring?
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2014-09-06T22:58:51.927
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# Question
Title: Why is the prospect of external funding driving hiring?
I'm curious about today's focus on external funding versus that of the past.
In Mathematics anyway, it seems that the quality of a researcher is increasingly being measured in dollars of external funding rather than by some other, more idealistic measure. That means that pure mathematics, for instance, seems to be much less valued than "fundable" mathematics.
Do any veterans have any perspective on what seems like a changing climate? Are things really different today than they were 20 years ago with regard to the importance of obtaining funding for ones research?
# Answer
> 5 votes
I agree that there is more pressure nowadays to get funding in areas like pure math in which it's valuable but not mandatory for doing great work. It's still entirely possible to make an argument along the lines of "Sure, Alice doesn't get much funding, but look how wonderful her papers are," but it's slowly getting harder.
The short answer as to why this is happening is World War II plus inertia. Here's a longer answer:
The first thing to keep in mind is that grant funding is on average genuinely good for universities, because the overhead rate paid to the university is often higher than any extra costs imposed on the university. All other things being equal, it makes sense to prefer to hire faculty who can get funding, because they are subsidizing the infrastructure for everyone else (e.g., libraries and internet access). Of course, all other things are rarely truly equal, and I wouldn't advocate for giving grant funding much weight, but there's a reasonable argument for giving it nonzero weight.
There's also a temptation to use funding as a simple numerical measure of popularity. Universities should serve the public, and it's clear that people are much more eager to fund work in some topics than others. It's not crazy to take that into account in university decisions. However, if taken too far I feel it's an abdication of our responsibility for intellectual leadership.
But why do these things seem to be changing in recent decades? Universities are generally conservative and slow to change, so it's always worth looking for an explanation of any movement, and in this case I think it's World War II.
Most funding agencies were set up in the aftermath of the war (e.g., the U.S. National Science Foundation dates back to 1950), and the whole tradition of large-scale government funding of research didn't even exist until then. How academic leaders reacted to it was based on their personal history, and academic inertia meant the changes were slow in coming. Some of the effects are still surfacing now.
Let's divide things up into academic generations since World War II, giving each generation a twenty year time span to displace the previous one. Here are my impressions of what happened for cheap or theoretical areas in which funding is not essential to do good work (I'm sure things were very different in big science):
1. The senior faculty of Generation 1 (1945-1965) were strongly influenced by pre-war traditions. They had never dreamt of making hiring decisions based on external funding and weren't about to start doing so now. They were suspicious of how wisely the funding would be allocated, and they saw no reason to think these agencies were even going to continue indefinitely in their present form.
2. Those in Generation 2 (1965-1985) had still been brought up to be skeptical of paying more attention to funding track records than necessary. However, they were getting more comfortable with the funding agencies and starting to wonder about how grants could or should be taken into account. I believe this is the point at which listing grant funding on your CV became mainstream in pure mathematics.
3. The senior faculty in Generation 3 (1985-2005) went further and began taking funding information into account in ways that would have scandalized Generation 1. If you didn't list grants on your CV, the dean might now complain about it. But there was still a sense that this was somehow shallow and historically new.
4. Generation 4 seems to be taking the trend still further and normalizing it.
Of course this is all vastly oversimplified, and no serious history can be conveyed in a few paragraph-long sketches (even if I were an expert). However, the key phenomenon is real: the funding landscape was revolutionized after World War II, and academic traditions have slowly been adapting to this fact.
# Answer
> 1 votes
When I was in the Netherlands, a group at the university needed about 450,000 euros to fund a PhD student. If the money is not coming from the university either indirectly from the government or other revenue sources, then the money needs to be secured by the faculty themselves.
In the US, the story is similar, but the costs may vary. In short, academia is not cheap and someone has to pay for it.
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Tags: research-process, funding
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thread-28124
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28124
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How to document teaching experiences?
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2014-09-07T02:14:02.830
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# Question
Title: How to document teaching experiences?
When applying for a senior academic position, teaching experiences play a critical role in the application. We list the corses we used to teach but when assuming the position, we need to deliver some official documents to the human resources?
1. What should be this document? a letter from the last university listing the courses or a detailed set of documents for each course/semester including evaluations?
2. Who should issue this document/letter? VP for Academics, Dean or Department Head?
3. Is it needed to get similar documents of teaching experiences from previous universities? or the last university is enough?
I am asking this question for the case of a full professor coming from Asia to Europe or North America.
# Answer
> 5 votes
I don't think applicants in the US are ever required to prove that they taught particular courses on particular dates, so no system like official academic transcripts certified by the university has arisen. However, if there were some doubt that courses listed on a CV were not taught, it would be a simple matter of contacting the department to verify.
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Tags: teaching, professorship, recruiting
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thread-28118
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28118
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Are there any negative consequences to an instructor attempting to achieve "all A's from everyone"?
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2014-09-07T00:27:25.443
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# Question
Title: Are there any negative consequences to an instructor attempting to achieve "all A's from everyone"?
Instructors can use reflective teaching to analyze their teaching, in the hope that they can improve their course for subsequent terms. If a teacher focused on insuring that all students earned A's, would that bring about unintended negative consequences.
Here are some examples:
* If some students did not earn an A because they failed to understand some material, the teacher would attempt try harder in the next term to explain this material more clearly and to also identify or correct the course readings.
* If some students did not earn an A because they were uninterested and unmotivated, the teacher should try harder to make the lessons more interesting.
Assume that students only earn an A by demonstrating that they have achieved the course goals, the teacher never lowers their standards for what is an A, and students not made aware of this goal, would such an "all A's from everyone" focus create any intended problems?
# Answer
> 8 votes
## No, there are no negative consequences.
The key is this sentence right here:
> Assume that students only earn an A by demonstrating that they have achieved the course goals
That being the case, grading becomes evaluating the following:
*If everyone in the class is able to do everything that they **should** be able to do... mission accomplished*
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*Edit*: I teach pilots how to land airplanes safely. Students only earn an A by demonstrating that they have achieved course goals (they land the plane), and I never lower my standards for anyone (you don't get an A unless you land safely). As for the third criteria, I don't make students explicitly aware of my goal, but let's face it, it's implicit in the training.
My argument comes from seven years of personal experience:
* Are there any negative consequences of me making sure that all my students are able to land the plane safely? No.
* Are there any negative consequences of me *not* making sure that all of my students are able to land the plane safely? Yes: flame and then newspaper headlines.
# Answer
> 3 votes
The potential disadvantage is that wanting every student to get the top grade results in the teacher spending all their time with the weaker students. The stronger students, who can get an A without extra help, don't get stretched and find the course dull and unmotivating. Thus, the next generation of people who might take the subject farther, even to research level, get switched off and do something else.
You're also assuming that every student is capable of getting the top grade, and they're not. However much time and effort you put in, you will not get the weakest students up to the level of the top grade. Your time and effort are valuable: it doesn't make sense to invest them beyond the point where they've stopped having any effect.
Also, what does it even mean for every student to get an A? If your entire grading system is essentially a single binary decision of "Can do X" versus "Cannot do X", wouldn't a pass/fail system make more sense?
# Answer
> 3 votes
It's not clear to me how a teacher would know whether students missed an A because they "failed to understand some material" or whether they were "uninterested and unmotivated".
If most people are getting an acceptable mark then repeatedly changing the course to try and make it more interesting to a small portion of the class could lead to:
1. actually making the course less interesting to a larger group of people - not everyone will find the same things interesting.
2. making the teacher(s) less capable of teaching the course well since they're now less familiar with the outline.
Also, if a specific course gets a reputation for a high level of As being achieved, it could potentially attract people that want to take the course because they expect an easy A. I don't think that's really much of a problem though, and shouldn't put people off making an interesting and well explained course.
So: while there are probably no real disadvantages to aiming for all students to get an A, a poor implementation has potential disadvantages and if "all students should get an A" becomes some kind of department standard (or maybe even just a personal goal), it has potential to cause stress, annoyance, and low morale as it may be an unobtainable goal for staff to meet.
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Tags: teaching, motivation
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thread-28154
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28154
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Can I count on "future works" ideas in a paper to work?
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2014-09-07T19:14:58.543
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# Question
Title: Can I count on "future works" ideas in a paper to work?
Can I count on paper future work or not? in order to work on that for my master thesis. I have a paper and its implementation. and I work on that for some months.
This paper belong to 2013 and the author work on another fields on 2014. I track his publications and I am not sure he goes back to his 2013's paper future work.
I want to know and make sure if the idea will work or not? How can I make sure if it will work or not?
# Answer
> 7 votes
> How to make sure if it will work or not?
The reason why it's in the "future work" section is that no-one knows because it hasn't yet been done (and it's easily possible the original authors never will try it). "Future work" ideas can range in feasibility from wild speculation to simple, *almost*-guaranteed-to-work extensions that just need a bit more manpower or computer power to finish.
This is a good topic to discuss with your supervisor as soon as possible. You should be asking questions such as:
* How feasible might it be for these ideas to lead to some useful conclusions?
* What if it doesn't work? How soon will we know, and what alternative paths are there?
Of course, some ideas are much easier and more feasible than others. There's no way to know for sure but to try the idea yourself (after making sure that the problem is not already solved in later literature). Because dead-ends often go unpublished, it might even be worth contacting the relevant authors to ask if they attempted to follow up on their future ideas.
It's a courteous thing to do especially if theirs is a recent publication: if the original authors are still working on the problem, publishing the solution first might annoy the other researchers. Though whether to proceed anyway (and give them notice that you're working on the idea as well), stay silent, or offer to collaborate, is a dilemma that's off-topic for this question.
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Tags: thesis
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thread-28156
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28156
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Can journals share information about your submission?
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2014-09-07T19:51:47.647
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# Question
Title: Can journals share information about your submission?
Can journals share information about your submission or for that matter your entire submission at will? Is that fair game? Is this a varying practice based on who you submit to?
Is the general idea that the implications of sharing the notes and related content is trivial?
# Answer
In general, no, journals cannot arbitrarily share your submission with others—at least not before it's been accepted.
However, they *can* share your submission with:
* Reviewers, so that the peer-review process can be completed
* Other staff members within the publisher, which can be useful when a paper is submitted to the "wrong" section of a journal, or to the wrong journal, but is otherwise acceptable for publication.
Once the paper has been accepted and appropriate copyrights assigned, though, they can do more or less whatever they normally do in their publication and advertising process.
> 3 votes
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Tags: publications, journals, privacy
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thread-28148
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28148
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Ask the author of paper about an idea
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2014-09-07T17:08:20.013
|
# Question
Title: Ask the author of paper about an idea
I am doing my MS thesis on wireless networking, I give the codes from the author of the paper, for some month, after reading his paper and also working on the some aspects of his codes (the implementation of his paper). Now it is the time to create the idea, Can I send him "Do you have any idea which improve some aspects of your paper ? "
would you please give me some advises ? can I ask him or not? how to ask that ? what I should say to him ?
NOTE: my reason for asking him is this: I am sure he knows his codes better than every body, also I am afraid in implementing any idea which do not lead to good result at the end. By the way I do not have lot of time to try and test another ways I mean try and implement one idea with bad result and after that switch to another idea.
UPDATE: If I ask him, "... , that is my idea, what do think about my idea?" what will happen? what is his possible respond?
UPDATE2: The meaning of idea in my question is "HOW TO EXTEND HIS WORK"
# Answer
Since you are now doing your MSc thesis, you are relatively new to research. Still, you have to learn a very valuable lesson. Good research ideas are hard to find, when thousands of smart people are competing for limited slots in journals or CS conferences. In this spirit, people do not want to share their good ideas or inform others about what they are planning to do, more than what they state in the future work section. In this SE community, there are many posts about supervisors or collaborators stealing idea from their students, or vice versa. If you cannot always trust your advisor or student, can you trust a stranger with your good research idea? The obvious answer is NO, unless you simply cannot implement the idea yourself without his help or you do not have the time to do it by yourself (which is solvable if you delegate this work to more collaborators, like undergraduate students or colleagues). **Sharing ideas should be limited to people you absolutely trust.**. Do not get me wrong. By people you can trust, I do not necessarily mean people you interact socially with. It might be the person in your next office or another scientist 1000s of kms away. But trust in a necessary component before any type of sharing and "brainstorming".
I would therefore suggest: Try to do it yourself. Extend his work the way you see fit and try to publish the results. If you succeed, then he will know that you are good enough and perhaps suggest collaboration himself. Of course you may find that your idea was not that good and you have wasted a significant amount of time. Or your idea was good but parallel to you and without him knowing what you were planning to do, he implemented it faster and got it published. In any case, you should base your option on what you want to do. Do you want to finish your MSc thesis as soon as possible and go to industry? Then by all means, share your idea and use his help. But if you want to continue in research, you must choose the hardest way and do it yourself with all the risks and time included.
> 3 votes
# Answer
It never hurts to politely ask!
> 3 votes
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Tags: thesis, masters, email
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thread-28104
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28104
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Uneven skill set and customer service attitudes of University Support Services
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2014-09-06T17:43:34.607
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# Question
Title: Uneven skill set and customer service attitudes of University Support Services
I was wondering if anyone had any guidance on how to handle/manage the uneven skill sets and lack of customer service attitudes on the part of administrative units. I'm talking about concrete issues, such as a person in the grants office who can't figure out research budgets and grants.gov and IT staff who can't keep email up and running. Keep in mind, these are folks who are not directly under the supervision of my department, but who we are compelled to use.
# Answer
There are many excellent, competent, and dedicated staff and administrative people at universities, but there are also a visible percentage who are not. Universities face several hiring challenges:
1) Salaries are low and opportunities for advancement are rare. Talented people could make more in industry. Those that remain are sometimes there because they don't have mobility (because of a faculty-spouse ties them to that location, etc.).
2) many people are hired for reasons not related to their skill sets: second-body problems, hiring recently graduated students to reduce the appearance of post-graduate unemployment, etc.
There is no easy solution to this problem. However, even second-body hires are not resistant to getting fired (or worse, transferred to the dining unit). Like all bureaucrats they are afraid of complaints and the additional paperwork this would cause. Anonymous complaints can usually be made via the university ombudsman (if you have one).
> 2 votes
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Tags: university, administration
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thread-28176
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28176
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Arranging a visit to a professor you do not know yet
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2014-09-08T07:09:19.843
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# Question
Title: Arranging a visit to a professor you do not know yet
I am a PhD student in mathematics and I’d like to visit professor X (whom I don’t know personally), as he’s an expert in my field and could really help me with some passages in my research. I have quite a few questions:
* How to approach professor X to ask if I can visit him and what sort of information should I provide?
* When PhD students visit academics, what happens usually? I mean, would professor X become a sort of supervisor for the time of the visit, or would it just be that me and professor X would mostly be in the same place at the same time and able to chat a bit if the opportunity arises?
* How long do visits last, usually? Would I be a student at professor X’s university during the time of my visit? Would I have any academic requirements (e.g. to give talks at seminars, etc.)?
* Professor X is in a different country than I am. Are professors based in a different country than a potential visiting student more reluctant to let students visit them? If so, why?
# Answer
> 7 votes
There's no definite answer to any of your questions. All of these details depend a lot on the professor, the circumstances (e.g., funding), and you:
> How to approach professor X to ask if I can visit him and what sort of information should I provide?
I would assume a mail is sufficient. However, if you don't know the prof personally, and you are not overly well-known in your community yet, it may be better to **ask your advisor to establish contact**. Professors get many mails from prospective students on various levels, with various intends. Those mails tend to get discarded quickly and unceremoniously.
I don't know what information would be required, initially probably almost none, except who you are and what you would like to work on with the professor. At a later point, **details of how this visit would be funded may become an important discussion item** (e.g., who pays your travel? who pays your hotel / apartment? if you are an university employee, who pays YOU during your visit?). Don't expect your host to arrange funding - this is something that you / your advisor will need to arrange, and just agree with the host.
> When PhD students visit academics, what happens usually? I mean, would professor X become a sort of supervisor for the time of the visit, or would it just be that me and professor X would mostly be in the same place at the same time and able to chat a bit if the opportunity arises?
I have seen both happen. Clearly, in the second case, the visit is often close to worthless. However, in most cases, the truth is somewhere in the middle. The prof meets a few times with the visitor, and "appoints" one or more of his own students with a matching profile /research interests as a contact point and collaborator for the visit. **You should not have too high expectations of how much time your host can really invest into you** (and not into, say, his own students or his own research).
> How long do visits last, usually? Would I be a student at professor X’s university during the time of my visit? Would I have any academic requirements (e.g. to give talks at seminars, etc.)?
**Depends.** I have so far done two research visits, one as a short as 2 weeks, one for 6 weeks. I know of others who have done visits for up to 6 months. You usually have little academic requirements, and you are not usually considered a student of the host institution (at least for visits that are shorter than one term). Giving a talk is sometimes necessary as part of your funding arrangements. For instance, in my second stay, my travel was funded by the host institution over the vehicle that they officially invited me as an expert speaker for their seminar series (so that they could formally pay for my travel, which they could not do for a visit). In my first visit, the expectation of the funding source was that at some point a paper would be published related to the visit (clearly not within those two weeks, but at some point). Further, I had to write a brief report.
> Professor X is in a different country than I am. Are professors based in a different country than a potential visiting student more reluctant to let students visit them? If so, why?
Not typically, however, finding funding may be even more difficult. However, both of my visits have been cross-country, in one case cross-continents, so **it definitely can be done**.
# Answer
> 3 votes
Academic visits take all sorts of forms, so it really depends on the situation. There are however some general things that you should keep in mind.
First of all, it would be necessary to come into contact with the professor you want to work with. Just contacting him out of the blue might not be very successful. If your PhD advisor knows him, it is probably a good idea to let him make the initial contact. Another option would be to try to talk to him or his students at a conference of workshop.
Another question is who will fund the visit (hotel, travel costs, etc.). If you would be able to attract funds yourself, that would be helpful. Especially since you say you will have to travel abroad, this could run up the costs.
As to what happens during the visit, that really depends. It is usual that the visitor gives a seminar or colloquium talk. What I usually do is to try to talk to as many people in the group as possible, to get some feeling about the kind of projects the people are working on. If you come there to solve a particular problem with the professor, then in-dept dicussion sessions with him make more sense. Finally, most groups have desks available for visitors, so that you can work on your own as well.
For longer visits, say more than a week or two, the professor might take more of an advisor role, but that really depends on the goal of the visit and on the people involved.
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Tags: visiting
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thread-28175
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28175
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Emailing professor too early has any impact?
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2014-09-08T06:49:39.417
|
# Question
Title: Emailing professor too early has any impact?
I was just wondering when should we start contacting professor of grad school for admission. Does contacting professor too early cause any impact? like, professor gets irritated and never reply back again, blocks forever and things?
# Answer
> 1 votes
Any sensible professor would be happy to reply to a talented student with A+ results; and be more than happy to supervise one.
The only issue with the time is, sometimes the good professors at a university can't take more students to supervise; because they are supervising 5-8 students for their final year projects. So, as soon as you can contact the professor, the better.
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Tags: graduate-admissions, professorship, email
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thread-28171
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28171
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Who hires a visiting professor?
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2014-09-08T05:32:06.417
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# Question
Title: Who hires a visiting professor?
When a professor stays in another university as a visiting professor during his sabbatical leave, his salary is partially paid by his home university. Then, he is not a regular employee of host university, but how is the official processing?
For example, he needs lots of employment stuff such as ID, parking, etc. Thus, he should have a profile with the human resource.
1. Is he hired by the university (HR) or directly by a department?
2. Does he need to provide regular documents such as academic credentials (diploma, transcript) or an employment status from the home university is enough?
3. Following these questions, when he teaches a course or supervises a student, what is his employment reference in official records? I mean can a guest professor teach/supervise without official records in the university HR?
**EXAMPLE:** A full professor goes to another university on sabbatical leave whether for teaching or research. He needs ID card, and normally HR or similar central unit issues the ID card, not individual departments. Shouldn't he have a record in the HR files as the reference for the ID card issued?
My question is: *When the HR is creating a file for a visiting professor/scholar/researcher, what documents should be supplied?*
# Answer
> 8 votes
Let me clarify some terms:
* Despite the language, *Visiting Faculty* are not usually faculty who are gainfully employed at one university who are just staying at another university during their research leave.
* Most visiting faculty are "*Visiting Assistant Professors*" who are (usually recently graduated) scholars who do not yet have full-time employment and are hired as one-year (or two-year) replacements for professors who have gone on sabbaticals. This is different from an adjunct as the recipient university is hiring you full-time (not per course) for a term of one or two years.
* *Visiting (Full or Associate) Professors*: Only rarely would a tenured, senior faculty use their sabbatical year to go to another university solely to *teach*. Exceptions would be: 1) they aren't being paid during their sabbatical year and need the money; 2) the recipient university has resources that they would like access to (archives, etc.); 3) they want to live in the recipient city for a year, etc. This last one is the most common -- especially with American faculty visiting European capitals (sigh... Paris...). Some faculty are contractually forbidden to use their paid sabbaticals in outside teaching -- at my university, a sabbatical is a leave from teaching responsibilities but it is ultimately a time when I am supposed to be doing research.
* There is also the category of *Visiting Researcher* \- this is the category which most visiting full faculty would use on sabbatical at another institution if they had no teaching responsibilities. It would not normally come with pay or any benefits except library/archive/gallery access, e-mail, and an office.
Thus if Prof. Smith@UniX goes on sabbatical, then Visiting Asst. Professor Jones@Unemployed is hired by UniX to replace Professor Smith.
To answer your specific questions, UniX is entirely responsible for Prof. Jones' salary and benefits.
1. Hiring is usually done by the department who needs a replacement. Often a full search is not run and sometimes the hiring is done on the Chair's prerogative. While HR of course handles the details after the department makes their choice, it is rarely HR that runs the search from the very beginning.
2. Credentials may not be checked as thoroughly since it is a temporary hire.
3. Visiting Faculty have appointments in their recipient universities and can serve as the instructors on record for courses. Depending on their term (and the rules of the institution) they can also serve as readers for senior essays, but usually they do not serve on doctoral dissertation committees. They are also usually exempt from most service work.
Biographical note: After I received my PhD, I taught for a year as a visiting assistant professor, as a sabbatical replacement. This was before I received my first tenure-track job. \[note: simplified version of a complex reality\]
# Answer
> 2 votes
Assuming a professor will teach at a temporary university during sabbatical, the official processing can be done several ways, depending on the situation and the specific institutions. Because the teaching is something extra, the professor would almost certainly expect the temporary institution to pay for it.
* Some institutions just hire the visiting professor as normal, the way they would hire an adjunct. If the sabbatical already has some pay, the professor receives pay from both institutions.
* Some institutions would make a deal with the professor's home institution. In this type of deal, the temporary institution sends money to the home institution, which then continues to pay the professor's salary as normal, and the professor receives no direct pay from the temporary institution.
In any case, setting up this type of visiting position during a sabbatical requires planning well in advance, so that both institutions can approve it.
To address some specific questions:
* In the U.S. I am only aware of hiring by HR departments. I have never heard of someone hired "directly by a department". The department will make an offer, with the approval of the dean, and then the actual employment is always done by the university HR department.
* It's likely the visiting institution will need to review his academic credentials, as part of their hiring policy, but that is really just a minor detail.
* The third question seems to be very university dependent. There will be *some* form of record keeping.
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Tags: professorship, job-search, visiting, recruiting, policy
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thread-28130
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28130
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Pros and Cons of including less interesting results
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2014-09-07T04:53:51.660
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# Question
Title: Pros and Cons of including less interesting results
For the problem I am trying to solve, I considered 2 base algorithms and devised about 30 variations on each.
I then threw about 2 CPU-years and ran a number of simulations to see how they went.
When that completed I drew alot of graphs and came to some conclusions like:
1. Variations of the form `X` do almost exactly as well as the control
2. Variations of the `Y` family can be predicted to have unpredictable (and thus useless) results
3. The `d[1,0*]` variation is great under these conditions
4. The `d[0*]` variation is great under these other conditions
I took the last 2 and made a new algorithm and then tested that and found further useful results.
Now I am going to write my findings up into a paper.
I have 3 kind of results above:
* Points 3,4 (and the subsequent improvements) are interesting and will be the main focus of the paper.
* Points 1, 2, are kind of nonresults. They are failures, they did not produce anything useful.
+ For most it isn't even surprising that they didn't.
+ For others they are a approach by taken on a similar problem in a paper that inspired me to try and solve this related problem.
**So should I comment at all about algorithm variations that were tested and found to not be good?**
**Why/why not?**
Pros I can see:
This would help prevent others, not spend time trying them. I have read that it is a problem that in many disciplines (including this one) "negative results are not published".
Cons I can see:
Takes up space, may confuse reader as to which algorithm is the focus of the paper.
It feels abit weird that of the 2 CPU-years I spent testing these, and the considerable time I spent making the tests, I will only tell the rest of the world **about 5% of my results**.
# Answer
You could omit the uninteresting 95% in the peer-review journal version, but include them as an appendix in the arxiv.org version of the paper. That way they're available but you're not forcing anyone to read them...
> 10 votes
# Answer
Negative results are as interesting, in my opinion, as positive ones. They allow future researches to know what won't work, and prevent them wasting their time (unless they thing you did something wrong- in which case they will try it anyway :-). However, the main paper should probably focus on the positive part, since most researchers have enough to read already and will not care much about the negative results.
In biology at least, it is frequent to mention some negative result and then include "(not shown)". But nowadays with the facilities to add supplementary material there is no reason to not include some proof. I would suggest to include negative results as supplementary material and just mention them in the main manuscript.
> 3 votes
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Tags: research-process, writing
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thread-28192
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28192
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NSF postdoctoral fellowship eligibility requirements
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2014-09-08T11:49:48.620
|
# Question
Title: NSF postdoctoral fellowship eligibility requirements
I am about to receive my PhD and would like to apply for an NSF postdoctoral fellowship.
I have two questions about the eligibility requirements that I haven't been able to find the answers to online:
1. **I have already secured a postdoctoral position with a mentor.** I was offered a postdoctoral position and will start shortly after the fellowship application deadline. The NSF application materials seem designed for people who will start in the Summer or Fall in the year after the application. Does this affect my eligibility for the award?
2. **I will technically receive my PhD after I begin my postdoc.** Due to scheduling problems I've had to postpone my official thesis defense until after I begin my postdoc. However, I will have defended by Spring 2015, well before the award would be distributed. Does this affect my eligibility?
# Answer
> 3 votes
The eligibility requirements are stated in the solicitation. It certainly sounds like you will be eligible. If you defend in spring of 2015, then you can apply in falls of 2014,'15, or '16 to start the following summer (in fall 2017, it will be too late, since you will have had your Ph.D. for two years on Jan 1, 2018, and 2018 would the "year of the award). The only things that can make you ineligible are: losing your US citizenship (presumably easy to avoid), serving as PI on an NSF grant (again, not a huge danger), and being offered the fellowship and turning it down. (I think there is also some general stuff about drugs convictions, etc.)
Taking any kind of job will not make you ineligible, though it's possible it could influence the way your application is looked at (for good or for ill, I can't really say). You can apply with your current job as your site, or with a different one. I don't know many examples of people getting the fellowship after they first graduated, though of course, 2015 will be when you first graduated, so maybe that's not an issue.
Just a general comment: if you have questions about NSF awards, **ask the program director**. They'll be the ones who actually interpret the rules, so they know better than random people on the internet how they'll be interpreted.
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Tags: postdocs, nsf, funding
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thread-28170
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28170
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Made some great course slides, now what?
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2014-09-08T04:03:42.923
|
# Question
Title: Made some great course slides, now what?
I just spent a year preparing a set of course slides for an introductory course in engineering, and they now look really good. In addition to posting them on my web page, what more can I do to get use out of them?
For example, it would be nice to see if there's a MOOC that would be interested in them, but it doesn't seem like any of the major ones ever solicit such things.
I'm not aware of any examples of "publishing" slides either, so I'd be curious what more experienced users here have done.
# Answer
> 7 votes
Here are some ideas:
Make a video of yourself presenting the slides (either to a class, or just to the camera), and upload it to YouTube (or similar). Others have done this, and as a result there are some great free resources available for people who otherwise would not have the time or money to take the course. For example, N J Wildberger has several maths courses online. If you don't want to be on the video, you can just have the slides, with your voice presenting them. (See the videos of Bill Shillito, for example.)
Put the materials on your website, and spread the news.
Turn the materials into a wikibook, where others can add to them.
Put the materials on OER Commons, Curriki, MyOER, or Share My Lesson. I haven't used any of these myself (yet), so I don't know which would be most appropriate for university-level or postgraduate teaching materials.
# Answer
> 1 votes
Your university may have a digital institutional repository where you can post the slides together with related course materials.
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Tags: teaching, mooc, presentation
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thread-28199
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28199
|
Which edition/version should I use for citations with page numbers
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2014-09-08T15:46:37.050
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# Question
Title: Which edition/version should I use for citations with page numbers
How do I cite a very old and well-known book which has multiple editions and reprints, various editors, facsimile reprints, and a recent paperback version, plus it's even available free online, again at more than one site. The text I want to cite is common to all of them so that's not an issue but I'd like to be able to give page numbers in the standard way. I don't know which edition to cite. The actual copy I've been using is a hardback 1970s reprint of a 1900s edition from the university library but it's not necessarily easy for others to find.
# Answer
Things can occasionally get tricky, but most situations are handled by these guidelines:
1. Cite what you've seen. If you have one edition, don't assume that another has the same numbering (for pages, chapters, sections, equations, or whatever) without checking. It's always better to cite an out of date edition correctly than to risk giving an incorrect reference to another edition.
2. If you've seen several editions, try to cite the one that will be most useful to readers. Recent editions are generally preferable, both because they are easier to find and because they may be more up to date in other ways. (But if a book is out of copyright and reprinted by many publishers, then recency may not be salient.) If you know that a recent edition is not useful (for example, because material was cut), then you should say so. Translations may be preferable for readers who do not speak the original language.
3. If you can't tell which edition would be most useful, then the decision probably doesn't really matter. The most recent edition is generally a safe choice, if you can get your hands on it to check the reference.
4. More detailed references can help disambiguate. A quick numerical reference is efficient, but it becomes near useless if the numbering has changed, while adding more context can make it easier to figure out where it might have moved in another edition.
> 3 votes
# Answer
Actually you don't want to put the reader of your article, at the same position, where you are now; and want to highlight the important background and related works, the reader needs to know about.
Therefore, cite the version you actually read and was part of the inspiration to your article/journal. This way, the reader knows exactly where to look, for further readings.
> 2 votes
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Tags: citations
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thread-28174
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28174
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Is it a good idea to email to potential grad advisor with personal website email domain?
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2014-09-08T06:39:01.410
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# Question
Title: Is it a good idea to email to potential grad advisor with personal website email domain?
I was reading about email etiquette. Dos and don'ts when you are sending mailing your professor. One of them was about email domain. I was wondering if it is a good idea to use personal website domain? (eg. email@sadafnoor.com)
(Does the professor really look at those things? Seriously?)
# Answer
> 21 votes
Nowadays, I really don't think it makes any difference whatsoever. You are free to use whatever domain you like, so long as it's not somehow offensive or insipid (for instance, if the choice would be considered a curse word or epithet). If there's something potentially offensive, your email could get blocked by a spam server or filter.
Otherwise, though, it really doesn't make a difference. I'm not going to judge a student more or less favorably because they use an email address that isn't a school-based address, or if it's a "vanity address" like the one you've listed.
# Answer
> 6 votes
If the professor's email is an university-based account (e.g., ends up with ac.uk), to make sure the email doesn't end up in the 'Junk' section (i.e., because of universities' firewall system), send your email through your university account. I had an incident through major free email providers, based on the username I chose.
# Answer
> 4 votes
I would recommend against using a university e-mail account for this because you are presumably about to graduate and you will likely be about to lose access to your current university e-mail account when you do so.
Any sensibly named personal account will be okay. But if your e-mail address is something like "wolflord\_mcflorin@hallofthegamerheroes.com" or "hotdickforsex347@slutfinder.com" then take the time to get yourself a more sensible e-mail address (while those two aren't real examples you'd be surprised how often people use these kinds of e-mail addresses for serious correspondence).
# Answer
> 3 votes
I agree with other answers that assuming it's not obscene or childish, it won't make a huge difference either way. I just wanted to add that if you're sending it from a personal website, the domain may pique your potential supervisor's interest. Make sure that you have some information on there about your academic achievements, maybe a writing sample, things like that. Some personal stuff to make you a bit more memorable is good as well. It's not guaranteed to make any difference, but on the off chance they do type in the domain you want to make a bit of an impression.
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Tags: etiquette, email
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thread-28166
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28166
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Are there any legal issues with publishing part of an unpublished thesis in a journal?
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2014-09-08T01:13:56.247
|
# Question
Title: Are there any legal issues with publishing part of an unpublished thesis in a journal?
I have recently graduated and I was wondering whether, after submitting my thesis, there are any issues (legal or otherwise) if I publish parts of my thesis as a paper in a journal.
My thesis was not published as book, as was the case in this related question.
# Answer
Ask your thesis advisor! In most cases, the answer will be, "No. Go for it!"
Schools *love* for their graduates to have publications.
In some institutions, including the one at which I teach, the institution claims ownership in the intellectual property of student work, but even then, a derivative work that results in a publication is likely to be welcome.
> 6 votes
# Answer
In some (many/all?) PhD programs you have to publish before being able to defend your thesis. Some PhD theses can even be composed of the published papers with some sort introduction/discussion (a colleague in the laboratory where I did my PhD did so). Of course, your PhD supervisor needs to approve it, but otherwise I think you can (and maybe you should) safely publish your results before writing your thesis. As an additional note, it is also OK to publish *after* you have written your thesis, i.e. there should not be issues with self-plagiarism.
> 3 votes
# Answer
Nobody here can say whether there are issues with *your* thesis. Perhaps there is something different than usual about it.
The most common situation for students in the U.S. is that you can do what you like with the content of the thesis. You can submit the entire thing as a book, or you can divide it up and use it as several papers. This is not plagiarism, because the thesis is not viewed as "published", even though it may be available from your school's library or from services like ProQuest.
The flip side of this situation is that, when we evaluate someone's vita, we don't count the thesis as a "real" publication. So if you are pursuing an academic career, you probably *should* publish the results of your thesis elsewhere, to develop your vita.
In Europe, some students have many copies of their thesis professionally printed, and distribute the hard copies. I don't know whether they view this as a formal publication.
> 2 votes
# Answer
One other thing to keep in mind is patent rights; a journal article would count as disclosure and invalidate a patent, whereas a thesis may or may not. Some universities have an IP office, and you should check with them if possible; they might have an ownership claim if they employed you.
> 1 votes
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Tags: publications, journals, thesis, copyright, legal-issues
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thread-28215
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28215
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How are international graduate applicants perceived by universities in the US?
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2014-09-08T21:04:25.353
|
# Question
Title: How are international graduate applicants perceived by universities in the US?
I've always wondered how professors and admission committees in the US think about international applicants for doctoral programs in the US.
Skills:
Why are international applicants selected over (I believe sufficient) domestic applicants at all? Are there some skill differences?
Funding:
Isn't it more expensive and risky to provide \>5 years funding to an international student than a domestic one? When do they think an international applicant trustworthy and appropriate for funding their studies?
I am wondering specifically about PhD programs (not Master etc) because some programs offer funding before even knowing the student in person which seems risky because if I were an advisor it would be difficult to evaluate a student's value for my lab before having actually worked with her.
# Answer
To answer your specific questions, schools are generally trying to admit the best applicants (who will choose to come), not just a group of people of the right size over a certain threshold. So if an international student appears to be a stronger candidate (evaluated the same way any other applicant would be), the international applicant is likely to be preferred.
Graduate students are generally funded based on packages that don't take into account where the student's from, so it's not generally more expensive. (International students may be less likely to accept because the funding is less likely to enough, but that's no reason not to admit them.)
Finally, why would international applicants be any less trustworthy or appropriate than domestic ones?
> 6 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, united-states, international-students
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thread-28231
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28231
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Restoring self confidence - possible?
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2014-09-09T02:21:03.593
|
# Question
Title: Restoring self confidence - possible?
I am having a personal crisis and I thought maybe I should ask for some guidance in this forum.
I have been in grad school in 4 years, failed qualifiers once passed at second attempt. I am dedicated to my math-intensive research area, queueing theory, yet I still feel I am far away of being an expert in it. I have only almost finished a paper, that requires feedback from my advisor but I feel I am a big failure. My advisor thinks that I am ready to propose my thesis (thus make an early presentation to committee) next month and possibly graduate next summer. The trouble is, although I respect his opinion, even if I do get my PhD I think I will feel like I don't deserve it. It is as if I hit the magic 4 year landmark and being allowed to graduate.
Now, publication record may not be the only indicator as in my department people don't publish as much as in other fields. When I look at some good thesis's I feel that mine can be considered as masters (personal not confirmed opinion). In retrospect, all the proofs I stuggled seem so easy to me. Although I never considered acedemia as a career path and only consider industry, I more and more feel that I am a failure and will have achieved so little in the last years. I have been always aware of the challenges of grad school but I feel I messed up somewhere considering I work 10 hours each day, at most a day off weekends and having no time left to cultivate my interests, develop new friendships or develop other useful skills.
Maybe I should also mention that I am doing my studies in a top 20 US university, people mostly have the impression that I am smart, and I am aware that I have learnt so much during the last 4 years. I have read many books on productivity, learnt about Feynman's method, watched TED videos. I started going to gym to manage my stress and I think that smartness is a matter of knowledge and I have the capacity to be smart. I don't regret going for a PhD but on the other hand I can't stop feeling like I wasted my years in going grad school and maybe should have just gone to a mundane job where I'd have time to read about architecture, finance or philosopy and be a much more interesting person.
Does anyone share or shared the same feelings? Any advice to people in my situation? Any help appreciated
# Answer
I had some similar experiences in the recent past.
> I still feel I am far away of being an expert in it
No one can be an expert in a whole domain. Being expert/perfect is an ideal situation in my personal opinion. So in case you are not an expert, there is nothing bad in it. You admit that you are not an expert so this is a positive point, it means you are able and willing to improve yourself and your knowledge. It means that even if you get a PhD degree, you'll still try to get more knowledge.
> even if I do get my PhD I think I will feel like I don't deserve it
You seem to be a perfectionist. But remember no one is actually perfect. Each one of us has some strengths as well as weaknesses. How can you measure perfection? This is not absolute in my personal opinion. Have you ever thought why relative grading system is mostly used for evaluation instead of absolute grading? Because we cannot live in isolation. We are living in a society,interacting with our fellow human beings. So we need to be evaluated relative to our fellows. If you don't deserve a PhD, what about your fellows? When your supervisor is sure that you have possess certain knowledge level at which you can present your work, it means it is relatively better than many others. If those others can get a PhD, you can also deserve it. (Even if you ACTUALLY don't deserve a PhD after some time when you'll get out of this phase of life, you'll start thinking this way).
> In retrospect, all the proofs I stuggled seem so easy to me
Why don't you try to think yourself as an intelligent or genius person? The same proofs may be too difficult for someone else who is not actually interested in this domain. You may disagree but in my personal opinion, apart from the industry-academia discussion, you are interested in your research domain because without interest one can't achieve this level. However, you have been working too much on the same things for a long time that you have got bored from the same lifestyle and you need a break and a change.
> Although I never considered acedemia as a career path and only consider industry
I consider industry-academia debate to be separate from the research-development debate. And i think you are getting confused between the two. Industry is incomplete without academia and vice versa. Similarly research and development support each other. Most of us consider one of them to be more important that the other and hence get confused. We can characterize them in two ways... 1. what we get, 2. what we give
Try to think seriously about choosing industry, academia or a combination of both and evaluate the pros-cons of each choice in terms of your time, energy, monetary benefits, work-life balance many other job motivational/demotivational factors. However, according to my personal experience and understanding, you are sick and tired of your routine in academia and you have been overloaded with work in the recent past which has disturbed your work-life balance. Considering industry as an alternative would only worsen the situation because job in industry can be more time and energy consuming.
> I work 10 hours each day, at most a day off weekends and having no time left to cultivate my interests, develop new friendships or develop other useful skills.
Take out some time for yourself. If you are able to afford, take some leave from your current job (atleast a month or so) and spend some time at home with your family and friends. Make sure that you are completely disconnected with the official/research work/supervisor and any relevant person who can give you relevant news. After spending around 15 days of your holiday, start working part time with some other faculty member of almost the same domain but with relatively different research interests as your supervisor. You'll probably automatically start comparing that faculty member with your supervisor and will most probably start missing your supervisor. You'll realize that you were taking him/her for-granted. Its just that you have been working with your supervisor for some time now and you know much about him/her technically so you don't find something new in this experience. As a result, you start thinking that their is nothing special in what you are doing. Hopefully at the end of your holidays,you'll be back fully energetic and enthusiastic to pursue your work.
> 3 votes
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Tags: publications, graduate-school, career-path, thesis
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thread-16293
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16293
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Why is college tuition high, but academic salaries low?
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2014-01-29T00:00:57.127
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# Question
Title: Why is college tuition high, but academic salaries low?
Where is the money going to?
How can it be that interested students pay so much, but many academic salaries are so low (excluding the obvious full professor in a field where the industry pays for getting research results, like IT).
# Answer
Supply and demand. The value of something is what people are willing to pay for it.
> Why is college tuition so high?
Because students will pay it anyway. If you headed the committee to decide how much tuition to charge, what would you base your decision on? You would probably want to charge as high as possible, since you're trying to bring in money for your school. And you would find (as many current committees do) that you can go pretty high and still have millions of students crawl over each other for the privilege of giving you piles of money.
Why would universities lower tuition? Top schools already dismiss 20 applicants for every one they accept, despite the insane tuition cost. Clearly, either education is an inelastic service, or there is a ridiculous shortage - either way, HYP could probably charge 10 times what they do now and still have no trouble finding students. I would say that the main reason they don't is a combination of concern for their reputation and a fear of being sued.
You may ask why the students are willing to pay so much; but that's an involved matter which is outside of the scope of this question.
> Why are academic salaries so low?
Because professors will take the job anyway. If you headed the committee to decide how much salary to pay, what would you base your decision on? You would pay as little as possible.
In many areas, money is the prime motivator. So, at least the top companies will pay top dollar for the best employees, because the best employees have a string of job offers lined up and you have to give them something extra to take up *your* offer over all the other. Unfortunately, it so happens that in academia, money is not a good motivator:
* Most eminent professors are old and content and they couldn't care less if their professorship made them $75k or $85k - they'll still want to work at that one school that they like for the reputation and the work environment (like colleagues and quality of graduate students). The ones that do care about money probably have a side business that brings in huge sums of money which makes their salary look like peanuts in any case.
* Small time professors are either terrified of being fired (if not tenured) or can't get over the conflict between their ego and their lack of recognition, so they will readily take a pay hit to work at a more desirable institution if it means they can increase their own prestige.
* Post-docs and other grunts will take pennies to work for a slightly more famous institution, because they think the association is vital to getting a faculty job after their post-doc. I'm sure many of them would *pay* (if they can afford it) to work like crazy for a guy who is famous enough.
* Grad students are... Well... Grad students. The typical PhD candidate, when told that his job is essentially slavery, smiles and acts like it's a hilarious joke (*even though he acknowledges that it's true*). Many grad students already *do* pay to work like crazy, and not even for famous people.
How do you convince a thrice Nobel prize winner to be professor at *your* institution and not Next Door U? Pay him an extra grand every month? He's got three Nobel prizes, he doesn't care. And since he doesn't care, you might as well pay him a pittance - and as a nice bonus, you can tell all the other wannabes "Look, even *he* gets paid so little! Be content with your salary!".
If you ask why professors don't care, the answer is easy: Most people who care about money realize by the time they leave college that becoming a professor is not an optimal strategy for making money. To be a "greedy" professor, one must essentially wake up on their 30th birthday, and suddenly decide that even though all their life they haven't cared about money at all, from now on, money will be their chief concern. People who are old enough to have earned a PhD rarely have their worldviews change overnight so drastically.
> Where is the money going?
Short answer: Admin staff, marketing, sports. Things such as cleaning staff and building maintenance are also factors, but crucially they are less dependent on the school budget. Whereas those three mentioned areas will benefit the most from budget increases (but perversely, academic salaries will be *harmed* the most by budget *decreases*).
For details: Depends on the university, and may be determined by consulting the annual financial report of the university.
> 23 votes
# Answer
There are a few false-assumptions that must be clarified, I feel, to answer this question properly.
# Why are academic salaries low?
Well, in the US, if you compare them to most citizens of the country they simply are not. Naturally if you compare them only to Hollywood Stars they are paid a pittance, but let's get clear on the facts by the numbers:
In the US the lowest ranking full-time faculty professors receive salaries that are in the top 70% of all wage earners in the US. A full professor pulls in a salary that is in the 86% to 97% percentile of all wage earners over the age of 25 in the US. It also does not hurt that "professor" is consistently found to have some of the highest job satisfaction ratings across all jobs in the country, which certainly makes the job all the more desirable.
This has led to there being more people who want to be a Professor than there are positions available both nationally and internationally.
# Why is college tuition high?
Here's the thing, and it isn't always easy to remember this: **college education is a durable, long-term investment**. And for many - though *not all degrees from all institutions* \- it is still an incredibly lucrative one.
Indeed, college is perhaps the single most amazing investment pathway available to many Americans; it is one of very, very few that does not require you already possess wealth to take advantage of it.
As one nice survey points out rather thoroughly, even a bachelor's degree, on average, cuts your relative risk of unemployment in half (8% to 4%), raises the median earnings over 40 years of work to 65% higher than those who only have a high-school diploma, and many other pleasant benefits. In the worst of economic downturns a person has never, to date, been better off (at least statistically) to not have a college degree.
Further, only 1% of college students take out more than $75,000 in student loans. Now if you are one of those (and one of my friends racked up over $200k)...I'm very sorry, that is one hell of a debt service. But no one suggests that's necessarily financially wise, or at least everyone knows it will be unpleasant.
# Fancy Words: Price Discrimination
Most Universities in the US publish reports on this, but for most places I've considered the percentage stated is that 70% of students receive financial aid, and for 40% of students this aid covers all costs to attend (and often extra which is given back to the student to assist in general living expenses). This includes federal student loans, which are provided by the government at artificially low guaranteed rates - and service on the debt is deferable if you are unable to obtain gainful employment.
Bottom line here: this is price discrimination, where some people pay more than others. But just as with the sticker price on a car lot here, most people do not pay as much as the official tuition posted. Endowment Universities, which often have the highest posted tuitions in the whole world (think Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc) regularly cover 80% or more of costs to attend for selected applicants who do not come from a wealthy family.
Some Universities are just still crazy expensive though, but that's a different subject!
# College Isn't Just For Academics
It's probably just a minor artifact of wording, but let's be clear: most people who go through college, even through graduate school, do not become employed as academics. Academics are the minority of the population, even for the graduate population. Therefore there are many, many more market factors at play in between the price of tuition and the salary of a full-time academic.
# So Where Does The Money Go?
Um...well, everything else, basically. A standard metric of business is 20-30% of a budget is salaries/labor, and the rest is...all the other stuff! Buildings, campuses, food, insurance, chemicals, equipment, computers, various and sundry apparatuses for science and art folks. Then add in advertising/marketing, travel and reimbursable expenses, college libraries, IT infrastructure, maintenance, custodial, utilities, "community involvement"...and we still haven't mentioned the other costs of "research" activities not otherwise included. Then there's the extra-curricular, like sports, clubs, and other supported campus organizations, "student life" and entertainment, "campus development" like building yet more buildings and parking lots to allow expanded enrollment, etc etc etc...
For most public institutions the actual charged cost of tuition to students is less than a quarter of the income required to balance a yearly budget. I must admit to ignorance about private institutions, largely because I have never been involved with them and because their budgets aren't usually made public.
> 17 votes
# Answer
I believe the answer is a combination of a few things.
1. Easy student loans (as mentioned by nagniemerg in a comment)
2. More demand from employers for higher ed degrees (because of the large, underutilized labor pool)
3. Increasing use of adjuncts, which are paid very little (see related question)
So, it's really a combination of more customers being able to afford the product, limited competition due to high barriers of entry, along with teaching labor being cheap because it is abundant.
> 10 votes
# Answer
An increasing fraction of college budgets is being spent on things other than instruction. Administration is a big part, including management and special programs like various tutor/counseling centers, compliance officers, legal, IT, etc. Also soaking up money are sports programs, construction costs, scholarships (to raise prestige), advertising, etc.
> 8 votes
# Answer
Focusing just on "why is tuition so high", remember that not all schools are the same.
It is true that elite private schools have so many candidates that, if they are willing to just admit anyone qualified who can pay, they can set tuition rates very high and still attract students.
The situation is very different for non-elite public schools in the U.S., e.g. the "regional universities" and "directional schools". These schools are controlled by states and have a primary mission to educate students from that state. These institutions do need to worry about raising tuition, because their student body is not able to absorb price increases so easily.
Since the 1970s-1980s, there has been a significant reduction in state funding for higher education in the U.S. This is true even for elite public universities; here is a quote from the University of Michigan:
> However in the 1960s, state funding made up 80 percent of the U-M’s general fund budget – the budget that pays for the university’s core academic programs. In the coming year, the state appropriation will be around 16 percent of the general fund budget.
The first link above shows that quite a few states are on track, if the current pattern of funding cuts were to continue, to have no funding for public education by 2030-2040.
Non-elite public school are usually not in a position to obtain large amounts of grant funding, compared to elite public schools. Other sources of income are also difficult.
**This does not mean that schools must raise tuition** \- they could (and do) try to cut costs elsewhere. But at least one factor in rising tuition has been this reduction in state funds. And the state legislators, who must budget for the entire state, are perfectly aware that the schools *can* raise tuition, which is sometimes mentioned to the universities as a partial justification for the budget cuts.
> 4 votes
# Answer
One reason tuition is so high is so that the institution can charge a variable rate. Many people (in absolute terms, though not as a percentage) are able and willing to pay full tuition, and lower tuition loses those dollars. At the same time, many institutions advertise how large their financial aid awards are, which is essentially providing a discount. Variable pricing strategies of this form are quite common. It's not all that different from a lot of fashion companies: set a seemingly outrageous price because the smart shopper won't pay retail.
> 1 votes
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Tags: funding, salary, tuition
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thread-28238
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28238
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Is there a benefit to registering digital identification via both ORCID and ResearcherID?
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2014-09-09T07:36:45.580
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# Question
Title: Is there a benefit to registering digital identification via both ORCID and ResearcherID?
This question is in continuation to the discussion from about a year ago, concerning *researcher digital identification*: Why use unique digital researcher ID?.
It appears that researchers, who would like to identify themselves within research community, today have two options: *ORCID* and *ResearcherID*. The former relies on **open** source code and **open** directory, while the latter is a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters, a for-profit company. It seems to me that ResearcherID is essentially a *tool* for Thomson Reuters for increasing *information flow* to their **commercial** systems *Web of Science* and *Highly Cited Research*.
If my observation is correct, then I'm interested about whether it makes sense to register with **both** directories (fortunately, *ResearcherID* seem to be compatible with *ORCID*)?
# Answer
These two reseacher identifications fill somewhat different purposes, beside the point that one is more open (Orcid) and one more controlled (both with regard to access and data). Below, I've highlighted the main diffences I see:
**Orcid** provides a way to connect many different types of "outputs" with your profile, both by manually adding information or importing from a number of databases. Beside article publications you can also add posters, presentations, software, grants etc to construct a more full representation of your output, basically a full CV.
**ResearcherID** is more focused on connecting published journal articles with your profile, and this is mostly geared towards importing data from Thomson's Web of Science. However, since ResearcherID is connected to a citation database it also provides citation metrics in your profile, and in that sense overlaps with a personal Google Scholar page. Orcid does not provide this functionality (at least not yet).
Since the two identification systems contain different types of information (at least for the time being), it can make sense to use them both, and as you've noted an Orcid profile can be linked from a ResearcherID profile. In terms of visibility it is probably also useful to use both, since their user bases are likely to differ. If you do not want to support ResearcherID because it is a closed Thomson Reuters product, Orcid + a Google Scholar citations page would provide basically the same information (but based on a different citation database), but with the drawback of two separate pages/profiles. I can also imagine that used exclusively, ResearcherID will probably be more useful for researchers from STEM fields compared to researchers in the humanities and social sciences, since the cover in Web of Science is known to be poorer in the latter fields.
> 7 votes
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Tags: cv, online-resource, digital-researcher-id
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thread-27952
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27952
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How to register for GRE if you have multiple surnames?
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2014-09-03T01:45:42.470
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# Question
Title: How to register for GRE if you have multiple surnames?
I've just completed the registration of my GRE account, and was going to schedule my test, when I read the guidelines on how to fill in the "First name" and "Last Name" fields and realized that I may have filled them incorrectly.
From what I've understood, if you have multiple surnames then you should fill in the "Last name" field **with all of them**, without spaces in-between. So, if my name is Alberto Oliveira Castro Alves Saracaia, the "Last name" should be "OliveiraCastroAlvesSaracaia". Is this correct? Or should the "Last name" be filled as "Saracaia" only (which is what I did).
I've tried contacting ETS by e-mail, but got no response so far. Any help would be appreciated, thank's in advance.
# Answer
Yes, you made a mistake, because "last name" means surname or family name (sobrenome in Portuguese or apellido in Spanish). It is NOT the *last* of your names.
So your question now is how to fix it. Have they answered your email yet? If not, call them. You can also call your testing center and ask if they'll allow you to take the test. If they say they are OK and understand that you made a mistake, then you have more time to fix the problem. If not, you need to fix it before your test date.
If they do allow you to take the test before you fix the problem and you still have issues with ETS (and cannot fix your name), then you'll need to contact the universities you are applying to, and make sure they are aware of the problem and are able to find your test grades once ETS reports them to the University.
I know of people from Spanish-speaking countries that have registered for the GRE using only their first surname and have had no issues during the test taking or the reporting of the grades. However, your problem is different because you are using the last of your surnames, and unless in your country that surname is considered your "main" surname, they may not let you take the test. For the case of the people I know, in their countries the first surname is considered your "main" surname, so using the first or both of their surnames works, but using their last surname would probably have raised questions at the testing center.
> 3 votes
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Tags: gre, personal-name
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thread-28246
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28246
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What is the perception of doing a conference presentation at your own institution as opposed to another one?
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2014-09-09T11:44:09.020
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# Question
Title: What is the perception of doing a conference presentation at your own institution as opposed to another one?
This is a hypothetical question so no hard facts about conferences etc.
Say for example there is a conference at your own university that you get to present a paper at but you also get accepted at another university's conference to present a paper at as well.
For this example we will say that both conferences/universities are of the same standing and there is no disadvantage to attend the other one such as cost etc.
Would both look equally good on a CV or would there be a view that the presentation at your own institution would not carry as much weight when viewed by, for example, by a hiring committee?
# Answer
> 17 votes
Rtisan is probably right about a local conference carrying somewhat less weight and prestige on a CV.
However, there are some other benefits of presenting at a local conference:
* It's usually free. With the travel money you save, you can attend another conference far away later on. Now you have two conference talks on your CV instead of just one. (In other words, "present locally" versus "present far away" is probably a false dichotomy. Even if the local conference conflicts with a faraway conference, there is very likely another faraway conference in the near future that's just as good. And if the conflicting faraway conference is, like, the one and only awesomest conference in your field, then the organizers of your local conference probably shouldn't have scheduled theirs to conflict with it.)
* Less travel: you get to save a day or two of travel time, sleep in your own bed, see your family, etc. This may make the conference much more relaxing.
* Being the attraction: People may be saying to themselves: "Hey, there's a conference at Podunk University. I think that's where gman works, so I'm sure he'll be there. I was just reading his paper and it will be great to hear his talk and ask him questions."
* Networking: as a local at a conference, people are more likely to want to talk to you. For instance, "Hey gman, you live here, can you recommend a good restaurant in town? Would you like to join us for dinner?" The opportunity to talk to other researchers informally can be very valuable to a career. Even fielding mundane questions like "How do I connect to the wifi? Where is Room NNN? Can you help me turn on the projector?" can start good conversations. (Make sure you know the answers to these questions!) It can be harder to initiate interactions like this when you are a stranger in a strange city.
* Help organize: Try to join the organizing committee, or at least offer to help them out. Organizing a local conference is a lot of work, and by contributing to this you will gain the appreciation of your colleagues. It's also valuable experience, and "conference co-organizer" is a nice line to have on a CV. Finally, conference organizers tend to have more contact with the visiting participants, contributing to Networking as above.
# Answer
> 1 votes
First of all, think about your career in a long run. The outstanding CV shows high number of publications with high factors.
If you have an opportunity to formally present your work at another university, do it; simply because you can discuss your work with new people at your field, and get their feedback about your work. You need these feedbacks to direct you, to an outstanding results, and ultimately great publications. You can talk to your colleagues, about your work/results at your university, at any occasion.
# Answer
> 1 votes
In general, I think there is usually the perception that having papers accepted to conferences at your home institution is easier and, thus, carries less reputational weight. This "home institution penalty" is probably less severe:
1. the higher your home institution ranks in the discipline, and
2. the greater the perceived importance of the conference in the field.
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Tags: conference, cv, presentation, reputation
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thread-28255
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28255
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Should sources of sample sentences be shown in (computational) linguistics research?
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2014-09-09T16:14:04.460
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# Question
Title: Should sources of sample sentences be shown in (computational) linguistics research?
What would be best practice in indicating the source of text samples used to illustrate some concept or analysis result in linguistics or computational linguistics?
For example, I might want to use the sentence
> If you had told someone in 2012 that in just two years hence, the eurozone would remain bonded together but the United Kingdom might not, they would have thought you insane.
from a recent The New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/upshot/why-does-scotland-want-independence-its-culture-vs-economics.html?abt=0002&abg=0), augmented with some annotation, in order to illustrate how different anaphora resolution methods would work or fail for this real life example. Copyright fair use policies allow to use such limited extracts without any permission, and using them is common practice, but the attribution and quoting seems unclear.
**How, and if, should I quote the source of that sentence within a paper?**
Would publication style (say, short paper vs. a dissertation) affect it?
Would density of examples (2 examples in whole paper vs 20 different examples in a single page) matter?
Would indirect sources change it? E.g. if the sentences are taken from, say, British National Corpus - but, naturally, they originally come from some different publication.
## Language utterance sources are different from other references
At least in computational linguistics, general practice clearly is to not include the source of language utterance or sentence examples together with normal references. There are various approaches seen in practice among respectable publications: no referencing at all, a footnote reference for the sentence, a mention in article text, a single reference to a whole corpus (by referencing not the source but some authoritative paper about the corpus), etc. I'm wondering about those options, which would be preferable and which should be avoided.
Avoiding the whole problem by using sentences made up by myself is not a good solution - artificial examples are biased towards using constructions that behave in the same way as you and your tools expect, so real life examples of natural language from domain-representative sources are strictly preferred.
# Answer
> 2 votes
I believe your field is doing itself a disservice by not citing the sources of language utterances. Particularly if direct quotes from published sources are used, the information about the source is important. Did the sentence come from the Los Angeles Times or the neighborhood community newspaper? From a novel written by a Novel Prize winner or a first-time novelist? From a book written in 1879 or 1979?
It feels like an archaeologist writing about a pot without including where it was found, what was found around it, etc.
The field is just not practicing good science.
If you feel that your paper will not be accepted with more complete referencing of the language utterances, try to mitigate the issue by using examples from the fewest references possible or creating your own with the same structure or pattern.
I think you've found a nice hole in the field--can research be done to show that omitting or not studying the sources of the language utterances changes results?
# Answer
> 2 votes
> At least in computational linguistics, general practice clearly is to not include the source of language utterance or sentence examples together with normal references.
It seems to me that this general practice is just a sloppy practice. As other people suggested, treat language sources as any other source, and let the journal editor decide whether the reference section is too long and, in case, which action should be taken.
In other words: do what is mostly correct from a scientific point of view and let others decide whether there are any typographical or graphical issues.
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Tags: research-process, quotation, linguistics
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thread-28232
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28232
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Is it appropriate for a TA to say "My Students"?
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2014-09-09T04:07:05.033
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# Question
Title: Is it appropriate for a TA to say "My Students"?
I am a teaching assistant for the first time this semester. A couple of friends have asked how it is going, and I have used phrases like "some of my students..." or "my students are ..." when telling them my experiences.
I'm not so concerned when talking to my friends, but in an academic setting (ex. talking to another professor) is it appropriate for me to say "my students" when referring to the students in the class which I am TA'ing for?
I'm definitely leaning towards "no", because I am not the one instructing the class, I am just *helping* instruct the class, but I'd like to get SE's opinion.
# Answer
Yes, it is perfectly appropriate to refer to students in a class you are TAing as "my students."
You are teaching them; hence, they are your students. It doesn't really matter whether or not you are the primary instructor.
> 74 votes
# Answer
"My students" is not a possessive. It's "the students whom I am responsible for." As such, it's wholly appropriate.
> 10 votes
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Tags: etiquette, teaching-assistant
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thread-28267
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28267
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Is it possible to get admission to masters for theoretical physics with a bachelors in electronics engineering?
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2014-09-09T18:26:02.673
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# Question
Title: Is it possible to get admission to masters for theoretical physics with a bachelors in electronics engineering?
Can I get into masters for theoretical physics without having a bachelors in physics or maths? I have a bachelors in electronics engineering, and I can get a recommendation from the physics department for the admission.
# Answer
> 0 votes
Absolutely. On a Masters course you will meet people from a wide range of backgrounds. In fact, one of my physics students has just been accepted onto a Masters course in computer science.
Having said that, you may struggle to get onto a good course if your grades are not strong. Since you will have a lot of catching up to do, those running the Masters programme will need to be persuaded that you're hard working with good potential. You will also probably need to demonstrate that you've already made an effort to study theoretical physics (e.g. discussing in some detail the topics that interest you in your application).
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Tags: graduate-admissions, masters, physics, changing-fields, electrical-engineering
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thread-28224
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28224
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Should I apply to tenure-track positions if I'm fairly certain I won't be staying?
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2014-09-09T00:27:09.663
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# Question
Title: Should I apply to tenure-track positions if I'm fairly certain I won't be staying?
I hope to receive my PhD in Mathematics in May of 2015, so I am currently applying for jobs. Due to life circumstances, I'm fairly certain that I will only be staying at my next position for about 2 years. Does this mean I shouldn't even try to apply for tenure-track positions? Will a hiring committee not even consider me for the position if I'm not willing to commit to staying with them for a certain amount of time?
I would love to get a teaching/lecturing position at any institute of higher education (4-year research university, liberal arts school, community college), but as I look for openings, a lot of them are tenure-track assistant professor positions. Should I go through the effort of sending in an application, or will that be a waste of my, and the committee's, time?
Thanks for any advice you have!
Edit (to address Nate's comment):
My wife is currently applying for 2 year graduate degree programs in various cities in the US, so I'm applying for jobs in the same cities. When she finishes her program, we plan to move outside of the US (Africa or Southeast Asia), where I do hope to remain in academia, teaching mathematics to college-aged students.
# Answer
> 19 votes
Apply.
If you accept a position, you are committed for the following year. Leaving after two years will disappoint people, but it happens fairly often, and the potential consequences of you not applying to these jobs are perhaps more serious than the potential consequences to the departments if you leave after two years.
Besides, I don't know what your circumstances are, but you are presumably not completely sure you won't stay.
# Answer
> 12 votes
Faculty come and go all the time at universities. Although we may hope a tenure-track hire will stick around for a decade or more, in practice we know many examples of people who have left voluntarily before getting tenure. So the disappointment that your departure might cause will probably not be very significant. (My personal viewpoint is that it is much better to hire the "best" candidate who applies, even if she only may stay for a short time, than it is to hire someone else just because they will stay longer.)
Regardless of how long you plan to stay, when applying for a tenure-track university you are likely to need to write some sort of teaching statement and some sort of research statement. These will be scrutinized by the hiring committee and neither can credibly say "I am leaving in two years". So you need to develop a plan *for the possibility* that you will stay in the tenure track position indefinitely, and use that plan when applying.
The bigger concern I have is when you write
> I would love to get a teaching/lecturing position at any institute of higher education (4-year research university, liberal arts school, community college),
Those three types of schools are very different, and they are looking for very different types of faculty (and there is a fourth type, "non-research-intensive moderately large public university", with its own idiosyncrasies). Very few candidates have a vita that is competitive for hiring at even two different kinds of institutions.
If you have not yet started thinking about which sort of institution you want to specialize in, now is a good time. I am in mathematics myself, and I have seen many candidates try an ineffective "shotgun" approach where they apply to huge numbers of schools for which they are not competitive. Remember that even a non-elite school is likely to receive hundreds of applications for a single tenure-track position in mathematics these days. A generic application is not likely to rise to the top.
# Answer
> 9 votes
First of all, this isn't really answering your question, but you should seriously discuss with your advisor or another trusted senior mathematician about what sort of jobs you should be applying for; even mentioning research universities as a new Ph.D. makes me wonder if you have been told the "facts of life" by someone. It is much more likely that you'll be able to find a short-term position anyways.
That said, I don't think you should worry about the fact that you want to leave in 2 years. I can speak from the experience of having left two TT jobs within 2 years of starting. Of course, it's not something to be proud of, but it does happen pretty often, and I don't think it offends anybody's sensibilities too much. Honestly, I don't think you need to worry about people asking you about your plans (as long as they don't read this question and follow the link back to your webpage); leaving to move to Africa is so far outside what most people will imagine that they won't even be considering it. They assume that if you're applying for the job, you're at least thinking at the moment that you'll be in for the long haul.
I think if you do mention your plan to anyone involved, it will hurt you a lot. No one actually wants to hire someone into a TT position who will leave in 2 years. It's a huge amount of wasted work and money, so I think it's only worthwhile apply to TT jobs if you feel comfortable just not mentioning it.
# Answer
> 5 votes
To expand on @Anonymous answer, even if you are certain *now* about what you plan to do in two years, you do not really know what life has waiting for your. In two years your certainties may be very different- and you may regret not having applied for those positions.
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Tags: mathematics, job-search, tenure-track
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thread-27445
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27445
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How to respond to an editor's post-review comments suggesting major changes I'm not willing to make?
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2014-08-21T06:16:22.193
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# Question
Title: How to respond to an editor's post-review comments suggesting major changes I'm not willing to make?
I submitted a paper (in applied mathematics) to a journal about a year and a half ago. I received the first feedback from the Editor in Chief about a year later (the reviewing process for this journal is usually long): the two reviewers were positive and suggest minor revisions (clarification, typos, etc.). At this point, the EIC wrote me that he would keep his comments for the next round of reviewing.
The second feedback came 6 months later. The two reviewers replied very shortly, saying that their requests had been satisfied and one of them recommended publication overtly. At this point, the EIC wrote a lengthy set of comments on the paper which can be roughly divided in two categories:
* On one hand, revision of typos, clarification of some paragraphs, etc., that the reviewers had missed.
* On the other hand, he commented on the theoretical framework used in the paper, saying that it was unnecessarily complicated and hoping there would be a simpler way to achieve the same goal. He suggested to cut most of the parts where this theory would be used and to rewrite the paper accordingly.
I feel being in a delicate situation, where I'd like to have this paper published, but not sacrifice its background and the main ideas it implies. For me, the theory which is proposed provides a very simple way to deal with the examples. I am considering writing to the EIC to essentially ask him if he's ok to keep the theoretical background (with justifications from parts of the paper) in which case I'm willing to make the revisions he requested for clarification (I'm considering withdrawing the submission in the other case).
What do you think would be the best way to handle this situation ?
# Answer
> 10 votes
I would suggest the following thought experiment. Take a day (or at least a couple of hours), and fully embrace the editor's suggestions. Think about why h/she made them, and think about how you would revise your paper to fully incorporate his/her suggestions, and in what aspects it would make the paper better.
Sleep on it a couple of days. Then, if you decide you prefer not to take the editor's suggestions, you will be in an excellent state of mind to write a reply.
> I carefully considered suggestion X. As pointed out by the editor, this would have advantages Y and Z, and W. \[It is especially helpful to not just say the same thing word-for-word, to show that you thought about the editor's suggestions carefully.\]
>
> Nevertheless, I feel that for the most part the paper is better as is, for the following reasons: ...
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Tags: publications, peer-review, paper-submission, editors
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thread-28273
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28273
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How to go about "record of teaching excellence" as part of an application for an academic position when you don't have teaching experience?
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2014-09-09T21:24:19.827
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# Question
Title: How to go about "record of teaching excellence" as part of an application for an academic position when you don't have teaching experience?
I am currently a post-doc and I would like to apply for a tenure-track position in a health-related discipline. As part of the application, the search committee requests a record of teaching excellence. My experience with teaching so far has been as a TA but never had a chance to teach a course or even part of a course. Just wondering what should I include in this section of the application? Do I submit a teaching philosophy with a brief summary of my TA experience? (they did not request a teaching philosophy) I am looking forward to hearing from present and former research committees members (and for sure from anyone else would like to participate).
# Answer
Include what teaching you have done as a TA. Space permitting, I would also include some details of what your teaching comprised, e.g. setting and marking coursework, small group tutoring, class tutorials etc.
As the application calls for a record of teaching excellence, try to identify aspects of what teaching you have done that meets some reasonable definition of "excellence". Do you have evidence of positive student reviews? Any lecturer/tutor assessments?
Do not include a statement of teaching philosophy if it is not called for.
> 2 votes
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Tags: teaching, job, tenure-track, faculty-application
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thread-28110
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28110
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Is it possible to restart a PhD due to issues with supervisor (and should I do it)?
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2014-09-06T19:51:39.307
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# Question
Title: Is it possible to restart a PhD due to issues with supervisor (and should I do it)?
I am a PhD student in Europe and I am in the state of permanent crisis because of my PhD supervisor. He is a very nice person, who is very active with public engagement, very successful at grant applications and all that. But the problem is, it turns out he does not know the subject. Now I realize this is a very arrogant thing to say. However, for a very long time I refused to believe it and thought that there was some problem with me. Now all evidence (corroborated by others) shows that he really is incompetent. He somehow manages to pull it off, getting on other people's papers and so on.
The fact that this takes place in Europe is significant: I had to choose someone from the start of my PhD and the time is extremely limited. Also, I am not sure, but I have an impression that you will not be able to get funded, if you quit your PhD and start over. Is this so? Also, there is a *very* small number of people doing similar things around and none in the same institution. Additionally, it seems very likely, that no one would support a rebellion (i.e. switching a supervisor), because of politics.
I have a very good track record, I finished at a top American university with very high grades, and most importantly I do want to do research. So this situation makes me very unhappy. I can't see any way out, but maybe there is someone who can? I will consider changing the field somewhat (but not too radically) and starting over, but it seems like the funding will most definitely not be available. Or maybe it will?
# Answer
> 14 votes
It's true that switching advisers might be difficult, especially within the same department. There are a few other options:
* Make do and finish your PhD nonetheless. Remember a PhD is supposed to be an open-ended research work on a challenging topic. It means that many things are not going to work, that the end result cannot be perfect and, importantly, that your adviser cannot hold your hand and lead you to a guaranteed solution like instructors in bachelor or master courses. It's difficult to judge how serious the situation is from the outside but some level of frustration is quite common and you do need to manage your expectations (if your adviser has time for you and is happy to sign off on your work, you are in a better position than many PhD candidates…).
* Seek a secondary adviser. For better or for worse, it's actually quite common for professors to oversee theses on a broad range of subjects and exercise only minimal supervision, relying on junior colleagues to deal with the details. In some cases, the secondary adviser can also be a full-professor at another university. Ideally, he or she should complement the first one and help deal with some specific aspect of the topic the latter knows less well. This could help you get guidance on some important aspect of your work you feel your current adviser is not competent to deal with. But do clear that first with him before approaching others.
* Switch adviser. Yes, it's difficult and politics often make it almost impossible within the same institution but it's not unheard of. If things look very dire, think about switching country. I know someone from Germany who rescued her thesis that way. The way she explained it, things went very bad with her previous adviser and she would not have been able to defend at her university or to switch advisers. But a professor at my university thought the work was good and took over the thesis almost at the end, asking for about 6 months of work to correct and add various things.
* Start over. It might be somewhat more difficult to get hired (or not) but it's not the case that it would be impossible to get funded Europe-wide. Here again, if some country-specific regulation regarding grants complicates things, consider going to another country. As noted by Pete, going back to the US is also an option and would be easier to explain later on.
You can also seek advice from other people at your university. There might be a research coordinator, a PhD “coach” or councilor or some HR person whose role is to help in those situations. But whatever you do, be very careful how you present things: “my adviser is incompetent” might not go well.
# Answer
> 68 votes
Adding a student's perspective to Pete's answer:
My advisor told me at the being of my master thesis, that soon I would know more about my particular area of research than him. At the time I didn't believe a word he said, but at our third meeting I was already explaining stuff to him and by the fifth I started to feel irritated that I had to explain stuff to him which I didn't have to explain to his PhD student whom I collaborated with.
But then I realised that I worked on this topic all day every day, my collaborator worked on a related topic and discussed my research with me several times a week but my advisor only got to spend time on this topic every other week when we met with him, because he had plenty of other students to advise in the meantime and also had his own research, teaching and some administration to do.
So from the sixth meeting on it became a habit for me to open the meeting with a quick catch up on my topic and my progress before diving into the details. And from that meeting on I always got great advice from him.
I think you need to think about whether you have given your advisor a fair chance to help you when you were stuck and whether he has been able to help in that regard, because that's his job and knowing all the details about your current topic is your job.
# Answer
> 28 votes
Switching from one thesis supervisor to another is hardly a "rebellion". In fact it's a fairly common thing: in my own PhD program it seems to happen roughly 5-10% of the time. (In institutions with a higher rate of faculty turnover, it is probably more common.) And switching advisors is *much* easier than any form of "starting over a PhD". You should definitely look into this: starting by identifying some other faculty member in your program that you think would be a more suitable supervisor, and see if they are amenable to research-related discussions.
Your claim that your advisor "really is incompetent" is disturbing. I am a bit skeptical of it: not necessarily through arrogance, graduate students often have unrealistic ideas about faculty knowledge. If you walk into my office and ask me a question about something, maybe I can answer it right away and maybe I can't. But if I can't it might still be in one of my papers! Being an expert is much more about knowing how to find out important information / solve problems eventually than about what can be summoned at a moment's notice. In general I feel like I am fairly helpful in providing information to others in a professional context, but I have had the experience of people who for whatever reason simply don't wait a reasonable amount of time for me to answer their question. I remember one person in particular who would ask me a question cold, and after less than a minute of my thinking about it, he would say "Never mind" and move on to something else. That was rather frustrating: what kind of question is important enough to deliberately ask someone else yet not important enough to wait a few minutes for a good response?
Another point is that there are levels of expertise. Most faculty members are regional, national or global experts on *something*; but that thing or things may not be what they are teaching in all their courses or even what they want their students to work on. One of the hard parts of the advisor/student relationship is to find a topic of mutual interest in which the advisor's expertise is strong and can be appropriately conveyed to the student. Oftentimes this requires some patience and several tries: most of my students have not written their thesis on the first thing I suggested to them.
Anyway, though I may not want to, I have to admit the possibility that there are truly incompetent faculty members supervising PhD students. That sucks. If you feel this way about your advisor that's more than enough reason to look for a new advisor. But I think that in practice you should keep this to yourself as a reason for switching, at least until your thesis is approved and you are ready to move on to your new job. To have an incompetent tenured professor is only possible through some alarming combination of enabling / incompetence / total lack of contact or oversight on the part of the other faculty in the department. Fixing that kind of problem is above your pay grade.
**Added**: Though switching to a different faculty member in your department is easiest, it need not be the best choice: there may or may not be another suitable advisor in your current department. It's quite possible to transfer from one PhD program to another: doing so need not be (and probably will not be, unless you promote it this way yourself) a failure or rebellion. If you have only been in your current program for a year or two, you could plausibly start fresh elsewhere. If it's been more than that, you may want to look into the possibility of arriving at another program with advanced standing, up to "ABD status". Also, (especially) if you are American and studying in Europe, maybe consider coming back to the US, especially if that's part of your post-PhD plans. I mention that because coming back to your native country provides a sort of implicit explanation for your change of programs: many fewer questions will be asked of you.
# Answer
> 2 votes
Actually you are asking two different questions:
1. The supervisor is not good, for whatever reason. So how to change the supervisor, in a political oriented office environment.
2. The research area is and its potential contributions are all on you (few people are doing it around), and with addition to the 'bad' supervisor what can you do, such as large number of publications for better future in research (find a postdoc, academic, etc.)
So here are my answer to that:
1. Let me give you the benefit of the doubt. Some academics are in fact horrible mentors. Lets face it, being an academic means the person has large number of publications and good networking here and there. Also their job doesn't require to be 'nice'. They can close their doors and don't really supervise, act like crazy person, but as long as they have large number of publications, with the name of the university on the top of it; they will be praised. So here what I do:
1. Talk to your supervisor, and express your unhappiness. Tell him/her this is not what you are expecting. He does not supervise in the area of his/her expertise, and therefore not suitable for you.
2. Talk to the head of research group, or the person in charge, and express your unhappiness about your supervisor.
3. All the universities have human resources. You go there and tell them, you need to change your supervisor; and you talked to him/her and the head of the group; but nothings seems to change.
2. This is the tricky one! Some supervisors get a PhD student, and want them to be a postdoc (independent researchers). Now that you already started your PhD, with some effort, you can change a little, the direction of the research; but stick to the same area. For example, if I'm doing a research about security in software systems, and all the other PhD students around me are doing research in the area of database; I can change the focus of my PhD to the security in the database systems, and write my thesis about it. Remember, you are the one that will defend your thesis, in whatever area you want it to be.
Good luck.
# Answer
> 1 votes
I have not even completed MS so I can't predict the detailed experience of a PhD student but before changing your supervisor, please give it a second thought.
> I had to choose someone from the start of my PhD and the time is extremely limited.
You admit that you have limited time span for PhD completion and most it has already finished. Selecting some other supervisor, creating a mutual understanding and good working relationship, and completing your work atleast at the same pace at which you are working will most probably consume the time left and you may not be able to complete your thesis in the given duration.
Now lets assume, the time limit has exceeded, you'll have to face financial pressures as well in addition to the actual workload. You may get financial assistance (if you are lucky enough) but what if you don't get it? You'll have to work for managing your finances. Obviously, you'll need some time for it, which means your concentration will be divided between your job for managing expenses and your research work. Feeling bored, tired and depressed is very common among graduate students so even if you think you are really happy and contended (which you don't seem to be), with the passage of time you'll get more and more frustrated with the time your PhD is taking to be completed. So in short things will most probably get worse. (At this point i can be called a pessimist :) but still all this is possible to happen)
> He is a very nice person, who is very active with public engagement, very successful at grant applications and all that.
So you are actually satisfied with the non-technical/social side of your supervisor and the major (if not only) reason for dissatisfaction is his lack of technical expertise. Lets assume, you manage to somehow change your supervisor (even without facing any political issue). What if the new supervisor is technically very sound but is non-technically too rude, proud and arrogant; not very social, takes too much time to respond to your queries, is not very good at public engagements, not really good at grant applications and so on.
You'll most probably start comparing the two supervisors in each and every single thing that happens to you. There is a big chance that you'll start missing the old one and will find some other problems in the new one. You'll regret your decision and will want to go back but most probably you won't be able to due all those financial, time, ego and politics related issues. If you continue going on in the same nostalgic mood, you'll start comparing the students/researchers working under the two supervisors and you'll probably find the better ones working with your old supervisor. In short, chances are there that you'll feel more depressed and frustrated that you are right now.
> But the problem is, it turns out he does not know the subject
It may be just a wrong assumption. I totally agree with the well explained response of @Sumyrda and @Pete L. Clark
> Now all evidence (corroborated by others) shows that he really is incompetent.
Don't be misguided and confused. Every one has his own opinion about the same thing and can have different experience based on his/her mindset, psychology, behavior etc. Being a student, i can easily say that there are very few students in the whole world who'll proudly say that their supervisor is actually a good one. Most students are dissatisfied by their supervisor due to one reason or the other.
At this point, you must use your own experience only to decided about your supervisor. Don't try to judge your supervisor in terms of the experience of "OTHERS". He/she may not be considered a good supervisor by everyone else in the world but still there is a chance that he/she prove to be the best supervisor for you or vice versa.
I may be wrong but i think that when you started working with this supervisor you were happy. You started expecting a lot from your supervisor and he/she was unable to meet your expectations. In the meanwhile, you tried to convince yourself that everything is fine. If in case any thing is wrong, its with you. Then at a later stage, you started discussing it with your fellows. They shared their experiences with you and you started making opinions based on their stories. Please don't be judgmental about your supervisor. He/she may actually not be that bad. Even if he/she is, no one in this world is perfect. Every one has some strengths as well as weaknesses and we need to accept this fact. Your new supervisor will not be perfect as well. Strengths and weaknesses may vary but they'll be there.
> He somehow manages to pull it off, getting on other people's papers and so on.
It seems that he tries his best to satisfy (but may be unfortunately he is not successful in his efforts). What if he or your supposedly new supervisor is least bothered and does not even try? You'll have to live and work even in that situation. At the end of the day, its your work and your job. No one else can live your life. *"Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else"*\- Les Brown
You are going to be a PhD soon and you should not expect spoon feeding from your supervisor like a FYP student. Its your field of specialization not you supervisor's so you should know more about it than him (and you'll definitely know more). Getting on other's papers is fine because no one is expert of everything.
> Additionally, it seems very likely, that no one would support a rebellion (i.e. switching a supervisor), because of politics.
This part is actually serious (although most fellows here will probably won't take it seriously and ideally it shouldn't be). But lets assume you are right that your supervisor and department suffer from organizational politics etc. Changing your supervisor would really harm you. If you manage to change your supervisor (taking care of time limitations, financial, administrative and departmental issues) but your supervisor(both new and old one) are in the same department or even in same university. In such a case, you can't surely assume that you'll never see him again. If you'll have to interact with him, what level of interaction would it be? Based on this interaction, you can decide the consequences.
**Last but not the least**, have you actually considered alternate PhD supervisors available for switching? Does their research interest match exactly with what your work requires? What kind of guarantee can you provide yourself that your new supervisor would be technically more strong and overall better than the current one. Even if you have enough time, finance and every other relevant thing, you can't spend the whole life experiencing supervisors for PhD. Currently you are experiencing Mr. A, left him, went to Mr. B, worked with him and realized he is no better than Mr. A or is even worst than A, then what would you do? Coming back to A or finding some Mr. C would definitely be not possible
# Answer
> 0 votes
Oh wow! I've seen other MSc students in that situation - they arrived at college and felt the course wasn't what the were expecting. I've been in that exact same political situation in my PhD (one minute I was publishing papers and cruising across the edge of space like a SR-71, next minute I find myself shot down because someone else felt I had invaded their airspace).
Your university should have a PhD course councilor. That's the first person to talk to, in order to explore your options. Many universities now require that each PhD student has two supervisors to make the thesis stronger, and to avoid any problems due to "sudden departure" by a single member of staff. Perhaps you can suggest this. You could also try to see if you can adjust the direction of your thesis to suit your needs. My supervisor had a preference for tried and tested technology - crufty bits of code out of 1970's coding cookbooks. I let him direct my work in this direction even though I could see the rest of the industry was moving onto cloud computing, parallel processing and GPU's. My external examiner then asked why I hadn't used any of those technologies.
The purpose of completing a PhD is to demonstrate that you have creativity, can keep up with the rest of industry, see where things are going wrong, think up ways that they could be improved or fixed, evaluate them systematically, and convince others logically and tactfully that this is the correct direction to take. So if you have a feeling if something isn't going right, you have to tell someone.
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Tags: phd, graduate-school, advisor, europe, supervision
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thread-28281
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28281
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Applying for posdtoc positions: is it okay to send out many applications?
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2014-09-10T01:07:57.640
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# Question
Title: Applying for posdtoc positions: is it okay to send out many applications?
When applying for postdoc positions, one has the option to send out lots of applications, possibly get several offers, then choose the one that seems best.
Alternatively, the applicant could contact the research group that looks the most relevant or best suited for him, and focus on getting a position there. If the feedback is not positive, then (and only then) move on to the next best choice.
I believe that in the USA it is accepted that people will shop around for positions, and not taking an offer is considered completely normal. However, in some other places it is possible that if the applicant shows a lot of interest for a certain position, then gets an offer to be hired, and doesn't accept it anyway, it could be considered rude.
What is the usual or best way for applying in various countries? I think it is very important to research this point to avoid any misunderstandings or bad feelings because of differences in attitudes towards the application process.
# Answer
You should remember that universities are also looking at the resumes of many candidates for a given position. If it is not rude on their part to consider many applications and rejecting most of them, why will it be rude for a candidate to apply to many positions and reject some of them?
This is a many-to-many matching market between applicants and positions. You are trying to optimize your chances, they are trying to optimize their interest. If you look at it from this game theoretic perspective, you will not feel any qualm of conscience.
> 2 votes
# Answer
While Pete's concern looks valid to me, even in this hypothetical situation, a polite declining letter/email should do fine. For a somewhat reliable account of how faculty generally thinks you should go about declining an offer, follow this link.
Of course, the above was written in the context of grad school applications, and post-doc is much more personal than that AFAIK. (You contact a person, not an institution - so if there's any possibility of declination being deemed rude, it is more likely to be the case in a post-doc application than in the grad school context, which necessitates it further). But the intent is the same, and content (of the email) could also follow suite!
But having said that, please bear in mind that the professor would've himself been in your position some time back. He/she would've himself declined offers in his days, and I don't he will consider it rude. (Unless of course, if your correspondence went to a very advanced stage, you assured him you would join, he told other applicants that he's full and has no vacancy, and now you insist on not joining! But if it is simply that you were considered and found good enough, and decide on not joining, go ahead with the advice to avoid rudeness concerns.)
Hope that helps
> 0 votes
# Answer
For a moment think about both ends:
1. You want to find a postdoc position, to continue your research. Hopefully you will contribute a number of good journals, and move forward through your goal (an academic position). So you should be very careful where and with whom you will do your postdoc. In a long run playing the number game (i.e., sending your cv everywhere) does not pay off, because even if you find a position, it doesn't mean that much until you contribute great results. And that 'great' result is based on many factors out of your hand (e.g., supervisor, the team he/she made around him or herself, the city you will do your postdoc, etc.). So, do your search wisely and apply to ones that truly you think you will be useful.
2. Supervisors look for a postdoc position to ease their job to some extent in the first place (e.g., help them with proposals, help them in labs, etc.). Lets face it, they already have their permanent position, so if they pay for a postdoc, they want a helping hand in the first place. In some cases, publication comes second hand for them, they already publish papers/journals on regular basis without you anyway.
So if you want the situation be in your favor as a postdoc, you really need to look into these factors. Just don't send your CV some strange place, expect to be great situation. You might tie yourself to a nightmare (e.g., in the middle of project, and they don't care about your input).
> 0 votes
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Tags: application, postdocs, job-search, job
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thread-28257
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28257
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Overcoming depression and getting back on rails with PhD work
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2014-09-09T16:49:32.623
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# Question
Title: Overcoming depression and getting back on rails with PhD work
I'm a first year PhD student (computer science), and I've felt that I lost this year up to now due to some life difficulties. I'm getting no financial support and I was forced to teach to get some money and pay my expenses. I have another personal problems that took me to a state of depression, where I've spent some months completely stuck in my work.
I want to "be back on the rails" and continue to work on this, but I'm feeling lost. I need to go back to the very beginning and find what a PhD is, and what I must do to advance the state of art with my current (weak) capabilities. At the same time I must to show some results to my advisor with what I already have in my hands.
I know that my "question" is pretty obscure, but I need some advices on how to proceed, from people with some experience in this situation. **How can I overcome depression and 'get back on the rails' with my PhD?**
IMPORTANT EDIT:
Some years later I finally got my PhD. I cannot believe I made it. At the time that I wrote this post it seemed utterly impossible to achieve this. If you are in the middle of a PhD you may try to endure and fight until the end. But if you are wondering about starting a PhD, please make sure YOU ABSOLUTELY LOVE your topic, otherwise you'll end like me when I wrote this. I didn't like my research area and the topic I choose. Everything else seemed to be way more interesting. I wanted to do everything instead of reading papers and conducting my own research. I felt unproductive and useless, and at some point my advisor started to complain about my lack of results. It was my fault since the beginning since I didn't followed a research area that I could have joy with it. I should have choose something that matched my abilities and preferences, for instance, I'm pretty good with programming, but my math skills aren't great, and yet I tried to enter a field that is dominated by math and advanced statistics. I couldn't do what I do the best, neither I was able to catch up with the involved math.
# Answer
> 33 votes
Depression is very common amongst graduate students and faculty. So know that you are not alone.
> About 60% of graduate students said that they felt overwhelmed, exhausted, hopeless, sad, or depressed nearly all the time. One in 10 said they had contemplated suicide in the previous year. -- AAS Science Careers
However, there is very little that the community on SE can do to help you. We are not therapists and cannot provide a therapeutic relationship.
Know that there is no shame in seeking help. Your university almost always has a mental health clinic with free or subsidized service. Whether you prefer talk therapy or psychopharmaceuticals (or both) is up to you and your insurance plan -- but please do go seek help from specialists.
# Answer
> 29 votes
Ok, here is my (partial) take on the matter.
I completed a PhD, also in Comp Sci, but in theory rather than software. In retrospect, I believe it may not even have been a good idea to do so. I'm not suggesting that you quit, though; nor am I going to write my long personal story since it is, well, personal and long. So let's just make some suggestions:
* Ask yourself this: "Is my self-esteem, my sense of self-worth, based on me succeeding academically? As a student and now as a researcher?" If the answer is "Yes", then you need to rewire your brain. Because even if you don't end up in a deep emotional crisis right now, you will at some point in the not-too-distant future, and until then you'll probably suffer most of the time. I was very afraid of asking myself that question, because I sort of knew the answer; but if it reaches your consciousness than you know you have to do something about it.
* Suppose your PhD tanks. You don't reach publishable results, you wander around in circles, you need money and there's nothing you can do on campus to make enough - it goes up in flames. You advisor frowns and is disappointed. Your parents wonder "Gee, what's he going to do with his life now?" Sounds terrible, right? Can you live with that? The answer is: Of course you can. What you can't live with is spending your time trying to avoid this possibility, or imagining it out of existence. It may happen. Don't start spending all your time on planning for PhD failure, but try to entertain it as a real possibility. Try to "pre-accept" this failure and thinking of your PhD prospects as a sort of a calculated bet.
* Some people bypass their emotional issues by making research breakthroughs relatively quickly; they supposedly never have to deal with the kind of anguish we go through. For us, however, it's all the more exasperating to see them progress while we're stuck. If you spend *any* time trying to compare yourself to them: "Why am I less successful/quick/able than that guy" - again, you're in trouble. You're thinking of the PhD as a sort of rat race. Unfortunately, it's half-become that in some fields. Your PhD is supposed to be something unique, that you are pursuing for its own sake (or because you need to apply the research personally). Don't adopt the goal of "getting ahead" abstractly in your PhD.
* It is my (non-universal) experience that many people around you, especially senior tenured staff, can be total *assholes* about this kind of problem. It is so commonplace, so fundamental, so frustrating... and yet, they're just shuffling along untroubled. Even when all the signs tell them how you feel. And nobody prepares you for this. They make you think you're just, well, continuing your studies. Don't be afraid to develop a nice grudge :-) and, on that note
* A PhD candidate is not a student. That is, you are also a student, and research is a kind of study, but in that sense a Professor is also a student. You now have something between a strange kind of *job* and an also-strange kind of *contract work* (perhaps half-unpaid). I know usual capitalist class divisions (hired labor / capitalist employer) don't apply very well to academia, but I think it's emotionally (and sometimes financially) useful to think of it that way. Of course, you should be very committed to your job and take it seriously, not slack around...
* Is your advisor actually advising you? Academically, at least? That is, does he provide guidance, suggestions on how to proceed research-wise and academic-life-wise? Clearly, you're not close with him, and he doesn't realize what you're going through. Do you think you could tell him? Or will he not 'get it' emotionally, and just end up thinking you're a weak person? I would say it's probably a good idea to share your situation with him even if he's expected to respond relatively poorly. Don't make excuses to him and try to hide what's going on. Better for him to think of you as a wuss who can't handle it than a dodgy person who can't be trusted to tell the truth.
* You wouldn't believe how many people use psychotherapy, or take anti-depression medicine - in society in general and in grad school in particular. If you're, say, at the point of having trouble sleeping, or having other physical symptoms of depression or anxiety - talk to your GP (your doctor) and ask him/her to explain such possibilities to you.
* Teaching is part of the calling of being an academic. Researchers should teach, regardless of money. It's good for keeping in touch with the foundations of your discipline, and what's more - it can help your mood. At least, it did for me. Still, if you need to do a lot of it to make ends meet, that sucks. There are academic staff labor unions for these kinds of problems (and for wider concerns hopefully), but I'm not going to suggest to you as a single person that all the graduate teachers should go on strike for better pay etc. Although they generally should :-)
# Answer
> 16 votes
Your question is:
> Overcoming depression and getting back on rails on PhD's work?
My advice would be to treat these as two separate problems.
First you must tackle overcoming (or at least learning to cope) with depression ... which you say is due to personal problems. You should prioritise this. Only then can you aim to get back on the rails with your PhD work. In terms of coping with depression, this may involve lifestyle changes, seeking counselling, and so forth.
Once you are healthier, you can then prioritise pushing forward your PhD work. It's important to keep communicating with your supervisor what is going on with you. Their job is to advise you. Let them know what is going on. Likewise set yourself small achievable goals. Thinking about a PhD in its entirety is very daunting. Break up your work into little milestones (no longer than a week, say) and try to focus on one thing at a time.
---
On a side note, there can be a pathogenic aspect to academia where working ridiculous hours and being depressed all the time is sort of implicitly tolerated, for students and staff alike. **This is wrong.** If you find yourself in such an environment, try to improve it. If this doesn't work, just get out. Learning does not require suffering. Research does not require suffering. Depression should not be a side-effect of a PhD.
If it is your PhD that is an underlying cause or aggravator of depression, I think you need to ask yourself: Is getting a PhD really worth it? Can you take steps to improve your situation? Could you find another PhD position elsewhere? Maybe you could try find a job or just do something different?
# Answer
> 13 votes
Depression is the root cause of why I didn't finish my Ph.D., so please take it seriously.
First divide things into stuff that you can fix and stuff that you can't. Things that you can't fix include lack of sufficient money to study without work and the difficulty of your subject. Things that you can fix include exercise, diet, and sleep patterns (@badroit). Also, there are extra things that you can do such as using the campus psych help and medications.
It is surprising how much a change to logical exercise, diet, and sleep can help. The only problem is that those changes take a significant amount of effort which is the original problem. Nevertheless, try a "21 day challenge": more than 7 hours of sleep a night (at night), no junk food nor soda, and at least light exercise (e.g. yoga, hiking). Also, try to socialize, more than just drinking buddies.
As to the medications, I have found most of the prescription stuff of little use. Zoloft, etc. had only a marginal effect. The single most effective thing has been wheatgrass juice. I used up to 4 oz of freshly ground wheatgrass juice daily, and after about 10 days, I noticed an improvement. Within about 2 weeks of starting, my depression was GONE. I haven't been without depression since puberty (~20 years), and it took me awhile to get used to it. At first, I felt fragile, like anything might break it. Then, all of a sudden, I could finally do all of the things that I wanted.
One thing to bear in mind. No matter what type of medication you take, your mental habits still remain from the depression. Be aware that one of your first priorities should be to change your mental habits (e.g. always seeing the bad side, assuming everyone hates you / makes fun of you / holds you in contempt, assuming that you can't finish anything, assuming that you are a horrible person or stupid, etc.). These are just artifacts. You will finally be able to change them like changing your clothes. I know that that statement sounds stupid, but once the depression stopped forcing my mental outlook, I actually could gain control of it. Big change.
Finally, you mentioned that you have weak capabilities. That might be true or not, but that is FIXABLE. That is the purpose of school. You are in the process of improving those capabilities. Where else would you expect someone to improve their academic capabilities. So, don't worry about that.
# Answer
> 12 votes
The legendary physicist Richard Feynman struggled with a terrible bout of depression shortly after Hiroshima and was unable to work. He talks about it in his book *Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman*. In the end, he decided to go back to his roots and just work on things that interested him - rather than what he *should* be working on. As it happens, while modelling the motion of a flying and oscillating plate (for fun), he inadvertently solved a quantum mechanical problem.
As a PhD student who has also wrestled with depression for many years, I have adopted this same indulgent approach: find a problem or task that interests you and work on it *for fun*. You'll be amazed with how often this leads to something publishable.
# Answer
> 5 votes
As a past PhD student in the domain of software engineering, and having some personal problems during my PhD; I can totally relate to you.
First of all, doing little/nothing (in your opinion) during the first year is pretty common. In fact there is a lesson in itself. That is, a year, is not a long time in a lifestyle of a researcher. So you can plan your years ahead more wisely.
Second, you need to understand that, doing a research in computer science is sometimes is very hard; as many big successful companies are doing great things, and for marketing purposes, bragging about it publicly; and you need to sit and think about a contribution that is not tackled before, with limited resources (e.g., time, budget, etc.). Hopefully in near future you will find the purpose in your research, and will be happy about your role in the computer science domain.
Third, you need to start exercising on a daily basis. Sitting long hours, and trying doing a research in an office environment, sooner or later will effect your mental health. So plan a light workout at least 3 times a week.
Fourth, eat well. If you use any self medication (cigarets, alcohol), stop them. They will contribute to your moods.
Fifth, work during reasonable hours. Do not work more than 8/9 hours a day. Do not work strange hours (late nights, midnights).
Hopefully by balancing your life, you will start feeling good and then great again and will continue your research.
If you still have the problem, contact the student union at your university, they can help you get some time off, so you can tackle this issue professionally.
# Answer
> 3 votes
**Talk to people** Talk to your advisor, your professors, your TAs, your fellow students, your friends, your family, the people at your school's graduate office (often just waiting to help), or a counselor if you have access to one. People on the internet don't count. It might be tempting to get stuck in your own head and believe that you can figure everything out on your own if you just work hard enough, but clearly that isn't working.
# Answer
> -1 votes
Don't be depressed! Always, Be hopeful! Posting this question means that you still have a lot of hope within yourself. You just need to get it recognized by yourself and acknowledged. Try to think, imagine and act in such a way, read, write and watch such stuff which provides you hope.
Since you have mentioned about the first year that is some what about the course work. Let me tell you the fact that you have lost nothing, if you have passed the courses you took and, maybe, only something very little and not everything (of course, not a complete year) otherwise.
The fact that you have no financial support is something that happens to many and you are not alone to be in such a situation. You are rather lucky that you have made it up by teaching. I personally know those who have had similar situations in grad schools and were forced to take odd jobs.
Try not to think about that personal problem much. Your too much mental involvement in that is not only harming you in your present, rather it would leave its marks on your mind and would also be destructive for your future. Remember not to think about the things too much which are not under your control.
Forget about showing results to your adviser so far. He won't kick you out of the PhD program. Try to bring your problems in his knowledge, otherwise, it won't work this way for rest of the years during your PhD. Do not try to be a superman, just be realistic with your life, work and supervisor. Try to keep him in 'CC' about the challenges (not problems) of your life and work.
Keep your emotions under control and remember that: "PhD is also a patience test". During the course emotions won't let you complete it at several occasions and they might even force you to quit. But, please! don't let your emotions hinder you work, your life will be okay.
Best Luck!
---
Tags: phd, work-life-balance, emotional-responses
---
|
thread-28204
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28204
|
What, if any, roads are open to graduate schools for athletes with borderline grades?
|
2014-09-08T16:07:28.433
|
# Question
Title: What, if any, roads are open to graduate schools for athletes with borderline grades?
My understanding is that colleges with sports programs will admit students with "low end" but not "off the charts low" grades if the respective sports teams want them. By this, I mean grades just above the "cut-off" for admissions, without having to make a special case or allowance for the athlete.
Suppose a certified athlete tried to get into a graduate program with similarly minimum grades. To take an example, suppose the Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter retired, went to college, and got something like a 3.3 GPA which is the cut-off for certain graduate school programs.
What constituencies (if any) might such a graduate applicant have (e.g. celebrity value)? Or are "athlete" slots open only to undergraduates?
# Answer
> 16 votes
I'll answer based on the U.S. (which is where these issues are most relevant, I believe).
There is no special consideration for athletes in graduate admissions. Undergraduate admissions are handled by admissions officers who often use all sorts of non-academic criteria, and recruiting athletes to play for the university is a specific goal at many universities. However, graduate admissions is done by departmental committees made up of faculty, and the non-academic criteria that play an important role for undergraduates (well roundedness, extracurricular activities, athletics, etc.) are irrelevant. If anything, a continued desire to participate extensively in high-level athletics could be considered a disadvantage, since it would take time away from academics.
If Derek Jeter wanted to go to graduate school, I'm sure some faculty would be impressed by his fame, but they would also be careful and skeptical in evaluating his qualifications. In any case, there certainly wouldn't be a special admissions slot designated for an athlete.
# Answer
> 9 votes
To add to Anonymous Mathematician's answer (i.e. no special treatment), I would add that the major reason to recruit athletes at the undergraduate level is *you want them to play for you*, in intercollegiate sports. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is the governing body for US college sports, and their rules would normally exclude graduate students from playing.
The NCAA eligibility rules are complex, but a general principle (as I understand it) is that each athlete may only play intercollegiate sports for at most four years in their life. Moreover, all four of those years must normally come within 5 years of first enrolling in college (as an undergraduate). A college athlete applying to graduate school would almost certainly have used up their eligibility and would not be able to play for the graduate institution; perhaps for a year at most. Thus the institution would have no real interest in recruiting them for athletic reasons, since they wouldn't be able to play on the intercollegiate teams.
For Derek Jeter, there's another reason he couldn't play: there is an amateurism requirement, and anyone who has played a sport professionally would likely be ineligible under that clause. Indeed, athletic programs have suffered severe penalties merely for letting their athletes talk to agents.
# Answer
> 2 votes
As a partially parallel case, Imperial College readmitted Brian May to complete his PhD in astrophysics after a 30 year gap. They might not have done that for someone less famous.
---
Tags: graduate-admissions, college-athletics
---
|
thread-28288
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28288
|
What's the role of colloquiums in academia?
|
2014-09-10T08:04:57.773
|
# Question
Title: What's the role of colloquiums in academia?
During my bachelors and masters degree I have attended some brief talks called colloquiums in which a researcher was invited by a professor at the university and s/he gave a one-hour talk about a scientific topic most of which about his/her own research interests.
These talks are a little different from normal conference presentations and seminars because the speaker is invited to give a talk and he is not presenting a specific paper; but in a conference, except from keynote speakers; people normally submit their papers to be peer-reviewed.
I don't know what's the role of colloquiums in academia and what the speaker is seeking by giving such talks? Also, who can give such talks (a researcher, somebody from industry, an outstanding professor, etc.)?
# Answer
> what the speaker is seeking by giving such small talks?
One word: **exposition**.
As a rule, the more senior a researcher gets, the less of her/his attention is devoted to writing single research papers. It becomes more central to be known for a specific niche, a specific topic where (s)he is the world's foremost expert. One does not become such a figurehead for a specific niche by writing good papers in the area *alone* (although, clearly, this is still required). One also needs to be an ambassador for the niche. This includes giving keynotes at conferences, as well as giving seminars and colloquia.
> Also, who can give such talks
Everybody who gets invited by somebody. However, typically, one does not give keynote-level talks before senior postdoc or assistant professor level, simply because most PhD students do not have all too much of a vision going beyond their thesis yet. And, frankly, the keynotes of most postdocs also suck. Like most skills in academia, giving good exposition talks is also a skill that comes with training.
(there are exceptions, of course - I can think of at least one outstanding PhD student in software engineering who was regularly invited to give keynote talks at conferences midway through her dissertation)
> 6 votes
# Answer
In addition to other answers, a colloquium series is often used as a way to indirectly fund research collaboration.
In many cases, the colloquium speaker is a collaborator of one of the institution's own faculty (call her X), or at least X is specifically interested in the speaker's work. X may suggest that the speaker be invited. The speaker will usually be on campus for a day or two (or more), during which he and X can have longer technical discussions. The colloquium talk is for the benefit of the rest of the department: they can learn about the speaker's work at a higher, less technical level. (Colloquiua are usually meant to be pitched to an audience of faculty and grad students with a general background in the field, not necessarily the speaker's specific subfield; of course, that isn't always the way the talk turns out!) The department pays for the speaker's travel expenses, and everybody is happy. Next week, someone else's collaborator is invited.
> 5 votes
# Answer
In addition to @xLeitix answer, another reason comes from the inviting part point of view. For example, in my institute from now and then researchers (at the levels mentioned by @xLeitix) are invited to give talks. The goal is that researchers in the institute get to know about other researchers vision, topics and approaches. The aim is mainly to broaden our knowledge in order to stimulate new ideas and collaborations between researches from different topics or even fields. This is why typically these presentations are not just about a specific paper (likely niche topic), and look more like keynote presentations in conferences.
> 1 votes
---
Tags: research-process, university, seminars
---
|
thread-28305
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28305
|
Is it wise to contact the editor of a journals with my concerns regarding the length of the acceptance process?
|
2014-09-10T14:16:31.700
|
# Question
Title: Is it wise to contact the editor of a journals with my concerns regarding the length of the acceptance process?
I have finished writing my first paper to be published in a journal. My intent is to try to publish in a high-impact journal (there are two candidates from the IEEE Transactions class). However, my advisor and another professor, who is close to our research, both suggest that I should refrain from trying to aim that high, i.e. first publish in a lower ranked journal. They state that the reason is not the insufficient quality of the paper, but rather the length of the acceptance process, which is in their experience particularly for first-time authors very prolonged. The argument is, that I would lose many months, perhaps even more than a year in the back and forward process of rejections and resubmitions, when all this could be cut significantly, if a l. All that seems a bit pessimistic to me, of course, I don't want to wait so long, but I was under the impression that such a process would take at most 3-4 months.
Are those considerations regarding first-time authors deemed accurate? Would it be appropriate/advisable to contact the editors of the journals with my concerns regarding the length of the acceptance process?
PS: the field is computer science
# Answer
> I was under the impression that such a process would take at most 3-4 months.
**No.** 3-4 months would be, in my experience, **extremely quickly** for Computer Science transactions. That would mean that your submission would get accepted without modifications in the first revision, which almost never happens (and even then 3 months would be very fast). 1 to 2 years for the entire process is more common.
However, this has nothing to do with it being your first paper. It is the same for every submission. Those journals have pretty rigours peer review, which simply takes some time.
That being said, it will also be similar for other non-spam journals. I am not aware of any reputable CS journal that would suit your 3-4 months expectation.
> Would it be appropriate/advisable to contact the editors of the journals with my concerns regarding the length of the acceptance process?
The answer would very likely be "deal with it or submit somewhere else". Frankly, if a journal had a reasonable way to cut down on the time required for the review process *without hampering review quality*, they would arguably do it anyway. They are not going to "make an exception" or anything of this ilk.
> my advisor and another professor, who is close to our research, both suggest that I should refrain from trying to aim that high, i.e. first publish in a lower ranked journal. They state that the reason is not the insufficient quality of the paper, but rather the length of the acceptance process
I would assume they meant not "a lower ranked journal", but rather "a conference". Review durations for conferences are indeed much more predictable (and, generally, shorter, in the 2-month range on average).
Submitting to a weaker journal to get your notification a little bit faster does not seem like overly good advice to me. If they indeed were speaking about a lower-ranked journal, you should consider the possibility that they were sugar-coating their judgement that your paper is not good enough for a very strong journal.
> 16 votes
# Answer
I think it is perfectly appropriate to contact the editors with whatever question you have regarding the submission process. But first check the information in the web site. If there is not explicit information about the time it takes to review the manuscripts in the journals' instructions for authors (or elsewhere) then you can of course contact the editors. Personally I have contacted the editors previous to submission in several occasions to inquire about different aspects of the submission process or the journal's policy or even status (e.g. IF, indexing in PubMed, etc.).
> 0 votes
---
Tags: publications, journals, editors
---
|
thread-27945
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27945
|
Is there a web service that receives a reference and returns the impact factor?
|
2014-09-02T22:34:50.573
|
# Question
Title: Is there a web service that receives a reference and returns the impact factor?
Is there a web service that I can send a bibtex entry and receive an impact factor?
e.g.
```
http://magicalsite.com/query.php?json={MY_BIBTEX}
```
returns:
```
{
'IF':37.65
}
```
---
So I figured it out...
I use http://www.impactfactorsearch.com which is proposed in this answer.
Here's a quick and easy PHP script to get the impact factor of any journal:
```
<?php
$name = "Applied Ocean Research"; //change to suit your needs
$journalName = urlencode($name);
$cmd = "curl -s 'http://www.impactfactorsearch.com/test.php?json=true&input=$journalName'";
$result = `$cmd`;
$ifObject = json_decode($result);
$levDistances = array();
if (isset($ifObject->results)) {
if (is_array($ifObject->results) && (sizeof($ifObject->results) > 0)) {
foreach ($ifObject->results as $journal) {
$levDistances[$journal->value] = array(
'score' => similar_text($journal->value, $journalName),
'if' => $journal->id
);
}
arsort($levDistances);
$keys = array_keys($levDistances);
$impactFactor = doubleval($levDistances[$keys[0]]['if']);
echo "journal: " . $name . "\n";
echo "if: " . $impactFactor . "\n";
}
}
?>
```
# Answer
I recommend you to search the publisher of the impact factor's website which indexes the journals or even the journal's websites themselves in which their IF is written. However, if I want to answer your question; I found one website which may help you the way you want to search for impact factors.
I searched over the net and only found Impact Factor Search website in which you have to enter the journal's full title (seems simpler than uploading the bibtex information) and by clicking on the provided link, a search list will appear to you. You then have to choose the name of the journal you want to get information about and in the output's window you will have the following information:
```
JOURNAL NAME:
ABBREVIATION:
IMPACT FACTOR 2013:
```
The website currently prints the most up-to-date IF, for the year 2013, and is ready to support IF for the year 2014 too as the latest data become available .
> 2 votes
---
Tags: website, impact-factor
---
|
thread-28316
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28316
|
Should I email a potential supervisor who agreed to support me?
|
2014-09-10T15:53:49.747
|
# Question
Title: Should I email a potential supervisor who agreed to support me?
I am applying for a PhD at a certain university that requires the student to provide and evidence of support from a potential supervisor before submitting the application. After mailing some professors, one of them agreed to support my application. It was a very brief email saying "I am happy to support you". I immediately prepared a research proposal and sent it to her. She replied by saying "Noted". I prepared my application and submitted it two months later.
Is it appropriate to email her as a reminder of myself? If so, what would be a good email? This university is very important to me and I want to do everything I can to increase my chances of admission.
# Answer
> 9 votes
Yes, in general it's entirely appropriate to remind faculty members about letters/recommendations/paperwork they've previously agreed to.
In fact many faculty members I've known (and I cannot, alas, wholeheartedly exclude myself) rely on such reminders to a greater or lesser extent. Faculty nowadays are faced with so much paperwork / routine correspondence (and are not necessarily trained or culturally aligned to regard such things as being important) that we start to believe also in the converse: what we have heard about once and never been reminded of must not be very important.
Just now I got a second email from a secretary in my department about an annual inventory issue. She sent the first email just a few days before and included a hard deadline in both emails. In other words, she knows all the tricks to get faculty to do things without causing resentment. The keys: be polite but persistent, and make the convergence to the deadline clear by ramping up the email reminders accordingly. It really works: pardon me while I run down to her office so she can tag my laptop!
# Answer
> 0 votes
As my experiences, you should.
But the tricky are, before you remind his/her about their "promises" to support you, in your email, inform him/her your little progress about your proposed research. This can be your opinion about some paper that you used as evidence. Better if you make something so called prototype. After it, change the discussion about your last email. Just ask about his/her opinion what should you do next.
---
Tags: graduate-admissions, email, supervision
---
|
thread-28294
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28294
|
Whose responsibility to detect plagiarism during peer review: editor or referee?
|
2014-09-10T09:59:16.453
|
# Question
Title: Whose responsibility to detect plagiarism during peer review: editor or referee?
Around a month ago, I was requested to review a paper submitted to a well-known APS journal. The main idea introduced in the paper was nice and the experimental implementation had fairly good results. I therefore sent my approval with some minor revisions.
Last week, I was shocked to find (through a poster presented at an international conference) that the idea in the work I refereed had been **blatantly plagiarized** from another work published earlier this year. In fact, a few sentences had even been simply copy-pasted.
In the course of reviewing, I had checked all the references in the paper and not surprisingly, the original work had *not* been cited.
I immediately sent a correspondence via the APS referee interface to revert my earlier decision and reject the paper outrightly. The editor later sent me a detailed reply saying that the paper has been rejected by the journal and the authors have been *made aware* of the original work.
But anyhow, the question I wish to raise here is: *whose responsibility should it be to find out if a work submitted for publication is an act of plagiarism* ?
While I feel both referees and editors must work on this aspect, I think the primary onus should be on the editors/publishing team. They have far more resources to investigate plagiarism. Furthermore, in contrast to editors, referees do not get paid and are doing this job mainly because of their belief in the edifice of peer-review, to add to their CV, etc.
Perhaps the experts and experienced researchers can give their opinion here?
# Answer
Well, we now have two opposing views, so I'll add a third: **Neither.**
I don't think that either the editor or the reviewer has a responsibility to try to detect plagiarism. When I read a journal, I don't assume that anyone has taken explicit steps to check for plagiarism. I don't see it as incumbent on either of them to take steps like matching against a database of previous papers (indeed I think such things cause more trouble than they are worth; see arXiv's "textual overlap" detector).
If a plagiarized paper should make it into print, I blame the author, but I don't blame the editor or referee for not catching it. They are victims of the plagiarist, along with the rest of the community.
The referee is typically asked to judge the novelty of the paper, so they should be reasonably familiar with the existing literature (if not, they should decline to review the paper). If the paper seems very reminiscent of a paper they've seen before, then they should certainly compare them, but not so much to check for plagiarism as to better understand the innovations of the new paper.
That said, the referee certainly has a responsibility to *report* plagiarism if they do notice it, and the editor has a responsibility to thoroughly investigate any reports or allegations of plagiarism, and take prompt and decisive action if warranted.
> 37 votes
# Answer
> I think the primary onus should be on the editors/publishing team.
I don't think most editors would agree with you here.
Further, you say:
> in contrast to editors, referees do not get paid
Neither do most editors of scientific journals. Both are community service jobs taken up by academics. Many journals do (in addition) have copy editors and lectors, but those are typically not responsible for any content-based decisions. Those copy-editors are responsible for making sure that the layout is correct, that references etc. are in the right format, and (in some cases) improve the language, grammar, and spelling. They do not have the field knowledge to judge whether the document they are currently looking at is plagiarized, except for maybe the most blatant cases.
Finding plagiarism (both, in sentences and ideas) is the job of the refereeing team, which consists of the reviewers, the responsible associated editor (if any), and the editor-in-chief.
> 24 votes
# Answer
As referee I would say I never actively check for plagiarism- neither I have been asked to do so in the instructions for referees (my fields are life science and bioinformatics). The responsibility falls mostly on the editor's side. Indeed, many journals will pass your paper through plagiarism tools like iThenticate and they warn you during the submission process (indeed, you have to agree with this before being able to submit). I think all journals should do this.
Of course, if we find proof of plagiarism or self plagiarism we should report it to the editors, as you did. During my reviews I have found a couple of cases of limited self plagiarism when looking for information related to the manuscript and noted that to the editors in my review.
> 17 votes
---
Tags: peer-review, plagiarism, editors
---
|
thread-28324
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28324
|
Why is a tenure defense talk necessary?
|
2014-09-10T19:01:44.737
|
# Question
Title: Why is a tenure defense talk necessary?
Once a tenure-track professor finishes their initial 6 year evaluatory period, I imagine their publication/teaching/grant record should pretty much speak for itself to a tenure committee. Apparently, as I have recently found out, some departments additionally require a tenure defense talk at the end of this period. It seems to me that this talk is something akin to a dissertation defense, only on a grander scale of all the research I've done over the initial 6 year period.
But my question is:
**Why is it even necessary?**
What could be expected from such a talk that wouldn't be readily and easily obtainable from the submitted tenure package? Is it just a formality or does it really hold an important weight in the tenure committee's final evaluation to keep me?
Should I just rehash and summarize what is already in my tenure submission package? Is there something more to it that I should emphasize in my tenure defense talk?
# Answer
I haven't heard of such a thing, which suggests a simple answer: an oral tenure defense is not necessary. But regardless of whether it's necessary in some abstract sense, it might be a requirement wherever you end up.
It's possible that your tenure defense would be a grueling affair, with the audience trying to poke holes in your research or dispute its significance, but I very much doubt it. At worst you could expect the same treatment as an outside candidate giving an interview talk.
The tenure defense is presumably intended to give you a chance to explain your research program, specifically what you have done and why it matters. This is in principle redundant (your tenure file should already do this), but adding an oral presentation could help. It's often inspiring to see someone present their own work, and it can be valuable to have a chance to ask questions. In cases where tenure seems likely, the presentation could also play the role of an inaugural lecture, highlighting for the department the work of someone who is about to become a permanent colleague.
This practice seems uncommon enough that I doubt there's a clear standard for exactly what it means. Anyone considering taking a tenure-track job with a tenure defense presentation at the end should ask how it works at that particular institution.
> I imagine their publication/teaching/grant record should pretty much speak for itself to a tenure committee.
Publication records can speak surprisingly unclearly. A non-expert reading through someone's papers won't necessarily appreciate their novelty or how they contribute to the big picture, and may not even understand clearly how they fit together into a coherent research program. Keep in mind that most people evaluating a tenure case will be non-experts: even other department members will typically have different specialties, and that's not counting university-wide committees or administrators.
One crucial part of preparing a compelling tenure case is sorting out these issues and framing everything appropriately. This is done partly by the candidate, partly by whoever is overseeing the case (typically the department head), and partly by the letter writers.
So from this perspective, something more than just a binder full of papers is definitely necessary. However, the added context is typically supplied through written documents; if there is an oral presentation, then it is just to supplement the written file.
> 14 votes
# Answer
I've not seen any case (in my U.S. -based experience in mathematics) where the junior faculty person up for tenure had to present a summary of their own work, in effect "defending" it as one "defends" the Ph.D. thesis.
However, I have witnessed many cases where a more senior person with expertise in the tenure candidate's work was asked to describe/explain it, or, really, its significance, to the tenure committee (prior to having the full math faculty vote). But in all the cases I've seen, from both sides, the tone was informational, not confrontational or adversarial. And the candidate was absent.
The necessity of *that* sort of tenure-defense talk is exactly that the body of work itself is hard to understand, the letters of recommendation are inevitably severely tainted by political gamesmanship and circumlocution and conceivably bias, and, thus, in the end, a local opinion+explanation from someone trusted by the tenure committee is highly desirable... despite all the formal procedures.
I'm inclined to wonder whether the question's premise is partly based on inaccurate gossip.
> 9 votes
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Tags: tenure-track, defense
---
|
thread-28340
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28340
|
What to do when haven't heard back from potential supervisor who is moving?
|
2014-09-11T01:12:21.160
|
# Question
Title: What to do when haven't heard back from potential supervisor who is moving?
I had contacted a potential supervisor and got a positive response from him. He said that he is interested but he said we should do a skype interview first. He also stated that he is moving to another university in 4 weeks and explained a few conditions and asked if I am still interested. I had no issue with the place or university since I am interested to work with him so I replied and sent my skype id for interview. Its been a week and I haven't heard back from him. I think he might be busy as he said that he will be moving to some other university.
Shall I write him again and if yes how do I start the conversation again or shall I wait for his response?.
# Answer
> 4 votes
I cannot agree with Neo: one month is awful long time in any conversation, and I would take that long wait only if explicitly said to contact months later. Long time is a problem because 1) he forgets what was it about, 2) it can give the impression that OP is maybe not that enthusiastic about the opportunity, 3) in a month a lot of things can happen with an open position....
People can forget mails, or not answer even if they not forget them, especially if he is busy and not you are his first priority. Just send him a polite follow up email: remind him in the first sentence or two about your discussion and he was positive about you. Then ask about the Skype interview, how you can roll this etc.
If you are afraid that he is busy and you are too pushy, you can just state that you know he is busy so if he wants to postpone this conversation / scheduling the interview after his move, you are totally fine (are you? do you have any deadlines to care for?). If this latter happens, still ask that you will follow him up a month etc. later, if it is good for him. Busy people dont like to be pushed in a schedule, but if no one sets expectations for a schedule (any schedule that convenient for him), nothing will be done and also kind of unprofessional.
(I assume this story is about US. Different countries call for different level pushiness.)
# Answer
> 0 votes
Wait a month before asking again, maybe longer because he is moving. Generally a month is a good time to wait even if he wasn't moving.
There is still plenty of time to get your application in and have a Skype interview.
The start of the semester is one of the busiest times in the year for an academic.
He probably gets a lot of emails from prospective students, plus he has to set everything else up.
---
Tags: phd, etiquette, email
---
|
thread-28315
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28315
|
Will doing my CS PhD by distance learning make it harder to get a job as a professor?
|
2014-09-10T15:45:41.927
|
# Question
Title: Will doing my CS PhD by distance learning make it harder to get a job as a professor?
I've seen very reputable universities such as Georgia Tech and Berkley, to name a few, offering MSc degrees in Computer Science through distance learning. However, I'm not seeing the same distance learning opportunity available for PhD programs. After a Google search, I've found few well-known universities that take off-campus students - I only recall University of Florida - for PhD degrees.
I want to earn a PhD because I would like to become a Professor after that, so I want to know if doing a distance learning PhD program would harm my employment opportunity.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Yes, it will make it harder to get a job as a professor of computer science.
A distance learning PhD is not well suited for learning certain skills that one would learn in a traditional PhD, as described in more detail at Are there any aspects of PhD work that do not translate well to distance learning?. Some of these skills are important for getting a job as a professor and/or doing the job of a professor. For example, you would not get any teaching experience in a distance learning course, and most faculty applicants are expected to have at least *some* teaching experience.
Furthermore, by doing a PhD by distance learning, you miss out on a lot of the networking and exposure to other academics that happens in a good computer science PhD program. This plays a major role in getting a faculty job afterwards.
The exception to this is if you were to get a job where the PhD is necessary only as a formality. For example, if you are already so well known in your field that every university wants to hire you, but can't because their HR departments insist that faculty candidates must have a PhD, then a distance learning PhD might be sufficient.
---
Tags: phd, computer-science, distance-learning
---
|
thread-12862
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12862
|
Reference a web page by author and year: which date to use in citation; publication date or revision date?
|
2013-09-20T23:47:27.443
|
# Question
Title: Reference a web page by author and year: which date to use in citation; publication date or revision date?
I came to a web page where it says beneath:
> Updated 3 September 2011 (first published August 2002)
When I cite this should the year be 2002 or 2011?
# Answer
I searched for your question and found these content which may help you. I found that, in citation of web pages or online resources, it is *better* (not a must) to cite with the updated date and the date when the reader has accessed the online content.
In this web pages about APA, Chigago and CSE styles, under the *update date* it is written:
> This date is when the page was last changed. The last update date of a web page is usually given at the bottom or top of a page. A posting date may also be given on the page one level higher (such as a page that is an index of articles).
Also, as a recommendation I read the following content on this webpage:
> **Date of publication or date of last revision**
>
> * The date a Web document was created or last updated is frequently listed at the bottom.
> * If a document includes both a date of creation and a date it was last updated, *use only the latter*.
It seems that as there is no general rule about the date included in online resources, the writer preferred the revised date.
However, I also checked the following book
**The Chicago Manual of Style**, **sixteenth edition**; essential guide for writers, editors and publishers; ebook, The University of Chicago press, 2010.
and in this section on the 1700th page of the PDF file,
```
14: DOCUMENTATIONI: NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY Chapter Contents >>
Source Citations: An Overview >> Considerations for Electronic Sources
```
the following guide is presented; as we see in the index of the document, this guide applies to `websites and web pages`:
> **14.8 "LAST MODIFIED" AND OTHER REVISION DATES**
>
> Some electronic documents will include *a date on each page or screen indicating the last time the document was modified or revised*. There are no accepted standards for this practice, and for formally published material the date of publication is generally more important. A revision date should be included, however, if it is presented as the de facto date of publication or is otherwise the only available date. Such dates may be particularly useful for citing wikis and other continuously updated works.
On the contrary it seems that in the APA style, the preferred date is the update date rather than the publication date in the previous quoted text. In the apastyle website under a blog content about The Generic Reference: When? we read:
> **Online Documents**
>
> Online material can be tricky to date properly. If the date is not apparent at the beginning of the document you’re citing, look at the end (e.g., APA Guidelines for Providers of Psychological Services to Ethnic, Linguistic, and Culturally Diverse Populations was finalized in 1990, so that’s the date to use).
>
> But look out for a footer that says, “This page was last modified on \[date\].” This is not the date to use! It could be the date that the document was published, but it’s more likely to be the date it was put online or the date when the webmaster added code for a dancing Freud to the page.
>
> Some sites place a copyright date for the website at the bottom of every page. Check a few pages on the site; if the identical statement appears on every page, it’s a site-wide footer, so that’s not the date you’re looking for either. (See "Zip, Zero, Zilch," below, for the best solution.)
As a conclusion; I found that if you want to cite an online content, pay attention into two dates; the date when you visited the online content and the date the content is created. If you have the date when the content is edited and updated, use this newer date. However, I recommend you to read the instructions of the style which you are using, they may have specific recommendations and guides on this issue. Also, be aware, it happens sometimes that the online content is written on an older date when the website update date is globally mentioned in the footer of the website's pages, you should use the date the page you are referring to is created or edited, not the date all the website is updated.
> 5 votes
# Answer
In the sensible future where updating and correcting on-line documents is not surprising, much as editions and re-printings of books has been understood for a long time, surely one should give *all* this information, much as what you quote. I think that the fact that many "standard" citation formats do not incorporate this is insufficient reason to ignore the reality.
Conceivably one could hope that the original version as well as all revisions are archived, but this currently seems not quite the case, although Google and other engines do a certain sort of archiving. If the archiving were "perfect", perhaps all versions of a document would have their own "doi" or other universal identifier, but at the moment this is simply not the case.
In particular, for an essential reference, one should probably create a local mirror, with due acknowledgements and disclaimers. I seriously think this is the new/future reality of "reference".
Edit: in response to the question "so which year, 2002 or 2011?", my point is *both*, with explanation. If there is a format constraint, try "2002/2011" or "2002/11". If the format constraints insist on four decimal digits, then you are in a minor circle of heck, and have other difficulties as well, ... :) ... On one hand, I'd suggest *not* allowing oneself to be constrained by such dysfunctional stylistic requirements, but I understand that one may have already chosen some software system that is shortsighted.
In the worst-case scenario, give the year of the version you used/saw. Pity if that cannot reflect the real story, simply for random formatting reasons. Reminiscent of the "y2k crisis", entirely that the Cobol programmers c. 1970 did not imagine that they'd be writing code that would still be in use by 2000.
> 0 votes
# Answer
Many citation styles will tell you what to do. For APA 5 the format was:
> Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of document. Retrieved month day, year, from `http://Web address`
In APA 6 the format changed slightly to be
> Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of document. Retrieved from `http://Web address`
with a clause that you should include the retrieval date if the source material may change over time. The page you are describe clearly falls into the may change over time category so you would essentially use the APA 5 style.
For your particular example the date of publication is 3 September 2011 and the date of retrieval is whatever date you visited the website. The August 2002 date is irrelevant. Think of it like citing a book with a 1st edition published in 2002 and a 2nd edition published in 2011. If you use the 2nd edition, you cite the 2nd edition.
> 0 votes
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Tags: citations
---
|
thread-28353
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28353
|
Name change during the course of PhD?
|
2014-09-11T08:33:18.743
|
# Question
Title: Name change during the course of PhD?
I am now working towards my PhD degree. In the very near future, I will have a citizenship change, which also leads to a name change. In detail, I am adding another given name to my current name with the original surname and given name untouched. So it's like going from
```
FirstName1 LastName
```
to
```
FirstName2 FirstName1 LastName
```
I already have some publications under my current name, `FirstName1 LastName`, which I do not wish to lose after my name change. At the very start of my PhD, my supervisor has advised me to stay consistent with the name for a better recognition in the field.
Is there a way to minimize my loss of recognition in the academia? Will the publication stats tools, such as Google Scholar, include my publications under my new profile?
# Answer
I would recommend sticking with what you started using, since there is no real advantage not to. That said, if you really want to change I don't think a change in *first* name will affect you much. Depending on the citation style, the name change won't even be visible. I don't think this particular change is anywhere near a change of last name in terms of impact on your popularity.
With regards to Google Scholar: you can always add your new publications manually to your profile in the unlikely case that scholar borks, so that's not an issue.
> 7 votes
# Answer
I'd go for the change. Firstly, you want it, so if you stick with the old it's always going to bug you. Secondly, if you don't, you're stuck with a professional and a personal name. Imagine, for instance, that a friend of yours meets a potential contributor and tells him to google you. If the friend doesn't know your professional name, you miss out on a possible network connection. The damage goes both ways. If you change, you only have to worry about past publications.
You can mitigate the damage by maintaining a well-curated list of publications:
* Sign up for things like a scholar profile, and Mendeley profile. These pages will be spidered by other services, and used to correct their databases. Just add the publications manually.
* Find a curated database of publications for your field (like DBLP) and make sure that all your publications are linked to the same person in there. A decent database should be able to hold aliases for a person. Basically, if you make sure that the most authoritative source gets it right, the information should trickle down.
If you show some diligence in maintaining this data, and letting people know that some publications are known under a different name, it shouldn't impact your career noticeably.
> 3 votes
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Tags: publications, personal-name
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thread-28087
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28087
|
What matters most for Grad school admissions ? Practical grades or Theory grades?
|
2014-09-06T11:43:16.120
|
# Question
Title: What matters most for Grad school admissions ? Practical grades or Theory grades?
My college separates theory and practical grades. I have poor grades in theory like I scores around 60 ~ 80 in most of my theory grades. But except two practical exams in which I scored between 80 to 90 I got above 90 in every single practical exam. Even in my Engineering thesis and cumulative viva I scored above 90.
Applying to grad schools is a costly process so I am thinking if I should choose colleges based on my practical grades or theory grades. I can only apply to 5 ~ 6 colleges at max. Maybe less too.
Practical exams are given 2 credits and theory exams around 3 to 4. Engineering thesis was for 8 credits and cumulative viva 2 credits.
One of the reasons I scored poorly in theory grades was cause 5% of marks is awarded based on the candidates attendance and I had below 40% all throughout my undergrad study. But its not mentioned in the grade cards though.
Edit: I am a computer science student.
# Answer
> 1 votes
I may be suggesting the obvious but it will depend on your program and your level.
For a course based masters program with a practical bent I would imagine they would look upon your grades favourably. These tend to include some sort of practical capstone project required to earn the degree. If it's thesis based, it would tend to imply some theoretical work.
For a PhD, expect theory. Really, why else would they be PhDs?
Further, most of the applications I've seen (and submitted) tend to speak to a well rounded applicant profile. They want to know about the work you've done, volunteer experience, publications, and your academic history.
But perhaps most importantly in your situation, they tend to want some form of personal statement outlining why you both want and deserve to be in a program. This would be your opportunity to convince them; much like a cover letter.
I'm in the western world however, and cant speak to institutions beyond that sphere.
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Tags: graduate-admissions, grades, gpa
---
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thread-28373
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28373
|
What level would an assistant professor be hired at, if applying to associate professor position at another institution?
|
2014-09-11T15:31:02.850
|
# Question
Title: What level would an assistant professor be hired at, if applying to associate professor position at another institution?
If a tenure-track Assistant Professor who will be coming up for tenure shortly (5th year) applies for a tenure-track Associate Professor position at another institution, and the other institution is interested in making the hire, what is the relative likelihood of the following scenarios:
* hired as tenure-track Assistant Professor with shortened tenure clock
* hired as tenure-track Associate Professor without tenure, with tenure decision in a few years
* hired as tenure-track Associate Professor with tenure
(assuming the candidate's record is tenure-worthy at either institution).
# Answer
Based on what I've heard and seen, most schools fall into the second pattern, with the first and third happening much less frequently. However, I've known all three possibilities to occur. Ultimately, there is no "most likely" or "least likely" option, as it really depends on the rules for tenure promotions at the individual school at which the applicant is being hired.
> 6 votes
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Tags: tenure-track
---
|
thread-28360
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28360
|
Do manuscripts sent for submission in Word format need to be already in two column or a specific font?
|
2014-09-11T12:24:39.690
|
# Question
Title: Do manuscripts sent for submission in Word format need to be already in two column or a specific font?
I am reading the guidelines for authors on a research journal which is part of Wiley. In the guidelines for authors it is only mentioned it should be submitted in Word format but nothing about font, font size, and if it should be already in two-column format.
Also it says figures should go at the end of the Word file, but I want to insert two figures in the same page to avoid paying twice the color page charge.
How is this supposed to be done?
# Answer
> 0 votes
Journals typically provides guidelines as to what formats are possible, for example, Word and/or LaTeX for text, eps, pdf, TIFF; JPG etc. for graphics. Wiley, for example, provides a guide line for graphics that is general in their Author Services section.
Adhering to the requested file formats may be quite important although with Wiley, I have noted that they accept common formats for graphics although they are not specifically mentioned in the general guide line. As for formatting of text, I would (as editor for a journal) argue that
* you should keep it as simple as possible
* do not attempt fancy formatting, keep it tidy and readable
* make sure your figures are of good quality and reproduced well in the files you provide
* follow any *instructions for authors*, or equivalent, the journal may provide (if such IFAs do not exist, then use a standard font and make, for example headings clearly visible against the main text and check the journal for reference system and formatting)
# Answer
> 4 votes
The review formatting and the final, camera-ready formatting are often quite different. You will probably get a chance to reformat it for publication after it is reviewed. If you have any doubt about that, you should contact the editor.
# Answer
> 2 votes
The most common and universally acceptable formatting for scientific manuscripts is Times New Roman, 12 point, 1 inch margins all around, one column. Certainly don't attempt two-column format! That happens much later, during the typesetting process.
Regarding figure placement, that is also something to discuss with the editor or copy-editor much later, after the paper is accepted.
Right now you are preparing the paper to be read by reviewers. They don't care what page your figures are on, and they certainly don't want to deal with two-column formatting!
---
Tags: journals, paper-submission, formatting
---
|
thread-27619
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27619
|
Is it advisable (or even possible) to get a second masters in a similar field from a higher-ranked instution?
|
2014-08-25T23:38:48.670
|
# Question
Title: Is it advisable (or even possible) to get a second masters in a similar field from a higher-ranked instution?
In May, I will graduate with a Master's Degree in Mathematics from a school ranked #201 in the U.S (for undergraduate education). It is unranked in graduate school rankings (for my program).
I am excelling in my current program with research focus in mathematical biology.
**My goal:** I would like to get my Ph.D. from a top-5 institution.
Assuming I don't succeed in my goal directly, is it advisable or even possible to pursue a second Master's degree in mathematical Biology, from a second-tier institution, and then apply for a Ph.D. at a top-tier institution?
# Answer
> 0 votes
It is possible to get second masters degree in a similar or related field. Doing so might even help with getting into a top PhD program.
That said, where you did your master(s) degrees is not the key to the kingdom or even the most important thing in your PhD application. Demonstrating that you are smart, hardworking, and excellent at research should be your goal. Another masters from a "better" University *might* help toward that end but it's hardly the only or best way.
Focus on doing excellent research, publishing that work in excellent scholarly venues in your field, and getting excellent letters of recommendation from people that are known and respected in the field. If you do those things, and if you also have good grades and test scores, you'll be a strong candidate for any PhD program. I have seen people build that portfolio as an undergrad, in a masters program, as research staff at a university, or even in industry. What you do matters at least as much as where you do it.
---
Tags: graduate-admissions, masters, mathematics, second-degree
---
|
thread-28378
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28378
|
Is it ethical to apply to a scholarship sponsored by my employer?
|
2014-09-11T15:50:58.370
|
# Question
Title: Is it ethical to apply to a scholarship sponsored by my employer?
I am a masters student in Computer Science. I also work for a software development company which happens to sponsor a scholarship that I want to apply to.
I was concerned about the ethical aspect of applying to this scholarship, I contacted the communications department via e-mail and asked if it is illegal and/or unethical to apply. Response said that company employees can apply, which means, I can apply. The answer did not state anything about the second part of my question - would it be unethical?
I also know that the CEO of my company will be the head of sponsorship committee.
Should I just ignore this weird circumstance and write my motivation letter as if there was no connection between my employer and the scholarship? Or should I not even apply?
**Edit:** My initial question had 2 parts so I split it into separate questions. The other question, How would applying for a scholarship sponsored by employer affect my employer's perception of me?, is posted on Workplace.SE. It is a different question and I expect an answer from a different angle to it.
# Answer
> "I contacted the communications department via e-mail and asked if it is illegal and/or unethical to apply. Response said that company employees can apply, which means, I can apply."
I think that answers the ethics about it as well. As long as you are open about the fact that you are a company employee, *there is no scope for you to violate any ethics*. Any possible violation (which I don't think there are any) would be in the company's hands.
Think about this - why is the company offering a scholarship? They probably want the recipient to graduate and then work for the company. Thus by attracting top students to apply for an attractive scholarship, they gain a highly skilled and motivated employee. Sure, the fact that you already work for them might give you an advantage in the application process. But this is a private company giving out privately earned funding. They should be able to pay whomever they choose, for whatever reason.
In the end, there is really little difference between this, and an internal hire.
> 12 votes
# Answer
It wouldn't be unethical or surprising if, on receipt of the company's scholarship you were offered a work placement with them. For that reason, I don't think you should be concerned about applying *through the normal means* as if you were any other applicant.
What *would* make this unethical, would be to turn up for work and:
> Morning CEO! How's the wife and kids? I just got back from my holiday in Scotland, and I thought you might enjoy this whiskey.
>
> Oh -- by the way, I heard about the scholarship you're offering, I'm really interested in applying for that, so I just thought I'd drop off my application. I'll leave it over here with the whiskey.
In short, if you just apply through the normal process, I do not think anyone can complain of any wrong-doing. I'm sure there's *at least* one stage to get your application through before anyone even realises you work there.
> 7 votes
# Answer
Companies funding their employee's studies is common and I believe not considered unethical. If you worry about whether employees will be given preferential treatment over non-employees, I'd say it's the scholarship committee's problem, not yours.
> 4 votes
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Tags: ethics, funding
---
|
thread-28380
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28380
|
Is someone with a masters in CS eligible to apply to a CS masters program in another country?
|
2014-09-11T16:14:43.930
|
# Question
Title: Is someone with a masters in CS eligible to apply to a CS masters program in another country?
I've completed my Masters in Computer Science in India. Here we've had no specialization as such and the subjects assigned have been as per University rules. Now I feel the need to specialize in my area of interest and have found Universities in the US that will allow me to choose subjects that align with my interests. Am I eligible for applying to said universities?
Note - These subjects are still in the Computer Science department in these Universities :(
Will the fact that they're in a different country be the exception wherein pursuing a second Masters isn't a problem?
# Answer
> 2 votes
The issues you mentioned in your question should be covered in your Statement of Purpose. That is, you should be willing and able (as you did), to explain why you want to "repeat" the degree (you're not really repeating the courses).
Hopefully, your schools of choice would consider you "superprepared," having completed many courses, but not the ones you plan to take. The danger is if there are weaknesses in your test scores or your grades, it could work the other way by showing that you are a "less good" student who needs to repeat courses.
---
Tags: graduate-admissions, masters, computer-science, international, second-degree
---
|
thread-28385
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28385
|
Which is preferable, to go to graduate school at same school as undergrad or to go to a lower-ranked school?
|
2014-09-11T16:46:08.697
|
# Question
Title: Which is preferable, to go to graduate school at same school as undergrad or to go to a lower-ranked school?
I've heard from people that generally, it's a bad idea to go to the same school as your undergrad to get your graduate education.
However, in the situation that you get into only your undergrad school and a few much-lower ranked grad schools, what would be the better school to pursue?
# Answer
> I've heard from people that generally, it's a bad idea to go to the same school as your undergrad to get your graduate education.
The word "generally" is commonly used in two rather different senses. The first sense is "typically", "most often". The second sense -- perhaps more common in mathematical and scientific writing -- is "always", or "in the largest possible scope which might be applied". The quoted advice is valid if "generally" is construed in the former sense, not the latter. To briefly explain: on the one hand, there are advantages to acquiring a diversity of experience. "Great University X" will do its business in a way which is slightly different from "Great University Y". Experiencing this is very valuable, because if you stay in academia you will probably be affiliated with several more universities, different from each of these. If all of your student experience is at a single place, you will have subconsciously internalized the universality of your experience, and you'll be in for a rude awakening when you learn that what is obviously best to you is not the practice in your new environment. Then too, by going to different great universities, you meet different great people (many of whom will know each other and will be in transit to/from other great universities), both students and faculty. This is also very valuable.
On the other hand, there are situations where it is most advantageous to stay where you are. For instance there are sometimes personal, family or financial considerations. Even neglecting these, there are times that the university you attended as an undergraduate is truly the uniquely best option for you to continue your studies, or the best option among those available to you. If you are an undergraduate at UCLA, if you want to study analysis, and if you did not get admitted to Berkeley, MIT, Chicago, Princeton or Stanford, then staying where you are sounds like an excellent (perhaps optimal) choice academically. If you've already done successful research with a top faculty member at your current program and you truly want to continue that research most of all: yes, think seriously about staying right where you are.
The other answer says that graduate school rankings is "a little ridiculous". While I don't really disagree, let me try to put a finer point on that: grad school rankings are ridiculous if you take them *too* seriously, and especially if you regard them as a strict linear ranking. It does not matter that US News and World Report currently thinks that MIT is the best mathematics department in the US whereas in past years it used to think it was some combination of Harvard / Princeton / Berkeley. It would be more honest and more helpful if they simply recorded that these departments and several others (Chicago, Stanford,...) are in the **uppermost echelon** of graduate programs in mathematics. Asking whether Harvard is better than Stanford *is* ridiculous: it depends upon what you're studying. (If you want to study analysis, don't go to Harvard unless you know you want to work with the one faculty member there who does that.)
Students should be thinking of departments in terms of echelons. Within a given echelon, ranking is not helpful. However, barring some truly exceptional circumstances you want to go to a program in the top echelon that accepts you. As a corollary to this: if your undergraduate institution is in the top 10, and every other program you've gotten into isn't in the top 30, then **yes**, I think you should stay where you are, unless you have a very good reason to go to a lower-ranked department (best reason: there is a superstar there that has agreed to work with you).
Finally though I have to say that I find it slightly odd that the OP has apparently gone to a top department, been admitted as a student to that top department, but not at any other department of comparable quality. That suggests to me that her application is not as strong as it could be, as those who know her in real life apparently value her more highly.
> 10 votes
# Answer
In a forced choice, I'd go to the same, rather than inferior school.
"Diversity" is a good idea when you can get into a comparably good school, or better than the one where you did your undergraduate degree. Then you will get a choice of viewpoints that will (hopefully) make you a broader, more qualified candidate.
These advantages (mostly) disappear when your additional choices are all worse than what you have. This is what master investor Peter Lynch called "diworsesification," which you might not want to do.
> 5 votes
# Answer
> I've heard from people that generally, it's a bad idea to go to the same school as your undergrad to get your graduate education.
I think the underlying, and unmentioned, assumption on this statement is that you should not go to the same school as your undergrad, but rather you should go to a BETTER one. This would be consistent with my experience that many, possibly most, faculty at departments that consider themselves to be the best, do not often recommend their students to take a step down to study elsewhere (and if you consider yourself the best, everywhere else is lower).
That said, graduate school ranking, especially for PhD studies, is a little ridiculous. More important than the rank of your university, school, department, is the reputation of your primary advisor. But even that is not nearly as important as the quality of your research. While better ranked schools/departments/groups tend to have better faculty and resources there is considerable variation.
> 3 votes
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Tags: graduate-school, undergraduate
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thread-23778
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23778
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How much salary can I expect as a physics post doc in the Netherlands?
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2014-06-22T05:56:20.350
|
# Question
Title: How much salary can I expect as a physics post doc in the Netherlands?
I am considering a post doc in the Netherlands. I am a bit spoiled -- currently doing a post doc in the US with a salary of about $75000. I found a PI in the Netherlands whose project sounds very interesting and it seems like I may be able to have a bit of freedom in forming collaborations. But the PI had quoted a salary of 2000 euros (he didn't actually know, but just took a guess when I asked him to estimate). Though I currently have no better offers, this sounds like too big a step backwards that I am wondering if I should spend more effort searching for other jobs.
I would like to negotiate a better salary when I interview with the PI. Is 2000 Euros reasonable? I saw a post with a salary table. But I'm not sure where on the scale I fall. Should I be a E10-1 because this will be my first year on this particular job? Or can I hope for a E10-4 because this will be my fourth year as a post-doc? Is there any way I can supplement my salary by applying for external grants? (I guess there are few of those for non-EU citizens...) I have a husband and school-age children, and since I am not sure whether my husband will be able to have income, I want to be able cover our necessary living expenses with my salary/benefits so I can concentrate on working.
# Answer
> 22 votes
You can expect rather more than that.
* 10/0 corresponds to a second year PhD student (functieschaal P). A postdoc typically goes on somewhere around 10-5, plus a point per year. So you might hope to be somewhere around 10-8.
* To get your annual salary, multiply these numbers by 14: 12 months plus two bonus payments. Don't ask me why.
* Coming from abroad you are probably eligible to be paid under the "30% rule", where you get the first 30% of your salary tax free.
Thus, *after* tax you can expect to get something in the region of €35-40k ($48-55k). Be aware that living costs may be higher than you're used to in the US.
Of course, you shouldn't rely on this information: talk to the HR department. But the situation isn't as bad as you fear!
# Answer
> 12 votes
There's isn't that much room for negotiation in general, since all these university-related things are fixed by law. You've already found the CAO tables which determine salary. Depending on how badly they want you over there, a PI might be able to get you entered in a higher 'trede' (10-x), or even a higher 'schaal' (x-1). I would say it's nearly impossible that they would put you on 10-1, but don't hold me to it. What you have going for you is your high previous salary, because new employers sometimes do take this into account as far as possible, and your being from outside the country which can have its own benefits. A few things to keep in mind:
* the 2000 the PI mentioned would be after tax, and in my estimation quite the lower limit in terms of net monthly income
* the PI has only limited influence on salary, you really need to talk (or have the PI talk) to HR to know exactly what you're in for before you make your decision.
* quite a lot of benefits are included and already deducted, which makes a comparison of raw numbers between the Dutch and US salaries a bit tricky. There may moreover be quite a few differences in terms of vacation time (a *lot* of holidays, really), benefits such as bicycle plans, whatever...
So I would advise you to get an overview of
* your exact current benefits, health care costs, pension plan, plus your current pre- and after-tax salary,
* your potential future benefits, health care costs, pension plan, plus your new pre- and post-tax salary (especially if being from abroad has extra tax benefits as mentioned by someone above, I don't know about that), depending on
* the 'trede' and 'schaal' they would put you in to start with. The one thing to ask your PI is to find out which trede and schaal HR could (would) give you, then contact HR to find the answers to your other questions because - from my experience - there's a good chance the PI won't know all these details.
75.000 dollars sounds like quite a good salary to me, but without knowing what that got you, what's included, and so on, it's hard for me to say how much (or if any) of a step backwards you'll be taking.
The last thing to note: living expenses (mainly housing) can differ quite a lot across the NL, so what you effectively save each month also depends on where the institution is. World of difference between e.g. Amsterdam or the provinces outside the 'randstad'.
Good luck on the decision and potentially the position.
# Answer
> 3 votes
Found the answer now: pay scale 10, step 8, 3381 euros monthly before taxes and other deductions. Thanks for all the answers!
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Tags: postdocs, europe, salary, netherlands
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thread-28084
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28084
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Chair of my committee keep adding and changing ideas
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2014-09-06T05:23:43.063
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# Question
Title: Chair of my committee keep adding and changing ideas
I am trying to defend my proposal and I have a very inefficient professor as the chair of my committee. He keep adding and changing ideas consistently. I get the feeling that he doesn't really know the details of my work. During discussions with him, he picks up some elements and asks me to add ideas and tasks that aren't applicable.
I am afraid that if I confront him (e.g. why his idea won't work, or what I don't like about it), he will take it personally. I spoke with one of his students and was told that he had picked a topic for her, which later on, an expert in that field deemed invalid.
He seems to be more interested in new topics that sound fancy or complex. The good part is that he is not very interested in the work itself or the result. What I mean that if I just want to please him I can through some of his ideas somewhere without much effort and he will be happy. After all, the ideas he picks are not within his area of expertise and he doesn't know much about them. But I can't do this for my proposal because it is hard to explain them to the rest of the committee members. Any advice,
# Answer
> 1 votes
My advice is that the dissertation, and therefore the proposal, are the student's work. It is the student's responsibility to pick a topic and execute it. Faculty are not usually trained in project management so the student may need to act to keep the faculty member on track. For example, you can tell the faculty member that their ideas are very interesting, but you need to complete your current project first.
More specific to your situation, a fourth year student should know more than their advisor about the student's work.
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Tags: phd, advisor, communication, thesis-committee
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thread-26180
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26180
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"Excellent foreign scholar" from Chinese National Science Foundation
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2014-07-21T02:18:24.380
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# Question
Title: "Excellent foreign scholar" from Chinese National Science Foundation
I am reading a colleague's CV which lists an "Excellent Foreign Scholar" scholarship from the National Science Foundation of China. I am not familiar with this program, nor is google particularly helpful for me as a complete non-speaker of Chinese. Is anyone familiar with this program, and what it would entail?
# Answer
*Preamble: I am one of a few Chinese active participants on this site. There have been some questions about Chinese academics here. I always tried to not to answer them. For example, there was a question about the role of correspondence author in Chinese academia(the OP even offered a bounty for it). I did not answer them for two reasons: I am not an insider and I do not wish to give out information I am not absolutely certain about. However, I feel that I need to give some answer for this question because I just see some un-useful answer. Hopefully some Chinese scholars will answer them after they see this one.*
According to this document, "The Joint Research Fund for Overseas Chinese Scholars and Scholars in Hong Kong and Macao is established by Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to encourage **excellent** overseas Chinese scholars (including those with **foreign** nationalities) under the age of 50 to conduct high-level joint research with researchers and organizations in mainland China."
I suspect your colleague received this fund. Please note that the qualification is oversea Chinese scholar. "Foreign" here means he could be born in oversea but at least one of his parents is a Chinese.
> 4 votes
# Answer
Go to google for china and you can ask that it translate the page. You will find several articles related to the "Excellent Foreign Scholar" scholarship from the National Science Foundation of China.
> -2 votes
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Tags: funding, asia
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thread-28343
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28343
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Is it appropriate to reply every time to a professor's "thank you" email?
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2014-09-11T01:58:57.917
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# Question
Title: Is it appropriate to reply every time to a professor's "thank you" email?
I want to know, since I am not a native English speaker, whether or not it is appropriate to reply to a thank-you email from a professor?
For example, if every time you get an email from a professor saying "Thanks," you reply "no problem" or "you are welcome."
Could it turn out to be annoying or offending if one replies to every "thank you"?
I realized sometimes misunderstanding may unnecessarily arise because of cultural differences. If one does not reply to a thank-you email from a professor, then would the professor be accordingly offended? On the other hand, if one constantly reply "you are welcome" or something like this, would he be instead considered prudish?
# Answer
> 50 votes
Email exchanges need to end at some point. If the professor's email is a simple receipt of correspondence, then I don't think there's a need to reply. However, if the professor has initiated a larger email then a reply is probably appropriate. See these examples:
## Thanks sent as a form of receipt:
> **Student**: Hi Professor Smith, I've run the analyses you have suggested (see attached), Cheers, Mike
Then the professor replies:
> **Pofessor Smith:** Thanks for that
In this case, I think there is no need for the student to reply "You're welcome".
It wouldn't be a big problem, but it would be mildly distracting for the professor. Email exchanges need to end. The professor's "thank you email" was already a confirmation email indicating receipt of your original message.
## Thanks sent by professor as part of a larger email initiated by the professor
Imagine the professor sends you an email that provides detailed information that also includes a thank you.
> **Professor Smith:** Hi Mike, well done on your work in the lab the other day. You did a really good job of fixing that equipment. I really appreciate it. Cheers, Professor Smith
In that case it might be appropriate for the student to reply: "you're welcome".
# Answer
> 8 votes
If the entire content of response is "*thank you*," there is absolutely no expectation that you will respond to those emails with "*you're welcome*" or "*no problem*" or anything else. As I've used them, the point of the "*thank you*" email is usually just to acknowledge that the email being replied to you has been received and read. There is no need to acknowledge the acknowledgement.
In this sense, an email reply that consists only of "*thank you*" can be used as an invitation to end an email thread. Saying your "*you're welcome*" will be read as polite but it might get annoying if it seems like you are always trying to get the last word on every thread. If it's really just "*thank you*", you can safely skip the reply.
# Answer
> 6 votes
I'm not a native speaker either but generally speaking "thanks" does not mean "please waste another 2 minutes of my time".
# Answer
> 0 votes
**EDIT**: Apparently, I'm wrong, and some professors write a lot more "thank you" emails than I do.
I think you mean "Is it appropriate to send a thank-you email in response to every email from a professor," and I'm answering that question.
It probably depends on the professor, but I think it's a reasonable approach toconsistently send a short reply to acknowledge emails from a professor. It doesn't have to necessarily be a thank you (for example, if setting up a meeting, you can just write "See you there.", but it's always helpful to receive a reply showing you an email was read.
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Tags: etiquette, email
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thread-28412
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28412
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Too old for school?
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2014-09-12T06:55:11.770
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# Question
Title: Too old for school?
I am almost 30 years old. I got my bachelor's many years ago, and I've been enjoying myself while in the industry. I am a practical person.
However, for some reasons, I felt my technical skills were regressing, so I decided to go back to school, to enhance and update my skills.
I chose a topic that is quite abstract, which is stressful to me. Also, I feel threatened by grades and such ... which sometimes make me regret having put myself in such a "delicate" situation.
Should I be patient (there will be better days) ? Or should I go back to the industry and discover things myself?
# Answer
> 3 votes
I believe you should be patient because education is among the best investments you could ever make, in the sense that it is highly probable to pay off in the long run. Moreover, being (only!) 30 you are looking ahead at thirty years or so of a career, so some extra training will absolutely help in the long run; even though the picture may not be clear yet, education does open doors to new opportunities.
# Answer
> 2 votes
I believe there are some great answers at I want to do research but I'm too old for a PHD as stated in the comments.
That said I have followed somewhat a similar path to you. I went to college at 17 to do accounting and still work in the area. I returned to college when 29 to complete a BA part-time. This course was over four years and I think no amount of experience can prepare you for returning to the rigour of study. Grades can be an issue, but I always found professors to be very open to discussing ways to improve, and in fact many stated that they preferred teaching the part-time course as the class where a bit more mature. Since then I have started a masters and although it can be stressful doing research I have found there are more good days than bad ones. Again having good communication with those that supervise you is essential.
While I think only yourself can answer your question, I believe if you have a passion for your subject and use the supports that may be available at your institution (such as study support groups in your topic) it will may your decision easier. They best advise I can give is to talk to those in your course that may be able to assist and guide you.
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Tags: masters
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thread-28429
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28429
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Is it possible to have a PhD advisor from another university?
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2014-09-12T16:28:17.383
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# Question
Title: Is it possible to have a PhD advisor from another university?
I am a graduate student, 2nd year, in a STEM field at a US university. I have passed my quals.
Is it possible to ask from a Professor who is not at your university to be your advisor? Did anybody hear of a similar situation?
I am very interested in the research of a professor who is at a nearby university, I really want to work with him but I don't know if this is even possible. (Maybe I should also note that his university is not necessarily better than the one I am now.)
Any suggestions?
# Answer
> 8 votes
Extrapolating from the very few cases that I've seen, I think you'll need an official adviser at the school where you're actually enrolled. If it's OK with that adviser, then you could also have a "real" adviser elsewhere, on an unofficial basis. Your school may have some paperwork to be completed if your real adviser is to serve as a member of your official thesis committee.
# Answer
> 5 votes
I've never heard of that except in the case where a prof left one university to go to another. During the long transition, some of his students physically moved with him but continued their PhD at the old school. I believe the professor retained some sort of appointment at the old university in order to make it fit within the University's rules.
That being said, almost every PhD committee is required to have an external member. That's usually outside the department, but it is often outside the university. So, it might be possible to find an advisor at your current university to be the nominal head of your committee, but to include the other guy on the committee and have him be the de facto head. The biggest problem will probably come down to how your research is funded. If funding is not a problem, then you might be able to pull it off.
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Tags: phd, advisor
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thread-28398
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28398
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Can one publish ideas well before one has evidence proving the ideas work?
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2014-09-12T00:44:51.723
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# Question
Title: Can one publish ideas well before one has evidence proving the ideas work?
I am rather disappointed by the existing research in my area of interest. There is a big disconnect between the solutions practitioners need and what researchers look at.
* I have read everything available on the subject in e-journals.
* I have many ideas which I believe can solve some small problems in my field.
* I also have ideas for paradigms (or major expansions of existing paradigms) which I believe can help the researchers and practitioners look at the problems in a different light.
* I am not in a PhD program, so I lack the advice, time, resources, and know-how for setting up controlled experiments to validate these ideas, so I can only address them as thought experiments or identify the nearest related experiments not directly testing my ideas.
Can I publish short here-is-an-idea paper (e.g. “Proposed Solution for X” or “(new) Model for Y”) well before having any means of providing some proof?
# Answer
> 14 votes
Generally, no.
Insights are a dime a dozen. Insights with *evidence* are how science (social and natural) proceed.
Proceeding through your bullets:
* You mention e-journals. Have you read the "literature" in traditional journals/books/whatever the field's standard is? There's a lot of good reason to be suspicious of e-journals, so you may not have a full view of the field.
* Belief in ideas doesn't make them true(r). Sorry.
* Is there a reason that you think that these expansions of paradigms haven't been considered? Are you *sure* that they really have never occurred before?
* Perhaps that's the argument for obtaining a Ph.D. or research master's --- to demonstrate that ideas have empirical heft.
If you really want to make a difference, you will have to offer evidence that your ideas work or have worked, beyond the logic you offer.
# Answer
> 3 votes
Sure, one can publish ideas before properly evaluating their value. But it depends. Your area of research might be different from mine, but I have written "position papers" papers in the past where the main purpose is to generate discussion. Then you usually have to go to the conference and workshop your ideas with other participants.
So if there really is a big disconnect between practitioners and researchers, do some groundwork, maybe interview those practitioners so that you can back up your claims when you meet the researchers. Then propose improvements to current research so that you can work on your ideas and study them properly. You may also find help and advice and co-authors for the future.
# Answer
> 2 votes
In order for a work to be scholarly, the content has to be reviewed by a group of experts in your field, tested by those peers for accuracy and then you have to find someone who is willing to publish your work. You don't have to have proof of your findings for them to be published, but the work wouldn't be considered a scholarly document. Just remember that theories aren't just ideas, but concepts that have been tried and tested to be logical and accurate. Whatever you do, make sure that your experiments can be repeated and that you get the same "Proposed Solution for X" every time. Remember that every revolution begins in the mind of one man, and that your "proposed solution" might possibly be the right one, with or without proof.
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Tags: publications
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thread-28409
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28409
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Does a bad grade in one course (with otherwise OK record) affect graduate admissions?
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2014-09-12T04:13:22.063
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# Question
Title: Does a bad grade in one course (with otherwise OK record) affect graduate admissions?
I'm currently an M. Phil student in Math and I failed a course last semester because I was not able to hand in a home work assignment (which was worth 40% of my grade) on time (I was 30 minutes late).
Apart from that I'd say I'm a fairly decent student, I got an upper second class honours bachelors degree, I have a B+ and A's for all my other courses in my current programme and I'm almost finished with my first paper to be published.
I've however been deeply worried about this failure as it would reflect poorly on my transcript if I were to apply to a Ph.D or another Master's programme.
Will my failing grade affect my chances of getting into a competitive programme or greatly lower my chances of getting a scholarship?
# Answer
**It's not a deal breaker.** I had awful grades in many courses but I got offers with TA/RA-ship/fellowships from a couple of top 25 US PhD programs in Math. The reason, I think, was that I had very high GRE scores, I had participated in undergraduate/masters "research" projects for a few years with professors at my schools, and I had pretty good recommendations. My research statement was normal and earnest. I didn't have any extraordinary ideas nor some well defined research agenda in it. I think that, overall, the rest of my portfolio made up for my awful grades.
In your case, it's just one course. That does not signal any systematic problem. If you feel particularly insecure, you can address it in your personal statement but don't talk about the professor in question negatively, instead you can focus on how you were tardy once but it does not reflect your work usual work ethic. I cannot speak for top 10 schools. They may have a sufficiently large pool of applicants who may beat you on every metric.
Also, Math departments at large public Universities generally need lots of bodies to TA/grade their numerous remedial and baby-calc type undergraduate courses and generally do the culling at the qualifying exam stage. You may find their standards for an incoming PhD class to be more forgiving.
> 7 votes
# Answer
> Will my failing grade affect my chances of getting into a competitive programme or greatly lower my chances of getting a scholarship?
Unfortunately yes, this is quite possible and, at least in certain contexts, rather likely. Most good graduate programs in mathematics (and presumably elsewhere) see very high grades in general from their applicants. One or two imperfect grades can be easily dismissed (still, better is better...) but a **failing grade** is a big red flag. In many (American, I don't know how it is elsewhere) graduate programs, the minimum GPA required to maintain good standing is 3.0. Thus a lackluster performance in a graduate course often results in something like a B/B+. There is a lot of variation here and many problems make a *de facto* distinction between lower level / core courses in which "grades count" and higher level / optional courses in which it may well be expected that everyone gets the highest possible grade more or less automatically. Either way, a failing grade in a graduate course looks especially bad.
The more courses you take, the more one can discount any one grade. But if as you say you will be applying for admission and/or scholarships with one out of four grades a failing grade: well, I'm sorry to say it, but that doesn't sound good at all.
What can you do? First I would look into the prospect of getting the grade changed (though of course it may not be possible and in certain circumstances it may not even be appropriate to ask). If that's not possible, the matter becomes how to *explain* the grade in a way which makes it minimally alarming to people who are evaluating your application. In this regard I have to be honest again and say that your given explanation is not a great one: there was one problem set that was worth 40% of your grade, you didn't turn it in on time, and there was no way for you and/or the course instructor to rectify the situation? Not good. Your perspective may well be that the course instructor was an extremely unreasonable, ungenerous individual. And you may be right, but that doesn't really fix the fact that you didn't meet the course requirements. Maybe your entire program is somehow off...which is still not great.
I would try to have at least one faculty recommendation letter explicitly address this situation and explain it in a way which somehow allays the above concerns.
> 5 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, grades
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thread-28396
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28396
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Is it appropriate to ask a professor how I may be able to improve my letter of recommendation?
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2014-09-12T00:25:04.887
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# Question
Title: Is it appropriate to ask a professor how I may be able to improve my letter of recommendation?
**Background**
I graduated with a BS in math about a year and a half ago from a not well known school and with a less than stellar academic record. I did not go to graduate school (I was not accepted). Since then, I have improved my mathematical ability considerably, but I have not kept in touch with my professors. I can demonstrate this improvement in many ways, the most obvious of which is by referring to my subject GRE score.
Given that I was a mediocre student, I assume that my professors' letters of recommendation did not paint me in as positive of a light as they would have if they knew me now.
I am now interested in applying to graduate school again but this time I would like to secure stronger letters of recommendation.
**Question**
Is it appropriate to ask a professor the following question:
> "Is there any way I can demonstrate my current mathematical ability and thereby improve your letter of recommendation for me?"
If so, how should I ask this question?
**Further Considerations**
If the answer to the above question is "Yes", then for at least two of the professors, I can suggest showing them my typed solutions to every question (save the trivial ones) in the textbook used for their class. These classes were both upper level classes (second level Linear Algebra and second level Real Analysis). With the last professor, I can demonstrate knowledge of Calculus of Variations (a subject that this professor is interested in) as well as Functional Analysis. Should this be my approach?
# Answer
> 8 votes
I think it is okay to ask the question. However, I do not think you should suggest that professors read your solutions since they are likely very busy.
You may do better to tell the professors what you have been working on, including your GRE score, and then ask them if there is anything else you can do to prepare yourself for graduate school. Then follow their suggestions. Essentially it is the same question, but I think it could show you are a "deep learner" rather than a "strategic learner" who only cares about the letter.
# Answer
> 6 votes
You're thinking about the problem a little bit sideways, as do many students.
First, when you originally request a letter of recommendation, ask the person your asking to support you if they can write you a strong letter. If they say no, they can write you a letter but they're not in a position to write a strong one, you can either move on to the next person (if there is one), or have a very mature conversation where you ask what's the best portrayal you can get. For example, if you feel like there's a hole in your application portfolio that this person can help fill, ask about it. Sometimes, if a student with average grade performance is a stand out in terms of writing, communication, leadership, I can focus on that and come out with an OK letter.
Now, to new recommendations from your original references: If your original recommenders have had no interactions with you that would change their opinion, its probably already too late to get a better recommendation. If there's something about your overall package that would change your likelihood to be admitted to a grad program, then you should be able to dig up a new reference to support your application. Your personal statement should be carefully crafted, stating very clearly what's changed about your situation, why you're a better candidate than you were originally, and some evidence to support it that an admissions committee can understand. A recommendation involving a recent interaction from a new person would be extremely helpful.
For what its worth, the admissions committee will be very interested in how you've spent your time since your BS. They might expect you to be showing maturity not typical of recent graduates. If you can show a solid understanding of why you are now seeking a graduate degree and how you expect it to impact your career in your application package, that will prove very helpful. If you've been twiddling your thumbs since you graduated, and that's apparent in your package, that will not go over very well. If that's the case, you might consider delaying your application until you can make your application package look right, and spend six months working very hard just to develop those good recommendations.
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Tags: etiquette, recommendation-letter
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thread-28423
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28423
|
Teaching timetable conflict
|
2014-09-12T10:08:33.917
|
# Question
Title: Teaching timetable conflict
My wife and I teach at different universities. This is the first year that we have run into a timetabling conflict that makes dropping our son off at school difficult. The conflict involves wife's 200+ person lecture that is centrally timetabled in a lecture hall that is in near constant use and my 30 person lab in a relatively unused computer lab. It is unlikely that any type of changes could be made to my wife's class that would help with the conflict. I teach one of 8 sections of the lab. While all the sections occur on the same day they happen in a number of computer labs which have some unused time on that day. I would like to see if I can reschedule, or adjust the schedule, of my teaching. The lab is scheduled to start at 9:00. My son's school starts at 9:00 and I could start teaching at 9:30. Who do I approach and what do I ask for?
I feel like I could try and swap sections with someone else (mine is the only section that starts at 9:00) or I could also ask the organizer for the lab if I can move my section. Is there another option? What is the best way to approach this?
# Answer
I don't think you can ask to move the start of your lab section. As in the other related question about class times, those times are fixed by the university and not really movable without lots of notice. Your best bet is to get together (physically or virtually) with the other section teachers and find someone willing to switch with you. Then you can propose it to the lab organizer.
Outside your university, you might see if there's a friend or neighbor you trust who can drop your kid at school or a way to arrange with the school to drop your child half an hour early. It can't hurt to ask them.
> 5 votes
# Answer
I assume getting a baby sitter or a before-school childcare is not an option? In our case, we have the children signed up in the before and after-school program on as needed basis.
> 0 votes
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Tags: teaching, working-time, work-life-balance
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thread-28444
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28444
|
Is it necessary to add mentions such as "Any opinion expressed in the paper does not necessarily reflect the view of the funder"?
|
2014-09-13T01:31:56.833
|
# Question
Title: Is it necessary to add mentions such as "Any opinion expressed in the paper does not necessarily reflect the view of the funder"?
I sometimes read in papers that *the opinions, findings, and conclusion or recommendations expressed in the paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the \[funding agency name\]* in the acknowledgments section. E.g. in this paper:
> Stanford University gratefully acknowledges the support of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Deep Exploration and Filtering of Text (DEFT) Program under Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) contract no. FA8750-13-2-0040 and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) contract no. FA8650- 10-C-7020. **Any opinions, findings, and conclusion or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the DARPA, AFRL, or the US government**
Is it necessary to mention this? If the authors omit such statements, does this mean that the opinions, findings, and conclusion or recommendations expressed in the paper do reflect the view of the funding agency?
# Answer
> 6 votes
It depends on the grant that you receive to do your work. Most if not all grants require you to acknowledge the granting agency. Some grants give you very specific language that you must use in your acknowledgement (ranging from the request to include the grant number and use the full name of the agency to very pedantic requests for particular wording).
And some grants do require you to specifically disclaim the granting agency from your conclusions and opinions. For example, NSF requires the following:
> An acknowledgment of NSF support and a disclaimer must appear in publications (including Web pages) of any material, whether copyrighted or not, based on or developed under NSF-supported projects:
>
> > “This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. (grantee must enter NSF grant number).”
>
> NSF support also must be orally acknowledged during all news media interviews, including popular media such as radio, television and news magazines.
>
> Except for articles or papers published in scientific, technical or professional journals, the following disclaimer must be included:
>
> > “Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.”
The NSF example is interesting because you don't need the disclaimer for academic journals -- presumably because the readers aren't presumed to be idiots.
In any case, this is all part of the grant letter that you receive when you get a grant -- and part of the contract you sign when you agree to receive their money. There may be other terms inside the grant contract that are not visible (rights of first refusal in licensing technology, etc.) but by their very nature, acknowledgements are the most visible.
# Answer
> 4 votes
> Is it necessary to mention this?
If research is funded by a "DoD component" (as in your example), then typically any conference or journal publication stemming from the research
1. must be cleared for public release,
2. must carry an appropriate distribution statement, and
3. must carry a disclaimer similar to the one in your example (e.g. "Any opinions, findings, and conclusion or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of ...").
In practice, it is sometimes sufficient to satisfy items 1 and 3 above.
> If the authors omit such statements, does this mean that the opinions, findings, and conclusion or recommendations expressed in the paper do reflect the view of the funding agency?
Again, in the case of articles stemming from DoD component research funds: **No**.
Manuscripts must first be submitted to the appropriate reviewing "center" for the particular DoD component funding body (such as the Public Release Center in the case of DARPA, etc.) to be reviewed for compliance.
If the article does not contain the appropriate distribution statement and/or the required disclaimer, the reviewing center rejects the manuscript (it is not cleared for submission to a journal or conference), and the author must include the appropriate distribution statement and/or disclaimer before then resubmitting for clearance.
The trivial contradiction to my answer includes those cases where authors are required to obtain clearance prior to publication, but don't do it for some reason (e.g. they forget to submit the paper for clearance). I'm not sure what happens to these authors, and I don't want to find out the hard way.
---
Edit: While my answer specifically addresses DoD funding per OP's example, as an author, it is important to follow the guidelines put forth by each particular funding body with respect to disclaimers, etc.
---
Tags: publications, funding, acknowledgement
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thread-28442
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28442
|
In universities, what are the advantages of having a second department affiliation?
|
2014-09-12T22:26:39.813
|
# Question
Title: In universities, what are the advantages of having a second department affiliation?
Browsing the internet, I found many professors, researchers and scientists that, in addition to their main affiliation to their main department, have also a **second affiliation** to another department of their university (for example, Russ Altman at Stanford).
**Why so many scientists decide to have a second department affiliation?**
**What are the main advantages and benefits?**
# Answer
> 6 votes
Sometimes, a second affiliation has real administrative meaning, for example if a professor's teaching duties are divided between two departments. In other cases, a professor's duties are in just one department, and the second affiliation is either just an honorary matter (saying that the second department regards him as respectable in their field also) or possibly (depending on university rules) enables the professor to officially supervise dissertations in the second department.
# Answer
> 5 votes
There are joint appointments (split FTEs) and courtesy appointments (0 FTE lines).
* Joint appointments are when two departments equally (or not) contribute some of their dedicated faculty lines to a position. For example, Physics gives 0.5 FTE (half of a faculty slot) and Chemistry gives 0.5 FTE and they bring in a person who gains the title of "Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Physics." Normally this person would have duties in both departments.
* There are also courtesy appointments, also called 0 FTE appointments. If the above person was brought in 100% by Chemistry (1.0 FTE) but for various reasons wanted to occasionally teach a cross-listed course in physics, serve as a chair on a couple of doctoral committees, or other sundry reasons, the Physics department could decide to add this person to their affiliate faculty list. It would not cost them any lines (which is why it is 0 FTE) and would solve some administrative requirements.
Note that some university programs are entirely consisted of 0 FTE positions and have no faculty lines of their own. Women's Studies is a good example of a program that on many campuses is entirely 0 FTE driven.
---
In the case of the example given by the OP, the person is "Professor of Bioengineering, Genetics, and Medicine (and Computer Science, by courtesy)." This would seem to indicate that he has three 0.33 FTE lines (or 0.5 FTE, 0.25 FTE, 0.25 FTE; etc. etc.) and one 0 FTE courtesy appointment.
---
Tags: university, affiliation, joint-appointment
---
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thread-28454
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28454
|
Copyright for creating a video that is a chapter-by-chapter Analysis of a Technical Book?
|
2014-09-13T05:07:52.817
|
# Question
Title: Copyright for creating a video that is a chapter-by-chapter Analysis of a Technical Book?
There is a technical book that I like a lot and is widely respected in my field. It has about 80 "rules" in it with example code.
I would like to create a series of videos to further explain and review each of the "rules". I will narrate the video in my own words. My goal is for the video series to be like a tutor that is walking the viewer through the book. I plan to fully credit the author and cite his work. Some questions:
* Can I use code samples from the book if I give proper citation (title, author, page #)?
* Is creating a chapter-by-chapter review of a book and putting it on YouTube considered an ethical gray area? To repeat: every video will fully credit the author of the book and it will be obvious that I am explaining ideas in my own words.
I am asking this question here because of all the stackexchange sites, people here seem to be the most well versed in copyright and fair use.
Thanks.
# Answer
Disclaimer 1: I am not a lawyer, I know sh\*t about law, it is not a legal advice and you should consult with a professional.
Disclaimer 2: ethics and law are two different question, this answer tries to give ideas about the law part (and you should not fully rely on it, as stated in D1)
If you using substantial amount of the book (its code, its ideas), especially blatantly copy its structure making it obvious what you copied, then you are way beyond fair use and you are in a gray or even red copyright area. Depending on publishers they generally put some short examples in their copyright session what constitute fair use, you can check those. What you describe here goes far beyond this. Also the whole purpose is to spread it to wide audience on youtube, so publisher can claim that they suffer significant loss of revenue, because the whole thing with all the details and secret sauce is on YouTube.
What you can do about it? You can try to get a permission from the publisher (most probably the author himself cannot give this). It may help if you have a reasonable discussion with the author / publisher about your idea and tune down the "I will discuss every little details of your book and copy out all the codes" part. For example it helps if you have your own intellectual effort in this whole stuff, e.g. analysing problems not presented in the book and show how the books method can be used, and not just reading/summarizing the book on video.
> 2 votes
---
Tags: copyright
---
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thread-28462
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28462
|
Why would a security agency distribute research funds?
|
2014-09-13T12:20:03.637
|
# Question
Title: Why would a security agency distribute research funds?
I was reading this excellent paper by Alexander Berkovich and Will Jagy.
And at the very bottom of the very first page it says:
> The first author was supported in part by NSA grant H98230-09-1-0051.
(The NSA is the US National Security Agency.)
What does this mean? What does a security agency have to do with distributing funds?
# Answer
Let me just add a bit more context as a pure mathematician previously funded by the NSA, and in particular, respond to the question "What does a security agency has to do with distributing funds?" The first point is, they actually farm out most of the decision making to the American Mathematical Society (as described here). That still raises the question of why policy makers think routing the money through the NSA makes sense in the first place. The cynic in me points out that though lots of this research could easily be funded through civilian agencies (for example, NSF), it's a lot easier to pass "defense spending" through congress, and you get fewer questions from ignorant congressmen who like to make fun of grants based on their titles.
On the other hand, that still requires somebody in the NSA thinking that requesting this funding is worthwhile. My reading (this is not based on any detailed knowledge of policy makers' thoughts, just general supposition) is this: the NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the world, much larger than any university or scholarly society. You would get an even more impressive number if you included other branches of the US Department of Defense, and contractors like IDA. They thus have a vested interest in making sure more Americans get advanced mathematical training (a lot of their jobs are in practice only open to US citizens, due to security clearances), and keep in mind the possibility of working for the NSA.
Giving grants to mathematicians is probably an inefficient method for this (some of the money goes to graduate students directly as salary or travel funding, some to universities as overhead, encouraging them to keep professors on their staff and run graduate programs), but it's also very cheap in the grand scheme of things. I'm sure they also do occasionally benefit from the mathematical results (while they have a reasonably broad program, they don't give grants in all areas of math).
There's also tons of other grants coming from the DOD: DARPA, the Army, Navy and Air Force all have their own research offices, and the DOD has its own graduate fellowship program. In all cases, some of the research is directly connected to military needs, but quite a bit is just predicated on the idea that a strong a well-trained pool of scientists can be very important for national defense. I think ultimately, this grew out the experience of World War II (and the Cold War) where this was undisputedly the case.
> 23 votes
# Answer
As noted, the NSA is the US National Security Agency. This department issues federal grants in the areas of information security, foreign language training for Americans, and mathematical sciences (algebra, discrete mathematics, number theory, probability and statistics). These grants are highly sought after,and like all federal grants, require rigorous preparation. The authors of the paper which you read were successful applicants for a grant from the NSA.
> 11 votes
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Tags: funding
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thread-10202
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10202
|
What are the benefits for universities/professors to record online courses?
|
2013-05-24T11:58:06.447
|
# Question
Title: What are the benefits for universities/professors to record online courses?
What are the benefits for the universities and particular professors in recording online courses (MOOC)? Do they get paid by Coursera and similar sites? Do they pursue publicity?
I know that they are providing a useful service by spreading education to everybody in the world, but what do they get in exchange? Do they hope to get more students enrolled, or more public exposure for the university? Or do they do it out of the kindness of their hearts, or for some other reasons?
# Answer
I record my lectures (when possible) for the following reasons:
1. Easier access for students who can't attend class. While I generally want students to come to class, there are valid reasons for being absent (e.g., I'm currently teaching classes to military members who often have duty that preempts class attendance). I can also point students to a video to review if they ask me questions explicitly covered in class (and also for general review).
2. Open access. I think it's pretty cool to live in a world where it is possible to get free access to videos that enhance knowledge. I feel like I'm playing my little part by putting my lectures online.
3. Introspective review. It can be extremely beneficial to review your own teaching methods, although I don't have time to do this for all of my classes. I have gone back to particular sections to review, and I almost always find something I could improve upon.
4. (minor) The America's Funniest Videos factor. I've had clips that have been unintentionally hilarious, either because of something I've said, or because of something students have said. :)
Universities have their own reasons for putting classes online, and you've already listed a number of them. I'd like to believe that most of the reasons are altruistic, with sites such as MIT's OpenCourseWare and Stanford's Online Courses providing no-strings-attached courses for free. I would also hope that someone is doing research on these types of course offerings, to see if they are really having benefits to the people that watch them. I don't believe the bottom line at extremely selective schools will ever be hurt by offering free course material, but if they do start feeling the pinch I imagine they will change their models.
Sites like Courseara are for profit and starting to make money by offering to verify certificates of completion for a cost.
> Why, then, some \[Universities\] charge enormous fees for attending courses?
The question of college expense is a can of worms that has as many differing answers as there are people asking about it. Selective colleges charge what they do because (1) it is expensive to run a brick-and-mortar college, and (2) the applications keep rising and kids can still get loans, grants, and other aid. Obviously it is much more subtle than that, and it would take more than a few free economics courses to get to the bottom of it.
> 17 votes
# Answer
In addition to the good non-financial reasons mentioned, there is also a more financial reason - promoting your own book. I am sure this is not the main reason to give online courses, and having the book is not an explicit requirement, but it does provide a way to benefit financially.
For example, Prof. Daphne Koller from Stanford and Prof. Yaser Abu Mostafa from CalTech both offer free online Machine Learning courses, and both have relatively recent books that are top best-sellers on Amazon.
> 3 votes
# Answer
I believe that the university and professor are promoted by showing their work, people can watch their courses and see how good they are, and spread the word, this will increase the prestige of the university. Another thought is that this shows the university cares about the lessons and gets into this trouble, thus the faculty seem more invovled. A more benevolent thought is that it might help students from other universities.
I, personally, have gained a better opinion about MIT for example, or a different one anyway, having used it's online courses repeatedly to cover the gaps left by my professors.
> 2 votes
# Answer
I was under the impression that part of the reason courses are currently offered free is to gather data about how people use the material/how they study etc, and that's (partly) why they tend to have questionnaires about you at the start.
There's also a more cynical way of looking at it. Shortly after I first finished a course, I got an email saying lots of people had been asking about a course on a particular topic; there wasn't a free course available, but there was one you could do for $400.
> 0 votes
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Tags: education, online-learning
---
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thread-3117
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3117
|
Are books and professional society memberships allowable expenses under US federal grants?
|
2012-09-06T14:06:08.280
|
# Question
Title: Are books and professional society memberships allowable expenses under US federal grants?
Can you include books and/or professional society memberships in expenses under grants from agencies like NSF and NIH?
I've purchased lots of books under grants from DOE and the Air Force in the past, but I'm wondering if they're generally considered allowable. My quick searching uncovered the following:
I haven't found anything about allowability of professional society memberships.
# Answer
> 8 votes
The page you linked to in your question directly addresses memberships for NIH:
> **Dues or Membership Fees**
>
> Allowable as an F&A cost for organizational membership in business, professional, or technical organizations or societies.
>
> Payment of dues or membership fees for an individual’s membership in a professional or technical organization is allowable as a fringe benefit or an employee development cost, if paid according to an established organizational policy consistently applied regardless of the source of funds.
I agree with your conclusion about books for NSF grants, and their page oddly doesn't list information about memberships. I would imagine that it could arguably fall under the section related to conference fees, but that's conjecture.
# Answer
> 4 votes
I have occasionally bought books with NSF grant money. At the time, I was told, by the staff in charge of grant accounting, that books are an allowable expense provided they directly relate to the research being done under the grant.
# Answer
> 3 votes
In my experience, professional society memberships generally fall into a gray area due to taxes. It is useful to split them into two categories. The first is where you get no financial benefits that offset the cost. The second is where membership gets you a discount for publication, meeting registration, or access to a journal.
In my experience the first cases is not allowable since it is considered a personal benefit and is tax deductible. I have never been able to charge these to any grant. The second case often results in fights with the finance office. They would prefer to charge the grant the extra money and not pay for membership. With a little bit of fighting, I have never had a problem getting them to pay the membership at the time of meeting registration when they can see the savings fully offsets the cost of membership (as it often does in my field). I have no idea what would happen if it was only a partial offset.
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Tags: funding, books, professional-association
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thread-28487
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28487
|
Should I be stressed about asking for an Academic Reference?
|
2014-09-14T04:44:49.927
|
# Question
Title: Should I be stressed about asking for an Academic Reference?
I need a academic reference for application of a PhD program. I believe this is the same as what is called a Letter of Recommendation, at other institutions.
I am getting one from my potential supervisor, and I need one other. I thought through all the lecturers I had, and came up with a priorities list of people to approach. Taking into account (in rough order of priority): How likely they are to remember me, How relevant their units/expertise are to my intended course of study, How well I did in their Unit/s, and How research/project focused the Unit/s I did under them were.
The person I found most suitable is currently lecturing me, and has done serveral times before.
I figured I would basically send him an email saying:
> "Looking at continuing my studies on X, that I mentioned to you before, with a PhD. For this I need a academic reference. I thought you might be suitable because of (reasons outlines above). Could we meet to discuss this some time in the next few weeks? I am free on Monday mornings, Tuesday afternoons ..."
I thought, fairly casual, not really a big deal kinda thing. But then I got looking around the internet, and it seems like maybe it is a big deal. There seems like there is lots of advice and template letters out there.
So is it actually worth worrying too much about? Should I spend say a hour or so checking over my request email, to make sure I am giving all the right information and that it is formatted nicely and perfectly grammatical?
Or is it more of a casual thing, the email serves its purpose to give the key points of information and to arrange a meeting. It will be a throw away communication.
Is it different because he is currently lecturing me, so it is not so much of a cold call?
If it is cultural depended I am in Australia. I am applying to the same institution I am currently doing my undergraduate/honours at.
# Answer
If the person who you're asking for a letter of reference knows you well enough to write a good letter of recommendation, you don't really need to be worried about the formality of the request. You should be able to ask: "I would like to talk to you about writing a letter of recommendation for me. Could we set an appointment?" or something similar to that, and it should be fine.
Remember: writing letters of recommendation is one of the responsibilities of faculty members (and other instructors)!
> 22 votes
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Tags: recommendation-letter
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thread-28469
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28469
|
How to grade students' lab worksheets to prepare them for a final lab exam?
|
2014-09-13T14:48:05.000
|
# Question
Title: How to grade students' lab worksheets to prepare them for a final lab exam?
I am a physics lab TA and I was recently informed that my engineering students will receive a lab final at the end of the semester worth 50 percent of their grade. The final exam is not personally created by me, but is decided amongst all of the lab TA's teaching the same course in the same semester. The meeting amongst the TA's will occur next week, however I am attempting to prepare for whatever will come, for better or worse for my students. I want my engineering students to succeed, and I want to give them all of my resources to give them the preparation to pass the final exam. I assume that I will not be allowed to tell my students what the lab final will be, or what types of questions will be asked. My students are required to complete 9 weekly lab worksheets corresponding to their specific lab of the week. All sum total of all lab worksheets are worth the other 50 percent of the lab grade.
One issue I am currently weighing in my head is how to grade the lab worksheets. Should I go easy on the grading to soften the blow of the final exam, or should I grade harshly to force them to correct every mistake they make in prepration for the final exam?
# Answer
> 6 votes
While I don't TA physics, but Geology, our labs tend to have the same structure. Luckily the labs are small enough that I can get to know the groups ect, So I can determine how hard they are working on the labs ect, so I generally grade 70% effort and 30% correctness. The difference is though, that you are teaching engineering majors, where I tend to teach non geology or STEM majors. Getting something in the lab 100% correct for my students isn't as important and following the scientific process, but, for a class of engineers, I would have higher expectations since the content they are learning is helpful for their careers later. IE, they should have a vested interest beyond the grade.
My experience with the Lab exams is that the students either do very well or very poorly. I would be somewhat lax on the labs, especially on first time mistakes. But there isn't much you can do if they aren't working hard and aren't completing the labs correctly and they will likely fail the test if thats the case anyway.
# Answer
> 3 votes
People learn physics (and many other things) by making mistakes, and then trying to correct those mistakes. With that in mind, I would always grade activities in a way that was supposed to motivate my students to fix their mistakes. However, it's also useful not to penalize them too much for making mistakes when they are first learning the material. Usually what I wound up doing was grading in a way such that students had to basically know what they were doing to get a 90% or higher, and they would have to really get *everything* right to get a 100% on an activity, but even if they didn't understand some concepts they would still get around 80%.
Of course, this grading scheme was specified by the administrators I was working for, so I don't really have any data comparing this with alternate grading schemes. I can offer the anecdotal evidence that when I was taking physics classes as an undergraduate, it was understood among the physics students that the grading would be harsh and thus grades as low as 60% or so could still be taken as an indicator that you were basically getting it.
# Answer
> 1 votes
One of my lab instructors would force us to correct the mistakes until the report was of sufficient quality. Sometimes, the problem would be forgotten units on a table, or a numerical error in a formula (fixable in a few minutes); others would be conceptual mistakes (requiring more work).
On another similar lab, the instructor would clearly indicate any errors and discuss them with us to make sure we understood them. There was then no need to rewrite the report, and the grade was only affected mildly. But, on the following reports, you better not make the same mistake, because it will then be penalised.
With the first option you can give them an opportunity to correct the mistakes without harming their grades, albeit at the cost of more work for all parties. On the second, you can make sure they learn from their mistakes, while being nice when they do it for the first time.
---
Tags: teaching, teaching-assistant, grading
---
|
thread-28484
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28484
|
Why do many instructors avoid giving personal introductions?
|
2014-09-14T00:48:52.203
|
# Question
Title: Why do many instructors avoid giving personal introductions?
I recall that as an undergraduate, very few of the older instructors ever presented basic details about themselves. While I can understand how most would not reveal much about their family life, I cannot understand why few told about their academic background, research interests, work history, or other details which seem connected to the course. This was not the case with the younger instructors and graduate student teachers. Now that I teach undergraduates, I wonder if these older instructors knew through experience that it is best to keep quiet about one's background. Is there a good reason for instructors to keep back such information?
# Answer
> 20 votes
I am not sure whether this is in any way related to the age of the instructor, but the primary reason that most people I know don't do a *"this is me and my vast experience and research results"* style introduction is that it is all too easy to come across as bragging. Even if you have the best intentions and just want to explain your background to the students, so that they can judge your qualifications for themselves, it may sound to them like you are really just showing off.
Most students *assume* that the instructor knows what he's talking about, until they have solid evidence to the contrary. There is really no reason to explicitly talk about your experience beforehand.
That being said, if you feel like a short introduction of yourself will add to the course, go ahead. In the grand scheme of things, I am sure whether you talk for 5 minutes about yourself in the beginning of a course is the tiniest of issues. What I would avoid is what one industrial lecturer in my alma mater did. This guy spent 5 - 10 minutes of the beginning of *every* lecture talking about himself and his company (and was ridiculed a fair bit for this by the students :) ).
---
Tags: teaching
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