texts
list | tags
list |
|---|---|
[
"Romance between tenured and pre-tenure faculty? Ramifications for disclosure?",
"I'm an assistant prof in humanities at a small school, just finishing my second year in a new position, and I've developed romantic feelings for a tenured faculty member (Dr X). We are both unmarried, single, and have similar areas of specialization. \n\nDr X is, unfortunately, currently serving in an administrative position ($$) for the first time this year, a position appointed by our somewhat mercurial dean. Because of this, Dr. X is my immediate supervisor. \n\nWe are friends, and I'm quite certain these feelings are reciprocated, but neither of us has made a move because of the rank situation. \n\nWhat happens if we move forward with this? I'm on track for tenure - publishing well so far, and I have a contract and both internal and external grants for my book manuscript, which will be completed at the end of this summer. \n\nI understand we would have to disclose, but then will Dr. X lose the administrative position if the dean disapproves? Will I potentially damage my tenure case? I've considered going back on the market, but the market is bad, and it seems a lot to risk on an un-tried relationship."
] |
[
"ethics",
"united-states",
"tenure-track",
"non-tenure"
] |
[
"What is the right way to patent an idea under PhD studies?",
"Let us assume that a phd student has discovered a brilliant idea during his/her phd studies and that the idea has not been published or presented yet. \nHow can that student protect the idea under a patent? What are the right steps to follow and wrong steps to avoid?"
] |
[
"phd",
"research-process",
"copyright",
"intellectual-property",
"patents"
] |
[
"Should I make project report public before publishing journal article",
"I have written a report about a piece of user research that was carried out with an industry partner. The partner wants to make the report public, and I would also like it to be public as soon as possible and disseminated widely as it is of interest to the (fast moving) industry.\nHowever, i also plan to write an academic article (which will obviously take longer to publish) based on the research, and am concerned about self-plagiarism.\nShould I\n\nWait until after journal publication to make the report public\nMake the report public and reference it in the article\nMake the report public and include a reference to the article ("in preparation")"
] |
[
"publications",
"plagiarism",
"self-plagiarism"
] |
[
"Do the yearly (worldcomp) conference recognized by Scientists?",
"I am planning to submit for a conference that organized by the (World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, & Applied Computing https://americancse.org/events/csce2018) located and held every year in the US. Looking at their invited speakers over the last 10 years, they managed to attract many top scientists from NASA, SAP, Google...etc\n\nThe conference that I am planning to submit my work for named The 20th Int'l Conf on Artificial Intelligence (ICAI'18) and ranked-B according to Qualis. After I checked the dblp database, I noticed that they stoped indexing the Congress proceeding on their website. Do that indicate or reflect any bad signs?"
] |
[
"publications",
"ranking",
"conference"
] |
[
"what are good ways to find team-mates on research and writing papers?",
"im a AI researcher and mostly interested in a field that is less attended in our university. i have some ideas to work on but i blieve it can have better results by working with exprienced people. is there any network that you can find interested people that want to work in special type of fields?"
] |
[
"collaboration",
"research-topic"
] |
[
"Is my advisor asking me to commit fraud?",
"I am currently a postdoc, leaving my position in ~1 month. I am departing my contract a few months early after receiving an offer for a job in industry, about which my advisor is very upset. It is policy at my institution to pay departing postdocs for un-used vacation days.\nMy advisor has asked that I "use" my leftover vacation days, i.e. take them on paper, but actually use that "time off" to finish a few papers. His argument for this is that he "cannot afford" to pay me for them (this sounds bogus to me; how was he going to pay my salary, if he is so broke?). It seems to me he just doesn't want to participate in this policy.\nObviously, this would be shafting me first and foremost, since I would be losing out on this money, but I am not all that upset about that. I'm worried that the university, or our funding agency would object to this maneuver. Would it even be legal? Most importantly, could I be held responsible, for facilitating this?"
] |
[
"united-states",
"funding",
"postdocs"
] |
[
"Is mathematical aptitude the limit of how well I can do in an interdisciplinary life science field as a computer scientist?",
"I apologize in advance if this question is too broad, or too subjective - I couldn't think of a better place to ask it.\n\nSummary: does mathematical aptitude impose an upper boundary on how well one can do in research areas where life sciences intersect with engineering and computer science? I.e., is an ideal researcher in such fields either an experimentalist or an applied mathematician/physicist?\n\n\n\nI'm a computer science graduate thinking about pursuing a PhD in an interdisciplinary life science field; specifically systems biology, synthetic biology, bioinformatics, genomics or cognitive (neuro)science. Characteristic of all these disciplines is that they seem to - ideally - require one of the following two profiles:\n\n\nsomeone with great experimental/domain skills (e.g. molecular\nbiology, neuroscience methods etc.), \nsomeone with great quantitative skills (math/physics).\n\n\nBy virtue of my undergrad background, I'm likely closer to the second profile, even though I have some domain knowledge. However, here's where my self-doubts begin. People of this profile seem to be - in the long term at least - expected to produce new theoretical knowledge primarily by employing advanced math. Top research papers seem to be full of it. I'm concerned about this for the following reasons:\n\n\nmy mathematical skills and aptitude in the context of this profile are average, or a bit above average at best. Sure, I can handle ordinary differential equations and numerical integration, but once it gets to the postdoc level and above, I'm competing with people who are elite talents and have backgrounds in math or physics from top schools. I don't believe I posses anywhere near the math talent that they have, and I simply wouldn't be able to do the job as good as them - and I don't want to be producing subpar research. Furthermore, I spent a significant amount of time studying things that don't seem applicable to this type of research, like CPU architecture or OS internals. Because I'm targeting programs in Europe - where a PhD is normally 3 years - I can't in this short time develop my math skills enough to close the gap, especially considering my less-than-elite talent (funny as it may sound, I believe I have a much greater talent for the humanities/philosophy, but the amount of positions there is close to zero). \nby far my strongest actual skill is coding/programming, and I could probably get some kind of position based on that. I believe I could do\nwell enough to produce some tools and maybe even get a (likely mediocre) PhD eventually, but\nafter this step - when an independent research path is expected - it\nseems to me I would be at a disadvantage and heading for the\nindustry, because implementation skills are simply not enough, i.e.\nthey seem to have merely a supporting role in academia (since they alone cannot generate new knowledge, the main objective of research). Permanent faculty positions seem\nto go out at much higher rates to math-inclined\nindividuals, who are at an advantage when it comes to formulating a\nunique theoretical research statement. At least, this is my\nobservation.\n\n\nShould I choose something else if I'm not a top math talent and thus can't evolve into any of the two profiles mentioned?\n\nOr is such categorization of researcher profiles in fact a false dilemma and there are more options, i.e. not everything required to perform well in these fields can be reduced to mathematical aptitude?\n\nFor what it's worth, I did undergraduate research in computational biology that lead to published papers, and sure I could handle math at that level, but it just seems to me that to make it as a top full-time researcher, I would either have to become an applied mathematician or an experimentalist."
] |
[
"research-process",
"career-path",
"computer-science",
"interdisciplinary"
] |
[
"May I ask professors to reschedule two back to back night classes from 4:30PM to 9:00PM?",
"As a graduate school student, I have two professors teaching two separate classes that go from 4:30PM to 5:50pm and 6:00pm to 9:00PM. This happens every one day of the week.\nI'm not sure whether I can handle concentrating for 5 hours and I have the option to not take a class but it would delay graduating by a semester.\nDo I negotiate with the professor to reschedule or do they have the power to deny it?"
] |
[
"graduate-school",
"professors"
] |
[
"Disagreement over how much IP to put in paper",
"Apologies if this is not the correct site for this- I work in a research lab that is in a kind of grey zone between academia and industry and I can't tell from the help centre if this would be considered off-topic here.\nI'm a fairly junior researcher in my field, and I'm writing my first paper that I will be the lead author of. My paper is based on work that I did on a relatively niche process in my field that has little previously published on it.\nHowever, I'm being told by my manager to not include any potential IP in the paper, and instead just report on the results. My issue with this is that work was fundamentally about creating a framework for this process- without the underlying technical description allowing the reader to recreate the process there is not a great deal of note I can say other than we did it and it worked.\nThe reasoning behind my managers argument is to ensure that the lab (which is kind of a corporate entity while also being a research lab) can exploit the work for products and services later down the line. I would be fine with this except that the company is quite poor when it comes to actually exploiting IP, and instead just prefers to sit on it. On top of that, the work performed doesn't really meet the level of being patentable, so it's not possible to protect the IP and then give a thorough description in the paper.\nThe likely outcome as I see it is then that I publish a paper with little technical information or impact and does nothing to further the field, the IP is not patented and the company does nothing with the outcomes of this work, meaning that the work might as well have not happened. As this is an area I am very enthusiastic about and have sunk quite a bit of my spare time in to (not to mention I am somewhat proud of it) I am rather disheartened by this.\nMy reasoning for wanting to publish the underlying technical content is that\n(a) it has a much better chance of being cited, having a greater impact and increasing awareness of the work\n(b) advances the field by allowing other groups to implement this process\n(c) does not stop the company from engaging in commercial work with industry in this area as we are really the only group with expertise in this area.\nSo my question is how should I approach this issue?\nAm I being overly pessimistic, and should I just accept what my manager wants?\nOr should I try and argue my position (and if so, how?)\nEdit: to clarify, this is a publicly owned institution, that has dual aims of both generating impact from science and also making a profit to provide a greater value for taxpayer money. It doesn't really have 'competitors' per se, and can be either commercially or research focused depending on the issue."
] |
[
"intellectual-property",
"workplace"
] |
[
"Changing research interest in Math",
"I am currently in my final semester of masters. I have some background in Algebraic Number Theory. I have one PhD offer from a US university. \n\nWhen I started getting into algebraic number theory, I did not have much trouble as most of the pre-requisites were from Galois Theory and Commutative Algebra. But through my study in the last two-three semesters, I have realized that Number Theory is a subject which requires knowledge of many different areas like Complex Analysis, Algebraic Geometry, Topology(subjects which I have not learned properly or not learned at all). This has put me under a quite a lot of stress: Am I good enough to study Number Theory or should I shift to something else, something more self-sufficient? \n\nIs it possible (and advisable) to change my research interest to something else? What should I do?\n\nEdit- To add to my troubles, I don't know anything about Modular Forms or Automorphic Forms or Galois Representations.\n\nBefore voting to close this question down, I would like you to know this: I originally asked this question on Math SE. But people told me that it was more of an Academia SE question."
] |
[
"research-process",
"mathematics",
"research-topic"
] |
[
"Are there tenure track academic jobs where teaching and research are given equal importance?",
"I have asked my advisers this question recently (since in a year or so, I expect to go on the job market) and received a variety of answers, specific to the USA. Very generally, as I understand, with reference to the US, there seem to be jobs which are either primarily research based (R1 universities) or primary teaching based (liberal arts colleges).\n\nI understand that in either case, you are expected to do some amount of teaching and some amount of research but the focus varies depending on the university. In my university, research is generally seen to have more importance than teaching.\n\nI was wondering, specifically with reference to the whole world, whether there are academic jobs where teaching and research are both given equal importance.\n\nI am very interested in discipline and country variations in this.\n\nThanks."
] |
[
"job",
"job-search",
"tenure-track"
] |
[
"How to React to an Introduction Email",
"So, someone (A) introduced me to someone else (B) via email, so that I can ask B questions and get advice. The email is directed at B, and I am copied. Should I wait for B to email me, or should I email B first? If the latter, should I reply to the original email and copy A, or should I just open another thread with B?\n\nAlso, I don't know if it is important or not, but the email ends like this:\n\n\n Thanks for connecting with him, he is copied on this email.\n\n\nNeedless to say, \"him\" means me."
] |
[
"etiquette",
"email"
] |
[
"Does one get academic credit towards a degree for open online courses?",
"Lately lots of courses like udacity, coursera, and MITx are provided online. I attended most of them; also I have attended courses in OCW provided by MIT. Now I desire to earn some credits for whatever I have learnt so far, so that I can apply for a degree (in electronics and computer engineering). \n\n\nCould anyone suggest some place where I will get accredited for the courses I do?"
] |
[
"degree",
"online-learning",
"mooc"
] |
[
"Should I mention mental condition?",
"I graduated on time and on the top back then, but after that I had some problem with major depression and anxiety, hence I have some gap on my CV and for a while, I either couldn't work or worked below my qualification. My world literally fell apart but now I am trying to get back to my old dream. Next year, if everything goes well, I want to go get a master degree. \n\nHow should I explain myself? Do I need to mention my history with depression? I am from a country where mental health is still really badly stigmatised, but I'd like to apply abroad. I am not sure what's appropriate to say and what's not.\nThank you."
] |
[
"graduate-admissions",
"masters",
"health"
] |
[
"What are the ethics of getting help from online forums?",
"As an engineer, sometimes in my research I come across a mathematical problem that either is beyond my mathematical skills, or I know that someone, somewhere must have seen something like it before and can point me in the right direction, hence saving me time.\n\nAsking on math.stackexchange often does the trick, but I wonder what the ethics involved are. For instance, if someone provides a complete answer, and the result turns out to be integral to the paper, should I offer them authorship? \n\nPS: I'm not talking about a result that is novel in itself - i.e. it would not be considered as a contribution to mathematics. The result will be an application of standard mathematics to a particular engineering problem."
] |
[
"ethics",
"mathematics",
"authorship",
"collaboration",
"engineering"
] |
[
"How to show that the department fits my research goal?",
"In the question about choosing research ideas to include in a statement of purpose, JeffE advised how to write the last paragraph of the SOP:\n\n\n How does my department fit your research goals? (If the rest of your statement is well-written, the reader already knows the answer to this question, but you also need convince the reader that you know.)\n\n\nWhat should I really say here, without having repetition? This is the sum up part, which doesn't need to explain again, and should be short. I would add that this part also needs to raise the emotion of the readers. They have used their rationale enough in the main part. Whether I succeed in satisfying them or not, I have already tried my best, and there is no need to prove that I'm good anymore.\n\nOr, as JeffE says, I need to convince the reader that I know I'm good*. My preference is to make the scarcity here, because the feeling of losing is one of the most strongest emotions. However, when I have the draft proofed, it is highly criticized that it is hubris, or at least unnecessary. I have given my rationale, but no one respond. Here is the draft:\n\n\n To sum up, I hope that If I get admitted, I will be a valuable asset to the lab, the department, and the university. I will be a new researcher with a compelling plan to maturing the theory; a new student who can enrich the diversity of the X department; and a future scientist working to accomplish the Y school’s vision: create a better world.\n\n\nSo:\n\n\nHow to write this part?\nShould I use this part to raise their emotions? \nShould I use scarcity to raise their emotion?\n\n\n\n\n*Emboldening is only to emphasize the needed words, not to be hubris."
] |
[
"graduate-admissions",
"statement-of-purpose"
] |
[
"Applying for an MPhil or PhD in Computer Science at Cambridge University",
"I am an MSc Computer Science student in UK. I love to study and I would like to apply for a competitive place. I'm interested in Cambridge PhDs, but I have no previous experience in research (except for the BSc Thesis, which I wrote after a 5-months internship in University). \n\nI've found that Cambridge has an advanced degree, called MPhil, which could work as a starting point for a PhD. \n\nDoes anyone here know something about MPhils, and their differences with Masters and PhD? \nWould it be a reasonable idea to seek for a PhD at Cambridge, spending one year more with a MPhil? \n\nI hope someone can give me some information,\nThanks to all,\n\nC."
] |
[
"phd",
"graduate-admissions",
"masters"
] |
[
"Should I include 'future work' in a paper, when I don't intend to do that future work?",
"I am in the process of writing a paper that I think introduces a novel concept. There are some related factors (perhaps even foundational factors) that should be worked out in order to perfect my idea. I plan on putting these ideas in a 'Future Work' section of the paper. However, I have no interest in actually doing anything I put there. After this paper, I want to move on to another topic.\n\nShould I include those ideas in 'Future Work'? Should I state that I have no plan to work on them myself, so as not to leave anyone interested in the work 'hanging'?"
] |
[
"publications"
] |
[
"Why do some universities not have a comprehensive exam?",
"I spotted that some universities do not have a comprehensive exam for their PhD students while it is standard at most universities (specifically for computer science). For what reasons do some universities drop the requirement of comprehensive exam? What is the impression towards someone who has graduated from no-comprehensive department?"
] |
[
"phd",
"qualifying-exam"
] |
[
"Intellectual Property Rights When Moving University",
"I am considering moving institutions (from a one UK University to another), but I am concerned about what Intellectual Property (IP) rights my current institution may retain. Some of my PhD students, one of whom has been funded by my university directly, would move with me, or at least I would like them to. I am also unclear about the rights they/I would have to the research they have already done. Their projects would naturally remain similar, but I see no obvious commercial potential, and have no intention of trying to find some. \n\nMy questions are: \n\n\nThe University's policy is clear that they own all Intellectual Property I produce during my employment. I assume this can't apply to projects that have not got to the point of being protectable/tradeable but where one project begins and another ends is not always clear. Many of these projects naturally build on work I have published, or is in the process of being published. How can I tell/establish what exactly they have rights to?\nHow do I 'leave' them with what they own so that I can make a clean break."
] |
[
"career-path",
"professors",
"europe",
"intellectual-property"
] |
[
"Listing professors' titles/ranks in CV",
"In my CV's Education section, in particular, in its Ph.D. part, I listed, along with the full title of my dissertation and the date I defended it, titles and names of my dissertation committee members. Two of them are full professors and one is associate professor. I have decided to list them as such, but I am having some doubts about whether in this context \"Professor AAA\" should imply a full rank or just a title (so, no \"Associate Professor BBB\"). Your advice will be appreciated."
] |
[
"cv",
"job",
"titles"
] |
[
"How to handle rude and distracting fellow graduate student who sits in the same office?",
"In a nutshell, I hate one of my fellow PhD students. I am sitting in the office with that fellow graduate student who frequently interrupts me when I want to focus on my work. He also often is very insulting to me in front of other fellow graduate students.\n\nI general, I try to be nice and respectful to my fellow students, but I suspect this makes me a perfect target to him. Also he seems very nice to other people, just not to me. I wish I could change the department because its actually a major drawback and affects my whole PhD life, since I currently meet him every day all the time. I frequently miss lunch or some activities of my lab, since I know I couldn't handle his presence. But I don't want that my social life suffers because of him. Do you have any tips on how to overcome this situation successfully?"
] |
[
"etiquette",
"interpersonal-issues",
"workplace"
] |
[
"Can teaching help one's studies?",
"Most of the questions about teaching assistantship portray TA'ing as a waste of time that only damages research. Although I am not TA'ing this year I consider applying for a TA position next year, because I feel I kind of missing it and it actually helps me to focus on my research.\n\nAre there any clear benefits of TA'ing for one's studies and research?"
] |
[
"teaching",
"research-process"
] |
[
"Should I write a \"proof\" to a professor I don't know?",
"TL;DR\n\nI solved two integrals left unsolved in a paper I'm reading. Should I notify the author? \n\n\n\nI am studying in a finance master and we have been assigned a project for one of our class. This project consisted in some literature review and then a small implementation.\n\nReading one of the papers, in which the author propose a new density p to model a random variable, there is written that \n\n\nThey can't find analytically the constant c that makes p a density (basically could not compute the integral of p) \nThey write that numerical simulations show that E[X]= theta but an analytical proof was still missing\n\n\nI have calculated in closed form both integrals, and numerical simulations suggest that my results are correct; I will probably add this to the project I'm writing.\n\nNow the question is: should I send an email to the author about this? If so, how to phrase such an interaction? I guess that I'm looking for something along the lines of \"thank you, well done\" with maybe a short mention if they get around to modify the original paper. \n\nOn the other hand, the paper is old (2007) so I don't even know if the author is still interested in that.\n\nAlso, the proof was nothing too complicated. I mean I spent a lot of time on it (mainly because of my inexperience) but it certainly doesn't feel like anything too difficult. Probably I just \"saw\" the right path to do it and once you see that, it's pretty easy.\n\nIs this something common to do? Are professors pleased to receive such an email or just annoyed?"
] |
[
"professors",
"email",
"communication"
] |
[
"What does it mean when a STEM researcher has a lot of \"solo\" publications?",
"This is related to advisor selection for North American universities, STEM majors.\n\nI noticed some profs tend to have a lot of \"solo\" publications, meaning that he or she is the sole author of a journal/paper for over the span of quite a few years. This tends to be from earlier on during his or her career as a researcher.\n\nIs this common in academia? What would cause this to happen (not saying that it is a bad thing) and does it hint at anything about the particular researcher?"
] |
[
"publications",
"authorship",
"collaboration",
"stem"
] |
[
"Professor not replying to emails",
"My professor assigned a final paper due the 12th, and while our exam period extends to the 23rd of December, all my exams were scheduled on the 11th and 12th and a couple before. As this was one of my more interesting classes, I asked the professor if I could have a couple days' extension, because I'd rather not rush the paper but actually engage with the sources. While some might prefer to get on break early, having back-to-back final exams is extremely exhausting, and having them spread out would be much preferred in my eyes. So I explained the circumstances and requested an extension (well in advance) but never got a response. After a couple days passed, I tried again to no avail. I have emailed the professor before and they responded but now seem to be ignoring me. I was one of the only 3 students to have perfect attendance out of a class of about 50, so I thought they would understand my genuine interest. Also, I know 3 other students who got like two week extensions on earlier papers, so I thought it should be fine. Any idea on how to proceed?"
] |
[
"email"
] |
[
"How to negotiate the salary for a UK faculty position?",
"Following several interviews, I have been offered two faculty positions in the UK. Salary is among the factors I consider to choose one of the positions.\n\nHow can I reasonably negotiate the salary? Can I suggest the highest value in the range advertised? Or I shouldn't be greedy.\n\nIn general, how negotiable is salary in the UK universities?"
] |
[
"faculty-application",
"united-kingdom",
"salary"
] |
[
"My advisor wants me to make my PhD thesis weaker",
"I am a final year PhD student in mathematics at a university in Spain and about to submit my thesis in a few weeks. During the last months, I have been writing up the remaining details of a project. Let me make clear that this project is not the only one contained in my thesis. However, it is the heart of the thesis and the other projects contained in my thesis, while in some way independent, yield interesting results when combined with the project I am talking about in this question. Moreover, the topic of the project was proposed by my advisor, but I mostly worked on it without talking to him (he was visiting other universities and sick for a very long time, and there were other reasons as well).\n\nThe project is a classification of certain objects, meaning that it consists of two parts:\n\n\nGiving a list of examples of said objects;\nShowing that the above list is in fact complete.\n\n\nWhile coming up with the examples was kind of hard at the beginning, it was pretty straightforward and algorithmic once I got the hang of it (I always told my colleagues that one could teach a chimpanzee how to do it). The mathematically involved and complicated part is to show that the produced list is in fact complete. This involves several creative ideas and is highly non-trivial.\n\nMy advisor now thinks that the thesis is too long (it is about 130 pages, part 2 being roughly 25 pages long), and that I should remove part 2 from the thesis (i.e., that I should not show in the thesis that the list is complete): according to him, a longer thesis has more potential of containing small, subtle mistakes, and obviously mistakes are bad. He said that he cannot be sure that everything is correct, since he never read all details and I need to submit rather soon. He is also travelling and busy until I am supposed to submit. \n\nHowever, I do not want to cut the second part of the thesis, for the following reasons:\n\n\nI already have the proof, and I am sure that it is correct. Why should it not be included in my thesis? The alternative is to include an unproven claim in the thesis, similar to \"the list is in fact complete, which we will show in a forthcoming paper\".\nIf I remove it and only keep part 1, my results are incomplete and the project only consists of \"describing some examples\", which is - as I explained above - pretty easy once one knows how to.\nObviously, I want my thesis to be as strong as possible.\nThe interplay between all projects of my thesis cannot be made as strong, as well.\nI know who the referees of my thesis are going to be, and one of them is notorious for being a very harsh grader. While I am pretty proud of my thesis in the current form, I am afraid that removing part 2 will affect the grading of my thesis.\n\n\nI explained my point of view to my advisor, but he kept saying that the thesis is too long (apparently the period of time the referees are given to evaluate the thesis is pretty short) and that it is too unsafe for him to submit it as in its current form.\n\nHow should I behave in this situation? I am extremely thankful for any advice!"
] |
[
"thesis",
"advisor"
] |
[
"Should I address a \"Charge de Recherche\" or \"Directeur de recherche\" in France as \"Prof.\"?",
"In France, the following are two of the main ways people get promoted in academic positions:\n\nMaître de Conférences (assistant professor whose responsibilities include teaching as well as research) -> professeur (professor)\n\nand\n\nChargé de recherche (in charge of research) -> Directeur de recherche (director of research).\n\nNote that in the second sequence of academic promotions, one doesn't have to teach and the positions are mostly dedicated to research (although one can opt to teach if s/he wants to).\nMy question is: while applying to a position (postdoc/permanent) in the team of a chargé de recherche where s/he is the PI of the project, should one address her/him as a professor ("Prof."), say in the cover letter? It's technically incorrect it seems, but perhaps no harm is done because their positions are equivalent to those of professors anyway.\nI'd like to know the viewpoint(s) of someone(s) who's familiar with the French system!"
] |
[
"postdocs",
"job-search",
"job",
"france"
] |
[
"Does publishing in journals known as \"predatory\" hurt one's reputation?",
"Does publishing in what is known as a \"predatory\" (such as OMICS) journal diminish ones reputation? Do these publications help at all when applying for grants (or do they impede ones chance)?"
] |
[
"publications",
"disreputable-publishers",
"reputation"
] |
[
"How much time is typically spent reading reference letters?",
"For graduate school applications, I have to submit three reference letters. For those who are on the admission committee, how much time do you spend reading these letters? \n\nEDIT: I am applying to PhD in the hard sciences. \n\nEDIT2: I am applying to schools in the US."
] |
[
"graduate-admissions",
"recommendation-letter"
] |
[
"How to list an old manuscript on my CV/website?",
"A while ago, I wrote a short paper and posted it on arxiv. \n\nMy paper contains an observation that some idea in another paper can be used to give an alternative proof of some other result. I like the paper and other researchers have responded positively to it. However, since it neither contains a new result nor a new idea, the paper isn't really suitable for the usual publication channels. Thus I have not published it in the conference or journal sense.\n\nI'm quite happy to just leave the paper as an arxiv preprint and not go through the publication process. However, I'm currently applying for jobs and I think that it looks odd on my CV/website. I list it under \"Manuscripts\" but that feels out of place, as all the other papers listed there are recent and most are currently in submission. It is \"published\" in the literal sense of being publicly available, but I don't think it's right to list it under \"Publications\" either.\n\nHow should I list this old arxiv preprint on my CV and website, if I have not \"properly\" published it and don't intend to?\n\nOf course, one resolution to this is to find somewhere to publish it. But I feel like that is a waste of time (and also too late for the current job cycle)."
] |
[
"cv",
"online-publication"
] |
[
"Transitioning out of a PhD program and into research in industry",
"After a bachelor's and the master's degree I decided to do the PhD and now I'm a first year CS PhD student in a very good University in Europe. However, I'm not living a good period of my life since I'm not finding motivation in this path, both for personal and work issues. I'd like to work in another country and find a good company where I can code that it's what I really love in this field.\n\nHowever, I wouldn't like to do the task of a programmer where usually someone above you asks to develop a particular software for a client. Instead, I'd like to implement software that could be used inside the company by using personal or technical paper's ideas. It looks like this kind of work is more suitable for people who already have a PhD or who have experience with research.\n\nWith this two premises I would like to ask a couple of questions.\n\n\nIs the interruption of a PhD a disadvantage for the applicant?\nIs it possible to find a research work without a PhD?"
] |
[
"phd",
"industry"
] |
[
"How many grants it is possible to have simultaneously?",
"It is feasible to assume that you cannot have more than one grant, since getting a grant means that you are paid for a research project and you cannot work on too many projects at once. So answer should be one. Nevertheless there should be some researchers that have more than one grant. How common is that? Is this field related?"
] |
[
"funding"
] |
[
"Is there a list of all online creative commons based journals?",
"I know there is a good list of all paper peer-reviewed journals but I would like to know is there one specially for creative commons based online journals? I am kind of trying to figure out which is better to publish in terms of access to \"outsiders\"-people who aren't research scientists and most likely will never care about research journals but if I post a link to my paper on a social media site would make the effort to see it. Is there anyone here who has experience with such audience? Publishing not for the colleagues, but for the general public. You know people these days don't like to pay to view something on the Internet and if your audience isn't a member of a faculty impact factor is crap. But I wish to know can my papers go through at least some kind of(even very rudimentary)peer-review process. This is why I am looking for a list of free online journals who have at least someone with academic background on their editorial board.\n\nDoes such a thing exists?"
] |
[
"peer-review",
"online-publication"
] |
[
"How to search in Google Scholar within a particular conference?",
"Using Google's search operators, guide, we can restrict our search to that of a particular web domain, eg: site:twitter.com Paul Daniels \n\nWithin Google Scholar, can we perform a similar in nature search but for articles within a particular conference (or journal)? I am looking an operator specific to Google scholar which I expect would resemble conference:NIPS Paul Daniels"
] |
[
"conference",
"literature-search",
"google-scholar"
] |
[
"Do unethical acts that are tangential to methodology taint research?",
"It's well-known that unethical acts can render research virtually unpublishable, but the cases we hear about tend to involve situations in which the methodology is tainted - for example, fabrication of data or unethical experimentation on humans.\n\nDo unethical or unlawful acts that are tangential to actual research methodology likewise taint research?\n\nFor example:\n\n\nA researcher is unlawfully present in the country in which they do the research, or lacks the legal status to do it there (e.g. overstaying visas, attending a university on a tourist visa, dodging a border checkpoint, etc.).\nA researcher falsifies their academic credentials in order to get access to lab space, equipment, or grant money (e.g. the research itself is sound, but the researcher would not have been allowed unsupervised access to the university's microscopes had they known that he didn't actually have a PhD).\nA researcher conducts research using stolen equipment or supplies.\nA researcher commits a crime in order to hinder, delay, or incapacitate a rival researcher (e.g. sabotaging someone else's lab, murdering them, stealing their lab notes in order to deny them access to them, fabricating allegations to get them thrown in jail, deported from a country, expelled or fired from a university, etc.).\nA researcher unlawfully uses performance-enhancing drugs without a prescription to maintain concentration on their work.\nA researcher carries an unlawful weapon (e.g. concealed handgun without a permit, rifle unlawfully modified for full auto, etc.) for personal protection when gathering field data (e.g. where the researcher would have otherwise not gone there out of fear of violence).\n\n\nAre there best practices or general principles on when such unethical acts taint research? Obviously, I'm not asking whether or not someone can, or should, get away with committing these acts, only whether or not they also would prevent publication. E.g. could someone say, \"Yes, I blew up Dr. Smith's telescope and hit him with an axe so he couldn't beat me to publication, and I accept my 20-year prison sentence for that, but I was, in fact, the first to complete a spectrographic analysis of that planet and write it up so I should still be allowed to publish.\"?\n\nThis is not a request for personal advice! I'm just curious as to what actually happens or is supposed to happen in these cases.\n\nMy \"guts\" say that this would depend on the degree of non-academic misconduct - for example, that murdering a rival would prevent publication while parking unlawfully in a no-parking zone in order to make it to a meeting on time would not, but is this actually the case? Is every case evaluated independently, or is there a bright-line rule?"
] |
[
"publications",
"ethics"
] |
[
"Alternatives to supervisor for letter of recommendation",
"I am applying to an executive MBA program. Of course, letters of recommendation are needed. My supervisor has, on multiple occasions attempted to discourage me from applying to any graduate program. He has said than an MBA is a \"waste of time\". He has said that a PhD would \"not help\" me. The only programs he has expressed any favor with are those that are 1) on our campus and 2) are simply training in skills that I already use in my current position. He has claimed that he could, personally, \"certify\" me regarding management skills. He's a professor at a university biological research department. I have been working for him since about 2002, with a brief gap where I moved away to care for a relative. It essentially looks like I will not get a letter of recommendation from him.\n\nWhat can I do?"
] |
[
"masters",
"recommendation-letter"
] |
[
"Why write papers anonymously?",
"The author Anonymous has 74,305 publications in the Scopus publication database. Those include 32,476 peer-reviewed articles, most from the 1980s and 1990s.\n\nWhy would anyone write a peer-reviewed paper anonymously?"
] |
[
"publications",
"anonymity"
] |
[
"A current PhD applicant in a dilemma between current lab and other programs",
"Some of my backgrounds: Currently a master's student in a good but not top school. Now in a research group that could have been more productive. I am applying for PhD programs in this round of application (applying in 2020 and entering in 2021).\nI talked with my current advisor and told him that I need a LoRec from him for my PhD application. I told him that I still haven't fixed my list of schools, which is true because I am still balancing my choices. He hinted me between his lines that he is interested in transferring me to his PhD student. He also suggested (in a very refined way) that he has enough fund to support me through the whole PhD program so I don't probably have to fulfill TA at all. His words were specifically made super easy and obvious for an ESL student to interpret: I can choose to continue to stay at his lab, or go somewhere else. This puts me at a dilemma:\nThe bad thing about it is that I do want to reach higher. I want to try and see if I can get into any of the top programs, because the ranking of my current program is a little bit low, and also my current advisor has a group that's not producing a lot of papers in past few years. The group members are all nice people, but I am worried that staying in the current group will not be the best investment I can make out of my next 6~ years.\nThe good thing about it is that accepting this "oral offer" at least gets me secured. I do have a very competitive GRE, GPA, and (I guess) quite strong letters, but this still doesn't ensure me or guarantee me about anything- I may be rejected by all the programs that I want to go, and the possibility of this is not low. If I just tell my professor that, yes, I want to stay, then of course I don't have to go through all these risks.\nI can't really lie to my current advisor as if I am devoting to his lab while sneakily applying to others - On the one hand, I am really bad at telling lies. For real. I can barely lie on how much money I am earning even. On the other hand, one of my LoRec is from him, so once I give him the list of schools that he should send his letter to, particularly all of which are obviously better than my current school, then he'll know what's happening of course.\nIs there any way to talk with my professor so that not only can I secure my potential position at this lab, but I can also apply to other schools with his letters, without making any negative impact either on him or on my application? I have no friend to talk with about this issue [they think I should find a job and start to earn a life]. I feel like I am being a greedy naughty bad student, but I don't have any idea how I should choose or what I should do. Any suggestion?"
] |
[
"phd",
"masters",
"application",
"professors",
"recommendation-letter"
] |
[
"In Preparation For The Job Market - On Day 1 of the PhD",
"There's a higher likelihood everyday that I am considering pursuing a PhD in my field, and ultimately, in applying for positions as a professor down the road. What I am trying to do is think ahead as to what some extra pieces of my application could include that are not research related. I understand that every field is different, but there are most likely numerous qualities and characteristics on an academic application that are not bound by discipline. So the question I would like to figure out is what type of professional development activities I can work on over the course of my PhD that would contribute to a well-rounded academic resume. \n\nObviously, publications are key components in an application and over time those will (hopefully) manifest as research continues. What I am trying to do now is target other areas that will allow me to round out an application in the future. As an example, I am currently taking a Teaching & Learning Program with the Graduate Studies department at my university and the program draws on the \"Science of Teaching and Learning\". In contrast to research papers, this type of thing may be minor, but I feel that developing these sort of auxiliary components to the overall application over time are all important. \n\nSo pursuing development to become a better educator (and this is because I actually want to, not because I feel compelled to) is one thing that I can do in the present to help prepare me for the future. I am wondering what some other things can be done over time (especially over the course of a PhD), that can contribute to a strong application aside from research activities. Below is a list of some things that I have thought of that could be developed over the course of a PhD that could A) help a future application or at least B) make my life easier down the road (haha). \n\n\nDeveloping a sample of introductory course notes for in class & online learning (boo COVID-19)\nPursuing professional development activities in teaching and learning\nDeveloping introductions for certain technologies that have some relevance in my field, but can be overlooked at the undergraduate level (Programming Language or Geographic Information Systems)\nWriting tips and advice for undergraduate students \n\n\nI debated asking this question, because it sort of feels like a shopping question, although after some thought it felt like more of a professional development question."
] |
[
"application",
"career-path",
"job-search",
"academic-life",
"assistant-professor"
] |
[
"Capitalization conventions for departments, schools, etc",
"(Disclaimer: I'm unsure if this is more appropriate here or on English SE instead; Please do migrate this if deemed more appropriate elsewhere)\n\nAre there any general guidelines on when/how to capitalize departmental names which are \"pseudo-proper\" names, e.g. the department of applied stochastic basket-weaving science in the school of textile engineering at Dartmouth College? — at least in terms of \"grammar\" (term used loosely here), the the in the example above seems enough: In this usage, it's understood there's only one department of applied stochastic basket-weaving science in the school of textile engineering at Dartmouth College, and there's only one school of textile engineering at Dartmouth College. However, in isolation, such names are often seen in \"title-ish\" case:\n\n\n Department of Applied Stochastic Basket-Weaving Science\n\n\nLikewise:\n\n\n School of Textile Engineering\n\n\nHowever, would this style of case still be applicable when using these terms in running text?\n\n\n At the Department of Applied Stochastic Basket-Weaving Science (ASBWS) in the School of Textile Engineering at Dartmouth, methods have been developed for using the fibers from old baskets sitting on your grandmother's windowsill to create weapons for the battlefield of tomorrow.\n\n\nThis looks like A Lot of Unnecessary Capital Letters to me, but perhaps my judgement isn't correct."
] |
[
"writing-style",
"language"
] |
[
"APA citation of two articles with no author, no date, and the same title?",
"I'm looking to cite both of the following articles:\n\nhttps://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_for_Free_Speech\nhttps://ballotpedia.org/Institute_for_Free_Speech\n\nFor web pages like this, my understanding is the citation should look like this:\n\n[Title]. [Web Site]. Retrieved from [URL]\n\nSince both have the same title, how should I distinguish between the two in in-text citations? Should I list both the title and web site somehow?"
] |
[
"citations"
] |
[
"Realistic expectations from a postdoc in terms of publications",
"I am in the process of applying for a postdoctoral grant and I was wondering what the expectations are in terms of journal publications when I plan? \n\nWould it be fine if I plan 1 paper per year if I have no PhD students? Is 2 papers/year an exaggeration?\n\nInput from senior members, possibly those with selection committee experiences would be great.\n\nField: engineering (electrical and electronic)\nCountry: Australia, EU, USA"
] |
[
"publications",
"funding",
"postdocs"
] |
[
"What papers can you ask someone to cite for using your software?",
"Ofen Software authors request that users cite a paper of theirs in publications resulting from projects using their software.\n\nAs such an software author, what logic governs what kind of papers you can reasonably ask to cite?\nI see 5 cases:\n\n\nThe paper is about the software explicitly. Eg Theano\nThe software is a direct implementation of an algorithm described in the paper. Eg anything from here\nThey created the software to use in research presented in the paper. It has not changed since.\nThey originally created the software for use in the research paper, but since then it has undergone fairly large changes as it has continued to be developed. Eg DeepLearnToolbox\nThe paper has nothing in common with the software, except sharing an author. \n\n\nIn which cases is it acceptable to request the paper be cited?\n5 seems like an obvious no-no, but are the others in the clear?\n\nThis question is the flip-side of Should I cite Papers to acknowledge usage of tools?"
] |
[
"citations",
"software"
] |
[
"Scholarship/Funding for working professional already holding MS degree",
"I'm a working professional trying to get into academia in a new field. I already has bachelor's degree in EE and master's degree in CS. I'm trying to get into pure math.\nI have to take some undergraduate classes in order to strengthen knowledge. I'm trying to be a part time student and take only the courses relevant to the new field. Even so, the cost is significant. Even with in-state status, each course in UC Berkeley is about $3000. I need to take at least 6 courses in order to build a "math major" profile. I looked online, I won't qualify for "returning to school" scholarships because those are for people who don't have degree yet. Is there a scholarship/funding available for my situation?\nI also thought about becoming a full time master/PhD student in order to speed up the study. Can I still get TA/RA if I already hold a MS degree? However, to get into a good master program, I need to build my transcript with more relevant courses. Back to the same question..."
] |
[
"mathematics",
"funding",
"tuition"
] |
[
"Do professors like answering questions from non-students/private citizens?",
"I am a non-student/private citizen and I am eager to meet with professors at universities in my area so I can ask these professors a particular question about a particular subject matter. I want to ask them the same question to see if they all will give me the same answer. Based on their answers, I will then decide whether or not to pursue writing an article to be published which relates to this particular subject matter.\n\nI have sent emails to six local universities requesting a meeting with a professor in this particular area of study and so far I have only received one e-mail reply. In that one email reply, the professor suggested that I meet instead with one of their graduate students because his consultation fee is very high. I am still waiting for the professor to provide me with the names of these grad students.\n\nI have decided to wait at least a week before sending follow-up e-mails, or perhaps calling them directly to ask for an appointment, because I realize that professors are busy people.\n\nThis experience with trying to communicate with college professors makes me wonder if professors, in general, like answering questions from non-students/private citizens. Is it safe to say that professors, in general, would prefer that non-students/private citizens seek answers from subject matter experts in the private sector?"
] |
[
"professors",
"email",
"independent-researcher"
] |
[
"How should I treat this prior work?",
"I submitted a theoretical paper about new algorithms to a computer science conference. Now I found out that the most important theorem of my paper was actually proved 20 years ago (in a workshop paper with less than 15 citations). The other theorems/algorithms of my paper are kind of easy corollaries of this result, so this makes the theoretical contribution of my paper lower. However my paper connects these results to a lot of literature of past 20 years to which the old paper has not been connected before, so it still has good motivation and a lot of original contribution.\n\nWhat should I do if the reviewers do not find this old paper and accept my submission? Could an accept turn into decline if I tell them about this old paper? Would it be ok to just add a footnote where this old paper is cited?"
] |
[
"peer-review",
"ethics",
"conference",
"computer-science"
] |
[
"Shrink the paper or pay for extra page charges?",
"A PhD student has started his research about two year ago by research scholarship from university. His supervisor won a huge grant on a topic very close to his research project couple of months earlier. He and his supervisor submitted a 6 page paper to a journal for publication. Editor's decision is that the paper should be published as a communication rather original research. This means that they have to reduce the manuscript to 4 pages or pay about 500$ for extra pages. The adviser asked the student to shrink the paper to the shortest possible version.\n\nI have the following questions:\n\n\nCan they pay the publications fees from the grant budget?\nCan student ask the adviser to pay for the publication from the grant? What is the best polite approach for such request?\nShould supervisor expect to put the grant number in the acknowledgement while he does not pay for the publication fees."
] |
[
"publications",
"journals",
"advisor",
"supervision"
] |
[
"How to invite potential collaborators for personal visit?",
"No starting point for scientific collaboration is better than face-to-face conversation. Conferences are good places to meet potential collaborator, but another way is to invite them to visit your institute/group and negotiate for possible collaborations.\n\nHowever, when inviting a colleague from long distance (e.g. crossing the Atlantic), it is difficult to cover the cost of the flight (particularly as it significantly varies and hard to justify its necessity). Sometimes, the visitors has better access to available fund to cover his/her trip. Of course, it is easier to cover the cost of accommodation.\n\nHow do you invite a potential collaborator to visit your institute when you cannot cover his/her flight cost? Isn't it rude to invite someone and quote you must come on your own expenses as we cannot cover it? Note that the relationship is quite formal with least personal acquaintance (no joint work yet)."
] |
[
"research-process",
"professors",
"collaboration"
] |
[
"Can international students in USA intern in summer in industry?",
"Can international PhD students go do internships during summer in industries? \n\nDoes their F1 visa status allow this?\n\nFrom how I see it, this is neither an OPT or a CPT. \n\nI asked my International Office and they said I could spend a term at another university because then I'm still enrolled Full Time (just at another institution) which I believe is fine with some paperwork. However, they are getting back to me (it's been a while so I am asking here) whether anyone else has done something similar?"
] |
[
"phd",
"internship",
"international-students"
] |
[
"Best tool for digitally marking assignments?",
"I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good piece of software for marking digital (PDF) assignments. Specifically, I am marking a first-year mathematics course, and need to do the following for each assignment:\n\n\nOpen student's PDF assignment\nMake annotations (really, the only two tools I use are red pencil/pen and text comments). I am using a Wacom pen tablet for this.\nSave a copy of the marked assignment in the original directory.\nRepeat x many.\n\n\nI am currently using Foxit and was using Xodo previously, but neither tool feels quite right for the job. I would favour something that:\n\n\nMakes the above process quick and easy\nInteracts nicely with the Wacom tablet (Adobe Reader doesn't, for example)\nIs lightweight and easily usable (really only need pen and text tools, and possibly rotating pages every now and then. Everything else is clutter)\nHas a good workflow so I can mark as efficiently as possible."
] |
[
"software",
"grading",
"homework",
"assessment"
] |
[
"In a CV, how do I list my status of a PhD if I completed the oral exam, but not awarded officialy?",
"I have recently successfully completed my PhD Viva (oral exam) at a UK university. This means that my PhD project is formally over and I have a formal promise from the university that I will be awarded a PhD, under the condition that I submit a corrected version of my thesis, adding those corrections requested by the examiners, in due time.\n\nHow should I list this state in applications eg. for postdoc positions? Given how different university procedures are in different countries and faculties, will it be acceptable to state “viva passed with corrections” for applications elsewhere in Europe, or are there better and clearer ways to phrase this?"
] |
[
"phd",
"cv"
] |
[
"How to find response time for a given journal in engineering?",
"I would like to find journals response times? A google search does not give any good results. May be I am using wrong key words. \n\nI am open to find particular subset of journal response times too. Any pointers about this is welcome. this answer gives a list of backlog for mathematical journals. Are there any such other list? How can I find them?\n\nThanks for comment.\nActually I would like to learn \"From submission until a decision\". I know \"Total time from submission to publication\" can take a lot of time."
] |
[
"journals",
"peer-review"
] |
[
"For a new assistant professor in CS, how to build/manage a publication pipeline",
"I am a new assistant professor in a research institute, where the number of top-tier publications matter a lot. In short, they simply count the number of tier-one papers. \n\nI am highly advised to work out a good publication pipeline, in terms of how many papers are in progress (e.g., implementation), how many papers are under review, and also how many are in the preliminary stage to investigate the feasibility. \n\nSo besides \"working hard\", what are some tips, comments and advices on start to setting up a \"publication pipeline\"? To concretize a bit, what I can come up with are:\n\n\nhas one or two main research lines such that you can constantly publish your major research output towards some really prestigious conferences in your field, in CS it's like SIGGRAH, OSDI, POPL and so on. But of course, usually preparing such a work takes a very long time; my personally experience is about 1~1.5 year, when I was a Ph.D. student.\nSimultaneously, become versatile in terms of skillset and therefore can quickly hunt for some (low-hanging) fruit. This can be much shorter, say 3~5 months, can still target on tier-one conference, but maybe not that \"prestigious\" ones. I am not going to name such conferences to avoid some arguments here... \nWhat else? \n\n\nAll I can find is a thread here (https://www.chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=38427.0), but the message is a bit unclear to me. Any suggestion or advice would be appreciated a lot. Thanks."
] |
[
"publications",
"research-process",
"professors",
"assistant-professor"
] |
[
"Are U.S. governmental reports a reliable source of information to cite?",
"I am trying to cite this document but I found out that, apart from informal in-text citations such as 'according to x' (which I can cite as a secondary source because I was never successful in locating the original primary source), other information are not cited/referenced and there's no reference list. Can I rely on such information to cite the report? Why don't they provide references I can track for their claims? Do they consider such information as part of common knowledge?"
] |
[
"citations"
] |
[
"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.\n\nI 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!"
] |
[
"masters",
"teaching",
"professors",
"adjunct-faculty"
] |
[
"What can I do about someone publishing my work from GitHub?",
"I have many public repositories working on projects related to machine learning stuff, and it has recently come to my notice that someone has published a machine learning research paper based on one of the projects that I have in my GitHub with the same results that would be obtained from running my code(without citing my GitHub, or taking prior permission).\n\nI'm pretty upset. What can I do about it, from an academic route? And what could happen to the fraudster, if I do that?"
] |
[
"plagiarism",
"repository"
] |
[
"Changing my supervisor before starting",
"I am an undergraduate student in Computer Science. I asked a supervisor for thesis and he must still send me the first materials for starting. The actual supervisor hasn't yet even told me exactly what I must do and is waiting for me to return from my Erasmus to start. In the meanwhile I discovered that another supervisor is doing something that interests me more. The research area is what I would like to study also in my graduate studies. Is it a problem if I change my supervisor at this point? \n\nThank you in advance for your answers"
] |
[
"thesis"
] |
[
"Recommendation letters for assistant professor position (computer science and statistics)",
"I am applying for (research) assistant professor positions in the computer science and statistics areas. I have seen advice on having at least one recommendation letter outside of my graduate school institution. I have two letters from inside my graduate school institution.\n\nOne letter is from my major professor, who can comment on my ability to obtain grants and conduct research. The other letter is from a professor who can comment on my ability to teach and conduct research.\n\nI am currently deciding about my third letter, and have two options in mind. One idea is my manager at a software company from my summer internship in 2016. She can comment on my ability to get work done, work with team members, demonstrate software development skills, and make connections (she told me I was persistent in asking for the internship position). The other idea is a professor emeritus who I worked with back in 2009 during a postbac position. He is now in his early 80s but still publishes research. He was the founding chair of an academic department (not directly related to what I do now though within the sciences and maths), won several prestigious awards, and served most of his time in academia. He can comment on my research abilities and initiative (he was impressed that I developed my own research ideas to fruition during my postbac). He has written a recommendation letter for me back in 2012 to apply for graduate school.\n\nI would be grateful to hear opinions on this topic. Do you think either of these third options appropriate? Is one more favorable than the other? Most applications require exactly 3 letters, but some allow 4 letters. Hence, I can include both for some applications. Thank you for sharing any of your wisdom!"
] |
[
"recommendation-letter",
"assistant-professor"
] |
[
"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. \n\nDoes 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?"
] |
[
"coursework",
"open-access",
"creative-commons",
"license"
] |
[
"Should mathematical symbols and equations be included in a word count?",
"I am currently in the process of finishing up my Master's thesis which requires me to disclose the exact word count. \n\nMy thesis contains a lot of mathematical symbols and equations and I am not sure whether those, together with table and figure captions, should be included in the final word count or not.\n\nI know how many words, inline math and display math (in LaTeX terms) elements my document contains, but I am just not sure whether to count them or not. \n\nMy university has not given any guidance on what to include in the word count, so I am wondering if there are any general rules that apply in this situation? The only thing I could find on the internet was from APS Journals: \n \"The word equivalent for displayed math is 16 words per row for single-column equations. Two-column equations count as 32 words per row.\"\n\nAny guidance on this would be greatly appreciated!"
] |
[
"thesis",
"masters",
"mathematics"
] |
[
"Should I mention teaching experience in my cover letter?",
"I am applying for tenure-track positions in R1 (say, top 50) universities in Computer Science in the US.\n\nWhen writing the cover letter, should I mention teaching experience and competence?\nOr should I leave it for the teaching statement?"
] |
[
"application",
"computer-science",
"teaching",
"faculty-application",
"application-cover-letter"
] |
[
"Co-authors that quit during software development and such software is using later in a patent, should they be added as coauthors/inventors?",
"We have a situation in which we developed some software, where four previous members of our research group participated some time ago. Then they left the group, and said that from then on, they did not want to work on further developments of the code.\nNow we have used that code, which has evolved a bit since they left, and we have applied it to some other contexts, in which we have made some discoveries, and it turns out we can file a patent.\nThe question here is, the old members that left the group and did not want to work on further developments of the code, must they be included in the patent as authors/inventors?\nI would say the answer is no, since they said they did not want to work on further developments of the code, but since this software tool was a key step for the discovery reported in the patent, and they participated a bit in the past on the software, they should perhaps be included as coauthors/inventors.\nShould they be included?"
] |
[
"authorship",
"software",
"patents"
] |
[
"What is the closest alternative journal to journal X?",
"Does anyone know of a website or resource that identifies the nearest journal neighbours to journal X (any specific journal) in terms of content (perhaps defined by some distance metric defined on article keywords?). In other words, if I am rejected by journal X, which journals might consider the same paper?"
] |
[
"journals",
"bibliometrics"
] |
[
"Guidelines for When to Acknowledge Research Assistants",
"I know that it is general practice to include a footnote on papers acknowledging research assistants who have contributed to the project. I am wondering, however, if any guidelines or accepted practices exist for how to determine which assistants should be acknowledged where. In general, since it is low cost to acknowledge assistants, it makes sense to be pretty generous in erring on the side of acknowledging. But, in the interests of acknowledgments being honest reflections of those who contributed to the project, what about some of these particular cases?\n\n\nResearch assistant (RA) is hired. Does a small amount of work, but not enough to be useful, and then quits.\nRA works hard on project, but is very poor at communicating. As a result, RA goes incommunicado for a while, comes back at the end of the period having put together a work product that is of zero use to the project.\nOpen-ended research project begins. At start of the project, it is not clear which avenues of research / aspects of the project will turn in to productive papers and which will not. RA does good work on an avenue of research that turns out to be a dead end. Another avenue of research is more successful and results in a paper. RA contributed nothing directly to the successful avenue, but did contribute to the larger open-ended project."
] |
[
"acknowledgement",
"research-assistantship"
] |
[
"Supervisor asking me to fabricate papers (and other problems)",
"I'm seeking guidance here for a situation which is becoming unsustainable. As you can get from the title, I don't get along with my PhD (STEM) supervisor. \n\nHe never cared of my thesis, he doesn't even read my papers at all. All he does is charging me with his ideas that every time turn out to be unsuccessful. Even worse, when an idea of his turns out to be unfeasible, he asks me to fabricate the results (and by fabrication I mean totally invented works). This has become systematic. \n\nFor a good part of my PhD I cut him of from my activity, I almost finished my thesis and I published 6 first-author papers, 5 non-first-author papers and about 10 conference papers (I'm not including bogus works in the count).\n\nThe problem is that I'm starting an abroad period at another university and I need his recommendation. It goes without saying that he started again with his unethical and time-wasting requests.\n\nAfter my abroad period, I'll come back some months (six) and finish my PhD. After that I'd like to apply for a postoc in that university. \n\nMy question is, if I prove myself during the abroad period, would I still need his recommendation for a postdoc application? Mind that I also have a second advisor for that, in case.\n\nIn the six months between my abroad period and the thesis defense I'll be again at his will, so this mean again losing times at crazy ideas and faking papers. I need to dump him as soon as I can. Will I need him for a postdoc, if they already know me at the place where I want to apply?"
] |
[
"phd"
] |
[
"Can I receive both an NSF international postdoctoral award and salary from a foreign university?",
"Recently I was offered a full salaried postdoctoral position (not a fellowship) in Australia (with a long lead time).\n\nI am a US citizen, so can also apply for the NSF international postdoctoral fellowships.\n\nSuppose, hypothetically, that I apply for and receive an NSF award.\n\nIs it acceptable to increase my postdoctoral salary with the fellowship, or would it not make a difference?\n\nGiven that I already have an offer in hand, if the NSF fellowship wouldn't increase my salary, then it isn't worth it to me to apply (I realize there are other benefits, prestige, that go along with receiving a fellowship, but I'm time-strapped at the moment)."
] |
[
"funding",
"postdocs",
"international"
] |
[
"What can a student do if a professor makes special allowances for one student in a course?",
"In one of my software engineering courses, the syllabus includes two exams (midterm + final), daily quizzes + participation mark, spot quizzes and a group project.\n\nA lot of us asked the professor to drop the midterm and add more weight to the project because we all wanted to build a beautiful project, so eventually we can also add it to our resume. The response was that it would not be possible to drop the midterm but the weight might be reduced, but would have to think about it. (Fair enough).\n\nHowever, a week later we found out that one of the students in class got exemption from writing midterms, daily quizzes and spot quizzes. That student only has to worry about the project. We asked how this is possible and we learned of a special deal with the professor. So basically when the group projects begin that student will in charge of holding group meetings with different groups and providing feedback to the professor on their progress. So since they have a lot of \"workload\" they won't be writing quizzes and exams. This option was never mentioned by the professor when the class as a whole asked her to drop the midterm.\n\nSo I am wondering, is this legal or even possible? There are a lot of international students in the class too that are simply scared to speak up. I feel it is not fair that one student is exempt from doing all the work. \n\nWhat should I do? Just keep quiet and mind my own business? \n\nThis is a Graduate Computer Science Program.\n\nAdditional Details\n\nIn the first two weeks the other student wrote quizzes like everyone else and the professor was not happy with the grades of quizzes of some people (everyone except this one person had good marks), so it will be worth a little less. Eventually a week later the student stopped writing quizzes after making this special deal. \n\nI have great relation with the Department Chair and I am also working on a project with them, I am not sure if I should bring this up in our conversation."
] |
[
"ethics",
"professors",
"coursework"
] |
[
"Applying to several faculty positions within the same institution",
"The following question is not a general question about applying to many academic positions at different institutions, but rather about applying to several positions within the same institution (regardless of applying to multiple other institutions as well).\n\nStarting questions are, as follows. What are the potential effects, following such strategy? Mostly negative, mostly positive, or neutral? A situation often occurs, such that an institution advertises several positions that I believe I would fit, however, among those, only one (usually) is the best fit (my preference), but others are also suitable (decent fit).\n\nTherefore, my main question is twofold: 1) is it a good strategy to apply to all suitable positions within an institution; 2) if Yes, should I mention my preference, for example, in an application letter (if No, I assume that the optimal choice is to apply to the position with the best fit)?"
] |
[
"application",
"job-search",
"faculty-application"
] |
[
"How to deal with ageism as a graduate student?",
"I have lurked on this site for some time and I have appreciated the intelligent, well-written answers to myriad questions.\n\nMy inquiry is the following: I have faced age discrimination in the program I am attending. This has ranged from consistent age-related comments to rejection of research grants and programs based on age (statement that I am \"over-qualified\" and \"too experienced\"). I am in my 30s. Most of the students are in their 20s.\n\nShould I quit the program? I am especially interested in the experiences and opinions of older students who have faced similar issues.\n\nPlease note that in order to improve the quality of my question I will update it with any and all needed points of clarification."
] |
[
"age"
] |
[
"Reasons for an academic to need administrator rights on work computer",
"Questions related to this in a not specifically academic setting have been asked elsewhere, notably Should developers have administrator permissions on their PC? and Should dev be admin on their computer? My question relates to my job as an academic at a (UK) university. \n\nI moved to using Linux at work so that I did not have to have my computer managed by my university's IT service. This is purely because they are poorly resourced/managed and so addressing small problems takes a very long time. I might, for example, have to wait several weeks for a piece of (free) software to be installed. This imposes unacceptable (to me) delays on my research. They are now changing University policy such that all PCs connected to the network are managed by IT (reasonable), backed-up (reasonable) and local admin privileges are restricted to those who can demonstrate a genuine need for them (reasonable, but I am unwilling to go back to not being able to make progress because of them).\n\nI am confident that one way and another in the end I can persuade them of my need -- but I would like to avoid the delays, meetings, and aggravation this will involve.\n\nWhat are good, unarguable reasons, that I might need local admin rights. I'm currently thinking 'compiling code written by my co-author' but I might need something more concrete. They will not know enough about my research to know what I might actually need or not."
] |
[
"university",
"united-kingdom",
"administration"
] |
[
"How common is it for journal to reject a solicited paper?",
"A guest editor at a peer-reviewed academic journal solicited me to write a paper. I initially hesitated for lack of time. But the editor's invitation was courteous. So I sent an abstract, which was accepted by the editor.\n\nI submitted the 6k-word paper a few weeks later, taking care to comply to the submission guidelines (I downloaded the journal's CSL file for bibliographic references, for example).\n\nI just received a rejection letter. I know an invitation is not a ticket to bypass the reviewers. Still, I am rather stunned. I'll get over it, but I was wondering how common it is for academic journals to reject solicited papers?"
] |
[
"peer-review",
"rejection",
"invited-paper"
] |
[
"In the US, if I cannot finish my PhD in 5 years, will I lose my stipend and have to pay for my own living costs?",
"The contract says financial support is for 5 years. I am not able to support my own living cost."
] |
[
"phd",
"funding",
"united-states"
] |
[
"Contact the editor on the acceptance chances of my article",
"I submitted a paper to a journal about two months ago and now the article has been under review for a month. It is my first article out for publication ever, so I am not the best at judging my chances of being accepted. However, I presented the paper on a conference and they offer the chance of entering it as a book chapter in a publication resulting from the conference. I now wonder if it would be ok to ask the editor of the journal if they can tell me some more on my chances of being accepted. Maybe they already got one review back and they can tell me what the verdict was there? Is this appropriate, and if so, should I explain truthfully why I ask this question to the editor?\n\nPS: I would prefer the publication in the journal rather than the book chapter, but if I go for that option and it's not accepted I also can't be in the book because they need an answer now."
] |
[
"publications",
"peer-review",
"editors"
] |
[
"Can grant money be spent on travel to program committee meetings?",
"Many research conferences hold an in-person program committee meeting for all of the members of the program committee, where the PC members make the final decisions about which papers to accept or reject. (At least, that's how it tends to work in computer science; I don't know about other fields.)\n\nCan program committee members use federal grants to pay for their travel costs to attend a program committee meeting, for conferences where they are on the program committee? Generally speaking, what funding sources do professors tend to use, to pay for travel to these meetings?"
] |
[
"peer-review",
"conference",
"funding",
"travel",
"program-committee"
] |
[
"Should I talk to my supervisor about including a new field in my PhD?",
"I am a part-time PhD student coming towards the end of my first year – I have another five years left. My PhD is in Music and I do like my topic a lot. However, in the last 18 months I have also become very interested in an area that is not that related to music – computing and open source. I started looking at it as something extra to learn before my PhD started and am now finding it difficult to put down. As well as this, I would like to integrate some aspects of what I have learned into my PhD. I just don't really know what and how. \n\nIs this something that I should bring up with my PhD supervisor or should I just \"put up or shut up\"? She may think it's a bit weird to mention it since she will probably feel that it doesn't really relate, however, computing (and its related ethics) are fundamental to the ways in which we undertake academic research these days. We've even had a few classes on software use. I feel that I could probably link the two in some way but little has come up yet which is obvious, though it may well present itself in the future. From past experience I tend to function at my academic best when integrating different challenging interests into my learning and I would love to integrate my learning of computing into my music PhD. I feel I have learned – and applied – a lot and I want to continue learning alongside my music learning and to combine the two in my topic. \n\nQuestion: should I raise this with my supervisor, float some ideas past her about this or should I just ignore it? If I do the latter the question may well come back to haunt me further down the line. I don't think I \"can\" (nor do I want to) give this up, well, not without forcing myself to since it fascinates me. Do others have experience of wanting to mix in new ideas/subjects into their PhDs and how did you go about it?\n\nFor clarification - the PhD in Music is ethnomusicological, i.e. the PhD is to do with the study of music in culture and as culture rather than composition or performance."
] |
[
"phd",
"computer-science",
"interdisciplinary"
] |
[
"What are we expected to do when citing literature?",
"Open any research article and it is littered with citations. I’ve recently been wondering what is expected of us when citing the literature:\n\n\nAre we expected to cite every reference relevant to our research article?\nAre we expected to cite only the “best” references relevant to our research article, where best can be defined as the papers which have appeared in the best journals or papers that are most cited?\nDo neither of the above apply? Are we simply expected to cite any paper relevant to our research article, just as long as we have cited something that supports/is related to our argument?"
] |
[
"publications",
"citations",
"writing",
"literature-review"
] |
[
"Is this plagiarism or something similar in a master's project?",
"I am a master's student in 3rd world Asian country. My master's thesis guide (who was from a different institute) abandoned me after giving a research paper to read. Now, with no guidance left as no-one in my institute works in analytic number theory, I began reading the papers related to the first paper. I read 5 papers in total and in my thesis I will write in detail about the details which were not covered in the papers (like detailed steps and proofs).\n\nBut, as I had no help I posted questions on mathstackexchange and some which were not answered on MSE were subsequently posted on Mathoverflow. I am really thankful to the community because without their help it wouldn't be possible to completely understand the papers. One professor in combinatorial number theory (who recommended me to another professor) agreed that I could write his name as a supervisor (my institute has rules that he had to be made a co-guide earlier even when I didn't know my guide will not work with me). \n\nI don't want to write in my master's thesis that I took help from Mathstackexchange and Mathoverflow because it could create an impression that I don't know enough mathematics. But if I don't acknowledge it, is this plagiarism? It doesn't seem right that I write the names of all the users as I have asked about 10-12 questions there. I think writing all those names will create a bad impression of me. The evaluators in my university may not understand the situation. I have worked really hard on thesis despite the trauma of my guide not replying to any of my email.\n\nCan anyone please tell me whether I am plagiarising?"
] |
[
"thesis",
"mathematics",
"masters",
"plagiarism"
] |
[
"What is a proper way to consider the supplementary materials as a reviewer?",
"I was chosen as a reviewer for a conference in the field of computer science in which the authors can also submit some extra materials like proofs and additional implementations separately (until a week after the deadline), but their papers should be understandable and self-contained without considering these additional materials.\n\nThe paper I’m reviewing has a good scientific contribution and I like the way they tried to solve the problem, but some parts are not so understandable unless you read the additional submitted PDF file. For example, their pseudo-code for their algorithm has some mistakes, but they provide the correct algorithm in the additional material. Also, they provided more implementation results in the extra PDF file, which I think are important to support their claim. The proof and in-detail explanation of their method is also provided there.\n\nThe organizers have emphasized that the authors shouldn’t use the additional documents as way to submit a more complete version of the original paper.\n\nSo to be fair, if they add some of the parts from their supplementary document to the main paper, then the resulting paper would be perfect and I’d definitely accept it. However, I’m not sure whether it is better to accept it with feedback on the lacking parts, telling them to move these parts from the additional PDF to the main one to make it complete, or to only consider the main paper to be self-explanatory, in that case I’d more likely reject it!"
] |
[
"publications",
"peer-review",
"conference",
"rejection"
] |
[
"Is it true that M.Eng. is considered an undergraduate degree in the UK? If so, why?",
"It is surprising to see from these sources (Wikipedia and University of Edinburgh) that the Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) degree is actually an undergraduate degree in the UK. It is recalled as an 'undergraduate masters degree'. While only PhD MSc and MPhil are considered to be postgraduate degrees. \n\nHow far is this true? Why is it so?"
] |
[
"masters",
"degree",
"united-kingdom"
] |
[
"Convention for excerpting from the middle of a paragraph in another work?",
"A project of mine involves meticulously tracing the source material for a work of literature constructed from an author's unpublished notes. I have established a system for referencing the notes themselves, but to precisely trace the material that constitutes the finished work, I'm following the format:\n\n[ Note # ] [ Page(s) ]\n[ Headwords of first paragraph ]\n\"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...\"\n[ Footwords of paragraph, either the same one or the end of the last if the passage spans multiple paragraphs ]\n\"...fermentum eu velit quis iaculis.\"\n\nHowever, there are some instances where the material was taken from the middle of a paragraph, continues unbroken through several subsequent paragraphs, and stops in the middle of another paragraph. In order to proceed with my work, I've been using this format:\n\nIf the source begins in the middle of a paragraph, include the headwords to that paragraph then include the beginning of the actual excerpt:\n\"Lorem ipsum dolor [...] Maecenas mattis erat in metus...\"\n\nIf the source ends in the middle, include headwords in addition to the conclusion of the excerpt itself:\n\"Lorem ipsum dolor [...] tincidunt dui urna nec diam.\"\n\nThis example supposes material is taken from a single paragraph, so another example spanning multiple paragraphs might look like:\n\"Lorem ipsum dolor [...] Maecenas mattis erat in metus...\"\n\"Vivamus nec sodales neque [...] quis lobortis nibh porttitor.\"\n\nEssentially I'm wondering if this system is too confusing, or if there is an existing standard already in use that I can adopt. Including the headwords serves as a way to navigate through the material using paragraphs as an easy visual reference. I've considered assigning each paragraph a section number and referencing them by section marks (§) which would serve as an alternative to including the headwords (\"§52 Lorem ipsum dolor...\" through \"§55 ...nunc sollicitudin lectus.\"), but I'd like to avoid that if possible.\n\nAny suggestions are appreciated!"
] |
[
"citations"
] |
[
"Does my Anthropology PhD topic have to be the same as my Masters topic?",
"I have a MSci in Social and Cultural Anthropology. While doing the masters, I chose a thesis topic that I ended up hating. I finished the thesis regardless and graduated with merit. \n\nI want to now apply for a PhD, but I don't want to continue down the path of the masters thesis topic, instead choosing something I studied in a course in the program, but didn't write a thesis for (I did write some related essays on it, and took a related course on it). \n\nAlso the two topics would be in latin america, dealing with women (just different groups of women, one was urban women in brazil, the PhD topic would involve indigenous women in Guyana). I can certainly find some overlaps, though it might be a stretch of the imagination. \n\nWhat do you think? How important is it that the masters topic overlap with the phd topic?"
] |
[
"phd",
"application",
"anthropology"
] |
[
"Can we add an acknowledgment to a paper after it has been published?",
"Like it has been mentioned, I wanted to know if it is possible to add an acknowledgment after the paper has been accepted\n\nWe even attended the conferences a few days back"
] |
[
"publications",
"paper-submission",
"acknowledgement"
] |
[
"contact of the editor",
"I sent an article it's been almost 4 months, but still my article is in the same status \"submissions being processed\", that I have to do is what I contact the editor or I wait for their response, since I have heard when we send an e-mail to the editor, he sends the refusal directly, I wait for your suggestions, thank you in advance"
] |
[
"phd",
"student-exchange"
] |
[
"Reviewing experiences effects on applying process",
"Can reviewing experiences for top notch journals in a specific field be considered as a distinguishing and effective factor for the applying process?\n\nI've read somewhere that having a fertile record in sites such as Publons can have a positive effect for applying for, e.g. a PhD position."
] |
[
"phd",
"journals",
"peer-review",
"application",
"cv"
] |
[
"Is there any standardization of figures for scientific publication in any field?",
"Short Version: Making the data behind the figures openly available is undeniably a massive help to the research community. What are some enabling systematic efforts (standard, file format requirement, tools to extract data from the figures) who are pushing for this openness available? This is not to ask for people to share their tabular data, but to use a figure file format that is easily extractable.\n\nImagine a day that we can do a meta-analysis on a large number of scientific papers to build a big AI. Or a software that can extract all the figures and build a massive database of data that can put the research into a quick use by engineers or others. Perhaps if there is a standard or framework for figures it would help this happen faster (the same goes with the objectives and hypothesis of papers).\n\n\nAre you aware of any effort in this direction?\nIs there any framework for figure structures, locations of content in the figure that is mandated/suggested by journals for better OCR in any field or certain experiments?\nFor example, the data in Matlab fig files (no matter how many curves or dimensions) can be accurately extracted. Is there any journal that asks for such file formats from which data can be easily extracted? \nLink here: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/100687-how-do-i-extract-data-from-matlab-figures\n\n\nAs an example of figures that work as a scientific report, but their data if extracted can help the bigger scientific developments, here are some examples. I doubt if an OCR-like algorithm can extract 100% all these data accurately."
] |
[
"graphics",
"data",
"databases",
"publications"
] |
[
"Should I ask to work on professor's project?",
"I have a professor that I've gotten to know pretty well. Currently we're going through and learning about a newer area of mathematics just for the fun of it. It was my idea to do it and now he's looking to do more with it. He wants to do research on an application of this area of math next summer through next fall. We plan to continue studying this area for this coming apring semester as well, but I would love to actually work on this project with him.\n\nBecause we know each other so well, I think he would enjoy me working with him on it overall. The problem is that he's going abroad to do the research. What I want to know is if there's any potential for me to work with him on this and on whether or not I should ask him for the opportunity? Or should I just wait and see if he approaches me on it?\n\nI should point out that I will have graduated by next summer."
] |
[
"research-process",
"research-undergraduate"
] |
[
"Choosing which project advisor to ask recommendations from",
"I did a research project, in which I was advised by two researchers. Most of the time, it was a PhD student who defended and transitioned to post-doc during the project. But my official advisor, with whom I talked less often, was this post-doc's own advisor, hence more established and with a "full researcher" position.\nI am not sure which researcher I should contact about letters of recommendation for PhD applications. They both gave me good feedback and advice. It was the senior advisor who graded me (close to a perfect grade), but as I said, the post-doc advised me more often.\nNote that I am not yet applying to anything, I just want to ask if they would be willing to write recommendations for me in the future.\nWould it be better to contact the post-doc, the full researcher, or both in a joint e-mail? Does the job title make a big difference, or is it more a matter of how closely they followed the project?"
] |
[
"phd",
"application",
"recommendation-letter"
] |
[
"How to professionally interact with a famous scholar (e.g. asking for a photo from a Nobel laureate)",
"My specific question is:\n\nIs it improper as a researcher to ask a (more famous) scientist to take a photograph together?\n\nLonger version of question\n\nI am currently a postdoctoral researcher and recently had the opportunity to have a private meeting with a famous scientist in my area of research (a Nobel laureate) to discuss my research. In this situation I acted like it was any other research meeting with a colleague/potential collaborator and just discussed science with the person. However, I would have liked to have asked to take a photograph with the person but was uncertain if this would have come off as unprofessional in any way.\n\nI had similar situations when I was still a student and felt that there was already such a clear demarcation between famous scientist and student that it was appropriate behavior to ask for a photo as a student, however is this appropriate for a professional (e.g. postdoc or young faculty etc)?"
] |
[
"etiquette"
] |
[
"Why do researchers sometimes use extremely complicated English sentences to convey their meaning?",
"I will begin with a disclaimer, I am not an English native speaker, but I can speak fluent English and understand English in almost all research papers I read. \n\nHowever, occasionally I come across some papers published in peer reviewed journals with ridiculously complicated sentence structure using relic non-technical vocabulary that no one in the past century has heard of! \n\nHere is one of my favorites:\n\n\n The algorithm fathoms in a synergetic manner globally, and an antagonistic depth quest locally.\n\n\nWhatever that means!\n\nDon't get me wrong, the content of such papers can sometimes be informative, but I can't help but get frustrated over such over complication in language! I can spend days trying to decipher what the author was trying to convey and I occasionally give up on the entire paper.\n\nSo my question is, why do authors feel the need to hide their amazing ideas/contributions behind such language barrier? Would it hurt to write the paper in a simple fashion such that any reader with the required technical background can understand it? \n\n\n auth'rs, wherefore thee doth this?"
] |
[
"writing-style"
] |
[
"Is it normal to have several one or two month extensions after a fixed term contract postdoc?",
"I'm frustrated by these short term contracts and would like some advice. I've been offered several one or two month extensions after my fixed term ended in May. My PI said he may have longer term funding next year but for now he wanted me to stay while waiting for grant results. I wondered if I should continue to live on these short term contracts and wait for the uncertain grant results or start looking for another job? I want to stay in academia."
] |
[
"postdocs",
"academic-life",
"contract"
] |
[
"Is it normal to have grad student instructors for upper division classes?",
"I'm almost done with my undergraduate degree (B.S. in a physical science) and, looking back, a good portion of my upper division major classes have been taught by grad students. Is this normal?\nI hope the grad students are getting some sort of additional stipend for full-on teaching these courses in addition to their research since the department seems to lack professors.\nPossibly pertinent info:\nThis is a public research university in the United States."
] |
[
"united-states",
"teaching",
"undergraduate",
"teaching-assistant"
] |
[
"Where do I find full citations for articles cited by author(s) and date/year only?",
"I am reading an advanced physics book which cites articles using only the name of author and the date of publication. Google scholar most often does not find such articles despite using Advanced Search. Where do I find the full citations in the book?"
] |
[
"citations",
"google-scholar"
] |
[
"If the purpose of a registered study changes, is it still a registered study?",
"A study was registered in 2004 at ClinicalTrials.gov with identifier NCT00080171. It defined its purpose as:\n\n\n Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common cause of disability in adults. The \"Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI): A Knee Health Study\" is a nationwide research study that will help researchers gather more information about the physical changes that occur prior to the onset of arthritis symptoms or before OA gets worse. The purpose of this study is to examine people who have knee OA or are at high risk for knee OA; information will be used to better understand how to prevent and treat knee OA.\n\n\nThe American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a paper, Fried potato consumption is associated with elevated mortality: an 8-y longitudinal cohort study, with the stated conclusions (emphasis mine):\n\n\n The frequent consumption of fried potatoes appears to be associated with an increased mortality risk. Additional studies in larger sample sizes should be performed to confirm if overall potato consumption is associated with higher mortality risk. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT00080171.\n\n\nOn closer inspection it appears that the fried-potato paper relied on data collected for the osteoarthritis study. But the study registration mentions neither fried potatoes nor mortality.\n\nGiven the divergence of purpose, should the paper make the claim that the trial was registered?"
] |
[
"publications",
"ethics",
"medicine"
] |
[
"How specialised should research prior to tenure be?",
"When establishing yourself as a researcher, the importance of independence from your PhD supervisor and focusing on a niche area (to establish popularity in a particular sub-field) are fairly well-established. For longevity of research career the polar opposite criteria of collaboration and breadth have been suggested.\n\nDefining the terms field and subfield etc. is important, so taking the following hypothetical example:\n\n\nSubfield - PhD research uses a common computational method applied to a number of closely related problems. \nRelated Subfield - Other PhD students in the group apply the same method to different problems.\nField - Computational methods related to PhD yet distinct applied to any problem in the super field\nSuperfield - Broad area of research encompassing theoretical, computational and experimental work, eg superconductors, photonics, etc.\n\n\nAfter PhD and prior to tenure, how specialised should one aim to be and how closely related to the PhD should the specialty be?\n\nIf given the choice, is it best to focus exclusively on a related subfield topic (generally project based research typical of most post doc positions), or take on another topic in the field, or to develop breadth by researching multiple related sub field topics in collaboration with other groups?"
] |
[
"research-process",
"career-path",
"tenure-track"
] |
[
"Should I send a research recommendation letter to teaching postdoc position?",
"I am a math PhD student, graduating this semester. I found a teaching postdoc that I would really like to apply for but I am confused by the ad. \nThey ask for a teaching statement but no research statement. The duties include teaching two to three classes per semester and some course development/improvement. \n\nThey ask for two recommendation letters, \"at least one of which addresses your teaching.\" \nI have two teaching recommendation letters that I am pretty confident in.\nBut would it be concerning if I don't have a recommendation letter from my advisor? I just don't see the benefit in sending a research letter for a position that doesn't involve research, but I don't know how these things are judged. \n\nAny advice is appreciated!"
] |
[
"application",
"postdocs",
"recommendation-letter"
] |
[
"Do you need a certificate to validate your publication?",
"Background:\nI got an acceptance at a conference and now need to register for it. They said that only the person who registers, gets the certificate and not all authors (we have 5 but only 2 primary authors).\n\nQuestion: Is the publication in the proceedings (LNCS) alone sufficient to prove that you published the paper? Or does one need the certificate as well?\nIf required as to whom I am asking for, you can assume it to be a PhD (CS) admit panel in the US.\nI am aware of this question: How to show proof of publication?. But my conference has no admit card associated with it."
] |
[
"publications",
"graduate-admissions",
"conference",
"computer-science"
] |
[
"University learning over online learning",
"What are some advantages of learning on-campus that one does not get from learning online?"
] |
[
"university",
"online-learning",
"online-degree"
] |
[
"How to prepare for a graduate school fair?",
"My school is offering a graduate school fair in one week, and I am interested in graduate school. I am already planning to take my Biology GRE as soon as possible, but not soon enough to bring the results to the fair. So, how should I prepare myself for this event, this being my first time at one? \n\nBackground info:\n\nThey state that there will be recruiters there, so I assume formal/semi-formal attire. But do schools really even bother recruiting for graduate programs at these events or is it more of a general advertisement/ tour? I also assume bringing my CV would be smart, but my GPA is not stellar ( 3.0ish at lower-end school), so would that leave a bad impression or no? \n\nThe \"nail in the coffin\" for me is my indecisiveness in what to actually study in biology. My advisors often tell me to only consider graduate school if you have something you are really \"passionate\" about. I never really felt \"passionate\" about biology or any subject though, I simply liked it better than others and found it cool. I have done so much in my undergraduate studies that I have liked, such as working in a greenhouse, to doing undergrad reserch in genetics, it is hard for me to set my heart to something. \n\nThis is all assuming I could afford to attend grad school without sinking myself further into debt, given I have no more financial aid or federal loans left to my disposal. I have read that some people get \"free rides\", but those are few, far between, and for the very gifted/focused students I assume. Thanks for your time."
] |
[
"graduate-school",
"recruiting"
] |
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