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thread-30265
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30265
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If I get an HND then a BSc, can I then go and specialise in any area for my Masters?
|
2014-10-20T12:01:13.563
|
# Question
Title: If I get an HND then a BSc, can I then go and specialise in any area for my Masters?
I am currently in an apprenticeship for Software Development; however, I want to change my future career after doing a job as a Software Developer.
I would like to know if I would be able to go and do a MSc in Astronautics if I get a HND in Engineering and the do the top-up course for the Bachelor's Degree. I didn't get the best GSCEs although I do have my 5 C's and did not do any A-levels. Would this still be possible?
For anybody wondering, I live in the UK.
# Answer
Yes, there are several routes to get to your speciality Masters. Once you've got your Bachelor's degree, very few people will care much about the route you took to get it, whether it was an HND, foundation course, A-levels at night school, whatever.
> 1 votes
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Tags: masters, university, united-kingdom
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thread-30260
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30260
|
When is a good time to go visiting potential post-doc opportunities?
|
2014-10-20T10:33:18.363
|
# Question
Title: When is a good time to go visiting potential post-doc opportunities?
I am in my last year of graduate studies. I have lately started networking for post-doc opportunities with some of the prominent people out there. I believe I have done a decent job in presenting myself so far, and I have gotten some people interested in discussing it further. The typical scenario would be to initiate formal contact by email then, if both parties are interested, pay a visit to the lab and talk with the people working there.
Now that I am starting to plan these things, I am wondering if the timing is optimal and if not how I should be putting them. I like planning these things in advance and not having to end up stressing about it all the way in the end. Heaving a big margin also provides time for project planning, as well as finding and applying for post-doc grants.
On the down-side, this last year is all I got to finish my projects, get papers out and also write a good thesis. All of which, I am sure, will take a significant amount of time. Ideally worrying/planning about the next step, should not prevent me from progressing as efficiently as I can.
So, in general, when would be a good time to take active and serious steps towards the next employment after graduate studies?
# Answer
> 4 votes
The answer depends on your geographical and academic areas.
* Postdoctoral positions in **Europe** are often attached to specific research groups and are funded through grants obtained by the head of laboratory/research group. As such their availability are often announced after the successful grant application, which means sometimes in the spring in general. On the other hand, if you have a specific person you want to work with and you have discussed this, it is good to get started early so you can help out as much as reasonable with the grant application process. (This is assuming that you have struck a mutual agreement that she will hire you if the grant is successful.)
* Postdoctoral positions in the **United States** and **Canada** are, depending on field, are sometimes funded as in the European case described above, and sometimes funded by the department (departmental, "named" postdoctoral positions). In the latter case the application process may have begun already and you should consult the appropriate trade magazines or bulletin boards to keep yourself posted of these opportunities. (I see that your profile indicates an applied math background; many math positions are posted on MathJobs and AcademicJobsOnline, and you should of course keep an eye on SIAM publications.)
In fact, the schedule is also similar for faculty positions in the United States: you generally expect to be applying during the fall and winter (and sometimes the summer) of the year prior to the start date. (Something you should keep in mind after you land your postdoc job.)
* The various countries' equivalents of the **National Science Foundation** also offer postdoc funding opportunities with varying deadlines. For example, the United State NSF funds postdoctoral research in various fields. And you are likely already too late: the Mathematics deadline was last week. While the Swiss NSF has a postdoct program whose due date is not under February next year.
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Tags: job-search, postdocs
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thread-30258
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30258
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What to do if a co-author is delaying announcement of results?
|
2014-10-20T09:47:43.370
|
# Question
Title: What to do if a co-author is delaying announcement of results?
I am finishing writing a joint paper with a collaborator and we are both extremely excited about the results. However, we cannot agree on when to announce the results.
In my opinion the paper is essentially ready and we should announce the results very soon. The field in which we are working in is booming right now, there are several brilliant, quick people we are competing with. We have a breakthrough result and in my field it is not unusual to see people arrive at the same results simultaneously and independently. Seeing a lot of activity and knowing more or less what people are working on I feel that we need to secure priority essentially immediately. This would mean e.g. circulating the current version of the preprint among colleagues or, ideally, posting it on a preprint server.
My co-author on the other hand would like to explore other potential applications of our results. The main result of the paper is complete, and the only question is how many applications we can have. We currently have 5 very nice applications but my co-author would like to look for more. If they are found they would be certainly good, but at this point it is more of a fishing expedition. However, because of this my co-author demands that we announce our results three months from now and is insisting on a gag order until then. (In our field it is not uncommon to lose results to dishonest researchers who learn about your result early and can try to publish/attach their name to it before you).
Basically, I feel like we are sitting at a roulette table with a million dollars but instead of cashing in we are waiting to see if we can win another 100k. I would really appreciate some advice on how to reasonably resolve this situation.
# Answer
> 18 votes
I think you should push harder to get the paper onto arXiv. The important thing is to have a rational discussion with your co-author where you discuss your worries and try to address them. Here are some additional arguments you can try to use to convince your co-author:
* If someone discovered your main results and puts it on arXiv right now, you lose potentially a lot. (Though not everything; if the result is reasonably deep posting your paper one or two days after the other group will result in recognition as "simultaneous discovery" at least.)
* If you posted your paper and someone else derived good applications from it, you still gain some increases in your h-index (probably).
* Posting things on arXiv does not mean the paper is immutable. You can continue to think about further applications and revise the paper as necessary. It is only after you submitted the paper at a journal for review that you really have to start worrying about making big changes to the manuscript.
But absent you finding out exactly why it is that your co-author is reluctant to post the manuscript on arXiv, the brainstorming sessions with strangers on the internet can only go so far.
I probably am not familiar with your subfield of mathematics, but this mentality of "In mathematics being able to apply your result is what makes it more sellable, papers are sometimes turned down if the result itself is too technical but there are no applications in sight" is foreign to me. In PDEs frequently a technique is developed to solve one or two problems initially. And the originators then work very hard the next few years to extend the technique to apply to many different problems. It is surprising that you are still worrying about the number of applications when you already have five!
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Tags: collaboration, preprint, interpersonal-issues
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thread-30272
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30272
|
How can I write a paper that will convince the reviewers that the results are non-trivial?
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2014-10-20T13:31:58.797
|
# Question
Title: How can I write a paper that will convince the reviewers that the results are non-trivial?
I submitted a paper in math/cs/economics to a top-level journal. The paper involves a new variant of a well-known problem. All reviewers agreed that the results are interesting and non-trivial, but they rejected the paper as not being general enough for their journal.
Encouraged by the positive feedback, I submitted an improved version of the paper to a medium-level conference. The improvements include simplifications of some of the proofs and additions of stronger results about the same problem. Now the reviewers rejected the paper claiming that the results are too weak and unsurprising!
What should I do in the next time I submit (to a different journal), in order to make the reviewers believe that the results are indeed surprising and non-trivial? I don't want to write the proofs in their more complicated version, as in the first revision, because this is unscientific. But writing it in a simple way seems that doing so creates a false impression that the results are too simple. What do you suggest?
# Answer
> 7 votes
In the end, the significance of a scientific advance is determined not by how complicated it is or how much hard work was put in, but by comparison with what was known / possible before.
It sounds to me like you need to have a much clearer and stronger comparison with the prior state of the art, particularly emphasizing *why* the new result makes a difference to larger or deeper issues. Depending on the nature of your work, this might mean anything from a little improvement on the prior work section to introducing new sections with explicit comparisons.
For example, if you were able to mathematically compute the Nash equilibrium for preference of donuts vs. muffins, that's a nifty little result, but it might seem obvious or insignificant. If you can explain that this was something impossible with prior methods, because nobody had previously been able to deal with the breakfast uncertainty principle, then that is surprising and interesting. If you can show that your result accurately predicts sales in major chain stores, then that is also surprising and interesting. In either case, you are showing how your result has implications outside of just being a result.
Now, you could probably also make your work appear harder and more significant by obfuscating the mathematics, and that might "work" for purposes of getting this paper accepted. I personally, however, consider that to be scientifically dishonest, and would strongly recommend against that. Remember, that your colleagues are not stupid, and sooner or later, people will realize that you are fluffing up your results, to your detriment.
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Tags: writing
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thread-30262
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30262
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What to do when on-line instructor is ignoring questions?
|
2014-10-20T10:58:55.027
|
# Question
Title: What to do when on-line instructor is ignoring questions?
I am enrolled in an on-line graduate course. The course is not available in the classroom format.
For the past few weeks, the instructor has ignored every question I sent him. I've asked for:
* help in understanding specific course content.
* clarification on upcoming assignment instructions.
* clarification on the problems in my papers.
I used the recommended contact method described in the syllabus and all other tools on the course Web site, but he sent no replies to these.
# Answer
> 19 votes
The first two kinds of questions should be asked in the course's public discussion area so that the answers will benefit all students. Since you've used "all the other tools" in the course, perhaps you've done that.
I suggest a concerned phone call to the department chair. If the professor is not present in the course at all, ask, "Is Dr. X OK? He hasn't been in the course in several weeks." If he's around, but ignoring you, ask, "Do you know whether I've somehow offended Dr. X? He hasn't answered any of my questions in several weeks."
The point is to give the chair a chance to make corrections without having said anything like "ignoring me." If it has already been several weeks, I'd suggest doing this very soon. Be as specific as possible about dates when the instructor stopped responding, how other work such as quizzes is handled, etc.
# Answer
> 0 votes
As far as I understand, your question is pointing into the completely wrong direction.
Please reword your question to contain that:
* you didn't "send him" the questions, but posted them to an online board which is the official platform for that course.
* he didn't answer ANY question which was posted to that online board.
This means it has nothing to do with your person, or the question content, at all. It is a more general problem.
First, make sure that the "instructor" knows that there is an online forum where students can ask him questions. Maybe he doesn't. So, if you have other, more foolproof, means of contacting him: Do it. Be friendly. Ask him to have a look into that forum and answer the student's questions.
With "more foolproof", I mean personal contact, telephone calls, instant messengers, publicized email addresses, or just send him a snailmail!
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Tags: coursework
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thread-30254
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30254
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How to make leaving a PhD program seem like a positive thing on a resume
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2014-10-20T05:33:27.553
|
# Question
Title: How to make leaving a PhD program seem like a positive thing on a resume
I have a feeling this question has been posted before, but I wanted to ask as my situation is slightly different. I've recently decided to leave my PhD program in the social sciences in order to look for work. I've basically come to the conclusion after completing 3 full years, courses, and fieldwork that I don't want to be an academic but would rather put my skills to use with NGOs, non-profits, or the public sector. In many ways, the last hurdle of the PhD (i.e. writing the dissertation) seemed more like a barrier to what I wanted to do, rather than something that would bring me closer to it. I left because I wanted to go in a new direction, not because I wasn't sure that I was capable of finishing.
Anyways, my main concern right now is how to present this discrepancy on my resume. As I've been a TA and doing research projects since getting my MA, I've decided to list my years as a TA, and the rest under the position of "Researcher." I figure that the situation is a little too complex to really explain in a resume or cover letter, and that most employers will be able to read between the lines that I was probably in a PhD program. I've basically been marketing myself on my resumes/cover letters as a "researcher" with lots of research projects under my belt, without specifically stating under the "education" section that I have a partially finished PhD. My motivation behind the "researcher" title is that during my graduate studies I designed, proposed and carried out individual research on a number of projects.
I guess I should qualify this by mentioning that my PhD studies were in the social sciences, and there seems to be a bit more leeway in terms of describing what we do. All of my dissertation research was funded by a fellowship, and all of my various other research projects (where I wasn't principal investigator) were the result of competitions funded by grants. I have always designed my own research projects, which is why I didn't think it was a bad idea to go with "researcher", and my references could verify that.
It looks like this title would be a little confusing given the circumstances, so I think I'm going to use "Graduate Student Researcher", "PhD Researcher" or something similar in the future. I guess this seems like it gives a more accurate representation of what kinds of things I was doing. I figure that the 4 years of MA/PhD work on research projects gives me (and any other former graduate student) skills that are valid to most employers. I just want to be able to address this discrepancy honestly and enthusiastically in an interview, rather than clumsily addressing it in a cover letter/resume. What do you guys think? Is this the right strategy to take?
# Answer
I think it is a really bad idea to list your time as a grad student as "Researcher".
As a general rule, it's usually considered unwise to make up stuff on a resume, and this includes job titles. I think the only title that really fits your status is "PhD Student" or "PhD Candidate" (or, if you want to focus on the job, "Teaching Assistant" or "Graduate Research Assistant" or the like - whatever was on your pay stub).
The title of "Researcher" would normally be attached to a full-time (non-student!) staff position, generally someone who works on a research project led by a faculty member. Although the duties may be somewhat similar, the hiring process and level of responsibility could be rather different, so it is really a misrepresentation for you to claim this title.
Suppose a prospective employer calls your university, checking references, and asks "Was Unsure a Researcher at your institution during the following dates?" The university is going to answer "No, he/she was a grad student" (or even worse, maybe just "No"). Then the employer tosses your application in the trash because your resume is inaccurate (or as they might say, "falsified"). And if they don't check and you get the job anyway, but they find out later, they could easily consider your application was fraudulent - that gets you fired for sure, and is possibly career ending.
If you think employers are going to figure out anyway that you were in a PhD program, why not just go ahead and put "PhD Candidate" on the resume?
> 24 votes
# Answer
If I understand your question correctly, you've decided to look for a position where a PhD is not a requirement. In that case, there really is no reason to try to hide or "spin" the fact that you were a PhD student. The world is full of people who left a PhD program for one reason or another. The fact that you were in a PhD programme, even if you decided not to complete it, will probably be a "plus" on your resume, or at least not a negative.
I suggest you *briefly* explain your situation in a cover letter/email. Rather than focussing on why you left the PhD, phrase it in terms of what you decided to do *instead*. For example, "I've decided to leave my PhD because I want to put my skills to use as soon as possible with NGOs, non-profits, or the public sector".
> 7 votes
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Tags: phd, job-search, cv
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thread-30284
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30284
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What should you do when your supervisor suffers from Dunning Kruger effect?
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2014-10-20T19:37:43.343
|
# Question
Title: What should you do when your supervisor suffers from Dunning Kruger effect?
My supervisor wants to borrow some ideas from another sub-discipline into his own sub-discipline. The problem is he is suffering from Dunning Kruger effect. He just has some very basic knowledge about that sub-discipline. He thinks he has a very deep understanding of that sub-discipline and he doesn't need to invest time as they are too low level details to spend his time. As a result, he comes up with some wild hypotheses (anyone who has good understanding of that domain will simply know it doesn't make sense) or something that's obviously true. And he keeps arguing that his hypotheses are true and noble. As he doesn't have good understanding of that domain and he thinks it's too low level detail to spend his time. So after some time, the whole argument turns into opinion based arguments, no longer fact based or reasoning based arguments. Then he becomes very rude and keeps demeaning us (me and another PhD student).
He doesn't allow us to work on or discuss our own hypotheses, he simply discards them without giving any constructive feedback or any reason why we shouldn't work on or discuss them.
At the end of meeting, after long arguments and rectifying my supervisor's hypotheses, he claims he is the one who came up with these amazing hypotheses and we didn't contribute anything in the research, we just did the experiments.
Now meeting with my supervisor has become emotionally exhausting and unproductive for me. We are wasting time because he thinks he has deep understanding of this new domain.
Just to make it clear, I am not saying he is not smart. He is a smart person. But he doesn't understand this new domain and thinks he has deep understanding.
# Answer
> 12 votes
This seems on the border of a "Here's my story, now what do I do?" type question. But the title question seems reasonable.
If you feel like your advisor does not have enough knowledge about something to usefully direct you: first, try to get some independent confirmation that that's true. The Dunning-Kruger effect may not be cutting in the direction that you think. But assuming it is: you either need to direct your research towards your advisor's expertise -- this is, by the way, a quite normal process in most student/advisor relationships, as academic knowledge is vast but in order to make progress most academics are highly specialized -- or you need to find a different advisor. In your case
> At the end of meeting, after long arguments and rectifying my supervisor's hypothesis's, he claims he is the one who came up with these amazing hypothesis's and we didn't contribute anything in the research, we just did the experiments.
>
> Now meeting with my supervisor has become emotionally exhausting and unproductive for me.
it sounds like you have lost faith in your advisor. Consider looking for someone else.
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Tags: advisor, interpersonal-issues
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thread-30288
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30288
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What is the academic value of a white paper?
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2014-10-20T22:21:57.960
|
# Question
Title: What is the academic value of a white paper?
**I am wondering what constitutes a white paper and what is the academic value of it.**
I found some information here but I am more after turning an aspect of a research into a white paper.
Currently, the research is just for internal use. I am hoping the white paper will make it more visible and reach a wider audience.
The other reason is that I can then add it to my CV as a tangible output (if that is possible).
What is a "white paper"?
# Answer
Some of the things that I have seen white-papers be useful for:
* Position papers, manifestos, and other intellectual opinion statements.
* Disseminating protocols, techniques, standards proposals, and other things that are useful but "below the threshold" of a normal publication
* Seeding discussions with program managers and other potential funders and collaborators.
* Date-stamping a piece of work so you can get it out of your queue and move on. Much better a white paper in an informal repository than a disreputable journal.
Sometimes white papers end up "upgrading" into proposals or publications of various types---sometimes very high impact publications. Sometimes they even draw a surprising amount of citations. Mostly, though, they are for the less formal side of scientific life. A well-regarded white paper sort of statement can change the course of an entire field.
One thing that I think is very important is, for any white paper that you are disseminating publicly, to get it into some archival location. There are a number of methods for this, from arXiv to standards RFCs to institutional technical report collections. If do this, it will be much easier for people to cite your white paper, pass it around, and generally disseminate it. And if it's persistent, you can feel much more comfortable adding it you your C.V...
> 9 votes
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Tags: grey-literature
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thread-21251
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21251
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Is it common to claim co-authorship by helping writing a paper without doing any research
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2014-05-21T12:23:04.097
|
# Question
Title: Is it common to claim co-authorship by helping writing a paper without doing any research
In my research group, there is a researcher who usually approaches other PhD students who are about to write papers in order to offer his help. Normally, he does not actually do any research related to the paper. Instead, he reads our papers, makes comments about the writing style and sometime re-writes some sections in order to make them more readable. At the end, he will claim the co-authorship of the paper. I can see it is very helpful for new PhD students who don't have much experience in writing papers or articles. However, it is sometime uncomfortable for me to see someone who doesn't do actual research but still manages to get an authorship.
So, I want to ask if it is a common practice for someone to help writing a paper without doing any actual research relating to it, and claim the co-authorship. If it is not, how should I react if someone wants to do the same to me?
# Answer
> *people who help write papers may help fulfill one of the pillars of scientific discovery... communication of the science.*
There is an appropriate place to credit people who read your paper and offer useful comments on it: the **acknowledgement section**. It is very common to see acknowledgements "for providing valuable feedback", "for suggesting a cleaner presentation", "for pointing out important related work" and so on. Even "for providing a simpler proof of Lemma X.y".
None of this rises to the level of co-authorship.
What's worse in this case is that
> At the end, he will claim the co-authorship of the paper.
While I'd find the idea of co-authorship for such contributions odd, I would not think too much about it if it were negotiated in advance (as is the theme of many of the answers on this site). But to offer what appears to be unconditional help first and then (when the student really has no choice in the matter) to demand co-authorship is plain wrong.
To answer your last question on what to do, the answer, as is always the answer, is to negotiate things up front. It's a little awkward, but a little pre-collaboration awkwardness is MUCH better than a lot of post-collaboration recrimination and hostility.
> 53 votes
# Answer
The so called *Vancouver protocol* (developed by ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) and its definition of authorship has been mentioned in many questions of this kind here on Academia but I think they deserve being repeated. The protocol describes authorship through three components which every author must fulfil:
> 1. Conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data
>
> AND
> 2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content
>
> AND
> 3. Final approval of the version to be published.
A key point here is the "AND". To read and comment on the text is clearly not enough for authorship by these standards. In fact a reviewer of the manuscript would at least fulfil point 2 whereas a person helping out as you describe would not.
It is difficult to fend off this behaviour from more senior colleagues as a PhD student. It may, however, be good to bring up an open discussion about authorship standards in the group without necessarily directly connecting it to the draft of a paper. In some research groups systems for determining both order and authorship as such have been developed by splitting the paper up into tasks. See for example, AuthorOrder.com for an example. Looking at the tag here on Ac.sx and a search on Google will provide much background. But, I particularly recommend the recommendations report from ICMJE; ICMJE developed the protocol and their recommendations constitutes their continually updated version of the protocol.
> 29 votes
# Answer
Obviously his service and helps do not count as co-authorship. I have seen various versions of this tactic before, for example in the form of showing interest, or giving some general and mostly useless advices, comments and discussions. None of these are co-authorship either.
But to answer you question on **"how should I react if someone wants to do the same to me?"**, I recommend you restrict your research communications to a small list of people who have the following qualities: 1. they are experts in the subject your are working on, 2. you have some kind of agreement about how to perform the research and who should do what, 3. they have scientific integrity and are not looking to get credit for something they have not done!
Finally, it is not recommended that you show or discuss your work to someone who is not a trusted expert before submission.
> 10 votes
# Answer
This happens quite often in industrial PhDs, at least based on my experience. Every paper I've written so far had around 5 authors, although myself and a research fellow were the only ones doing the work. I completely understand your frustration because there are two guys who have technical backgrounds but doing management work (thus no technical input to my papers whatsoever) who have their names on my papers (that applies to other PhD Students here too). I am not sure about pure academic research (i.e. funding from university) tough, things are likely to be different in that case.
> 8 votes
# Answer
It doesn't matter whether it is common or not: it is inappropriate.
He is "editing" and not "authoring".
Don't let it get to you. Even if you were to stop this guy, there has been, are, and will be many others doing the same thing. Just hope that karma will take care of it.
> 7 votes
# Answer
An author should be involved in the research, otherwise it is only a clerical role. However, it is not unusual for a collaborator whose contribution to the research is below the average to compensate by doing more work on the writing.
> 5 votes
# Answer
I once was asked by a prof to provide comments on a draft paper given to him by a colleague. I added a third section to the paper, and re-ordered and re-worded the arguments that were in the draft. The paper was then published with no further changes. There was no recognition of my contribution by the author.
> 1 votes
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Tags: publications, ethics, authorship
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thread-16552
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16552
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Is it possible to make leaving a PhD look good on a CV / Resume?
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2014-02-04T17:28:16.760
|
# Question
Title: Is it possible to make leaving a PhD look good on a CV / Resume?
I am in the process of leaving my PhD programme in life sciences at a top university in the UK. A PhD is simply not for me and I find the work/life balance to be intolerable; in addition, my PhD so far has included an industrial placement at a Fortune 500 company that was very eye opening and enjoyable. I am looking to leave academia permanently and apply for graduate schemes.
My question is whether it is better to leave the fact that I quit a PhD off my CV, or to have the failed PhD / MPhil on there, or to mask it as '18 months of lab experience' or something similar. Is it possible to make the fact I left a PhD sound good?
# Answer
In my discipline (computer science), almost all of the people I know who declined to finish the Ph.D kept it listed on their professional profiles with a "not complete" note under it.
They did list their experience though under "work experience", as "Research assistant" or similar and continue to keep their accomplishments listed.
Overall, I think keeping it there, even if unfinished, is better than having a long gap of 2-3 years, because big gaps of nothing are going to look worse than employment in that period that you decided (for varying reasons) to not complete. You can explain away "I decided not to do a Ph.D" in a phone screen but it's harder to tell someone "Well, I actually tried to get a Ph.D but didn't finish, sorry I didn't list it on my resume".
> 24 votes
# Answer
I guess it depends on the reason for leaving, e.g. I know several people who did not finish their PhD because
* they got good jobs just before finishing the PhD. One may say that their next employers hired them just before they got into the official postdoc market.
(The offers were clearly based also on the expertise they gained during their work at the PhD project)
* the company they founded as side job (same profession) went well so they more or less gradually switched over to work at that full time.
Both are IMHO perfectly good reasons for not finishing the PhD.
So e.g. if based on your experience at IBM you end up as their employee IMHO that is a perfectly good and also nice looking explanation for leaving the PhD.
But I'd not leave the PhD formally before the next working contract starts - this way the CV will not have a gap. And after all, even if you don't like the PhD work that much, I think it is better to go on with that than to be unemployed: quitting PhD followed by being unemployed may leave a completely different impression from the situations I described above.
> 8 votes
# Answer
If you're no longer interested in working in academia or research, having a PhD is often a strike *against* you in a job search. I regularly encounter negative bias against a PhD in professional and social situations. So unless you're applying for a job in a field that requires, or at least explicitly values PhD training, I'd list your 18 months as 'lab experience' of some kind. You don't want a gap on your CV, but you also don't want to trigger the negativity that too many people associate with the term "PhD".
> 5 votes
# Answer
Here is my answer to this similar question, where the OP was leaving after 4 years not 18 months. 4 years is more into ABD territory so I think it was wrongly marked as duplicate. Anyway:
Ok, this touches on multiple points:
* people who leave before completing PhDs (so-called 'PhD dropouts', which is *not* a disparaging term) tend to be either significantly better or worse than average PhD students (depending whether the cause was financial, lack of motivation, immaturity, departmental politics, failure to define topic, realizing your field or topic was not worth it/dead/useless/bad career prospects, or (shock horror!) a better opportunity arriving).
* your job is to help the reader understand which one you are
* but as you figured, the resume is not the place to overexplain. You also have the cover letter, the phonescreen, and the interview for that. So be succinct and upbeat, list specific skills, tasks completed.
* "I figure that the 4 years of MA/PhD work on research projects gives me skills that are valid to most employers". But you still need to list them succinctly. (You might have multiple resumes for different employers: one for publishers, one for CS, one for finance, etc etc.) Show us a sample of what you're saying? Also, state specific accomplishments or tangible results you delivered, especially since you're leaving. Any publications? or at least research reports? After four years, I'd expect several. If you list no accomplishments and no publications, then your resume will rightly get propelled into the trashcan/shredder at Mach 10.0
* "All of my dissertation research was funded by a fellowship, and all of my various other research projects (where I wasn't principal investigator) were the result of competitions funded by N grants totaling $X. I have always designed my own research projects". That's gold-dust. Authoring and winning grant proposals is highly valued.
* "I guess I should qualify this by mentioning that my PhD studies were in the social sciences, and there seems to be a bit more leeway in terms of describing what we do." This is a cultural US vs European difference. Hence you see very different opinions in responses to that question. Use whatever job description is correct in your country. Just don't get caught obfuscating that you were an MA/PhD research student.
* Will you list your supervisor(s) as references? If yes, will they generally corroborate what you say? If no, why not, and who will you use?
> 3 votes
# Answer
My suggestion:
* If you earned a degree along the way, certainly list that in the education section.
* If you were a research assistant, put that in your work experience.
I wouldn't add "failed PhD" or "or incomplete" or anything.
Nobody will judge you for quitting a Ph.D. program if you decided you don't want to do research.
> 1 votes
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Tags: phd, job, career-path
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thread-30289
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30289
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Prepare presentation for Ph.D. Interview in Germany
|
2014-10-20T23:15:16.840
|
# Question
Title: Prepare presentation for Ph.D. Interview in Germany
I have been invited to the second round of interviews for a PhD position in a research programme in Informatics. I haven't submitted any research proposal, but now I have 2 and a half days to prepare a 15min presentation on the potential topic of my research "How to use X models to evaluate Y systems" (allow me to disclose some information) and do it via Skype - the panel will include my future supervisor, the director of the group and the programme coordinator and 3-4 other people.
The thing is I don't know much about the X models that will be used in the research, I only know them from a course in my master studies. My potential supervisor is aware of this since I have admitted it in my first interview. I have practiced many methods of evaluation in many kinds of systems, hence the acceptance to the second round.
I would really like any tips and suggestions on what to include in this presentation. Naturally, I can't learn everything in 2 days for X models.
I have thought the following points:
* outline how X models work
* include limitations and strengths
* examples on how they have been used in the Y field/ other fields
* a potential methodological approach (how to do it will be difficult since I lack technical knowledge)
* Expected findings
I also believe I should showcase the ability to think critically and that I can focus on the main frame.
Should I include my research experience/skills and how they relate to the work?
Any other advice?
# Answer
> 6 votes
No your don't have to know everything, first of all that's impossible to do in just two days, second of all you could not talk about every aspect of the topic in just 15 minutes.
**15 Minutes is really short** If you want to talk about your experience/skills don't include this into the talk. I guess they want to hear you talk about the topic on the first place so use this time to do so. This is the second round of an interview so the persons not knowing you will ask if they want to know something. Of course you can create slides to do so but I would keep them independent of your main talk.
**"A Potential Methodological Approach"** Don't talk yourself into trouble here. If you are not familiar with the topic and they even know that I would not risk too much at this point. Just talk about stuff which you are absolutely sure that it's right.
**"Expected Findings"** This seems quite bold if one keeps in mind that you are not familiar with the topic. Of course everyone can dream about some nice results but without some knowledge of the field this point seems a bit too much. Just say what you want to do.
**Other Idea** You could include some quite new results. If you have read some papers about the topic maybe there have been some recent results. Just mention them to show that you are trying to get into the topic. (Again just do so if you are sure).
Other than that just try to give a nice introduction to the topic and explain what is known and where you want to tackle open problems. You are **not** giving a talk about an/your research proposal.
---
Tags: phd, interview, germany
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thread-28809
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28809
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Are there any good strategies for conveying the true significance of the results that look obvious post factum?
|
2014-09-20T21:46:25.900
|
# Question
Title: Are there any good strategies for conveying the true significance of the results that look obvious post factum?
In nearly any field there is a number of important results which look obvious to experts *post factum* but somehow are not that easy to come by in the first place (e.g. in mathematics some important definitions look exactly like this). Unfortunately, this apparent *post factum* simplicity makes conveying the importance of the idea to expert audience (and in particular to the journals' editors and referees) very difficult. To make things worse, sometimes the author is unable to illustrate the application of the idea by sufficiently striking examples.
> The question is whether it is possible (and if yes, how) to mitigate this **apparent post factum simplicity** in the talks and research articles, i.e., what can be done to *adequately* convey the significance of "post-factum-obvious" results to the audience and, in particular, to get these results to the journals they truly deserve?
I am particularly interested in the advice applicable to mathematics/mathematical physics but the suggestions suitable for other fields are very welcome too, as the situation in question does not seem to be all that field-specific.
# Answer
The best approach may be to address the issue head-on: include a paragraph in the cover letter, in the introduction or discussion sections of a manuscript, and explicitly in the conclusions section of a talk, that sets up a "straw man" critique. Something like: this result may seem obvious because of (expectations in the field; the beguiling simplicity of the final proof; the incorrect assumption that the problem was already solved; etc). But actually that assumption is flawed (and say or show why). Our result is not obvious because (state reasons).
> 8 votes
# Answer
The OP writes that "experts", "journals' editors" and "referees" will *fail* to realize the "importance" of a result, if it looks "obvious" after statement.
I note that "importance" should have been somehow defined in the question, or at least be endowed with some operational meaning. But let's pretend we understand roughly the same things by reading the word, and let's assume that, indeed, all these people don't get this "importance". Then *who* understands it? The author? Namely, the one who "is unable to illustrate the application of the idea by sufficiently striking examples"? In other words, the person who has labored deeply into the case, he, on the one hand cannot come up with "striking examples", but at the same time "knows" that his result is "important"?
*How* does he know, if he does not know *why* the result is important? And if he knows *why* it is important, how can it be that he cannot communicate, however imperfectly, these reasons why? He may be lousy regarding presentation skills, he may be a bad writer. But still, how come *nobody* of those in the scientific community that know the field and the subject, realizes the importance of the result, in any form of communication, except the author?
Important results are sometimes initially overlooked because they are stated in a very *specialized framework* and their generality and wider applicability are not immediately, or even easily, evident. But "obvious" results, are, exactly, evident, and so their importance should either be evident, at least to *some* individuals that are part of the populations of "experts", "journals' editors", and "referees", or chances are, it does not exist. Difficulty of derivation or conceptualization are neither necessary nor sufficient for "importance".
But of course, I may be wrong -so I would really, honestly, appreciate it if someone could provide an actual example of such a situation.
I note that the impression I got from the question is that the OP does *not* refer to "paradigm shifts" and "revolutionary ideas" that may "fall on deaf ears" for sociological reasons. For such situations, it is a whole different, and largely theoretical, discussion.
> 4 votes
# Answer
In talks, you can use some didactic means. For example: start by presenting the problem. Then, ask the audience to think about it for a minute and suggest some directions for a solution. If somebody suggests a direction which doesn't work, show why it doesn't work. If nobody answers, prepare in advance some apparently useful directions that turn out to be unfruitful.
The disadvantage is that it requires you to spend about half the presentation time on discussion with the audience. The advantage is that, maybe, after the talk, your audience will better appreciate the difficulty of the problem.
I am not sure how to adapt this didactic technique to a paper, though.
> 4 votes
# Answer
> To make things worse, sometimes the author is unable to illustrate the application of the idea by sufficiently striking examples.
I think this goes hand in hand with the problem you describe. You cannot expect an audience to evaluate the difficulty of the problem you have solved in a short time and often the same goes for reviewers and editors (unless of course, they are familiar with the problem). But you can show that you are addressing an important problem, which does not yet have a (satisfying) solution.
Now, if the latter is true, others should have thought about it before you. But as they have not come up with a solution, the problem could not actually have been that obvious. (Of course, it could have just been that nobody spotted the problem or the general approach you have taken – but then you can take credit for that.)
<sup> I have attended some interdisciplinary conferences and observed a general tendency that participants from more theoretical fields failed at motivating what they are doing – which was one of the key issues that made their talks very difficult to sit through or their posters not interesting.</sup>
---
If there are standard approaches to your general type of problem, you could also shortly explain why these do not work. This way you can demonstrate that the problem required some thingking out of the box.
> 2 votes
# Answer
I have first hand experience with this and can say that it depends on how you present and apply the findings. I recently published a paper where I derived from first principles a relation showing how a property of some natural systems varies in some conditions. The corollary of the mathematical relation where just the well known facts from Nature, except one, which was surprising. The relationship itself looks obvious when one sees it written, and this was noted by the reviewers, but they appreciated how it was presented and the fact that it provided some sort of consistency and logical framework for the observed facts.
So, in my opinion, go ahead, make a nice case on why your findings are worth publishing: examples, relations and some sort of harmony.
> 2 votes
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Tags: journals, writing, peer-review
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thread-30301
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30301
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CC-licensing course slides
|
2014-10-21T07:48:35.277
|
# Question
Title: CC-licensing course slides
I would like to share under a Creative Commons license some course material (slides) I created. However, I used (abused?) of duly cited non-cc sources such as books etc. to prepare the course material.
Does using copyrighted material to prepare a course prevent to distribute the slides and source under a CC license? What would be the best way to deal with such a situation, which I believe is quite common in academia?
# Answer
> 11 votes
> I copied 1 or 2 figures verbatim (with proper citation) from statistics books.
You cannot release these figures under a CC license. Even if we assume that you have the right to use them in this case, for example under fair use, you don't have the right to authorize others to use them in potentially very different ways.
However, you can easily get around this by excluding the figures from the CC license that applies to the rest of the slides. See, for example, this blog post for further discussion of this issue.
> In some parts, I followed (and cited) the content/organisation of the class textbook quite heavily (not copied though).
This is a trickier issue. The fundamental question is whether your slides could be considered a derivative work of the class textbook. If so, then they are themselves a copyright violation if done without permission. If not, then I think you're OK.
I'm not a lawyer and do not know how to draw a clear line for what constitutes a derivative work. My understanding is that summarizing or explaining another work is not necessarily a derivative work, but for comparison an "abridgment" or "condensation" is a derivative work (under U.S. law, at least). Where your slides fall on this continuum presumably depends on exactly what you did. As a non-expert, I'd guess that you're fine unless you followed the book rather closely, but you should consult with an expert about the details of your situation if it really matters.
# Answer
> 5 votes
The copyrighted material must be omitted or replaced in your course material before you can release it under a Creative Commons license, except in cases where you have express permission to distribute the copyrighted work. In many cases, it is not especially difficult to get permission for this kind of use, just send a letter to the copyright holder. Most publisher's are willing to grant permission for limited use and distribution.
The materials distributed for MIT OpenCourseWare are distributed with a CC license and are full of examples of both use cases (use with permission, and omission of copyrighted material).
I am not certain, but it may be that your use (release under CC) of copyrighted material with permission could change the licensing status of the included material depending on how it's incorporated in your work.
It's also worth noting that CC licenses cannot be revoked. Thus, if you release your course material under a particular CC license, others will always have the right to use your slides under that license.
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Tags: coursework, open-access, creative-commons, license
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thread-30282
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30282
|
Grades in masters before PhD
|
2014-10-20T17:53:30.203
|
# Question
Title: Grades in masters before PhD
I'm working on a masters in mathematical finance. I am going to make at least one B this semester at a program which is not highly regarded after having made very good grades in undergraduate school at a decent university. I was wondering how significant this is if I wanted to apply for doctoral programs in math or physics in the future.
# Answer
> 1 votes
First of all: **Don't Panic!**
If you search for Bad Grade on this site you get a lot of questions from students in a similar/worse situation. In this case I can just talk for me and for my case and let the other questions talk for themselves: I'm currently a PhD-student and I've gotten among others one B, one C and even one D in courses during my masters. In the end nobody cared because I've written an really good thesis and (at least here at my university and group) that's way more important. So focus on what's ahead of you.
So all in all it is of **no** significance (or at least should not be).
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Tags: graduate-admissions, grades
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thread-30311
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30311
|
Tuition cost over time
|
2014-10-21T14:46:44.497
|
# Question
Title: Tuition cost over time
I am wondering if anybody knows of a datasource that makes available tuition cost over time (annually) for US institutions. I am particularly interested in the cost of graduate school expense.
# Answer
> 3 votes
The National Center for Educational Statistics publishes reports mostly yearly regarding tuition fees as part of its Digest of Educational Statistics.
Relevant Table for graduate admissions from the most recent report. Information appears to go back to the 80s even with the 1995 report. Earlier data might be available from the Department of Education itself on request.
Professional degree type 1988 to 2010 Of note is that most fields have ballooned in cost the past three decades.
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Tags: reference-request, tuition
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thread-30315
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30315
|
Is it OK to name discrete research areas as your research interests in the statement of purpose?
|
2014-10-21T15:28:26.423
|
# Question
Title: Is it OK to name discrete research areas as your research interests in the statement of purpose?
I am planning to apply to a Chemistry graduate program and I am interested in both drug delivery and computational chemistry fields, which are not quite related to each other. I have backgrounds in both of those fields. If I state both of them in my statement of purpose would it have a positive or negative effect? Would the admission committee see me as a versatile researcher, or would it see me as someone who doesn't know what he wants to do?
# Answer
I assume that you are talking about a Ph.D. program rather than a Masters (which are typically rather shorter and more focused). Beginning Ph.D. students are not generally expected to have a well-developed research agenda. Learning how to focus and formulate a good research agenda is an important part of what you learn in the process of getting your Ph.D., and it is generally understood that your focus and area may shift along the way.
What the professors considering your application are more likely to be interested in is whether you are thinking clearly and carefully about what you are interested in and why. If you are sincerely interested in both areas, then explain clearly why each one interests you and how you see your background as supporting that interest. Make sure to say that you could see yourself focusing on either one, depending on the program and professors that you work with. This will give the committee clear evidence that you aren't just non-committal, while at the same time avoiding artificially restricting your possible matches.
> 1 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, graduate-school, application, statement-of-purpose, chemistry
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thread-30281
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30281
|
When do you ask a professor if a visitor can sit in on class?
|
2014-10-20T17:42:26.607
|
# Question
Title: When do you ask a professor if a visitor can sit in on class?
There's a prospective graduate student visiting my adviser and I was asked if the student could come with me to an undergraduate class I'm taking at another college within the university. Is it acceptable for me to just show up to this class with the prospective student or should I email the professor and ask if the visitor can sit in? The class is lecture-based and doesn't require student discussion, relatively large (~40 students at both the undergrad and graduate level), but the professor will likely notice that the visitor isn't in the class.
Edit: I'm in the US and the prospective student and I are both from here, but the professor is from the Netherlands.
Update: I ended up emailing the professor three days in advance to make sure it was fine.
# Answer
E-mail a few days in advance.
Just showing up puts everyone on the spot, and could end poorly. It could also turn your visitor off.
> 29 votes
# Answer
I suspect the right answer to this question depends very much on the country you are studying in.
To give one example, in Finland it is determined by law that all university lectures are public and free for anyone to attend. Nobody would notice an extra attendee, unless there were normally only a couple of students in the class. Emailing the professor would just seem odd.
> 25 votes
# Answer
I have taught a lot of small classes where I know most all of the students.
I also host office hours for my local Python group in a conference room, where people are expected to come and go at will, and new faces show up all the time.
In the former case, a new student showing up out of nowhere would have definitely raised my eyebrows, and an email in advance would have been sufficient warning to avoid any awkwardness. But in either situation, I would greet the new face warmly and welcome them.
Some schools may have more restrictions on access than others, and what you mostly want to ensure is that your guest has permission to be on campus, usually registering their presence at a visitor center before going elsewhere.
> 2 votes
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Tags: etiquette
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thread-30320
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30320
|
Is it OK to include a personal (non-science related) statement in the final slide of a presentation
|
2014-10-21T16:55:15.797
|
# Question
Title: Is it OK to include a personal (non-science related) statement in the final slide of a presentation
Is it OK to include a personal note telling intention of hard-work on the topic,
> e.g. I am looking forward to work on this problem
in the Conclusion slide of a presentation related to possible research topic in the future?
I believe the Conclusion slide is used to collect the scientific conclusions about the work in the end of the presentation as a takeaway message, how would such a statement stand in the end?
# Answer
I think that writing on the presentation that you'll be looking forward to doing something is somewhat out of place.
In addition, it appears that you may be confusing two separate definitions of `conclusion`.
The first is the scientific conclusion, which you have defined. This is, as you've described, the takeaway message from scientific research, i.e.
> This research shows us that potatoes are actually tasty.
The second is a presentation's conclusion. This can be the scientific conclusion in a presentation about an actual study. However, you're referring to a proposal, which has no conclusion, or perhaps to a slide mentioning future possible research topics.
In this case, your conclusion should be a summary of what you've covered during your presentation, preferably onto one slide, i.e.
> Conclusion
> \- This research will establish whether or not potatoes are tasty
> \- Important to humanity as it helps determine whether or not further investment into discovery of potato recipes are practical
> \- Funding this project will be cheap as potatoes are grown a lot already
Then, when you present your situation, you can mention `I look forward to performing this research with your support.` and it flows cleanly.
If I've interpreted anything incorrectly regarding your situation, OP, let me know.
> 5 votes
# Answer
While it's generally OK to add a personal thought, it's important to be careful with what sort message you add at the end of a talk. What do you want the audience to get from this extra message, and will it conflict with the rest of the talk?
Some examples I've seen that worked:
* A mention of how the science links to some sort of outreach or broader impact goals that personally motivate you.
* A cute / funny vaguely related image that lets you end on a light note, e.g., the speaker's child interacting with a robot at the end of a robotics talk.
Some examples I've seen that didn't work:
* A declaration that all of this work was in service of the higher glory of Christ (caused a rather awkward silence in the highly diverse and international audience)
* Not actually stopping, but just rambling about unrelated things until the session chair actually physically shut off the projector.
Something bland like, "I'm looking forward to working on this project" is so normal and unexceptional that the audience may not even notice that you said it.
> 2 votes
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Tags: presentation
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thread-30324
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30324
|
Citing an article under a double-blind review process
|
2014-10-21T17:56:14.557
|
# Question
Title: Citing an article under a double-blind review process
This is my case: I've recently co-authored and sent an article to a journal that follows a double-blind review process, so that reviewers shouldn't be able to know the name of the authors. ---I mean, I (as the corresponding author) am responsible for hiding any authoring information to them.
Now I am writing another paper and I want to cite the article that is under double-blind review.
So, it is not only that I should add the typical *"under review"* label when citing that article, but moreover I can't give any information about the article that may *spoil* the double-blind process. For instance, if I add the name of the authors and the name of the journal it was sent to, then I can't include the title of the article (because it could happen that the citing article is sent for reviewing to one of the blind reviewers of the first article, or that it is even published before the first one...).
Anyway... **How can/should I cite an article that is under review by a journal that follows a double-blind review process without potentially revealing too much information?? How is this problem usually solved?**
I must say that I usually publish pre-prints as technical reports, but I didn't do it this time, in order not to reveal any information that could be accessed by the blind reviewers.
EDIT:
I was thinking about putting this label instead of the title of the cited article: *"\[Title is omitted to protect the double-blind review process\]"*. But I still have some doubts. If I mention the name of the journal it was sent to, could the article be potentially recognized by the blind reviewers?
# Answer
> 13 votes
Considering the following extreme case can help to clarify: what will you do if article B is accepted before article A finishes peer review? This could easily happen, given the high variability in time in review cycle and number of reviews.
At that point you've got basically two options:
1. Drop the references. Can your paper survive without them? If so, it's not a big deal.
2. Put your blind review article into a pre-print archive, in order for it to be available. This might "spoil" the blind review process, but only if the reviewers go looking for it and only if it significantly changes their opinion.
In the mean time, I would recommend citing it as "\[omitted due to ongoing blind review; available on request\]", and letting the reviewers request through the editor if they feel reading your pre-print article is important.
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Tags: citations, peer-review
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thread-30285
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30285
|
How should I approach a Tokyo University professor to join their lab?
|
2014-10-20T19:47:06.683
|
# Question
Title: How should I approach a Tokyo University professor to join their lab?
What are the guidelines that I should follow when contacting a foreign University professor to ask for joining their lab?
I need to find a professor for my already accepted semester abroad as an exchange student. I will be doing my Final Year Project as an undergraduate student and I am having a hard time getting a *response* from the professors at the Tokyo University. I have contacted with the current student abroad and he told me that it also took him a while to find a professor.
So now I'm wondering about my methods. Is this letter okay?
> Hello \_____,
>
> I'm an exchange student from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. I am contacting you to see if you might be interested in accepting me for doing my Final Year Project.
>
> The project I would like to do is an artificial skin capable of registering different pressure points on a soft material layer. It would consist mainly on a foam that has resistivity variable with the pressure and an Arduino circuit to read and process these values. In this way we can read many points of pressure in a precise way.
>
> The main challenge is joining several fields of Engineering, which is also one of the strongest motivations for me. I have broad experience in programming, I am confident of my capabilities in electronics and I have already verified that this material is the right one.
>
> There are mainly two fields where this technology could be very useful:
>
> * Medicine: For the people who are missing a limb, this could bring back a part of the sensibility, even if it's in a different format.
> * Robotics: relying on precise pressure sensors could improve greatly the accuracy of many of their functions.
>
> Would you accept me as a student to develop this project? Seeing your background I think that you might be interested.
>
> Thank you so much for your time,
>
> Francisco Presencia Fandos
The main feedback I've already gotten is that if I write the letter open to suggestions but not proposing a project it would be easier for the professors to accept me. Also, I'm thinking of writing my achievements so far, but I think they could look like bragging.
**Is this letter okay? Is this the right method for finding a professor in an university abroad?**
# Answer
For professors in Japan, taking on students is a tremendous responsibility and burden. Unlike in the United States or Europe, professors are responsible for even the extracurricular activities of students (i.e., getting arrested; showing up drunk and groping someone; having an apartment so messy that the landlord complains, etc.). They are also responsible for the student's career after they graduate.
So faculty are noticeably reticent to take anyone on that they do not know or that do not have anyone to vouch for them. It's in this context that letters of introduction from known faculty are extremely important.
This is very hard for outsiders to break into. Your best hope is that one of your professors knows somebody at U-Tokyo, or knows somebody who knows somebody at UTokyo. It's their letter of introduction that will open doors for you.
Cold-calling will not yield many good results.
Without a good letter of introduction, your next best strategy is to enroll in either a study-abroad program / exchange program with U-Tokyo that has open enrollment or to apply to one of their English-speaking graduate programs. Going through their international programs office tends to be much better as the staff are used to international norms for student applications. Unfortunately, most of these programs aren't in engineering, but at least it gets you a foot in the door.
---
Edit: From the discussion, it became clear that the OP has already enrolled into an engineering program at U-Tokyo that caters to foreigners. In this case, it's the program's responsibility to find him his advisor, as it is clear from their FAQ:
> "As an applicant for all courses, it is not necessary for you to contact a prospective supervisor in advance. Instead, after evaluating your application documents, we will allocate you to a field of study/faculty member which will be most appropriate for your research and research interests. "
> 10 votes
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Tags: university, professorship, collaboration, international, abroad
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thread-30331
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30331
|
Is the Cambridge Certificate of English accepted in US?
|
2014-10-21T19:13:14.153
|
# Question
Title: Is the Cambridge Certificate of English accepted in US?
According to CEF, CAE and CPE are the highest level possible. If I apply to some top US university/college, will they accept a certificate from Cambridge instead of TOEFL?
# Answer
> 10 votes
You should read the minimum requirements of the program at the university to which you are applying. Some universities only accept TOEFL, some other only accept IELTS, some universities accept both of these, and some universities accept those certificates like FCE, CAE or CPE as well as TOEFL or IELTS. (Some other universities also accept the English tests which are designed by themselves.)
I have seen some tables in which the minimum scores of each test is mentioned. For instance a university may accept a 7.0 of IELTS, 100 iBT (internet based TOEFL) and an A of FCE.
So the only advice I can give you is to check the minimum English language requirements of the university *and* the program you are applying.
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Tags: graduate-admissions, united-states, language-exams
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thread-30338
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30338
|
Is it impolite to ask a professor who was not my master's thesis advisor (but with similar research field) to help me to work on a research topic?
|
2014-10-21T22:08:59.040
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# Question
Title: Is it impolite to ask a professor who was not my master's thesis advisor (but with similar research field) to help me to work on a research topic?
I have finished my master's thesis and graduated from the university in which I used to study for my masters degree. Now I have two or three months free time and I am searching for a PhD position; in this period of time I want to work on research topic, I see two professors at that university, whose research fields are really interesting to me. Their research field is really near to that of my master's thesis advisor.
Is it considered impoliteness to my master's thesis advisor if I ask another professor in his department (with similar research field to him) to help me work on a research topic?
# Answer
> 6 votes
Not at all. You are not committed to doing your PhD with the same advisor. Even if you did want to work with the same advisor, he/she should encourage that you talk to others to hear out their ideas. I highly doubt your advisor would be offended to hear that you were interested in speaking to other professors about their research interests. After all, a PhD is a long road, and you need to be really happy with your advisor, and your work, to survive it.
In fact, I think it looks positive, even to your advisor, knowing that you have multiple options. I once had a job interview where, upon disclosing that I was also interviewing at other places, that "they would be worried if I wasn't".
# Answer
> 2 votes
No. You finished your master's. Therefore it is okay to work with a new group. In most situations it is okay to ask people to help you.
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Tags: research-process, professorship, etiquette, collaboration
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thread-30345
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30345
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Wanting to return to university, but I have a Master's degree. Funding options?
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2014-10-22T00:21:36.613
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# Question
Title: Wanting to return to university, but I have a Master's degree. Funding options?
My undergraduate is in Biology, I'm a US native.
I'm thinking about going back to school to study a more quantitative discipline like statistics or computer science.
Does anyone know of any scholarship websites, fellowships, or other ways to pay for school expenses?
Right now I'm looking at taking out more loans. If I work for the government, I'll qualify for their "Public Servant Loan Forgiveness" program which will help.
If anyone has been in my position please let me know how you managed to retrain while not owing your soul to Sallie Mae. Already having a graduate degree really hurts when it comes to finding financial aid.
Thanks in advance!
# Answer
> 3 votes
The only thing I can add to jakebeal's answer is that, it is generally only true for STEM *research* masters. Most coursework degrees, even in STEM, are not funded. It was unclear from your question whether you were thinking about doing a second masters with a research component, or just looking to get a coursework masters.
That said, if you are looking for a research masters, I agree with jakebeal. However, I don't know of any school or organization that will fund a coursework masters.
# Answer
> 2 votes
In the U.S., graduate education in a STEM field at a good university is typically funded by the university, not the student. In addition to your classes, you are expected to "work for your keep" as a research assistant or teaching assistant. In exchange, your tuition is covered and you are paid a stipend to cover (cheap) living expenses. Pretty much every Ph.D. program in a STEM field works this way. If you are only looking for a 2nd Masters' degree, it will depend on the institution.
# Answer
> 0 votes
Even in cases where you're not in a research college, you can sometimes find TA positions, which give you a small stipend and will comp some of your classes. Of course, you would have to show the department that you are capable of handling such classes, both in terms of workload and knowledge of the topic.
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Tags: funding, united-states, education, changing-fields
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thread-30367
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30367
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Can corresponding authors include their personal website to be contacted?
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2014-10-22T10:04:20.457
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# Question
Title: Can corresponding authors include their personal website to be contacted?
I wonder if corresponding authors in peer-reviewed publications can include their personal websites to be contacted besides their address, telephone and email.
In the case that the corresponding author is between two jobs, she/he can still be contacted in case her/his previous email account is deleted once her/his previous job has come to and end.
# Answer
Instead of including a personal website, why not just include a permanent e-mail address?
* Simplest would be just get a Gmail account (or any free webmail provider) for your work correspondence.
* If you want a more professional looking account, sometimes professional organizations can provide to dues-paying members e-mail forwarding services. For example, the American Mathematical Society offers precisely one such service.
* Also, if you have a personal website, maybe you can set up a mailbox under its domain that you use to receive work correspondence?
One other thing you can do is to sign-up for a digital researcher identification so that your publications are properly linked to each other. That way readers may be able to track down your more recent publications and find your contact info there.
---
But to the question you actually asked: I am sure it depends greatly on journal and publisher, so you are much better off asking them than us.
> 10 votes
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Tags: publications, website, correspondence
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thread-30296
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30296
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Is there a website that shows current research strides in several academic fields?
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2014-10-21T05:15:30.290
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# Question
Title: Is there a website that shows current research strides in several academic fields?
I am looking for some sort of website that shows/illustrates current research strides across several academic fields. It would be pretty cool if this existed as a interactive interface like google maps (e.g. one could click and drag into different research areas and zoom in and see which problems are getting solved). The interactive part seems unrealistic, but I would at least like to be able to see a list of topics (perhaps a word-cloud of recent research papers per academic field would be okay) per academic field.
Can anyone show me something similar to what I am looking for?
# Answer
> 2 votes
I would not normally say Reddit is a good tool, and may get downvoted for suggesting such a maddening thing, but /r/science aka The Reddit Journal of Science provides a surprisingly high-level view of science research that is considered interesting, while also fitting your requirement that it splits information by field (the entire right side is dedicated to individual fields).
For example, these are some of the top articles from the past month.
* Environment: NASA now says vast methane cloud over US southwest is for real
* Social Sciences: The secret to raising well behaved teens? Maximise their sleep: While paediatricians warn sleep deprivation can stack the deck against teenagers, a new study reveals youth’s irritability and laziness aren’t down to attitude problems but lack of sleep
* Health: Gut microbe found in people with eating disorders (bulimia, anorexia). Experiments show it produces a human hormone mimic that affects feeling of satisfaction, energy use, and mood. The severity of eating disorder symptoms is positively correlated with immune reaction to the mimic.
* Neuroscience: Scientists have found “hidden” brain activity that can indicate if a vegetative patient is aware
* Physics: Researchers have developed a new method for harvesting the energy carried by particles known as ‘dark’ spin-triplet excitons with close to 100% efficiency, clearing the way for hybrid solar cells which could far surpass current efficiency limits.
Obviously, you'll still have to do work of digging through potential garbage or low-quality sources and fact-checking. If it holds water, then you can dive into the related literature.
# Answer
> 1 votes
While not necessarily interdisciplinary, emerging research fronts from Thompson Reuters (the one of the Web of Knowledge) could be helpful. E.g. here is a PDF with list of 2013 research fronts. The idea is basically taht they keep track of the paper that are highly cited and keep gaining new citations faster than usual. I guess one should be able to filter (unfortunately probably by hand only) the ERFs that are multi- (or inter-) disciplinary in nature.
# Answer
> 0 votes
In principle, Microsoft academic search seems to fit your question. They have a list of research fields on the start page. You can then browse these fields by for example authors, keywords, or organizations, and find articles related to specific keywords. You can even interactively browse a coauthorship graph or citation graph.
Unfortunately, the database seems a bit outdated in parts. In my field, it seem's they didn't index any publications after 2012.
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Tags: research-process, website
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thread-30364
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30364
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How to deal with coauthors that have left academia
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2014-10-22T08:04:35.547
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# Question
Title: How to deal with coauthors that have left academia
Researchers might take different paths other than staying in academia after completing their PhD, postdoc or even later. This happens for a number of reasons. The most compelling of all is that there is not enough room for everyone, but it could happen that these people lose interest in research, find a good opportunity in the private sector, or (more often than we'd like) get burnt out.
For a typical researcher, there is a body of work that they have done and is susceptible to be published by people who they were collaborating with after they have left. However -beyond possible personal satisfaction- they do not have the motivation or time to publish this work anymore. This leads to poor communication between the authors that stay and the person that left, usually motivated by the latter not replying (perhaps reading) emails concerning the work or taking too long to do so. These people will usually be fine with having their names on a new publication even without the need to go through the manuscript before submission (this might also be true for reckless researchers in general, but that's another story...) because they might not be concerned about their (former) career in academia anymore.
How should this situation be dealt with? Is it ethical to submit a paper when a coauthor that left academia has not actively taken part in the preparation/proof reading of the manuscript, considering he/she has contributed significantly to the work?
# Answer
> 19 votes
First of all, it doesn't matter where, how, or even if a person is employed. Science can be done by anyone, anywhere, "academia" or not. Assuming the person has made significant contribution by the standards of your field, the only things that matter are:
1. Is it possible to contact them?
2. Do they want to be an author?
If they have contributed significantly and want to be an author, it is **dishonest** to not list them as an author. If they've dropped out of research entirely, you may find yourself doing the writing work without their help, but they still should be an author. If you can't contact them, err on the side of inclusion.
In fact, this is a place where I disagree with the letter of the Vancouver Protocol, which states that somebody can only be an author if they are significantly involved with preparation of the manuscript. The spirit of the Vancouver Protocol is to prevent "gift authorship" and other unethical types of inclusion. Imagine, however, writing an acknowledgement that says: "John Smith did all of the experimental work, but the long hours burned him out, so he left for a job at Netflix and we cut him out of the author list." To me, at least, this feels like denying credit inappropriately.
# Answer
> 7 votes
This is in fact very common especially after the PhD.
> How should this situation be dealt with?
First talk to the person. Does he want to be included? Does he want to be an author (possibly even the main author)? Or doesn't he want to have anything to do with it?
> Is it ethical to submit a paper when a coauthor that left academia has not actively taken part in the preparation/proof reading of the manuscript, considering he/she has contributed significantly to the work?
In my opinion it is ethical, as long as the coauthor is fine with the published work and the fact that he is a coauthor. In addition, anyone that is listed as a coauthor should have contributed in an extend that entitles him to be an author (which is very different in different fields).
If he says: I don't care, just leave my name on it and don't bother me anymore. Than, in my opinion, it is fine to just publish it on your own.
However, if he says: I want to be a part of it and then just vanishes it is another story.
# Answer
> 0 votes
> This leads to poor communication between the authors that stay and the person that left, usually motivated by the latter not replying (perhaps reading) emails concerning the work or taking too long to do so.
Then maybe it is time to think how this communication could be improved. My main idea would be to offer a answer mechanism that basically takes no effort at all. Make sure they know that all you really need is their permission to submit (see below).
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> has not actively taken part in the preparation/proof reading of the manuscript, considering he/she has contributed significantly to the work?
* There's no need that one has to change text or something like that in order to become a coauthor, and significant contribution to the work is given here. (Think of a coauthor who thoroughly reads the paper with the intention to improve it but decides that the text he got is fine as it is)
* But: All **coauthors must agree to the submission**. So IMHO the minimum communication you need to get is the coauthor's OK with the submission. Whether and to what extent they (proof)read the text or not is their decision. Usually, it is in their interest to read and know what is to be published under their name.
However, IMHO it is perfectly OK if the coauthor gives you a blank permission (i.e. they state they implicitly trust you wrt. the submission), the same as your signature under a contract is legal even if you *chose* not to read it before signing.
I'd somehow be inclined to do a phone call that explains that
* you need their decision whether they want to be named as coauthor,
* and if so, you need their permission to go ahead,
* but that it is up to them to decide how much further work they'll want to put in: they already delivered a substantial contribution.
Make clear that you'll email unasked the manuscript so the co-author can file it, but in the end all you need is the statement that they are fine with submitting it.
If you're afraid of loosing contact with someone who's about to leave, discuss the procedure while they're still at hand.
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Tags: publications, authorship
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thread-30372
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30372
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Working Experiences Sections in application systems of doctoral programs?
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2014-10-22T12:04:01.433
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# Question
Title: Working Experiences Sections in application systems of doctoral programs?
I am applying to doctoral programs and I am not sure if it is necessary to fill out the sections for working experiences.
The problem is that I have been always a full-time student up to now and, though my working experiences are many, all of them are part-time and intermittent. A job for two to three months, no job, another job for two to three months, no job, and so on. Moreover, it is very difficult for me to identify and list all the work places that I had been at their service.
Then what is the best strategy for me to tackle the sections of working experiences? Should I leave it blank or ...
# Answer
Write down everything you have done. Here in Germany you usually get an employer's reference even if you've just worked there for a short time. Hence you would know where and when you've worked. Also at least at university it is known that studies are a full time job so nobody expect that you've worked throughout your studies.
If you can't recall where you've worked that's a different problem. Try your best and if you come up with a decent amount/majority that should be good enough. Just don't underestimate the experience gained just by some work aside from your studies.
So **don't leave it blank** just try to fill it as good as possible.
> 1 votes
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Tags: phd, graduate-admissions, application
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thread-30357
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30357
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What should be included on the title page of a conference presentation
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2014-10-22T05:54:57.633
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# Question
Title: What should be included on the title page of a conference presentation
I am preparing slides for a conference.
And I struggled (a bit) for what to put on the title page.
I know the paper title is a must, maybe the conference name, place, date.
How about authors and affiliation?
Should I put all the authors name on the title page?
Or only the presenter?
How about if they are from different institute?
Should I put all the institute names on the first page?
# Answer
I usually include:
* Title of talk
* Name of presenter (me)
* Names of coauthors
* Date
* Name of conference
* Title of conference session (if applicable)
* City of conference
* My institution's name
* Maybe my institution's logo
I don't include the coauthors' affiliations.
> 5 votes
# Answer
> Should I put all the authors name on the title page?
Yes, of course, unless there are tens of authors (common in particle physics: I dunno how they handle it... maybe with a group photograph). You can then highlight the speaker's name.
> Should I put all the institute names on the first page?
Frequently, one puts institutes' logos instead.
> 2 votes
# Answer
To answer from a slightly different perspective: As somebody *watching* the presentation, I would like to see the following:
* A title (if possible, one that reflects what you're actually going to talk about, rather than what you thought you would be talking about a year ago when you submitted the abstract ;-))
* The authors' names and affiliations. Make it clear who is speaking, in case I don't know you personally.
* An email address for queries (put it at the end as well, but if it's at both ends there's a stronger chance that it'll remain up for long enough to note it down)
Try to resist the urge to turn it into a dense mass of extraneous information and logos. Do not include the following unless you have to:
* The name or city of the conference
* The date
* Funders' logos
If I am at a conference I *know* where I am. Unless it's been a very long and tiring conference I probably know the date as well. These things may be useful metadata for archival purposes, but it isn't needed by the audience - so put them in small grey text somewhere on the slide, invisible (or at least not attention-grabbing) from a distance.
Similarly, if I'm watching your presentation I probably care about the research, and maybe who did it - not who funded it. Don't include funders logos on the title page unless required to do so; instead, put them on an acknowledgements slide at the end, with anybody else that you owe acknowledgements to.
> 1 votes
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Tags: conference, presentation
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thread-30306
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30306
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Are researchers permitted to mislead subjects about the purpose of a trial?
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2014-10-21T12:54:33.753
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# Question
Title: Are researchers permitted to mislead subjects about the purpose of a trial?
I think much research would not be very successful if the subjects knew the purpose of the research. When researchers gather human subjects for a trial, can they provide the subjects with misleading information about the purpose of the trial?
# Answer
Standard 8: Research and Publication of the "Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct" of the American Psychological Association pertains. Specifically:
> **8.07 Deception in Research**
>
> (a) Psychologists do not conduct a study involving deception unless they have determined that the use of deceptive techniques is justified by the study's significant prospective scientific, educational or applied value and that effective nondeceptive alternative procedures are not feasible.
>
> (b) Psychologists do not deceive prospective participants about research that is reasonably expected to cause physical pain or severe emotional distress.
>
> (c) Psychologists explain any deception that is an integral feature of the design and conduct of an experiment to participants as early as is feasible, preferably at the conclusion of their participation, but no later than at the conclusion of the data collection, and permit participants to withdraw their data. (See also Standard 8.08, Debriefing.)
Whether or not a planned study satisfies these requirements is for the Institutional Review Board to decide, which must review every proposed study before it starts.
> 32 votes
# Answer
I recently participated as a volunteer subject in a psychological experiment, where it turned out that the experimenter had deceived me about the main purpose. At the end of the experiment, she told me about the deception, and offered to show me the paperwork from the ethical review board that had approved it. This was in the UK, and I presume that it was all in accordance with the standard UK rules. For me the experience was quite interesting, but it could have been upsetting for people with a particular (and uncommon) set of life experiences. However, it seemed clear that that kind of issue had been carefully considered by the review board.
> 4 votes
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Tags: research-process, ethics
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thread-30343
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30343
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What procedures should I follow if my preprint is stolen and published in a journal?
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2014-10-21T23:50:04.963
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# Question
Title: What procedures should I follow if my preprint is stolen and published in a journal?
I am surprised by the fact that a journal published an article that I have had in arXiv for a few months. The date of publication is after the date that I posted on arXiv. The submission date in the journal is not mentioned. What procedures I should follow?
Some information to clarify the situation:
* The article published in the journal is a total plagiarism. They changed only the name of the title.
* The article is published in a journal in the name of other authors.
* My article (that is in arXiv) is already accepted in another journal (but not yet online) and the date of acceptance is before the date of publication of that of the other authors.
# Answer
> 39 votes
I believe the first thing you need to do is to **contact and email the editor in chief** of that journal and give him/her a link to your arxiv paper.
He/She a long with the editorial board have to *retract* the article (hopefully, with a big red X stating that the authors have plagiarised citing your arxiv work).
# Answer
> 3 votes
# Copyright Status
Perhaps you gave away your copyright.
Review your copyright status on arXiv. Copyright status can vary as described here including public domain.
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Tags: publications, journals, plagiarism, preprint, research-misconduct
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thread-30390
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30390
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How are letters of recommendation handled when they come from a member of the admissions committee?
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2014-10-22T20:13:49.773
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# Question
Title: How are letters of recommendation handled when they come from a member of the admissions committee?
I've asked three professors from the school I did my undergraduate studies at to write letters of recommendation for me. However, one of the schools I'm applying to is that same school.
In other words, lets say I went to Harvard as an undergraduate, asked three Harvard professors for letters, and then applied to Harvard's graduate program.
It seems kind of weird to me that my letter writers will review the letters they wrote for me as part of the committee review of my application. And I know at least two of them are for sure on the committee, the third I'm not sure about.
Undoubtedly, this is something that happens all the time, but I was curious how this situation is handled by the committee.
Of course, there are more committee members than the three who wrote recommendation letters for me who don't know me as a student as well, so it gives them a chance to learn about me.
I'm just wondering how this influences their decision, or, rather, how they can prevent it from influencing them too much. I know being accepted won't be a guaranteed thing, but how can you not accept someone that you yourself have recommended?
# Answer
I've seen this situation. In our department all faculty vote on admission decisions (we don't have a separate committee that is delegated to make these decisions.) The faculty who have written recommendations have typically argued in favor of admitting the students they've written recommendation letters for, but it would also not be surprising if a faculty member who recommended a student felt that other candidates were better qualified when it came time to make final decisions.
It's one thing to say "I think student A is well qualified for our graduate program and a TA." This is not inconsistent with "After reviewing all of the candidates, I feel that students B and C (with BS degrees from elsewhere) are the most deserving of the two available TA slots." or even "After discussion with other faculty members, and reading all of the recommendation letters, I've agreed that student A should not be admitted to the program."
It's important to understand that these are group decisions, and that faculty committees often operate by discussion and consensus rather than by simple vote counting- a lot can happen during such a discussion.
As an applicant, there really isn't anything that you can do about this- the faculty in the department will deal with it as they choose.
> 5 votes
# Answer
I don't see that there necessarily is a conflict of interest here. As a letter writer, the faculty member's job is to describe you and your qualifications. As a committee member, they are trying to evaluate your qualifications. Why are these two in conflict? I've been on a few such committees, and if there is a committee member who knows a particular applicant through a course or some other means, we have always listened to what that member has to say in order to augment our understanding of who the candidate is. (I gather that in some situations there are stricter rules about what criteria may be used to evaluate candidates.)
> 4 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, recommendation-letter, conflict-of-interest
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thread-30396
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30396
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What to do when a former supervisor keeps contacting my current supervisor as a way to pressure me to publish my Master's thesis?
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2014-10-22T23:19:24.790
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# Question
Title: What to do when a former supervisor keeps contacting my current supervisor as a way to pressure me to publish my Master's thesis?
I'm all for publishing my own work of course. Since I have coursework and new projects during the semester I have temporarily put aside my manuscript and I have communicated with the former (Master's) supervisor about this. But now she kept contacting my current PhD supervisor and he in turn has written to me a few times regarding this matter.
I feel my former supervisor's behaviour is quite innappropriate and this is the third time she does this. There have been two very similar instances previously--her asking my PhD supervisor whether I could depart later than my planned date to start my PhD program; then about two weeks before the final thesis submission, she contacted my PhD supervisor while I hesitated to let her use my thesis for grant application--both times behind my back with me only learning what she did from my PhD supervisor. I called her the second time she did this asking her very politely not to do such a thing again and hoping to remain on good terms. She agreed. But now this happens again........
What can I do to stop her from doing this? While not having my relationship with the current supervisor damaged but also I guess not having to be coerced into doing what she wants?
Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated!
# Answer
> 17 votes
One thing you should understand is that in this crazy world, she may benefit from having your thesis published more than you, especially if she is currently under considerations for reappointment or promotion, so don't be too hard on her: rather blame the entire screwed up evaluation system in academia that has made much stronger people panic and do ridiculous things.
With all that said, the usual advice applies: be firm but polite and show some good will. Think of when you can realistically finish the job (it is in your own best interests to finish it *eventually* regardless of anything), and tell the plan to your current adviser. That should settle your scores with him and, most likely, he'll no longer bother you with that anymore. If you want, you can tell the target date to your former adviser as well.
Don't forget to give yourself some leeway, so that you can keep your word no matter what. Remember that promising less than one expects from you won't hurt your reputation, but failing to keep your promise will.
# Answer
> 1 votes
First of all, good on you for taking a calm approach, particularly when you asked her stop directly. However, her persistent actions, especially after you have asked her politely and directly to stop is bordering on harassment. Not only that, she is undermining you with your present supervisor.
A good course of action I can suggest is to firstly speak with your current supervisor about the situation, your concerns and especially the recent event. Depending on what your current supervisor and you come up with, you could consider a discrete message to your former supervisor's Dean, asking for their assistance in this matter - particularly with her going behind your back.
However, in saying this, negotiate and stick to a timetable to have the manuscript completed - ensuring that your time constraints are also considered. It may be a good idea to have your current supervisor help with this, as it coincides with your current research.
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Tags: publications, advisor, interpersonal-issues, supervision
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thread-30377
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30377
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As an inexperienced/unknown recommendation letter writer, what should I do to make my letter stand out?
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2014-10-22T13:42:21.630
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# Question
Title: As an inexperienced/unknown recommendation letter writer, what should I do to make my letter stand out?
It is generally acknowledged that one should try to get recommendation letters (for grad school, jobs, etc.) from well-known experienced members of your field, if at all possible (for e.g. see some of the answers to this related question: Do letters of recommendation typically include a biography of the writer?). Of course, sometimes this is not possible.
I am a first-year postdoc (in mathematics, but perhaps this is not relevant), and a masters student in the graduate-level class I am currently teaching approached me to write a letter for them when they apply for PhD programs. I am a natural person to write a letter for them since they are interested in the field that I teach (topology) and I'm teaching one of the three courses they are taking (since application deadlines are quite soon, they won't have taken any other courses here before applying). Of course, I am also a poor choice (which I mentioned to them) as a relatively unknown person with little experience.
While it makes sense to me that recommendation letters from senior research-focused faculty are worth more (since they have greater experience interacting with graduate/soon-to-be-graduate students), there are a fair number of students from relatively obscure 4-year universities who apply to graduate school. They might not have had any access to senior research-focused faculty.
> What are some things I should keep in mind when writing a recommendation letter for graduate admissions as a new entrant to my field, or perhaps as an instructor at a relatively obscure primarily teaching-focused school?
Statements like 'they are in the top 7 of all graduate students I've ever taught' carry little weight, since I've only ever taught 7! For what it's worth, the student in question is doing quite well, and my goal is to write a well-deserved relatively glowing letter; I would like to make sure, as much as I can, that my letter is not ignored.
# Answer
> 13 votes
My advice is to start your letter by explaining who you are and your background. For example, you could mention where you went to graduate school and that you think the student could succeed in that graduate program. This will give the reader a sense that you have some idea of what will be expected of the student in graduate school.
Beyond that, you should focus on the same things that more experienced letter writers do.
You need to explain how you know the applicant and give the reader some sense that you've had enough interaction with the student to be able to judge their chances of success. Simply having had a student in a large class isn't really enough here. On the other hand, "I was Johnny's instructor in a senior level topology class with 12 students. Johnny frequently met with me during office hours to ask questions about aspects of the subject that we were not able to cover in class." tells me that you have had many discussions with the student and really know the student well.
You should comment on both the applicant's intellectual ability and their work habits. Ideally, we want applicants who are smart and work hard. An applicant who isn't very smart but smart enough and who works very hard might be a good candidate for admission to a master's program but might be a very poor choice for a PhD program. An applicant who is brilliant but lazy might start to work harder in graduate school and could turn out to be really successful. Some faculty are willing to take a chance on brilliant but lazy students.
You should talk about the applicant's personality and how they get along with other students and faculty members. No one wants to work with a student who is not fun to be around because they're argumentative or depressed all the time.
You should talk about the applicant's communication skills (both writing and oral presentations) and in mathematics you should comment specifically about their ability to write mathematical proofs.
If it's relevant (and it would be for any area of applied mathematics) you should comment on the applicant's computing skills. What languages and specialized packages have they used in their work with you? Have they been able to produce programs of any substantial size?
You should check that what you've written matches up with the student's transcript and their statement of purpose. For example, don't say that they're one of your top 5% students if their GPA is 3.0. Don't say that Johnny would be a great master's student if he's applying to a PhD program. If the "story" told by the applicant's application file isn't consistent, then I'll be much less likely to admit a student.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Providing an anecdote about your interaction with the student which highlights his or her competencies will make your letter stand out, as well as making your letter more readable.
Choose an anecdote that will resonate with the desires of the reader - in this case, finding an articulate, self-motivated and talented researcher.
Far from being inappropriate for reasons of formality, a properly constructed and relevant anecdote about the student will speak volumes to the reader.
"Alex came to me with a particular problem he was facing in understanding elliptical functions. I wasn't able to help him greatly at the time - as it was grant-writing season -- but I suggested that he review Walker et al on the topic and we would discuss it more fully later. Alex returned having not only read Walker, but had downloaded the relevant open-source codes and had made a start on amending them to his problem, solving his original problem and actually identifying a serious flaw in the code which he had started to address".
(Completely fictional. I don't even know what an elliptical function is. Or if there is, indeed, a Walker et al. on the topic.)
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Tags: graduate-admissions, job-search, recommendation-letter
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thread-30394
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30394
|
Should I index all the specific terms which are included in appendix?
|
2014-10-22T22:18:46.287
|
# Question
Title: Should I index all the specific terms which are included in appendix?
I am writing my master thesis (Mathematics field) and I would like to know if I should index all the specific terms which are included in appendix.
Is it necessary?
# Answer
Institutions that I am aware of generally do not require an index because building a good, useful index is very difficult. Also, these days people will typically just search for terms in a document rather than looking them up in an index.
The question that I would ask instead is: what is the value that you are trying to get from an index, and is there a better way to get it? In heavily mathematical documents, I find it very valuable when the author includes somewhere a table of symbols and/or terms, which I can refer to when I'm wading through equations and trying to remember what on Earth v-prime-double-hat and w-double-prime actually mean. I especially appreciate this when I am the author, and I need to look back at the document a few months later after my brain has flushed its cache.
So if you want your thesis to be accessible to readers, I strongly recommend adding tables of symbols/etc. As to where: you can put them anywhere you want. I personally prefer sticking the table right at the beginning of the first place where the symbols start to show up in earnest, both as being most proximate to the need and as a warning sign to the reader indicating heavy going ahead.
> 1 votes
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Tags: thesis
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thread-30356
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30356
|
Intent behind Recommendation Letter requirement?
|
2014-10-22T05:40:13.697
|
# Question
Title: Intent behind Recommendation Letter requirement?
What is the inherent idea of having a recommendation letter/ "letter of reference" requirement in academia, especially while applying to grad schools?
I understand that if the person giving the recommendation letter is a bigshot or even fairly well-known, people would be ready to take his word regarding the applicant's caliber.
However, if the person recommending is previously unknown to the university you are applying to (of course, they may use Google to dig up some information, or they may not want to), what weightage does his word carry? If I am on the other side, I won't be inclined to trust the judgement of a person whom I don't know. What I would want to do is to judge the caliber of the applicant for myself, but that's a separate issue altogether. (Judge yourself, or trust some metrics...)
Now, in general, if "*the other side*" is a decent enough university, it will have applications coming from all parts of the world. Then, situation no. 2 (above) is more likely than situation no. 1. So, **what is the intent of having a recommendation letter requirement** in the second case?
# Answer
> 5 votes
I agree with BrenBarn, but perhaps it will be useful to express things slightly differently.
To understand the purpose of letters of recommendation, it's important to think about the context. In my experience, the default assessment for a graduate school application is "not enough information" or "insufficiently compelling case." Most of the time, a rejection doesn't mean the committee felt there was enough evidence to prove the applicant was unworthy (although it can mean that for particularly bad applications). Instead, there just wasn't enough to justify admitting this applicant rather than the competition.
For example, grades are not very useful. The ceiling is low, the standards are inconsistent, and in any case getting good grades is a quite different skill from doing good research. Undergraduate research can be a more useful indicator, but it's still pretty limited. Some students have much better access to high-quality research opportunities than others do, so it's hardly a fair comparison. Plus many undergraduate research papers consist of straightforward work on specialized problems, done with considerable guidance and under some time pressure. That's a little closer to professional research than classwork is, but still not so close.
So the basic setting is that admissions committees are desperate for information. Judging research potential is really difficult, and it's at best loosely correlated with most of the hard data in graduate school applications. This is the context for letters of recommendation. If you have interacted closely with the applicant on a substantial undertaking in this field over a period of months or years, then you are in an excellent position to judge their suitability for graduate school. If you can convey this information to the admissions committee in a trustworthy and reliable way, then it can be far more valuable than anything else in the application.
Of course not all letters are useful. A letter saying "Joe got an A in my course" reveals nothing beyond what the committee could have learned from the transcript. More depressingly, some letter writers say substantive things but are not in a position to do so compellingly. If you are completely unknown to the committee, with no reputation or track record of prior students, then your letter will carry less weight (and even less if you don't at least have the excuse of being young).
This isn't as much of a problem as you might guess. Many people in the field have a reputation, even if they have never met anyone on the admissions committee, and they have an incentive not to hurt that reputation by writing foolish or biased letters. If necessary, someone on the committee can get in touch with them to ask further questions. Plus there are all sorts of opportunities for consistency checks (for example, if someone repeatedly says each year's top student is the best in years, that will be noticed).
However, there's still a genuine problem. A small fraction of applicants just aren't in a position to get compelling letters of recommendation, no matter how talented they are. They are going to be rejected through no fault of their own.
That's a sad outcome, but it seems to be unavoidable. If we had a more reliable way to judge research potential, we would eagerly use it. The point of letters isn't that they always help with the decision, but rather that they often help. When they don't help, the application joins the pile of rejections due to lack of information.
For comparison, one of the comments reads:
> Now, ideal case, if A=B in ability, two possibilities arise - (1) If recommendation letter matters, then A gets picked over B (which is not fair),
Indeed, it's not fair, but it's impossible to gather enough information to make fair and reliable judgments in every case. Ultimately, the admissions committee has to accept that some wonderful applicants will be rejected because they couldn't prove how wonderful they were. (Not using letters of recommendation would reduce this type of unfairness, but at the cost of greatly reducing the information available to make good decisions in the other cases. It would amount to partially randomizing the decisions, which would not be in the department's best interests.)
To put it rather starkly, fairness is not the admissions committee's primary goal. Instead, the primary goal is to admit as strong an incoming class as possible. Letters of recommendation greatly help on average in achieving that goal, at the cost of disadvantaging certain applicants. This is a price departments are willing to pay.
# Answer
> 10 votes
At a minimum, a letter of recommendation is no worse than, say, a Yelp review. The person who rated Joe's Hamburger Shack 5 stars is a total stranger to you, but knowing that that person liked it is still more data than you previously had about how good the place is.
For a grad school application, there are few sources of concrete information. Hard data like grades, GPA, and GRE scores cover only a fraction of the relevant qualities of each applicant. It can certainly help if the admissions committee knows the recommender, but even if they don't, the mere fact that that the applicant is considered qualified by an active researcher at an accredited instituion is a significant gain over the other information available in the application.
Also, as Nate Eldredge mentioned in a comment, a good letter will not just state the belief that the applicant is qualified, but will give reasons. These reasons, again, come from a person who is presumed qualified to evaluate them, and are therefore more valuable.
It is true that if not only the recommender but also their institution is totally unknown to the committee (e.g., a recommendation from Prof. John Doe at East Podunk Community College), the information may not be helpful, and could even be viewed skeptically. But I don't think this is a common case. Even if no one on the faculty personally knows or has collaborated with any professors at, say, Harvard, you can bet that it means something to have a Harvard professor recommend someone. Although that's an extreme case, the same principle applies to other schools in varying degrees: even knowing that the school exists goes some way towards establishing credibility.
How much weight these are or should be given is debatable, but there is simply no other way to get the information in recommendation letters, namely a qualified professional's judgment of the applicant's quality. It may indeed be that in some cases the committee views the letters as unhelpful because they are too vague, but if many letters are informative, then vague letters are already "bad" in comparison, and provide a means of winnowing the applicant pool. Even in a hypothetical case in which only a few letters were helpful, the school doesn't really stand to lose anything by having them, and stands to gain useful insight that they can't get any other way.
Also, I would be interested to see some numbers on how often the admissions committee really does not know and has never heard of any of the people writing the letters. An important thing to consider is that in many cases one or more of the letter writers will have been consulted by the applicant to get advice on where to apply. Thus, there can be a self-selection process at work: professors know professors at other institutions, thus they advise their students to apply there, and then they write a letter of recommendation. I would guess that this significantly increases the likelihood that some of the letter writers will be known to the admissions committee. In effect, the same people are not only recommending the applicant to the school, but recommending the school to the applicant (by suggesting that they apply there).
A little edit: Based on your comments, it seems you are also worried about situations where, e.g., the letter writer is "biased" towards recommending the applicant. There are two responses to this: one is that everyone knows that. The recommender wouldn't be writing the letter if he were biased *against* the applicant. The recommendation is not supposed to be "impartial" in the sense that it mechnically assesses some attributes of the applicant. It's just supposed to be the honest opinion of a real person who interacted with the applicant in a real academic context.
More generally, there is simply no getting around the fact that virtually everything in academia operates on trust. When you submit an article to a journal, the editor has no way of knowing whether you plagiarized the text, falsified the data, etc. When you apply for a job and list dozens of publications on your CV, the search committee probably does not look up every single one ot make sure it really exists. For better or for worse, academic procedures are built on the notion of receiving "credentials" that indicate you are to be trusted. When someone receives a letter signed "Prof. John Doe, XYZ University", they assume that Prof. John Doe really is a professor at XYZ University. It is of course possible to fabricate such credentials, but to handle that problem would require a complete overhaul of academia. The basic reason people trust a letter-writer is because academics trust each other not to tell brazen lies about who they are, where they work, etc. They understand that the recommender may not be totally objective in his or her assessment of the candidate, but they nonetheless assume that the assessment is made in good faith by a qualified judge; that's all that matters.
# Answer
> 1 votes
I wholly agree with @BrenBarn's answer.
From the comments it seems clear that the question is also suggesting that there is a bias for a faculty member to write a good letter in the interest of the student over the interest of the other department. I would like to argue that this is faulty reasoning (even if it happens). I think this amounts to a little bit of game theory.
At the outset, we assume a faculty member has no relationship with the department s/he is writing the letter to. Assuming the faculty member writes a compelling letter, it may get noticed and there is some chance that that letter will lead to the acceptance of the student.
If the student is accepted and performs well, the faculty member's word will be more valued by the department during the next round of selecting PhD students and the faculty member may receive an email saying "Send us more students like Joe- he's done really well in our program" as per @Brian Borchers' comments. If the student is a flake, the faculty member's word is now (what is the word?).
This means that the next time that faculty writes a letter to that department it will be dismissed, even if it is compelling. Moreover, this may reduce the stature of the faculty member's entire department in the eyes of the other department.
So, in the end, I guess my answer is that to some extent faculty letters can establish a relationship between different departments. To the extent that they do, such letters are valuable.
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Tags: graduate-admissions, recommendation-letter
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thread-30416
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30416
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Plural or singular in CV section titles?
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2014-10-23T07:03:24.570
|
# Question
Title: Plural or singular in CV section titles?
In a CV for graduate school application, should one use **plural or singular for the section titles**? My main confusions are at
1. Research Experience or Research Experience**s**
2. Publication or Publication**s** (more than one paper listed)
3. Education or Education**s** (two universities listed)
4. Honor & Award or Honor**s** & Award**s** (more than one award listed)
# Answer
> 12 votes
There is no general answer, I'll answer for the specific cases:
1. Research Experience (singular)
2. Publications (plural), or "List of Publications"
3. Education (singular). A better term is "Academic Record" IMO.
4. Honors and Awards (plural)
In points 2 and 4, going for plural makes sense because there is more than one publication and more than one award involved. In pt. 3 there may be more than 1 institution involved, but it doesn't say "institutions", it says "education", which means sum total of everything you obtained by going in these institutions. In point no. 1 also, the phrase "research experience" talks about all the research you have done in your academic career. "Experiences" would refer to the experiences you had during the course of your research. That's not what they are asking for!
Hope that helps :)
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Tags: cv, grammar
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thread-30391
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30391
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Could research data fall under the Freedom of Information Act?
|
2014-10-22T20:29:14.633
|
# Question
Title: Could research data fall under the Freedom of Information Act?
When I refer to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) I mean either the federal act or similarly implemented state laws. Clearly the validity of such requests would have to be limited to institutions which have received government aid in at least some way. In addition, there is the argument that such data could be considered a trade secret, as is the case in Mississippi.
However, the case in Mississippi is meant to protect findings themselves rather than raw data. In addition, there are many cases in which the data itself could be considered to have been public information to begin with, as is the case in archaeological excavation.
Some institutions already have an open data policy, such as PLOS, which requires all data relevant to a paper to be published:
> PLOS strongly believes that, to best foster scientific progress, the underlying data from an article should be made freely available for researchers to use, wherever this is legal and ethical. Data availability allows validation, replication, reanalysis, new analysis, reinterpretation, or inclusion into meta-analyses, facilitates reproducibility of research and extends the value of the investment made in funding scientific research. Thus, PLOS believes that ensuring access to the underlying data should be an intrinsic part of the scientific publishing process. Furthermore, by getting data into the right place on publication we can reduce the burden on authors in unearthing old data, retaining old hard drives and answering email requests.
This is, at least in part, a purpose of FOIA: verification of claims. So based on the letter of the law, would such a FOIA request be considered valid and assuming the institution simply rejects the request, would there be legal recourse?
# Answer
The original Freedom of Information Act applied only to information in the possession of government agencies. That means that the release of reports and proposals submitted to the funding agency could be compelled under the FOIA. But it did not apply to data from the research, if in possession of the PI and not the funding agency (as is typically the case).
A later amendment (Shelby amendment) expanded the FOIA to apply to *some* federally funded research data in the possession of a non-profit institution, as follows:
* The release of "research data relating to published research findings produced under an award *that were used by the Federal Government in developing an agency action that has the force and effect of law*" may be compelled under the FOIA, *if*
* the data is not "trade secrets, commercial information, materials necessary to be held confidential by a researcher until they are published, or similar information which is protected under law."
Also, the requestor may be charged a "reasonable fee equaling the full incremental cost of the agency, the recipient, and applicable subrecipients."
So the general answer to your question is that **in most cases, the FOIA does not compel the release of data from federally funded research.**
Regarding state law, it seems from the appendix to this report mentioned in another answer that at least one state does have an open records statute that may apply to research data produced by employees of the state university system:
> "Measuring Reproducibility in Computer Systems Research." Christian Collberg, Todd Proebsting, Gina Moraila, Akash Shankaran, Zuoming Shi, Alex M Warren. March 21, 2014.
> 9 votes
# Answer
Yes, it could. "Could" is a very broad word. Keep in mind that FOIA applies only to executive branch government agencies and has nine exemptions. Additional laws apply in particular states and in other countries. As other commenters pointed out, this is not legal advice and you should consult a lawyer.
http://www.foia.gov/ also see Wikipedia.
> 0 votes
# Answer
**First:** If you are seriously concerned about this, you should consult with a lawyer. Period. Only lawyers can give legal advice, and you shouldn't call others unhelpful if they point this out. By the way, academic institutes and universities can really kick your balls if they think you hurt their trade secrets even if you done it with good will. There are examples about people who got jailtime esp if it was something patent related. So err on the safe side if you are not sure what data you should share.
**Second:** ".. the underlying data from an article should be made freely available for researchers to use, wherever this is legal and ethical. Data availability allows validation, replication, reanalysis, new analysis, reinterpretation, or inclusion into meta-analyses, facilitates reproducibility of research and extends the value of the investment made in funding scientific research."
or from PLOS:
"PLOS defines the “minimal dataset” to consist of the dataset used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript with related metadata and methods, and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety."
It sounds nice and fluffy, but technically speaking all this hold for present publications, too. Off course, no one publishes every single experimental results, but any data that needed for replication, validation etc should be part of your publication. Results without reproducibility are useless in science, even if reality is a little bitter. I guess these policies are coming to push people a little more in the direction.
> 0 votes
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Tags: research-process, united-states, data, legal-issues
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thread-30415
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30415
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What are the pros and cons of being a Mathematical Reviews' reviewer?
|
2014-10-23T06:39:56.417
|
# Question
Title: What are the pros and cons of being a Mathematical Reviews' reviewer?
I received a letter from Mathematical Reviews inviting me to be a reviewer. Before I make my decision, may I ask what are the possible advantages and/or disadvantages of being a reviewer?
# Answer
For background, MathReviews are reviews written by mathematicians of published mathematical papers and typically describe the content of the paper. Such reviews are available on the online database MathSciNet.
Here are some reasons to do it
* Writing reviews forces you to read some papers that are not in the focal point of your interests. Since there is no decision to take, I find it less time-consuming and stress-generating than refereeing a paper.
* A good review is a service to the mathematical community: it allows mathematicians to find relevant papers and decide wether a paper is worth searching for and/or reading.
* You get paid $8 for each review that you can use to buy books from the American Mathematical Society.
* Your name might appear in MathSciNet as a reviewer next to some nice authors and nice papers ;-)
Here are some reasons not do it:
* Reading a paper and writing a review takes time.
* You are not anonymous. If you are not careful enough in writing your review, you might upset some authors.
Here are some tips to have a good experience:
* You can set up a limit of the number of papers that you accept to have at once. Set it a reasonable level for your workload.
* Choose carefully the AMS classifications that you are interested in. A poor choice can lead you in reviewing papers that do not interest you. (Afterwards, if you receive many uninteresting paper, you should consider mentioning that you are not interested in their AMS classification.)
* Reviewing a book takes much time. Think carefully about it when asked.
> 30 votes
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Tags: mathematics, peer-review, review-databases
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thread-30414
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30414
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What is the best way to start learning a new course?
|
2014-10-23T06:28:59.013
|
# Question
Title: What is the best way to start learning a new course?
For learning new courses by one's self is it better
* to read the related text
* to attend online courses such as from sites like Coursera
* to combine the two
* or use another method altogether
In general, which is the better strategy for a motivated adult learner who is entering a new area?
# Answer
There isn't any wrong way to cover course material, but different approaches may be more or less effective for learning. However, it is difficult for a stranger to give you definitive advice, since what works best for you may not be the same as what has worked in the past for other students. At the same time, certain learning styles or strategies seem to be effective for a large number of students.
---
My advice if you want to **start** learning on your own in a *new subject area* is the following, in roughly this order:
1. Read. Take advantage of textbooks, lecture notes & slides, and articles that cover your subject of interest. You shouldn't expect to understand everything, but you should continue reading and re-reading material as you gain more understanding of the subject.
2. Search for and learn about resources and tools related to your subject of interest. What do other students, teachers, or experts on this subject use or rely on? This should lead to more reading, which will give you more perspective on the subject.
3. Try to find things that link the new material to thing you know and understand. Look for analogies, similarities, and differences.
4. Keep track of your questions--questions raised by your reading, questions that arise from new ideas that challenge your perspectives or understanding of basic principles. Try to find answers to your questions; seek advice from people (or forums attended by knowledgeable people) to explore solutions to your questions.
> 2 votes
# Answer
There is no best way to learn a new course, some people better learn by attending classes and some other better learn by reading textbooks and reviewing lecture-notes and pamphlets. I know a person from my bachelors degree who did not used to come to classes. He just used to photocopy the lecture notes and read them before the exams. On the other hand, I used to always attend the classes and did not miss even one minute of them.
In order to learning a new subject, these come to my mind; but I think you should examine each and choose the best way which suits your own learning habits.
1. Attend some physical classes. Take notes and do the assignments. However, if you are not registering for the course, talk to the lecturer before the class.
2. Register for open course-wares and do online learning.
3. Search for the best textbooks in that course and try to read them.
4. Ask a friend who can help you in that course to teach you one or two hours a week. One of my friends asked his friend to teach him an engineering software two to three hours a week and now he can easily work with that software.
5. Group study with friend(s) who are learning that course, try to solve each other problems. This may also help you better stick to the course. People sometimes get bored when they self-study a topic.
However, depending on the level of the course you may need to choose wisely. If you are aiming to learn a post-graduate course, you may also need to read some papers and discuss your problems with a professor specializing in that branch of science, while some of the under-graduate courses do not always require to talk to a professor. You can ask your questions from a teaching-assistant, a friend with high marks in that course or even discuss with a friend who is also learning that course, or even ask your questions in a related online question and answer website or forum.
> 2 votes
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Tags: online-learning, learning
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thread-30423
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30423
|
Are references with indication of page number uncommon in computer science?
|
2014-10-23T12:37:57.760
|
# Question
Title: Are references with indication of page number uncommon in computer science?
I am writing a computer science paper in which I cite several lengthy sources (text books and standard specifications). Whenever I cite such a source, I add the page numbers of the subsection to which I refer, e.g.:
> Bla bla is considered very important \[52, pp. 210-214\].
One of the reviewers of the paper remarks the following:
> Do not use references with indication of page numbers (e.g., \[52, pp. 210-214\]), this is very uncommon.
*Is this really true (in computer science)?*
*Am I wrong to include the page numbers in the reference?*
The reference in question is a 400+ page book that broadly covers a whole subject area and I thought knowing which pages I actually refer to might help the reader. There are several other (and longer) sources, such as technical standards, which I cite in the same fashion.
# Answer
Many computer science venues are fairly picky about their citation styles and also use highly abbreviated citation styles that don't give any option for including additional information like a page number.
If page numbers are critical to your citation, then you have two options for how to include them while conforming to the required style:
1. If you only use one narrow set of pages in the book, use an "in-book" style citation (@inbook in BibTeX) that includes the page numbers in the reference.
2. Alternately, or if you refer to more than one set of pages, you can include the pages in the text rather than the citation:
> Bla bla is considered very important, as described on page 210--214 of \[52\].
> 8 votes
# Answer
Specifying which part of a long book or article you are referring to in your citation is a sound practice, but in general section, theorem or equation numbers are more common than page numbers for this task: \[52, Section 3.5\] or \[52, Equation 3.23\] rather than \[52, Page 132-134\].
Personally I use page numbers only as a last resource where nothing else is available: that is, when the section or equation I want to refer to does not have a number of its own.
I do not have a compelling reason for this, if not that section numbers are more robust to minor pagination changes, but this is the behaviour that I have seen more commonly.
> 13 votes
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Tags: citations, writing, computer-science
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thread-30436
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30436
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What are books and websites I should look at before trying to write a grant?
|
2014-10-23T16:58:43.130
|
# Question
Title: What are books and websites I should look at before trying to write a grant?
I am an undergraduate currently involved with a local arts nonprofit, and the folks in charge would like to write grants and proposals to the colleges in town for cooperating on an after-school program. What should I read to find:
* Organizations I should be in touch with which offer grants
* General guidelines/requirements for a successful proposal?
Also: How do I find somebody in my school or elsewhere whom I could ask to review my grants before I submit them?
# Answer
The form of a successful proposal varies wildly from organization to organization and often also within different programs in an organization. Many grant organizations thus provide "model grants" or "writing guides" somewhere on their website that you can look at to see what they are looking for (they aren't interested in wasting their time either). See, for example the NSF's grant-writing guide.
Government organizations also generally allow you to search a database of previous grant recipients: you can look for some who are close to your area (thematically and/or geographically) and ask them for advice or to share their examples of winning proposals. People are often willing to help out like-minded colleagues in this way.
> 1 votes
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Tags: funding, citations
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thread-30353
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30353
|
Do automatic tools to check thesis exist?
|
2014-10-22T03:29:32.617
|
# Question
Title: Do automatic tools to check thesis exist?
I am currently writing my bachelor's thesis in Computer Science with LaTeX. The thesis is written in English. I use `aspell` for spell checking, but I think there is more that could automatically be checked:
* Writing "style" (e.g. warnings for "I", "me", ...)
* Grammar checking.
* Wrong citations (I use bibtex)
* Missing figures or tables
* Duplicate lables
Is there a program that checks writing style for academic work?
# Answer
I use a Academic Writing Check for most of my academic writing, including my thesis. It checks for:
* passive voice: don't use the passive voice if you can help it.
* duplicate words ("the the"): this has saved me many times.
* wrong abbreviations: for example, i.e (no second period)
* bad typography
* and some others
To check missing or duplicate labels, I use pdflatex (with this very cool Makefile). It prints a warning message anytime some of the above occur.
I'm not sure how you would check for wrong citations, but pdflatex will tell you about undefined references. For certain words you don't ever want to occur, just use grep.
The last check I do is for overfull hboxes, you can visualize them in your document by setting this in your preamble:
```
\overfullrule=5pt
```
I found that on the LaTeX stack exchange, you will no doubt find the answers there a great resource as your write your document. Good luck!
> 4 votes
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Tags: publications, writing, tools, latex
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thread-30335
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30335
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Why do some universities not allow dissertations to be publicly available?
|
2014-10-21T21:36:48.337
|
# Question
Title: Why do some universities not allow dissertations to be publicly available?
After reading a comment (now deleted) saying
> My university's policies does not allow me to share my thesis PDF file completely.
I was wondering why some universities do not allow dissertations to be publicly available over the web? (by any means - free or through subscription)
This seems a fundamental right to the students (to share their dissertations) and to the community in general.
Thus, I thought I may get some inputs/examples, from different academic cultures, for possible reasons to not to have dissertations over the web (i.e. top secret?).
**Update**: The user whose comment prompted this discussion mentioned in a comment on this thread:
> I consulted one of the professors at my university and he told me there is no prohibition on sharing my thesis's PDF file. It was my own mis-understanding of the copyright statement on the copyright page.
# Answer
As the one whose comment triggered this question, I figure I ought to answer: one of the foundational principles of science is that it should be freely and publicly available.
At the same time, there are a lot of human interests that push in the opposite direction. Some examples:
* A nation may want to restrict high-technology in order to promote its own interests. For historical examples, consider the British empire's secrecy around timekeeping for navigation, or Bavarian secrecy on methods for making high quality optical glass.
* Information may be considered dangerous to release to the general public, such as regarding atomic weapons or the DNA sequences of deadly pathogens.
* Commercial companies invest in technology in order to gain advantage over their competitors.
* A scientist may want to avoid publishing patentable research until after the patent is filed.
A lot of science that is done is thus never openly published, or openly published only long after it has been completed. The question then is, how should universities relate to this, particularly regarding dissertations?
To the best of my knowledge, in all of the high-ranked U.S. universities, a Ph.D. dissertation is required to be entirely public, as a matter of scientific principle and integrity. This wasn't always the case, particularly during the convergence of scientific research and military funding around World War II. As the country became more uncomfortable with that association, however, the elite universities began to remove classified research from their campuses and require that theses be publishable. In many cases, classified research still goes on in association, but through a separate entity, such as Lincoln Lab for MIT, SRI for Stanford, and LBNL for Berkeley. Likewise, sensitivities have developed around commercial research.
The general principle that is followed then, at least for elite U.S. universities, is that the research leading to a dissertation may involve unpublished or restricted information. The dissertation, however, must be public and substantial enough to stand on its own without depending on other non-public research that may have been done in association.
> 14 votes
# Answer
I'ts done to protect sensitive materials. As a rule, dissertations were made openly available at the Harvard Archives. This changed a few years ago, when the deans, responding to doctoral students’ fears, allowed embargoes broadly. As a result, as a search in ProQuest reveals, an unprecedented number of dissertations (almost one in three) produced at Harvard in 2012 and 2013 are embargoed. These dissertations are now secret and the authors can decide how long to keep them so. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/9/10/Harvard-dissertation-secret/
Just wanted to add, that many universities partner with corporate firms where the research is funded, so probably either the university hopes to apply for the patent or the firm.
Colleges and universities own the ideas and technologies invented by the people who work for them, including professors and graduate students who are paid to do research
> 3 votes
# Answer
Based on most comments on the question, I know this answer may seems odd but at least it may elaborate more details on the comment. As much this may be surprising, I was surprised when I saw online dissertations for the first time.
Where I study, only the hard copy texts are available in the libraries and students can **read** them, but they can not make a copy of them. Students can write down some notes in a paper and only take that note out of the library. Also the time you can access the dissertations is limited. As I have seen a lot, the copy right page where I live is something like this: *All rights reserved to the respective initiatives and innovations resulting from research studies subject of this thesis is owned by X University*. So the University *thinks* they are the ones who own the results not the student who generated them.
With this in mind some reasons may be:
* You can easily copy the dissertation from another university and sell it in black market or foist it as your own work. The reason is dissertations is not available online is your adviser can't or won't bother to check every library in different universities or he/she has not enough information on your field. So, it would make it easy for the student to copy the results of others.
* Some dissertations may have some flaws or weak results. If they publish it online, it would compromise the fake reputation of the university. So it is in best interests to not publish it online.
* Sometimes, the student or adviser wants to publish the results in a journal but they have not decided when to do so. So they prefer to keep the results for themselves for the time being.
* Only published papers in journals and conferences would help the scientific degree of a teacher, so why bother to publish it online when it is non-English and it won't be cited by elite universities in US or Europe.
Keep this in mind that these are irrational response of some universities in order to solve their problems.
**ADDED**:
Some universities have different opinion about ownership. For example:
> ... I pledge not to publish the results of this thesis without permission of my adviser and I am not allowed to disclose any information regarding of my thesis with anyone without permission of my adviser.
* About the first point: I am saying it make it harder for students to plagiarize. It's like erasing the problem. If a student wants to plagiarize he/she will do it one way or another and of course as I can see, it hasn't helped both parties but it is an irrational response to this problem where I live.
* About the third and fourth points: Again I reference to manuscript of another university not a person.
> All the papers based on this thesis should have the name of X university.
So it is not just a decision of a person for his/her profits.
> 2 votes
# Answer
Diploma mills (fraudulent "universities") will refuse to disclose dissertations because the dissertations do not actually exist or are obviously inadequate.
> 1 votes
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Tags: thesis, university, policy, academic-freedom, research-dissemination
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thread-30413
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30413
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What are pros and cons for an adjunct professor job at a community college for an IT professional?
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2014-10-23T06:06:50.153
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# Question
Title: What are pros and cons for an adjunct professor job at a community college for an IT professional?
I've just been contacted by a friend's friend who decided I'd make a great adjunct professor at a community college, IT department, application development. Suddenly I heard myself agree to an "informal" job interview, and now am freaking out. What am I getting myself into?
I have all the hard skills necessary, in fact probably overqualified as far as the hard skills go. Soft skills, different matter. I am shy and fear public speech. Counselling one-on-one is no problem, but I do get a bit shaky in the knees thinking about standing in front of an audience. Which is why a part of me wants to do this job - to overcome my fears, to develop leadership skills, which I could then use in private sector. I also have a few interesting curriculum ideas I'd like to try. From tutoring my nephew through his university years (different school), I saw much in the Comp Sci curriculum that I think could be improved.
I wonder though whether this will help or hurt my career in the private sector. First of all, the very fact of being an adjunct professor at a community college (one of the weaker community colleges actually) - is it a resume builder? From looking at the faculty, it just might be.. the staff seems to have good bios.
Then there is the RateMyProfessor.com. As a newbie, and a pretty anxious one at that, there is a non-zero chance of me screwing up and getting a bunch of low reviews that will then haunt me for the rest of my career. The HRs do google job candidates' names.
My current career as a software developer has had its ups and downs: have worked for a few prestigious, big name corporates, left for a startup of my own, the startup is imploding, time to get a day job. While the bottom of my resume (where the old jobs are) looks great, I need to build up the recent part of my resume, need references. Would this be a good move or not?
# Answer
> 8 votes
Without wanting to sound harsh, this whole post is all about you and how it will benefit your further career (after leaving this job). You seem to forget that you will be teaching real, young people that need a good teacher, in order to get the education they deserve. So, unless you refocus on them first, perhaps you should reconsider getting this job for simply "overcoming your fears, developing leadership skills, which you could then use in private sector" and leave it to someone more passionate about it.
To directly answer your question: Getting a job you are not sure you are going to like and risk being bad at it or prematurely leave, always looks bad on any resume. So, unless you are really passionate about this, perhaps you should stick to what you already know.
# Answer
> 7 votes
As a full-time I.T. employee with a CS background at a community college, I feel I may be able to chip in here. We have a lot in common -- great hard skills, shaky soft skills, a desire to overcome our limitations, and a desire to better educate the next generation of programmers.
As Alexandros said, first you need to focus on the students. You've pointed out that their CS material could use revision, so I think you're already on the right track there. The best CS professors I've worked with have one thing in common: they all had prior or concurrent industry experience. Current, real-world experience gives you an advantage when it comes to curriculum development that can really benefit the students.
As for the class size, I'd have a hard time imagining 100 students in a CS class at a community college. Our class sizes tend more toward 10 than 100, limited apparently by interest, not class size caps. It's still more than one-on-one, so you'll still have to get over that, but just remember why you're there.
Don't worry about how badly you might screw up. Even the best professors get occasional low ratings and the internet is full of anonymous jerks spewing vitriol. You're not in middle school anymore, just don't worry about it.
As for how it looks on your resume, I can't personally speak to this with any great experience, but as a hiring manager I'd look favorably on it, particularly if you teach only one or two classes per semester for awhile. It shows that your soft skills are maybe stronger than the next guy and that you're comfortable conducting training and writing documentation within your field of expertise. Those are all desirable qualities that are a little harder to find in the software industry. The only negative point I can think of for it would be if they thought you might be trying to get your foot in the door as a full-time professor, they might not want to bring you on full-time. Not a lot of places think like that, though.
Finally, regarding benefits: I can't speak to any other school's policy, but adjuncts here are simply part-time faculty. As part-time employees, they don't get medical/dental benefits. They're hired on a per-class basis, so if you want to teach one or five classes, that's up to your desire and their needs. We're pretty flexible, I expect that's pretty standard.
# Answer
> 5 votes
Cons: Adjunct teaching at a community college may be a poor way to get references because you will mostly be working with students, not professionals who can serve as references. I taught one class at a CC and met my department chair a total of twice.
I would not worry about ratemyprofessor.com. Most people don't take it seriously. All students are different, so you are sure to get one occasionally that does not like your teaching. You can use a different name for teaching if you are really worried.
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Tags: career-path, computer-science, adjunct-faculty
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thread-30405
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30405
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Is it ethically questionable for me (an undergraduate) to hire "research assistants"?
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2014-10-23T03:05:11.667
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# Question
Title: Is it ethically questionable for me (an undergraduate) to hire "research assistants"?
I am an undergraduate student being paid a (relatively speaking) hefty monthly research stipend. I need only some of this money to pay off my university fees and living costs, since I have wonderfully generous parents.
The research projects I work on officially revolve around applied problems in math biology. Lately, I have been interested in Baez's work on "network theory", but because of full course load, along with the research project I am responsible for, I don't have the time to explore these ideas as I'd like to.
I have some ideas for pure math projects that involve extending Baez's nascent network theory ideas to problems in biology. I also have some ideas for tools that could be made in order to help a researcher formally analyze interaction systems.
These ideas are completely tangential to my own work (for the moment), although if I were able to set up the groundwork for them to the point where I am able to see that they do have potential, I'd love to bring it up with my professor.
One idea I have had recently is that I could hire my own "research assistants" out of my stipend (I am allowed to spend it as I like, right)? I could provide them with my motivations, and give them "guidance" (I don't know how capable I would be of this) through ongoing communication. This way, I would be able to explore my ideas, even if I don't personally have the energy and time to see them through right now. The alternative of course, is that I buckle up and find time from *somewhere* (e.g. by not writing this post) to work on the ideas, or put them away for a later date when I do have time.
So, is hiring my own research assistants at this time ethically questionable?
# Answer
All that jumps out at me is that you won't be able to find and supervise someone capable enough for the amount of money you have, which I assume is on the order of tuition or less. You know research is really, really expensive right? People like Ph.D. students - and yourself - do it for cheap out of extreme valuing of their own educational and research experience.
You can't provide a six figure salary (what an industry researcher costs), you can't hire out your own research passions to someone; you have no play.
This, in theory, comes up in the professional world too. As a rule you can't really hire someone better than you to solve your problems... you'll run out of budget for them as they bleed your personal checkbook, or they'll get hired and take over your work (which is probably very bad for you). There's no "ethics", it stops at the pragmatics.
I think the ethics of this are kind of a moot point because there's cultural reasons this can't really come up. A more practical ethical question might be if you can hire researchers to work on parts of your project for you. That's a pretty different question, but I'm pretty sure the answer is yes, that's what a research budget is for (and your undergraduate underlings would of course appear as co-authors, which is a big part of why they took the opportunity).
> 30 votes
# Answer
**No**, there are no *ethical* concerns, as long as whoever you hire is given the appropriate credit for the work she/he did.
There are *economic* reasons why this situation is unlikely to be fruitful, but that is another question.
> 22 votes
# Answer
If you are doing this for course credit or if this is part of your undergraduate thesis, you should ask your academic advisor or director of undergraduate studies. **The assumption is that all work that you hand is is your own.**
Many students have writing or math tutors to help them with basics or fix errors, but the underlying principle is that you did the work.
The question is what your 'staff' will be doing for you. If it is similar to what a writing tutor or math tutor is doing (checking for errors, helping you with argumentation, etc.) then it is likely kosher. However, if it is tending towards what a paper-writing service is doing (you provide the topic and money, they provide the paper) then it is likely illegal and will get you in trouble.
Again, if what you are doing is kosher then you should have no concerns in being open about this with your faculty advisers. It behooves you to clarify this now as you don't want to be accused of plagiarism or fraud (presenting work that is not your own as your own) later on.
If this is for a project that has nothing to do with school, then: 1) you're posting in the wrong stackexchange; 2) you have nothing to worry about as long as you don't try to present it as connected to your school work.
> 6 votes
# Answer
This is a very good moral question. It addresses the authority of an undergraduate researcher with respect to other students.
In my experience, as an undergraduate researcher, I found that there were times that I would have appreciated outside help that I would pay out of pocket for. Something along the lines of a consultant with regards to certain technical aspects.
I like Bob Jarvis' comment that you put your own idea at risk and someone run with it. Also take into account that instead of focusing purely on the task, you have to manage someone which is a heftier plate to be responsible for —and it already seems you have a sizeable amount.
Perhaps, as a compromise, if your advisor can promote you to a role that would take into account another researcher, e.g. senior undergraduate researcher, then probably this would work well.
To reiterate: paying someone out of pocket leaves many questions to interpretation, as far as roles and responsibilities go.
> 2 votes
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Tags: ethics, research-undergraduate, research-assistantship
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thread-30458
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30458
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Professor asked me for draft of letter of recommendation,what should I do?
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2014-10-24T01:33:41.170
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# Question
Title: Professor asked me for draft of letter of recommendation,what should I do?
I know there are a lot of discussions about this topic in this forum and I read all of them but my situation is slightly different. I took a class with my professor and I worked in his research lab and I know him for a while. When I asked him for a letter of recommendation he told me send you CV plus draft of your letter of recommendation. In this forum a lot of people said do not do that it is unethical. I understand this and I understand why it is unethical but what should I say to him should I say this is unethical and I cannot do that or should I forget about letter of recommendation from someone who I worked in his lab.
# Answer
You might tell the professor that you feel uncomfortable writing a letter for yourself, but that you'll be happy to provide the CV and a list of the things about you that you would be happy if they emphasized in the letter.
> 0 votes
# Answer
First, I think it's important to get this letter of recommendation. Letters coming from professors who have first-hand experience of your research experience are incredibly important in STEM fields.
When it comes to getting strong letters of recommendation, I generally advise students to submit their CV and a comprehensive list of what they did in lab from start to finish. I would keep it to a page or less and include class work, but this is standard at my University. It sounds like this professor just wants the letter-writing process to be easier for him or her. Letter writing can be difficult, and these two items make it significantly easier. If it were me, I would go forward almost as if he didn't ask directly for a draft.
You also might ask for advice from another professor in your department. Professors are known for their quirks, and I'm sure you aren't the first to notice this professor makes unusual requests. I would make sure that you can trust the faculty you ask for advice, but you would be surprised at the quality of the advice professors have for dealing with other faculty.
> 0 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, graduate-school, recommendation-letter
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thread-30322
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30322
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How to professionally quit a student job?
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2014-10-21T17:20:06.927
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# Question
Title: How to professionally quit a student job?
I'm a CS master student in a German university currently writing my thesis. Three months ago I saw an advert from a PhD student in the group where I'm doing my thesis asking for a student assistant (HiWi) to work on a programming project. I went and said I'm interested in the job but specified I can only work 5 hours a week since I must work on my thesis. It was agreed saying "I don't care how much time you will take to finish it".
Since I'm writing my thesis and was about to finish when asked: "how long are you staying here" and I said that I don't know yet and asked why; the reply was "because now I'm concerned that you might leave me if you finish soon" and I mentioned that I will stay to do my PhD.
So I started working. After the first week I noticed that the Phd student is actually quite weird. Once I mentioned that I'm going to use framework "X" for a particular part of the project, and was told: "No I want you to use framework Y, because **what if you die** then I have to continue doing the project". I didn't like how it was said, but I considered it a joke. Then the weird stuff continued. I won't mention them because it will take too long.
Because of administrative issues they couldn't start my contract for two months, so I worked two months for free. It was said that for the coming months they will put more hours in my contract and I can skip some weeks without working so I can make up for the two months.
However the most annoying thing happened 4 weeks ago. I was told that we need the project done earlier than thought (never mentioned any deadline previously). Then I thought OK I will work twice the time (10 hours a week) for two weeks and then once I finish the main functionalities in the project I will ask to skip two weeks so I can make up and work on my thesis.
Surprisingly after those two hard weeks I was told that the project is wanted done by the end of next week! I said that I was already working overtime and was replied "I don't care I just want it to be done by the end of next week because I have a workshop and I need to present it"!
That was the time I made the decision to quit since it was known very well that I can't do this because I have to work on my thesis, also because of the Phd student's weird behavior. However after receiving the shock I decided that it's not professional to quit at this stage since there is a deadline for the workshop. Also I finished 60% of the project and we made the deal to finish only until 70% for the deadline.
However I want to quit after the deadline but I have the following concerns:
1. The atmosphere in our work group is very familial. I have lunch with all PhDs and postdocs and jokes and everything. I'm now concerned that quitting would make the atmosphere negative between us.
2. Whenever I think about quitting I remember when I was asked about how long I will stay because of the worry that I might leave, to somehow not to screw up things. It's the main concern since the project will be 70% done and hiring a new student would be painful since they would have to read what I did and so on and will delay the project.
3. The professor is also concerned about this project and now I'm afraid that quitting this project at this stage would make my image look bad as a quitter.
So how do you recommend me to quit this job?
Edit:
One way I thought of quitting is to go after the deadline and say that I won't work for 2 weeks because I need to work on my thesis. Now if told that I can't do that, then I will tell say "then I'm probably not a good fit for the requirement of this project and I don't want to be an obstacle for its progress. I think it's a good idea to find someone who is a better fit". Then I will pray that the response is "Yes you are right". The issue is that we have a lack of student assistants so he might still want me to work under my conditions, but I don't want to continue working for them!
# Answer
> 11 votes
German university students leave *HiWi* positions all the time; essentially all universities have forms that allow you to break a running contract (*Auflösung*) for essentially any reason that you so choose, given the requisite notice; typically this is one month before the new end date of the contract.
Your situation is not that unusual, in that you're doing a HiWi in the same group that you're doing a master's thesis (and intend to do your PhD in). Since it's clear you really don't want to do the HiWi work right now, you can mention, as you suggested, that you're worried about finishing your master's thesis on time and doing a good job with it. However, leaving this position in this manner means you won't be able to take another *HiWi* position within the group (although you might be able to accept something else in another chair).
However, you shouldn't worry about quitting the position because of time constraints. This happens fairly frequently for lots of reasons. A good graduate student and research group will understand this and not be bothered by it. (If they *do* have a problem with it, then you should reconsider the wisdom of doing your PhD there!)
\[On a side note, though, it seems your PhD student supervisor had unreasonable expectations of the position and what you were supposed to do. Most of the issues are on his side—particularly since he agreed that you could work just five hours per week in the first place!\]
# Answer
> 11 votes
It sounds to me like you don't exactly need to *quit*. Remind him of the conditions under which you took the job, and ask him to stick to the agreement. If he can't do so because his requirements have changed, then that's his choice. You might say something like this:
> As you recall, when I accepted this job, it was under the condition that I would only work 5 hours per week so it wouldn't interfere with working on my thesis. Because of your workshop, I have been working far more time than we agreed. I'm concerned that you need more support than the 5 hours a week I am able to provide. What do you think?
Note that I said "5 hours per week" twice for emphasis. Give him a chance to respond. At this point, if he promises to stick to 5 hours per week in future, and allows you to take the next few weeks off to catch up on your thesis, then perhaps you might give him one more chance.
However, if he indicates that he needs you to work more hours, or be available whenever he has deadlines, then you might say something like this:
> Unfortunately, I can't work more than 5 hours per week, and it sounds like that just won't be enough. Perhaps the best way to solve this is turn the project over to someone else. I'll do what I can to ensure a smooth transition.
Instead of "quitting", you're working with him to solve *his* requirements. If it turns out that the only way to meet those requirements is for you to hand off the work to someone else, then that's his choice.
As for the time you worked for free at the start of the contract, I think it is going to be difficult to get paid for that without burning bridges. Of course, you are entitled to be paid, and you could pursue that legally, but you may not want to. In future, remember never to work without a contract.
# Answer
> 1 votes
Agreed with @Davidmh re: going to professor. Things to bring up: 1. Change in deadline conditions (you took the job under a condition of open deadline, which then changed to specific dates); 2. Change in hours (you took the job with a cap of 5hrs/wk, which then increased and began to interfere with your thesis work which should be your #1 priority as a student; 3. Change in project scope (e.g. frmwrk Y) If the grad student will feel that you went behind his back, let him know you felt the professor was best positioned to answer a funding-related question since he is the one ultimately paying.
Also, be sure to mention to the professor the issue of working without pay (same as delayed pay) for 2 months. Make sure he is aware that YOU are aware of this and that you expect reimbursement in accordance with the contract. Be sure to remain calm, courteous, and overall professional in this discussion, and ground your arguments in principles (e.g. getting paid for work) and not people (e.g. the student not paying you on time). This will position you as someone who is in control of the negotiation and speaks from a more objective position of fairness rather than individual-specific nuances.
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Tags: masters, job
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thread-30469
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30469
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Should you respond to a call-for-papers rejection email?
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2014-10-24T11:20:26.337
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# Question
Title: Should you respond to a call-for-papers rejection email?
This question is related but I don't think it is a duplicate. I recently sent the abstract of my first paper to a call-for-papers for a conference. I received an email thanking me for the submission and then about a month later I received a longer email stating my submission was not selected.
What should I do now? I presume I could just leave it at that, or I could reply to them at least acknowledging their email.
However the conference is one I would be interested in keeping up to date about. Since they don't seem to have a website yet I am wondering if it would be appropriate to email back in order to acknowledge their email and request some information on how to keep up to date (maybe they have a mailing list) with the conference?
# Answer
Whether or not you should respond to their e-mail depends on how you want to be involved with the current meeting and the community supporting the conference.
> Acknowledgement of a rejection e-mail from conference organizers is generally not necessary unless they have requested confirmation or further information.
You mentioned an interested in "keeping up to date" with this conference, presumably with the intention of presenting here in the future. However, it may still be possible to participate in the current meeting if you make an effort to politely contact the organizers as soon as possible.
Every conference is a little different, since they are organized according to the preferences and constraints of the core group of researchers that plan and organize the meeting. Often there are poster sessions or other opportunities to present your work in lieu of a presentation if it is suitable for the conference.
**Before you decide to contact the organizers**, you should carefully re-read the original call and conference description. Since your paper was not selected for presentation at the conference, there may be a problem with: (1) the perceived quality of your submitted manuscript, (2) the format of your submitted work, or (3) the topic that your paper addressed. Check the call and double-check your submission to make sure there are no obvious discrepancies that would disqualify your work. Make sure your paper is on-topic, in the correct format, and of suitable length.
If you are new to a subject area, or a particular conference, your impression of what it is all about may not match up with the actual meeting as well as you might expect. It may be that your submission was off target for this conference and could be amended with a little communication.
> 2 votes
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Tags: conference, etiquette, email, rejection
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thread-30435
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30435
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Is it realistic to deal with a huge undocumented code base for master's project?
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2014-10-23T16:53:39.670
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# Question
Title: Is it realistic to deal with a huge undocumented code base for master's project?
I'm currently pursuing a Master's degree in a STEM field and working on a thesis. For my master's thesis, my advisor suggested I expand the code of the group's software and add new features to it. However, is very large (some files are thousands of lines long) and hard to read. It consists of many different files and there are hardly any comments that explain what the functions do, the meaning of the variables, etc. There's no documentation that explains what the functions/classes do. It seems like whenever I am focusing on what a function does, there's multiple functions/variables in it that are defined in another file and those functions/classes themselves are hundreds of lines long
While my advisor has mentioned he is open to helping me with whatever questions I have, most of the problems I'm having are related to the code, since it's so gigantic and I don't even know where to begin to ask questions. But the prof doesn't know much about the code, so I have to ask the postdoc whenever I have questions about the code. However, the postdoc doesn't even know alot of the code (he knows c++, but most of the code was written by a former postdoc), and told me I should email that former postdoc to answer my questions about the code.
I've spoken to some people about this, and they've said this is a very bad situation. Should I leave this group and join a new one, even if it means I have to delay my graduation by an extra semester(assuming that I will graduate on-time if I continue with this current group)?
It's been a month since I joined this group and I hope to finish by next spring, but I don't know how realistic that goal is.
# Answer
> 3 votes
I would be very wary of taking on this thesis topic. There's a huge amount of programming effort here, but you're not trying to get an MS in software engineering, so this will necessarily be a project in which you spend most of your time doing work that is actually outside of your discipline. Furthermore, there's a risk that either you'll never be able to understand various aspects of the code or that you'll misunderstand things and then make changes that break the code.
# Answer
> 2 votes
This isn't a complete answer by any means and this is very far from being my field, but I wonder if there's a possibility of an alternative before you jump ship. Could go to the existing postdoc and ask him if there is any project related to the code base, that you could do in the time available, that would help move his work forward? Then take that idea back to the supervisor, saying that you've talked it over with the postdoc. You might get a bit of informal supervision and you could work on a portion of the code that you could be advised on...if it was technically possible, everyone was amenable etc.
# Answer
> 2 votes
sorry to hear about the difficulties. I used to be a graduate student too and most of my current friends who I interact with almost daily are graduate students. As Greg pointed out, this scenario is very common but certainly far from ideal. I understand your concerns very well since I was in this scenario not too long ago. I was debugging a code written by a earlier post-doc which was in C++ and I was only a novice at C++. My supervisor knew that I was a novice at it and he did not know much about the nitty-gritties of the code. However, I was only debugging the code so did not need enough expertise to add new features. In the end after a couple months of effort I was able to fix the code. That was my story.
However, in your case there are 4 possibilities:
1) Your supervisor envisions some useful features but has no idea how much effort it is to implement it or thinks it may not require much effort but in reality it does. \- (Bad scenario)
2) Your supervisor has somewhat of a good idea of how much effort it is and needs you to do it so that you could use these new features in your work (to follow) and write up a thesis based on it. - (Not a bad scenario unless you have your own different likings for topics you want to work on for your thesis).
3) Your supervisor has somewhat of a good idea of how much effort it is and needs you to do it just as something useful for the group besides your thesis. -(Not a bad scenario unless it takes more than a month or two and absolutely can't go in your thesis).
4) Your supervisor has somewhat of a good idea of how much effort it is and needs you to do it because it will be useful for the group and it is going to take several months and does not help you advance in your field or cannot go in your thesis. -(Bad scenario)
Now, you need to figure out which scenario you fit in broadly. The way to figure out is to discuss and ask questions to the post-doc in the group as well as your supervisor. Ask for a meeting and discuss your concerns (perceived as not the best thing to do- but in reality it is indeed the best thing to do). Many students worry about their supervisors judging them negatively. This worry needs to be suspended since something greater is at stake. Proper communication will eventually lead to good results and in turn a good judgement anyway. Again, you need to discuss and understand how useful this project is for yourself. Then you need to come to a consensus wit others about how long it is expected to take and if it is worth your time to do it. Lastly you should also discuss and put some safeguards in your plan, i.e. a timeline where you expect smaller goals of the project to be completed and if it does not work out the way you want what will be plan B?
And another important thing: If the project or other possible projects that you could take up in this research group do not interest you at all, then you should look elsewhere.
Hope this helps. My best wishes. Feel free to ask more questions in response.
# Answer
> 1 votes
Because I know some people here may not be completely familiar with computer science and "documentation", I'm including this to help people get a better grasp on the scenario.
### The Context
Somewhere in life, if you work with code, regardless of whether you enter research or industry, you are likely to come across `magic code`.
In most cases, the `magic code` works. No one knows how or why, and the original ~~magician~~ developer has likely moved on. So we have a product that works, but no one knows the ~~incantations~~ methodology that was used to produce the results.
An example of `magic code`:
```
c=["6B8CFF","B13425","6A6B04","E39D25"];a='0155000555540ABEC02EFEFC2EBFBF2BFEA803FFF00A6A002A69A8AA55AAF9D76FFD557FF5555F0541502A00A8AA00AA';with(document)for(i=0;i<96;write('<br>')){h=('000'+parseInt(a.slice(i,i+=6),16).toString(4)).slice(-12);for(j=0;j<12;write('<rp style="padding:1 8;background:#'+c[h[j++]]+'"></rp>'))
```
No one, not even people with knowledge of this language, will instinctively know what this snippet of JavaScript does. It draws a picture of Mario
Writing code like this, the developer will know what they're doing, but no one else will. It is a remarkably efficient time and space-saving technique if you don't have to explain to anyone what you're doing.
The caveat about uncommented code is that somewhere down the line it falls apart and becomes impossible to improve or understand. Someone before you most likely took the code and coded on top of original uncommented code, and kept kicking the documentation down the line for someone else to handle, i.e. saved time now for an eventual time cost later.
At this point, it sounds like the "later" has reached critical mass, where progress cannot continue unless previous progress has been documented.
Leaving the project removes you from the problem, but the problem still exists, and will land in someone else's lap, and if the code is as bad as you indicate, this is application is on development death's door.
### What you should do about it
You should meet with your advisor to discuss your concerns, as well as these issues:
* This code, while functional, does not follow standard coding convention, and will likely need to be brought up to standards before development can continue.
* Documenting of undocumented code is time-intensive, but ultimately improves future developments Documentation can easily take a fair percentage of the actual time spent coding. If this code has been developed for 4 years, I wouldn't find it unreasonable for a new person to take several months to document everything, or a few weeks to document the important stuff, while leaving the guts intact.
* Possible alternative projects such as retrospective analysis and improvement of the application for improvements, while corrolating your actual topic with how it is being handled by the code.
# Answer
> 1 votes
The short answer to your question is, yes, it is realistic in the sense that it is a common scenario, and no, it is not realistic in the sense that it can seriously hurt your career and you may not want to get involved in a quagmire like this.
The long answer: scientists are notoriously bad in developing and managing codes. As a result, you often end up like 30 years old undocumented FORTRAN codes that run only a Win95 machine. It may sound exaggeration, but I used to have an old PC because certain software could only be compiled with certain Fortran compiler which has last version running only Win95 or older systems. The situation therefore common and obviously it can be very tiresome to fix all this. If you don't think it worth the effort, don't get into it. On the other hand there are cases when the code can do magic and important magic. In this case it is an opportunity to you to became a magician and an expert in a tool that needed by many, but for obvious reasons, can be used by only very few. In other word, if it is an important program, it may pay of on the long term.
---
Tags: research-process, masters, code
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thread-30479
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30479
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Is there evidence of effects of votes of no confidence on enrollment?
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2014-10-24T16:10:36.447
|
# Question
Title: Is there evidence of effects of votes of no confidence on enrollment?
Is there any evidence that a successful vote of no confidence on the president of a small college will have a negative impact on enrollment? This warning is being used by the administration of my college to encourage faculty not to vote *no confidence.*
# Answer
My answer is opinion unsupported by evidence, but I think it's right. {grin}
If your student population is drawn primarily from the local area, then the publicity might dissuade a few potential students from applying. If the student population is drawn from a wide area (nationally or international) then most potential students will never know about the vote of no confidence, no matter how it turns out.
> 1 votes
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Tags: administration, governance
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thread-30486
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30486
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Do U.S. PhD students who engage in research during summer or intersession breaks get vacation time?
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2014-10-24T17:41:28.337
|
# Question
Title: Do U.S. PhD students who engage in research during summer or intersession breaks get vacation time?
When a PhD program in the United States like this states that students are expected to engage in full-time research during the summer months and the January intersession in addition to their regular coursework, should one expect that vacation time is out of the discussion, unless it is unofficially granted by the advisor?
# Answer
If your advisor is providing your pay, then you should negotiate vacation with your advisor. About 2 weeks per year is considered standard in US employment.
If your advisor is not providing you with pay, you should still discuss it with your advisor to make sure they think you are making progress and are committed to your research. However, your advisor should realize they are not in a position to dictate terms.
Do not be surprised if nobody cares. But don't abuse it.
I recommend planning your vacations at the same time as everyone else's. The benefits are that other people will not notice you are gone, and it can be hard to get work done anyway when the people you work with are gone so less is missed. Typically these times are late December and August.
> 4 votes
# Answer
My university is officially closed (skeleton crew only) from Christmas Eve through New Year's Day, and lot's of graduate students take this time off (and more). OTOH, there are plenty of profs that work their students to the bone and demand work over Christmas break, every other holiday when the university is closed, and every weekend, too.
If personal time is important to you, you should discuss expectations for time spent working or in the lab with a potential advisor before your sign on to work with them. My PhD supervisor expected people to put in appearances most weekdays in the lab and to be productive, but I know others that have Friday meetings that generate Monday deadlines.
> 2 votes
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Tags: phd, united-states, working-time
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thread-30473
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30473
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Should I cancel / alter office hours for committee meetings?
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2014-10-24T14:22:42.423
|
# Question
Title: Should I cancel / alter office hours for committee meetings?
My contract requires that I maintain a certain number of office hours a week where I am available to meet with students. In practice this time is rarely entirely taken up by student meetings however.
Recently I have joined some relatively large university committees that (not surprisingly) have a hard time arranging meeting times. I have historically indicated that I am unavailable to meet during my office hours but I am not sure if this is the appropriate position to take.
The solutions that I see are:
1. Consider this time booked and unavailable.
2. Consider this time flexible and reschedule office hours as needed (this would likely be somewhat frequent and could also just create more downstream conflicts).
3. Cancel the office hours as conflicts arise.
**What is the appropriate way to deal with responsibilities that conflict with office hours?**
# Answer
It seems to me that you need to generally be available for students a certain number of hours per week, *without* scheduling appointments. That's because scheduling an appointment is somewhat of a barrier, making it less likely students will avail themselves of your assistance. Office hours are largely intended to be for students who may have a hard time asking for help; those students may have a hard time getting help otherwise. (Of course, whether this works in practice is another question...)
As such, if it's a rare thing, it's probably fine to just cancel the hours; but if it's as frequent as your question makes it out to be, you should keep the office hours as set. If the committees often like to use that time for meetings, I would (permanently) move your office hours, but not reschedule them frequently - that leads to confusion over what hours you hold that particular week.
> 9 votes
# Answer
My feeling is that it is fine to cancel or reschedule office hours when other responsibilities conflict, provided:
1. You announce it to students several days in advance;
2. You tell students that you are happy to meet them at another time, if they make an appointment.
> 19 votes
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Tags: time-management, service-activities, office-hours
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thread-30346
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30346
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Does getting pay to be a subject in an experiment violate an F1 visa in the US?
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2014-10-22T00:47:06.457
|
# Question
Title: Does getting pay to be a subject in an experiment violate an F1 visa in the US?
I am in a university in the US. I need 10 subjects for a 2-hour experiment. The compensation is 100 USD. If a subject is an international grad student on an F1 visa in my university, will it go against the terms of his F1 visa, which restricts his ability to work in the US?
# Answer
> 1 votes
It depends on whether the student on the F1 visa is already working 20 hours / week, which is likely to happen if he is an RA or a full-time TA (typically grad TA), but unlikely if he is on a fellowship or pays the tuition fees himself. If the student is already working 20 hours / week, then he is not allowed to work, either it is on-campus or off-campus.
Given the amount of experiments or other small jobs I see paid either in cash, Amazon gift cards (sorry RMS), ice creams, and other kinds of compensations, the immigration law forbidding F1 visa holder from working more than 20 hours per week is broken every day.
I am impressed so few people seem to care about this situation, given that violating the 20-hours-per-week rule can be a cause of visa termination and other troubles (e.g. green card obtention).
(I need to check for volunteering work, but to me that's work too. Any idea?)
> Are there exceptions to the limit of 20 hours a week for on-campus employment?
>
> The only exception is if the Secretary of DHS suspends this requirement, by means of a Federal Register notice, due to emergent circumstances. The student must demonstrate to you that the extra work is necessary because the emergent circumstance has affected his or her source of support.
>
> Endorse the student’s Form I-20 with a reference to the Federal Register notice that announced the emergency exception before allowing the student to work more than 20 hours a week.
# Answer
> 4 votes
You need to ask the international students' office at your university, because
1. It's a delicate legal issue of the type they are trained to navigate, and
2. The answer may depend on the particulars of how the university handles its students and how your experiment handles compensation, and
3. The answers to these questions change frequently, as visa and immigration regulations mutate.
Even if somebody on this site could give a correct answer and take legal responsibility for it, it would not be safe for somebody else to rely on it in the future.
# Answer
> 2 votes
The safest and correct answer is to ask your international student's office, immigration attorney, or customs and immigration themselves.
Seems like a lot of work for $20 (our standard 'enticement' at my university). Your enticement is $100 which is much nicer....
The pragmatic answer is to inquire whether you will need to fill out a W9 before being paid. If you do, then they are reporting the enticement to the government as taxable income. In that case, GOTO LINE 1.
If not, then the enticement is so low as to not being reportable and/or not being reported. In that case, follow your conscience and/or risk adversity.
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Tags: united-states, international-students, legal-issues, visa, experiment-design
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thread-29723
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29723
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What is the acceptable similarity in a mathematics PhD dissertation when checking by Turnitin?
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2014-10-10T10:42:59.367
|
# Question
Title: What is the acceptable similarity in a mathematics PhD dissertation when checking by Turnitin?
I have checked the originality of my PhD thesis in mathematics using Turnitin. The similarity was 31%. Is this percentage acceptable by most committees?
# Answer
> Is this percentage acceptable by most committees?
This is the wrong question to be asking, since academic decisions are not made based on a numerical measure of similarity from a computer program. The purpose of this software is to flag suspicious cases for humans to examine more carefully. It will identify passages that appear similar to other writings, but it can't decide whether that constitutes plagiarism.
For example, part of your thesis might be based on previous papers you have written. In some circumstances, it may be reasonable to copy text from these papers. (You need to check that your advisor approves and that it doesn't conflict with any university regulations or the publishing agreement with the publisher.) Of course you would need to cite the papers and clearly indicate the overlap. It's not plagiarism if you do that, but Turnitin doesn't understand what you've written well enough to distinguish it from plagiarism. So it's possible that Turnitin would flag lots of suspicious sections, but that your committee would look at them and see that everything is cited appropriately.
If you haven't committed any plagiarism, then you don't need to worry about this at all. If you genuinely write everything yourself (or carefully quote and cite anything you didn't write), then there's no way you could accidentally write something that looks like proof of plagiarism. There's just too much possible variation, and the probability of matching someone else's words by chance is negligible. The worst case scenario is that Turnitin flags something due to algorithmic limitations or a poor underlying model, but human review shows that it is not actually worrisome. (Nobody trusts Turnitin more than they trust their own judgment.)
I'll assume you don't know you've committed plagiarism, but it is possible that you honestly wouldn't know? Unfortunately, the answer is yes if you have certain bad writing habits. For example, it's dangerous to write while having another reference open in front of you to compare with. Even if you don't copy anything verbatim, it's easy to write something that's just an adaptation of the original source (maybe rewording sentences or rearranging things slightly, but clearly based on the original).
If that's what worries you, then you should take a look at the most suspicious passages found by Turnitin. If they look like an adaptation of another source, then it's worth rewriting them. If they don't, then maybe Turnitin is worrying you unnecessarily.
But in any case a plagiarism finding won't just come down to a percentage of similarity. Any percentage greater than 0 is too much for actual plagiarism, and no percentage is too high if it reflects limitations of the software rather than actual plagiarism.
> 16 votes
# Answer
TurnItIn uses a complicated algorithm to determine whether a piece of text within a larger body of work matches something in its database. The TurnItIn is limited to open access sources and therefore has huge gaps in its ability to detect things. Further, while TurnItIn can in some cases exclude things like references and quotes from the similarity index, it sometimes fails. Overall, when my department's academic misconduct committee looks at TurnItIn reports we essentially ignore the overall similarity index. We do not completely ignore it in that it guides how we are going to further examine the document.
We employ 4 different strategies based on whether the similarity index is 0, between 1 and 20 percent, between 20 and 40 percent, and over 40+ percent. A piece of work with a similarity index of 0 is pretty rare and generally means that students have manipulated the document in a way that TurnItIn cannot process it (e.g., if a paper is converted to an image file and then converted to a pdf, there is no text for TurnItIn to analyse). A similarity index less than 20 percent can arise from work that contains no plagiarism with the similarity being quotes and references and small meaningless sentences. The key here is "meaningless". For example, there are only so many ways of saying "we did a t-test between the two groups" and it is reasonable to assume that someone else has used exactly the same wording. A piece of work with a similarity index less than 20 percent can also, however, include a huge amount of plagiarised material. A similarity index between 20-40 percent generally means there is a problem unless a large portion of text that should have been skipped was not (e.g., block quotes, reference lists, or appendices of common tables). A similarity index in excess of 40 percent is almost always problematic.
You really should not depend on the overall similarity index. First and foremost you should depend on your own following of good academic practices. If you have followed good academic practices, there really is no need for TurnItIn. If you want to use the TurnItIn report, you should look at what is being match and ask yourself why it is matching. If it found something your "accidentally" cut and paste, or "inadvertently" did not reword appropriately, fix it and use that as a wake up call to improve your academic practice. If everything it is finding are properly attributed quotes or common tables (or questionnaires, etc) and references then there is no problem.
> 11 votes
# Answer
I have some familiarity with Turnitin, though that was way back in undergrad. The thing about similarity engines is that they aren't perfect.
It's important to consider exactly how Turnitin describes itself on its FAQ.
### What does TurnItIn actually do?
> Turnitin determines if text in a paper matches text in any of the Turnitin databases. By itself, Turnitin does not detect or determine plagiarism — it just detects matching text to help instructors determine if plagiarism has occurred. Indeed, the text in the student’s paper that is found to match a source may be properly cited and attributed.
When we were testing Turnitin in high school (probably a decade ago) with a short writing prompt (~page or two) with a single source, the entire class ended up getting 15 to 20% similarity score, because not only did our sources match, but our quotes matched. No surprise there, really.
Now, consider how large Turnitin's database has grown. If this FAQ is to be trusted, you're comparing your paper to more than 80 thousand journals.
> Turnitin’s proprietary software then compares the paper’s text to a vast database of 12+ billion pages of digital content (including archived internet content that is no longer available on the live web) as well as over 110 million papers in the student paper archive, and 80,000+ professional, academic and commercial journals and publications. We’re adding new content through new partnerships all the time. For example, our partner CrossRef boasts 500-plus members that include publishers such as Elsevier and the IEEE, and has already added hundreds of millions of pages of new content to our database.
If I recall correctly, you can see exactly where your paper has similarity with others, so you can pull that up.
### Sources of Similarity
My bet is that your paper cites papers almost identically to how another paper cites theirs. The great benefit of commonplace citing techniques like APA and MLA is that they're consistent.
If you cite, for example, the general APA format from Purdue, and someone else cites it, they're going to match at almost 100%.
> Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderlund, L., & Brizee, A. (2010, May 5). General format. Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
The chances of you citing a paper that has never been cited before when compared to the world of science is, let's face it, probably 0%. Someone out there has cited your sources at some point. With sources being at times up to 10% of the paper's length, that's an easy portion we can knock out.
The other portion likely has to do with the vernacular that is used to describe a situation. Let's go with the following statement, written entirely off the top of my head.
> Java is an object-oriented programming language.
Pretty simple statement, and true enough that it has been mentioned 260,000 times already, in that exact wording.
Similarity for that statement is 100% if it were to check for that. But when you make it loosely checked for similarity (i.e. remove the quotes from the search), you get several million hits.
Does that mean I plagiarized? Nope. Would TurnItIn flag it? Definitely. Consider how likely everyday people great each other with "How was your weekend?" Are we plagiarizing each other's greetings? Nope. We pick up similarities in how we control language to understand each other, and that shows in papers, where we describe confidence intervals, methodologies, and processes the same way.
Perhaps even more terrifying in considering the similarity score, is that it will likely evaluate the two following statements similar:
Statement 1
> The double helix of DNA was first discovered by the combined efforts of Watson and Crick. Watson and Crick would later get a Nobel Prize for their efforts.
Statement 2
> The double helix of DNA was not first discovered by the combined efforts of Watson and Crick, but by Franklin. Watson and Crick would later get a Nobel Prize for her efforts.
Two very similar sentences. 80-90% similarity word-wise. Meaning-wise? Completely different. That's why the human element is required. We can tell those two statements tell an entirely different story when read. These small similar sets of wording add up quite quickly, and a 30% similarity in your case, given the level of research probably done in whatever your field is, and the amount of sources you have probably cited (100+?) is unlikely to be anything to fret about in this day and age.
> 3 votes
# Answer
From my experience with Ithenticate (the version of turnitin for journals and conference proceedings), I'd say that 30% similarity most likely indicates significant plagiarism or self-plagiarism (recycling of text.) I would certainly investigate further to understand exactly where the similar text was coming from.
If the similar text is taken from sources written by other authors, then I would investigate further by reading the text carefully and comparing it with the sources. There are certainly false alarms raised by this type of software. For example, common phrases like "Without loss of generality, we can assume that..." and "Partial differential equation boundary value problem" will be flagged. Standard definitions are also commonly flagged. However, if I see long narrative paragraphs with significant copying, that's clearly plagiarism.
It's traditional at many universities to staple together a bunch of papers and call it a dissertation. Conversely, it's also very common to slightly rewrite chapters of a dissertation and turn them into papers. Either way, this is "text recycling."
Now that text recycling can be easily detected, commercial publishers are cracking down on it for a variety of reasons. First, the publisher might get sued for copyright violation if the holder of the copyright on the previously published text objects. A different objection is that the material shouldn't be published because it isn't original. As a result, text recycling between two published papers (in conference proceedings or journal articles) is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. This has upset many academics who have made a habit of reusing text from one paper to the next. Some feel that if the reused text is from a methods section or literature review, than the copying is harmless. Publishers typically take a harder line.
The situation with dissertations is somewhat different. In one direction journals have always been willing to accept papers that are substantially based on dissertation chapters with minimal rewriting. Since the student usually retains copyright on the thesis itself, there's no particular problem with copyright violation. Since dissertations traditionally weren't widely distributed, publishers didn't care that the material had been "previously published." I don't really expect this to change much in the near future.
In the other direction, there are two issues: First, will the publisher of journal articles object to reuse of the text in the dissertation as a copyright violation? You'd need to check with the publisher. Second, will the university be willing to accept a dissertation (and perhaps publish it through Proquest or its own online dissertation web site) that contains material that has been separately published? That really depends on the policy of your university and the particular opinions of your advisor and committee.
> -1 votes
# Answer
I have used websites in the past to help with similar content, they will give you a report of what was found online and help remove/reword the similar content so you don't have to worry about your document being marked as plagiarism.
> -2 votes
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Tags: phd, thesis, mathematics, plagiarism
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thread-30512
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30512
|
How can I fix or do after I made many big mistakes with my professor?
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2014-10-25T06:04:55.677
|
# Question
Title: How can I fix or do after I made many big mistakes with my professor?
I am a new student in a college, the other company in my class is so quiet! (very rare questions and answers), and I am not very good at English (my professor is English).
I said negative comments about things that I disagree with such as "I don't think that because..", "I think it changed, this is old statistics..". I corrected his speech: "Sir, is it weather or climate?". I laughed and spoke in my language in the class so he thought that we are talking about him,
I actually feel shy when I speak in my language to my friends but it's difficult sometimes to change to English. I really feel like he is saying to himself "rude girl!"
In addition, I ask some ridiculous questions and talked too much, I just noticed how stupid I was. But the worst thing I did is when I suggested (by email) to come the class earlier because we are late, He thought that I am not interested and I want to finish earlier. He spoke to me in front of class but I did not understand what he was talking about ( his voice was low and angry), At home I understood so I sent an email of explanation but I Still feel bad. I am really nervous and confused, what should I do? I feel like I want to leave the class.
# Answer
The existing answers are great but I would add a few things. As a note **I teach classes were ALL my students are non-native English speakers but I am a native English speaker**.
**If you find the prof's statistics are out of date, then email him** with what you believe the current data is. Making everyone in class think less of the prof is unlikely to motivate the students to put in the work to learn.
**Don't pick apart the grammar or vocabulary usage unless it is important to his point**. For example, if he says "the weather is heating up over the decades because of pollution" then the fact that he should use "climate" is not really critical. You are not there to teach him English and even native speakers make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes are on purpose. I regularly use incorrect vocabulary because I believe my students would not know the proper word in English. If it matters, I will focus on the word. If it does not matter, then keep everyone focused on the point.
As far as what he is thinking when you are saying in a language other than the language of the classroom AND you are challenging him at every turn, then yes, he is likely thinking you are saying something bad about him.
You need to be polite. **Asking questions is fine (actually it is great) but if you are asking every minute you are slowing down the class** which makes it harder for the prof to keep his timing. Remember that he has a job to do and you should want him to do his job well. So, find a way to support him and not harm his efforts.
I suspect he is a professional (otherwise you would be talking about what he did to make you suffer) so just change your behavior. If you want to apologize, then do so. However, even if you do not but **if you DO change your behavior, I am sure he will appreciate your enthusiasm in the classroom**. Just keep it under control. Keep participating, in a reasonable way, and you may yet become his favorite.
> 11 votes
# Answer
**Don't** make the language as an excuse to your behaviour. Being respectful to your professor has nothing to do with the language proficiency. If you can't learn in English then quit your English-speaking school. Most of us are not English native speakers and yet we study at English schools.
> *What should I do to fix the problem?*
**1) Change your behaviour**. There is no need to give your opinion about everything the professor says. At the same time, I bet you are very welcome to ask questions *related to the material* and the professor will be happy to answer them.
**2) Tell the professor that you have changed and you regret what you did**. I believe you got a very nice professor ( I know some professors who will make your day miserable if you act like this in their class). Take the class seriously or at least do not be the class trouble maker.
> 20 votes
# Answer
It's simple: don't act childish in future lectures. If you are talking/giggling/whatever instead of following the lecture you are a nuisance to the professor but also to other students that try to pay attention.
Disagreeing with the professor is not necessarily bad, though comments like '*this is old statistics*' are not constructive. It's better to ask questions that can help you (and your classmates) understand the material better than to remain quiet and learn nothing. Just make sure you are polite when doing so and don't openly challenge your teacher's knowledge.
> 10 votes
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Tags: professorship, undergraduate
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thread-30524
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30524
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Is it ethical to reference a work accused of plagarism?
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2014-10-25T12:07:02.087
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# Question
Title: Is it ethical to reference a work accused of plagarism?
I have been using a book as reading for the background of my dissertation, but have just found out that it has been accused of being an unauthorised translation of someone else's work: http://www.mathematik.uni-marburg.de/~gumm/Plagiarism/index.htm
Can I still reference it in my dissertation, or should I reference the original author's work but using the material in the translation, or use a completely different reference instead?
# Answer
First, you need to decide if you find the plagiarism charges credible. Assuming that you do (the material at the link you include certainly looks damning), then you certainly should not give any citation to the plagiarists.
But that still leaves a dilemma: if you can't read the language of the original work, can you honestly cite it? To think about how to solve this, let's return to the principles of what a citation actually accomplishes:
1. A citation justifies an assertion in your work
2. A citation gives appropriate credit to the related and supporting intellectual work of others
3. A citation gives readers links to follow in learning more about the subject.
If this reference has been helpful to you, then the original author deserves citation on the basis of purpose #2. That does not, however, support purpose #1 or #3 if neither you nor most of your readers can read the language. The ideal solution would be if the original author has material with similar content, but written in English, which you can cite instead. Switching citations like that still fulfills all the criteria.
What if there is no appropriate source in English by the original author? If you can verify that the original work really does contain the parts that you find useful (e.g., via online translation or a friend who speaks the language), then cite the untranslated original, fulfilling purpose #1 and #2. Then, since this is textbook-level background material, there should *also* exist some non-plagiarized English works that are appropriate background to cite: find them, and add them in as well, strengthening purpose #1 and fulfilling #3.
> 14 votes
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Tags: citations, ethics, plagiarism
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thread-23114
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23114
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Can a conference paper be an extended version of a previous conference paper? Will it face copyright issues?
|
2014-06-09T02:59:51.880
|
# Question
Title: Can a conference paper be an extended version of a previous conference paper? Will it face copyright issues?
I am currently reviewing a conference paper, which I found is just extended version of a previous conference paper. I have heard that a journal paper can be a new version of a conference paper with some new stuff added, while the paper I am reviewing is something like this. Would this paper be rejected simply because of the copyright issue?
# Answer
> 2 votes
It would seem that you should contact the organizing committee of the conference and get their advice. To me it seems kind of low to write papers that have very similar content but it does happen. If you are questioning it that much I would bring it up with the Organizing Committee and see what they say. You don't even have to mention names or specifics but just get their general opinion.
# Answer
> 2 votes
This depends entirely on the conferences involved. Some conferences will allow an overlap of up to 30% with other works (for example), and others require entirely original products. In either event, it is imperative that the earlier paper be referenced in the later one, ideally with an explanation of what is new.
# Answer
> 0 votes
I don't know if I read the question correctly. You are the reviewer? Not the author?
**If you are the reviewer, the thing you should do is:** Open your e-mail client, write to the jounral/conference editor that asked you to make the review, and tell them that you found this, and ask them if they will even consider it for the publication or not. It would be good to give them a link to the other paper, or send a copy attached (if you're legally allowed to do that).
# Answer
> 0 votes
The only case in which it is intellectually honest for conference paper to be an extended version of another is if:
1. There is a major difference in the length of the two papers (e.g., 4-page extended abstract vs. 10-page full paper), and
2. The paper declares the relationship up front with a proper citation (e.g., "This paper is an extended version building on the results already presented in \[XXX\]").
I see the relationship between conference and journal versions as different. In computer science, where the principle is typically "30% new for the journal version," the theory is typically that the journal version is a final and archival version which ties up all of the critical loose ends and inserts all of the portions omitted for space purposes in the conference paper. Thus, it essentially supersedes the conference paper. A second conference paper, on the other hand, should generally present a new piece of work not previously shown.
Thus, for a conference, if both of these criteria are not fulfilled, then you are dealing with a case of salami-slicing and possibly also self-plagiarism and the paper should be rejected.
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Tags: conference, copyright
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thread-30489
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30489
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Using MHRA, do I need to cite a translator when referencing an online text?
|
2014-10-24T18:02:04.050
|
# Question
Title: Using MHRA, do I need to cite a translator when referencing an online text?
My apologies in advance if this question is misplaced here. Using a reference like this (for online resourses)
> Heraclitus, 'Fragments Of Heraclitus - Wikisource, The Free Online Library', En.wikisource.org, 2014 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fragments\_of\_Heraclitus#Fragment\_1 \[accessed 24 October 2014\]
do I need to include somewhere that the translator is John Burnet? I assume so, but I cannot find anything in the style guide to indicate where I would put the translator (maybe just, "Heraclitus, translated by John Burnet, ..." ?).
# Answer
> 1 votes
One of the several reasons for citation is to give credit where credit is due. Thus, you *must* cite the translator. How to do so? Just like you would an editor.
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Tags: citations, online-resource, translations
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thread-30504
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30504
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What is the recommender address and his/her title or position in graduate applications?
|
2014-10-25T03:01:33.213
|
# Question
Title: What is the recommender address and his/her title or position in graduate applications?
I was trying to fill out the graduate school application for graduate school. However in the "recommender info" part it asks me to enter the address, city, institute and title or position but I wonder what they are? should I enter the university address? is title or position like assistant or full professor? I would be very appreciated if anyone can help me with that.
# Answer
> 2 votes
Ask the person who will write the letter of recommendation what address they want you to use. I suspect that this university will send them a return envelope to use to submit the letter, so the address must be their proper mailing address.
# Answer
> 1 votes
These days, most people who could serve as a good recommender have a professional website that will give their full contact information, including their full title, mailing address, etc. You can typically find this either by Google or by going to their organization's website, which will somewhere have a list of faculty and other significant staff.
If this information is not publicly online (most likely to happen with a recommender from a company) then just ask your recommender to give their preferred contact information.
# Answer
> 0 votes
Lookup the mailing address for the academic department in question. This can be easily found on the department's website. And yes, position is something like assistant or associate professor.
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Tags: graduate-admissions, graduate-school, recommendation-letter
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thread-30432
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30432
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What is the meaning of signs and numbers appearing in scoring system of AAAI?
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2014-10-23T14:41:10.847
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# Question
Title: What is the meaning of signs and numbers appearing in scoring system of AAAI?
I've received the reviewer reports for a paper I submitted to AAAI (the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence). I found their scoring method a bit confusing and I would like some help understanding their review of my work.
Each aspect is followed by a number and some plus and minus signs. For instance:
> 8(+++)
Can any experienced reviewers/authors explain the meaning of these signs and the range of scores?
# Answer
I dug up my AAAI reviews from two years ago, and it looks like they've been tinkering with their scoring system, so I can't tell you a precise answer. I can give the general principle, however:
EasyChair allows the chairs of a conference to configure a set of "attributes" for scoring. Each attribute gets both a numerical value and a descriptor. Some examples from AAAI two years ago:
Individual attributes:
> 5: (ground-breaking (top 15%), a sufficient basis for accepting the paper)
>
> 4: (positive, a factor in accepting the paper)
>
> 2: (problematic, a factor in rejecting the paper)
Overall ratings:
> 2: (Strong acceptance. A 5 or 6 in some category, no 1 in any category.)
>
> -2: (Strong rejection. A 1 in some category, no 5 or 6 in any category.)
So as you can see, then they were using a 1-6 scale and a -2 to 2 scale.
From the sample you gave, my guess is that they're currently using a 1-10 scale, with 5 being neutral. Thus
> 8 (+++)
Would translate approximately to "8 out of 10 (a very good score, three positive steps above neutral)."
> 2 votes
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Tags: conference, peer-review
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thread-30532
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30532
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How can I find a link to Guardian's list of postgraduate open days for 2014-15?
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2014-10-25T13:58:27.137
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# Question
Title: How can I find a link to Guardian's list of postgraduate open days for 2014-15?
The Guardian newspaper website has previously published a list of postgraduate open days at UK universities. However, I cannot see the list of postgraduate open days for 2014-15. Does anyone have the link please?
# Answer
A little Googling found a Guardian article this summer that now points to a separately established website which seems to aim to be a long-term resource: http://www.findamasters.com/opendays/
> 1 votes
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Tags: website
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thread-30339
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30339
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How and where can I seek help regarding research outside of my university?
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2014-10-21T22:26:03.077
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# Question
Title: How and where can I seek help regarding research outside of my university?
I'm so glad to finally have found this avenue where I can seek some advice related to my Phd. I wonder why it took me so long to stumble on this.
Let me give a brief of my situation:
I'm a Phd student in management Science discipline (My research area is - Management Information System & Decision Making ) well into 4th year with little progress to speak of. The thing is, I made 2 biggest blunders at the outset about which I cannot do anything at this point:
1. Getting into an University without considering whether it's suitable for the topic I'm interested in
2. Not changing my topic even after figuring out that my supervisor and the whole faculty aren't really comfortable with it.
I plead guilty.
I'm the first scholar assigned to my supervisor. So, he doesn't have any experience guiding research. He is also not knowledgeable about my research area. As such, I have received nothing from him in terms of suggestions, guidance or direction in all these years. The other faculty are also not very helpful either regarding the topic or the research in general. I'm only looking for some intellectual discussions and guidance related to how to perform the research.
Nevertheless, I finally came up with the research proposal, which finally (after 2 years) "seemed" to satisfy all the faculty. I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out because I believe that with good guidance, it could have been way better.
All these years, I continuously tried to contact other people for help - academicians, practitioners and the like for support with only meager results.
Due to personal reasons, I moved to a different country a few months back (USA) and I have deregistered from the university. But I still want to finish my phd and get the degree. The system works like this: I can work on my own and when I think I'm almost done I can re-register (before a stipulated time) and submit my thesis within an year of re-registration.
So, now I'm completely cut-off. Not that I fared any better while I was with the University.
I did some literature survey (not sure it's exhaustive), identified some variables, started working designing questionnaire, but still am stuck on how to address one of the research objectives.
My question:
I am looking for people researching in the related field ( Phd students, academicians) , with whom I can discuss ideas/bottlenecks. And I'm seriously in need of advice regarding survey design and analysis. How can I find and approach such people? Where do I need to look for support? (I tried reaching several professors, researchers with no avail. No friends of mine are knowledgeable about MIS/Research) Anyone on this forum who can help me? What should be my strategy now?
I'm really passionate about my research. Given my constraints, I want to do as decent a work as possible.
# Answer
> 2 votes
Are there any universities in your area? Problems like yours happen, and there are often kindly professors who will understand and take in academic refugees of various sorts, especially if what you are primarily looking for is advice and not funding.
In approaching a possible professor for advice, however, you need to make sure you're asking for an appropriate level of interaction. Do not show up and say, "Please will you become the supervisor of somebody totally unknown to you on a possibly very time-consuming project?" Have a particular specific question about something small that is your next step, and in the email you use to introduce yourself, ask if they would be willing to meet *briefly* to give some advice on that question or to if they could point you to somebody who would be better to talk to.
You need to be fairly independent and willing to get help and advice from many different people, if necessary. You also need to understand that you will be generally the lowest priority of anybody that you talk to, and not feel discouraged if some people don't respond.
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Tags: phd, research-process, independent-researcher
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thread-30449
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30449
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Getting a scientific article published with no qualifications to any scientific journal?
|
2014-10-23T23:11:08.623
|
# Question
Title: Getting a scientific article published with no qualifications to any scientific journal?
I hope I have found the right website for my query. Would it be possible to get a psychological experiment that you carried out published to any journal, despite the fact that you are:
1. Only 17 (nearly 18) years old
2. Have no degree or qualification
I've got some really great ideas for psychological experiments that I haven't been able to find them done yet. I really just want to do science and get recognised for it. I was thinking Google Science fair, but that has ended. I'm just doing this for self-pursuit and interest. I am hoping exposure to a scientific audience can lead me to my future career path.
# Answer
> 29 votes
There are two different types of "no qualifications":
1. A person may be "unqualified" because they don't have the usual pieces of paper
2. A person may be "unqualified" because they are not familiar with the standards and practices of the field.
Don't worry about the first one. Worry about the second one. For example, one of the other comments raised the issue of getting human subject experiments approved. Likewise, there are lots of subtle challenges in experimental design that have to be dealt with in order to getting a valid psychological result. But high school students and undergraduates do real scientific work all the time. Consider, for example, the iGEM genetic engineering competition: students from around the world, both high school and undergraduate, get right out to the bleeding edge of science, and some of their work goes on to be published. Or consider the Hackerspace/DIY movement, which is bubbling over with innovation and certainly knows no age barriers.
Now, what most of those folks have, and what it sounds like you don't currently, is mentors who know the ropes. A good mentor might or might not be "qualified" in the sense of pieces of paper, but should have a good sense of the scientific method, and at least some ideas of who else to get involved if you start thinking you've got a unique result and want to figure out how to get from awesome science on the internet to a formal publication.
Don't worry about the uniqueness or publication part of it too much. First, find some good peers and a mentor if you can, and *just start doing some science*. Then see if you actually enjoy the thrill of the knowledge chase enough to overcome the frustrations of experiments that don't work and people who point out the problems in the ideas you have come to love. If you fall in love, not just with the *idea* of science, but with the process, then as time goes by you can sort out which of the many science-related career paths ends up being a good one for you to pursue.
Maybe you'll end up published before you turn 20, and maybe you won't. If that makes a big difference to you, then you're in it for the wrong reasons.
# Answer
> 24 votes
You don't need any formal qualifications to get an article published. You don't have to have degrees or titles or money or anything. What you have to do is make an original, important contribution to the sum total of human knowledge.
I don't want to offend you here, but you need to be realistic. The chances that you are going to make such a contribution at 17 or 18 is virtually nil. You haven't seen anybody else suggest such experiments, but how much literature have you actually read? How many monographs, how many research articles? The reason that it is pretty much only people with PhDs who publish research is not that there's some big conspiracy. It can take as many as 5-10 years of dedicated, carefully directed effort, involving lots of mentors and help along the way to get a person to the point that they can start making such contributions.
Don't be discouraged in your desire to do research. But recognize that you've got a long road of learning the field, and internalizing the norms and practices of the discipline before you're realistically going to get a piece of original research published. It really is that hard, but that's also why it's so special and valuable. Stay hungry.
# Answer
> 6 votes
Yes, it's possible if uncommon. I did it, learned a ton, and had a blast. The byline in the journal just unceremoniously lists my affiliation as my high school. It's actually pretty funny. But the others' answers are spot-on; you have to put in a lot of background reading in the field. This is much easier when you have a mentor in the field to guide you, but I didn't have one. If you can, talk to someone with a good brain for research and study design even if they're not in psychology, and ask for their help with the idiosyncrasies of preparing a manuscript for submission.
Don't have wild expectations, but go for it. It's pretty damn fun to do independent research. And psychology is not a bad choice: the literature is accessible to a layperson, and if you're clever, you can do a psych study on a shoestring.
Good luck!
# Answer
> 0 votes
Ignore the doubters.
Do the goddamn experiments and keep a METICULOUS log of your activity, practice, procedures etc. Videos, transcripts, audios, pictures, notes, EVERYTHING.
Most of the greatest minds in our history all came from little to no educational background, (or completely different fields)
People forget that science isn't about a degree, it's about curiosity.
Go do it my man.
It's true, it might be easier if you can have a patron or mentor but don't let that stop you from starting. You can do both at the same time. Send a respectful letter or phone the Professor and say something along the lines of:
"Hi, My names John, I'm doing some cool research about xyz, I thought you'd be intereted because
I'm running my xth wave of experiments (never say it's your first or second) at the moments and it's due to finish on the xth.
I'm telling you this because it would be great to have another perspective/opinion/insight about the results. Already there are some amazing trends beginning to show."
Be confident and display certainty in your communications.
Don't get too caught up in the pomposity of academia. Respect it, but don't aspire to it, keep things simple man.
FYI. I read and use various reports, and papers all the time in my occupation, and most of it could be said with about 60% less verbage. It's disgraceful that the most 'educated' minds require so many words, they are nearly as bad as lawyers, (which use these massive amounts of words to sneak their own interpretation into)
Toasting to your success my friend.
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Tags: publications
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thread-30553
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30553
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Is there any difference between one-year MScs and two-years MScs?
|
2014-10-25T18:08:37.060
|
# Question
Title: Is there any difference between one-year MScs and two-years MScs?
I am currently intending to apply for a master degree in Health/Clinical Psychology. I would like to ask if there is any difference in terms of qualification between an one-year MSc and a two-year one, that is, if they are recognised as of same value in any possible field of application. If not then what are the differences between them?
# Answer
I am not sure about your field, and it also probably varies by university, but generally one year MScs are just course based, professional degrees that offer little to no funding (Meaning you pay out of pocket). Two year degrees, on the other hand, generally are thesis based degrees, are often funded (not as often as PhDs). Sometimes 2 year MScs are also course based, but I would look at credit requirements. Some schools offer programs where you can do the equivalent of a 2 year program in 1 year (non thesis based).
In my field, Earth Sciences, a 1 year or 2 year non thesis based MSc is generally reserved for people who want to teach in High school (USA) or their company wants them to brush up on some new techniques in the field. Those who want to go on to a PhD program, or, get a high paying industry job (in oil/gas) tend to do thesis based degrees to be competitive.
So more credits = better degree. Thesis = better degree. In general, of course.
> 1 votes
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Tags: masters
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thread-30579
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30579
|
If I know how many questions I attempted/got wrong on GRE Math Subject test, can I estimate my score?
|
2014-10-26T03:22:19.510
|
# Question
Title: If I know how many questions I attempted/got wrong on GRE Math Subject test, can I estimate my score?
I gave my Mathematics GRE Subject test yesterday ( 170 minutes). I attempted 42 out of 66 questions and feel I could do more if I had some more time. I lost time solving some questions.
Of the questions I attempted, I took my time and at most only 3-4 might have been attempted wrong.
Do I have chances of receiving a really low score? How can I estimate my score?
# Answer
The official practice book for the Math Subject Exam describes how to score an exam.
According to this practice book, a typical scaled score in 2008-2009 for someone with a raw score of 41 (42 correct answer, 4 incorrect answers = 41 raw score) might be around 730, or 72nd percentile.
You can calculate the score for other possible scenarios following the procedure described in the practice book.
As for whether this is considered a "really low score," please see What is an acceptable math GRE subject score.
> 5 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, mathematics, gre
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thread-30569
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30569
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When and how should you talk to a professor if you think you deserve a different grade?
|
2014-10-25T23:43:15.250
|
# Question
Title: When and how should you talk to a professor if you think you deserve a different grade?
I recently was returned a midterm I wrote. One question I interpreted differently than what was intended. As a result I got 0.5/3 marks, which isn't a big deal but considering the test was only out of 15, it adds up. Due to timing conflicts I'm unable to meet the prof during office hours, but have scheduled to talk to him after next class.
I'm getting a bit stressed out, I'm uncertain what to say and what to ask for. If I had interpreted the question he intended it to, then I'm sure I could have gotten full marks. Any suggestions? This is the second time it happened but the first was only for 0.5 mark, so I let it slide.
The question had to do with output of a program and asked "what are all possible outputs of the program?" and I wrote down the correct answer, but what he was getting at was if the program was rerun the output may be in a different order so he wanted the answer to have all possible permutations.
Does anyone have recomendations on how many marks to ask for or have a policy on when to talk to the prof when you think you deserve more marks?
# Answer
> Does anyone have recomendations on how many marks to ask
Yes, one: do not, *absolutely*, ask for a specific amount of marks. Explain your interpretation, but leave to the professor to decide whether you deserve more marks or not and, in case, how many.
> 16 votes
# Answer
In the situation you described, *in principle* it seems reasonable to ask for the professor to reconsider the grading, based on what you've written. If you do, here are a few tips:
* Be polite. Take the professor's personality into account. You don't have to be sycophantic, just be professional.
* Be clear about the situation without being verbose. Choose neutral wording - don't insult the exam or make it seem like you are trying to dodge responsibility.
* Don't put the professor "on the spot" - don't pressure them to decide immediately, especially if you are talking to them just after class. If it is at all possible, try to meet at office hours instead. Perhaps give them your exam and ask if they will look at the question and get back to you.
* Listen carefully to the response. You can stand up for yourself, but being aggressive is not likely to help anything, so avoid any appearance of that.
That is my opinion about *asking*. Whether you will *receive* extra points is a separate question. Certainly, a few professors may be completely unreasonable.
In my experience most professors *want* to be reasonable, but they may have other valid concerns about changing the grade, which you would not be aware of:
* Whether changing your grade would require changing other students' grades in order to be fair. This might not be straightforward if the exams have been returned.
* Whether, in the professor's opinion, you had enough examples of similar problems to know what was intended.
* Whether the change is likely to actually affect your final class grade. It it seems unlikely to change your overall grade, and there are other concerns about making the change, this may lead the professor to say no.
* Whether many other students are asking for grade changes - which may be less reasonable. There is sometimes a concern that one exception to a policy will lead to many more - so a seemingly inflexible policy may be an attempt to avoid a slippery slope.
> 8 votes
# Answer
From the perspective of the marker:
At any time, even the best students might misunderstand a question, and go off the rails in answering it. That's ok, no one exam question or coursework question is a big deal in the final Masters mark. The final assessment, references, and so on, will all be based on the overall course, not one question.
But when a student gets in touch to say they disagree with their mark, and want to negotiate a new one, and they're doing this outside of (or in the absence of) any existing appeal framework, then in my experience that's usually a sign that there are much deeper problems: that this isn't an unlucky incident, this is a problem student.
Bear that in mind.
Don't do any of the things you propose doing. Instead, appoach someone who taught that module *and* was involved in the marking; tell them that you know you screwed up on that question by misinterpreting what it was asking; and ask how you could have avoided it, and how you can avoid repeating that mistake in the future. Then, if the question genuinely was ambiguous, there's a good chance they'll understand the issue, and take compensatory / corrective action if appropriate. And if it wasn't ambiguous, their answer to your question will help you learn, which is - ultimately - the whole point of the exercise.
> 7 votes
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Tags: coursework, exams, grades
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thread-30313
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30313
|
What are the expectations for a Ph.D. candidate in Scandinavia in particular?
|
2014-10-21T15:21:44.750
|
# Question
Title: What are the expectations for a Ph.D. candidate in Scandinavia in particular?
I am willing to pursue a PhD degree in Northern Europe (mostly in Scandinavia). So, I take advice from differen professors of my university.
The exact question I asked was:
> I want to complete my PhD degree in a Scandinavian Country
Some of them told me that it does not matter where I want to go. Others told me that it changes with respect to the region I want to go.
I was ready to be satisfied with only one common advise, however, most of them told me completely different expectations.
They can be summarized as:
1. Cumulative GPA should be 4.00/4.00.
2. You should publish a conference paper.
3. You must publish a journal paper in a mediocre journal.
4. Most important thing is getting very good reference letters.
5. It is just luck. You should give every university a try.
6. They mostly look at your cover letter.
7. You should find someone that you know from that university. He/she should advise you.
Are these sentences professors' own expectations? Or are some of them completely true?
Or...
Should I take all of them into consideration?
To sum up:
I am pursuing a PhD in Scandinavia. What should I do? Are the expected qualifications same as US or Asian countries?
# Answer
> 4 votes
In **Finland**, you usually start your PhD studies after your MSc studies. If you don't have an MSc yet, get it first.
Other than that, there are no unusual requirements or expectations. You just have to convince your potential supervisor that you personally are the best person in the world for this position. Hiring a PhD student is a huge investment — in the ballpark of hundreds of thousands of euros of grant money, plus numerous hours of their time to supervise the student — and you really have to convince the professor that you are worth all that.
A fairly common approach is to do your MSc studies in the same place, get to know the professors, work as a summer intern in their research groups, write a MSc thesis under their supervision, etc., and this way gradually convince them that you really are not just an excellent student but you also could become an excellent researcher.
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Tags: phd, application
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thread-30593
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30593
|
How can I study PhD in business after masters in physics?
|
2014-10-26T11:58:41.730
|
# Question
Title: How can I study PhD in business after masters in physics?
I got master in Physics and now I am thinking to continue for PhD in marketing, business or Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Is it possible to switch for Phd? How can I do that and how should I persuade admission committee?
# Answer
It is very possible to switch majors. If possible, try to talk with a faculty member with whom you are interested in working. If they are willing to work with you then the admissions process is likely to be fairly simple.
With that said, a PhD in business is meant to prepare you for teaching or a career in academia, not in actual business. If you want business skills for work outside of academia, an MBA is the way to go. Considering this, an admissions board / faculty member is probably most interested in your aptitude to publish. Your masters shows strong quantitative skills and so if you have any publications, that will likely go a long way in helping you get started.
All of these are very general statements, if you are really serious about a PhD then you should definitely contact schools you are interested in and see if you can talk with faculty.
> 2 votes
# Answer
Switching fields this drastically takes some work. You probably will not be able to go directly, although many business schools are dying for more quantitative people, so that could change things. Really, though, you probably won't have a hard time convincing the admissions committee that you are smart enough to do a PhD. What you need to show them is that you are genuinely invested in the topic and have legitimate interest in it - that it's not just a passing "fad" for you, which you won't complete. Ways to do that include:
1. Get a second masters.
2. Find someone who does the kind of research you do, and work with them for a year or two.
3. Since you want to do marketing/business stuff, you really should think about working in this field in industry for a few years, first. Many business PhD programs won't even admit people who don't have "real world" experience.
Of these, the third is probably best. It will take time, but will also leave you in the best position to pursue your PhD of choice.
> 1 votes
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Tags: phd, changing-fields, business-school
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thread-30614
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30614
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Saying that you will do something in the near future in CV and statement of purpose when applying for grad school.
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2014-10-26T21:12:13.177
|
# Question
Title: Saying that you will do something in the near future in CV and statement of purpose when applying for grad school.
I am applying for PhD and In my statement of purpose I said that I have submitted a paper for a certain conference and that I will submit another one to a top conference once I have completed doing certain measurements.
I also said that by the end of my degree I will have done this and that. I mention these things in my CV too which I will submit to that school.
Is it OK to say such things ? These are near future plans and show how I progress and what I plan to do and I believe that they will improve my chances of getting admissions. How will professors and admission committees look at such a CV ?
# Answer
> 4 votes
In CVs, it's not unusual to write "*planned*" or "*expected*" next to certain lines on a CV that are not yet realized but where there is a very strong reason to expect the event will happen. Although I don't think there's a hard and fast rule about when you should or shouldn't do this, the most important thing is to be honest and unambiguously clear about what stage and state a particular piece of work is. If things fall through and something doesn't happen according to the plan, nobody who read your CV before should feel like you misled them.
The most common example of this is a listing of a degree with an expected or planned date that it will be awarded. This is common enough that I might even find it unusual surprising if a student in a degree program did not list a degree in this way. Because less of this is within an author's control, I'd be very hesitant to list dates next to any unpublished papers on my CV.
That said, it's not uncommon to list papers or projects at different points along a process — especially for more junior scholars who don't have a lot on their CV otherwise. For example, it's normal to list papers as: *in preparation* (i.e., unfinished), *under review* (i.e., submitted but without a decision), *in press* (i.e., accepted but unpublished), etc. Again, managing expectations is key here. On my CV, I list working papers in a section that is entirely separate from my list of publications.
In terms of your personal statement, I think you *absolutely should* list papers in preparation and make it clear where and when you plan to submit them. Again, just explain things clearly in a way that will honestly communicate the state of your research.
# Answer
> 4 votes
Anything that you have already done weighs much more than what you intend to do. That said, as an undergraduate, you may not have had a chance to do very much yet, so talking about future plans is OK. Put most of your emphasis on the work that you have done in support of the submission, less on what you plan to do next, and least on what you plan to write and where you plan to submit it: after all, anyone can write a bad paper and get it rejected from a top venue!
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Tags: phd, graduate-admissions, statement-of-purpose
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thread-30590
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30590
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Is it advisable to emphasize (italicize) good research qualities in a research statement?
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2014-10-26T09:50:05.900
|
# Question
Title: Is it advisable to emphasize (italicize) good research qualities in a research statement?
In a Ph.D. application, a statement of purpose (or more precisely, research statement) is required. I think a candidate should use this statement to showcase his/her good research qualities backed up by the research experience to the admission committee.
In order to make those qualities (i.e., those positive adjectives) stand out, can one emphasize those adjectives by italicizing them?
Specifically, I am referring to qualities such as "independent thinking ability, rigorous"...
In my opinion, the research interests and professors of interest should be highlighted in bold so as to facilitate the faculty reader allocation. This way, highlighting these adjectives also in bold will be pretty messy. So it may be a good idea to highlight the adjectives in another and less catchy form, i.e., the italic form. Am I right?
# Answer
> 7 votes
The preferred details for typesetting your research statement are likely to be highly subjective. Different things are likely to be pleasing, striking, or off-putting, depending on the individual preferences of whoever is reading your application.
I would agree that italics are one of the preferred methods to provide emphasis without being too flashy or distracting. Whether or not that is the appropriate choice for your research statement should probably depend to some extent on the style and content of the rest of your application as well. If you have access to a university writing center, you should try to speak with someone there to decide on the style and arrangement of your application.
To speak to my own experience, I generally will not consider a candidate more capable or skilled in *independent thought*, *rigorous work*, or *attention to detail*, because it is typographically emphasized on their application.
# Answer
> 4 votes
The most effective way of emphasizing an attribute is not by typography, but by illustrative examples. Compare the declaration:
> I am capable of great *attention to detail*
versus a more illustrative:
> I am well known for my attention to detail: other members of my lab group always ask me to review their proofs before submission.
The real meat of the statement is not the bit you might want to fiddle with typography on, but the larger sentence that demonstrates *how* you display the attribute in question. In this "show, don't tell" sort of presentation, messing with typography will distract from your point rather than adding to it.
# Answer
> 1 votes
**I would skip the italics.** There is no rule against italicizing things in your personal statement. That said, you should remember that this is a formal piece of professional writing. Bolding words comic book-style seems unprofessional and italics only seem slightly better.
More importantly, if I wasn't convinced by the unitalicized version, I am not going to change my mind because of the slanted letters. I would focus on finding a way to let your virtues speak louder than your typography.
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Tags: statement-of-purpose, formatting
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thread-30623
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30623
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How should I phrase a résumé if I have an uncertain degree plan?
|
2014-10-27T01:45:25.460
|
# Question
Title: How should I phrase a résumé if I have an uncertain degree plan?
I have been working towards a degree in mathematics and in computer science for the last two and a half years. That corresponds to the following bit in my résumé:
> **Education**
> B.A. in Mathematics (2012 - 2016 expected)
> B.S. in Computer Science (2012 - 2016 expected)
However, I recently found out that I can graduate next semester with a major in mathematics and a minor in computer science. If that was my plan, I would write this:
> **Education**
> B.A. in Mathematics (2012 - 2015 expected)
> Minor: Computer Science
However, at the moment I am undecided about which path I plan to take.
Which should I include in the résumé? I am considering just writing down whichever one would seem more impressive, but I don't want to be deceitful.
# Answer
> 3 votes
Facing an uncertain graduate date is a common issue, particularly for many Ph.D. students who aren't sure exactly when they are going to defend. The thing that you want in your C.V. is to communicate as clearly as possible what are your skills *and time of availability* to the people considering taking you on for your next career stage after graduation. Thus, put your current best estimate in; if you want to indicate an option to join a position earlier, put that in as well as an option.
# Answer
> 0 votes
The best way I worded my resume was Stating the school you when to, the city,state Bachelors of Some Thing Additional Fields of Study: Minor in Computer Science and Engineering
In terms of your resume, I would start out stating your revelant course work in a list but make it into a table (hide the borders when your done) that you can hide in MS Word.
After that put your volunteer and work history
after putting that put all the skills and qualifications.
I added something a bit extra which was I speak Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese), Spanish, Japanese, and English (my second language was English)
Math majors are much needed in CS and in biology. That's a very good path.
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Tags: cv
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thread-30620
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30620
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Getting Letters of recommedation with no professor suport
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2014-10-27T01:27:26.163
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# Question
Title: Getting Letters of recommedation with no professor suport
How does one obtain letters of rec after he/she graduated from university?
I am currently enrolled in a post-bac biotechnology program where I could identity one potential candidate for a letter. I have one letter from my former boss where I dealt with computers. But what are my options getting another letter? BTW I haven't known my professor in the biotechnology program forever (just 2 months). How long do you have to know a professor before asking?
# Answer
> 0 votes
> I haven't known my professor in the biotechnology program forever (just 2 months). How long do you have to know a professor before asking?
There is no stipulated time duration. It is just that the person writing that recommendation letter has to well acquainted with your work, to feel confident while endorsing you. In your case, the relevant points would be how well you fared in any self-learning modules of his course, or otherwise, in his course in general. (I'm assuming there's no "*project*" type thing involved. If there is, even better!, because that gives him a better opportunity to judge your potential.)
So, if you feel he has had ample exposure to your work to be in a position to write a favorable recommendation letter for you, you should absolutely go ahead!
> How does one obtain letters of rec after he/she graduated from university?
Provided the above stipulation is satisfied, you can go and meet him personally, or even write an email if the former is not possible. You haven't mentioned for how long have you haven't been in touch with him in the question. If it is 1-2 years, it is likely that he wouldn't have completely forgotten you, or at least, you can ring up old memories in any case. Also, you must absolutely enclose your CV in the email.
Please bear in mind that if he doesn't feel confident enough, or has his doubts, he is most likely not going to respond to your email, and obviously, no recommendation also. If your entire correspondence is via email only, you could send him one, or at most, two gentle reminders, but DO NOT press it beyond that! Also, space the reminders by about a week or so. If he doesn't reply, accept it calmly that this avenue is gone. If it is gone, you will have to look for another guy, but all this is definitely worth a shot. I mean, you have nothing to lose.
Hope that helps :)
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Tags: recommendation-letter
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thread-25932
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/25932
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Can someone really be assigned to review in the APS’s editorial system for over a month without reacting at all and if yes, why?
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2014-07-15T13:46:47.293
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# Question
Title: Can someone really be assigned to review in the APS’s editorial system for over a month without reacting at all and if yes, why?
From observations as an author and reviewer that I made myself and that have been reported to by others, it seems that the editorial system of the American Physical Society (which in particular publishes the *Physical Review* journals) works as follows:
> 1. The editor selects a reviewer.
> 2. The reviewer receives an invitation to review, which he can accept, decline or ignore.
> 3. If the reviewer declines, inform the editor to select a new reviewer (i.e., go back to step 1).
> 4. Otherwise, wait approximately one month for a review.
> 5. If nothing has happened, inform the editor to select a new reviewer.
This means in particular that if the reviewer does not react at all (for an extreme example, because he died years ago), it takes one month until another reviewer is selected. In contrast, with all other publishers, step 3 seems to be instead:
> 3. If the reviewer declines or does not accept the invitation within a few days, inform the editor to select a new reviewer.
which seems much more reasonable to me, as a reviewer who does not accept to review (which usually is little work) for whatever reason is very unlikely to review a paper.
My questions regarding this are:
1. Does it really work like this?
2. If yes, why is the system not switched to one, which requires the reviewers to give some positive response within a few days?
---
Note: Just in case, somebody mistakes this for some disgruntled bashing: Apart from the above, my experience of publishing with APS journals has been rather positive. I am just puzzled by this seemingly nonsensical mode of operation.
# Answer
1. Yes it really works like this, except that: (a) the editor selects 1-2 reviewers, not a single reviewer (see http://journals.aps.org/authors/web-submission-guidelines-physical-review). In my experience / field, it's usually two. (b) I'm not sure which APS journal you are submitting to, but for Physical Review B, the median time with referees is be about 30 days (Rapid Communications) or 40-50 days (regular) in 2013--see https://journals.aps.org/prb/rapids. This is roughly consistent with my experience.
2. Some journals are much faster. In my experience in refereeing manuscripts, I'm usually given only 1-2 weeks to respond with "Yes I will review" / "No I will not review". However, I'm usually allowed to request for an extension of the deadline (and there's usually a box where I'll need to give a justification for the extension).
A 1+ month wait may be a little bit longer than normal--you may wish to consider writing directly to the editor (and if the editor feels there is a need to do so, the editor may choose send an reminder email to the referee). Note that the referee could already be receiving reminder emails (auto-generated by the system)--I have received such emails as the deadline for review approaches.
> 4 votes
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Tags: peer-review, publishers
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thread-30622
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30622
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How commonly do researchers spend a long time (>10) years on soft money?
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2014-10-27T01:44:00.640
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# Question
Title: How commonly do researchers spend a long time (>10) years on soft money?
In Academia, a soft money research position is one where uncertain money comes from an external source. The employee or xyr supervisor/boss might need to secure funding every couple of years or so, in order for the position to continue. The way out would be tenure or a government job.
An obvious soft money position is the post-doctoral fellowship, but many post-docs might not find a faculty position directly. For example, if the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) advertises a soft money assistant researcher position, they have a defined path of promotion steps. UCLA defines four steps of assistant researcher (2 years max), three steps of associate researcher (2 years max), and nine steps of researcher (3 years max until step IV, possibly indefinite from step V). If coming in at step I of assistant researcher, it might, theoretically, take 4\*2+3\*2+4\*3=26 years of positions in steps of 2 years (first 14 years) and 3 years (last 12 years), until one *might* be appointed indefinately, if I'm reading things correctly. Needless to say, not ideal from an employee's point of view.
Although time-limited positions and soft money might not mean exactly the same thing, I suppose they often go hand in hand. That raises the question: *how common is it for researchers to spend a long time, say more than 10 years, in soft money positions*? It's one thing to "drop out" of Academia when finishing a PhD at 28 years, it's another thing to move from postdoc to assistant researcher to associate researcher, only to finally discover, at age 45, that you're not good enough for tenure, and lack the necessary skills and experience for a teaching position. Oops.
In Science, Technology and Engineering (STEM) fields in the USA and Canada, how common is it for researchers to spend more than 10 years in time-limited soft-money research positions?
# Answer
> The way out would be tenure or a government job.
There seems to be a misconception here, namely that tenure is necessarily a way out from soft-money positions. Instead, it's possible to get a tenured soft-money position. This means the university provides no salary or other funding (which are supposed to come from grants), but they can't decide to eliminate your affiliation with the university. This is obviously not as secure as being paid by the university, but it still means something. Controversial research can't be held against you, and the department can no longer decide you don't meet their standards. (The latter is actually a genuine risk. Sometimes someone is allowed to hang around in a soft-money position for many years despite not being respected by some of the department, because nobody cares enough to try to get rid of them. Then one year a new chair comes in and decides to clean up the department by imposing higher standards.)
Most soft-money positions do not lead to any sort of tenure, and it's rare to have an "up or out" scenario in which someone must achieve tenure or leave. In particular, the scenario described in the question, in which someone pursues a soft-money position for twenty years and is then denied tenure and forced to leave, is not standard or common.
In particular, I don't think the UCLA positions the question links to are "time-limited" in any harmful way. My reading is that once you reach Researcher V or above, you can sit at that rank indefinitely. The time limits on lower levels ensure that junior researchers will get periodic raises and titles the reflect their increased experience. There is no tenure in this career track at UCLA; there is periodic review, but I'd guess that it's not particularly severe (intended to make sure people remain productive, not to weed out otherwise promising researchers). It's certainly not a career track with anything like the security or stability of a tenured position, but aside from that it looks pretty reasonable.
> In Science, Technology and Engineering (STEM) fields in the USA and Canada, how common is it for researchers to spend more than 10 years in time-limited soft-money research positions?
It varies enormously between fields and departments. In medicine, soft-money positions are pretty common and they can be prestigious and relatively secure. In mathematics, very few people support themselves entirely from grants. In computer science, it's in between.
As a rule of thumb, in the U.S. long-term soft-money positions are not a route towards a tenured hard-money position. It can happen, but this is not the typical or expected outcome. Instead, they are a parallel career track. One way to gauge how common this track is at institutions you care about is to look at departmental directories and count titles like "researcher", "research associate", "research scientist", etc.
> 8 votes
# Answer
In the U.S., at least, long-term careers on various forms of "soft money" are a lot more common than it looks from inside the "core" academia of graduate school and tenure-track faculty positions. In reality, the research ecosystem is very complex, with all sorts of niches that aren't necessarily apparent from the outside. My own experience as a grad student was that I didn't even know any of these options existed until a colleague reached out and invited me into the non-traditional side of academia.
I know of many people who have had long and fulfilling careers, all the way to retirement (if they ever really retire), entirely on soft money. Some of them have been with a single university or company for that entire time. More often, they shift around from position to position over time, between university, government, small company, large company, consultancy, foundation, non-profit, standards organization, etc., in patterns dictated by the evolution of those organizations and how the research opportunities are shifting. Unlike with postdocs, this often doesn't require moving, particularly near a high-tech hub: Boston and the Bay Area are obvious examples, but many large cities have research sectors that interact with the local universities in all sorts of non-obvious ways.
The distinction between "soft" and "hard" money is not always as obvious as it appears, either. For example, there are organizations that pool soft-money risk, or have core positions that are effectively hard because they are pooled between many external grants. Even university professors can often have the option to "soften" their positions by buying out of teaching responsibilities.
From my experience, it seems that there are three main classes of soft-money researcher, showing up in all of these environments:
* Primary investigators: just like normal faculty PIs, but with a higher cost and no teaching commitments. A PI who can establish a strong research direction and funding stream can hold a position nearly as secure as tenured faculty.
* High-skill implementer: these are people who don't necessarily lead their own projects, but who work full-time for PIs in executing projects. Engineers, analysts, programmers, lab technicians, etc. Really good implementers are always in high demand for research, and can have a long and productive research career when teamed with the right sort of PIs.
* Exploited labor: these are either implementers who haven't developed/proved their skill, people trying to become PIs who haven't made it yet, or researchers who are stuck in an exploitative environment. This is the type of soft money that seems to be most common in certain parts of traditional academia and can be "eternal postdoc limbo" (or its fake-hard-money cousin: "adjunct faculty limbo"). Unfortunately, it can often be hard for a researcher to tell if they're in this category and whether it's a passing stage or a trap they need to break out of.
Life in these worlds can be very different than in the teaching-centric parts of academia, but an awful lot of interesting things happen in them, and it offers much more variety in career options for a graduating Ph.D. with an inclination to research than I think most people know about.
> 14 votes
# Answer
In central europe, things look much the same as jakebeal explains in his strong answer. In reality, I think only a **small minority** of academics actually follow the theoretical trajectory of "PhD student - \[short time as postdoc\] - junior prof - tenured prof" around here. A simple reason for this is that the notion of tenured-track "junior professors" (whatever this position is formally called differs from country to country) is in fact a new-ish invention around here, and actual positions of this type are still **very, very rare**. My alma mater with more than 100 CS profs. had less than 5 calls for single tenure-track CS positions *lifetime*.
The career trajectory of an academic in central europe is generally much less standardized. The first step is always doing a PhD, but what comes in the next 10 to 15 years is different from candidate to candidate. Common career stations seem to include: (1) traditional postdoc positions, (2) working as a senior postdoc / soft-money PI (3) spending a few years in related industry, (4) founding your own startup (and, often, running it into the ground :) ), (5) working as a research scientist in a government or industry lab, or (6) going abroad (to the US or asia) for any of the options 1-5.
Some will then, after spending 10+ years in a combination of the options above, directly re-enter the regular university system as a tenured (full) professor. The majority, of course, will at some point before that drop out of academia entirely (e.g, their startup succeeds, they find work in industry more fulfilling and better paid, or they simply decide that their research isn't good enough to have a real shot at professorship).
> 2 votes
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Tags: career-path, funding
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thread-30640
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30640
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Would graduate committee be more favorable to a barely passed grad course or no grad course at all while undergrad
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2014-10-27T07:32:00.163
|
# Question
Title: Would graduate committee be more favorable to a barely passed grad course or no grad course at all while undergrad
I recently completely messed up a graduate level class I'm taking.
There is little hope that I will get a reasonably good grade out of this course, therefore I'm contemplating dropping it. Even I don't drop and get everything to 100%, I will wind up with around 65 at the end. Horrible.
If I drop it, my GPA will be preserved but I will have a lot of explanation to do to my recommenders for grad school, and it is kind of awful that it would most likely to be the first course I will take in grad school. I'm glad I found out how hard it was while still being an undergrad, but I'm not happy at all that so much efforts were spent for a miserable result.
Would grad committee look more favorably towards a barely passed grad course you took as an undergrad, or no grad course at all but reasonable gpa.
# Answer
The big question that both your recommenders and the admissions committee will wonder about is what this experience predicts for you in graduate school. If you do poorly when taking a grad class now, will you be able to do well in grad school?
One factor may be preparation. Maybe you were enthusiastic but overly ambitious, and in another year you'll have the experience and preparation needed to do well. This is the reassuring scenario.
Another possibility is that you're just not used to be challenged by courses, since the undergraduate program was not very demanding. Now that you know what you face, you'll take it more seriously and do better. It's entirely possible, but this scenario is more worrisome. Lots of people say "oh, next time I'll work harder," but this is easier said than done.
And there are even more worrisome possibilities. For example, maybe you just didn't like the material and couldn't bring yourself to engage deeply with it. This could be a symptom of lack of preparation, or it could be a sign that this field is not a good fit for you.
I'd recommend dropping the course. In grad school there's no value in barely passing a course: if you need to learn something, then you need to really learn it well, not just avoid failing. This means a bad grade on a transcript won't impress admissions committees, and it means you're going to have to go back and learn this material properly in the future anyway. Probably you should take this course in grad school. If you don't take it, then you'll need to put in some serious effort to master the material on your own.
Meanwhile, you should think about what went wrong and how to explain it to your recommenders, so that you reassure them regarding your future in grad school.
> 3 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions
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thread-30646
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30646
|
Top authors in a field
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2014-10-27T09:39:37.913
|
# Question
Title: Top authors in a field
I'd like to write down a list of the top authors in my field in order to keep up to date with literature. Can anybody suggest any systematic approach to build such a list?
# Answer
> 5 votes
*Disclaimer: I am definitely no expert in research, but let me just share with you how I do it.*
I do it largely by the help of Google Scholar (Hoo-ray for Google!). In order to make it sound "systematic", I phrase my way in two steps and an extra optional step.
1. **Step 1: Obtain the name list of the top authors in the field of interest from Google Scholar.** Since many researchers, especially in the filed of EECS, use Google Scholar, and they usually list their "research interests" in the form of tags (e.g., machine learning), we can view the authors conveniently by research interest. For example, see the results here for the top authors in the field of machine learning. You will notice that the list is automatically sorted in descending order in terms of citations.
2. **Step 2: Stay tuned for new papers by these authors with the help of Google Email Alerts.** Once you have browsed through the top author list, you should have shortlisted several most interested authors. To receive an email notification when they have new papers available online, simple click `Follow` on the right side of their names. Voila! You will receive an email every time they have new research published from now on!
3. **Optional Step:** Another thing I also do every year on top of the previous two points is to **skim through this year's proceedings of the famous conference/journals in the field.** This way, you may get a sense of what is hot these days.
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Tags: literature
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thread-30636
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30636
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How to abbreviate the name of a university when there is no official abbreviation?
|
2014-10-27T06:39:53.310
|
# Question
Title: How to abbreviate the name of a university when there is no official abbreviation?
Given that I must address a university by abbreviation, say call the University of X simply X, for some given X, and that there is no official abbreviation for the name of this university, what is a safe strategy to call this university?
# Answer
1. Do not do this. Especially since there are often many smaller universities that you do not know about that partially or entirely share the same name. For example, does "Rochester" refer to University of Rochester or Rochester Institute of Technology? Does "University of Massachusetts" refer to the well-known research campus in Amherst, or the very distinct and semi-separate institutions in Lowell, Boston, Worcester, or Dartmouth?
2. If you are forced to, ask Wikipedia, which will generally have an accepted shortened version in its article (e.g., "UMass Amherst"). If there is no Wikipedia article, then it's definitely not notable enough to abbreviate.
> 6 votes
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Tags: university
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thread-19192
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19192
|
Reviewing test answers with students using a Course Management System
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2014-04-10T20:19:07.560
|
# Question
Title: Reviewing test answers with students using a Course Management System
When I give an online test using a Course Management System (aka Learning Management System, LMS), I like to use the "review answers" capability to go over the test with the class and highlight questions that many of them got incorrect. This can reveal common misunderstandings, poorly worded questions, things I didn't teach adequately, etc.
But given that the recommendation is to scramble the order of the questions and even the answers, how on earth can that work? This is why I DON'T scramble questions and answers.
Does anyone have a way of dealing with this? I have spent hours searching the web and found no reference to this issue. But anyone using a LMS must have encountered it? Thank you!
# Answer
> 3 votes
I'm assuming the following:
1. Students are taking an online test, with questions entered into the LMS
2. The LMS produces some sort of visual output
3. You meet with students face-to-face
I've used our in-house LMS, Moodle and Coursera. In all cases the software offers the students randomized versions of the questions, but produces a view for the instructor that shows student responses that are aggregated (sample given at end of post). If my assumptions are true, you can pick perhaps the three most often missed questions from the test, make a screenshot, and present this to the class. Or better yet, offer an often-missed question on a slide and have students work in groups to provide a higher-quality group answer.
We might be able to help you more if you correct my assumptions and provide which LMS you are using.
Sample screen shot:
# Answer
> 3 votes
Terascore has a built-in way to do this. After the students filled out the test the report shows you question by question how well the whole group did on the question, even showing you which questions are by-design defective - eg. everyone got it wrong, even the top performers.
Full disclosure: I'm one of the founders of Terascore.
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Tags: coursework, exams
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thread-30670
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30670
|
Multiple submission of same work for different audiences
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2014-10-27T16:39:39.367
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# Question
Title: Multiple submission of same work for different audiences
I have research work that has been conducted and is at the stage where it is worth disseminating to the research community. It is somewhat cross-discipline in nature, and involves some technical contributions and is also of interest to a set of end users who are completely non-technical.
The problem is that, having attempted previous submissions, it has become painfully clear that neither community seems to appreciate quite the same issues as the other. Thus, a single paper aimed at addressing all the issues from both perspectives ends up being perhaps lacklustre, and apparently unappealing from both sides. This is partly due to constraints on paper length, which prevent adequate detail for all aspects of the paper, and also the fact that fundamentally large portions of the paper end up being targeted towards an audience that is not present for the given journal.
Therefore, I was wondering if I could adopt the approach whereby a high-level paper is written targeting the end users of the development and submitted to an appropriate journal, and a second paper which covers the technical aspects in detail without trying to cover the aspects necessary for the end-user audience. Considering that both papers will present the same results, is this an acceptable approach to publication?
# Answer
This is actually something my group also deals with extensively. A lot of the work we do is focused on improving existing computational methods to improve their efficiency or extend their range. A lot of the time, the actual work done is of very little interest to the end-user audience, but quite significant from a computer science perspective. So a lot of our recent work has been divided in exactly the manner you propose: we present the basics of the method and some end-user applications in papers geared toward the application community, and specialized papers for the methodology that are directed toward the CS community.
The main thing to remember is that the publications should stand independently of one another as much as possible. Some overlap will of course be inevitable here, but you should strive to make the "stories" they tell as distinct as possible.
> 10 votes
# Answer
I think it is a good decision to target your manuscript for a single audience if your experience has shown that presenting it in a broader fashion misses the mark. It is not unusual to write two different papers that advance the same prior work and present new results.
However, this shouldn't simply be a matter of repackaging the results of the first paper, it necessarily entails analysis and additional work to produce a substantially new result.
Another option that can work well is to divide your article into separate, directly related articles (Part I and Part II) published in the same journal. In my experience this ends up being a lot of work, but it relaxes the length constraints and allows you to section and adjust the presentation of the material in a unique way.
---
On the other hand, the answer to this question *as it is stated* is, unequivically, no.
> Considering that both papers will present **the same results**, is this an acceptable approach to publication?
Quality journals nearly always stipulate that they will not accept work that has previously been published elsewhere--a practice known as redundant or duplicate publication. Unfortunately, it is not always possible for reviewers and editors to be aware of multiple simultaneous submissions and there seem to be a number examples of people abusing the system with few consequences.
What constitutes original work may vary to some degree in different fields, but the point of any paper is to communicate something noteworthy that isn't otherwise available. "Results" need not be defined narrowly as new measurement data, but every article should be an honest attempt to contribute something original to the field.
For instance, good review papers are very much original contributions in the sense that they synthesize results and highlight connections that might otherwise go unnoticed. But if you set out with the premise to publish *the same* results in more than one article you are creating more noise for all of us trying to keep track of the literature. You may not always be called on it, but the practice is something that good reviewers and editors notice.
> 3 votes
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Tags: publications, journals, multidisciplinary
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thread-30571
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30571
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Is the correlation between learning a subject and having high grades strong?
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2014-10-26T01:07:31.697
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# Question
Title: Is the correlation between learning a subject and having high grades strong?
I've found myself in a paradoxical situation. I have failed modules over and over, many modules, some modules more than once. One of the failed modules was introduction to computing. After passing it I felt an urge to write lecture notes because I though that the "official" lecture notes made by two teachers of the computer science department were too shallow and unappealing. I took some time to write it and publish in a free webhosting service.
Now I'm feeling like continuing that type of work, expanding it to more modules, such as physics and calculus. It seems that explaning things with plain english, doing comparisons and following a straight path is kinda easy for me. Although I did fail so many modules so many times.
Is the correlation between learning a subject and having high grades strong?
Conversely, is the correlation between not properly learning a subject and having really bad grades strong?
# Answer
There's no general answer to the question. It depends on the individual course.
* If the course is designed so that grades are earned for demonstrating achievement of a learning outcome, then there will be a strong correlation between having high grades and achieving the learning outcomes of the course.
* If the course is designed so that grades are earned for things that don't demonstrate achievement of a learning outcome, or so that students can achieve a learning outcome but not have an opportunity to demonstrate it to earn a grade, then the correlation will be weak.
Also, your general description of "learning a subject" may not necessarily be strongly correlated with the desired learning outcomes of a course. It's possible to earn a poor grade for a well-designed course even after having "learned the subject" if the course has specific learning outcomes (i.e., "Students will know how to solve a certain class of problem," "Students will have learned this particular skill") and what you are learning about the subject happens to be orthogonal to those learning outcomes.
> 6 votes
# Answer
The correlation between learning facts and getting good grades at the postgraduate level isn't particularly strong, no.
At lower levels an appearance of education can be simulated by the rote learning of facts. But that becomes less true as the education level increases. By postgraduate level, although some facts are useful, it's much more about being able to use academic tools, to be familiar with theories and their strengths and weaknesses, and being able to think things through deeply and critically.
> 0 votes
# Answer
No. I can recall many things that I learned in college 45 years ago from classes in which I received poor grades, and I have forgotten things from classes in which I received good grades.
> -3 votes
# Answer
A few notes:
* **Are you actually *allowed* to post lecture notes online?** Many schools or professors will take exception to this.
* I will disagree with some other answers: **there isn't a correlation with learning materials and having high grades, *but*, there is a correlation between knowing enough at a given point in the class and having high grades**, if the class is taught well. That is, if you know what you should know at a given point, your grade is more likely to be higher. However, just because you are learning a lot doesn't mean your grade is necessarily good.
* \[Edit: wording improved\] You mentioned you're studying computing. As CS grad student, I can tell you that studying computing is somewhat different from studying other fields: you *cannot* "learn" computing in the same way you learn other subjects. Memorizing facts and techniques *aren't enough*; the largest part of succeeding at computing is *understanding at a deep level* the *implications* of the facts. (This is of course important in other fields too, but you can get away with rote learning for longer. In CS, though, lack of understanding is an *immediate* path to failure.)
+ To prove this, I will mention that I *never took* notes in my CS classes. I didn't because while the lecture was proceeding, I was internalizing everything I didn't know already, and then applying it every chance I got. Guess who did better.
+ To elaborate, **practice and application are literally the most important things to do when studying computing**.
* I agree with the commenter that **you need to ensure that what you think you are learning is actually correct**. For a technical field, it is easy to screw yourself up with mistaken beliefs. Computing, in particular, is a field where being a smartass is a prerequisite. You need to be *highly* attuned to very slight differences in meaning, and if you're going at it alone, you're going to miss things. Talk with the professor. Talk to your TA. We're there to help you understand these finer points and check yourself.
> -7 votes
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Tags: teaching, grading, learning
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thread-30601
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30601
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Should students be shown the grading rubric?
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2014-10-26T17:18:11.327
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# Question
Title: Should students be shown the grading rubric?
I teach a practical class which is assessed by a lab report. I grade the lab reports based on a rubric. The rubric has 6 sections (abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusions) with a number of items that I generally expect to see in each section. Historically, about 95% of the lab reports can be accurately graded based on the rubric while the remaining 5% of the lab reports go in unique, often very good, directions and therefore do not tick many of the boxes on the rubric. I am considering showing the students the grading rubric in advance of writing the reports this year with the hope that this will key them into what is important so that they can better demonstrate their understanding of the key issues. Is there any research that looks at the benefits and consequences of showing students a grading rubric in advance?
# Answer
**Being open and clear about your grading policy** is a large part of what makes the grades you assign meaningful. In that respect, it is generally helpful to share the rubric with your students if you work from one. At minimum, a good grading system should meet three criteria:
1. it should accurately reflect differences in student performance
2. it should be clear to students so they can chart their own progress
3. it should be fair
Sharing your rubric directly enhances the second criterion, and presents a context for evaluating the other two. You might also consider using some of your lecture time to go over examples of what an excellent lab report should look like and then discuss the rubric with your students. This would give you an opportunity to point out that lab reports should cover key points, but good lab reports don't necessarily follow a rigid cookie-cutter format.
---
**Since you asked about sources** on sharing rubrics with students:
The authors of Introduction to rubrics, mention discussing the grading rubric with students and even include a chapter on constructing/tailoring rubrics directly with student feedback.
> \[Stevens, et al.\] "... because we discuss the rubric and thereby the grading criteria in class, the student has a much better idea of what these details mean ..."
However, you may be interested in this paper which examines the learning outcomes for different peer groups when they're given details about assessment criteria. Evidence for their conclusions is based on a very limited number of samples, so the usual cautions apply, but they found that simply sharing explicit grading criteria was not sufficient to positively influence learning, while making time for the students to work more intensively with the rubric did yield benefits.
> \[Rust, et al.\] "... it is being engaged with the process of marking as well as seeing examples of other work that significantly contributes to the students’ subsequent improvement in performance."
> 24 votes
# Answer
Sharing a good rubric with your students can be a helpful way to let them understand what is expected of them. There is a down side in that the rubric then provides a basis for students to complain that you've graded a paper unfairly. Don't release the rubric unless you're really willing to give credit according to the rubric even if a paper has obvious flaws in areas not covered by the rubric.
> 49 votes
# Answer
There are disadvantages to distributing the rubric. Most importantly: it encourages sensible students to game the rubric rather than understanding and answering the question. I do not think this concentration on grading rather than learning is a good thing. Against this you must set the benefits of transparency and the ability of students to engage with their assessment.
You seem to think that the very good unique answers are a problem to be discouraged – I disagree; I think they’re a good thing. The difficulty for you is in grading them – and it seems you are sticking to your rubric in the face of good answers. This is a mistake. The rubric should be used as a guide to help you give consistent grades, not to limit the range of answers you will accept. When faced with a high-quality answer that does not fall neatly into your pre-written rubric, your response should be to try and grade that submission without the rubric not reduce the marks you award.
> 8 votes
# Answer
**Write careful and comprehensive rubrics and distribute them with your assignments.** What better way to tell students what you expect from the assignment than by telling them exactly how you are going to evaluate it?
If there are unique and interesting directions that you want to allow assignments to go but that you think your current rubric precludes, rewrite your rubric so that it's flexible enough to allow these papers to be assessed highly. A great rubric is clear enough that an instructor can communicate clearly what is expected in a way that is transparent, fair, and clear, but not so overconstrained that it leads students to formulaic box-checking. It's a tricky balance but worth striving for.
> 6 votes
# Answer
I wanted to continue the trend of substituting my opinion for the research you requested:
Any impact the sharing of the rubric itself has on student outcomes is secondary to the impact the transparency of sharing the rubric will have on you, your pedagogy, and the course itself. Even a controlled study of a large standardized course taught in many sections, half of which do/don't receive rubrics, is going to be blind to the cumulative benefits of transparency:
* being forced to clarify your expectations to yourself (i.e., extract them from your intuition) well enough create a rubric you're confident leaving in the hands of your students
* being encouraged to evaluate how well your pedagogical practices actually prepare students to meet these explicit expectations
* being forced to face problems with your expectations (as the distance between the grade you intuitively want to give a student and the grade the rubric suggests they deserve)
* being forced to renegotiate your rubric as students challenge it
In short, your ability to consistently apply your public rubric in ways that satisfy both you and your students is a good proxy for evaluating your own course design.
Beyond this, I'd also like to add to the "student benefits" concern: one of the overarching goals of education is to teach people how to do "good" work on their own. Learning to self-evaluate is a big part of consistently performing good work without supervision; learning the qualities of good work is a big part of learning to self-evaluate, along with feedback mechanisms that consistently communicate the importance/validity of these qualities.
> 2 votes
# Answer
In my training to be a public school teacher mostly from principals, assistant principals and other expert teachers, the expectation is we show the rubric when we give the original assignment.
In a related example, my college tutoring student with a long test has likely spent too much time on less critical questions because the professor did not explain the weight given to each question. Even when he got his test back he and I are unsure how much weight is being given to each question. This is inappropriate on the professor's part.
It is only fair to students that they know ahead of time what is important to the professor communicated through a rubric or advance knowledge of the grading scheme.
> 1 votes
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Tags: teaching, grading, assessment
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thread-30710
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30710
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Mentioning slipshod undergrad research or not in top graduate school applications?
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2014-10-28T13:02:37.623
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# Question
Title: Mentioning slipshod undergrad research or not in top graduate school applications?
I am recently writing my statement of purpose (or research statement, if you prefer this) for my graduate school applications (in the field of EECS). I have two conference publications, `paper_A` in one mediocre conference (1st author) and `paper_B` in one famous (but not yet top-tier) conference (2nd author).
I am completely happy with `paper_A`, despite its publishing venue being mediocre, simply because I did it completely myself and knew exactly why I was doing that. So I had a great time talking about that work in my statement.
On the contrary, `paper_B`, although accepted by a famous conference, really tortures and discourages me a lot while I am writing about it. Being the 2nd author, I now feel that there doesn't make much sense doing that work, and what we have claimed is weak and untenable. While elaborating on `paper_B` in the statement, I even gradually lost all the confidence about myself, which I have gained from writing about `paper_A`!
My targeted schools are those top-tier schools. So I am afraid this slipshod piece of research may even backfire, since the critical faculty may find my work lousy.
So should I simply delete that paper from my statement and CV? But, its publishing venue is indeed a famous and widely acceptable one. Or should I present the complete me to the committee with all my works? But, will that piece of slipshod research backfire and hurt me?
P.S.: One side information that may help. `paper_A` is in the area that I wish to apply for, and `paper_B` is more like a side work, which I don't wish to continue in my graduate research.
# Answer
As an undergraduate, you are not responsible for the scope and scale of research you are not directly leading. If a graduate student or PI is the one in charge of the work, you will not be "dragged through the mud" for having worked on it. In general, you are given the benefit of the doubt—you are asked to contribute to a project, and you do it.
I don't think any committee is going to take a dim view of having published two conference papers while still an undergraduate. (And any committee that does probably represents a department you don't want to be at.)
If you are concerned about the impact, though, I would mention but not emphasize it. If you don't mention it at all, and somehow it turns up later on, it will raise more red flags than if you at least mention it in passing.
> 10 votes
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Tags: graduate-admissions, research-undergraduate
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thread-30707
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30707
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Do any academic institutions publish objective surveys of alumni satisfaction?
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2014-10-28T12:30:41.060
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# Question
Title: Do any academic institutions publish objective surveys of alumni satisfaction?
Having seen some questions asking about the costs/risks/benefits of doing a PhD I wonder if any academic teaching organisations actually contact their students after graduation and seek structured feedback (qualitative and quantitative) about the perceived or actual longer-term costs and benefits of their degree (bachelor's, master's or doctorate). And if so, do any of them publish the results? My own alma mater have never asked for feedback (just contributions!).
# Answer
> 5 votes
**Yes**, here is an example.
A quantitative assessment of the 'long-term costs and benefits' is complicated by the subjective aspects of many parameters. For example, some individuals value salary over independence, other don't. But my *alma mater*, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) does objective surveys and statistics on alumni employment. These numbers should be interpreted knowing that answers are given on a voluntary basis and, the EPFL being modest in size, *n* is small.
Some examples of the results (for 2011):
"One year after graduation, MSc graduates who did not start PhD studies are employed at 90.9% by the industry in Switzerland. It took them an average of 9.5 weeks and 12 job applications to find a job (less than in 2010). Their average entry-level salary (in Switzerland) was CHF 77,967 in the private sector and CHF 76,591 in the public sector (slightly more than in 2010).
One year after PhD graduation, 90.5% of graduates have a job. However, finding a job was harder: they needed an average of 14.9 weeks and 19 job applications (significantly more than in 2010). Salaries are also lower than before, average entry-level salaries were CHF 93,716 in the private sector and CHF 82,720 in the public sector."
They also asked PhD graduates if they think their degree is 'useful for their careers':
* 29% said it was mandatory,
* 29% that it gave them significant advantage over non-PhDs,
* 40% that it was sometimes an advantage, sometimes detrimental depending on the employer,
* 4% that it gave them no advantage whatsoever, and
* 1% had no idea.
Some more data on work satisfaction of PhD graduates:
```
very high high average low very low
overall sat. 21% 54% 23% 1% 1%
interesting job 19% 51% 24% 4% 1%
adequate training 22% 41% 22% 14% 1%
degree recognition 24% 38% 28% 9% 0%
salary 8% 29% 51% 10% 1%
```
Here is the link to the original document (in French).
<sub>**Notes:** translations are mine, 1CHF=~1US$, the MSc is considered the 'undergraduate degree', global unemployment in Switzerland is \<4%, PhD studies are funded with a salary of roughly CHF 50'000 with negligible tuition, these are numbers for PhD in sciences and engineering, numbers for humanities are very different.</sub>
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Tags: alumni
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thread-30686
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30686
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How necessary is buying a domain when I'm just a graduated student?
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2014-10-28T05:44:56.830
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# Question
Title: How necessary is buying a domain when I'm just a graduated student?
I'm a graduated student and about to make a poster for my institution's conference. I would like to have a website so that I can have more space to present in the poster while still have a data to show if necessary. If I choose to have a free domain, I will have an URL contain the host name, e.g. myname.wordpress.com. If I buy a domain and use free host like Wordpress, I can quickly build my website up but the price is not cheap. If I buy a domain and a host, the price may cheaper but I have to build it by myself. I want my website to look professional (and impressive) on the poster so that using a free domain may not a good choice, but I also consider in the economic prospect. In my country, $10 is not a big deal, but also not a thing that people is willing to spent easily.
# Answer
> 4 votes
If your department/school won't give you support...
The domain should cost you between $0.50 to $0.99 USD for the first year. Hosting costs range a lot, but many offer deals for the first year that cost about $12 USD.
After you have your own server and domain, it is trivial to setup WordPress on your own server.
Thus you get the best of both worlds, extremely affordable and easy! Besides, I recommend most people have their own personal website for their portfolio and such anyway.
# Answer
> 3 votes
I'd recommend Github pages as a quick and easy way to set up an accompanying static site without paying for hosting. For free you get a slightly nicer sub-domain than wordpress etc. (`username.github.io`), or if you've bought a custom domain you can use that. There's some nice, modern default themes and Jekyll integration if it's to be used as a blogging platform.
# Answer
> 1 votes
The best thing to do in terms of web presents at this point in your career is probably to host it through your institution. Pretty much any academic institution has some way for its members to host a website, and will sometimes provide templates as well. Talk to your IT staff and find out what they recommend.
If hosting through your institution is not possible, you can also consider using ResearchGate as your official web presence. It is designed as a social network for academics, and gives a nice stable URL as https://www.researchgate.net/profile/\[yournamehere\]
# Answer
> 1 votes
I would simply walk off a poster without asking for a copy of the paper if the poster had a WordPress reference for the contact information. To me, this makes a statement to the effect of "I am an amateur and don't really know if I want to be a part of academia".
There is no shortage of professional social networks, including LinkedIn (academia + real world), ResearchGate (academia as a whole), WebMD (medical sciences), and whatever it might be in your discipline. You can start off with these. Also, I am surprised that you can't set up a personal page at your institution, even as a graduate; this would be the primary route in the U.S., as far as I can tell.
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Tags: website
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thread-30690
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30690
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how do you verify your knowledge in a subject area for grad school admission while you have not been enrolled in regular class?
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2014-10-28T07:05:13.853
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# Question
Title: how do you verify your knowledge in a subject area for grad school admission while you have not been enrolled in regular class?
If you want to apply for graduate school in computer science , you have to show that you have the prerequisite background knowledge . What are the available options ? Can I take a challenge test for credit in one subject area ,say ,algorithms provided that I have the required knowledge in this subject ? There is a man who managed to complete most of the undergraduate MIT computer science curriculum using MIT OCW . Can he verify his knowledge to the admission committee by taking challenge tests?Can I take the final exams that the university department offer to regilar students without attending to prove that I have the required knowledge for the graduate program ?
# Answer
> 1 votes
What you want to do will limit your choices among schools. Where I teach, we do allow provisional admission for people without the requisite undergraduate degree.\* Those students are required to take a series of foundation courses before beginning the "real" master's courses. It is possible, although not easy, to test out of the foundation courses. The provisional admission is revoked for the student who earns unsatisfactory grades (C or below) in the foundation courses.
So, you will need to look for institutions that allow provisional admission, and then check the details of the provisions.
* Students must have *some* accredited undergraduate degree to be admitted; but it need not be in computing.
# Answer
> 0 votes
I went through this starting in 2001. I had a 1970 bachelor's in mathematics and a 1975 master's in computer science, and successfully applied for 2002 admission to a computer science Ph.D. program. I was not able to get a detailed transcript for the master's degree so I had no evidence of specific computing courses I had taken.
I got letters of reference from people in industry who knew my work. I made prior contact, through my industry network, with some professors in the department. I took the computer science GRE, which is no longer available.
The professors waived recommended prerequisites based on my experience: "The bad news is I've never taken a formal course in operating systems. The good news is I worked as an operating systems developer for 8.5 years."
The department assigned professors to check whether I needed to take undergraduate courses in their subjects, or already had the corresponding knowledge. They used several different systems, including looking at my industry achievements and interviewing me. One professor did not commit until after I had an A in his graduate course, when he decided there was no need for me to take the undergraduate course.
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Tags: graduate-admissions
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thread-30141
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30141
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Has any research been done into the marks awarded by markers using different strategies for exams with multiple questions?
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2014-10-17T18:45:00.663
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# Question
Title: Has any research been done into the marks awarded by markers using different strategies for exams with multiple questions?
I think anyone who's ever marked an exam with more than one question or section has wondered how to attack it, i.e.
Option 1) Mark all of the questions in a single script before moving onto the next student's script; or
Option 2) Go through each script and mark all the question 1s, then 2, and so on.
Idle rumination gives good points and bad points for each side (and possibly some more approaches), for example 1) means you can get through it faster since you're in 'question 1 mode', then 'question 2 mode', ... (i.e. less time spent switching your brain between different topics), and is likely more fair in the sense that you can consider all the answers to question i at the same time and make sure marks are distributed in a reasonable fashion.
On the other hand, marking a script at a time means you get used to a student's hand-writing, and may perhaps give benefit-of-the-doubt (or not) depending on the understanding that the student has shown previously in the same paper (but hopefully not on the basis of external bias from knowing anything about the student aside from what is on the script).
It would be interesting to see whether one technique or another tends to correlate with higher marks given by a marker, or fewer challenges once the student receives the script back (in cases where that happens), for example.
A brief search via scopus, arXiv and popular general-purpose search engines does not turn up anything particularly relevant. Does anyone here know of any published research on the matter?
# Answer
> 4 votes
The question we'd like to answer is:
## How should exams with multiple essay-type questions be graded?
*Note: It isn't possible to answer this definitively due to unavoidably large variations in grader performance and exam structure.*
Each course topic, exam, and set of graders is going to be unique and your own experience and judgment are likely to yield better results than any prescription of what you should do. This is a large part of the reason both teaching and assessment are challenging and generally require a lot of experience, testing, and adjustment to get right.
---
While you're own views should necessarily be more relevant for your teaching situation, here is **One perspective to consider:**
Ideally, we strive to consistently award the same amount of points for the same level of written work. However, it is likely that our impressions about the abilities of individual students (from lectures, office hours, etc.) actually have a negative impact on the *overall* consistency and reproducibility of the results when marking written exams.
Whitfield et al. compared oral evaluation results to written exam grades and found that facilitator impressions of student knowledge *overestimate* the performance of the weakest students.
> \[Whitfield, 2002\] "... there is little overlap in the factors which account for facilitator’s ratings and actual student performance ... Our conclusion from these studies is that an assessment given by a facilitator for student knowledge is not likely to be useful."
**The take-away is:**
knowing which student's answer you are grading will make the range of scores wider (lower reliability) for the same work, and generally lead to higher grades overall.
**For the most reliable grading:**
the grader should mark answers *non-consecutively and randomly from the entire set* of exams in order to:
1. reduce the chance of identifying the student that provided the answer
2. reduce the comparative influence from one marked answer to the next
---
The following articles look promising for further investigation, however, I don't have convenient access to these texts, so they are offered without comment:
"The interrelations of features of questions, mark schemes and examinee responses and their impact upon marker agreement," Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, Volume 18, Issue 3, 2011.
"Towards a model of the judgement processes involved in examination marking," Oxford Review of Education, Volume 36, Issue 1, 2010.
"Double-marking students' work," Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 1994.
"Responses to written work," Educational Review, Volume 30, Issue 2, 1978.
"A further study of the reliability of English essays," British Journal of Statistical Psychology, Volume 7, Issue 2, pages 65–74, November 1954.
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Related SE questions:
double marking ---- keeping focused ---- avoiding bias
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Tags: exams, grading, reference-request
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thread-30694
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30694
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What is minimum GPA for getting PhD in Germany?
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2014-10-28T07:48:29.687
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# Question
Title: What is minimum GPA for getting PhD in Germany?
I'm in the last year of my MSc in computer engineering and I want to apply for a PhD in Germany. I have a reasonable resume and have a published paper and my master GPA is 16.5/20, but my bachelor GPA in not so good, it is 13.5/20.
Can you tell me how much is this important? Do I have any chance?
# Answer
As flo said, it totally depends on the university.
In principle, you can become PhD student at any German university if you
1. Have someone eligible (normally a professor in the department) who declares that she/he will supervise you, and
2. You meet the requirements from the examination regulations for the PhD.
In the majority of cases, the examination regulations can be found on the web. Many departments do not list a formal "grade" requirements, but some do. Typically, the grades are only given in German style, so there is room for interpretation when translating foreign grades. **GPAs** are pretty much unknown in Germany. Admission officers will look at the grades (e.g., A-F, where F means fail) and if the institution where the grade has been awarded is "OK". Summary grades are expressed in the same system as the individual grades. To make this part of the answer complete, as you are probably aware, it is normally a requirement to have a Masters degree before you can start with a PhD.
Structured programs, such as graduate schools, typically have their own rules *on top* of these. Again, standard vary, and you should be able to find some information on the home page of the respective graduate school.
> 11 votes
# Answer
This totally depends on the university. There is **no common rule** for all German universities. Having good grades in field related courses may be the most important part, also the thesis being field related won't hurt either. Other than that it can depend on the university, the faculty, the chair, the potential supervisor and so on.
> 7 votes
# Answer
The exact requirements depend on the specific federal state ("Bundesland"), university, department and professor
Each federal state of Germany has its own university law ("Landeshochschulgesetz"), and that may impose limitations on the admittance to a PhD program, Additionally, each university can impose additional rules, and so can the department (usually "Fakultät") where you want to apply for a PhD. Finally, you must be accepted as a PhD student by a professor and he, too, may have additional requirements for accepting you.
In the end, you'll have to contact a department representative (usually the at the examination office/"Prüfungsamt") to check the formal requirements. Make sure you tell them your degree, GPA (and preferably also the interpretation of that GPA on the German grade 1-5 scale) and the country in which you graduated. This person should be able to check whether your are applicable to enter a PhD program, not only based on their department rules, but also based on university rules and state law.
You'll also have to contact the professor that you want to act as your PhD supervisor, and apply for a PhD student position (this may be a teaching position, a research project position, or a simple unpaid agreement supervision).
> 5 votes
# Answer
Adding a detail to the other answers given.
According to what I have seen and heard at the (German) university I'm a student at, your *Bachelor's* degree is probably almost irrelevant as long as the Master's is okay.
I think you won't need to stress out over a low score there. Personally, in the unlikely case you're asked about it, I would try to point out the improvement since then, and how you plan to continue that improvement.
Also, at my university there is a grade translation table, which can be used to map between Germany and pretty much every other country. You should inquire if your targeted university has something like that, too.
> 1 votes
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Tags: phd, graduate-admissions, computer-science, germany
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thread-30744
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30744
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Where do people leaving academia go?
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2014-10-28T18:45:58.360
|
# Question
Title: Where do people leaving academia go?
Is there any extensive research/study/survey that looked at where people that leave academia go?
I mostly interested in the computer science field (machine learning) in the US, but curious about other fields and locations as well.
People leaving academia can be PhD students or after (tenure-track, tenured, soft-money research positions, national lab researchers, etc.).
# Answer
> 2 votes
Copied from this question per Franck's request: the NIH recently examined where people with a biomedical Ph.D. ended up. The results of their survey are discussed here.
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Tags: career-path, reference-request
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thread-30600
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30600
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How to deal with two students who potentially colluded when one is unavailable?
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2014-10-26T16:41:53.427
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# Question
Title: How to deal with two students who potentially colluded when one is unavailable?
We have two students in my department who handed in identical essays. As per our policy we scheduled independent meetings with both students to determine what happened. Going into these meetings our primary objective is to figure out which of the following 5 possibilities occurred:
1. The students worked jointly and wrote one essay
2. One student wrote the essay and knowingly allowed the other student to copy the essay
3. One student wrote the essay and the other student copied their essay without the first student's knowledge
4. The students worked independently and managed to write word for word identical essays (this seems unlikely)
5. The students independently copied the same source
One student is on medical leave and was therefore unable to attend the meeting. The student who attended the meeting showed us drafts of previous essays which have convinced us that neither (4) nor (5) occurred. Further, when we exclude the other student's essay, TurnItIn doesn't find anything of concern. We also are confident that the student who attended the meeting did not copy the essay from the other student. This leaves us with possibilities (1), (2), and (3).
Our policy states that both students would be punished for academic misconducted if either (1) or (2) occurred and only the other student would be punished if (3) occurred. It seems without talking to the other student we cannot really come to a fair conclusion. Without a decision the student who attended the meeting will have neither passed or failed the class and therefore is not eligible to retake the class nor take any class which has the class in question as a prerequisite. It is unlikely the student on medical leave will be back in time to make a timely decision. How should we proceed?
# Answer
> 36 votes
Not letting this student move forward at this point would be punishment. If there is a chance that you will find the student innocent of any wrongdoing, it seems like the injustice of punishing them for something they did not do is worse than letting them get away with something they did.
Make it clear to the student that they will pass the class given the lack of evidence against them but that you will continue to evaluate the situation. Make sure they know that if you conclude later that they have colluded, you will update their grade to a failing one and force them to retake the class.
The only real negative consequence of this is that the student might be able to take classes that require this class as a prerequisite before they are forced to go back and take the original class again. That's not ideal, but it doesn't really seem so bad.
# Answer
> 15 votes
If you are convinced that the student who attended the meeting wrote the essay in question, then you must conclude that either the other student stole a copy or the two students collaborated. I think that almost requires grades of "Incomplete" for both students until the matter can be resolved.
Edited to add: I like Nick S's comment about waiving the prerequisites for the student who attended the meeting. His is a comment to the original question, and is worth reading.
# Answer
> 13 votes
I know this can only apply to some of the situations, but if the student is unable to attend, yet still able to communicate I would say:
**Have you considered scheduling a call?**
You can just do the talk by phone, or Skype and documents can be scanned and mailed. Perhaps this is not as good as a face to face meeting, but I would say there is a good chance that you can clear things up this way.
# Answer
> 10 votes
In my university we have a general rule: **If you collude, you both fail that assignment. If you took another student's assignment and copied it (stole from a classmate) then you not only fail the assignment but you fail the subject and must retake it**. Note: It is possible to fail and assignment and still pass the subject by resubmitting the failing work (as I believe most UK universities do and I believe you are in the UK).
I do not believe there is a perfect solution but by having a rule such as this, you can mostly avoid having one student say "It is my original work" when really it was joint work **because they would not want to save their friend at the cost of retaking the module (when they could both pass, albeit with a lower grade).**
If you have the same rule and the student in front of you is very clear about that and the student in front of you says "Yes, this is mine, all mine, he must have stolen from me" then I would let that student pass (without any contradicting evidence from the other student).
The challenge with such a rule in this case is that they might have colluded but the other student might simply take the fall, if only because he has nothing to lose because he's out on medical leave and cannot complete the module this term anyway. So, he might as well fall on his sword.
In your case (where one student is unavailable) I would have the student present sign some simple declaration ("It's my original work and the other student must have stolen it from me and I agree if the above is found to be untrue then my grade will be changed after-the-fact.")
I **would not** worry about the student taking subjects which need this subject as a pre-req. If he doesn't understand, that will be shown clearly later and will sort itself out.
Again, it's not a perfect rule but it mostly prevents colluding students from getting away with it by imposing double punishment on one.
# Answer
> 0 votes
As an answer, I would like to bring up a question. Are the drafts conclusive evidence that (4) and (5) can be excluded? As far as (4) is unlikely, I find (5) highly likely. My question is extended to ask what was the time frame between finding the plagiarism, informing the students of the plagiarism, and the submission of the drafts by the student who isn't on sick leave?
As most "drafts" are neither handwritten or typed on a typewriter, the ease and quickness that a draft can be made does not remove doubt that the work isn't of the student.
If (1) and (2) are options, and this brings into suspect their collusion, then don't think that they still wouldn't be colluding in the fallout.
# Answer
> -1 votes
I have another idea. Are the students both of the same sex? I just found something interesting that may help.
This site analyzes text for traits statistically associated with the sex of the writer.
http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php
It seems to be fairly accurate. It correctly identified George Eliot as female (it was not fooled by her male pseudonym, LOL), and me as male. I also used it to analyze a text translated by male and female translators of a male writer (the same passage of about 600 words). The male translator's text came out 8% more 'masculine'.
If the test text comes out 'female' and one or both of the students is male, you have reason to suspect one or both has copied it. But of course, this is only one tool and must be viewed as such. It is just a piece of evidence to add to whatever other evidence you may have. To 'calibrate' the system, you could run all the students' papers through the process to see if it correctly identifies the male and female students in the class.
Of course, if both students are male or female, and the analysis does not show any discrepancy, it is of no help in determining which of the five possibilities occurred.
# Answer
> -2 votes
It's hard to believe that *both* students would have agreed to turn in identical papers. Most students would know that turning in a paper identical to some other student's would certainly be noticed. So, it is more likely that only *one* of them is the culprit. In this case, this student is most likely stupid as well as dishonest. The question is how do we tell who is lying? I believe King Solomon had a similar problem, when two woman claimed to be the mother of a single child. You might want to offer to give *half* credit to each. The one who cheated would likely object less.
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Tags: plagiarism, cheating
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thread-30728
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30728
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As a student, should I offer alternative ways of understanding a point in lectures?
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2014-10-28T16:19:57.780
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# Question
Title: As a student, should I offer alternative ways of understanding a point in lectures?
Often, I’ll be in lectures and the lecturer will explain the point to me, and I make a comparison with something else that helps me understand the point, and it clicks. For example, in Syntax, the lecturer was talking about the difference between a noun and a determiner phrase; how the former describes a set of things, and the latter points to a specific thing. This reminds me of computing, so I think: ‘Oh, right. Nouns are classes, and DPs instantiate those classes.’
Is this type of rephrasing ever a useful thing to vocalise in lectures, for other students or the lecturer? I do sometimes vocalise these thoughts, usually in a smaller class setting though, not lectures. I usually try to keep quiet because I feel like either people won’t understand what I mean, or the teacher doesn’t consider it relevant or useful. So, my questions are: Is this kind of contribution in lectures valuable? Or do lecturers prefer that you ask questions instead of making statements?
# Answer
If you are in a small lecture that encourages participation, then it is definitely appropriate to participate, and understanding things in more than one way is often a great thing. I would recommend phrasing your thoughts as a question rather than a statement, however, e.g.:
> Would I be right in understanding this like \[comparison\]?
After all, you're only just learning the material and don't yet know if your comparison is actually right! If you can concerned that you might be talking too much then a) a very good lecturer may be able to let you know gently in the midst of class and b) you can ask the lecturer their opinion after class.
> 19 votes
# Answer
Yes, certainly it can be useful.
However, it's more useful if your analogy is well thought through, and can be stated concisely in a way that you think can be understood by the other students. If it's sort of rambling, or misses important aspects, or requires background that most other students may not have, it may cause more confusion than it clears up. So in some cases you may prefer to make a note for yourself, think it through later, and discuss it with the lecturer privately (e.g. during office hours). The lecture may then mention it in a future lecture, or invite you to do so.
> 14 votes
# Answer
To be honest, the specific example you give is unlikely to be helpful, since you're in something like a linguistics class and your analogy requires an understanding of a completely different field, object-oriented computer programming. Most of the other students probably won't have that background and the lecturer might not, too. And suppose the lecturer doesn't have that understanding. They'll likely be tempted to ask you to explain your analogy so they can evaluate whether you've understood or not. So now you have to spend a couple of minutes explaining OOP to the lecturer and all of that is time that would better have been spent on the actual subject at hand. The lecturer might also feel that you're trying to embarrass them by asking questions about something they don't understand.
In general, I'd be wary of interjecting with analogies since, unless the analogy is perfectly accurate (which most aren't), it's likely to lead to a discussion of the accuracy of the analogy, rather than further clarification of the real point.
Beyond that, I'd give the tautological advice that interjecting with alternative ways to understand is useful if it's useful. If the other students find it increases their understanding, go for it; if they seem not to appreciate it, don't do it. If the lecturer already explained it once and most people already understood it, there's no great value in you explaining it to everyone again. In particular, if your interjections become interruptions which break the lecturer's flow, you're hindering rather than helping.
> 12 votes
# Answer
Because these types of comments may or may not be welcome depending on the nature, topic and size of a course and the pedagogical approach of the instructor, **you should ask your instructor if these kinds of interjections would be welcome.** You can easily do this with a quick question after class or in an email. To make things concrete, it might be a good idea to come prepared with at least one concrete example of the kinds of clarification or reframing you might offer as a comment. As an instructor, I can see myself going way or another based on the class and the setting. That said, I would be always be happy to be asked ahead of time if this sort of thing would be welcome!
> 4 votes
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Tags: etiquette
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thread-4965
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4965
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Are academic indicators (h-index, impact factor, etc) really adopted by institutions? Currently used? And how?
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2012-10-25T13:39:40.537
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# Question
Title: Are academic indicators (h-index, impact factor, etc) really adopted by institutions? Currently used? And how?
Academic indicators (h-index, impact factor, modified h-indexes, etc) have a long string of criticism by academics and not (see here, here or here).
Instead of debating (endlessly) on how "not representative" and flawed these numbers are (or howling generic rants...), I would be interested to know if Academia.SE community members have objective **facts** and **reports** on how academic workplaces are currently using these indicators. For instance in the upcoming REF2014 (UK), academics in my institution are urged to use, as their contributions, the papers accepted in highest impact factors journals.
In summary, can you trade your h-index for a better paying job?
# Answer
On the European research market, various opinions have been offered on the use of h-index by ERC grant evaluation committees, and the broader relationship between h-index and ERC funding success. People who provide such opinion can be classified in three categories:
* affiliated with the ERC
* consultants whose business is to offer advice to (potential) candidates
* individuals involved in another way, whose advice is most probably only anecdotal
So, what do the first two categories have to say? The official word from the guidelines is, well… absent. But it is politically correct to assert that h-index is not a good indicator of scientific quality and, as such, not used. This gives quotes like:
> Quality in science is not proved by accumulating quantitative points. The role of commercial impact factor and h-index is limited. Overemphasizing of publish or perish policy leads to a gradual perishing of all.
On the other hand, practical advice might be a bit more nuanced:
> There will also be a new h-index study the successful 2011 awardees in the PE and LS domains. **The h-index is regarded as a background indicator rather than a determining factor** and the study on the 2010 Advanced Grant awardees showed that each panel made awards across a considerable range and that there were significant differences across the different ERC panels. There was a big variation between different disciplines within the main domains.
and this:
> Every applicant had to choose his 10 best publications published in the recent decade and add how many times each of these papers were cited in the literature. The total number L of these citations describes well how the scientific community perceives their recent achievements. **These numbers were provided by the ERC in the dossier of every applicant. However, during the evaluation process the panel did not put much emphasis on any bibliometric data. It was the opinions of the experts which did matter, not the bare numbers**. Only after completing the evaluation process, I realised a correlation between these data and the final outcome.
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To give another perspective: in France, a new evaluation system for higher education and research was put in place 5 years ago (the newly created agency performing the evaluation is called AERES). AERES evaluates each research group every 4 to 5 years, in order to give it an *overall rating*, which could be A+, A, B or C. This had at least two very practical consequences that I know of:
* For yearly financial negotiations between each university and the Ministry for research, the ministry started to require a spreadsheet with the number of university teams rated A+, and the number of A team (B and C didn't seem to count). Financial support was then dependent on that number, at least as a starting point for the negotiations.
* It became customary to include this grade in your French grant applications, because a A+ rating was considered a serious advantage. This was written in the “rules”, however…
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So, all in all, are bibliometric and, speaking more broadly, academic indicators really adopted by institutions? **Hell yeah!** They make deciders’ job easier: quantification of research quality makes it easier to make decisions. **Smart decision makers do realize, however, that a single indicator does not make for good decisions**.
> 10 votes
# Answer
In Czech Republic, researchers are obliged to indicate their most important publications, together with the number of citations, the corresponding impact factors of the journals, as well as their own WoS-based h-index on major grant proposals to national grant agencies (GACR, TACR, etc.). In a consequence, universities care for h-index and other citation metrics internally as well and in result citations/impact factors are tracked and form a basis for annual evaluation, possibly even leading to end-year bonus calculation. So yes, at least in Czech research space citation metrics, such as h-index and impact factors are a big deal.
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Later edit: Since you ask for objective evidence, I refer to the recent manual for GACR standard projects starting in 2012, paragraph 4.2.10, b-d (all in Czech).
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Yet another edit in response to ElCid's comment: There was an equation for calculating an extra-ordinary bonus taking into account the impact factor of the journal authors get their paper accepted in and then taking into account the stated (percentual) contributions of each individual co-author. In result, the formula spit out the amount of money each department-resident co-author would get for the paper. The bonus was a department-specific policy.
Secondly, there was an annual evaluation taking into account the number of papers produced by the researcher, the number of citations received in that particular year (sometimes extremely hard to track), impact factors for journals of the papers concerned (both submitted and those receiving citations) grants received, and other minor factors as well. The evaluation was a faculty wide policy, I am not sure whether it led to direct financial benefit to the researchers, but certainly these metrics were important in the internal university-wide division of funds which also partly hinged on aggregates of the above described metrics. To my understanding, these policies formed an incentive for the faculty to target high-impact journals in their respective fields.
> 6 votes
# Answer
The main reason to look at impact factor (at the schools where I've worked\*) is so that a future hire can most probably obtain funding to continue research (support grad students, purchase equipment, etc.).
Quality publications become an important aspect of any research proposals a future hire would submit. Research proposals are evaluated by other researchers within the network of the research program. Those researchers can freely use impact factor of a proposal's publications as a criterion for evaluation. I don't know of any programs that use it as a mandatory criterion, probably because it's still controversial.
Some professors might get hired because they already have good funding, sometimes because of R&D contacts with industry, a good IP track record (patents), and a low impact factor may be a terrible reason to reject a candidate like that.
As for converting h-index to better pay, I'd say if you're at the right institution, you can convert it to a better package (salary is only one aspect). Impact factor is not the only indicator that you will be successful, but might be an important one for tenure-track (assistant) professor positions. It may not get you a higher salary, but it probably will get your CV higher on the list.
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\*Hiring committees are formed and they are free to set the criteria for selecting candidates. Impact factor has been used on several committees at my institution, but it's not an established policy. I believe this is an issue of academic freedom.
> 5 votes
# Answer
As in JeffE's comments to another answer, it is very unclear to me that anyone should be happy that "bibliometrics" assume official stature, especially in the particular situation of "emerging" fields, where one's livelihood thus becomes contingent on opinions or behavior of non-experts?
In the U.S., in mathematics, it seems that this official stature is very recent, in contrast to various places in Europe where (apparently) the bureaucracy was even less shy than here about insisting on "simple" quantification of the "performance" of academics and departments. Of course, presumably, administrations have always simplified their private appraisals of departments and individuals for purposes of "decision-making" (a.k.a., deciding who gets the money), but more recently commercial products (from our buddies the traditional publishers) have been promoted to university administrators, and have been bought and paid for, over the public objections of faculty...
One point is that traditional publishers are happy, I'm sure, to have the significance of their gatekeeper "peer-reviewed" publications more firmly ensconced by the effective endorsement of their "rating" software packages. "Conflict of interest" comes to mind, for one thing. (But I'm not eager to trade this commericalized U.S. manifestation for the systematic, nation-wide version available too often in Europe.)
The real problem is that this commodification of "research/scholarship" adds a function-less layer of misdirection and noise to an already challenging enterprise, with already-precarious economics. For those who wish it to be a "revolution" that gets us out from under some old regime, I fear that instead it is merely a different incarnation of the same thing, sometimes owned by the same mulit-national corporate entities.
> 5 votes
# Answer
In many places of South Korea, IF is definitely used for job performance evaluation. In one Research Institute I am aware of, there is yearly evaluations which are quantitative, giving each person a score out of 100. The actual impact factor of each journal publication is used in the calculation, such as the highest IF journals are given 3x more points than low or non. The final score determines job promotion or firings.
> 1 votes
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Tags: university, reputation, bibliometrics, impact-factor
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thread-30769
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30769
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How to acknowledge oneself as the author of materials created in industry research position?
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2014-10-29T04:37:12.907
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# Question
Title: How to acknowledge oneself as the author of materials created in industry research position?
I am an industry-based researcher. As part of my role, I develop various resources for use by our clients. They include manuals, codes, quizzes, factsheets and the like. **In all cases, I am the sole author of these resources.**
These resources carry the name and logo of my company. However, I also want them to carry my name (and title), so that I can claim authorship. I need to do this for a range of reasons, including demonstrating my research output, as well as ensuring no one else claims credit for them in the future.
Implicitly, my colleagues know I am the author but as many of them are taking better job offers elsewhere or retiring, there may be no one left to 'vouch' for me.
Currently, I put my contact details at the start or end of these documents, which basically says "For more information or clarification, contact \[Name\]". I want more that this but in a discreet manner i.e. **I do not want to put my name on the cover page, as this would be too much in the "face of everyone".**
The last point is important because these are industry resources and their "weight" comes from the fact that they have been developed under the auspices of my company. Hence, the copyright is held by the company. I have no issues here. Its the right thing, as I am an employee.
However, it is not the company but me who is developing these resources. My company will have no issue if I put my name somewhere in the documents but it has to be done discretely. **The reason I am saying discreetly is because it is the company name and logo, rather than my name, that are important consideration for the end-users (including my CEO!).**
I am looking for some strategies to have myself acknowledged in this context? In particular, I want it to be without any dispute that I am the author of these resources.
# Answer
You should be able to place your authorship somewhere in the front-matter of the document without compromising branding. I think the magic phrase you need is something along the lines of "Prepared by: \[authors\]".
To take one of your examples: in a manual, after the cover there is often a set of front-matter with history and disclaimers and such. You can add "Prepared by" as its own little subsection or insert it into the version and history information. This makes it absolutely clear that you are the author, without putting yourself in front of the company's brand.
> 2 votes
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Tags: authorship, industry, acknowledgement
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thread-30766
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30766
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What is the relationship between credits and course hours?
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2014-10-29T03:24:46.003
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# Question
Title: What is the relationship between credits and course hours?
Why can courses at the same department have an apparent disproportionality between credits and hours?
For example at my French university my department offers a 12 credit course with 48 hours of lectures and 72 hours of practical work, a 9 credit course with 24 hours of lectures and 12 hours of practical work, a different 9 credit course with 24 hours of lectures and no practical work, a 6 credit course with 24 hours of lectures and 36 hours of practical work. There are also 0 credit courses with 1 hour of lecture, but these are not really courses and are just included in the course catalog as bonus content to make up a bit for courses not offered in the current year. All of the courses I refer to are Master's level.
How are the number of credits calculated? Intuitively, one would suppose that the number of credits should be somehow proportional to the number of hours, but it is clearly not simply: a x # of lecture hours + b x # of practical hours.
**Question:** What is the relationship between credits and course hours?
# Answer
> 4 votes
In the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) one credit point equals 25-30 hours of workload and you are supposed to do 30 credits per semester or 60 per year.
The number of ECTS credits assigned to a particular class is not directly related to the hours in class but to the total workload for the class.
For example, the master thesis is worth 30 ECTS in most German universities, yet there is 0 class time for it. On the other hand, I once took a chemistry lab course with 6 credits =\> 150-180 hours workload of which 120 hours where time spent in the lab, which was ok because you can't really do much at home except finishing that day's writeup and taking a look at what is planned for the next day.
In your examples, subtract the class time and you're left with around 180-240 hours of self study (reviewing the material, doing homework assignments) for the first three classes and half that for the last one \- so the 9 credit classes seem to involve more self study and less time in class.
That's perfectly fine as long as the overall workload is between 25\*credits and 30\*credits hours.
Since your university is in France, I want to mention that France has specified the workload for 1 ETCS credit point to be 29 hours.
# Answer
> 1 votes
Although only your school can tell you why that specific department has that system, I can give *one* answer.
If credit is determined by amount of work needed, the larger work is equal to larger credit. It is independent of time spent in class. In your situation, it could mean that some classes do not need extra hours in class, but extra hours outside of class, which is then factored into credits.
A good example of this is in Art/Design/Architecture schools (maybe music and dance as well). In Fine Arts/Architecture, there are usually classes called "Studio" in which they are nearly twice as long as other classes. So, an engineering class (history class or programming class in the same department of architecture) may have lecture 3 hours twice a week, for 3 credits, and a Studio class will have 6 hours twice a week for 3 credits. The perceived workload is thought to be equal as the Studio class naturally requires more time in a studio than at home reading.
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Tags: masters, coursework, europe
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thread-30785
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30785
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How should someone with a German PhD be addressed in the UK?
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2014-10-29T10:46:53.300
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# Question
Title: How should someone with a German PhD be addressed in the UK?
This question has been discussed several times but there doesn't seem to be a clear answer for my particular situation.
I have a Dr.rer.nat from Germany but currently I am working for an institute in the United Kingdom. Is it legal or acceptable to continue to use the title Dr.rer.nat (First Name) (Last name) in the UK or do I need to change it to (First Name) (Last name), (Ph.D)?
# Answer
In the UK the holder of a PhD (or other professional doctorate) will generally use the title Dr as opposed to Mr/Mrs/Miss that would normally be used.
Unlike in Germany there is no addition to field of study.
Therefore the correct title would be Dr (First Name)(Last Name).
> 25 votes
# Answer
It is certainly legal to refer to yourself by the title you would use in Germany - few titles are actually legally controlled in the UK - and I would say it is also acceptable. However, I would suggest that is *advisable* to use the normal UK convention so that your audience understands what your title means without you needing to explain.
I would therefore use Dr user23530 rather than Dr.rer.nat user23530.
> 8 votes
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Tags: phd, titles, germany, united-kingdom
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thread-30606
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https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30606
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What are the main reasons why academics leave academia? (Looking for references, not personal opinions)
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2014-10-26T18:16:34.540
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# Question
Title: What are the main reasons why academics leave academia? (Looking for references, not personal opinions)
Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the main reasons why academics leave academia?
I did read few articles explaining why some particular academics left academia, but I would like to have some statistics to see what are the most common reasons invoked.
I mostly interested in the computer science field (machine learning) in the US, but curious about other fields and locations as well.
# Answer
> 4 votes
I retired immediately after completing my Ph.D., but would have switched back to industry if I had continued working.
I am much, much happier and more effective doing technical work than teaching or managing. The computer industry has well-established technical tracks that allow career advancement without becoming a manager. The academic world, at least in the USA, seems to require teaching and administrative work from everyone, regardless of individual preferences and talents.
# Answer
> 1 votes
No hard stats on how often each reason occurs, but from anecdotal evidence:
## Switching fields
Some people simply choose other carreers - either they're disillusioned with their research topic, or with some specific people/managers, or found a much better paying job in other domain. This is pretty much the standard set of reasons for any other jobs.
## Lack of continued funding
The only academic-specific reason that I have seen - it's often hard (or subjective) to say if it's "not enough money" or "you and your research are not good enough to compete for the money", but it certainly happens - some research project ends, a new one doesn't get started (yet), then people get other jobs to feed their families, and don't come back afterwards if/when new funding arrives.
# Answer
> 1 votes
For machine learning specifically, I think a major reason is the high demand for such skills in industry (both in existing businesses, in startups/spinoffs or as consultants), which makes leaving easier compared to some other fields. This applies to other fields that are close to the market as well (for instance engineering).
Innovation and tech transfer is important for universities, so I am not entirely sure how to classify researchers that 'leave academia' to start a spin-off to valorise the IP generated during their research career. That said, many machine learning scientists take this 'exit', which can be unavailable to researchers in more fundamental fields.
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Tags: career-path, united-states, reference-request
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thread-30803
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30803
|
How does one denote that a cell value is not available / doesn't make sense in a table?
|
2014-10-29T13:59:12.363
|
# Question
Title: How does one denote that a cell value is not available / doesn't make sense in a table?
I have a table that compares the performance of different systems according to different error measures:
```
System | Error 1 | change | Error 2 | ...
--------------------------------------| ...
Baseline | 0.6 | - | ...
A | 0.1 | -0.5 | ...
B | 0.3 | -0.3 | ...
C | 0.7 | 0.1 | ...
D | 0.6 | 0.0 | ...
```
I currently chose `-` to denote that the value does not make sense. Of course, I can subtract the error of the baseline system from itself and get 0. But I don't think that makes sense.
Should I put `-` in that cell? Or `--` or `---` (I write the document with LaTeX) or eventually something different like `N/A`? Or make the cell black?
# Answer
> 6 votes
If it is self-evident (remember to look at your table from the perspective of a reader) I would just leave the cell empty. Less clutter is better. When not, I would tend towards `--`. More importantly I would add a footnote to the table explaining what `--` means. I think the footnote is in that case more important than the difference between `-`, `--`, and `---`.
# Answer
> 5 votes
I cannot find any mention of what to do with missing data in the APA style, MLA style, or Chicago style, but according to this website on AMA style says:
> Missing data and blank space in the table field (ie, and empty cell) may create ambiguity and should be avoided . . . . An ellipsis (. . .) may be used to indicate no data are available \[or applicable\]. (p87)
---
Tags: writing, tables
---
|
thread-30810
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30810
|
What is " companion proceedings" in a conference?
|
2014-10-29T14:54:13.670
|
# Question
Title: What is " companion proceedings" in a conference?
“All Web Science track papers will be published in the **companion proceedings** of the WWW conference." (http://www.www2015.it/call-for-web-science-track/) What does " companion proceedings" mean？ What are the differences of it with the main proceedings?
# Answer
> 1 votes
There's no major difference between "main" proceedings and "companion" proceedings. It just means that there will be a proceedings volume that collects the papers. Perhaps the only possible item might be that it's not a *dedicated* series—it might be a special journal issue that serves as a proceedings volume.
# Answer
> 1 votes
Often a "main" proceedings collects the papers from the main conference tracks and "companion" proceedings collects the papers of satellite events, such as workshops and such things.
In some cases, only the "main" proceedings is considered as a publication (in Computer Science, at least) and the "companion" proceedings is not.
---
Tags: publications, conference, terminology
---
|
thread-30813
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30813
|
Value of scientific community statement on brain training
|
2014-10-29T15:12:37.557
|
# Question
Title: Value of scientific community statement on brain training
Recently the "scientific community" made a statement on brain training to inform users that there is little evidence to support benefits from the games. With such an impressive list of signatories wouldn't a systematic review and meta analysis that was peer reviewed be a much stronger statement? What is the purpose of scientists issuing such a statement and what effects will it have on funding to understand how brain training affects, or doesn't affect, the brain?
# Answer
> 4 votes
In addition to finding what the truth is, an (often underserved) responsibility of the scientific community is to get that truth out to where people can use it. I wouldn't be surprised if systematic reviews and meta-analyses like you mention have already been conducted. Those, however, will probably be effectively inaccessible to the general public, from some combination of where they are published and how they must be written. Public statements in plain language like the one linked are important for getting the scientific consensus out where the public can use it to avoid wasting their time and money on products that don't work.
---
Tags: funding
---
|
thread-30770
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30770
|
Would it be acceptable to report a professor for poor teaching / attitude in a Masters graduate course?
|
2014-10-29T04:45:33.070
|
# Question
Title: Would it be acceptable to report a professor for poor teaching / attitude in a Masters graduate course?
I would like some advice about a specific professor in my program of study. I seriously feel that this professor has a problem teaching graduate students. On more than one instance, class was let out one hour early because the professor did not have enough material to last the entire allotted two hours of classroom time. The professor is an adjunct, part time lecturer and the class only meets once per week. 15 weeks are scheduled on the syllabus. The professor does not actually teach but flies through PowerPoint slides that are not even his own. For our midterm, I was able to find the answers to the questions online even before the actual exam.
I am a graduate student and have paid serious money to take this course. I would like some advice as to whether its advisable to report to the departmental head or dean regarding this matter. One final note, many of my peers come from a culture where group solidarity is prized over individual rights. Thanks for any feedback!
# Answer
> 7 votes
You should discuss this situation with your department graduate chair or a similar authority. It is important to give your program feedback so that they can improve. However, keep your feedback constructive. The word "report" is excessively negative.
I think you should adopt some perspective. Often, graduate level courses are not treated as seriously as undergraduate courses because graduate students are expected to spend their time on independent research, not course work. Also, while you may be paying a lot of tuition, it is unlikely that an adjunct professor is receiving very much pay. Many adjuncts are working many jobs to pay their living expenses. They often receive no training from employers. Poor teaching by adjuncts can reflect problems with the structure of the institution rather than with the individual adjunct.
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Tags: masters, teaching, professorship, adjunct-faculty
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thread-30448
|
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30448
|
How does the class time in the day and week impacts the students' learning outcome?
|
2014-10-23T21:08:58.860
|
# Question
Title: How does the class time in the day and week impacts the students' learning outcome?
Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the class time in the day and week impacts the students' learning outcome? E.g. students often complain when class are too early in the morning, students on Monday might be more rested than on Friday, etc.; I wonder whether there exist any significant impact on how well students understand and remember the class materials.
# Answer
I came across the following study:
> T McElroy, L Mosteller
> The influence of circadian type, time of day and class difficulty on students' grades.
> http://vjbennett.pbworks.com/f/circadian+rhythms.pdf
In the conclusions of the work, they mention that the students have a best performance if their optimal time-of-day (i.e., if they are monrningness type or eveniningness type) coincide with the class schedule. By contrast the classes that require less cognitive functioning are less sensitive to the advantage and disadvantage of optimal and non-optimal time-of-day.
> 2 votes
---
Tags: teaching, reference-request
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