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13,327 | <p>I'm a master student, my master's background is about IT, signal processing, and Telecommunications. It's a "research master", which means that we're trained more to do research than be an IT engineers/specialists.</p>
<p>I've made my choice because I want to do research, but It is also important for me to work after my masters graduation, some of my professors always say that it's very difficult, even impossible to do those two things together. So I'd like some more advice. Here are my questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>Is it practically possible to do research and work?</li>
<li>Is it a good idea to work for a year or two after my masters, and start a PhD after that?</li>
<li>What kind of internships can I do, and how long should they be, so I can apply to IT companies?</li>
</ul>
<p>PS: I've some background ans skills in Java technologies, software design, web development, and basic knowledge in networks.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13986,
"author": "Olley",
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"text": "<p>I did combine PhD and work for 4 years, so, theoretically - yes, it's possible. But I didn't like the process because I wasn't fully invested in either activity. It also significantly delayed my defense. It depends on how productive you are. At times you will be facing certain deadlines and will be feeling torn between two major activities. </p>\n\n<p>I think you should go ahead with PhD if you are serious about it. It will take some 3-6 years of your time, so why to postpone it? I think it's totally possible to get internships at summer time and you may have to develop software as a part of your research, so you'll be practicing your skills. </p>\n\n<p>You can also consider free-lance work so that you have more control over your time.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13987,
"author": "avi",
"author_id": 6240,
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"text": "<p>Yes, its completely possible, at least in Indian universities. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is it practically possible to do research and work?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>yes, but it will be difficult. see the related <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8747/is-it-possible-to-work-full-time-and-complete-a-phd\">link</a> by Charles</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is it a good idea to work for a year or two after my masters, and\n start a PhD after that?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Depends on you. If you need money, pay loan etc, job may help you.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What kind of internships can I do, and how long should they be, so I\n can apply to IT companies?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>not sure how do I answer this.</p>\n\n<p>If you really interested in PhD, then join after masters. All the best :)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13992,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>No, being a graduate student in a PhD program is a full-time job.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34357,
"author": "angarg12",
"author_id": 27993,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27993",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Is it practically possible to do research and work?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes it is. In fact, once I met one amazing girl that was working as a software engineer, getting a Master Degree in AI and getting a bachelor degree in Fine Arts at the same time. However, as the proverb says, the more you hold, the less you squeeze (does that even make sense in english?). She had to do all of these things half time, and of course that means less money from the job, and more time to finish the degrees. Also it requires an incredible amount of willpower and basically all your free time, so is up to you.</p>\n\n<p>However, there are two more reasonable alternatives here. </p>\n\n<p>The first one, less likely, is to actually get your Ph.D. in a private company. It is rare, but not impossible. I met one guy that was getting is Ph.D. in computer science in a private company. If you are that lucky, you can work and get a Ph.D. at the same time.</p>\n\n<p>The second one is to get your Ph.D. in a university, but getting involved in a research project. Some so called \"researchers\" in university actually do as much development work as any folk in a private company. That was actually my case. My Ph.D. involved some research, but also a good deal of development. I had to create this application from scratch and deal with the whole development cycle by myself. After I was done with that, they assigned me as a developer in a different project.</p>\n\n<p>The bad thing on this case is that, although you are actually doing development work, most companies don't count your time in university as \"working experience\". But you will get the experience nevertheless.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is it a good idea to work for a year or two after my masters, and\n start a PhD after that?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It is possible? Definitely. Advisable? not so sure.</p>\n\n<p>One of my friends was exactly in that situation. She worked for several years after her master, and then started a Ph.D. pretty late (on her late 20s). </p>\n\n<p>Her experience was fine because she managed to get her Ph.D. But it didn't came without obstacles.</p>\n\n<p>To begin with, it is rare to find older people doing a Ph.D. Depending on who works with you, they may ask questions, and sometimes it can be unpleasant. But I wouldn't say this is a big issue.</p>\n\n<p>More important is \"getting out of touch\" with research. Academia is like a bubble of its own outside the \"real world\" of companies. When you finish you Master degree you are \"on fire\" and on your prime to tackle a Ph.D. If you go to work for a few years, you may \"cool off\" and it can be harder to pick up.</p>\n\n<p>On the flip side, working in a company may give you very valuable skills to deal with the Ph.D. And I'm not talking about technical skills, but about soft skills such as time management or dealing with people.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What kind of internships can I do, and how long should they be, so I\n can apply to IT companies?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Sorry but I have no idea and I can't help you here. You should ask your university as they will be able to fill you in with all your available options.</p>\n\n<p>My only advice from personal experience is that having a Ph.D. can be a big plus when looking for a job, even with no previous experience.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 49063,
"author": "Phil",
"author_id": 21815,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21815",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You can combine Ph.D. and a full time job. However, from what I have seen people who do that generally take a few more years to complete their Ph.D. In some cases, I have seen some people completete their Ph.D. in 6 years instead of 3. </p>\n\n<p>It is a good idea to work for a few years if you need money or some time off. However, personnally, I would advise to directly go to the Ph.D. because the more time off you take, the less likely that you will want to go back studying after that. Besides, if you go back to do a Ph.D. after working a few years, it can be difficult for you to live again with a lower income, as a student. Or perhaps, that you would even have children in the meantime and that would also make it more difficult to get back to study. Also, if you stop for a few years, you may lose some momentum in your research field.</p>\n\n<p>For the question about internship, I don't know. But you can always try to do applied research with a company during your Ph.D. or to do some internships during the summer.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 49078,
"author": "Joe",
"author_id": 37443,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/37443",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In short, yes it is most certainly possible to work and complete your PhD at the same time. I am a permanently employed senior software developer and I have just finished my PhD in April 2015.</p>\n\n<p>The key to finishing is as simple as with any task in life. Planning and sticking to a routine until it is completed. Even full time students drop out due to a lack of routine and I found that work actually helped ensure that I stick to a rigorous routine. Up early, to bed late. :) Best of all, now that I am done, I already have three years experience and can apply to a number of more senior positions. It's hard cracking the job market, and in my opinion experience counts way more than a PhD presently.</p>\n\n<p>I can honestly say that it was a pretty rough three years, but I actually enjoyed both work and study. Might be a good idea to find a job that at least partially aligns with the research that you want to undertake and then start from there.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck, wish you all the best!</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/10 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13327",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8813/"
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|
13,329 | <p>I was wondering if there already exists a software/service that allows to build a tree of references/citing articles starting from a selected paper <code>X</code>. For example paper <code>X</code> has a list of references, call it <code>bibliography[X]</code>. This list of references is usually presented in the journal's webpage and, in fortunate cases, the list is also accessible by cross-reference. The idea is then to go to all the papers <code>Y</code> in <code>bibliography[X]</code> and repeat the process for the papers in each <code>bibliography[Y]</code> up to some depth. </p>
<p>On the other hand, we could also look at the citing articles of <code>X</code>, which is also displayed in the journal's webpage as well as in other resources, e.g. Google Scholar.</p>
<p>In this way the tree of references/citing articles of <code>X</code> up to some depth can be obtained and plotted in a nice graphical framework and perhaps display relevant information of the vertices of the tree like title, doi, etc. In my opinion this would be a very nice and efficient way of discovering new papers related to some paper, e.g. a seminal paper (citing articles tree) or to look into the history of a subject (references tree).</p>
<p>I have been looking for something like that for some time but so far nothing. I think Microsoft Academic Search would have the potential to do this by using the same framework they use for the Co-author path. Also there is this <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/jabrefprrvp/">project</a> for JabRef but it is not what I'm looking for.</p>
<p>Edit:
Something like <a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/ase/#video">this</a> would be perfect but unfortunately it is not available to the public.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13537,
"author": "Karol",
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"text": "<p>If you're serious about such a project, I think what you need to do is recognize that this task naturally separates into two parts. It will be <strong>very</strong> easy to find a good, general purpose and freely available program that suits your taste for visualizing/analyzing/discovering networks in general. I think <a href=\"http://www.cytoscape.org/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">cytoscape</a> is pretty good, although I've only played around with it a little and many others exist.</p>\n\n<p>Now, the second (well, first) part is to fetch and prepare the input data for the citation relationships of interest to you. You need to be very specific about exactly where you want to get this from and for what subset of articles, since it may not be possible (due to license restrictions) or technically feasible (as noted, the size of the network grows exponentially).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 44439,
"author": "Christy",
"author_id": 33792,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/33792",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is a tool if you use Zotero to manage your references and use the Related feature to link references together: <a href=\"https://www.conundrumescapes.com/zotnet/zotnet.php\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.conundrumescapes.com/zotnet/zotnet.php</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 49536,
"author": "Amir",
"author_id": 23641,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23641",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Web of Science has a similar tool called Citation Map. but it is not free even on many public university campuses. I wonder if there are free tools/scripts who do <a href=\"https://youtu.be/Qr8wQnTHMMg\" rel=\"nofollow\">https://youtu.be/Qr8wQnTHMMg</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 122838,
"author": "Alexis",
"author_id": 100339,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/100339",
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"text": "<p>One way to do this is to use <a href=\"http://www.vosviewer.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">VOSviewer</a>. It will not fetch the citation information for you, but you can download the results of a Web of Science search into a (series of) file that contain so called <em>records</em> with the cited references of each article in the search.</p>\n\n<p>VOSviewer can build a citation graph from such files, and has a bunch of features to color the graph based on other publication info (publication date, number of citations, ...). The graph nodes may either represent publication, authors or keywords, and the vertices may represent citation, keyword co-occurrence, co-authorship, ...</p>\n\n<p>Still, I wish there would be a better option, for the features of VOSviewer remain limited and the graph layout is not so easy to control.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 170147,
"author": "Nichola",
"author_id": 141972,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/141972",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is probably the online tool that is the closest to what is described in the question here:</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.citationtree.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.citationtree.org/</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 180978,
"author": "Liz Livingston",
"author_id": 152072,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/152072",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I was looking for a similar tool! I found four resources with varying implementations/usefulness but they are all <strong>online</strong> and based on doi/paper title search:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.citationtree.org/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Citation Tree</a> (mentioned in another answer, not a lot of information/interactive elements)</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://inciteful.xyz/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Inciteful.xyz</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.litmaps.co/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Litmaps</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.connectedpapers.com/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Connected Papers</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p>The Web of Science based applications like <a href=\"https://www.citnetexplorer.nl/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">CitNetExplorer</a> (from the same developers as the recommended <a href=\"https://www.vosviewer.com/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">VOSviewer</a> above) might be more exhaustive or have more customization tools, but I found them difficult to get working and they required downloading an application.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/10 | [
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"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
13,330 | <p>I would like to ask about the possibility of getting a paid PhD position in Germany.
I am going to defend my thesis in Physics after a few days and I am thinking of applying for a PhD.
My specialization is in nano-science and surface physics.
The average of my Master's degree will be at most 2.7, which is between good and satisfactory.
Does the average play a pivotal rule ? Is it difficult to get a paid PhD position?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13335,
"author": "silvado",
"author_id": 3890,
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"pm_score": 3,
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"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Is it difficult to get a paid PhD position?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In Germany, most PhD positions are paid. In physics, you would typically get a half to three quarters full-time equivalent position as a university employee. I don't think it's particularly difficult to get such a position, if you have the right qualification for it. This will also depend on the place where you got your Master's degree.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Does the average play a pivotal rule?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>A lot of professors that I know do care for good grades. And many university regulations ask for at least a good degree for admission as a PhD student (in my place, that translates to 2.5 or better, though there's a tolerance for students from abroad to take care of differences in the grading systems). </p>\n\n<p>My suggestion would be to look for position being announced through for example in:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.academics.de\">http://www.academics.de</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/\">http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.drarbeit.de\">http://www.drarbeit.de</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>and apply or get in contact with the person there to see how far you can get.</p>\n\n<p>Also try to use your personal network: Ask your supervisors whether they know good labs to apply to, or whether they could even throw in a word for you.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13339,
"author": "Ondřej Černotík",
"author_id": 8164,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8164",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>From my personal experience (just started a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in Hannover), it is not difficult. As <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/13335/8164\">@silvado</a> mentions, most Ph.D. positions are paid with about 75 % equivalent of a university employee (corresponding to about 1500-1600 EUR after tax per month). You can look at the Internet for open positions or try and contact group leaders that you would like to work with (possibly after a consultation with your current supervisor). The latter, however, might require some time as the professor will need to find funding.</p>\n\n<p>Regarding grades, some professors might care. In my case, that was not the case and only my research results (i.e., my master thesis) were important. Nevertheless, that is just a single experience and it might be different elsewhere. Anyway, I guess you can always ask about this and, if you can reasonably explain why your grades are not better, this might not be a serious issue.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13347,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Good grades can help, but they aren't the be all and end all. If you put together a great CV and have positive references then you've got a good chance of gaining an interview.</p>\n\n<p>More important than grades I think is simply showing that you are, and will be, a good researcher. Not every great academic was a hotshot from Harvard in their undergrad years. And not everyone with a perfect GPA from Harvard would make a good academic.</p>\n\n<p>I can tell you from personal experience that you don't <em>need</em> amazing grades to get a PhD scholarship. Just put your best foot forward in proving that you're an excellent researcher and go for gold.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/10 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13330",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
13,342 | <p>(This question is one of three correlated questions: How should I do it? <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13367/is-it-a-good-practice-to-choose-my-undergraduate-research-topic-on-my-own-and-h">(second part)</a>, What are the downsides? <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13368/is-it-a-good-practice-to-choose-my-undergraduate-research-topic-on-my-own-what">(third part)</a>.This is the <strong>first</strong> part)</p>
<p>I am an undergraduate student (in Computer Engineering) and I will be starting undergraduate research for my thesis. I have talked with many professors about possible projects and all the projects they proposed to me seemed <strong>interesting enough</strong>. </p>
<p>During summer, though, I read a paper and I was very interested and excited about it, but this paper was <strong>not for the projects</strong> that were proposed to me, but in a <strong>different area</strong>. I would like to do research in <em>this area</em> but I have some questions, because none of my professor is doing research in this particular field. </p>
<p>So, my questions are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Should I try to do a project in that area, even though my professors
aren’t doing research in that particular topic (some do research in a close field) or choose one of the projects that were proposed to me?</p></li>
<li><p>Will any professor be able to help/guide me through the project,
even if he is not doing research in this topic exactly? (I will ask
them if they are capable of helping me, but I want to know, how much
can someone help me if he is in the same field but I am doing
something different than his projects)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>P.S. I want to understand whether it will be beneficial to do a project that I want to do because of some paper(s) that I read or it will be better to do a project that was proposed to me. Also, <em>I would like to go for a Ph.D. after I graduate</em>.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13384,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
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"text": "<p>So somewhere I've made a moderators life harder, because I thought your three correlated questions were just one question. I think they probably could be, just incidentally. I'm going to answer accordingly, because when it comes down to it, How To Do It, Will I Have Help and What Are the Downsides aren't just correlated - they're interwoven.</p>\n\n<p>My bias: I did my own projects. As both an undergraduate and a graduate student. This worked out quite well for me, but is not without it's pitfalls.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>First, yes, your professor should be able to support you in your research interests - the odds of what your interested in being so far afield from their expertise, when you're an undergrad, is fairly unlikely.</li>\n<li>That being said, there are two elements of support they won't have: infrastructure and funding. It's helpful, if you're working on a project, for there to be grad students and postdocs working on similar things. Code you can use. Helpful little suggestions like \"Have you read Smith's most recent paper in Journal of Important Things?\" That kind of ambient helpfulness isn't going to be there. Similarly, even if you're working for free, its way easier to justify conference travel, a piece of software, or an open access publishing fee if it helps an existing research project.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>As I said, this worked out quite well for me - I got good publications out of it, and I got to work on my own stuff. But its a harder road, for graduate school may take longer, and you lack the security of working on an established project. Beyond that, if it <em>doesn't</em> work out well, you don't have an entire lab's worth of effort, papers that might be salvagable, etc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 73671,
"author": "Henry Brice",
"author_id": 58941,
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"text": "<p>I answer from my own experience, I wrote my own MA thesis (and published it) on a subject which interested me but which was outside the scope of my supervisor's research, and which my supervisor thought was a dead end.</p>\n\n<p>Depending on your institution, you usually need to have some form of a supervisor. If this is the case for you (it was for me) then you will need to find a researcher who is doing something close enough that they are prepared to take you under their wing. In my case, I was already working as an RA in a lab that was close enough, and my professor agreed to supervise me even though he though I would not get the results I expected. He gave me as much support as he could (including essential financial support!), and a lot of psychological support, but he gave me less <em>academic</em> support than he would have had I been researching something fully within his field.\nDoing it without a supervisor at all is tough - a supervisor can mentor you, help you keep deadlines, and usually give you some methodological and theoretical support even if it is not exactly within his field. In my case my research was empirical, and so I needed the facilities that my professor could provide in order to run my experiment. However, I designed, built, ran and analysed my own thesis, because it was my idea, and I understood it better than my supervisor did. If I had questions I could turn to my professor or other researchers, but the work was fully my own. I am proud of that, even though it was tough.\nIt was a similar story when i tried to publish - much of my paper was based on a field with which my professor was not acquainted, and so he was less able to help me with preparing the manuscript. It took a long time and two rounds of revisions, but finally I got my manuscript accepted for publication in a major journal. It feels good, even very good. I am proud of myself, and my supervisor is proud of me, and I don't regret it for a second.</p>\n\n<p>That being said, my PhD is being done on a question that is much closer to my supervisor's heart. I'm not sure if I'd want that level of independence for my PhD!</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13342",
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|
13,345 | <p>I have developed an Internet application that I need people to run across the Internet to collect statistics to see how well the program works. So far, I have used LinkedIn to reach out to my friends from my university and I started an open group. I also have a Git page where the program can be downloaded.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Andrew-Stantons-WSU-Masters-Thesis-6518497?home=&gid=6518497&trk=groups_guest_most_popular-h-logo" rel="nofollow">http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Andrew-Stantons-WSU-Masters-Thesis-6518497?home=&gid=6518497&trk=groups_guest_most_popular-h-logo</a></p>
<p><a href="https://github.com/acstanton515/ThesisLiveExperiment" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/acstanton515/ThesisLiveExperiment</a></p>
<p>I don't think the participation is going to be what I would like, so I need a way to find more users willing to run the program.</p>
<p>Any ideas on how to reach others in academia or elsewhere on a broader level?</p>
| [
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"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First: If you intend to do research, you have to pay attention to how you pick the participants. If you just take everyone willing to participate, there could be age/gender/etc bias in your results.</p>\n\n<p>Answer to actual question: Standard way to do this is to pay your participants (though not necessarily in cash). Try movie tickets etc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13390,
"author": "Zenon",
"author_id": 257,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/257",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If you are ready to invest a small sum, Amazon Mechanical Turk <a href=\"https://www.mturk.com/mturk/\" rel=\"nofollow\">https://www.mturk.com/mturk/</a> might be a good place to look.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13345",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8960/"
]
|
13,349 | <p>I have had two PhD interviews. One of the position (position A) I like more than the other (position B).</p>
<p>Now, I have gotton a reply from position B saying that they will offer me the PhD. However, before replying yes/no, I would like to know what the response is from position A.</p>
<p>Will it be good practice to let position B know that I will answer them once I know what the status is of my other application? Or is this sharing too much information?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13350,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>The usual thing to do in this situation is to ask B when they need your response. If that isn't enough time to hear back from A, then it's fine to ask B if you can have more time to decide (you don't need to say why). Of course, they might say that they cannot give you more time, in which case you'll have to make a decision on B without knowing about A.</p>\n\n<p>There's nothing wrong with wanting to consider all your options, and the people from B will undoubtedly read between the lines and understand that this is the situation, but you don't need to rub their nose in the fact that you'd rather be somewhere else.</p>\n\n<p>To echo Pavel's answer, whatever decision you do give to B, you should stick with. If B gives you a short deadline, and you decide to accept their offer before hearing from A, you're committed, and you need to immediately contact A and withdraw your application. It's not appropriate to accept B while planning to back out if A later says yes. Doing that would burn your bridges with people at B (and anyone who they talk to), and it could even be cause for A to rescind your acceptance, leaving you with nothing.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13351,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1429",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have been in a similar situation in the past. I told the people concerned very honestly about my choices and that I was waiting to hear back from other programs. They were, in general, very understanding about them.</p>\n\n<p>I did make sure to note down the formal dates by which I would have to notify each such department and stuck to them.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13352,
"author": "Pavel Zaichenkov",
"author_id": 8964,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8964",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Our research group has an experience of dealing with students who accepted the offer and then declined it because of the better offer received. This is often considered as an impolite behaviour and I will explain why.</p>\n\n<p>Supervisors and heads of a research group usually have ideas of projects to propose to new students before they arrive. When you accept the offer, supervisors are making plans already how to integrate you in the work of the group. When it suddenly appears that you are not coming to the group, because you received another offer or whatever reason, this requires substantial resources for a group to recover and to change their plans accordingly.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The group needs to start recruiting process again, what is time-consuming.</li>\n<li>If too much time passes, it often happens that the position can be lost, what literally means that the group wastes money and reputation.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>To sum up, don't underestimate people. Everyone understands that you can look for positions in many places simultaneously. Be honest, and accept the offer conditionally. If possible, provide the final decision date when you should know application results from all other places. The research group will plan their projects accordingly. Also this will help you to save the reputation. </p>\n\n<p>P.S. Industry is more tolerant to people who change their mind. Usually they have a team of recruiters and their daily business is to solve this kind of problems. Research groups usually don't have so much resources.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13349",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6049/"
]
|
13,353 | <p>I got my PhD in quantum gravity 2 years ago, not from a top university, publishing only 1 paper, no conferences. Couldn't get a post doc, and it has been 2 years struggling in the job market, teaching part time here and there.</p>
<p>I am thinking seriously about getting an MS degree in something that can open job chances for me because all jobs outside academia I looked at required certain skills I do not have, or knowledge never needed during my PhD, all my work was very formal. </p>
<p>My questions are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Would graduate schools/ master committees accept me being with a PhD? (I expect to pay my own tuition for that MS of course.) Do I have any chance? </p></li>
<li><p>Of course I am not planning to do MS in physics. How about geophysics MS programs? engineering MS programs? Scientific writing MS programs? MBA programs?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I am still evaluating my options for what career path I should pursue, but I just want to know if it is acceptable to do an MS after PhD or I will be rejected right away. (I would hate and regret my PhD if I will be rejected because of it.) </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13362,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes, you can.</p>\n\n<p>I have personally seen people start and complete an MBA after receiving a PhD in astrophysics. It is certainly possible to study a master degree after a PhD. </p>\n\n<p>If you want to be more rounded, for example, relating physics to the business world, this could certainly help your job prospects, especially in industry.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16709,
"author": "WetlabStudent",
"author_id": 8101,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8101",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'd recommend looking at the job market and seeing what jobs sound appealing to you. Next go to Coursera, Youtube, etc. and see if you like the subject by watching a few online classes. If you think you can adequately self learn the subject then that is the best option. Employers might look at the PhD -> MS like you are a professional student that lacks direction (plus it's a boatload of money). You want your resume to say, I have a PhD in physics which means I'm smart and I self taught myself all this stuff you require for this job because I am self motivated. It shows independence; if you need to learn something new on the job, they know you can do it, because you have done it before. Don't waste time getting an MS.</p>\n\n<p>There are two exceptions to this, and it may apply here. (1) If in your new field of study you can't adequately learn the vast majority of the material without the infrastructure provided by University lab facilities containing tons of expensive equipment, then it would be reasonable to pursue the masters. (2) An MBA program that is all about networking, pretty much requires face to face interactions, although an MBA is usually thought to be best pursued after having some industry work experience. </p>\n\n<p>The answer to your question, however, is yes, you can definitely get into the Masters programs. For most private schools masters programs are cash cows that fund the university. They let in all students they think are good enough to succeed in their program. The bigger question is whether it's a good idea for you to make this career move.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 24290,
"author": "Tom Au",
"author_id": 755,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/755",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In general, it's easier to get into a Master's program from a PhD than into a PhD program from a Master's.</p>\n\n<p>Most admissions committees are looking at how your highest level of achievement compares with the level of their program. Unless you are applying to MIT or someplace like that, your PhD \"trumps\" most Master's programs.</p>\n\n<p>The minimum GPA for most PhD programs is 3.3. For Master's, usually 3.0 (or lower). You're strongly \"qualified.\"</p>\n\n<p>Certainly, you should be very competitive with someone coming into a Master's program from a Bachelor's degree, again, with the possible exception of someone with a 3.8-4.0 from Harvard, Yale, or MIT.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13353",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8965/"
]
|
13,354 | <p>As a potential future researcher I would like to know how much I could focus on my research and how much distraction grants cause. My research interest lie in theoretical cs and logic, however the answers should include other areas so that they may be useful to other readers too.</p>
<p>Specifically, how many hours of your working day on average is dedicated to grant related issues - searching a grant, writing a grant proposal, writing the final report for the funded projects, etc.</p>
<p>I heard in an informal talk that this can be as much as half of the time of the researcher, say 5 hours, Monday to Friday. In such circumstance, I do not think I would be able to focus on the research.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13356,
"author": "fedja",
"author_id": 6118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6118",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>In my case (pure mathematics) it is about two or three weeks of hectic activity before the October 1 NSF deadline once every 2-3 years. I cannot say that I do nothing else during that time but it definitely distracts me quite a bit. What helps is that we (I and a few my colleagues and friends) often apply for collaborative research grants (so we have well-established separation of labor when writing, which increases the speed noticeably).</p>\n\n<p>The reports are easy if you have something real to show. I would say it takes me at most a couple of hours to write mine. Recommendation letters and reviews usually take much more time.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13382,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It very much depends on the field, the researcher, and the grants. To give you a picture of someone who works in public health - in a soft money position - here's some things that occupy my time. I am however not faculty (I'm a postdoc) so if anything this is an underestimate.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Several weeks a year, almost everything else comes to a halt. Even when I'm not the PI on a grant, if I'm in charge of a section theres reading to do, figures to make, etc. Also often rigging up preliminary data etc., because working on mathematical models of infectious diseases means that for grant applications you have to outline the model itself - a substantial amount of work is already done.</li>\n<li>I've spent probably a good month of productive working time managing a particular grant I have. This grant has been a problem child from day one - issues with the contract, issues paying things, issues, issues...it's depressingly not even for all that much money.</li>\n<li>Usually then per-paper I spend about an hour making sure my acknowledgments point to the right grants, make sure things that should be in PubMed Central end up their, etc.</li>\n</ul>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13354",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8784/"
]
|
13,355 | <p>There are a number of lessons I learnt as an undergraduate which I wish somebody had told me much earlier.</p>
<p>Although each of you learnt different lessons with different notions of which way is the right, please share your findings and wisdom so that an eager reader would contemplate over your advice and would not regret avoiding later in life.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13358,
"author": "Blaisorblade",
"author_id": 8966,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8966",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Research can be great, but I learned it can be so hard.</p>\n\n<p>First, Google \"should I do a phd\" and then \"should I do a PhD in \". There are tons of people who succeeded and failed in academia and writing about it, about what's it going to be in Academia, and so on. Two examples:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.nature.com/news/specials/phdfuture/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Nature's special on the point of a PhD</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">You and your research</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Beyond that, here's a few things I've learned:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Being a researcher is a career job, not so unlike being a lawyer, a manager.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>After all, a paper has to change the scientific knowledge on the\ntopic. You're going to teach respected scientists something they\ndidn't know and something they thought was wrong.</li>\n<li>I hear that in life sciences, the career aspect can extend to <a href=\"http://blog.devicerandom.org/2011/02/18/getting-a-life/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">people sabotaging\nfellow researchers</a> (that is, competitors).</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>Being more intelligent does not (necessarily) mean being a better researcher. If you're admitted to a decent program, you're more than smart enough for research. Managing your work (in all senses) can be more important, even though supervisors can help you with (part of) this in the beginning. But it's also about discipline and character:\n\n<ul>\n<li>Choosing a good question to work on (supervisors can help) - the question should matter (or you should make it matter, if you can).</li>\n<li>Keeping an overview of what you're doing is important: otherwise, you might find an excellent solution to a problem which in the end is the wrong one.</li>\n<li>Working enough on it (keeping focus among distractions of grad school can be hard).</li>\n<li>How do you choose which way to approach a problem? Some approaches might not ever work, but others will only work if you keep at them long enough. So you need to be tenacious, and be able to change mind, depending on the moment. You need to delude yourself that you'll succeed until you do.</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>A good supervisor is extremely important. Nowadays it's extremely hard to start doing research \"by yourself\". On the one hand, there's too much written knowledge to navigate (literature). On the other hand, there are often unspoken assumptions which you won't learn from reviewers. It helps if he's available enough for you.</li>\n<li>A supervisor must also fit you, character-wise. You mustn't be friends, but you need to function together, and neither you nor your supervisor study how to occupy your position.</li>\n<li>Communication is extremely important. You're supposed to learn something and then tell your peers (and the world). And nowadays, if your peers don't get it, it's your problem (because your paper gets rejected). Hence, learning technical writing was very important for me.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Of course this is what <em>I</em> learned, which is influenced by my weak points, my experience and my field — I'm saying this because I'm sure somebody will disagree.\nI'm a programming language researcher, so I invent and design stuff (programming language). And evaluating design is hard. So much that many ideas are not right or wrong per se - you can make it right or wrong by determined work (see also <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13357/8966\">this</a>). But other disciplines probably experience similar phenomena in different form.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13383,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<ol>\n<li>Don't fly solo. Having initiative, coming up with your own ideas and avenues of research is great, but find someone to take responsibility for you and your success - especially when it concerns funding and advocating for you in the department. Being a ronin grad student involves semi-recurring desperate searches for funding.</li>\n<li>Don't get too distracted by side projects - they're sometimes quite useful, but it's easy to get bogged down in new shiny things, and a collection of unrelated musings does not a dissertation make. Similarly, don't be afraid of presenting the same thing twice - continually submitting unrelated, novel projects just leaves a bunch of half-done things gathering dust.</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13394,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Two key pieces of advice:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>Learn to discern.</strong> You will encounter a lot of new information as a graduate student. Some of it will be absolutely illuminating; much of it will be of at most tangential benefit. Other papers and ideas won't be worth the paper they're printed on (or the bits of hard drive space they take up). One of your biggest challenges will be to figure out what's worth knowing, and what isn't. This will take skill, practice, and guidance.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Learn how to learn.</strong> As a researcher, the odds that you will be doing the same thing throughout your career are asymptotically small. Your PhD should not be just about picking up skills for solving a particular problem. Ultimately, it should be about learning <em>how to become an expert in a field you haven't seen before.</em> </p></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13400,
"author": "Piotr Migdal",
"author_id": 49,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Networking is crucial (it's not only a game of skill and hard work).</p>\n\n<p>It works in two ways:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>most opportunities (positions, workshops, fellowships) spread organically,</li>\n<li>for everything you need to provide 2-3 recommendation letters; if you don't know professors who are well-known and respected in the place where you apply to, it may strongly affect your chances.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13414,
"author": "penelope",
"author_id": 4249,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4249",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I've seen a lot of people have a bad time until they realized this:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>your supervisor/adviser is somebody you should work with, who can guide and direct your research, but after not so much time, <strong>you, not the supervisor, become the expert in your topic</strong>.</p>\n<p>Supervisor is the <em>more experienced researcher</em>, and his expertise should definitely be taken into account. But, after months of research into the topic, you start knowing more about your specific problem than anybody else, and should <em>not</em> expect the supervisor to be a <em>fail-safe book of infallible answers</em>.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Another very important one that I'm happy was told to me:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>you <strong>can't do research as a <em>side</em>-activity</strong>. In order to do it well, and to be happy... um... in your life, you have to love research in order to do research.</p>\n<p>There might be jobs that are not your dream jobs, but are worth having because of other personal benefits (e.g. proximity to where you live, good salary, etc.) which you can do full time and have a happy and full life beside them, even if you're not working your dreams. Research is just too demanding and too exhausting to do if it is not <em>the thing</em> you want to do.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17496,
"author": "just-learning",
"author_id": 10483,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10483",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This and related issues were also intensively discussed on ResearchGate, see e.g.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_wish_you_had_known_about_the_process_of_doing_research_that_you_did_not_know_before_you_started_it\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_wish_you_had_known_about_the_process_of_doing_research_that_you_did_not_know_before_you_started_it</a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_things_should_supervisors_tell_their_research_students\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_things_should_supervisors_tell_their_research_students</a></p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13355",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8784/"
]
|
13,357 | <p>Doing research requires exploring a tree of different ideas and then, upon failures, tracking back to some extent, up to giving up on the whole project and changing topics (or even quitting your PhD). You might err on both sides: change approach too much, give up too early, or too late. (See for instance <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8726/8966">this answer</a> or <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/10643/8966">Half good and some not good results in a research paper?</a>). Most importantly, though, often you won't know that you'll actually succeed until you did, and things might look bleak until then.</p>
<p>Does some degree of stubbornness help being a researcher (I couldn't extract an answer so easily from <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13178/8966">2</a>)? Lacking that, do you know any metaheuristics to approach this decision?</p>
<p>EDIT: I read this idea off the mention of "stubbornness and self-delusion" <a href="http://blog.devicerandom.org/2011/02/18/getting-a-life/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">in this rant</a> - and I've observed this trait in at least some researchers.</p>
<p>EDIT 2: an answer suggested that I talk about persistence instead. And probably that's the right compromise and what you actually should have. But I prefer the more provocative phrasing, also because I've anecdotical experiences of stubbornness as a "professional risk" of the profession.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13365,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes, you've got to be stubborn in order to get results, because everyone encounters failures and roadblocks. Giving up too early can withhold good results, but aimlessly slogging towards a dead end can be a waste of time.</p>\n\n<p>I only give up on something when I can justify <em>why</em> I should give up.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Identify the cause of the difficulty.</li>\n<li>Find out what you need to do to solve the roadblock.</li>\n<li>Assess whether it is feasible to solve the problem with the available time and resources.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Most failures are still useful to you, because you can usually find out why those ideas did not work. Learn from your mistakes, and (if appropriate) publish why a method did not work as expected (as a prelude to a subsequent method that did) so that others can learn as well.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13369,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Although I understand what you are getting at, I would like to say that stubbornness is perhaps not a good trait for a scientist. My dictionary provides the following: <em>Stubborn: Having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, esp. in spite of good arguments or reasons.</em></p>\n\n<p>Clearly a scientist needs doggedness and stamina to endure long and hard experiments, field work, often monotonous work on data and theory, as well as other issues met in the workplace. To be able to change footing in light of new evidence is, however, an important trait. So being stubborn, in the sense of the definition, would be very counter productive in our effort to have science progress. <strong>Persistence and perseverance</strong> are perhaps synonyms that better reflect the traits you aim for.</p>\n\n<p>So, yes it is important to be able to endure. Being a scientist is usually based on a deep appreciation for the subject and the research, which is why it is possible to endure the pressures that exist. It is a bit like being a top athlete, very few will excel without a deep love for what they do. As soon as you lose the drive it is difficult to continue because of the demands. Maintaining the drive is therefore a very important aspect of academia and the workplace in which you act.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13379,
"author": "J. Zimmerman",
"author_id": 7921,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7921",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As @Peter Jansson makes clear in his answer, stubbornness may not be a good quality to have, but tenacity and perseverance certainly are. See <a href=\"http://matt.might.net/articles/successful-phd-students/\" rel=\"nofollow\">this post</a> by <a href=\"http://matt.might.net/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Matt Might </a> for an insightful look at why PhD students need persistence and tenacity in order to survive and thrive in what can be an exercise in long-term frustration and failure before reaching success.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13357",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8966/"
]
|
13,363 | <p>I've become quite upset with how lectures for my courses are conducted. </p>
<p>Everyday, I attend lectures where the teacher simply writes definitions and theorems on the board straight from one of our textbooks (or another professor's published lecture notes). They then prove a handful of the theorems, or part of them, and leave more than half as an exercise. They do little to motivate the material or provide insight based on their professional experiences, and are often scribbling material onto the board as fast as possible to cover some predetermined amount. And sometimes the professor writes proofs straight from their notes and, when questioned, has a hard time explaining the gaps between steps (as they are simply regurgitating and not really even attentive to what they are explaining).</p>
<p>Ultimately, I feel like these lectures are a waste of my time. To be blunt, I can read a book and I can do exercises. I don't need someone to paraphrase a book for me and then tell me to fill in the rest myself. Moreover, since I cannot afford to live on/near campus, I have to commute an hour each way to sit through such lectures, which hardly seems validated.</p>
<p>I would like to attend lectures where the professor engages the students. Often, my professors are so rushed to scribble things on the board that they take few questions and relegate them to exercises (yes, I had a professor answer a simple question about his proof by assigning it as an exercise). If an instructor wants to cover some predetermined amount of material, I would prefer they assign this as reading beforehand and then take questions on that material in class. It'd also be nice if they presented us with hard problems in class and then we all worked through them together (with students presenting them, everyone critiquing, etc.).</p>
<p>Should I approach my professors about my feelings? How should I go about this?</p>
<p>To be honest, I am becoming quite bored (and frustrated) and starting to skip lectures in favor of office hours (which are far more engaging), reading the book on my own, and working extra problems. I do not like that I am not enjoying my educational experience (since I love to learn math!).</p>
<p>Or should I quit going to lectures and move on to doing what I am tending towards now, anyways?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13366,
"author": "user389823",
"author_id": 8978,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8978",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is a common frustration faced by college students, especially in lecture-oriented STEM majors. Unfortunately, the truth is that the lectures may be a waste of time and there is little you can do to change that. If you can cover the material more efficiently on your own time (especially since you're commuting), you shouldn't necessarily feel guilty in doing so. You can see similar sentiments expressed on ratemyprofessor where students often question the value of lectures and simply go to the library as opposed to lecture. </p>\n\n<p>Yes you're paying for the lecture, but if it doesn't help/contribute to your understanding, there is no point in going. I knew students who went every time out of habit, but it was an absolute waste of time. </p>\n\n<p>I've had physics professors who wrote starting problems on the board and then the solution only to say that if we were at his level, we should 'see' the dozen steps in between. Needless to say, lectures were fairly empty after that. He was very well versed in the material and many students would come to office hours, it's just that he couldn't lecture.</p>\n\n<p>Depending on the age/tenure of the professor, they may be receptive to making the lectures more engaging, or they may \"brush\" you off. Simply express your interest in the subject to the professor and ask them to make the lecture more engaging/be better prepared. Depending on the college/class, the professor may be unable to accommodate you because your peers may not be at your level. Be aware that some professors cannot lecture effectively, or have had unwanted courses foisted upon them. No matter your school ranking or major, you will encounter lousy enthusiasm-killing professors whom you'll have to endure. For many professors, your best shot for a more engaging experience would be to visit them during office hours.</p>\n\n<p>In a certain sense, to quote Mark Twain, \"Don't let schooling interfere with your education.\" You won't have this professor forever, though you may unfortunately have them or those like them again. Don't let them dampen your passion for the subject.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13372,
"author": "DQdlM",
"author_id": 248,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/248",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is difficult to know the reason why the lectures are not working for you without more information about you, the professor, and the course, but there are a few possibilities:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>The professor is not doing a good job of engaging the students because of a lack of interest or competence.</p></li>\n<li><p>The professor does not have the the flexibility to alter the way the course is taught due to institutional limitations.</p></li>\n<li><p>The professor should not alter the way the course is taught because overall it is working for the majority of the students in the class.</p></li>\n<li><p>The professor is unaware that the lectures are not working and would change the approach if he/she knew.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Of these only #4 will result in a change if you provide feedback but you should go talk to the professor because you are struggling with the class. Struggles do not have to be only low grades, if you are disengaging from the class that is a problem. Your approach should be one of requesting help understanding how the lectures are supposed to fit into the overall learning goals of the class, not one of offering lecture style critique. For the reasons listed above, I can't promise it will change anything but it may offer insights.</p>\n\n<p>That being said, you should still go to the lectures. Lectures are only one part of a course and unless the professor stipulates otherwise, you should consider them non-optional. Your full participation in all aspects of the class is your responsibility as a student. There are lots of things that we have to do professionally that are inefficient (e.g., all my faculty meetings) but participation is a requirement of being part of a professional community and is a prerequisite of gaining the other benefits of that community. For example, I would be very reluctant to invest a lot of time in a student (however promising) who regularly came to my office hours but skipped all my lectures. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13377,
"author": "J.R.",
"author_id": 780,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/780",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I would like to attend lectures where the professor engages the students.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Well, isn't that what we all want? Some professors are very good at this, and, unfortunately, others are not.</p>\n\n<p>I would recommend attending the lectures, even if you're finding little benefit. Why? I think skipping lectures altogether is a bad idea. You never know when a professor will offer some tidbit of information that will help you on an exam, or help clarify an assignment. It's one thing to miss a lesson every now and then, but habitually missing class doesn't seem like a good way obtain an education.</p>\n\n<p>After class, I would talk to fellow classmates, and see if your feelings are isolated or universal. If your opinions are shared by a majority of your classmates, perhaps you could get a groundswell of support for being very blunt in your end-of-course surveys. That feedback should be candid but constructive. In other words, don't just say, \"His lectures sucked,\" say, \"His lectures would have been a lot better if...\" If enough students voice a consistant message about the low-quality lectures, perhaps the professor will try to take some of your suggestions to heart, or perhaps the department head will pressure him to do so. That may not help you this term, but it might help other students in the future. </p>\n\n<p>As for the long commute, I feel your pain, but the way I'd handle that is to plan to do other things while you're on campus. Maybe you could start working out at the campus gym, or start writing for your campus newspaper. Driving an hour each way to just sit through a crappy lecture <em>does</em> seem like a waste of time – and gas. Driving an hour each way to become engaged on your campus – even if that time happens to include a lecture from a professor who may not be so gifted in teaching in lecture halls – may not seem so bad.</p>\n\n<p>I think it's rare for a professor to drastically change tactics midway through a course, so this is a matter of you making the best of a bad situation. Sometimes, that's part of getting an education, too, even though you won't get credit for it on your transcript. Just remember, many employees like to hire students with degrees, not just because of what was learned in the classroom, but for things that were inevitiably learned in the process of obtaining the education: time management, teamwork, dedication, extra curriculars – and making the most of bad situations.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 65949,
"author": "user51512",
"author_id": 51512,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/51512",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This depends on the type of student you are. I got a lot out of going to lectures (this is mostly in maths), because I did concentrate fairly hard and make notes to myself where I didn't understand things. A friend of mine got nothing out of lectures and was better off studying by himself.</p>\n\n<p>A few comments.<br> </p>\n\n<ul><li>In my courses, lectures set the pace for the course, so it was necessary to know what was going on in the lectures even if you didn't turn up. If you aren't going to turn up, I hope the course has a good web page or equivalent.</li> \n<li>Going to the lectures meant that during the lecture hour I was working on that subject. You need a fair amount of self-discipline to keep up steady work in all your courses without going to lectures.</li>\n<li>As a lecturer (which I became), sure office hours are more engaging, but it is a much better use of my time to talk with a student who has been to lectures but is having trouble than to explain something to some student who could have got the information from the lectures but couldn't be bothered.</li>\n<li>We gave a few marks for attendance, not many. We wanted students to get into the habit of turning up - this is particularly important for those who are not so able or don't have good study habits (yet), or whose background is a bit lacking.</li>\n<li>A couple of times I have heard about courses where there are no lectures, just largely self-directed projects and support in the form of office hours. In these cases there was a small class of highly selected and very able students, the institution had the resources, and the students had a high degree of commitment. We would all love to have such classes, but the reality is different for most of us.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 65973,
"author": "user51540",
"author_id": 51540,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/51540",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Sounds like you are just not at a competitive math department.</p>\n\n<p>I am not trying to put you down. I'm only attempting to give a candid answer.</p>\n\n<p>In our math dept, a top 5 department -- and top-ranked in several areas of math, our professors' lectures are pretty amazing.</p>\n\n<p>There's a lot of intuition, elegance, and rigor during the lectures - most of the proofs are actually different from ones found in the books. And the profs explain why they want to do it differently. </p>\n\n<p>Also, there's usually distribution of handwritten notes by the profs - stuff I had never found in the books. </p>\n\n<p>If you want to continue to grad work and really love math and want the lectures that you dream about having, try to get into the strongest math department that you can.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 65982,
"author": "The Guy",
"author_id": 50533,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/50533",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I understand your frustrations. One positive thing you can get from going to lecture is to interact with your colleagues. Remember. you might be engaged in team projects or study together for an exam or a test. Another thing is, you can always ask your professor questions in class! Even a well written book may not discuss/provide all necessary information. One last thing, some professors like to mention real life examples or stories related to the subject, some might even discuss examples similar to ones s/he will use in exams.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13363",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6497/"
]
|
13,368 | <p>(This question is one of three correlated questions: <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13342/is-it-a-good-practice-to-choose-my-undergraduate-research-topic-on-my-own-can-i">Can I get enough help? (first part)</a>, <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13367/is-it-a-good-practice-to-choose-my-undergraduate-research-topic-on-my-own-and-h">How should I do it? (second part)</a>.This is the <strong>third</strong> part.)</p>
<p>I am an undergraduate student (in Computer Science and Engineering) and I will be starting undergraduate research for my thesis. I have talked with many professors about possible projects and all the projects they proposed to me seemed <strong>interesting enough</strong>. </p>
<p>During summer, though, I read a paper and I was very interested and excited about it, but this paper was <strong>not for the projects</strong> that were proposed to me, but in a <strong>different area</strong>. I would like to do research in <em>this area</em> but I have some questions, because none of my professor is doing research in this particular field.</p>
<p>So, my questions are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>What are the <strong>downsides</strong> of choosing my own project instead of
doing a project that a professor is working right now (with his
Ph.D. students)?</p></li>
<li><p>How <strong>harder</strong> will it be to get something good out of it (in
comparison with doing a proposed project)?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>P.S. I want to understand whether it will be beneficial to do a project that I want to do because of some paper(s) that I read or it will be better to do a project that was proposed to me. Also, <em>I would like to go for a Ph.D. after I graduate</em>.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13388,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In my experience the topic is normally self-chosen. Your adviser might have some ideas but generally the research (and subsequent writing) requires a significant amount of work.</p>\n\n<p>Because of the amount of work involved, if you are not excited by the topic it might be difficult to follow through with the amount of work required. This might be less true for undergraduate theses but at the graduate level, you will need to really spent a lot of time and, therefore, maintaining motivation can be a challenge.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, if your adviser has some ideas that person might be more willing and able to provide support for you.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13433,
"author": "eykanal",
"author_id": 73,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Along the lines of <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/13388/73\">earthling's answer</a>, you do have a strong say in your topic, and you'll definitely want to be interested in the topic as you'll be putting a lot of work into it.</p>\n\n<p>However, do realize that, as an undergraduate, you have far less experience in doing research than your advisor. You will save yourself a tremendous amount of work and effort by working closely with him on your project. One way to ensure that your advisor will be willing to invest that time in you is to work on a project that (1) interests him and (2) is related to his research. Even better, both. You are definitely free to choose whatever project you want, but it would be a good idea to choose something on which he can offer his expertise.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13437,
"author": "Kogesho",
"author_id": 7773,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7773",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would like to answer you as a senior undergraduate computer science student.</p>\n\n<p>I wanted to do research (I had no prior research experience, so I asked an instructor for support for research. He gave me a topic, I found it OK, and I began to learn about the field and work on an existing paper.</p>\n\n<p>Yet in 2 months I realized that I lacked motivation to go on because that field was completely out of my interests and what I have always wanted was something else. ( I couldn't choose that as my research topic because there was nobody with that field's knowledge)</p>\n\n<p>Research requires deep knowledge and unless you are completely interested in that area, you might find it hard to continue after some point. You should really love and embrace it.</p>\n\n<p>But of course, everyone is different. Yet I strongly advice that if you are gonna work on something, make sure you are really interested in it and not doing it just for the sake of doing research. It can harm your motivation and discourage you from being a determined scientist.</p>\n\n<p>It will definitely be harder to get something out of it as your instructors don't know the topic. If the aim is to get fruitful results, you should choose one of the proposed topics. If your main aim is to develop yourself in an area that will contribute to your personal desires, it is better to choose your own topic.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13368",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8381/"
]
|
13,373 | <p>I am employed as a student in a theoretical computer science research group and part of my job was to assist my supervisor with a scientific paper he has been working on.
Concretely, my job was to implement the software that was used to conduct the experimental part of the research paper and also to gather and put together a dataset in order to empirically test the theoretical framework developed by my supervisor using real-world data.</p>
<p>Before the first submission attempt, I was mentioned in the list of the co-authors. However, the paper was not accepted on the grounds that the empirical results only weakly reflected the theoretical claims.</p>
<p>My supervisor thought that the rejection was due to a bug in the code I've developed and afterwards he removed me both from the list of co-authors and from the project. I am very sure that the code didn't contain any bugs.</p>
<p>Afterwards, my supervisor contacted a fellow student who was already working on a different topic, and asked for his permission to use the data from this different topic in order to test the theory.</p>
<p>The second submission attempt of the research paper was successful and the paper was accepted. My fellow student appeared in the list of co-authors but I didn't.</p>
<p>The version of the paper that finally got accepted differed from the first one that got rejected, in that it contained only an extra experiment, using the data from my fellow student. However, the initial empirical experiments that I put together were still there. They have not been removed, nor modified.</p>
<p>Regarding this situation I have a series of questions:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Is it normal to feel that I have been treated unfairly? I feel that the only reason why I have been removed from the list of co-authors is because the dataset I have compiled simply didn't confirm the expected theoretical results and me getting fired was simply a way for my supervisor to vent his frustration about being rejected.</p></li>
<li><p>Is it legal to publish a paper that uses data and software that some other person developed and not mention this person as a co-author (or at least as a reference)? Are there any laws or rules of conduct regarding such situations?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I'm aware that a variation of this question may have already been answered before:</p>
<p><a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2730/what-to-do-when-principal-investigator-publishes-your-work-without-putting-you-d">What to do when principal investigator publishes your work without putting you down as a coauthor?</a></p>
<p><a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/975/my-research-work-stolen-and-published-as-his-own-by-the-co-author-without-my-con">My research work stolen and published as his own by the co-author without my consent</a></p>
<p><a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5188/my-work-was-published-and-my-name-was-nowhere-to-be-found-how-should-i-handle-t">My work was published and my name was nowhere to be found: how should I handle this?</a></p>
<p>Most of the answers suggested that I should try to approach and discuss this problem in private with my supervisor or with some other member of the research group. I have tried doing exactly this and both my supervisor and 2 other senior members simply refused to discuss this issue with me. The only response I've got was: "what's done is done, let us focus on the future now".</p>
<p>What can I do, or what would be ethical to do in this situation?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13374,
"author": "Alecos Papadopoulos",
"author_id": 8575,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8575",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>Assuming that you are giving a totally impartial and accurate account of the facts</em>: </p>\n\n<p>To your first question: Your Supervisor has a \"right-to-manage\" in this project since it was his project and you functioned as his assistant. \"Right-to-manage\" is an euphemism for \"authority to fire\". Namely, he has the (moral, even) right to \"fire\" you from the paper, if he believes (rightly or wrongly) that it was your fault that the paper was rejected the first time. Naturally, he wouldn't want faulty work to continue to be present in his paper, now would he? So he went on and scrapped your contribution on which you have labored so hard... but wait: he didn't scrap your work from the paper, but he <em>kept it in</em>, without your name. This leads us to your second question: what he did can be legally characterized as \"<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_theft\" rel=\"nofollow\">grand theft</a>\", I believe, at least in the US legal system. </p>\n\n<p>What to do? The \"cosmic-joke\" scenario (but I am not joking here) would be to <em>actually find</em> a bug in your code and send a letter to the paper that published the paper, challenging the empirical results (and you will be in an excellent position to challenge them since you know all the details). </p>\n\n<p>The sensible thing to do, given that you have already futilely tried to discuss the issue with the defendant (which was the civilized thing to do), is to indeed \"focus on the future\" -<em>your</em> future this time. With <em>all</em> that such a vague phrase may silently imply.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13376,
"author": "Faheem Mitha",
"author_id": 285,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/285",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>To answer your questions:</p>\n\n<p>Based on what you say, it does sound like you were treated unfairly.</p>\n\n<p>Leaving you out from the paper given the circumstances is at least unethical. I don't know about legal.</p>\n\n<p>Your collaborators don't sound like nice people. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon in academia, where abuse of junior people is certainly not uncommon, though for obvious reasons statistics are hard to come by.</p>\n\n<p>An obvious option is to write to the journal's editor explaining the situation. If you have contributed significantly to the paper, you certainly have a claim to be considered a co-author. Obviously, make sure you have documentation backing up your claim. If you don't, it is just your word against theirs, and you will quite likely get nowhere. If you have good documentation, it will be more difficult for the journal to ignore your claims, though it is obviously hard to predict what people will do. Given that you were on the first submission attempt, I think that first submission should count as part of the documentation, and should really help your case if you appeal to the journal. It would be easy enough to compare the two versions of the paper. In the first submission, is your contribution described? Also, were the two submissions to different journals?</p>\n\n<p>It is not completely clear from your posting whether the paper has been officially published. If it has, it may be too late to add your name to the list of authors.</p>\n\n<p>Bear in mind that your collaborators will quite possibly try to find a way to get back at you, for any number of reasons. People who behave in the way you described can get extremely petty and unpleasant when they perceive you as \"going against them\". They also have a remarkable capacity for not taking responsibility for their own actions, and in their own minds will find a way to blame you for the situation. This is not meant to discourage you from standing up for your rights, but just pointing out the reality of the situation.</p>\n\n<p>Personally, I think people <em>should</em> stand up for their rights, but at the end of the day it is your decision.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13373",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8982/"
]
|
13,385 | <p>I would like to know what is graduate school supposed to be like? I started grad school for mathematics 2 months ago and I find myself studying all the time with no time for anything else (except activities of daily living). Is this typical?</p>
<p>Some notable advantages that I have:</p>
<p>I commute from school to home.
I am a U.S. citizen and obviously did not have to venture outside of home for any of my schooling.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13386,
"author": "user389823",
"author_id": 8978,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8978",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Short answer: Yes.</p>\n\n<p>Grad school is an extremely time intensive activity. Depending on where you went and what you did for undergrad, you may feel overwhelmed. Rest assured that grad school is designed to eat up all your time and you are expected to dedicate your life to it. That said, it should eventually be somewhat enjoyable.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13387,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1429",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Graduate school is an experience and like any other experience, it differs for different people.</p>\n\n<p>You may or may not let your work overwhelm you. That is entirely your choice unless you have to catch up with your cohort. <a href=\"http://www.gradview.com/articles/graduatestudies/graduate-school-time-management.html\">Time management</a> is one of the most important skills to learn in graduate school and as I understand, it carries over to real life significantly later on.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore, specifically in response to your question, your current experience is typical for <em>certain</em> graduate students but <strong>not</strong> all graduate students.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13391,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Most graduate schools take a \"firehose\" approach in the first semester or two, so a heavy workload is to be expected, although it's certainly not desirable. That said, however, it should not be all-consuming—but it's also true that it can eat up all of your time, if you allow it to happen.</p>\n\n<p>One of the things that I tell all of my students is that time for relaxation and non-study based activities is just as important as finding time for classes and preparing for examinations. In fact, not having the \"outlet valve\" can make you less productive overall; mentally and physically such behavior is not sustainable over a long period of time.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore, I tell my students—as well as undergraduates that I mentor who intend to go to graduate school—that they need to <em>schedule</em> relaxation time into their week. What they do and when and how they do it is up to them; but there needs to be something to balance the stress of being a graduate student.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13395,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have had a slightly different experience that what is mentioned here - I have worked full time while completing my PhD. That means a lot of time management, as well as stress management is required.</p>\n\n<p>Break up each task into smaller manageable subtasks and allow yourself rewards and most of all, as has been mentioned, time to enjoy some hobbies and recreation. This is critical - you'll potentially burn-out other wise.</p>\n\n<p>Having a job (volunteer or paid, full or part time) is also a good way to force you prioritise tasks and deadlines, the job also provides a break from study and vice versa - this is a mindset that develops over time.</p>\n\n<p>You will be busy, but be sure that you are doing something that you enjoy, it won't be a chore, it will be something to look forward to.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13408,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In addition to the other good answers, \"Yes.\" It is a situation in which there's no such thing as \"being too good\", of course. People who've been easily top-in-their-class are now \"average\" in the population. Very disorienting. Also, as noted, there is a pretense that people \"catch up\" at super-high-speed by doing 30 hours of homework each week, etc.</p>\n\n<p>So, yes, the pretense, the hype, the mythology, and the disorientation seem to tell people to spend every waking moment \"studying\".</p>\n\n<p>Among the bad/silly side effects or versions of this is the one wherein one merely <em>frets</em> all day, rather than doing anything constructive. Or \"obsessing\" about small things, individual homework problems that are of dubious significance, etc. Pointless.</p>\n\n<p>Also as noted, it is important to get sleep, exercise, and reasonable food, to say the least. Chronic sleep deprivation (and dubious diet) is all too typical in the relevant age-group in the first place, and having added seeming-motivations to sacrifice sleep, exercise, and diet just makes everything worse. </p>\n\n<p>As many people have said on many occasions, getting a PhD in mathematics is not a \"career choice\", because it's waaaay too much work in comparison to the (extra-mathematical) rewards. It only makes sense if one is fairly obsessed with math in the first place, and can continue to have that degree of irrational interest despite workload and temporary loss of self-determination.</p>\n\n<p>That is, by normal standards, it is not reasonable to aim for \"a normal life\", whether in grad school or thereafter, because it's maybe not possible, any more than performing musicians have \"normal lives\", whether classical or jazz or pop or... The idea is that it's a hobby that, quasi-miraculously, pays a living. (This is different than engineering, apparently!) If one can keep that feeling, then it's fine!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13423,
"author": "Emma",
"author_id": 9014,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9014",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Short answer is yes. Grad school can be very time intensive, especially if you are coming from a small undergrad program into a large grad program, as your background knowledge may not be up to snuff.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/13 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13385",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
]
|
13,397 | <p>Quick background; I study Computer Science and have been asked to take the role as a paid student teacher for college students. </p>
<p>I am extremely nervous about it, although it's a fairly familiar role as I'll be teaching what I learned only three years previous.</p>
<p>I'm far from the extrovert type and as such, find it really difficult to hold a room. <strong>How do I keep the attention and respect of students that are almost my age?</strong></p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13398,
"author": "user389823",
"author_id": 8978,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8978",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A few tips:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Practice.</strong> Get some friends, go to an empty room, and practice. Practice in front of the mirror. Practice in the street, in the subway, in line at starbucks, and at the bar(well you're <21 so that might not work). You want people to look at you. To stare at you. To ask, \"who the hell is that and what the heck is he talking about?\"</li>\n<li><strong>Prepare.</strong> Obviously, come prepared.</li>\n<li><strong>Get over yourself</strong>. Chances are that your first lecture will be awkward. Possibly very awkward. But then it'll get better and you'll eventually know what you're doing.</li>\n<li><strong>Identify with the students</strong>. They're roughly your age so it'll be easier to identify with them. As a student, you know how you wanted to be taught and what you wanted to hear. Follow that.</li>\n<li><strong>Responsive.</strong> Be responsive to the class. Don't shy away. There's no benefit for anyone.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Have fun!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13399,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Calm down! easier said than done. Remember you know more than they do but do not put on a suit that does not fit. If you get questions you cannot answer, do not get nervous, simply say: it is a good question and you will check up the answer. Don't start putting out excuses that you are inexperienced, haven't done this before, or whatever. Let what you do speak for itself, I am sure it is more than fine.</p>\n\n<p>Now that the emergency is over, what can you do? Be prepared. Check out the material ahead of time and if you are in a lab or have to help out in exercises, run through them yourself to figure out where problems may arise. This takes a little time but will help you run things smoothly. In the case of a lecture situation, you also need to be prepared, read up on the material, make a good series of slides. Show what you plan to do to someone more experienced to perhaps get feedback and pointers on improvements. A typical rookie mistake is to overwork things, put too much stuff into a lecture and set the level too high. Assessing the right level is something you learn but if you have a chance to look at others' lectures or perhaps go back to what you experienced, you may be able to find your level quicker.</p>\n\n<p>If yo want a quick check on what you have done you can do a quick feedback at the end. Give each person a small piece of paper (e.g. index card) and have them write one or a couple of things they found good on one side and something they think could be improved on the other. Do not use the word \"bad\" on that side, you want to know what you did well and what might improve. Collect the feedback and check it immediately. It may help you get a sense of how you came across. You can do this on a regular basis if time permits.</p>\n\n<p>In the end, it is tough to get started, we have all been there with different amounts of self-confidence, experience etc. Expect some things to go less well, it is bound to happen, we all have off days. If something is less well, use it to improve. Use your colleagues as support if you find it rough, everyone has some experience of that sort.</p>\n\n<p>I wish you luck. It can be really fun to teach. Look for pointers on teaching on the web and check out journals for higher ed. teaching to get ideas. There is no reason to approach teaching less seriously than what one would do, say research. The butterflies you will inevitably feel when you start will disappear and your confidence will grow with experience. Just keep calm and on top of matters.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/13 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13397",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8988/"
]
|
13,405 | <p>I am in the early stages of my PhD and I am trying to put together a literature review of my topic. My intention is that this review will eventually be included in my thesis, something like "<em>the chapter that describes the state of the art in the domain</em>."</p>
<p>My subject is soft matter physics and a large number of theses have already been written this topic. When looking at the literature reviews included in these other works I've noticed that: </p>
<ul>
<li>The sequence of ideas is often the same (this makes sense, so why not?)</li>
<li>Cited papers are always the same, even though 20 years elapsed between the first and last thesis. Moreover, papers from the 30's are cited but no one in my lab seems to have a copy available? </li>
</ul>
<p>My hypothesis is that these theses are derived from some sort of a <em>Mother of All Thesis</em>, and that paraphrasing the work of the previous student is OK. </p>
<p><strong>So, what makes a good literature review?</strong></p>
<p><strong>How do you notice that a literature review is sloppy?</strong> </p>
<p>PS: I posted this question because I assume many of you have experience with this process either in your own PhD work, or as a supervisor where you have had to deal with paraphrasing of your students. </p>
<p>PS2: I am not asking about making proper citations, LaTeX+BibTeX handles that like a charm. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13406,
"author": "Vaidyanathan",
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"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8331",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are couple of points i like to make from my perspective.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Bibliography is something which evolves during your PhD. I would recommend not to write it at the first place. As you read more and more, relevant to your area in Soft matter, you can keep adding it to your bibliography</p></li>\n<li><p>Soft matter is a really huge area. One who works on Molecular dynamics may not even touch crystal defects while writing his bibliography. In that way it is really topic specific and not the entire area.</p></li>\n<li><p>You said, you saw some say 30 papers in every thesis. This is not because of magic, this is only because they are path breaking. If you are in MD area (which is mine), and you are using a thermostat, it is 99.9999 % sure that you cite Nose-Hoover paper. It is no magic. </p></li>\n<li><p>There is no point in saying none from my lab is cited. It depends on how many groups are working in that \"specific\" area and what impact had the papers published from your lab made in their research. </p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>This all points out to the fact that one does not simply write a bibliography of an entire area :)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13413,
"author": "Nicholas",
"author_id": 1424,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1424",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The purpose and expectations of a PhD literature review is likely to vary from field to field. My PhD was in Physics, but my views might be taken to apply generally.</p>\n\n<p>There is likely to be some repetition or paraphrasing between students in the same research group, when it comes to the literature review. However, perhaps the comments below might help.</p>\n\n<p>A literature review should be an enjoyable to read (!) introduction, survey and guide to the state of the art. You want to introduce your reader to the field (assuming a clever, but non-expert reader), setting out what has gone before, and perhaps to some extent showing where the gaps are in the research - raising the opportunity for you to present your research as that which fills a gap (Next chapter: \"Aims and Objectives\", or similar).</p>\n\n<p>My primary hallmarks of a poor, or sloppy literature review is that papers are listed <strong>without any helpful context</strong>. A dreary literature review, to me, is a listing of papers that we all already know about, without any guide to the reader why the trail leads me to hold the present thesis. No-one much likes reading a dry chronology of papers. I personally, want to be told the story of the research and the literature review plays an important part of that story.</p>\n\n<p>The opportunity exists here to <em>review</em> the field - what are the general trends in the literature? For example, Paper A was the first to introduce the theory that drove the authors of Paper B to perform experiment Z which is now the standard technique. However, Paper C suggests that an alternative method may be more effective, etc. </p>\n\n<p>Note that your review shouldn't attempt to be a complete review of the field - whole standalone papers are written on this, usually by invitation. Your PhD literature review should be more focused, but still a recounting of the Story So Far. </p>\n\n<p>Since your literature review is to be a nice, focused review of the path to your contribution, it is likely that you will read far more papers than you will need to cite in your literature review. Those papers that do not contribute to the Story So Far can be excluded from your literature review. Going off on a tangent, like in any story, can lose and confuse your readers. If you feel a need to refer to these papers, perhaps you can refer to a decent review article which discusses them in detail, for the interested reader.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13995,
"author": "Ravi Kiran",
"author_id": 9371,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9371",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>References and bibliography are to be read and digested in a progressive manner. References that might have been not so intuitive become useful over time as we gain more experience.\nOne needs to document them in any suitable way and:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Add new references and connections with current work. </li>\n<li>Track these references and revisit them when and where you touch base again with them.</li>\n<li>Revise the entry with new information or clearer understanding of the subject.</li>\n<li>Remove any parasite or related paper that you think is no more directly related to your work - clear clutter up - this is important to stop accumulating lots of bibliography which can become non specific!</li>\n<li>All of the references you might accumulate may not be useful for the final bibiliography. There is need to sort or classify these references as biblio, self learning references, state of art, related (first order, second order) and so on and so forth.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Doing this using a wiki would be advisable - and if there is a team involved group updates would be preferable! Basically one needs a good sense of organization while writing the thesis. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16544,
"author": "penelope",
"author_id": 4249,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4249",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/13413/4249\">Nikolas' answer</a> is already pretty great. I'm not doing physics, but I'll try and stay as general as I can. Here's some specific advice I got from my supervisor and things I realized while doing my own lit review:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>It is normal for a big section of referenced papers to be the same across a lot of survey / literature review papers. Those would be the <strong>papers that <em>first introduced</em></strong> a problem, a concept, an approach.</li>\n<li><p>In addition to the <em>seminal papers</em> from your (sub)field, you usually want to describe <strong>the current state-of-the art</strong>. This would be based on current papers based on the original problem, concept or approach that adopt the problem for a different environment, apply a concept for a different purpose or represent an improvement to the approach.</p>\n\n<p>For example, in Computer Science, it would be okay to talk about a structure or a problem (<em>seminal paper</em>) and then talk about the <em>current best algorithm(s)</em> to solving the problem (<em>state-of-the-art</em>) without mentioning every single \"evolution step\" of the algorithm.</p>\n\n<p><sub><sup> Basically, to sum up and dump up these two points: you cite the \"first\" and the \"last\" paper dealing with the same thing.</sup></sub><br>\n<sub><sup>Of course, there's exceptions to this: if there's any groundbreaking papers between the \"first\" and the \"last\" paper, sometimes intermediate papers can also be viewed as \"seminal papers\" for the subject/field.</sup></sub></p></li>\n<li><p>This might depend slightly on the type of document you want to produce, but usually it is okay for you to explain the technique / method in detail, while for practical uses of the technique, you just <strong>mention</strong> (and cite) <strong>several successful applications of the technique</strong> without going in to detail about how exactly the method was adopted.</p></li>\n<li><p>Finally, if your goal is to <em>publish your literature review as a survey paper</em> (which is usually worth a shot), you should think about how to \"get a new spin on things\".</p>\n\n<p>Every paper, including survey papers, is supposed to be a scientific contribution. That means that you have to <strong>find something that makes your survey useful</strong>, or in some context better, then all the existing surveys. This might be a change of context in which the methods are examined, it might cover more material, offer new classifications of the methods or new links between them.</p>\n\n<p>I would say you have to think of at least one type of reader (a reader with one type of goal) who will take your review and say: <em>\"That's it!\"</em>, while he can not say that any of the current surveys out there are exactly \"it\" for him.</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13405",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8993/"
]
|
13,419 | <p>I need your advice, dear visitors. Currently I am finishing my BS in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, and trying to apply for a PhD program in Computer Science to universities in the USA.</p>
<p>But I have a real problem. </p>
<p>The topics on which I worked with my adviser are purely mathematical (differential geometry). I began to study this branch of math 2 years ago. But 1 year ago, due to a suggestion of my friend, I started reading articles on Theoretical Computer Science (namely algorithms on planar graphs and in Linear Algebra but nothing related to numerical methods) and became carried away by that. For some reasons, I couldn't have abandoned the work on my topics. One of them is that the results in differential geometry we eventually obtained are excellent (together with my advisor we have two articles in good mathematical journals). Since this is the last year of my education at my University, I haven't changed the field for my diploma (it would have had no sense and it would have been impossible in some way, but let me not tell about it). </p>
<p>Differential Geometry is very interesting and I know much about it but I feel that algorithms is the field to which my future research will be dedicated. I am not interested in any other field of CS. By the way, my scientific advisor knows about my future plans (reported to him half a year ago). He also heartily agreed to write a strong letter of recommendation for me.</p>
<p>So what have I got? Good mathematical skills: a wide spectrum of knowledge on many fields including algebra (linear and abstract), advanced analysis, differential geometry (as mentioned before), functional analysis, combinatorics, algorithms, graph theory... I also have medals and prizes earned on mathematical olympiads (IMO, IMC). So math and TCS background is not a problem for me. After all, Theoretical Computer Science is the same math (we also state and prove theorems like in math)!</p>
<p>Why a PHD? Because I absolutely know that one-two years spent on getting a MS finished will be just a waste of my time.</p>
<p>So I feel difficulty when composing a Statement of Purpose. I just don't know in which way I should put the description of my personal experience forward in such a way so it would be clear and laconic. I don't want the reader to be confused about my goals. I don't want my statement of purpose to be a fruit-salad. I want the reader to understand that a PHD in CS is what I need since I am completely determined about my intentions. </p>
<p>A lot of sincere thanks to whoever will answer my question. Maybe, one can give me a link to a sample of SOP similar to my case. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13440,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The best advice any of us could give you is to do an <a href=\"https://www.google.co.nz/#q=statement+of+purpose\" rel=\"nofollow\">internet search</a> for what others have written, and use such examples to help structure your own personal statement.</p>\n\n<p>Essentially, you want the following points:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>What previous experience (particularly research) do you have in this field?</li>\n<li>What are your future research goals? How do these goals tie in with past experiences?</li>\n<li>Why do you want to do this research?</li>\n<li>Why should <em>you</em> be chosen above other applicants?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>No one here is going to help you write it or proof-read your statements. If you have further <strong>general</strong> (i.e. not field-specific) questions that are well structured, they are much more likely to elicit a good response than the floundering \"where do I start?\" that I see here.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13441,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I think you've essentially written an outline of your SoP in the question. Namely, </p>\n\n<p>\"I'm interested in theoretical computer science and mathematics. I've worked in differential geometry, and here are my results, but I'm now fascinated by algorithms research, and I have extensive math background\". </p>\n\n<p>Now just expand on it. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/14 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13419",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9011/"
]
|
13,425 | <p>I am working towards a PhD. My supervisor and I decided upon a topic which interested both of us. I did an exhaustive literature survey, and found that there have been heavy work in this area in the past 2-3 years. The problem statement we started with seems to have been primarily solved, and now extensions to those are appearing in top journals and conferences.</p>
<p>Now, he feels that the work remaining in the area is not worth a PhD so we should look for something else, but he still asked me to explore the area. Now, I am clueless what exactly I am supposed to do and where to look for new problems (given that I have already invested my first year into this along with the course work).
Is it normal during the PhD that the problem that you expected to have not been mostly worked upon, already has so much work done ?</p>
<p>Now, in this case, how should one proceed to look for new problems or extensions of the problem that are worth a PhD ?</p>
<p>My area is Computer Science.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13426,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>With the vast output of science it is not surprising that more may be done than what might appear at first. Science is about advancing science and so if your original question has been answered the question becomes what is not answered? A key aspect of all research is that new question spring out of answering (or trying to) question. This leads to the point that one must read up on the literature in the field of interest so that you can identify the new questions that emerge. This is one way of interpreting your advisors suggestion. </p>\n\n<p>It will be very difficult to isolate oneself with a question since others will likely arrive at similar ideas sooner or later. Defining a PhD study can therefore be tricky since it means working on some line of questions for several years. \"Knowing your opposition\" is therefore a good thing. You need to read up on material not only to identify unsolved questions but also to get a sense of what others are working on. Going to key conferences in your subject is one good way to see what is going on.</p>\n\n<p>At the end, I want to add that I do not think it is your sole responsibility to do all this, after all, your advisor should now more about the field and who is doing what among peers. Getting a PhD is about learning to become an independent researcher and to ask too much of you early on is thus not realistic. What you can do is as stated earlier to read up on literature and build your own picture of the (sub-)field. You will need this knowledge under any circumstance.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13427,
"author": "Nicholas",
"author_id": 1424,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1424",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Don't consider your time reviewing the field necessarily wasted. You say that you've discovered that the research topic that you wished to pursue has already been thoroughly investigated. If this is true, then you are in the happy position of finding this out <em>now</em> before having invested more of your time.</p>\n\n<p>Now, <em>is</em> it indeed true that the topic has been exhausted? Perhaps this is the basis of your supervisor's request that you continue reading around the topic. Is there a line of investigation still remaining that you can work on? Are you sure all the extensions to the primary findings have been looked at? Is there a way of extending into new and unexpected territory?</p>\n\n<p>On this last point, <strong>talking to many other people in the field</strong> - or closely related fields - might spark off ideas in your head. Discuss with them whether they think all aspects of the topic have been considered. Find people who are not experts in the specific topic, but are conversant with it who might offer a difference perspective. These people might draw you toward research across two fields. Can the results of the research topic you were looking to work on be extended into other, surprising areas?</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/15 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13425",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2823/"
]
|
13,431 | <p>I want to continue working on the research I used to work on when I was in school.
The thing is that I am not a student anymore, and I also do not work for the company that works on the research project I used to work on. It used to work on the research project by myself while I was in school (a little help from professors), meaning I can probably work/project on it by myself.</p>
<p>My question is that since I am not in school anymore, do I need to concern the license issue as commercial? All I want to do is do my personal/individual research project and submit a work to academic purpose, such as journal or conference. I see some software or programming library I am using say "Acedemy" or "Commercial", and since this is for the academic purpose, I am not so sure which one I need to follow.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13432,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You need to read the exact terms of the licenses, and see what they call “academic” or “commercial”. There is no general definition, these types of licenses depend entirely on the software publisher.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13434,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In adddition to @F'x's point:<br>\nAs your situation is different from both the usual academic and the usual commercial situations, maybe you could email the developer/author/maintainer of the library. </p>\n\n<p>Whatever the license says, software licenses are almost always non-exclusive*. That means whoever holds the copyright to the software can grant you another license that covers your use of the library. This can be as easy as an email saying \"go ahead and use it under the terms of the academic license\" and would give both sides legal certainty. </p>\n\n<p>* Or at least, software with exclusive license usually doesn't make its way legally into the public. Although one could think of an exclusive license granted to the public...</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/15 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13431",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9018/"
]
|
13,435 | <p><sub>
Even though title itself seems quite similar to other questions asked here, my question is a bit different from other similar questions. I know it's a bit long, but I do appreciate anyone who has a read through it. </sub></p>
<p>I am a Ph.D. student in UK and it has been 5 months since I started. My topic was something completely new (to me) so as one might guess, I've spent these 5 months reviewing the literature and covering what I didn't know. Problems started right here.</p>
<p>I am working at a Research Institute that has expertise on something totally different than my Ph.D. (let's name it field A, and name my Ph.D. field B). Simply, A and B have nothing in common (except both are engineering topics, but sub-fields are different). As a result, this laboratory doesn't have the required equipment or facilities that I need for my Ph.D. <strong>most importantly</strong>, there is not a single person around me in the lab who has a single bit of knowledge about my topic, thus no practical help or chances of hands on experience. Speaking of the good parts; I am getting a proper work experience (since this research institute has industrial focus), my scholarship is a substantial amount and my supervisor (even though he is sort of clueless about my topic, he is a <em>huge</em> figure in field A) is quite impressed with my progress.</p>
<p>But, as always, I have an alternative. There is another lab in my university which has expertise on field B (my Ph.D.). In this lab, there are people who have expertise in field B and of course, director of the lab is a powerful figure in field B. I know it sounds good so far, but here are the cons of this alternative: Lab director can't give any sort of guarantees regarding a scholarship (which means I have to pay tuition fees as well, good old UK) and wants me to work in a new project(a new field, field C). This field C, again completely different from A and B, is a newer topic compared to B and there are lots of research going on in this field. Field B is sort of an established field, I am just trying to squeeze whatever's left out it.</p>
<p>So on one side, I have a good working experience, Ph.D. in field B, an impressed supervisor, yet no practical help about field B or collaboration whatsoever. On the other side, I have a group of people who have expertise in field B and C, yet no money. I personally don't have any problems about changing my Ph.D. from B to C, the only disadvantage will be losing 6 months of work and naturally, getting 6 months of extension in the end. On the plus side, I already have a paper waiting to be published (in field A though, not in my Ph.D. topic field B). Therefore, these 6 months won't be "that" lost.</p>
<p>So, both sides are waiting to hear from me as soon as possible. I have to make a decision by this Friday. Last thing that should be mentioned is my current lab is located in city 1, whereas the other one is located in city 2. I hate city 1 (current city), whereas I am in love with city 2.</p>
<p>Financially, I am promised by the other professor that depending on my performance, I can get funding. I do know I can't trust this, though I believe I can cover my expenses throughout my Ph.D. including tuition fees. So, money is not a big problem right now.</p>
<p>If I go to the other lab, field C will be my Ph.D. as well as my work, hence shielding me from dividing into two as I do right now for field A and B.</p>
<p>My question is simple, what would you do if you were me? I have exhausted my friends and my family about this issue and I need a fresh pair of eyes and neurons to help me out. I do appreciate any questions and comments. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13436,
"author": "Kogesho",
"author_id": 7773,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7773",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Whichever makes you a happier person. Life is short and not worth spending 5 years in a condition you don't like. If you have the money, go for it. If not, here is my longer answer.</p>\n\n<p>The work experience you are getting in field A should not be a priority because you are there to do research, to contribute to science. Work experience in that field should be just a tool so that you can earn money and live properly. The excellency of people in field A are also irrelevant, as your research is in field B.</p>\n\n<p>But, life does not always present us the best options. If you cannot get a scholarship when you switch to field B, then I would definitely stay at where you are now. You say you can cover expenses, but if you don't get a scholarship, how much will you lose in 5 years? That's a big number and imo not worth it (unless you have a million in some account)</p>\n\n<p>I would stay there and from time to time, consult professors that work in field B. After some time, as you dig deeper, you will know more than those guys anyway.</p>\n\n<p>It really depends on your budget I guess. I am not rich so I don't like the idea of Ph.D. level scientists' paying for it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13443,
"author": "Nobody",
"author_id": 546,
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"text": "<p>I would move to another lab if I were you. The reason is, I want to do my PhD and the research in the field I like. Otherwise, why would I do it?</p>\n\n<p>After reading your question a few times, my impression is that you like field B the most, field C the next, field A the last. Please correct me if I am wrong.</p>\n\n<p>If you stay in your current lab, everything will be the same as the past 5 months. You have the money alright. What else do you have? You don't have experts in B around you. You don't have equipments/facilities to do research in B. It looks like there is no way to finish PhD in B in that lab.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, you'll have experts in B to talk to you and equipments available if you move to the other lab. There is a good chance for you to finish the PhD in B if you have a choice to do B.</p>\n\n<p>Field B is probably a dead end, you are trying to squeeze something out of it. What if you find nothing after 2 years of squeezing with or without help from other experts in B? What are you going to do? Do you want to do A? I would not if I were you because I don't like A. But, you can choose to do C if you move.</p>\n\n<p>I think the lab director says he can't give any sort of guarantees regarding a scholarship because he wants you to do C. The scholarship is the incentive. If you don't have problem changing from B to C, I think you will get some sort of financial help after you move there (no guarantee, of course). If my interpretation of your question is correct, C is acceptable to you, at least it's better than A.</p>\n\n<p>This is what I would do if I were you, I would ask the other lab if there is some chance to get some financial help if I move there. If the answer is not 100% negative, I would move. (I must be able to get some food to eat while I am doing research.)</p>\n\n<p>If the answer is an absolute no, I would stay and look for other opportunities to move later on.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/15 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13435",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9019/"
]
|
13,444 | <p>There are quite a few question aiming at or hinting towards avoiding academic burn-out, but I couldn't come across one that targets interaction with a colleague that has suffered from a serious burn-out, which can be very tricky as I am learning nowadays.</p>
<p>Background: A colleague of mine (office-mate actually) has suffered a pretty major crisis over the past year and had to take an extended leave of absence due to stress. The person in question was/is close to disputation but due to the fact that they could not handle being at work anymore, everything was postponed. </p>
<p>After several months away, my colleague is trying to get back in the game by starting off 20%. I heard that it didn't work out all too good the first attempt, a couple of weeks later they are attempting to start again. As we were chatting the other day, I realized that I can't really say much without tripping my colleague off, in the sense that the subject often raises old issues somehow and causes some frustration/stress for my colleague. That partially originates from the fact that most of what we have in common and talk about is work oriented somehow. </p>
<p>My natural reflex when I realize that the subject causes discomfort is to not feed the conversation and attempt to change the subject. But that doesn't really work too good, as it's not very discrete. I also suspect that specially avoiding small-talk with my office mate isn't very nice either, I don't want the person to feel isolated and alone. I mean the fact that a person had a stress-related problem, it's not something that one should be ashamed or embarrassed about, it shouldn't be awkward socially, but somehow it does feel like that.</p>
<p>Does anyone here have any experience about how to tackle a situation like this? </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13445,
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"text": "<p>It is a tricky situation, and there is no 'guidebook' way of helping your colleague or how to deal with their recovery - I can only offer an account of when I burnt out.</p>\n\n<p>When I burnt out, my colleagues - both work and academic, rallied around and helped me get back on my feet. The way they did it was to be there and to simply <strong>listen</strong> - this was the key thing that helped me rise up. They also kept things as normal as possible and understood the times when I needed to vent - which over <strong>time</strong>, became less and less.</p>\n\n<p>They also gave me my <strong>space</strong> - like an open invitation for me to join in the conversations or activities when I felt I could.</p>\n\n<p>Having also been in the situation from the other side, listening and giving time and space did help.</p>\n\n<p>One more thing, you have to take care of your own well being as well - you are doing the right thing, by being there, it is not an easy road - but believe me, you <em>are</em> making a difference.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13451,
"author": "Community",
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"text": "<p>We can give suggestions, but the only person who knows how your colleague wants to be treated is your colleague. I would suggest discussing it with them directly. Maybe something like this:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I didn't realize until now how much I talk about work. I don't want to make you uncomfortable by bringing it up, so if I do, feel free to stop me or change the subject.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
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| 2013/10/16 | [
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"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
13,446 | <p>Often, when speaking English in research, you can find a great variety of (mostly, non-native) accents. Since I started moving in academic circles and a more international environment, I slowly learned to understand some of the accents much better. I can currently understand well most mild accents and some specific accents even if they are strong, but there are still both <em>researchers with very strong accents</em> and <em>types of accents I have a very hard time understanding</em>.</p>
<p>As networking, communicating, and generally talking to other researchers is very important, it got me wondering about what I can to to <strong>overcome this "accent barrier"</strong>.</p>
<p>I've encountered this "accent barrier" in at least three different settings, and there's always problems arising for that:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>speakers and presenters on conferences (or other big events)</p>
<p>I usually try and decide from the slides (and what I can understand) how relevant I think the presented material is for me, and then I would read the paper later on my own.</p>
<p>Still, it means that I could <em>miss some interesting papers</em>, <em>miss some of the authors insight on the problem only mentioned in the presentation</em> and <em>loose a certain amount of time, because listening to a talk is much faster than reading</em> (especially if one just wants to understand the basic idea).</p></li>
<li><p>poster sessions and social events on conferences / other manifestations</p>
<p>This one is a bit more tricky since it's more personal interaction. I would usually try and ask the person to clarify or reformulate the question, and then if I still don't understand try talking about something related to "keywords" that I succeeded to identify. If it's a social occasion, I would try to look attentive, smile, and excuse myself the first acceptable opportunity I get.</p>
<p>And again, I might be missing on some great ideas this way. Missing making some potentially useful contacts with the people from the community, and even possibly looking rude if I didn't understand something crucial.</p></li>
<li><p>interactions with people from you team/close environment.</p>
<p>With this one, I'm totally at a loss. I know how much team dynamics is important. If something like that happened, I would probably try and avoid one-on-one communication with that person as much as possible. Still, it would probably make me feel constantly uncomfortable.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>What <strong>are some suggestions on how to act in such situations?</strong> They generally make me feel uncomfortable, and often afraid that I'll offend somebody. Again, I do believe that a little practice and effort can go a long way to understanding different accents, especially when they are not <em>too strong</em>. But (and I guess this also depends on ones mother tongue) I think a lot of people have problems with (probably different) strong accents.</p>
| [
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"answer_id": 13448,
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"text": "<p>Accents are tricky... It's a problem that one often hears/talks about at conferences. English being the <em>de facto</em> language of communicating science (well, anything really) internationally, I feel native speakers of English are at a major disadvantage when it comes to accents (perhaps it's only fair since they likely have an easier time reading/writing in English). </p>\n\n<p>It might be counter-intuitive but, a native speaker has a very clear idea just <em>how</em> a particular word or expression is supposed to sound like. As a non-native speaker to two languages I speak most in my daily life (including English), I have to point out that learning a language is hard work, especially later in life. I was lucky enough to learn these languages when I was young enough, and my teachers have always been native speakers. Not many are so lucky... </p>\n\n<p>That being said, what can one do when talking to a person with a very heavy accent? Allow me to put forth my two-cents; </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>lecture/talk:</strong> I don't really have much else to say other than try to take notes of the subjects, figures and references the speaker mentions. Then try to keep your communication on a written basis. While it's not very nice, you can always excuse yourself for misunderstanding or not-catching up with the talk and ask for details that way.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>poster sessions:</strong> I think this is a two-sided coin; if you are the person visiting a poster, and can't seem to communicate with the presenter, it's essentially same as above, get the headlines and move along, then keep communication on a written basis. On the other hand, if you are the presenter it's more tricky. I have had occasions where a very interested researcher (young or senior) comes forward and tries to either fire shots at the project or inquire more about details of what I'm presenting, for instance how it's relevant for their work etc. I hate it when they have so much to say and just can't get themselves understood. I suppose it's a matter of being polite and trying to get them to rephrase, help out with choices of words (important to be very subtle) etc. If all else fails, resort to the ugly backup plan, ask them to mail you with their questions instead.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>colleague:</strong> I think it's essentially the most relaxed case, just help the colleague to formulate his/her questions or ideas. If you have a good enough relationship, advice them to improve their english and make it clear (in a friendly manner) that the impact of heavy accent is a hinder for their own success in communicating with others, and ultimately their chances of succeeding in academia. Give tips about how they can improve. It's of course problematic if the colleague in question is significantly more senior than you. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I know it's not much but I hope it helps anyways. Finally, if there's a particular type of accent that you find really hard to decipher, expose yourself more to it! Maybe that helps with the choice of the next vacation spot? ;)</p>\n"
},
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"answer_id": 13449,
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"text": "<p>I'm not a native English speaker but I do understand your frustration. Here are some of my experiences:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Embrace the elephant in the room</strong></p>\n\n<p>Time to time I found people around me are too \"polite\" to not tell me that they don't understand what I say. I have had a course evaluation saying that \"the instructor is great but time to time I had hard time understand some words he said. For example, it took me a few weeks to realize he meant 'result' when he said 'ray-sult'.\" I was actually amazed by how much money this student spent to be confused.</p>\n\n<p>Now, at the beginning of the course, I surrender myself and introduce the elephant. \"I have accent, and if any of my pronunciations is off, you're more than welcome to correct me. Your input will help me to become a better speaker.\" Then move on.</p>\n\n<p>I think the situation is the same in the native speaker's shoes. If you have trouble understanding a colleague. Tactfully ask for a few repetitions in an informal conversation, and then confess that you sometimes may not catch the full gist of the speech, and proceed to ask for a blanket excuse in the future should you need another repetition again.</p>\n\n<p><strong>\"Fully understand\" is likely an illusion</strong></p>\n\n<p>Your point about missing important materials in conference is well taken. Here are two reflections I have: i) realize that even you get the whole sentence, it's still a foreign language to the speaker and there will always be some loss in translation. ii) In a conference, it's probably hard to pick up all the little bits of information. On this point, you can Zen that over like watching a firework; let that go. Or if the curiosity is killing you, approach the speaker after the talk and clarify. If the conversation goes well you can consider exchanging business cards, and ask for a copy of their presentation over the e-mail.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Hold on to an ad hoc interpreter</strong></p>\n\n<p>When I teach in foreign countries, there would be English speakers whose speeches are beyond my cognitive reach. This is how I deal with it: i) Keep smiling, and rephrase the question as best as I can, and I know I'd fail, then repeat step i) for a few more times and keep calm and smiling, ii) eventually some participants who are more proficient would volunteer to translate. If no one does, embrace the elephant in the room and say \"I guess I'm a bit stuck here, would anyone tell me what I missed in the question?\" iii) once the question is clarified, answer it, facing the original questioner. For myself, I prefer to slowly pace up to the board, and write down my talking points. I think this would enhance the questioner's understanding if he/she has trouble listening to my speech.</p>\n\n<p>Often enough, no one would help. And the questioner may just wave his/her hand and give up. Don't be frustrated. Invite the person to stay and talk, and perhaps then you can employ things like paper and pen to better understand each other.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Use writing</strong></p>\n\n<p>When communicating with colleagues who have heavy accents, I'd also rely a bit more on writing. Using e-mails, or using a white board in a meeting may help. On that note, I also bring a stack of index cards with me to meetings and classes.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Use international \"language\"</strong></p>\n\n<p>Smile, drawing, ... etc. are always good substitute or supplement to verbal communication. Avoid using very specific body gestures because one friendly gesture here may deem insulting in another culture.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Learn some foreign languages</strong></p>\n\n<p>It's actually quite interesting that comparing to my colleagues who are native speakers, I actually have an easier time filtering other countries' accents. I attributed to the fact that when sitting through English classes, our teachers put extra emphasis on highlightin how our mother tongue may cause some English words to be mispronounced. Then in university I picked up a couple foreign languages, and then now I have virtually no problem listening to people from those countries speaking English.</p>\n\n<p>It may actually be impractical to learn all the languages. Here are a couple tricks I have used: First, just learn their basic pronunciation system first and if you have time, figure out how to say some basic <a href=\"http://www.towerofbabelfish.com/the-method/vocabulary/base-vocabulary-list/#.Ul6VVxB2GrY\">general words</a>. In the process, evaluate how the system may work if it's used to pronounce English. For example, Japanese system does not differentiate r and l, so you may expect hearing \"running\" and \"learning\" or \"lighting\" and \"writing\" pronounced identically. Mandarin does not have the -th and Th-, so Mandarin speakers may compensate with -ve and F- (e.g. A \"fief\" instead of a \"thief\".) On the contrary, Mandarin has an elaborated series of s or s-like sounds: si, zi, and ci, with different tongue-teeth positions and amounts of air blowing through the lips. So, you may expect emphasis on some syllables that would have been only lightly pronounced if spoken by a native speaker. Italian speakers, on the other hand, tend to clearly pronounce syllable-by-syllable and attach an -e or -a after some words. Once we put the same nouns spelled in English and Italian side by side, the reason would become apparent.</p>\n\n<p>Second, read some books on how to get rid of accents or how to speak in British and American accent. Most of these books would have a chapter or so dedicated to explain major mistakes made by speakers from different systems. For example, Japanese speakers may have an extra \"-gu\" after all words ending with -ing; Chinese speakers may not distinguish clearly between -s and -th. These tips are not for native speakers, but by learning some major traits, native speakers can quickly filter the noise and get to the content.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Make an effort</strong></p>\n\n<p>It takes time to understand accents. But as you speak to a certain foreign person more and more, you should be more at ease. This is particularly important when dealing with your colleagues. Keep talking and keep categorizing their speech traits, and you'll get better at talking to them. Most of these advices may make you feel vulnerable or even stupid, but as an ESL and also a foreign language learner, when it comes to language, I think we cannot be overly reserved.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13452,
"author": "eykanal",
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"text": "<p>The other answers here are fantastic. Just to add my experience, <strong>know that these conversations will take more of your time.</strong> I'm in the US, and I've been working with a team in India for some of our coding for the past few months. I quickly realized that simply slowing everything down by about 50% improved communication significantly. Speak slower, wait longer for responses, provide and ask for clarification about twice as much... you'll have much better success if you simply accept that what would be a 15 minute conversation with a local colleague may be a 30 or 45 minute conversation with someone less familiar with the language.</p>\n\n<p>On a related note, not all conversations have to be in person. I've had a lot of success with one of our contractors <strong>limiting our interaction to email and IM</strong>. This person is very uncomfortable speaking English, and using text-based communication has made our communication more painless and more frequent. There are still many instances when each of us has to ask for clarification, and when using IM I definitely slow down my own typing so as not to dominate the conversation, but it has helped immensely.</p>\n"
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| 2013/10/16 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13446",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
13,453 | <p>I am a 4th year computer engineering undergraduate student who will apply for Ph.D. programs this winter/spring, for the next fall semester. I have decided to become an academic 2 years ago, and head of department said "keep your gpa high and you will be fine". Well, I have increased my gpa, from 2.5 to 3.5 but now I see that I need research experience to be admitted to good programs. ( I can't afford masters program)</p>
<p>I thought I didn't need a research experience, yet while I was thinking that, I see that undergraduate students all over the world were doing research. I admit I was naive to think so but I was guided that way. So few months ago I am trying to learn about admission process and I see many people over the internet with tons of research experience and even papers waiting to be published, or already published. And the most important part of SOP is research experience.</p>
<p>And guess what? There is no lab at my university. And not a single instructor that does research in the field I want. It is a very small department (5 full time assistant professors).</p>
<p>So obviously, I cannot get into a top or very good program with these conditions, and they have every right to decline me. But I believe it is my right to get into a good valid program that matches my interests. I shouldn't take the whole responsiblity of non existent opportunities that other students had in other universities.</p>
<p>I would like to know, from experienced people, about what I should do to get into a Ph.D. program without direct proof of research capabilities. No lab work, no research, nada. Just reading many papers in the field I am interested in for last few months, and high motivation.</p>
<p>Or is it a point where I should say "That's life and never fair" and have plan B and plan C?</p>
<p>Thank you </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13455,
"author": "Moriarty",
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"text": "<p>If you need research experience for a program, <em>then you need research experience</em> and there's not much you can do about it besides gaining that experience. Even if you did gain entry into such a program, you will lack the research skills of your peers. You'll be starting off on the back foot.</p>\n\n<p>A PhD is a long-term commitment to poorly paid slave labour. What if you find out you don't even like research, 1 year in? I would strongly advise the \"try before you buy\" approach. Get a Master's degree or a postgraduate diploma, that has a reasonable research component.</p>\n\n<p>A good PhD program will want you to prove that you have the commitment and research skills to pull it off. Once you can do that, you have a good chance for admission. If research experience is a <em>requirement</em>, then you can't just shrug it off.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 55592,
"author": "Community",
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"text": "<p>I agree with the above answer by Moriarty, but do not believe that your hopes are gone. I have been active in analysing the academic market for a while now, and I used to think that it was necessary for Graduate students to go to to a tier 1 institution in their respective field, if they wanted to one day have a TT position in a respected university. While it doesn't hurt to do so, you should apply to more programs, that may not be ranked so high, but trust me, if you do well, you will have an equal chance to everyone else to get a TT position (tenure track position) at a respected university. Apply to programs such as ERAU (PhD ECE) or UA. Take on a research interest that is big right now, such as Radar Signal Processing, Electromagnetics, Big Data, Cyber Security, and do well in it. As one who is actively involved in advising and has talked to students, faculty, etc., as well as my own experience, you will be just fine. If you are going to only try for a tier 1 school, then it may be more competitive obviously, but in my humble opinion, is not necessary. I can tell you one thing, if you get into any PhD program I'm on familiar with institutions in the U.S., and a select few in other countries), in the USA, with a PhD program and research component, and you get your PhD, and you do well, you will be in the same boat as everyone else. If you really want the name, then finish your PhD where you get in, and then do a postdoc for a year or two at a tier 1 institution. </p>\n\n<p>That being said, ERAU, UA, and many other schools, although may not be ranked as high, are excellent institutions that are not necessarily \"easy\" to get into. </p>\n\n<p>I wish you the best on your future endeavours. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 55597,
"author": "Anonymous Coward",
"author_id": 42180,
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"text": "<p>I met someone in one of the top 10 US CS PhD programs who got in with no research experience. This person said they focused really <em>really</em> hard on the subject GRE and got a very high score (much higher than mine, and I got into the same program, albeit with some modest undergrad research). So it can be done. A masters with a focus on research as others suggested might be less of a gamble though.</p>\n"
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| 2013/10/16 | [
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13,457 | <p>I have no formal work experience. I have a BA in sociology and went into graduate school for education. Instead of following my instincts or really thinking about whether I could teach childhood as a job, I told myself it would feel more natural. It has not.</p>
<p>I will fail this program if I have to teach full-time, which is required to graduate (as is an exam that's so new there are no prep books, and it is required to stay in this program). I am in my mid twenties and have zero formal work experience. Foolishly, I'm one of those people that could barely juggle a full courseload and work. I've always chosen school and realized too late that graduate school was a horrible choice for me. </p>
<p>In terms of anything resembling work, I've assisted as a volunteer in classrooms, written papers and portfolios, and have put two years into this program but am incredibly unhappy and cannot finish, nor do I want to be in this profession anymore. I thought it was the one way to put my useless liberal arts degree into a professional path.</p>
<p>Before that, I went through a year and a half after graduation looking for entry level office job, bookstores, retail...no callbacks. Maybe three interviews in the whole time. Temp agencies stopped responding and when I called one to ask why they weren't calling me in to offer advisement, they said they'd have to call me. I graduated with a 3.0 but my resume was too weak, I guess. I had friends look at it to see that it was passable, but as I said I have no experience and I'm now in my mid-20s. (And for what it's worth, am incredibly ashamed of myself.) No experience, no work. My family says I am "unemployable" and I fear they're right--I was in this program two years and should have pulled out sooner. It looks suspicious. If nothing else, it is damaging because I went to school full-time instead of working. </p>
<p>The time, money, and effort I spent on this makes me feel bad, but the lack of a degree/ANY work experience in all that time makes me feel worse. </p>
<p>So there it is, I have no work experience AND no degree to explain the time gap. Can I salvage this? I feel embarrassed even to put the school on my resume b/c of the lack of a degree, but it's the only thing I have to show for the last few years. </p>
<p>(This is in teaching/early childhood. I don't know how to spin graduate school into first experience in even a basic clerical job.)</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13458,
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"text": "<p>The skills acquired as a graduate student are often very employable outside academia. I was doing a PhD in Linguistics with a focus on corpus linguistics. As part of my education, I learned statistics, Python scripting, Mandarin Chinese and technical writing. Those skills ended up getting me a job offer from a major computer software company, which I accepted and left grad school to take.</p>\n\n<p>You probably have more employable skills than you think. Spend some time thinking about what skills you possess and what professions need those skills. a PhD to your name is not the first thing employers look for - they look for whether you have the skills that they need. </p>\n\n<p>Stop thinking about your degree and start thinking about your skillset.</p>\n"
},
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"answer_id": 13504,
"author": "Faheem Mitha",
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"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't know if I have much of value to add, but here is my two cents for what it is worth.</p>\n\n<p>First it sounds like you have (in your opinion) gone down the wrong path, and are panicking a little bit. This is understandable. The first thing I should say, is, join the club. We've all been there. Everyone makes mistakes. The thing to do it to learn from them, and try not to repeat them. Though this is easier said to done. Also, try not to panic. It really doesn't help. If you are panicking, try to calm down. You could also try things like yoga. It can have a calming effect, apart from the health benefits.</p>\n\n<p>You said you are in your mid-twenties. This is not really old at all (by any definition). Many people at this time in their lives are still trying to figure things out. So, again, don't panic. Spend a little time making a calm assessment of where you want to go, and what you want to do.</p>\n\n<p>@user9042 made some useful suggestions. You said in response that all you wanted is a \"basic entry level office job\". Well, I don't think you do, really. If you have a functioning brain, you would hate it. I think if you are feeling that you want a job, any job, it is because you are feeling demoralized, and like a drowning person, you want a lifebelt to cling to. I think you can aim a little higher than that. Are you actually interested in (for example) statistics and computers/software/programming (per @user9042 posting)? If you are not sure, then I suggest learning a little about them, and seeing what you think. You could start by taking some basic college classes. If you aren't interested in these fields I <em>do not</em> recommend going into them. The world is already too full of programmers who aren't interested in programming and just want to make a fast buck. If you are, then you could consider a graduate degree in these areas and see where it takes you. More generally, you should consider seeing what area of specialization you think you would like. If you are an intelligent person, you probably won't be happy just dropping out of school. Most good jobs these days require some degree of specialization. You say you are \"fed up with school\", but this may just be a reflection of your experience in your particular program.</p>\n\n<p>Specific suggestions - if you want to learn basic computer programming, try learning Python. It is about as accesible as any language out there, and very popular. It is also not a toy language; many people use it for real work, including in research contexts. Are you familiar with the world of free software? If not, try installing Debian and see what you think of it. Debian is a fairly obscure operating system, but also has some claim to be the worlds best. Other similar Linux based operating systems would probably also work. Check out unix.stackexchange.com for example.</p>\n\n<p>Learning on your own about a more academic discipline like statistics is more difficult, but you could take a look at R.</p>\n\n<p>You can at least respond intelligently to questions people have put here, which is more than many people seem to be able to manage.</p>\n\n<p>Admittedly, none of this really has much to do with academia.</p>\n\n<p>Also, again, I suggest revising your question to include the information that you have given in the comments, so people don't have to look all over the place for it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13522,
"author": "Nobody",
"author_id": 546,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/546",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You are frustrated because you feel that you are stuck. You want to leave academia and don't know how to find a job outside.</p>\n<p>I'll answer a practical issue first. When you write your resume, you can say</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Education</p>\n<p>BA in sociology, University A</p>\n<p>Graduate study in early childhood teaching, University B</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Prepare to explain why you did not have graduate degree from University B. Your explanation can be that you are not interested in early childhood teaching anymore. This is not uncommon. Many people change their career in their twenties, thirties or even much later.</p>\n<p>As your employable skills, I believe you already have some. You may not know you have them. For example, writing is a very important skill. You may be surprised to find out many workers don't know how to write when you enter the job market. If you don't have the skills current in use, then acquire them. Go to job training. There are plenty available. Find what you like to do and acquire the skills needed.</p>\n<p>Now, back to academia. I don't know what you don't like about your current graduate school. Early childhood? Teaching? Or graduate school in general? I cannot tell from your question. It seems to me that you are worried about the upcoming full time teaching program. I guess you need to be with kindergarten kids for a while. If this is the problem, I think you entered a wrong area. If one wants to study early childhood teaching, of course he/she needs to go through such a real program. Otherwise, everything you have studied is just on the paper, no real value.</p>\n<p>If you don't like graduate school, then I would advise you to leave as early as possible. If it's the program you don't like, I would say you should consider changing your field of study. Only you know the answer. Good luck!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 19825,
"author": "Karen",
"author_id": 14039,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14039",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Short answer is yes, it is so easy to salvage the situation that over half my friends can say ‘been there, done that’. A book I found helpful at the time is ‘What Color Is Your Parachute’, by Richard Bolles, which is about and figuring out what you want to do, and finding work you like.</p>\n\n<p>Things that I or friends have done while straight out of school and clueless: SAT/GRE tutoring, boring clerical work, low paying internships, living with parents while looking for work, or networking with friends, family, and random strangers and finding good paying jobs within a month or two. I’d strongly recommend the last one, although you can get by on the others. </p>\n\n<p>You just need to find a starting point. Ask around your family and friends to shadow people at the office and get an idea of what goes on in different departments and industries. Once you have a clue what you want beyond ‘earn money’, it will be easier to focus your job search efforts. It sounds like so far you’ve just thrown your resume into the air, and gotten a copy to recruiters who have a few hundred more just like it. Instead, figure out something you’d like to try doing, and make an effort to meet people in that field, and ask them for work. </p>\n\n<p>You mention that you have no skills, and then you mention you’ve taught, so you can do public speaking. You’re a graduate student, so you’re an above average writer, and probably know how to think. If you’ve worked with kids, you’ve probably done customer service type work with their parents. You say you’ll have an inexplicable time gap. Just say ‘I was in graduate school studying X, but decided that field wasn’t for me, so I left.’ I used to explain a one year gap as ‘A bunch of unrelated short term jobs that wouldn’t fit on a resume.’</p>\n\n<p>Think about things you enjoy. Do you like writing? Solving puzzles? Thinking about problems, and coming up with solutions? Helping people solve their problems? Organizing and carrying through on your commitments? People skills? Marketing involves a lot of writing and strategizing, computer programming is all about solving puzzles (why I love it), or customer service lets you help people while puzzling out what their problems really are. People skills will help you out in any field you choose.</p>\n\n<p>You haven’t ruined your life, or even your entire 20’s. Quit beating yourself up, and start actively looking for something different.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13457",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9038/"
]
|
13,460 | <p>What information is important to provide when citing from a PhD thesis that has appeared as book?</p>
<ul>
<li>The publisher (even if it is a 'dubious' one that might vanish in the near future)</li>
<li>or the institution and that it is a phd thesis.</li>
</ul>
<p>As for bibtex, I wonder whether I should use the @book or the @phdthesis entry type.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13461,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Provide the citation form that you think will be <strong>most useful to readers in the middle or long term</strong>, or <strong>provide both</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>If it's self-published, then cite it as you would cite a thesis. On the other hand, if it was published in book form by a respectable publisher (i.e. it will be easy to find 10 years from now), then cite the book. This is commonly done in some fields of humanities.</p>\n\n<p>Citing both is also an option, and it does not have a downside, except it's a bit longer.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13463,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If a thesis is published as a book with an ISBN number (or ISSN-number as is the case with theses in my university system) then the thesis is traceable and identifiable. There may even be a doi associated with it. An unpublished thesis can of course be traced back to the department where it was produced, or at least the university. But, often such theses are found on fragile perhaps unmaintained web-pages with uncertain life-span. So given the information you provide both can be quite fragile, but with the published version the traceability might be better.</p>\n\n<p>One has to realize that theses are treated and stored in varying ways in different university systems. In some cases there are central repositories for unpublished thesis, in others there are not. They may even only exist as working copies for the examination committee. In my system they are printed and provided as part of a publication series (with and ISSN and ISBN number). So while there is nothing wrong with citing a PhD thesis using as you suggest bibTeX' @phdthesis, I would argue that using a published @book is better because of the official traceability (provided it has ISSN/ISBN/doi).</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13460",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8601/"
]
|
13,462 | <p>I have a doubt regarding the Statement of Purpose for grad school.</p>
<p>Toward the end of the essay, should I specify the list of professors who I am interested to work with? For example:</p>
<p><em>"...Since research in this field is very active in Dr. A's, Dr. B’s, Dr. C’s groups at XXX University, I would like to apply to your program..."</em></p>
<p>My concern is: though doing so may indicate that I have read about the professors and their works (which is a plus I suppose), it is risky at the same time. What if Dr.[A-C] are not able to accept more people to their labs? Will the admission committee automatically disqualify my application in this case?</p>
<p>Hence, I would love to hear more advices from you of how to play it safe: whether such specifications are needed, and how to phrase them properly.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13487,
"author": "JeffE",
"author_id": 65,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you have <em>specific and substantial</em> reasons for wanting to work with a particular professor, definitely mention them by name and say why. But do not lie, do not bluff, and do not just drop names and paper titles. Admissions committees already know you can use Google; anyone can read the department web page. But actually incorporating appropriate technical details from someone's papers into your own research plans will generally draw their attention and impress them.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What if Dr.[A-C] are not able to accept more people to their labs? Will the admission committee automatically disqualify my application in this case?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It should. If you want to be a student in department X specifically to work with Prof. A, but Prof. A is not taking students, then joining department X anyway would be stupid. In that case, you should <em>hope</em> that Department X rejects your application.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13491,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1429",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p><strong>Disclaimer:</strong> I am still a graduate student and my experience is limited to my own application process and as a student member of my department's graduate admissions committee.</p>\n\n<p>I have seen that specific reasons are almost always better than general reasons. When I was going through the application process, my SOP always mentioned current specific projects that my POI's were doing and how I could be an optimal choice for those projects in the near future with my background and current research. This approach seems to have worked well enough for me. </p>\n\n<p>During multiple interviews in the application process, my SOP was often alluded to, especially in context with these specific projects and my fit with them.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13462",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7401/"
]
|
13,464 | <p>This is one bit of academic etiquette I'm not sure about. When I write to another researcher, a peer (we're both professors). I've never exchanged with before and never met him but I know of him (and he probably knows of me).</p>
<p>Erring on the side of formality, I write to him <em>“Dear professor Mortimer”</em>. I sign with my first name, because that's how I've always signed my emails (there's a formal signature block below, with full name and contact details) and I think it indicates a willingness to be called by my first name (which I prefer, but I don't want to force people one way or the other).</p>
<p>Is that going to be well received? Will people take the hint? Or should I just start using first names from the start? (it does sound weird to write <em>“dear Philipp”</em> to someone you don't know)</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13465,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It is of course never wrong to use the title of the person to whom you write. In general I think it is fine to use Dr. since that is the degree most have. This may not work so well in cultures where titles are more of an obsession or where hierarchy is still well established. If the person writing is a professor, then you are of course writing from the top position and so you will either direct letters to someone at the same level or lower. This simplifies things compared to if you, yourself were not at the professor level. </p>\n\n<p>As an editor of a journal I often use the term Colleague instead of Dr. this or Professor that. This is because the tile may not be completely obvious from the manuscript and I do not permit myself time to Google every author to find out. Since I am also a professor, it feels relatively safe to call everyone a colleague.</p>\n\n<p>To sign off I often use my first name except if the mail has some formal aspect where, if it was a letter, I would have used my full name. In all my e-mail correspondence, I have found almost without exception, that once I sign with my first name, the mail reply will inevitably greet me by first name and be signed by a first name. I try to be a little sensitive about it but not overly so; I have \"my\" culture, the person I correspond with his or hers and none is above the other in my view. So In any correspondence I will open the first mail with Dear Colleague or Dear Dr. So-and-so. If the response is signed by first name then: titles away. Otherwise I will countersign correspondence with first name to break the ice.</p>\n\n<p>It seems e-mail is often more forgiving than regular letters or traditional contacts. I think internet has an informal context which implicitly signals to everyone that it is less formal. I have not seen research on this but I can see, for example how students can ask quite blunt questions over e-mail while almost trembling and excusing themselves when standing at my office door (not that I am in any way trying to be intimidating).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13471,
"author": "Dirk",
"author_id": 529,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/529",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Using titles may sometimes be not that easy. E.g. in Germany you would write \"Sehr geehrter Herr Prof. Dr. Smith\" while in other countries one never uses the \"Dr.\" if a \"Prof.\" is present. Moreover, I've heard that some people would even prefer to see their kind of Dr. (e.g. Dr.Ing.).</p>\n\n<p>In cases I am not sure about the title I usually go for the full name, i.e. start with \"Dear James Smith,\". If you know the full name this is not wrong and I think only very few people will mind if no titles are given.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13464",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700/"
]
|
13,466 | <p>The title mostly says it all. </p>
<p>I am writing an article on a rarely researched topic in my field - 4-5 articles exist, as far as I know. </p>
<p>I recently published a related article, still making this topic a rarely researched one.</p>
<p>Would it be a bad practice to include my own published article in the literature review?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13467,
"author": "silvado",
"author_id": 3890,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3890",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>No, not at all. You should cover all publications which fall within the scope of the review, and if one of them happens to be a paper of yourself, then of course you still have to cover that in your review. Just make sure that you try to be <strong>objective</strong> in the way you discuss it. Best practice would be to review your paper as you would review a paper by any other author.</p>\n\n<p>Maybe you have a coauthor in the review who was not coauthor on the research paper? Ask him/her to do the review section about that research paper.</p>\n\n<p>Also note the positive aspect of this situation: having published a research paper in the area you are reviewing gives you more credibility as an author of a review in that area.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13475,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>No, I don't think its particularly bad practice at all, assuming that the paper is indeed relevant to the topic, rather than being a stretch.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>The reader is reading a review paper to get a picture of the field as a whole - by not including your own papers, especially in a small field, you are in effect denying them an understanding of a significant percentage of the topic.</li>\n<li>Many fields have review papers invited (or proposed as \"Would you like to invite...\") by people who could be considered experts in that field. I think there's a pretty clear expectation that the people best qualified to write a review work in the field, and may end up mentioning their own papers.</li>\n<li>In meta-analysis, failing to include your own papers (or including your own unpublished work) has the potential to bias your findings. While your paper might not be a meta-analysis, the principle still holds - the paper should be an in-depth review of the available literature.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>That being said, treat your own work with an even hand and, as has been suggested, possibly have someone else read it over to make sure no \"Clearly the right answer is (Me, 2013) whose staggering genius is beyond the scope of this paper\" has slipped in.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16227,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is common to cite own works in science, and this is not considered a bad tone.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16231,
"author": "Darren Ong",
"author_id": 11047,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11047",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I just received a referee report a few weeks ago where my referee told me I needed to cite more of my own papers in the literature review section. So it definitely doesn't seem like it is bad practice, especially in mathematics.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13466",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
]
|
13,468 | <p>Do you think it is against the academic code of conduct to present a paper at a conference or a departmental seminar that has already been submitted to a journal for publication?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13470,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>There are two aspects to your question:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>“Duplicating” a publication by having both a conference paper and a journal paper about it.</strong></p>\n\n<p>This has been <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5820/2700\">discussed here before</a>, and a short summary is that this usually not a problem: apart from Computer Science, where conference papers have a rather different status that in other fields, <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/5823/2700\"><em>“publishing a paper does not normally prevent you from presenting your work at a conference”</em></a>.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Presenting as-yet-unpublished results in a conference/seminar</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>There's nothing wrong about that at all, and I think more people will actually enjoy you discussing recent results rather than old stuff. Customs, here again, depend on your field: I've seen more people discuss unpublished results in physics, and fewer in chemistry… but even in fields where it is less common, it is not forbidden.</p>\n\n<p>One thing to note: if the paper is not yet published, it is probably polite to inform your co-authors (or ask for their permission, depending on your relationship) that you are going to present it at a conference. At least, that's what I do (and expect my co-authors to do).</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13476,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In addition to F'x's answer:</p>\n\n<p>it may be good to tell the audience that the corresponding paper was submitted/accepted and give the corresponding reference, so they can look up the paper once it is out.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13478,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I do not know of any journals that do double-blind review. Having said that, here's a related scenario where there might be a problem. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>You have submitted a paper to a <strong>conference</strong> that requires\n anonymized submissions, and you give a presentation at a public\n <strong>seminar</strong> on the material while the paper is under review.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Here, while there isn't an issue of misconduct, there's a sense of actively breaching the double blind guidelines. Again, there are caveats here: some venues are more relaxed about this than others. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13485,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In addition to F'x's answer:</p>\n\n<p>I not only don't see this as a problem, but I think it is a great thing to do! By presenting a submitted (or not yet submitted) paper at a conference, you get instant feedback by a self-selected sample of people who were interested enough in your research to attend you talk - basically, the mother of all peer review. Of course, it won't be as in-depth as the reviews you get from the journal submission, but it can still be extremely helpful. And you can (and should) use the feedback from the conference to improve your submitted paper in the review process.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 48731,
"author": "Johan Larsson",
"author_id": 36513,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/36513",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While I think it is rarely an issue in the practical sense, I would still heed caution. Unless you are publishing your paper for open access, you are most of the time signing a publishing agreement with the journal and in so doing transferring copyright to them. While most journals have a liberal agreement when it comes to preprints, some do not. Hence, it is a good idea to check with your journal before you decide to publish something. Wikipedia has a helpful list of publishers and their preprint policies <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_journals_by_preprint_policy\" rel=\"nofollow\">here</a>.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13468",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9050/"
]
|
13,472 | <p>The blog Retraction Watch posted an interesting question the other day <a href="http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/ask-retraction-watch-whats-a-reviewer-to-do/">about reviewing the same paper twice, rejecting it both times, and then later finding out it was published in a different journal</a>. The reason for rejection was that the author(s) failed to mention previous work using the same dataset; seemingly a case of <a href="http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/one-case/">very similar publications</a> (or <a href="http://www.asc41.com/Criminologist/2012/2012_September-October_Criminologist.pdf">piecemeal publication</a>, or borderline plagiarism, however you want to describe it).</p>
<p>So what is an appropriate course of action for the reviewer in this circumstance?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13473,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Now that the paper has been published, your role is not that of a reviewer anymore, but is the same as any reader. Anyone might read the paper and draw the same conclusions as you.</p>\n\n<p>As such, you can act just as any reader would act, without having to disclose your earlier role as a reviewer. It seems to me that you then have a choice of three options:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Write to the authors</li>\n<li>Write a comment to their paper</li>\n<li>Write to the editor, mentioning your doubts about the adequacy of references to the existing literature (including previous studies by the authors)</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>In your particular case, the only additional information that you (as a former reviewer) have is that the authors have been journal-shopping for their paper, and do not want to make the necessary modifications to it. This means that solution #1 is probably not going to be productive, because the authors acted in bad faith. So, you're left with #2 and #3.</p>\n\n<p>If you choose to write a public comment, you definitely cannot say that you were a reviewer for a previous version of the journal. On the other hand, if you write to the editor, I think you could reasonably give him that information (<em>“I was a reviewer of this particular paper for another journal”</em>), because (i) it may change his point of view of the author's honesty, (ii) he will treat it as confidential information.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13474,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would suggest contacting the editors of the journal where it was published and pointing out the problem. However, the problem of salami slicing (to chose one expression) publications are not necessarily grounds for retraction so not much may happen. What will at least be achieved by such a contact is to make editors aware of the behaviour, which may be a very small victory in the battle against such publications. </p>\n\n<p>In cases like this it also pays to look at cases brought up by the <a href=\"http://publicationethics.org/\">Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)</a>. I found one case on <a href=\"http://publicationethics.org/case/attempt-publish-data-already-published-elsewhere\">An attempt to publish data already published elsewhere</a> which may be interesting to read. Each individual case must be weighed against these COPE cases and evaluated separately. In the linked case, retraction of both papers was in fact the resolution. It may be useful to point the editors towards the COPE site and any COPE case that might be applicable.</p>\n\n<p>I handled a case where someone published a paper in what they thought was in-house \"publication\" (\"\" indicating the didn't see it as published). The submitted paper was more or less a copy of the other with another years worth of data added. The problem was that the in-house publication had an ISSN number and had to be counted as a real publication. We rejected the paper much to the dismay of the first author. The point is that some people try to publish and from pressure or ignorance end up in these bad situations.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13472",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3/"
]
|
13,479 | <p>I love my full-time job and do not wish to leave it (statistician in a small-ish research institute within a large university) because I believe the research we do will someday benefit humanity and because I get the freedom to pursue my own research and several open-source statistical software projects I'm developing.</p>
<p>However, I am not making enough to provide for my family, and we are starting to feel it. I'm looking for something low-risk that I can do from home and on my own schedule, so finding an adjunct position someplace is not on the table. I'm looking into ways to commercialize my software and teaching myself about investing, but neither of those will be reliable income streams anytime soon.</p>
<p>So, I would like to solicit people's stories/advice on how they got into freelance statistical consulting or any other "low-hanging fruit" jobs. </p>
<p>Also, are there specific types of businesses that are known to hire free-lancers to do survival analysis, repeated measures regression, and all-around R programming?</p>
<p>I'm not trying to be the next James Goodnight, just to find a way to make some extra cash doing stuff I find easy and other people find difficult. I'll do web development if I have to, but I figure there should be a more profitable niche where I put my less common skills to use.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13481,
"author": "F'x",
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"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have a few friends with similar stories, though in different fields of science. Overall, they realized that their specialty is not their only skill, and that as successful researchers, other generic skills are more in demand. In particular, you can be a <strong>scientific or technical editor, scientific writer, copy-editor, technical translator</strong> (especially if you live in a country where English is not the primary language). These tasks are in very high demand, and allow you to work on a “as needed” basis.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13486,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is more of a brainstorming session/life hack than an answer specific for academic, hopefully this can spark some more inputs. As a disclaimer, I identify with you as I am also working in the field of biostatistics and epidemiology, though I have not actively sought after extra income. However, I have always been a financial life junkie and I used to love to daydream how to be rich or at least to enjoy retirement with dignity. Here are some of my thoughts and, well, refined thoughts.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Saving = Income - Expenses</strong></p>\n\n<p>We should first recognize that you can save money by either getting more or spending less. Before going to get more, I'd recommend sitting down with your spouse and go over the financial situation. Here are a few exercises that I found easy to pick up, and once you have started, you may see if this route is good:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p><em>Create a happy matrix for your spending:</em> Print out your credit card statement(s), item by item, grade how each of them makes you happy (Likert's scale, etc. you know the drill.) Identify things that are not contributing any satisfaction and avoid making the same purchase again. For those that truly make you happy, evaluate if you can cut back (usually, from all my reading, the culprit is often the $7.90 something Starbucks grande latte and a scone for the breakfast), or substitute with cheaper options such as shifting to other vendors or make them at home. I especially recommend everyone to check their credit card bill, bank bill, and cell phone bill: When I first started this routine, I found out that I have $280 sitting in my credit card as cash back! I just never claimed it.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>Have an energy audit of your house:</em> Most local government should be able to point you to some free energy audit service. They will evaluate your house's insulation, electricity usage, conditions of the heating system etc. and provide you a list of improvements and expected return on investment. For example, you can spend about $1,200 to inject foam in between inner and outer wall, and drop your heating bill by more than $200 per year. Other gadgets like motion sensing switch, smart thermostat, and CFL light bulbs may also help.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>Take public transport or bike:</em> I actually use this method. I don't drive and I live about 9 miles away from work. I commute on bike in spring, summer, and fall; and use subway in winter.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>Commit to be green:</em> This sounds like quite off. But I have come to realize that once you want to cut down on trash, you can't help but cut down on consumption. For example, I bring my travel mug and a collapsible box everywhere in case if I need to buy a drink or food. Since packaged food is automatically out of the equation (which are usually more expensive per weight), I save some money there. I also go to wet market or farmer's market for food, and I don't consume processed food. If I need an item I check out local flea market and freecycle websites (I give away stuff through freecycle as well.) For level 2 difficulty: Commit to be a vegetarian or vegan. Meatless lifestyle simplifies life tremendously.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>Use your educator's identity:</em> <a href=\"http://www.giftcardgranny.com/blog/the-complete-list-of-66-teacher-discounts/\">Many vendors</a> provide discount to educators. Since you work in a university, you can flash your staff card and get some good saving here and there. I'd also encourage you to check with your university's benefit page. I got a 24% discount on my phone bill just because I filled in an extra form.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p><strong>Then up a notch</strong></p>\n\n<p>If you have mortgages and complicated insurances, etc. Consider talking to a financial planner. Most of them can point you to some restructuring to make the system more streamlined. Simple things like grouping the insurance to one company can save monthly payment. I have even read about an extreme case that a couple actually ends up saving more by having one of them stopped working because the commute, childcare, and other expenses were eating into the take-home income so much.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Now, zoom out</strong></p>\n\n<p>I do understand that you value your biostatistics skills. But when it comes to making money, you don't have to only work on biostatistics. For me, after 9 hours of coding and reading outputs, I'd rather see something else. Once you have broken out from the box, you'll feel more liberated. Reassess your passions and hobbies, and see if you can pursue an instructor position somewhere. For example, personal trainer, yoga teacher, musical instrument teacher, handcraft, carpentry, gardening, etc.</p>\n\n<p>On my own spare time, I write video game walkthroughs, and post them on various websites and my own wiki sites. In the walkthrough I put affiliated links to vendors and in the wiki I earn Google Ads money. Given I am not very prolific, I don't earn a lot, but I can usually pocket about $300-400 a year if I happen to have written a walkthrough for a popular game.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Finally, zoom back in</strong></p>\n\n<p>Now, back to your question. There are many ways a biostatistcian can expand their job repertoire. Here are some examples:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p><em>Consult your local classified websites such as Craigslist:</em> Check for consultant type of jobs. You may even post an ad if you are so enticed. I used to do some consultation on and off as a student and got to charge $50 to $100 an hour.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>Propose a course to local adult learning center:</em> Most cities should have some adult learning centers the provide classes on hobbies or professional skills. Meet with the director and propose a course (on R, for example). You can build clientele and enlarge your social network as well.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>Statistical editor and reader:</em> You can also contact local editors and discuss on possibility to be an ad hoc statistical editor. I am actually working towards this direction. In my institution there are a lot of orphan data: grants ended, staff left, no body works on it and publishes the work. I found my niche of being a data undertaker, and I grew to be very interested in writing as well. Other than editors, you can also sell your skills to students who are writing their thesis. Most of their works can benefit by having a round of quantitative examination.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>Look for an adjunct position:</em> I know you don't want to, but I'd urge you to be a bit more adventurous on this option. Since online education is actually picking up traction, your skill in biostatistics and website building may actually be a good combination for some institutions looking for a way to move their program online. For remote course you usually just need to meet the student in the first 1-2 weeks or every other week, which can still preserve your flexible time table. Use online chat or billboard for office hour, give students feedback using track-changes, etc. You can do most of these at home.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p><strong>Closing remarks</strong></p>\n\n<p>I hope I didn't sound patronizing. But I wholeheartedly hope you may find some of these useful. I used to have mindset like you do, thinking of how to expand my income sources (I have my own expense and family in my home country to support), but after a few rounds of thinking, and sorting out what are the most important, I didn't feel like that any more. Now I make sure I have good pre-tax saving taken out first, save at least 10%, allocate money for family, allocate minimal expenses, keep about 5% or so for entertainment, buy used, give away or sell my own used goods, bike to work, stop all cable TV, lend to people on Kiva.org, simplify my closet, practice the motto of \"buy the experience, don't buy the stuff\"... etc. I realize that I still have enough, and I am not really sure what I was fussing about in the past. I'm happier, calmer, and definitely feeling clearer about what I want. And I certainly hope you'll be able to find your solution as well!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13488,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1429",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My answer complements the other, nicely crafted answers.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Disclaimer:</strong> My core competency is that of a statistician as well and I am still a graduate student.</p>\n\n<p>I don't really <em>need</em> to earn extra money. However, in the recent past, I have been hired on as an analyst or statistician for various projects by other professors or researchers in my university or in other universities.</p>\n\n<p><strong>How did this happen?</strong></p>\n\n<p>Personal networking I presume. I don't really make an effort to network at conferences or their ilk (I mostly attend talks which I want to ; the poster sessions and hang out with whomever is most fun. :))</p>\n\n<p>However, through formal and informal interactions with professors in my department and elsewhere, I have come to understand that I almost always position myself (<em>to them</em>) as a researcher coming from a math/stat background who is trying hard to understand and put on curious foot after the other in the interdisciplinary world of HCI/privacy etc.</p>\n\n<p>This unintentional (<em>and honest</em>) positioning infrequently results in conversations like \" <strong>Hey ! We have a cool dataset and need to publish a paper which answers some of these research questions. Do you want to lend us your skillz in return for money/19th authorship?</strong> \"</p>\n\n<p>Usually, in such cases, I almost always take the authorship offer but I have also done it for payment in the past as well. Sometimes, if its a really cool collaboration, it yields both !!</p>\n\n<p>Therefore, I advise you to reach out through your contacts, other researchers in your institute/university/college/department informally (lunch/dinner/happy hour) or formally (seminar/colloquium/email) and see what opportunities might be there in your own backyard. You never know. </p>\n\n<p>Good luck ! </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 14479,
"author": "hello_there_andy",
"author_id": 9764,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9764",
"pm_score": 3,
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"text": "<p>I found <strong><em>private tutoring</em></strong> to be a great way to earn money on the side as an academic.</p>\n\n<p>This often just involves going through exam papers with your tutee (e.g. studying Maths A-levels, GCSEs etc). </p>\n\n<p>Here are some advantages:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Great pay: ~£15-30/hr (depending on whether you are free-lance or via some agency or academy)</li>\n<li>Flexible hours: Often demand for tuition is after school hours ~5-7pm</li>\n<li>Rewarding and satisfying, your students remember you and may one day be great interns</li>\n<li>Self-improvement:\n<ul>\n<li>Keep up to date on pre-university curriculum/vocablurary (good if you need to lecture 1st year undergrads)</li>\n<li>Keeping afresh the fundamental concepts </li>\n<li>Great way to network with parents who may be in areas of business you may be interested in future</li>\n</ul></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17524,
"author": "qoheleth",
"author_id": 12479,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12479",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Have you tried <a href=\"http://zombal.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">Zombal</a>?</p>\n\n<p><strong>Disclaimer</strong></p>\n\n<p>I have nothing to do with Zombal. I don't get paid whatsoever.</p>\n\n<p>I am a statistician working in the government sector, and I don't earn a lot. So I too was looking to get some side income. I found Zombal through <a href=\"http://robjhyndman.com/hyndsight/zombal/\" rel=\"nofollow\">this blog</a>, which makes Zombal look quite good. I have yet to give it a try because I don't quite have the time (yet) and like @penguin_knight, I am not sure I want to do more stats after work.\nBut since you are asking how you can get side jobs, I am throwing this out as an option.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13479",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8083/"
]
|
13,489 | <p>Recently I caught a paper which had plagiarized my paper. Several sentences had been copied from my article without citing my article. Some of the copied sentences had been shuffled, so the words were the same but the order of the words had been changed. Some other sentences were exactly copied from my article. Besides, all the copied sentences in the new article appeared in approximately same places to the original sentences used by me in my article. I am not inexperienced in academia and without any severe bias, it was quite obvious that they have picked my sentences. Even the citations at the end of my sentences had been used in the same order in the new article... Moreover, the style of my sentences were unique to my article and not inspired from another article. So it was not possible that those authors were copying from another source other than my paper.</p>
<p>I said all the above points to the editor of the journal. I also highlighted all the copied sentences and put very detailed comments beside each highlighted sentence in the new article and attached the new article and my article to the journal editor so he could see for himself. He didn't respond. So I searched for and found the email addresses of all the editorial members of the journal and emailed them the same letter, frequently. All the emails were correct and running. Only one of the addresses bounced my letter. So I am pretty sure they have received my emails.</p>
<p>However they again didn't do anything about it, nor they did respond to me... So I wonder what else can I do? </p>
<p>I intend to report them to as many authorities as possible. I know a couple of them, but don't think they will do much about it. I need to know what can I do about it? What those authorities are legally able to do? And that should I sue them in court or not? The plagiarizing journal is in Turkey (not my country) and I don't know can I sue them in a court of my country? Are there other routes for filing copyright theft complaints?</p>
<p>Any suggestion is appreciated for when the journal tries to hide the plagiarism or doesn't care about it.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13492,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
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"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<ul>\n<li>Document everything.</li>\n<li>If you can't get a reply from the editors of the journal, write to the publisher. Or if it's the journal of a learned society, contact them.</li>\n<li><p>You probably can't act alone, but you may get more powerful allies (deeper pockets) on your side. There are others around you who have a vested interest in your work.</p>\n\n<p>In particular, the journal where you published your work… given that you transferred them the copyright, I suppose they might act in their own name against the plagiarist. Even if it does not escalate all the way to a legal action, the publisher of the plagiarized work might respond (or respond faster) to a well-known publisher.</p>\n\n<p>Your employer may also have an interest in helping you enforcing your copyright. They may also have a legal department who can advise you on this matter.</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13493,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If the journal editor(s) did not act (a question is of course how much time they should have before \"doing\" something), it should be possible to contact the publisher. If the editor(s) are not interested in digging into a problem, a serious publisher will probably think differently. So, the step beyond editors will be the publisher.</p>\n\n<p>You should also look at <a href=\"http://publicationethics.org/\">the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)</a>. COPE has a library of cases where assorted possibly unethical behaviours have been assessed. COPE is not intended for individuals but for editors to handle poor behaviour. But, by looking at their case studies you may find additional support for your case to influence both editors and publishers. </p>\n\n<p>I cannot answer the questions on legal actions but considering theft of, for example, copyrighted music, fashion and technology around the world, plagiarism will be low on the scale.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13489",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6928/"
]
|
13,495 | <p>When selecting an American business school, we look for certain accreditations specific to business schools, like ACBSP, AACSB, CHEA, , etc. </p>
<p>For European universities, we look for Equis, AMBA, etc.</p>
<p>What about British universities? (For pursuing a PhD in a UK business school.)</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13503,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Same as EU: UK has <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_accreditation#UK_.2816_schools.29\" rel=\"nofollow\">16 schools</a> with triple AACSB-AMBA-EQUIS accreditation, which is a good sign that it follows the same agencies as the rest of the world (or at least, as the rest of EU).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13524,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I am not sure how valuable accreditations are. I would suggest going by reputation rather than a binary is/isn't accredited. I think it would be rare for a school to have a \"good\" reputation, but lack critical accreditations. There likely is variability in the accreditations that schools with questionable reputations have. I would still base my decision on reputation and then only when deciding between a few schools with very similar reputations give any weight to accreditation. As for finding out about reputation word of mouth, league tables (e.g., the <a href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/education/table/2013/jun/04/university-guide-business-management-studies\" rel=\"nofollow\">Guradian</a> tables), and the <a href=\"http://www.rae.ac.uk/results/qualityProfile.aspx?id=36&type=uoa\" rel=\"nofollow\">RAE</a> are reasonable starting points.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13495",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9033/"
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|
13,496 | <p>Somewhat similar to <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/4784/7921">this question</a>, but looking for resources (books/articles, etc) for undergrad students who are not very familiar with designing effective surveys, (for example, one student is creating a survey in <a href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">SurveyMonkey</a> to evaluate nurses' attitudes toward their work). <strong>I'm looking for a resource to help my students develop survey questions that will return meaningful, non-biases responses.</strong></p>
<p>Note: this is in the social sciences, but would welcome resources that will be helpful to undergrads in any field.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13515,
"author": "410 gone",
"author_id": 96,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>What they need is proper training in survey design and analysis. Let's say, around 80 hours of teaching and then a lot of practical work, assuming they've already got a basic stats grounding.</p>\n\n<p>It's a serious technical skill, and you won't do them any favours if you don't treat it as seriously as any other tool they might use.</p>\n\n<p><strong>One option might be to work with a colleague who does teach survey design and analysis.</strong> They may well have students who are looking for some material on which to practice their new skills. Perhaps your colleague can set for them, as homework, the task of working with one of your students on the survey design. That way, your students get to introduce their students to their subject (learning by teaching), and they get to see survey science done reasonably well (assuming your colleague has taught them well).</p>\n\n<p>Just because survey design looks easy and online tools enable any fool to do it, doesn't mean that any fool <strong>should</strong> do it.</p>\n\n<p>A complaint about \"giving them a well when they only need a drink\", doesn't hold water. How could any teacher encourage their students to do bad science, or cultivate a contempt for other experts' fields?<br>\n(are they <a href=\"http://xkcd.com/793/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">physicists</a>?)<br>\n<img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/9nrH2.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13526,
"author": "Ben Norris",
"author_id": 924,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/924",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Some advice, but not a resource. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>As something that you want to happen quickly, EnergyNumbers' advice to\nfind a colleague who does this or teaches a class on it is\nappropriate. Ask this individual if they would be willing to come to\nyour class for one or two sessions to give the students an overview\nof the process, including examples of good and bad survey questions.\nA whole lot of success can be achieved by mimicking the successful\nbehavior of others, even if you do not have time to get into the\nunderlying theory (cf. memorizing basic arithmetic facts instead of teaching children to construct them <em>a priori</em>).</p></li>\n<li><p>As an exercise, have each student write two or three survey questions independently and test them on the rest of the class.\nDepending on the number of students in the class, extreme biases\nshould emerge under review by the class. </p></li>\n<li><p>Strive for a neutral tone in the questions. If you are asking an opinion question, do not ask how strongly they agree/disagree with <strong>one opinion</strong> on the issue. Give them a range of opinions and let them pick the one they agree with most. Let the respondents provide the bias (otherwise, what are you looking for). Let's go with the nurse example proposed in the question. Let's look at two questions about shift length:</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>To what degree do you agree or disagree to the following statement: \"My shifts are usually longer than I would prefer.\"</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Strongly agree.</li>\n<li>Somewhat agree.</li>\n<li>Neither agree nor disagree.</li>\n<li>Somewhat disagree.</li>\n<li>Strongly disagree.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Please select the response that most closely matches your opinion regarding the lengths of your shifts.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Most of my shifts are too short. I could work longer shifts if it was needed.</li>\n<li>I sometimes have shifts that atr shorter than I would like, but most of my shifts are of an acceptable length.</li>\n<li>I like the lengths of my shifts. They are neither too long nor too short.</li>\n<li>I sometimes have shifts that are longer than I would like, but most of my shifts are of an acceptable length.</li>\n<li>Most of my shifts are too long. I would prefer to work shorter shifts if possible.</li>\n<li>Other (provide a spot for written comments).</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Both questions are after the same info - how nurses feel about the length of their shifts. The first question is biased - it is asking nurses whether they agree with just one (negative) opinion about shift length. You have given them just one opinion to agree with about an issue instead of a range of opinions to agree with. The second one is not <em>as</em> biased. It goes after the same information, but in a different way - by providing a list of five opinions about shift length running the gamut from <em>too short</em> to <em>too long</em> and asking each respondent to pick which one they like most. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Provide an <strong>other</strong> option. Notice that my second question has this option. That way you can capture the few of the more unusual opinions without railroading the respondents into just the choices you provided.</p></li>\n<li><p>Use simple language. Do not use flowery language or more complex wording than necessary. Notice that my second question did not read:</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><code>Please meditate on the durations of your shifts and select the\n response that most closely matches the harmonious resonances of your\n soul.</code></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Avoid technical jargon unless that technical jargon is understood by all of your respondents (and then think twice about it) or if the survey is about technical aspects of the respondents' work. Jargon related to the nursing field would be appropriate, but be careful. Jargon used by a geriatric nurse might not be understandable to a nurse anesthetist. Since you student probably does not know much nursing jargon, such jargon should be avoided.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13888,
"author": "user9321",
"author_id": 9321,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9321",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Zimmerman I think I can help you out. I have a resource where students can create and deploy surveys. It also has a tutorial that helps you create a survey from beginning to end including tips on creating neutral non biased questions. </p>\n\n<p>Check out SurveySidekick.com</p>\n\n<p>The site should be especially useful for beginner survey designers. It was created by Teachers College Columbia University and meant for any higher-ed students so I think this is appropriate for your students.</p>\n\n<p>Hope this helps!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13890,
"author": "StasK",
"author_id": 739,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/739",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Everybody can design a good question, right? Just like everybody can build a car engine. Or everybody can cook Boeuf Bourguignonne a la Julia Child. Or everybody can write a speech for a candidate in a state governor election. Instrument design is a professional work that requires understanding how people respond to questions, which in turn requires some psychology on the respondent's end, some statistics on the data user's end, some computer graphics on the GUI end, etc. As a professional survey statistician, my professional duty is to discourage your creating a false sense of \"doability\" here. Rectifying the user-written instruments is an unpleasant part of the job that a team of survey methodologists in my company has to perform more often than we would have liked to.</p>\n\n<p>Having said that, I would encourage you to lookup something like <a href=\"http://lmgtfy.com/?q=questionnaire+design+class+syllabus\" rel=\"nofollow\">\"questionnaire design class syllabus\"</a>. The <a href=\"http://www.irss.unc.edu/content/pdf/Questionnaire%20Design%20Fall%20%2711%20Syllabus%20Final.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">JPSM/UNC class</a> looks good, and refers to right books. The reading list of the <a href=\"http://www.uic.edu/classes/chsc/chsc577/Syllabus.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">UIC course</a> is very comprehensive, if not intimidating. If you don't have the time to read any books, the minimum self-check list is available through the <a href=\"http://appliedresearch.cancer.gov/areas/cognitive/qas99.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">RTI's Question Appraisal System</a>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16236,
"author": "J. Zimmerman",
"author_id": 7921,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7921",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I have found several resources that are helpful for introducing motivated undergrads to the concepts of survey design and analysis. My own favorites are</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0803927436\" rel=\"nofollow\">Survey Questions: Handcrafting the Standardized Questionnaire</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1412977886\" rel=\"nofollow\">Methods in Psychological Research</a></p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>These books provide a good overview, and are accessible to beginners. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 27034,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I know an answer has already been accepted but I will add this for future searchers.</p>\n\n<p>Coursera has a module called <a href=\"https://class.coursera.org/questionnairedesign-001\" rel=\"nofollow\">Questionnaire Design for Social Surveys</a>. Since it's free and you can pick and choose which video lectures to watch, your students might find it quite helpful.</p>\n\n<p>One example of the lectures included is \"Measurement Error: Bias and Variance\" but there are also plenty of others to not just measure bias but also reduce it.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/18 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13496",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7921/"
]
|
13,497 | <p>I am doing my PhD research in a new multidisciplinary field within Computer Science. It is new in the sense that there are still no tools/implementations publicly available and several workshops co-located with different conferences. Many papers targeting this new area, have been published in different conferences and journals. As a PhD student and besides the scientific contributions, I would wonder what other <em>soft</em> things I can do for the field? </p>
<p>So far I have developed a tool for one of the main models in the field. I am documenting it to make it public. I thought about maintaining a bibliography. but not sure how beneficial it is. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13498,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>You should remember that as a Ph.D student, the instruments at your disposal are limited. Having said that, maintaining a bibliography is a useful way to collect all relevant information in one place, especially given the multidisciplinary nature of the area. If you do this though, be careful to</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>make sure things are always kept up-to-date. There's nothing more annoying than a half-baked reference page</li>\n<li>Be very liberal in what you include in the bibliography. It shouldn't be perceived that you're being a gatekeeper for the area. </li>\n<li>If possible, provide some structure to the bibliography: sections, maybe some annotation, etc. Depending on how web-savvy you are, you might be able to create a form for people to enter information in themselves. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The primary benefit for you will be access to the entire body of work in the area, and some credit for maintaining the page. There will undoubtedly be name recognition benefits if you are perceived not only as the librarian, but as an expert on the topic. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13499,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1429",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Disclaimer:</strong> I am also currently a PhD student.</p>\n\n<p>My research lies at the intersection(s) of HCI, privacy, location based social networks, mobility theory and spatial statistics. This means that the work in this area gets published from computer science-y journals like ACM CACM, IEEE Privacy & Security to communication-y journals like New Media and Society to conferences like CHI, SOUPS and MobileHCI. </p>\n\n<p>I adopt 3 strategies to organize my own work. If I do not do this then the existing literature and new critical thinking about my area will spiral out of control for me.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>I maintain an annotated bibliography for any relevant work in this area. As Suresh pointed out, its generally up-to-date and quite liberal in nature. This is not public but I always email it to folks who ask for it. I find that maintaining a bibliography in <a href=\"http://www.mendeley.com/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Mendeley</a>, exporting as a BibTeX file and writing a couple of sentences about each article works for me. I make sure that each article is filed under some loose sub-heading. For instance, one such general sub-heading in my area could be \"<strong>Location Privacy and Surveillance.</strong>\"</p></li>\n<li><p>I write scripts in order to extract, manipulate and analyze data and I always publish them on <a href=\"https://github.com/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">github</a>. This is public. Usually, I write scripts in php, python or R. Its great to see other folks forking my projects or following them and making them better than I could. :)</p></li>\n<li><p>I write <em>short</em> blog posts about my impressions on certain topics and also post some simplistic visualizations and analyses of my work there. I take special care in making sure that these are short but to the point. Nobody likes to read long, rambling blog posts. :P</p></li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13517,
"author": "David Ketcheson",
"author_id": 81,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One very valuable thing you can do is to try to form or contribute to an online community of researchers in your subfield. In my area, these communities tend to form lately on Google+ and/or Twitter. You can start by following/adding to your circles people you know who use these social networks. Then when you read (or write) an interesting paper, post your commentary for others to read.</p>\n\n<p>On G+, if you add the #spnetwork tag to your posts, they will also appear on <a href=\"https://selectedpapers.net/\" rel=\"nofollow\">https://selectedpapers.net/</a>, giving them wider exposure.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/18 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13497",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/532/"
]
|
13,506 | <p>I am currently dating a PhD student in the same department as me (I am also a PhD student). Not the same research group, but closely related topics anyway. We're both happy with it, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but I am worried about possible negative consequences on the job.</p>
<p>So, what rules (written and unwritten) should be followed when dating someone like that? that is we do not work together everyday but we are still working closely, both geographically and scientifically.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13507,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Concerning written rules you need to find out if any exist in your department, university etc. you will certainly not be the first or the only couple in this \"situation\". Unwritten rules are perhaps what you need to care more about and then I am actually not so much thinking about rules as such. First off, people know more about your relationship than you think. Or perhaps more precisely, they think they know more, in other words rumours and gossip might spread. so the advice is to be open about it and think about it as two adult persons in a relationship. It is your life, it is not a secret and most importantly, it is natural.</p>\n\n<p>Regarding your work, you need to act professionally (like any other should). You need to help each other prioritize your respective careers and make sure your relationship can function despite the pressures graduate school inevitably involves. So in my opinion, you should worry more about balancing work and relationship so that you both can spend the time necessary to succeed. this means making sure the relationship does not directly or indirectly affect others on a professional level. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13518,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>One possible thing to watch out for: in some departments, graduate students may work as teaching assistants for graduate courses. You should ask not to be assigned to TA courses which your significant other is taking (and he or she should do likewise), as this would represent a possible conflict of interest. Even if you can grade your SO's work objectively, there might be a perception of unfairness among other students. Likewise, if any other situation should arise where one of you might be in a position of authority over the other, you'd need to disclose the conflict of interest and be prepared to resolve it.</p>\n\n<p>Otherwise, as Peter Jansson said, relationships between graduate students are very common and aren't likely to cause academic concern. Just stay professional about it (e.g. don't make out in the hallways).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13519,
"author": "fedja",
"author_id": 6118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6118",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As long as you and your partner aren't put into any \"boss-subordinate\" professional relationship, it is nobody else's business what you are doing. So, it is perfectly fine to be in the same research group, the same class, etc., as long as it is not a direct \"teacher-student\" relationship. In the latter case just check what the university rules are. </p>\n\n<p>The only (but major) negative consequence for the job is that if your relationship gets serious, you'll get a two-body problem to solve. I've been trying to solve mine since 1995 with no really satisfactory results (at best I could rank the arrangements I had as \"tolerable\"). So, watch out!</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/18 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13506",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7902/"
]
|
13,508 | <p>I'm just had a look at my citations and they are in an aweful state. Most conference papers that I imported into my citation manager have different styles, e.g.:</p>
<pre><code>IEEEE Conference on Emerging Txxx Bxxx Qxxxxxxx, 2009 (ETBQ 2009)
IEEEE Conference on Old Wxxx Yxxx Sxxxxxxx (OWYS), 2009
IEEEE Conference on Txxx Txxx Xxxxxxxx, 2009, (TTX 2009)
IEEEE Conference on Gold. 2009 (Chicago)
</code></pre>
<p>Am I allowed to bring all conferences into the same format?</p>
<p>What format would you recommend? Should I drop abbreviation, year, or place of the conference as it is repeated? I think the year might have to stay because e.g. a coference might be held in Dec. 2009 and the papers are only published in Feb. 2010, hence the 2009 date would be lost. I also like the abbreviation as it helps my to identify the coferences in one glimps.</p>
<p><strong>Second question:</strong> Should I add "Proceeding of the" in front of every conference?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13509,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is clear that the papers from the same publication should follow the same format. The proceedings or journal should provide a suggested reference format for the papers. This should point you to what is a correct way to reference them and format the entry in your database.</p>\n\n<p>When you enter papers into a data base you should try to follow the suggested reference in terms of what information is suggested to be included. I use bibTeX and enter the full name of the publication. I can also provide the formal abbreviation of the journal since the format for references in journals vary, some use full names some use abbreviations. There is a <a href=\"http://images.webofknowledge.com/WOK46/help/WOS/A_abrvjt.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">data base for journal abbreviations</a> established by ISI that should give you the correct abbreviated format for all. I assume many if not all reference managers have ways of handling full and abbreviated names, probably using full names as a standard. With proceedings that are not included in the list you ave to follow the suggestions from the proceedings and also use the correct abbreviations for specific words as suggested in the ISI data base.</p>\n\n<p>Many authors do not know about the correct abbreviations, or do not bother to follow them, which causes confusion in databases. I have papers that occur under up to 4 different posts because of inappropriate journal names, wrong volume or page numbers etc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13693,
"author": "al_b",
"author_id": 5963,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5963",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As conferences are very important for computer science, here is this <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_science_conference_acronyms\" rel=\"nofollow\">list</a> on wikipedia.\nAnd at the end it also lists <a href=\"ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/LNCS_Conference_Acronym_Index.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">conference acronyms from LNCS series</a> published by Springer (LNCS publishes roughly half of CS conferences).\n<a href=\"http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conferences.jsp\" rel=\"nofollow\">This link</a> lists correct names for IEEE conferences, and <a href=\"http://dl.acm.org/events.cfm?CFID=257044285&CFTOKEN=61623404\" rel=\"nofollow\">this link</a> lists those for ACM conferences.\nAll-together, those would cover 85% of conferences in Computer Science:)</p>\n\n<p>Personally, I would advise to not go for journal-like shortening of conf names, which is IMHO last century, now we don't have a problem of storing longer strings in the database:)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 30152,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>There is an important and unfortunate caveat for managing citations that I bring up because this refers to IEEE. In IEEE, ACM, and many other computer science and electrical engineering venues, it is often the case that there are strict page limits and the citations are counted toward that limit. This happens mostly with conferences, but sometimes even with journals.</p>\n\n<p>Because of this, I often find it necessary to maintain both a \"master\" reference database and an ad hoc \"abbreviated\" copy of the database used for a particular paper. In the master database, I keep the full everything in all its bibliographic detail to the best of my ability. In the abbreviated copy, conference and journal names get shortened as necessary to purge the bibliography of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans\" rel=\"nofollow\">widow and orphans</a>\nand extract those last few lines necessary to get the text to fit. It's a nasty, undignified practice, and I consider it the lesser of two evils if it can preserve technical content without decreasing the ability of a reader to locate citations.</p>\n\n<p>The ability to find the citation, though, is sacrosanct. Authors, title, year (and volume and issue if available), must never be trifled with. As such, the shortening targets that tend I use, in order, are:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>\"Proceedings of the...\" can always go, as can the location of a conference.</li>\n<li>\"International Conference on\" goes to \"Int'l Conf. on\" and then vanishes </li>\n<li>Most EE/CS conference have acronyms: an exceedingly well-known conference can be entirely replaced by its acronym.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Thus, for example, \"Proceedings of the 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Beijing, China\" can ablate all the way down to \"IJCAI\", saving 1-2 lines in typical IEEE format bibliography. It's an ugly business, and maybe I shouldn't admit to it out loud on the internet, but it's a useful practice that I still find ethical as long as the spirit of readily locatable citation is preserved.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 30182,
"author": "Jukka Suomela",
"author_id": 351,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/351",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>\"Am I allowed to bring all conferences into the same format?\"</em>: <strong>Yes</strong>, please do it, and please make sure that you <strong>always give the abbreviation</strong>, because this is the only way to easily recognise the conferences.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 30198,
"author": "o4tlulz",
"author_id": 6978,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6978",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you are publishing specifically with the IEEE then I would recommend looking at their <a href=\"https://ieee-dataport.org/sites/default/files/analysis/27/IEEE%20Citation%20Guidelines.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Citation Reference Guide</a> which also explains the way common words from conferences are abbreviated and what you should include. </p>\n\n<p>For example, the word \"Proceedings\" is abbreviated to Proc., Conference to Conf. etc and a paper from a conference would look like this:</p>\n\n<p>[1] J. K. Author, “Title of paper,” in <em>Unabbreviated Name of Conf.</em> , City of Conf., Abbrev. State (if given), year, pp. xxx-xxx. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/18 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13508",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8549/"
]
|
13,510 | <p>While I am writing the references for my paper, I usually <strong>copy and paste the bibliographic</strong> information and use it <strong>directly</strong>. AFAIK, most of them are in the full version, meaning that all the author names are spelled out, e.g. <em>James Rhianna Smith</em>. <em>(They can be really long!)</em>.</p>
<p>Also given the fact that some conferences do have a <strong>page limit</strong> (e.g. 6 pages maximum), directly using those tedious full names is sometimes a luxury I cannot afford.</p>
<p><strong>Under this type of circumstances, should I shorten the author names?</strong></p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13512,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Sure, why not? There's nothing wrong with using first initials consistently.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13514,
"author": "eykanal",
"author_id": 73,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is almost always dictated by the style guide of the journal/conference/whatever to which you're submitting. Check with them, or better yet, use a bibtex style definition file provided by them (e.g., <a href=\"http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/CTAN/macros/latex/contrib/IEEEtran/bibtex/IEEEtran_bst_HOWTO.pdf\">IEEE</a>).</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/18 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13510",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8079/"
]
|
13,527 | <p>Perhaps it is too early to ask this, but I will go ahead anyway, to satisfy my curiosity. I am currently studying Arts in a University, aiming to get a BA Honours in English and German. If I went ahead to get a Masters, would I have to choose one of them, or could I continue with both? And similarly for a Doctoral, if I get that far, does it have to be one subject at a time?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13528,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you do research based Masters and/or PhD, you could probably find a specific research that combines elements of both - quite often (not always), these types of projects turn out to be the better ones, as they force the researcher to establish, rationalise and justify the links between them.</p>\n\n<p>Even though my research has not been in linguistics, rather in the applied physical sciences field, my research combined a few subjects together - in my case: atmospheric physics, programming and signal processing. </p>\n\n<p>So, it is very possible to do, in your case, relevant elements of both English and German in a single research postgraduate degree.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13531,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you're question is: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Can I do a 'double master's' in English and German the same way I can 'double major' in English and German?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The answer is <strong>not easily</strong>. The reason for this is that admissions to master's programs are normally decided by the department, not by the university as a whole. Therefore, admission to one program (say, a master's in English) does not give you the right to get a master's degree in the other program (here, German). You would have to apply to the programs separately. It is also difficult to study for multiple master's degrees simultaneously, since the coursework tends to be disjoint sets, and therefore you would probably need to complete the degrees sequentially (at best).</p>\n\n<p>The doctoral thesis topic would allow you to combine the two disciplines. However, it may be administratively difficult to have two different departments listed on your degree; this is an administrative issue rather than an academic one. There is usually an approved list of fields that can be listed on the diploma; if you want something else, you will have to petition for it, which could be a difficult process.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/19 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13527",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9066/"
]
|
13,532 | <p>I want to ask the authors of a paper if they have thoughts on an application of their work. I'm not sure who to email.</p>
<p>The first author is a grad student, who is supervised by the last author - however, the authors are in alphabetical order so I'm not sure if there is any meaning to the ordering. The paper is in economics, which traditionally goes alphabetically, I believe.</p>
<p>Should I email all the authors in one bulk message? Just the professors? Choose one of the authors at random and email them?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13533,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Papers usually have one (or more) designated <strong>corresponding author</strong>, or “contact author”, or “author to whom correspondance should be addressed”. That's whom you should contact.</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes it's indicated by a footnote, an asterisk, or at the end of the paper. Sometimes, it's indicated by the fact that only corresponding authors have their email address listed.</p>\n\n<p><strong>If there is no corresponding author, then email either the first author or senior author</strong>, depending on the nature of your question and how confident you feel in communicating with them. <strong>I would refrain from copying the email to all authors</strong> (except maybe if there are only two): if he wants to, the author you will write to can forward your query to others.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13535,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While this involves a little more work, it might be possible to do some digging to see who's the prime mover on the paper. For example, if one of the authors has a series of papers on the topic, or if it's part of an author's thesis, and so on. If you're able to find such a person, then it might help to email them directly. If not, then @F'x's solution is fine. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13551,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In fields like pure mathematics, where authors are given equal credit, I'd recommend e-mailing all the authors unless there are an awfully large number of them or special circumstances apply (you know an author personally, you happen to know that your question is most relevant to a specific author, etc.). The reason is that if you single out a specific author, then the other authors may try to guess why. Is it because the author you chose is the most famous? Because you mistakenly think they deserve most of the credit? Because you are ignoring a woman in favor of her male coauthor? Of course nobody will know why you made your choice, so they won't get too upset about their speculations, but this is not a great start for your interactions with the other coauthors.</p>\n\n<p>If you e-mail several people about a paper at the same time, it's best to send a single e-mail. Every so often someone will send the same message separately to me and to a coauthor, which just increases the chances that we will waste time by both replying without ccing the other.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13553,
"author": "AJed",
"author_id": 4472,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4472",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This applies to the case where there is no corresponding author. </p>\n\n<p>Talking about my field (applied CS), where many experiments depends on experiments which are not <em>always</em> easily repeated, and code are usually not available*: </p>\n\n<p>I think it is more effective to go directly to the supervisor (or supervisors) - [last and second to last authors - since this is the order usually followed in applied CS]. These authors usually takes higher care of their reputation in the field. Because of that, they will force their students (i.e. first author and/or second) to give explanation. (<strong>example</strong>: This happened when my supervisor received a question about a paper of his with another post-doc. I am sure that my supervisor did not work much on the details of the paper, but his name must be included - that s an engineering tradition I believe. The supervisor made sure to call the post-doc and asked for explanation. The supervisor forced the the post-doc to send an email back to the question sender). </p>\n\n<p>If you send a question directly to a PhD/Msc student, he would ignore you most likely - from my experience. Because many PhD students hide their mistakes intentionally - just to have their thesis accepted later. (<strong>example</strong>: I heard a PhD student that he made some mistakes in his MSc thesis and he hid them intentionally. He said \"this is to make whoever work on my work find trouble matching the paper results and the new experiments results\". </p>\n\n<p>But honestly, at the end, <em>we cannot generalize</em>. </p>\n\n<p>(*)This one of the biggest mistakes in applied CS. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/19 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13532",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9068/"
]
|
13,534 | <p>I have this line about the article:</p>
<pre><code>BioMedical Engineering OnLine 2007, 6:16 doi:10.1186/1475-925X-6-16
</code></pre>
<p>I think the volume is <strong>6</strong>.
Then what is <strong>16</strong>?</p>
<p><strong>How should you correctly cite the Bibliography in Tex?</strong></p>
<p>My BibTeX</p>
<pre><code>%
% Published abstract
%
@ARTICLE{vladimir,
author = {Kudriavtsev V, Polyshchuk V and Roy D L},
title = {Heart energy signature spectrogram for cardiovascular diagnosis},
journal = {BioMedical Engineering OnLine},
year = {2007},
volume = {6:16}
}
</code></pre>
<p>I am suspicious about the author and the volume field.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13536,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1429",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>That notation is standard for volume and issue no. For instance, the following is a ACM citation for one of my journal articles:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Jeremy Birnholtz, Shion Guha, Geri Gay, Y. Connie Yuan, and Caren\n Heller. 2013. Cross-campus collaboration: A scientometric and network\n case study of publication activity across two campuses of a single\n institution. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 64, 1 (January 2013),\n 162-172. DOI=10.1002/asi.22807 <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.22807\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.22807</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If you will notice, after the name of the journal (JASIST), there is the notation 64,1. It refers to volume 64, issue 1.</p>\n\n<p>In your particular example, which I found <a href=\"http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com/content/6/1/16\" rel=\"nofollow\">here</a>, on the top right hand corner, volume 6 is clearly mentioned. The structure of the citation leads me to believe that it is issue no. 16.</p>\n\n<p>In BibTeX, issue no's are default. There is nothing particular that you have to do.</p>\n\n<p>After perusing your author field, they also seem to be well aligned with the actual article. What are your suspicions?</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13555,
"author": "silvado",
"author_id": 3890,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3890",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>From the title, it seems that the journal is an online only journal. Many such journals don't use page or issue numbers, since there is no need for these in an online journal. Instead, such journals number articles subsequently as they appear throughout the year. In conclusion, it seems that in your case, 6 is the volume number, and 16 is the article number.</p>\n\n<p>For BibTeX entries, I usually use the <code>pages</code> field to enter such article numbers. The reasoning behind it is that, in classical journals, page numbers are used to refer to an individual article, while in online journals, it's the article number which takes this role. Also, there are several BibTeX styles which use a citation format with <code><volume>:<pages></code>. For these, using the <code>pages</code> field for the article number will be compatible and will turn out as you show in your citation:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>BioMedical Engineering OnLine 2007, <strong>6:16</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13556,
"author": "Federico Poloni",
"author_id": 958,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/958",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>As others have already said, it's an article number. \nYou can verify on the <a href=\"http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com/content/6/1/16\" rel=\"nofollow\">publisher's website</a> that papers in the same volume have indeed consecutive numbers.</p>\n\n<p>As far as I can tell there is no bibtex field for an article number, so you'll have to work around it. Personally I'd go for <code>volume=6, number=16</code>, and no page field (it's not mandatory for an <code>@article</code>). The publisher's own bibtex file (go on \"download reference\" from the article page linked above) reads <code>VOLUME = {6},NUMBER = {1},PAGES = {16}</code> instead; that said, publishers' bibtex files are often quite bad, don't take this for an authoritative answer.</p>\n\n<p>More importantly, the formatting of the <code>author</code> field is wrong. It should be <code>Kudriavtsev, V. and Polyshchuk, V. and Roy, D. L.</code>, or even better (if you know their names) <code>Kudriavtsev, Vladimir and Polyshchuk, Vladimir and Roy, Douglas L.</code>. Note that the correct format is <code>surname, name</code> or <code>surname, n.</code>, with \"and\" as the author separator. What you wrote would be parsed as two authors, one with given name Polyshchuk V and surname Kudriavtsev V, and one with surname only Roy D L. Abbreviations and sorting could go wrong with such a field.</p>\n\n<p>For more information on formatting <code>.bib</code> files, ask on <a href=\"http://tex.stackexchange.com\">http://tex.stackexchange.com</a>.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/20 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13534",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9009/"
]
|
13,538 | <p>A normal process of learning in a graduate school looks like taking courses that include a broad perspective on some subject. This also includes the instruments of control: exercises, tests, problem sets, and exams. Let's suppose this control exists only to show where a student has gaps in his knowledge.</p>
<p>A student takes such courses to learn things she will apply later in her work.</p>
<p>But in practice each course include much material that the student will never apply in her work, even in academic research.</p>
<p>Many notable scholars mention that they pick up necessary tools, while disliking the idea of a university that offers too much in general, so students have to disperse their efforts.</p>
<p>Why does academia use this push process of fixed course program and control for all students in the course, instead of a pull process, when students have their own research interests and just pick necessary tools when the need arises?</p>
<p>Shouldn't students in general use a selective, not linear, approach to getting necessary knowledge? It's obvious that students need some overview, but what prevents them from getting this overview as they work through the problems of their own?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13540,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You're presenting a false dichotomy: most graduate programs are not <em>completely</em> specified. There are a certain number of required classes—to ensure that all students have the same \"core\" knowledge that they will be expected to have, both as graduate student researchers as well as professionals in the field—and usually a number of elective courses, that can be chosen as the student chooses to meet the needs of their research, or to satisfy their interests.</p>\n\n<p>But if you're really asking \"why is there a core curriculum,\" it's because, as I mentioned, there are expectations of what an advanced degree holder in such fields will know. However, there are large discrepancies and variations in curricula between departments at the undergraduate level. Therefore, to \"level the playing field,\" and make sure that all students have the expected knowledge and skills, they offer the courses that will guarantee proficiency at the required level. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13542,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My immediate answer is they shouldn't. The problem is that there are differences between graduate systems. Aeismail has provided a good answer for one such system. Where I work each graduate student has an individual study plan and the idea is to tailor make the studies for each. this tailoring involves taking parts of a course and not for credit in the sense to go through examination. In our system all courses at graduate level is pass/fail. To understand the differences one has to look at the position of a graduate student as well. </p>\n\n<p>In some systems a graduate student is more or less a bit more than an undergraduate (a \"super student\"). In my system a graduate student is pat of the employed body of the department and in that sense also a colleague. The point is that this involves both rights and responsibilities and further involvement in department affairs. This position has old traditions where a PhD was not awarded until much later in life, the term graduate student simply did not exist, there were, for example, intermediate teaching positions for those who had not yet completed the PhD yet. The thinking about courses is thus to ensure that the student does not waste much time on unnecessary material, just as you stated in your question.</p>\n\n<p>So from this position, there is no right or wrong in terms of courses, the PhD programs differ so much between systems. The reason for the differences comes from deeper differences in the university systems and views on what the PhD student profile after completion. We had discussions about mandatory (tailor-made) course for students to provide a common base in the subject, but we have scrapped this approach because the field is simply to wide and then it will be up to each to read upon their sub-field.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13552,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Affirming the remarks in the two earlier answers, and continuing some of the themes:</p>\n\n<p>At least in mathematics, although it is vitally important to have direct, sincere enthusiasm about projects and questions, inevitably these are not well-informed from a beginner. That is, projects grounded in ignorance of established ideas, while temporarily often very beneficial, simply aren't \"professional-quality\" projects. That's fine, temporarily, but certainly not in the long run.</p>\n\n<p>So, in addition to \"common culture\" awareness, as mentioned earlier, there is the genuine and awkward problem that beginners may not have an inkling of what they'd like to know if only they were aware of it. Can't easily learn a thing if one isn't aware of it ... perhaps all the more crazily so if there really is a wonderful new concept that is unfortunately more than one remove from the familiar.</p>\n\n<p>At the same time, I do agree with the questioner that all-too-often the \"required\" courses take a too-adversarial approach, too much homework, too tricky exams.</p>\n\n<p>Certainly varying depending on the subject and on the program, many graduate courses are given in a not-so-adversarial fashion, with \"grades\" playing no serious role. Rigidity and an adversarial attitude are not universal.</p>\n\n<p>But, again, yes, encountering an adversarial and coercive attitude is polarizing and unfortunate. Creates a bad attitude, and this can be a long-term ill, also.</p>\n\n<p>Equally dangerous, though, is concluding too soon and too strongly that one is \"ready to go\", when, in fact, one is not merely missing some important things, but perhaps unaware. Sure, one should have enthusiasms, and follow them, but be absolutely sure to maintain at least one other thread in which one looks around fairly broadly, cultivating serendipitous encounters with helpful things one may have failed to imagine.</p>\n\n<p>(Required courses are a clumsy approach to the latter, yes.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13554,
"author": "Faheem Mitha",
"author_id": 285,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/285",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is a good question. I think the idea is to make sure, as aeismail says, that all grad students have the same core knowledge after having gone through the program. However, in practice this approach has major problems.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Many disciplines are so big that it is often not clear what the core\n<em>is</em>.</p></li>\n<li><p>Additionally, some areas are changing so fast that even the core\nbecomes outdated.</p></li>\n<li><p>Also, my experience with going through such courses is that it doing homework<br>\nproblems does not really make one understand the material as, say, working on \na research problem does. Also, a homework problem might be a page of \nargument which is by definition well understood. This is poor preparation for \nresearch work (assuming that this is the goal) because a research paper is \nmore than one page long, and does not consist of well-understood material. In \npractice one spends a lot of time when writing a research paper worrying<br>\nabout such things as graphs/figures, suitable notation, and organizing the \nmaterial. These are issues that simply never come up in course work. Even an<br>\nend of semester project in practice is not big enough to provide a suitable \nground for exercise.</p></li>\n<li><p>Often different parts of the core (depending on the subject) are rather<br>\ndifferent from each other, and as you say, a graduate student, of necessity, \nis forced to specialize quite quickly in one area, and will likely never \nneed to know about those other areas. So, in practice, much of this is time \nwasted.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I think part of the idea is that someone who is excessively specialized is not in a good position to cross-pollinate ideas across different disciplines. The very idea of interdisciplinary work is that ideas in one area are useful in others. But I'm not sure that forcing a set curriculum has the effect of creating a more <em>rounded</em> researcher. I think such adventures are best driven by curiosity and need.</p>\n\n<p>Additionally, my experience is that beyond basic/core courses in a department, the more specialized courses may just reflect the (possibly non-mainstream) research interests of the faculty, and can be a real waste of time if such courses are made a requirement.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/20 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13538",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9070/"
]
|
13,543 | <p>During my literature survey for a project, I came across papers that have very interesting results and have decent number of citations. Unfortunately, the sub-area I am exploring doesn’t have any standard datasets on which I can test my implementation of the algorithm presented in their paper. The authors have generated the dataset by applying certain actions on a subset of publicly available information, which are Flickr images in my case. </p>
<p>So I have contacted the authors, asking whether they can provide me with their code or the dataset that they used for their implementation so that I may use it to perform my experiments and possibly try to extend their approach. But almost a week has passed by, and I haven’t received any response from them. Does that mean that,</p>
<ol>
<li>My method of asking was not correct? (In that case, what would be appropriate?)</li>
<li>They don’t have the code or dataset available? (The papers were published in 2004.)</li>
<li>They are not interested?</li>
</ol>
<p>Would it be polite to remind them again?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13544,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>The reason for no response may be anything from what Anthony Labarre mentions to what you list. I would wait at least a month before writing off an answer; I have received answers even later than that. It is possible they are working on improvements themselves as well. In short, if you do not get a reply, you can only try again and perhaps express your request differently. </p>\n\n<p>You seem to have contacted all the authors. Sometimes the project leader may be too busy to pick up on questions and the younger team members may be more inclined to answer. They may, however, want to talk it over among themselves, and it is probably not a high priority.</p>\n\n<p>So try again in a couple of weeks. If you do not get any response, then there is probably not much you can do. You probably need to think about what can do to improve the chances for a reply. The word \"collaboration\" is sometimes a good way to \"sweeten the deal\". Sometimes, just to give a perspective, I get requests for data that are of the sort, give me this or that, give me everything, and I often end up asking myself, why should I? having laboured to generate the data. I am not saying you must follow such an approach to be successful but considering why the other researchers would want to help you may also help towards solving the communication problem.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13550,
"author": "Paul Hiemstra",
"author_id": 4091,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4091",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If they don't respond to e-mail, I'd try to give them a call. Many people get a lot of e-mail (running projects, requests to be hired as postdoc, etc, etc), so it is hard for you to get attention in this large amount of mails. Calling them makes it personal, you have their undivided attention at that moment. I would first ask them if they have time right then to answer your question, and propose to reschedule your call to a time that they are available.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/20 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13543",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2823/"
]
|
13,559 | <p>I currently teach at University X and am applying for a job at University Y. Should I write my cover letter on University X's letterhead, or use a blank page?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13560,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>No. It is you as a person who is applying, not you as a representative for your university. Univ. Y would probably look very negatively on an application on such lerterhead, as would Univ. X. Letterheads are intended for your official business of your position at X as teacher, researcher etc. Applying for a job or for example writing somewhere for your private business is just that, private. You can, however, create your own private letterhead to use for such instances but this should reflect your private standing and show only private address, phone and e-mail.</p>\n\n<p>So keep the official business separate from your private. As alluded to this also applies to e-mail, something most people forget about. It is good to have your own private e-mail for instances such as this.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13561,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I personally side with Peter Jansson on this one (do not use an institutional letterhead if you're not conducting business on behalf of your institution), but you will have to note that <strong>this position is not universally shared</strong>. I cite only one example, of <a href=\"https://theprofessorisin.com/2016/08/26/why-your-job-cover-letter-sucks/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">somewhat high-profile blogger/consultant</a>, who says:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Your letter must be on letterhead if you have a current academic affiliation of any kind. This is not negotiable.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I think it may be a field-specific and/or generation issue: some people, and some fields (humanities/law/medicine) have more attachement to older traditions and think a letterhead is a crucial part of correspondence etiquette.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13562,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would ask a senior person in your field. In my experience in mathematics in the US, no one gives a flying flip how you format your cover letter; in all likelihood, no one will read it. Using department stationary is common, though far from universal and I don't think affects anyone's thinking one way or the other. </p>\n\n<p>I don't think this advice is universally applicable; I know in many other disciplines, cover letters are read carefully, and thus their professionalism will have some salutary effect. My personal feeling is that using your current institution's letterhead, your office address, etc. looks more professional, but obviously this isn't a universal feeling, so all the more reason to check about your field specifically.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13578,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One point that I'm missing so far, but which IMHO makes quite some difference is the position which you are in:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>My \"default\" opionon on this question is not to use your employer's letterhead, nor your email at your employer's.<br>\nThe reason is that unless your relationship with your current employer is really bad (in which case <em>you</em> don't want to use their letterhead), (ab)using your employer's letterhead demonstrates illoyality: not only are you not acting in as an official of your employer, but as @scottishwildcat already pointed out, you are presumably acting against your employer's interests.</p></li>\n<li><p>But in academia, there are certain situations where your old university is anywhere between quite happy with over positively encouraging you to expecting you to apply for another job.<br>\nYou may be in a stage of your career where a change of university is expected or at least reasonable and you and your employer agree on this (close to finishing your degree, did a postdoc abroad but want to move home again, want to move for family reasons, want to become a professor which in some countries you cannot at your \"home\" university, ...), or you are on a project position and for external reasons they cannot keep you.<br>\nIn this case, IMHO you may use the university letterhead (although I'd probably still not do it). But if you do so, you should make sure the university where you apply knows unambiguously that your university is happy with your application for their position, e.g. by naming your current supervisor as reference.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>As for the email, free emails are available also with sober username and sober providers, so that shouldn't be a problem, neither.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 15991,
"author": "user37009",
"author_id": 8902,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8902",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In academia, if you are applying for an academic position (e.g., assistant adjunct prof applying for assistant prof), regardless of whether it is at the same of different institution, it is absolutely essential that you use the letterhead for the institution with which you are currently affiliated. I realize that this is different for private companies, where \"company\" letterhead implies official communication on behalf of the \"company.\" But in academia, the letterhead is an indicator that you are recognized as a member of a scholarly community and you have the rights, privileges, and responsibilities associated with your academic appointment. In academia, it does NOT mean you are conducting official institutional business. Official institutional business will have \"Office of the Chancelor\" in the letterhead or \"Office of XYZ Department Chair.\" If the chancellor or department chair were to apply for jobs, they would probably still use institutional letterhead but not have this \"Office of the __\" line in the letterhead.</p>\n\n<p>Using your institutional letterhead is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL when applying for academic jobs. Even (especially) if you are a grad student. Everyone knows that you are not speaking on behalf of the institute, the letterhead is an indication of your membership in that scholarly community.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 45289,
"author": "Colin",
"author_id": 34432,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/34432",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I fully understand the notion of not writing on letterhead except in an official capacity, but consider the tradition of using a hotel's letterhead when staying with them as a guest. I appreciate this is perhaps almost akin to sending a picture postcard (and an advertising opportunity for the hotel), yet this <em>clearly</em> is not a matter of the hotel's business activity.</p>\n\n<p>This practice extended to the English with houses large enough to have guest rooms, where the etiquette is to provide headed notepaper of your own for your guests to use.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 100601,
"author": "iris",
"author_id": 84589,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/84589",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Completely agree that you should not use letterhead from the academic institution you are trying to leave. I put those letters at the bottom of the pile when reviewing job applications for teaching positions. Only caveat is when you hold a postdoc, but if you are tenure track or more, then no, use your own.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 100633,
"author": "AJK",
"author_id": 9892,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9892",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Do whatever you want. </p>\n\n<p>There are strong and conflicting opinions on this (\"it would set off a red flag\" to not use institutional letterhead, etc. vs \"I put those letters at the bottom of the pile.\")</p>\n\n<p>We should ask ourselves, as academics: if we are evaluating people's job applications using such incredibly fine distinctions in academic etiquette, either:</p>\n\n<p>1) we are prioritizing completely useless information and probably introducing a good deal of bias against folks like international students and first-gen college students along with it!</p>\n\n<p>-OR-</p>\n\n<p>2) academia is so irredeemably petty that getting this right is actually an important sign of success in an academic position.</p>\n\n<p>Either answer doesn't make academia sound like a place you'd want to work. I have faith that people are not actually making such important decisions using trivia. I therefore suggest that the original poster should choose whichever option allows them to make the content of their letter clearer, i.e., if you need the space for more information, don't use the letterhead!</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/20 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13559",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9077/"
]
|
13,563 | <p>I'm applying to graduate math programs and my subject test score was abysmal, but I'm very confident that I will have excellent letters of recommendation from my professors. Will these LOR offset the bad test scores? I know every situation is different, but in general what is your opinion?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13564,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You state yourself that every situation is different, and that really is all we can tell you!</p>\n\n<p>At a school that receives a high volume of applicants, your GRE score is likely to matter a lot more than at a school where lower numbers of applications are received. An overworked applications committee is much more likely to toss an application with a low GRE score (without even reading the letters) than a committee that has enough time to properly assess each candidate.</p>\n\n<p>GRE scores (can) matter a lot, and then once you pass the gatekeeper they don't matter very much any more.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13565,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1429",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Disclaimer:</strong> I am a current graduate student and my experience is limited to being the student representation on the graduate admissions committee of my program.</p>\n\n<p>One of my advisers always reminded me of the following principle:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>GRE scores will not get you in but can keep you out</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><strong>What does this mean?</strong> GRE scores by themselves will never get you admitted into any program worth its salt. However, they do act as a nice way of filtering candidates, especially in schools which received hundreds of applications for its programs every year. </p>\n\n<p>Once you make the initial GRE/TOEFL filter, you are good. Your application will then be vetted on the basis of academic achievements, research, statement of purpose and letters of recommendation. Ergo, if you are removed at the initial stage by virtue of your GRE scores being rather low, then chances are, that nobody will even look at the rest of your application.</p>\n\n<p>However, if your GRE scores are bad (but not <strong><em>that</em></strong> bad) then your good LORs might serve you better in the later rounds. </p>\n\n<p>Of course, for quantitative oriented programs (like math), you might be expected to get a perfect (or <em>near</em> perfect) GRE Math scores and respectable Verbal scores.</p>\n\n<p>I hope this makes the process a little clearer.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13581,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This varies wildly from program to program. Most people on admissions committees recognize that actual graduate work does not resemble a multiple-choice timed test given one Saturday... but there is difference of opinion about how much it means, exactly.</p>\n\n<p>If you are from a good university with letter-writers who are well-known, terrific letters from them can substantially compensate for a terrible GRE subject test, although elite programs would still use the GRE as a \"weeder\".</p>\n\n<p>So, in summary, it's hard to tell what will happen... but only a matter of degree, really, since there are so many factors in play. E.g., if your coursework background is solid and letters are terrific, and your personal statement is both very positive and perhaps notes that you feel your performance that day did not indicate your preparation or ability, chances are only slightly worse...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13660,
"author": "D.W.",
"author_id": 705,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/705",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My reaction is pretty different from everyone else's here.</p>\n\n<p>The short answer is: in my experience, yes, outstanding letters from credible, well-known letter-writers will outweigh poor GRE scores any day. Few applicants get really outstanding letters from a credible, trusted letter-writer, but when we do see a letter like that, it carries a <em>lot</em> of weight.</p>\n\n<p>It does make a lot of difference whether folks on the admissions committee know and trust the judgement of the letter-writer. Does this letter-writer see a lot of students headed for graduate school, and see which ones are and aren't successful? Does this letter-writer work with graduate students? Does this letter-writer have a successful research program? Do people on the admissions committee know this letter-writter and trust him/her? What sorts of letters has this letter-writer tended to write for previous applicants, and if any of them were admitted, how did they work out? These factors weigh heavily in the admissions decision.</p>\n\n<p>It also matters a lot what the letter-writer says in their letter. I don't know how you can possibly know how strong your letter will be. A letter that says \"this student did really very well in my class\" is actually a weak letter (contrary to what you might think), because it gives very little information beyond what is already on your transcript. In contrast, a letter that describes successful research you did with them and your contributions to the research project and how they were critical to the success of the research project carries a lot more weight.</p>\n\n<p>Poor GRE scores might not trigger a kneejerk rejection, but they will certainly cause the admissions committee to ask questions and scrutinize your application closely before admitting you. \"Why did this applicant score so poorly? Are they lacking basic knowledge? We'd better go look more carefully at their grades in their undergraduate classes. Is their poor performance on the GREs a hint of fundamentally insufficient preparation, or is it a one-off anomaly?\" That's the sort of conversation you should expect committee members to be having. If the admissions committee can answer those questions to their satisfaction and the rest of your application package can survive close scrutiny -- if the rest of your application package is strong -- then I would not expect poor GREs to sink your application. On the other hand, if your GREs are poor, your grades are mediocre, and you don't have incredible accomplishments to counter-balance those flaws in your application, then you might be in trouble.</p>\n\n<p>This is based upon my personal experience with one particular admissions committee, so I have a very small sample size. It is possible that other committees might do things differently.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13563",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9079/"
]
|
13,566 | <p>It's embarassing, I failed my quals (in PhD ECE). The school is going to give me a terminal masters (w.o. thesis). My gpa is also not that stellar (3.4+), from a mediocre school. But I have a strong will to do a PhD (I enjoy doing research). </p>
<p>My supervisor (along with other co-authors) are supportive in the sense that they are willing to write good letters (i.e. I have a quite decent publication record). So, I am planning to apply this year, my specific queries are -- </p>
<ol>
<li>Is it really worth a shot? as I have a "bad record" now (although my transcript will not convey such information, but I am not willing to hide it either) </li>
<li>If no.1 is "yes", then how should I justify this to the adcom ? For example, explaining my financial and family problems that I faced during my last years (probably in the SOP)?</li>
<li>Is it possible to go to a better school/lab compared to my current one ? </li>
</ol>
<p>Some particulars:</p>
<ul>
<li>I am an international grad student in the US.</li>
<li>I have a 3.8+ undergrad score from south-east asia (used to be a class topper, if that helps)</li>
<li>My GRE was also decent.</li>
</ul>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13683,
"author": "anonymous",
"author_id": 9179,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9179",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Consider applying to a different school or switching majors in the same university. Yes it is certainly worth a short. And no do not mention financial or family problems in the SOP.</p>\n\n<p>Also consider joining the workforce. It is good to have options in hand. A PhD is not very useful unless you want to stick in academia which means low pay, being stuck in small city in the middle of nowhere, dealing with procrastinating students, begging NSF for funding etc. </p>\n\n<p>ECE Masters are paid well in the industry and most PhDs I know work on \"stuff\" that a Masters can easily do. There are always exceptions to everything.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20874,
"author": "derelict",
"author_id": 14547,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14547",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You can't let one setback keep you from pursuing your goals or dreams. Yes, it's bad that you failed your quals, but that doesn't mean you should just give up. Having supportive committee members will help a lot when applying to other schools or programs. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20876,
"author": "bordart",
"author_id": 15166,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15166",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Do whatever is up to you to achieve your goals. Don't focus on the previous events but rather try to get some lessons from them not to repeat them in the future. \nTry to focus on your advantages. It seems that you are not in a bad situation. You have a supportive supervisor, not bad scores. Besides, if there is a procedure of reapplying, it means that they also know that someone may need a second chance. \nSo, answering your questions.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Certainly. At the end you may say, at least I tried everything. Just keep moving and you will see the directions. If you are staying in the same place, you will never know whether your path is right or not. Give it a try.</li>\n<li>You don't have to justify anything. If they ask, then slightly explain the situation. They are not monsters. </li>\n<li>You can apply to a few places simultaneously. Of course it is worth trying. If you have time to manage that. </li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>As it was mentioned, you can also try to apply to another programs in your or other universities (if you want)/\nGood luck.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13566",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9083/"
]
|
13,570 | <p>I'm currently reviewing a paper that has an uncommonly large number of references compared to the average number for that particular venue (more than 60 versus around 30). This is a regular paper, not a survey one, and although there does not seem to be wrong references, it feels like some are not really necessary, and the fact that one particular author is cited more than 15 times makes me worry that this paper is used to inflate the number of citations of that author (the submission is anonymous). </p>
<p>Should I mention this in my review, and try to examine which submissions are "abusive", or just let it go?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13571,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I do not think that there are inherent problems with citing <em>some</em> \"extra\" papers, if they are appropriately relevant. The purpose of citations is to help us form a network of research. If a paper is not cited, then it will not join that network. However, one does not need to cite every paper that an author has written in the past 5 years in order to maintain that network!</p>\n\n<p>Rather than spend time examining each citation, perhaps you could ask the author why there are so many citations. If the author(s) has been inflating citations without due cause, then any academic worth their salt should promptly correct that indiscretion.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13572,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can only see one way to resolve this and that is to critically assess if all references are necessary. Self-citation can be a problem but it may be perfectly fine in situations where the author is a leader in, for example, a small field. Excessive citations can also be a sign of the author not being able to weed out the critical papers from the \"mass\". In some cases, it may be tempting to provide all the literature found on a particular topic wher perhaps a review paper or relatively new paper summarizing past work could be referenced using the form \"(e.g. author, yyyy)\", indicating it is one of several possible references on the topic. I think it is perfectly fair to ask for such changes if the excessive referencing is clearly just excessive.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13573,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It's really a judgment call… some people consider that more references is good, because it gives the reader a wider perspective into the issue, and some people consider it a bad practice (in old times because it wasted paper, but nowadays mainly because it obscures the more valuable information inside a long wall of text).</p>\n\n<p>I have, as a reviewer, sometimes asked authors to cut down on the number of references, so it is certainly an acceptable practice. Here are some factors you may consider when making the decision:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Does each individual reference bring something to the paper, i.e. is used to back up a fact, idea, or to give credit for a specific (and relevant) new idea that it introduced?</li>\n<li><p>Are references cited in block? I tend to consider it is very bad practice:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A series of recent experiments have shown systematically that current human-powered aircrafts are not suitable for mass transportation [refs. 9–21]</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Each paper (or group of two or three papers, at the very most) should be used with regards to a specific point in the discussion.</p></li>\n<li><p>Somewhat disguised form of the earlier: are long lists of claims and references justified? Sometimes many citations are used as “examples”, where a few would suffice.</p></li>\n<li><p>Could some of the citations be replaced by one or two reviews on the topic?</p></li>\n<li><p>Are the work cited really the seminal work on each topic/idea/experiment, or are there also less “worthy” works cited?</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Finally, it is true that there are some unethical practices that can lead to inflated number of citations. <strong>Excessive self-citation</strong> is certainly one, but there are others. For example, <strong>some authors cite very widely papers from all groups in their field</strong>, even when it is not really warranted, in an effort to help their chances at peer review: the idea is that the reviewer is less likely to be harsh to a manuscript that cites 5 of her own papers.</p>\n\n<p>And in conclusion, if you believe that self-citation was the motivation, there is nothing wrong with reporting your doubts to the editor.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13576,
"author": "Tobias Kienzler",
"author_id": 442,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/442",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I wonder if the authors considered the question <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13305/442\">When you reference an article, is it always expected that you have actually read it?</a></p>\n\n<p>I can imagine multiple likely reasons for the high amount of citations by one particular author:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The over-referenced author is a member of the same group as your paper's authors (or even themselves) and they try to promote their own work. This may be adequate if the cited papers honestly led to the new one, but if they are just loosely related (if at all), the amount of citations should be severely reduced</li>\n<li>that author is one of the big-shots in the field, and the submitters either want to acknowledge that fact or they know that person is likely to also review the submission and would insist on these citations anyway - maybe this is actually already the reaction to such requests. And don't say this doesn't happen...</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Unfortunately no matter the reason, to judge fairly you basically have to read at least the abstracts of said citations and check their relatedness. However, as <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/13573/442\">F'x' answer</a> suggests, if there are \"obvious\" signs of over-citation, e.g. block citations of more than, say, three publications, you shouldn't bother with that and rather directly state your concerns in your review.</p>\n\n<p>Once the amount of references surpasses a sensible amount, the authors should maybe more directly justify the citation themselves instead of forcing each reviewer to figure that out on their own...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13577,
"author": "Amory",
"author_id": 7886,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7886",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One<sup>1</sup> thing<sup>2</sup> that<sup>3</sup> hasn't<sup>1,4</sup> been<sup>5-7</sup> mentioned<sup>8</sup> yet<sup>1</sup> is<sup>3-5</sup> the<sup>9</sup> effect<sup>10,11</sup> on<sup>2,7,10</sup> readability.<sup>12</sup> References<sup>13</sup> are<sup>14</sup> a<sup>15</sup> necessity<sup>16</sup> but<sup>17</sup> loading<sup>18</sup> up<sup>19-21</sup> a<sup>22</sup> manuscript<sup>23,24</sup> with<sup>25</sup> too<sup>26</sup> many<sup>2</sup> will<sup>27</sup> often<sup>3-5</sup> make<sup>5-7</sup> it<sup>28</sup> more<sup>9,29-31</sup> difficult<sup>17</sup> for<sup>32</sup> me<sup>33</sup> to<sup>34</sup> follow<sup>35,36</sup> and<sup>37-39</sup> can<sup>40</sup> be<sup>3-5</sup> a<sup>13-15,19,21-23,25-27,29-33,35-37,39,40</sup> deterrent.<sup>41</sup> If<sup>2,3,5,8,13,21,34</sup> a<sup>3,14,15,19,26</sup> paper<sup>2,7,18,28</sup> turns<sup>1,6,18</sup> off<sup>1,4,14,21,35</sup> its<sup>1,7,32</sup> readers,<sup>2,23</sup> it's<sup>4,8,15,16,23,42</sup> not<sup>6,28</sup> doing<sup>1,2,4,8,16,32</sup> its<sup>2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37,41</sup> job.<sup>42</sup></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 76728,
"author": "Ébe Isaac",
"author_id": 40592,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/40592",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There should be a Goldilocks-range for this, and what this supposed to be depends on your field, topic (whether relatively new or not), and most importantly, your advisor and thesis committee.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/YpWMj.jpg\" width=\"400\" /></p>\n\n<p>(<a href=\"http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1821\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Image ref. PhDComics.</a>)</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13570",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
]
|
13,574 | <p>I am writing a Motivation letter to be used in applying for masters from German or Finland Universities. I have following points explained in my motivation letter:</p>
<ul>
<li>How I see this technical world</li>
<li>Why I chose Computer Science in my under-gradute</li>
<li>What I learned in under-gradute</li>
<li>What are my interests</li>
<li>Why I want to pursue Masters</li>
<li>Why I chose their University</li>
</ul>
<p>What could be the format of a good motivation letter?</p>
<p>What other points could be included to make it more explaining about myself? And how to arrange those points? How to connect a motivation letter to your CV?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13586,
"author": "penelope",
"author_id": 4249,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4249",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Well, just typing "motivation letter" or "cover letter" into Google seems to spew up links to loads of hints, tips, and how-to-s, so I guess it's not so hard to find materials outside of here.</p>\n<p>So, instead, I'll focus on the advice that was given to me last year when I had to write one, since it worked for me :)</p>\n<p>An important thing to realize is that a <em>cover letter</em> is supposed to <strong>complement your resume, not duplicate the same information</strong>. Thus, your qualifications and achievements should mostly stay in the CV.</p>\n<p>Also, you should <strong>focus</strong> mostly <strong>on the position you are applying for, what makes you want it and what makes you think you would be good for it</strong>, which means that <em>"how I see this technical world"</em> probably does not deserve much elaboration (one sentence should be okay in my opinion). You are trying to convince them that <strong>you are the One</strong> and show them what makes you different from the bulk of people applying. What makes you more suited, more likely to succeed, or a better fit than other applications they're considering. (I would guess it's easier for a Master studies application since they will be admitting more than one/a handful of students).</p>\n<p>Finally, the structure that I used, and will probably use the next time I will have to write something like that, is <strong>dividing the letter in to three parts</strong>:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>you:</strong> here's where you'll put information on you. While you're not supposed to list <em>all</em> your achievements here, you should emphasize or elaborate on specific achievements, skills and motivations that make you especially suited <em>for the position you're applying for</em></p>\n</li>\n<li><p><strong>them:</strong> it is important to "prove" that you're not sending out generic application letters. You demonstrate that you're familiar with the work done in the university/lab/research group you are applying for.</p>\n<p>If you're applying as a PhD student to a lab/professor, you might want to mention a specific paper or project and write an intelligible sentence or two about that. If you're applying for a University, you might want to pick some specific of their programme that especially caught your eye.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><strong>you and them together:</strong> first section is about how awesome you are. The second, how awesome <em>they</em> are. Now (to conclude), you have to show why you thing <em>you would be awesome with them</em>. Why do you think you're a good fit, right there? This section is <em>not only</em> about what they can do for you, you also have to try and convince then of <em>how they can benefit from you</em>.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Finally, the letter should <strong>not be longer than one page</strong>. Somewhere, you can even find this as a hard limit on an application. In my experience, you should also not have more than 3 sections. I managed to put an introductory sentence and an finishing sentence just fine in the "sections" I mentioned. Also, <strong>your writing should be impeccable.</strong> If you can, get a native English speaker to check your language. Use a spell checker. <strong>Pay attention to details</strong>. Getting an address wrong, or a letter in a name, shows sloppiness. Maybe it does not consciously affect the decision, but it might on some level.</p>\n<p>And the last advice I got, which I did follow, but you <em>don't have to take it as a hard rule</em>: <strong>avoid negative statements</strong>. It's supposed to give a better tone to your letter. So, instead of saying, e.g. "Unfortunately, I couldn't find and internship during my last summer", you should write something like "Having a free summer before my last year, it allowed me to spend more time reading upon the areas of my choosing". The positive statements should help you present the facts in a more positive light.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13593,
"author": "Layla",
"author_id": 6144,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6144",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can talk to you by my own personal experience following a Master´s in a Finnish university (about the German case I am ignorant about that). Anyway Finns are very laconic people, try to submit your motivation letter as concise and direct as possible. I have taken a look at the questions that you are plan to answer in your motivation letter and they are just fine.</p>\n\n<p>In my case I submitted my CV separated from the motivation letter, but a big plus would it be to show that you have some sort of research experience; for example if you have made some research article during your undergraduate or you have been a research assistant. In case that you do not have that, you can express your interest directly to make research in the field that you are applying for your master´s degree (I think that you have covered that part also in your questions stated before) </p>\n\n<p>Good luck!</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13574",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9086/"
]
|
13,579 | <p>Having experienced academia through masters, and work via part-time and full-time jobs, I plan to pursue PhD and keep working full time. However, my plan is to create a mutual relationship between work and PhD program in which research feeds work and leads new assignments, and work assignments helps research through results and my employer as well.</p>
<ul>
<li>I am not sure about the case in the other fields, but I think this should be valid for CS people. Do you think or know whether this is possible? If so, do you know any examples of such programs or people who work in this particular way? </li>
<li>The other questions is how might this relationship help or hurt PhD studies?</li>
</ul>
<p>There is already <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8747/is-it-possible-to-work-full-time-and-complete-a-phd">a question</a> about possibility of working full-time and pursuing PhD simultaneously. However, this question considers working in a completely unrelated area with respect to PhD program.</p>
<p>There is <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/708/is-it-possible-to-work-on-extra-activities-start-up-project-during-phd">another question</a> that explores the possibility of working on extra activities such as start-up project while pursuing PhD.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13580,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is not unheard of to have people work outside of an academic setting on their PhD thesis. For instance, in the US national laboratory system, there are a number of graduate students working on their PhD thesis. It's not a large number—maybe a dozen or so per laboratory—but it's not zero, either. In countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, it is also not uncommon to be employed as a PhD student in industry; however, the financing of that is somewhat unclear to me. (They may receive the equivalent of their stipend, or they may receive a \"professional\" salary.)</p>\n\n<p>That said, I suspect it will be difficult to find an arrangement which will allow you to work full-time and receive both a graduate stipend and a full-time salary. Such arrangements would be generally frowned upon by both university and the external sponsor.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13585,
"author": "posdef",
"author_id": 5674,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5674",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Disclaimer:</strong> This originated as a comment to @aeismail's answer but rapidly got too long and complex to warrant being an answer. It's however intended to complement his answer primarily...</p>\n\n<p>I can't speak for Germany or Netherlands but in Sweden you are officially employed as a PhD, thus you do get a \"professional salary\" and not a stipend, albeit that salary not being on par with what you could earn out in the industry. I cannot say for sure but I have heard that it's a similar system in Germany. </p>\n\n<p>The so-called \"industrial PhD\"s come in multiple flavours. The type I have seen most commonly are employed by a company which has a certain interest in a particular type of research. Basically by establishing a collaboration with a research group in a nearby university where there might be more resources (time, instruments and most of expertise) they send this student to do a PhD \"in-between\" the two organisations, figuratively speaking. It's usually a beneficial position for all parties involved, at least on paper, since; </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>the company gets the research done, with near-minimal costs. </p></li>\n<li><p>the research groups gets a grad student that is practically free</p></li>\n<li><p>and the student gets well-paid (often better than her colleagues in the research group) and usually gets better deals through her arrangement with the company in question.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Another way the industrial research might work is, if the company in question decides to have the necessary resources to conduct research in-house. Then you are practically working as a regular employee, you just get to do R&D and publish your results (usually after being filtered to a level which your company is content with). </p>\n\n<p>Finally, about keeping a full-time job and a full-time PhD position at the same time, if you do pursue such a course, make sure you double check your contract(s). Because we are government employed here (in my university for sure, but I think it applies to the rest of Sweden as well) and have pretty decent salaries, we are required to prioritise our research duties. In other words, we are <em>required</em> to not have any other full-time commitments besides our employment. I can imagine that similar fineprint might exist elsewhere as well</p>\n"
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| 2013/10/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13579",
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"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/399/"
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|
13,582 | <p>What should the last section of a scientific paper be called? Conclusion or conclusions?</p>
<p>I always felt like conclusions were things to take away from a paper, and a conclusion was the end of something (a book).</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13583,
"author": "J. Zimmerman",
"author_id": 7921,
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"text": "<p>According to the <a href=\"http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B006YY4JQ2\"><em>Little, Brown Compact Handbook</em></a>, in MLA style the final section is called the \"Conclusion\", while in APA style the final section will be labeled \"Discussion\". When using either citation style (and I would assume this holds no matter what citation style you are using), this section will contain your summary/interpretation, the conclusions (<strong>plural</strong>) that you wish the reader to take away from the paper, and perhaps a call to action or an outline of future work. So you are right, </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>conclusions [are] things to take away from a paper, and a conclusion [is] the end of something...</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>though not necessarily the end of a book; a conclusion can be the end of a paper, article, etc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13584,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is no real right or wrong here. \"Conclusion\" is quite common; \"Conclusions\" indicates that there is more than one, although I am sure that is not the intent. It is also possible to replace the conclusion with a \"Summary\" or \"Synthesis\" (both often occur in review papers). In some cases the discussion and conclusion is combined in \"Discussion and Conclusion(s)\". In other cases, the last section might be \"Recommendations\". </p>\n\n<p>In short, the last section might be called many things but it should summarize the important points of the discussion. That is the main point of \"Conclusion\" and its \"relatives\". So from the point of view of content it is all the same.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 94605,
"author": "Yvette C Martin",
"author_id": 78535,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/78535",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If only one 'concluding factor', then use Conclusion. If more than one; then use conclusions.</p>\n"
}
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| 2013/10/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13582",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
13,587 | <p>My University has recently started recording lectures and posting them online. We have also, in the past few years, noticed a considerable drop in lecture attendance across the whole Physics and Astronomy department (even in courses that are not recorded).</p>
<p>I expect that the advent of recorded lectures is a significant contributor to this. However in the tutorial classes as well as lectures, it wasn't uncommon for attendance in the course I was TA for this semester to be below 50%. Myself and the lecturers are at a loss.</p>
<p>I am not necessarily against offering pittance marks for attendance, however I think that it is rather poor practice as it does little to encourage students to become genuinely interested in the material. Encouraging students to discuss science among themselves and become emotionally invested in the topic is the best way to get them out of bed and attending classes.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any "success stories" to share where they have significantly increased the level of student engagement in their course(s)?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13591,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
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"text": "<p>My school has a mandatory attendance policy (which I know several members here disagree with) but because of that policy I have had to face with engagement in a different way that you. Still, I hope this answer will help.</p>\n\n<p>Without engagement I find myself in large classes (sometimes >100) and classroom management gets to be a real challenge (for me and the other students). So, after trying a few different things I've found that challenging the students almost like a game show seems to be useful.</p>\n\n<p>For example, in one module, I will give them scenarios (one at a time) to analyze (with multiple choice answers where each requires them to come up with their own reasons why that is the right answer). The scenario is short enough to fit on one slide and while the students are encouraged to read before class, they can still participate even if they did not do the work. This is particularly helpful to me since the ones who do not do the homework tend to be the hardest to control and, therefore, are the most disruptive to the learning environment. They tend to find it a challenge to see who can 'guess' right.</p>\n\n<p>On top of this, I try to inject a little humor while walking around the room asking for analyses which tends to add a little entertainment aspect to the whole event.</p>\n\n<p>For another module, I assess through an extremely difficult test which is quite common to fail unless extensive research is done. In this case, I alternate lecturer sessions (where I do most of the talking) and discussion sessions (where students do most of the talking). Engagement is not quite as strong with this module but I'm still honing it.</p>\n\n<p>On a somewhat related note, you might check into <a href=\"http://www.academia.edu/346077/Does_Discovery-Based_Instruction_Enhance_Learning_A_Meta-Analysis\">this article</a> on discovery based learning. I found it quite interesting.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13592,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 2,
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"text": "<p>I think the definitive answer is not within our grasp. There are interesting studies that indicate that improved quality of lectures is one of few possibilities to improve attendance (e.g., <a href=\"http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1743&context=commpapers\" rel=\"nofollow\">Univ. of Wollongong Online Research</a>). The causes of absenteeism can be related to many factors including demographic factors such as\nage, paid employment (e.g., <a href=\"http://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1571&context=ajte\" rel=\"nofollow\">Australian Journal of Teacher Education</a>, <a href=\"http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0963928042000310788#.UmaOXxDfnCc\" rel=\"nofollow\">Accounting Education</a>, <a href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1813-6982.2004.tb00137.x/abstract\" rel=\"nofollow\">South African Journal of Ecomonics</a>). It appears that the reasons for the attention drop has to be found in changes of student conditions, both in terms of academic experience and conditions relating to life in general. In other words, the world is changing and that demands adaptation from the university system. A study in <a href=\"http://exchange.ac.uk/journal/index.php/ee/article/viewFile/144/216.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">Engineering Education</a> (also in the aforementioned study in Accounting Education) provides indications that attendance and accessibility to teachers out of class hours correlate. The study also conclude that class performance and attendance are highly correlated. This means that academic performance is a selling point for attendance. The role of incentive schemes in achieving higher attendance may, however, not be a key to success as exemplified by a study in the <a href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8454.00163/full\" rel=\"nofollow\">Australian Economic Papers</a> so the means to improve attendance requires more attention.</p>\n\n<p>So whereas I do not have any good examples of how improvements can be made, there are studies that point at both causes and effects, positive and negative, which should be considered when trying to improve attendance. Some aspects lie with improving lectures but some concern understanding the changes occurring outside the university and adapting to these.</p>\n"
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| 2013/10/22 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13587",
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|
13,590 | <p>I submitted one of my paper to an ISI journal in September 2011. While I was waiting for it, I inquired about its status (I needed the paper to complete my PhD), and the journal wrote back saying that my paper was under review and the referee was not answering. I was thus waiting.</p>
<p>But after more than two years (about 26 months), the journal sent me this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>By a QUICK view on your paper, it is not interested for our journal and so we reject your paper</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I think they could have answered earlier. Unfortunately, now my work is still not published and some authors published my results in another journal. <strong>So, I want to complain to the journal, and possibly get them eliminated from Thomson's lists. How can I achieve this?</strong></p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13604,
"author": "Yuichiro Fujiwara",
"author_id": 7075,
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"text": "<p>First, to quickly address your explicit question in boldface, here's the official words from Thomson Reuters regarding their journal selection process for Web of Science and annual review:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://wokinfo.com/essays/journal-selection-process/\">http://wokinfo.com/essays/journal-selection-process/</a></p>\n\n<p>While they apparently take timeliness and peer review very seriously, my impression is that a single instance of slow external review is not a strong enough reason to remove a journal. As <a href=\"http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/06/new-record-66-journals-banned-for-boosting-impact-factor-with-self-citations.html\">this recent blog post on Nature</a> shows, they do ban journals rather aggressively when they feel necessary. But those dropped journals are serious offenders of abuse and are clearly hurting Thomson Reuters' business.</p>\n\n<p>Every researcher experiences unfair rejection in some way or another once in a while. I understand that it is very unfortunate that this has happened at a very early stage of your career. But this seems to be a lost cause at this point. And if you are sure that it was unjustifiable and if you do want to take some action, the best you could do seems to be let Editor in Chief know exactly what happened by writing a letter from an objective viewpoint in polite language and in sober tone and ask them to consider what they might be able to do to improve contributor experience. If you do not receive a satisfactory reply from them, you might consider reporting everything to the publisher that owns the journal.</p>\n\n<p>But before you take any action, you should ask opinions from experienced researchers in your fields, such as your advisor. This is very important because different fields have different cultures in academia.</p>\n\n<p>I assume that you are enrolled in a Ph.D. program in mathematics; I saw your post on MathOverflow. If this is the case, you might want to take a look at the most recent yearly report by American Mathematical Society on how long it typically takes for a paper to get accepted:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ams.org/notices/201210/rtx121001473p.pdf\">http://www.ams.org/notices/201210/rtx121001473p.pdf</a></p>\n\n<p>As you can see, the median time from submission to final acceptance varies greatly from journal to journal. You might want to notice how it takes a long time to get your paper reviewed by some of the most respected mathematics journals. For instance, Annals of Mathematics, which is arguably the most prestigious journal in mathematics, takes <strong>24 months</strong> on average for review. The Memoirs of American Mathematical Society averagely takes more than <strong>18 months</strong> from submission to acceptance. Granted that the practice of these journals is more of an exception than the norm, two years of review is certainly not unheard of in mathematics. So, while I tend to believe that your paper could have been reviewed much more quickly because a typical paper certainly does not require two years, it is impossible for us to tell if it was unjust or not without more context.</p>\n\n<p>As for the priority issue you brought up, if it is in mathematics, I must say that you should not be surprised if you do not receive much sympathy. Reading your post, it appears that you did not make your preprint available to other members of the mathematics community before or soon after submission. Because mathematics has a much longer review process than other fields, it is quite common and, I think, very important to disseminate your results as soon as possible by, for example, uploading your preprint on arXiv or directly sending it through email to people you are sure will be interested. In fact, some journals explicitly encourage authors to upload their preprints on arXiv upon submission.</p>\n\n<p>With that said, I understand that arXiv and other means of \"pre-publication\" are not for everyone. In mathematics, for example, <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/103703080789076472131/posts/e2cwzcu9B4t\">one Fields Medalist mentions unpopularity of arXiv among East Asian authors he noticed during his little experiment on arXiv usage</a>. As someone who was born and raised in Japan and received a Ph.D. from a Japanese university, I know how people may have their own valid reasons not to make their preprint public. You may have some strong belief or policy regarding science publication models as well. I din not use arXiv when I was a graduate student in Japan, either. However, you should not complain when someone \"beats you to it\" when you could prevent it by following the normal practice in the community.</p>\n\n<p>Now, if you managed to read this wall of text this much, that means that you are the good kind of person who can stay calm and be in control of yourself in a tough situation. And, obviously, you have good math skills with which you proved new theorems worth publishing. So, if there is one thing I am sure of, it is that you have been heading in the right direction as a graduate student.</p>\n\n<p>If you feel like the journal caused an unnecessary delay or \"gap year\" of some sort to your career, I guess you're right. But personally I try not to overthink, and try to think it's just another unavoidable glitch that often gets us out of the blue in our lives. (Notice the word \"try.\" I fail very often.) You know, there are so many horror stories like yours out there in mathematics... (And never ask why I've been doing a postdoc for so many years!) It sucks for sure. But probably the best you can do now is talk to your advisor, who is there to give you advice anyway, and get back to your math life as soon as possible to prove more theorems. Good luck!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 112486,
"author": "Allure",
"author_id": 84834,
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"text": "<p><strong>It can't be done</strong> (sorry). Clarivate Analytics is not related to the journal in any way. They do impose some quality criteria, such as not having excessive self-citation, but turnaround time is not something they use. One can hardly blame them for this, because turnaround time is not public info, because it is highly varied, and because it has no bearing on the quality of the work that's published. Besides, they're not going to arbitrate a dispute between you and the journal - it's none of their business.</p>\n\n<p>To use an analogy, what you are trying to do is similar to getting the Academic Ranking of World Universities to delist a university because of how they mistreated a single student - short of you buying over Shanghai Ranking Consultancy and forcing the change through, it's just not happening.</p>\n"
}
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| 2013/10/22 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13590",
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13,594 | <p>OK, I know this is a pretty basic question but I haven't been able to come up with any really satisfactory solutions. (I have searched around on this site, but none of the related questions precisely answer my problem.) I'm a first-year PhD student working mostly in evolution, phylogenomics, and conservation biology. I'm looking for basic tips on how I can become more effective at finding papers when I need to research a subject for any of the usual reasons like developing a methodology or drafting a proposal.</p>
<p>Right now I seem to be pretty bad at this. My search strategy pretty much consists of putting likely keywords into Web of Science and Google Scholar, and then looking at whatever papers appear that seem like they might be relevant to my query. Frequently this fails to yield satisfactory results, even when the subjects that I am researching seem like they ought to have a significant body of existing work behind them. I know I must be able to do better, because I see other people coming up with papers that I don't seem to be able to find.</p>
<p>What are some basic best practices for conducting a literature search? I feel like this is a big gap in my existing skillset, and something that will really hold me back if I don't get on top of it soon. Again, I realize that this is a pretty remedial-level question and I appreciate your patience and guidance here.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13595,
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"author_id": 4394,
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"text": "<p>If you limit yourself to only internet searches, your success will depend on your key search words as you mention. Doing such a search is of course an integral part in the approach but what you also need to do is the following</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Try to figure out what constitute key journals in your area based on your web searches and start browsing the table of contents of the journals for articles. Start from the latest issues and go backwards (as far as you find useful). You can either find out new search terms for additional web searches and/or find other key publications on the subject. Keep an eye out for upcoming issues and new manuscripts accepted by the journals since they are often posted online once accepted.</p></li>\n<li><p>Once you find recent published papers, check their reference lists for other relevant literature (papers/books/proceedings). This way you will start to get an overview of what other find of interest. Just remember you cannot find anything more recent referenced than the paper itself. In other words this is a way to search backwards in time.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Now put all this together and work on all fronts in parallel and your overview will grow rapidly. Doing literature searches will inevitably take time but you will learn to find your way through the mass of information more and more quickly.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13597,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
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"text": "<p>Literature search, to me, is like the recipe of potato salad: everyone has at least one, and they always claim that theirs is the best. In fact, we just use what we feel comfortable and, so far, has not caused any major meltdown. So, bear in mind that these are just what work for me, and you should modify them along the way.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Schedule a meeting with a librarian, now</strong></p>\n\n<p>Talk to a librarian at your institute. In our school we have a medical librarian and perhaps you may find one specialized in your field as well. They are trained to locate useful information and are up to date with related technology. Give them a clear field of study and even a gist of your research, and ask for a good list of databases. I may go so far to say that a good database list is half of the game. Apart from the list, learn Boolean and learn them well, pick up a good electronic reference manager software. Your library should have these resources.</p>\n\n<p>Also, ask your library if they have any library consortium. Some major institutes have large amount of subscriptions which open the gateway to many full articles. If your institute is tight on budget, a lot of the time you can just find abstracts sans full text. Having a consortium library card may grant you access to other bigger institutes' library, in which you can print or photocopy their articles. On the same note, ask for an introduction on doing inter-library loan and how much you're supposed to pay.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Learn systematic review</strong></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_review\">Systematic review</a>, simply put, is performing literature review as a scientific research. It's problem-based, protocol-focused, and the process is meticulously documented and hence readily replicable. There are plenty of publications about this skill. I have been using Booth's <em><a href=\"http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0857021354\">Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review</a></em> and so far it serves me well.</p>\n\n<p>Focus on the chapters about question formulation and ways of collecting data. I think even we are not heading for a formal systematic review, learning how to keep a clear search records, draft a conceptual framework, and maintain a paper trail would still be very beneficial.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Understand the cataloging system</strong></p>\n\n<p>In biomedical field (where I work) we have <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh\">MeSH (Medical Subject Headings)</a> which shows the hierarchy and grouping of keywords. Consult the librarian and see if such thing exists in your field.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Read a few systematic reviews or literature reviews in your own field</strong></p>\n\n<p>To get the general picture, I actually first start from Wikipedia and encyclopedia. If you already have some background knowledge, you can probably skip the first phase. After meeting with the librarian, use the new-learned technique to find a few literature reviews or systematic reviews (hereafter \"review\") in your field. Review articles provide general scopes and a rich pool of keywords for your later use. You can also perform a reference tracing technique on these articles because they usually have unreasonably nice and comprehensive bibliography.</p>\n\n<p>Spend some time with the online search engine and really read the \"read me first\" and \"how to use this site\" links. Learn how to massively download cited articles from a hosted article and export them to your manager software of choice.</p>\n\n<p>Another good reason to start with these articles is that they are all required to report the information retrieval in details. Which engines were used, how articles were screened, what were the criteria, etc. You can get a good sense of how researchers do it (or appear to want to be seen doing in order to look trustworthy.)</p>\n\n<p><strong>Start casual</strong></p>\n\n<p>Through this snowballing technique, a small body of articles should start to form. Pay attention to their use of words, keywords, etc. It's still somewhat a toying phase but you should start using your tools seriously. The only recommendation from me is at least one electronic storage/manager software should be used. Make sure you can integrate this software into the word processing software in a harmonious manner, and be able to export a formatted document on the fly. For the rest, it's personal choice: index cards, Post-it notes on the wall, writing on a poster size paper, etc.</p>\n\n<p>Now, many fun tools are available... <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map\">mind map</a> allows you to cluster the ideas and words, <a href=\"http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/webofscience/citmap/\">citation map</a> allows you to trace the ancestors (cited) and offspring (citing) articles of any indexed articles, <a href=\"http://www.wordle.net/\">word cloud</a> allows you to identify the most frequently used words, some of these functions are also embedded in manager software such as <a href=\"http://www.qiqqa.com/\">Qiqqa</a>, which is largely free and powerful.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Then get serious</strong></p>\n\n<p>After a week or so, you should have a good command of the tools, the software, the databases, and the keywords. Now you just need a question. Personally, all literature review should be problem-based. If someone asked you to \"go and understand the field,\" that is just simply absurd. It's like searching an encyclopedia without anything to search; while there may be people who enjoy randomly reading wikipedia entries (I do, to confess), but that's not the best use of PhD time. Isolate the questions from your study before doing any literature search.</p>\n\n<p>Now, what to search? I work in biomedical field so your and my paradigms may differ. For me, I usually go by this sequence as a starter:</p>\n\n<p><em>Definitions:</em> How does my field define XYZ? What are the controversy of the definitions?</p>\n\n<p><em>Operationalization:</em> How does my field capture/measure different contexts? How do we approximate \"poverty\"? How do we call a good \"user experience\"? etc.</p>\n\n<p><em>Data source/Research design:</em> What does my field do when they study the phenomenon of XYZ?</p>\n\n<p><em>Analysis:</em> What is some specific analysis for a certain type of design?</p>\n\n<p>In a way, use the first literature review to solidify and fortify the understanding of every single phrase in your research questions and specific aims. Then expand to other questions (you WILL have branching questions along the way, trust me. It'd be hard to suppress them). Stop when you feel you have somehow exhausted the answers, and/or you're happy with the results.</p>\n\n<p>Never start a literature review without a question, or you'll find yourself still only reading paper 18 months into the PhD, and that is probably not good.</p>\n\n<p><strong>PhD is not a between-people competition</strong></p>\n\n<p>You mentioned that sometime you saw others finding stuff that you did not. I'd suggest just ask them how they did it. Just because you asked them doesn't mean you're worse than they are. If they found something you didn't, get the references, read them and incorporate them into your manager, and instantly you're as well informed, if not better informed.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Talk to experts</strong></p>\n\n<p>Find some prolific faculty members and researchers, and ask them for tips. Collectively you should be able to get something more out of just talking to the librarian. Experienced researchers also tend to know more about the seminal work. And if you can get that list, compounded with the ability to trace the work's offspring, you can pretty much recreate the family tree of a particular key research theme.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Use crowd-sourcing</strong></p>\n\n<p>Websites like <a href=\"http://www.mendeley.com\">Mendeley</a> and <a href=\"http://www.researchgate.net\">Research Gate</a> utilize social bookmark approach and you can refer to other people's collections of articles/citations. If you have a good peer in your team, you may also divvy up the work and then evaluate the findings together, exchanging references, etc. Also some young researchers may be on other social sites such as <a href=\"http://www.reddit.com/\">Reddit</a> (but refrain from checking funny videos) or crowd sourcing sites such as <a href=\"https://github.com/\">GitHub</a>... you may consider setting up an account and set up a chat thread or a project for others to contribute.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Exploit all services of journals</strong></p>\n\n<p>There are at least a few services that you should see if your field's prime journals provide: </p>\n\n<p><em>1. Mail alert:</em> Some journals or search engines will send you e-mail when an article containing any of your preset keywords is available. Get like a weekly notice from them, and you can keep yourself somewhat up to date.</p>\n\n<p><em>2. Twitter:</em> Same as above, but through Twitter.</p>\n\n<p><em>3. Digest:</em> Some journals may boil down their published works into short pieces then feature them in the form of an online billboard. Occasionally a third party may do that as well for a nominal fee. For example, <a href=\"http://www.mdlinx.com/\">MDLinx</a> summarizes key medical journal findings and e-mail them to subscribers as a 5-minute digest every day.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Pay attention to \"grey literature\"</strong></p>\n\n<p>Notice that in some fields there is a tendency to favor publishing results that are statistically significant. Relying solely on literature database is only unbiased in the domain of the published literature. Sometimes, grey literature such as conference abstracts, documentaries, unpublished papers, white papers, proof-of-concepts, blog posts, grant proposal archives, trial registries, patents, personal communications, and general mass media may needed to be explored as well. Each field has their own literature graveyard and atypical channels of documentation, you'll need to talk to some specialists in your field.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Be always on</strong></p>\n\n<p>To me, literature search is really more of a lifestyle change rather than an activity. Now I have camera to take snapshots of posters, take verbal and written notes. I bring index cards for writing. Etc. When talking to people I often drive the topic to what cool papers they recently found. That's my best way to deal with potentially tricky water cooler conversation; either I'll learn something or they'll leave me alone.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13624,
"author": "Gaia",
"author_id": 9137,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9137",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You've got some great answers here. What I can suggest is trying <a href=\"http://www.myscizzle.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Scizzle</a>, where you can set up your feeds based on the things you always search for. It's more of a tool to keep up and stay on top of the literature rather than previous literature search, but it will help you going forward.\nThe problem with only using eTOC is that you limit yourself to just those journals and may miss something that is still important to you just because it was published in a journal you don't follow. Not to mention you might flood you inbox with all those alerts. </p>\n\n<p>I love the analogy of the potato salad, it's so true, you just need to develop your own workflow and practices that fit your own style.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/22 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13594",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9105/"
]
|
13,610 | <p>If one applies to a graduate school and gets declined, is it considered okay to ask for the opinions of admission staff or committee, about their thoughts on the person's application package (gpa, experience, personal statement, recommendation letters), for better adjusting his plan of applying to other schools and career?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13612,
"author": "Chris Gregg",
"author_id": 4461,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4461",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>There is nothing wrong with asking, but don't expect an answer that is particularly helpful (although you may get very helpful answers). You may get a standard response that doesn't tell you much, and I would think it pretty rare for someone to take the time to craft a detailed response.</p>\n\n<p>If you do ask, make sure you do it in a professional manner, with a couple of key questions about particular issues, like those you mentioned. I would avoid a generic email that simply asks, \"Why didn't I get the job/an acceptance?\" or \"What didn't you like about my application?\" Obviously, if you do get a response, follow up the response with a brief thank you email (and definitely don't get in an argument about the response if you don't agree with it!).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13613,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Tricky. The selection committee may refrain from telling you anything very specific about your case, because if they don't walk carefully and say something dumb, there can be a lawsuit. So, mostly you'd get some cookie cutter responses such as \"it's not a good fit\" or \"the selection process was highly competitive\" or something like that.</p>\n\n<p>To soften them, I'd suggest sending the chair of the committee an e-mail thanking for their time to evaluate your case. Express a reasonable amount of sorrow but show a strong will to pursue this degree or career. Propose an informal meeting or a phone conversation to lessen their stress of crafting a written response (stress \"informal\"). Schedule a time, and meet or call. In the communication, never ask why you were not selected. Twist the question a bit by asking what are the traits they value in this field/industry, and in light of your application, how you can enhance your portfolio so that you can become a stronger candidate in the general pool.</p>\n\n<p>Also, one school's rejects can be another school's successful candidates. On top of this very institute, you should talk to other institutes or at least attend their open day as well. The comments of the committee of the next school you'll apply probably matter a lot more.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/23 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13610",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/218/"
]
|
13,615 | <p><em>The topic of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility#Reproducible_research">reproducible research</a> is attracting quite some press these days, yet much remains to be done. In this spirit, I am asking what can be a reviewer's role in this — I'll explain fully below.</em></p>
<p>Like many people, I would like to see academic research moving toward a more “open data” model, especially because the principle of reproducibility of research is central to the scientific method. However, I know that at least in my field (theoretical chemistry), the usual standards are pretty lax. I'll give two examples:</p>
<ul>
<li>If you develop your own simulation/modeling code, you do not have to make it public in order to publish your results.</li>
<li>If you use an existing modeling code (available for free or commercial), you do not need to include your full/raw input files with your publication.</li>
</ul>
<p>When I peer-reviewed papers for publication in the past, I typically did not ask for this, because (a) maybe my standards are not other people's standards, and (b) the role of the reviewer is more to advise on the quality of the science and analysis of the results.</p>
<p>But, over time, I'm not really satisfied with this approach any more. So: as a reviewer, how much information do you think is reasonable to request from the authors? <strong>Should you follow the customs and unwritten standards of your field, or is it okay to push it toward the direction you'd like to see it go? And how much can you push?</strong></p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13623,
"author": "David Ketcheson",
"author_id": 81,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If there are other reasons to reject the paper, then it's certainly unnecessary to request code/data. If the paper looks like something that might be accepted, then you should ask yourself:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Can I certify the correctness and significance of this work, to the necessary degree, with the information that is available?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Of course, the key is the phrase <em>to the necessary degree</em>. To make things more concrete, you might consider:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Would I feel comfortable if the whole world knew that I refereed and recommended acceptance of this paper?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If the answer is <em>no, I don't have enough confidence in the results without seeing the raw data/code</em>, then you should ask for it. You're really doing the authors a favor here -- giving them the chance to convince you by providing additional evidence.</p>\n\n<p>I would be very polite and make the request through the editor. If the code and data are not forthcoming, you should probably say in your recommendation something like</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I find the results in this paper compelling if they are correct, but I cannot recommend it for publication without verifying the data/code that underlies those results.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Of course, the degree to which a referee is expected to verify the correctness of results varies greatly between fields. But you can always choose a personal standard higher than what's usual in your field. Just realize that good refereeing takes a significant time investment.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13658,
"author": "Faheem Mitha",
"author_id": 285,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/285",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here are my two cents.</p>\n\n<p>Yes, if there is code, you should ask for it (if possible). If you get it, then test it. Bear in mind if the authors don't have usable code, they probably aren't going to give it to you, but it doesn't hurt to try.</p>\n\n<p>If the authors have provided code, the authors will probably be delighted if you test it. Most of the time people don't bother. They'd probably be seriously thrilled if you provide useful feedback and suggestions for improvements. This practically never happens. Personally, if an academic reviewer was to provide useful feedback on some code I had written, I'd think I was dreaming.</p>\n\n<p>In particular, if you can't reproduce the results using the code, then I suggest documenting your reproduction difficulties in the review. I believe that such a failure is not considered a dealbreaker in academic research, because the ideas are the most important thing. However, it is still nice for everyone when this is possible.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/23 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13615",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700/"
]
|
13,616 | <p>I do scientific research, and I noticed for a lot of plots, the different curves are represented with different styles, but they are all black. For instance, one curve may be a solid line, one may be a dashed line, one may be a dotted line with triangular markers, etc.</p>
<p>However, this makes it hard for me to differentiate between the curves. Color is <em>much</em> more effective for helping people distinguish between data (and I’m taking a data visualization class that has research to prove it).</p>
<p>So... can I do this in my research article? I imagine most people are keeping their plots black and white because of printing restrictions on color, but at the same time they include colors in all kinds of other figures in their document. Also, how many people actually read printed articles anymore? For scientific work, I look all of it up online.</p>
<p>Are there good reasons for me to stick with this backwards black-and-white scheme?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13617,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Basically, the reason is as you suggested: historically, it has been very expensive to print in color, which made it unattractive for most research groups to do so.</p>\n\n<p>Now, however, it is increasingly common for most distribution of journal articles to be in PDF form, which can just as easily use color as not. Many journals will let you do \"color online\" for the same cost as black-and-white. However, if you are planning to use colors, then they should be used in <a href=\"http://tristen.ca/hcl-picker/#/hlc/6/1/816D92/57ECC5\" rel=\"nofollow\">an intelligent manner</a>. Arbitrarily using colors in a haphazard manner can make understanding even harder than using black and white. (Don't forget that many people are color-blind!)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13619,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>Why might be reasons for you to stick to black and white:</em></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Some legitimate scientific journals, even in the beginning of this 21st century, still have publishing fees for color figures and do not allow the combination of “color online and B/W in print”. It's sad to realize, but I know some in my own field.</p></li>\n<li><p>Having color figures allows you to have a higher density of information on a given figure. Yes, it sounds like a good thing and it usually is, but it is a double-edge sword. First, because you may end up making figures that are just too dense and difficult to interpret (if the caption requires more than 3 sentences, you may have a problem). Second, because if you do not choose your colors well, it may be actually <em>less</em> readable than a black and white figure.</p></li>\n<li><p>The rendering and perception of colors in printed materials and in video projected presentations is not at all the same. Thus, if you want to provide top-notch material, you might need to make two versions of your figures, which is extra work.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Mortiarty has said that the choice of colors is crucial. This is very true (and under appreciated by many), both for rendering and perception. I would advise you to read a book about color theory or color design (<a href=\"http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1592534333\" rel=\"noreferrer\">this one</a> is the one I read to strengthen my understanding of these things).</p>\n\n<p>To given an example, the software I love for drawing figures (<a href=\"http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Grace</a>) has an almost unusable default color palette (left below), but with some practice I could change it to a palette that is quite nice to use (right below):</p>\n\n<p> <img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/o9X37.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"> <img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/tdHx3.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n\n<p>Look in particular at how the basic colors have been desaturated: red, blue, green, and yellow.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13620,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>When making plots, I like to use reasonably subtle colours and <em>combine them with different line or marker styles</em> (e.g. blue triangles and red circles, or a black solid line and a blue dotted line). If printed in black and white the figure is still easily readable, and the colour version makes things a little more differentiable.</p>\n\n<p>Stick to dark or pale colours, and they will enhance the appearance and readability of your document.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Do:</strong></p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/5kxyP.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\">\n<img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/bidXi.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\">\n<img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/aAtFT.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n\n<p><strong>Don't:</strong></p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/BgSm0.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\">\n<img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/DMKIW.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\">\n<img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/AB4E8.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13622,
"author": "David Ketcheson",
"author_id": 81,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Some journals will ask you to pay a per-figure fee for your print figures to appear in color. If color really enhances the figure, then this is worth it. But if, say, you're just using a monochrome red colormap instead of grayscale, it's not.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13625,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Hail to Colorbrewer</strong></p>\n<p>I use Cynthia Brewer's website <a href=\"http://colorbrewer2.org/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Colorbrewer</a> to pick color schemes. It's also embedded in <a href=\"http://ggplot2.org/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">ggplot2</a> which is a common choice of graphing package in R. It allows users to specify colorblind-safe and photocopy-able color schemes. It's meant to be for map making, but the idea works for visualization all across the broad.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/SRdSB.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\" /></p>\n<p><strong>Other color specialists</strong></p>\n<p>For graphs that are used in more eye-catching media such as reports, posters or infographics, you may consider taking some advice from fashion and interior designers (See the graph below proposed by Japanese Shigenobu Kobayashi). Each combination can conjure a certain type of feeling, color schemes that seem absurd may work in other settings.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/D5TdK.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\" /></p>\n<p><strong>Works on data visualizations</strong></p>\n<p>You mention there is research backing up the use of color, which I do believe there must be. Though for that, I'd just like to share another point of view. Bill Cleveland, whom I consider the guru of visualization in science, advises that color should actually be avoided. In his book, he lays out this hierarchy:</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/G5Gth.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\" /></p>\n<p>I may not go thus far to suggest color is worse than area and volume, but I do agree that positioning along non-aligned scales is much better than color. In other words, if I have two curves to show, I'd opt for paneling them onto to their own coordinate then put the graphs side by side, or plotting them together using line with different styles or grey scales over using colored lines.</p>\n<p>The baseline for me is, <em><strong>the added colors should have their dimension (aka variable) to represent</strong></em>. If there is anything that does the same job, remove the colors because now the colors are "non-informative ink," as described by <a href=\"http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Tufte</a>.</p>\n<p><strong>Human eyes are prone to visual tricks</strong></p>\n<p>I do agree that colors catch attention, but just because it gets attention does not mean people can distinguish them well and can isolate the information well. Particularly, colors interact; just by pairing with some different colors, the same color can look different. For instance, here is an example borrowed <a href=\"http://www.sibleyguides.com/2010/05/color-illusion-and-thrush-identification/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">elsewhere</a>. The brown and the orange tiles pointed by an white arrow are actually of the same color.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/KGl07.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\" /></p>\n<p><strong>Why care about black and white?</strong></p>\n<p>And you asked "how many people actually read print articles anymore?" I would think that there are a lot. Schools in developing countries may not have color printer, and not every student has access to computer and the Internet. Their only way to learn about a journal article may just be through photocopies. Even in the US, with the rapid adoption of tablets, I still see a lot of journal clubs and meetings relying on B&W photocopies.</p>\n<p>Now when I go to deliver any workshops in other countries, I always photocopy a few sample pages of my handout to make sure they are still legible. And Brewer's work has been a lifesaver for me.</p>\n<p><strong>Closing remark</strong></p>\n<p>In a nutshell, I embrace data visualization and the increasing acceptance of colors thrills me. Though in the process I believe we should remind ourselves to be humble and do not create works that very disproportionally benefit people who are riding high at the technology tide. John Tukey laid the groundwork of some graphical <a href=\"https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0201076160\" rel=\"noreferrer\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">exploratory data analysis</a>, Charles Minard made a <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20130816224418/http://studio.coe.uga.edu/seminars/visualization/minard.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">visual</a> with rich amount of variables like 150 years ago and yet still considered to be pretty bad-ass by today's standard. How many colors did they use? Just one.</p>\n<p>At the end of the day, I would probably argue that <em><strong>design trumps all</strong></em>. It's not about color or non-color, it's about if they are used efficiently to maximize information transfer and minimize noises. At this moment, for me, lines, dots, shades along grey scale, and empty spaces are my staples; colors are my spices.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13645,
"author": "MacGyver",
"author_id": 5698,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5698",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Some might claim that having black and white is better because it's cheaper to print and keeps the focus on the content. </p>\n\n<p>But I disagree with using black and white and think that the content is better supplemented with color. There is research that if your mood is changed positively when learning (with our 5 senses), humans retain more information. (Example: don't you retain more when you eat dinner with your friends in a new restaurant versus sitting at your desk and talking to someone on the phone?) This is not true if the brain becomes conditioned to the environment (or restaurant in my example). So the environment should continually change to increase one's ability to learn. Thus, you should have a web interface to keep changing the theme to something new each day they visit the research. If it's on paper, then you're S.O.L. </p>\n\n<p>You could keep it in black and white if it's on paper and just spray some good smelling perfume on the paper. That may allow others to retain more with smell than with color, because smell has more of an impact on the brain than color.</p>\n\n<pre><code>Sight\nHearing\nTouch\nTaste\nSmell\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>Another way would be to put it in a card that plays classical music. When listening to classical music while learning, you will retain more. Hearing is on the list of 5 senses.</p>\n\n<p>I found this the other day that might help you.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://kuler.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/\" rel=\"nofollow\">https://kuler.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/</a></p>\n\n<p><strong>Then click the \"Explore\" hyperlink. And finally click the \"Most Popular\" hyperlink and the \"Most Used\" hyperlink.</strong> </p>\n\n<p>I'm not sure which one is better.</p>\n\n<p>You will find the work of many Adobe geniuses that might make your research a lot easier, rather than re-inventing the color wheel.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13699,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Many journals will either charge for the use of color (especially those that still appear in print) and a few I've run across outright ban its use unless it's essential for an understanding of the figure (some photographs, etc.).</p>\n\n<p>That being said, there's no reason you <em>can't</em> use color if you're willing to pay the fees, publish in online journals, use color in electronic supplements, etc.</p>\n\n<p>One essential thing I find, that I always check as a reviewer, and find appallingly uncommon in color figures: make sure they're still understandable in black and white. It doesn't have to be <em>as good</em>, but someone printing out your work on their office printer should still be able to understand what you did. Distributed in PDF or not, I can't read things for comprehension on a screen, so I print them out - I know a fair number of colleagues who do likewise. And I have yet to encounter a figure that <em>needed</em> printer unfriendly colors to be understood.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/24 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13616",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5958/"
]
|
13,631 | <p>In science/engineering subjects, it's not yet commonplace to use a laptop or tablet in class as most people still take notes with a pen and paper.</p>
<p>What is some good etiquette for laptop use in classes, so that I don't annoy or distract either my fellow students or the professor? Should I ask the professor if he/she would mind me using a laptop?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13632,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Professors don't share the same rationale so mileage may differ. Usually, the younger ones are more forgiving. Those born before late Generation X (aka 1970 or before) are more likely to feel awkward because in most of their education life, portable computers had not been made popular. So, personal computer and laptop were/are much less integrated into their daily life.</p>\n\n<p>In fact, it's not the laptop, it's what the laptop being used for and the manners of the owner's. Here are some guidelines, most are in my syllabi as well:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If the syllabus does not require a labtop but you'd like to use one, inform the professor through e-mail for permission. This step, however, can be skipped if the majority of the students have started using one since the beginning.</li>\n<li>Sit to the side or back so that your screen will not interfere with other students' line of eyesight.</li>\n<li>Mute all sounds.</li>\n<li>Be courteous about where to plug your charger and make sure no one will trip over the wire.</li>\n<li>Type quietly.</li>\n<li>Refrain from doing anything other than tasks related to the materials being covered (no Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, games, porn, jokes, e-mail, IM, shopping etc. even you think you have nailed down the contents).</li>\n<li>Occasionally establish eye contacts with the professor.</li>\n<li>Ask questions, keep engaged.</li>\n<li>If there are very few students and the interaction becomes more of a meeting, angle your laptop to either or your side by about 40 degrees so that it's not becoming a wall between you and the professor, or you and other students.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I also ask my TAs to sit at the back of the classroom so that I can make sure karma finds its way when I tally up the in-class performance portion of the final grade.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13634,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Follow the directions given. If nothing was said with respect to laptops, you may use one but be ready to fold it if asked to do so.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13635,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In addition to other useful information given earlier: yes, some \"older\" faculty are very sensitive (I almost wrote \"hyper-sensitive\", but that would have been judgmental...) about electronic devices of any sort in the classroom. Thus, no matter what you're doing, even if it's note-taking from their lecture, it will upset them.</p>\n\n<p>Some of that reaction is due to the greater difficulty of telling exactly <em>whether</em> you're paying attention, or not. The point is that <em>most</em> other \"inattentive\" activity is more easily distinguished from \"attentive\" activity... so that part of what is upsetting is that it's no longer possible to easily distinguish.</p>\n\n<p>Indeed, when I was in high school, one of the great attractions of my hobby of mathematics was that writing technical-looking stuff in a notebook <em>looked</em> just like taking notes in class... which was a great trick for me, personally: make occasional eye contact with teacher, then go back to what I was doing. :) An astute chemistry teacher did make a very cryptic comment which I only later realized was meant to let me know that, although no action was taken, not everyone was fooled. :)</p>\n\n<p>But/and, in fact, \"even many old people\" realize that \"paper\" is being significantly supplanted by electronics. In my <em>graduate</em> courses, students have the PDF notes called-up on their tablets, and mark on them using the touchscreen corresponding to the \"added value\" I (attempt to) provide in my lecture/discussion of the material. This is entirely reasonable, and certainly preferable to everyone printing out their own copy to physically mark on... ? </p>\n\n<p>Similarly, if/when I give references during lecture/discussion, how could I discourage a person from looking up the reference document (assuming it's available on-line)??? I realize that a well-prepared student may often have \"extra cycles\" available, so that they can legitimately pay attention well-enough, while looking up the peripheral stuff...</p>\n\n<p>And, similarly, in fact, I realize that a well-prepared student can fully follow what I'm doing while intermittently carrying on an email/facebook/text-message discussion with friends. Why not? Is this worse than daydreaming, looking out the window? :)</p>\n\n<p>I think the genuine operational issue is not whether-or-not faculty are offended, to which the answer is something like \"yes, but that's not the only thing that offends faculty, ...\", but whether it would be genuinely appropriate to try to actively prevent or \"police\" electronics use in class. This seems like a hopeless battle, beyond the larger request for ordinary civility in <em>all</em> things.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13640,
"author": "Tasawer Khan",
"author_id": 5995,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5995",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It might give an impression that you are doing something else on laptop and this might make someone angry. The tick tick from keyboard can also be disturbing. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/24 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13631",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8690/"
]
|
13,637 | <p>I am proofreading and editing a dissertation proposal for a student for whom English a fourth language--cleaning up the language for clarity and grammar, etc. The student has asked me to paraphrase the information of some articles so that s/he can use what is most relevant to her research. Is this commonly against school policy?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13639,
"author": "Tasawer Khan",
"author_id": 5995,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5995",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It normally comes under plagiarism to do paraphrasing for all dissertation. But if student does it by himself/herself it should be fine to proofread and suggest how to improve that. </p>\n\n<p>Just noticed kigen wrote same thing in the comment.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13642,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You may want to be sure of the policies as to what your university considers as plagiarism, if this is not clear, then ask what is the boundary. </p>\n\n<p>But, to be absolutely certain, I was advise to do as has been mentioned, that student needs to learn to paraphrase, even more so importantly that English is their 4th language - especially if they are pursuing a career in academia, paraphrasing is something the student will need to do themselves.</p>\n\n<p>You're heart is in the right place, but, by not doing the paraphrasing for them (rather editing etc), you will do yourself and the student favour in the long term.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13643,
"author": "penelope",
"author_id": 4249,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4249",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would maybe like to add that since a collaboration is an important part of research, <strong>explaining</strong> or <strong>summarizing</strong> the articles <strong>you already read</strong> would be okay in my opinion.</p>\n\n<p>When somebody new comes to my team and either has read something relevant to my research or is researching something where the articles I have read will be of help, we will often sit together for an hour or so, and the one who has read the relevant articles will explain the basic ideas, point out to relevant examples and/or results.</p>\n\n<p>In my opinion, this is fine, since there's no point in duplicating the time invested. Of course, I always read the articles in question after such talks, and I hope the other people do to. But, the explanations help reduce the time it takes me to fully understand the paper.</p>\n\n<p>So, to <em>summarize</em>, <strong>sharing the knowledge and research findings is okay</strong> and even encouraged in PhD level, but <strong>not researching and summarizing the relevant materials</strong> for somebody else; that is something I imagine high school professors would do for their pupils in the classes.</p>\n\n<p>Oh, and as a sidenote, proofreading is completely fine and I would gladly do it for any of my friends and colleagues whose English level is lower than mine (provided I have time).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13651,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p><em>I am proofreading and editing a dissertation proposal for a student for whom English a fourth language--<strong>cleaning up the language for\n clarity and grammar</strong>, etc. The student has asked me to paraphrase the\n information of some articles so that s/he can use what is most\n relevant to her research.</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That is fine.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><em>I am proofreading and editing a dissertation proposal for a student for whom English a fourth language--cleaning up the language for\n clarity and grammar, etc. <strong>The student has asked me to paraphrase the\n information of some articles so that s/he can use what is most\n relevant to her research.</em></strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That is abhorrent in two levels. First, the student had the guts to even ask. Second, the task itself involves significant amount of intellectual input that is not of the student's.</p>\n\n<p>I understand you wish the student to do well, and the work would reflect on your mentoring ability. But this is just identical to parents helping children with art project the night before school. It can be a fun and educational experience for kids, but outlandish for a grown up PhD candidate.</p>\n\n<p>At the very least, make the student do the major part of the work:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Highlight the parts that he/she feels relevant. The selection of articles and contents should never be done by you. Discuss with the student on the rationale of the selections, and use this as an educational opportunity.</li>\n<li>Paraphrase 5-10 various statements and hand them to the student as a guideline/examples, ask him/her to replicate on a dozen or so, check and give comments.</li>\n<li>Send him/her away with a complimentary copy of a thesaurus, or some URLs like <a href=\"http://thesaurus.com\">http://thesaurus.com</a></li>\n<li>Identify the ESL center in your institute, and ask the student to work with the ESL staff along the way.</li>\n<li>Recommend the student to identify an editor. His/her English standard will not become any better. Now you are helping with proposal, a couple years later you'll help with dissertation---vicious cycle.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Also, as how I define it, if English is my mother tongue, then all languages I would learn are my second languages. It'd only be a fourth language of this student if, say, he/she has Russian as mother tongue, then learned Chinese in Russian, then learned Thai in Chinese, then learn English in Thai. I don't think that is a very viable pathway, and you may want to hook the student up with a Russian English teacher/editor.</p>\n\n<p>And lastly, where were you when I was working on my PhD?!</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/25 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13637",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9153/"
]
|
13,641 | <p>Is it possible for an Indian student with M.Sc degree to do M.S course in USA? I heard BS degree in USA is of 4 years, but in India MSc is done after BSc.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13650,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>So long as you meet or exceed (but not by too much!) the graduate admission requirements of a department, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to study there. There's no fixed rule that says that you can't do a master's in India then do one in the US as well. (If there <em>is</em> such a rule, it applies only to the departments or universities that impose them; there are no universal rules that govern US graduate admissions.)</p>\n\n<p>The best bet is, of course, to contact the schools you're interest in attending and ask them directly what their policies are.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13665,
"author": "aspen100",
"author_id": 8876,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8876",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Honestly, it really depends on the University. Some universities do <em>not</em> allow you to do a masters in the same field, twice - for example : <a href=\"http://cs.stanford.edu/admissions/faq#a2\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://cs.stanford.edu/admissions/faq#a2</a></p>\n\n<p>Some of them will waive GRE/GMAT scores if you hold a master's degree (couldnt' post the link here, apparently I need 10+ reputation to do this). Other universities are more interested in whether your graduate degree had a research/thesis component to it, or if it was just a course based masters, like the one from NorthEastern (CS dept), for example, where a thesis is optional.</p>\n\n<p>For the most part, masters in science, AFAIK, are seldom course based, and more research oriented - so any university worth its soul will not want its students wasting time/resources on a second master's degree in the same subject - they encourage applicants to consider a PhD instead. </p>\n\n<p>However, if you hold a master's degree in, say, Physics - and want to pursue graduate studies in computer science, this is usually okay. </p>\n\n<p>Could you post details about which subject you've done your masters and bachelors in, whether your graduate degree was had a paper/thesis component, and what you want to pursue in the states? That may help narrow down the answer. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 61436,
"author": "Sathyam",
"author_id": 24064,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24064",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Absolutely!\nM.Sc. from a recognized Indian university usually meet the admission requirements in the US. Except if you had a M.Sc degree from IISC, IISERs, IITs, NITs and a couple of <em>good</em> universities; I think its advantageous to apply for a MS in the US in the perspective of research experience. Else and if you wish to do a PhD in the US, better appear GRE.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/25 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13641",
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|
13,644 | <p><strong>A confession first</strong>: This was our first attempt at a journal paper. </p>
<p><strong>The story so far:</strong><br>
We had submitted our work for possible publication with a reputed journal in our area. Some time later, while the review was still on, I checked out whether this journal allowed self-archiving of author's version of the paper. Feeling glad that it did (and being quite confident that our paper <em>will</em> get accepted), we decided to upload our pre-print on arXiv. </p>
<p><strong>And now...</strong><br>
The decision arrived from the journal. It was a reject. Amongst the other things written by the reviewers, one of the points happens to be: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>...I am a bit concerned with what appears to be the same paper
published and made available from: arxiv.org/xxx/yyy. I would
recommend that the authors clarify this potential duplication.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I do not think that this was the only reason for rejection, but might have contributed to it. </p>
<p><strong>My questions:</strong><br>
I know I did a mistake due my lack of awareness of the proper rules. How to rectify my mistake?<br>
Should I consider that this work of mine cannot be published to any conference/journal since its pre-print happens to <em>arXived</em> already?<br>
As far as I understand, arXiv does not allow us to remove papers. I can request a withdrawal, but even then the previous version(s) will remain available online (for any future reviewers to bug us). </p>
<p>What is the best course of action for me?</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>update based on answer by @F'x:</strong><br>
Adding this from the Journal's website, <a href="http://www.elsevier.com/journals/computers-security/0167-4048/guide-for-authors">Guide for authors</a> page:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Copyright is retained by the Publisher. Submission of an article implies that the paper has not been published previously; that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out; and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.</p>
</blockquote>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13646,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
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"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Update</strong>: I clarified the answer, as F'x correctly pointed out that the last part was not related. Sorry, I wrote the answer before having my morning coffee.</p>\n\n<p>Given that the journal allows self-archiving of the preprint on arXiv (as you reported), I don't think this was a reason for rejection. Reviewers may not know all the journal's rules (not professional behavior, but it happens). The editor, on the other hand, is supposed to know the policies. You can still clarify this with that journal's editor.</p>\n\n<p>Now, your \"issue\" is that you have your article on arXiv and this preprint cannot disappear. There is nothing wrong in having your manuscript there, as posting a preprint on arXiv has the benefit to make your work more visible. You are supposed to gather feedback on your study by posting your preprint there.</p>\n\n<p>Now, there are two cases, according to how your article was published in arXiv.</p>\n\n<p>If you decided to employ <a href=\"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/license.html\">arXiv non-exclusive license to distribute</a>, you are in the best position to submit your article to any another journal. If the journal wants \"original articles\", it does not necessarily mean that it does not welcome a preprint on arXiv. Journals usually make a distinction on this, if any. In any case, you <em>could mention the preprint existence in the cover letter</em>. It is an act of transparency in any case.</p>\n\n<p>If you chose a CC license, be very sure to make a pre-inquiry with the journal editor in chief. As much as I love CC licenses, non Open Access journals may not like that people will be allowed to create derivate works out of your preprint (i.e., much of your article).</p>\n\n<p>If your target journal has a clear policy against arXiv and other non-institutional preprint servers, most likely you have to switch journal for this paper.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13647,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>The answer to your question <strong>depends on the exact details of the journal's policy</strong> (and it would be good for you to quote them exactly, or give us a link). More precisely, it depends not only on the journal's policy regarding self-archiving, but more importantly on the <strong>journal's policy on prior publication</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>I know that might sound weird, but these are actually two separate questions. Self-archiving is a question of copyright, a legal issue: it's a question of what rights you retain (and what rights you transfer) according to the agreement you have with the journal's publisher. This copyright agreement is not something that influences the peer review process, it only governs what you agree with the publisher <em>should they actually accept to publish your paper</em>. (The agreement is void if the paper will not be published, obviously.)</p>\n\n<p>Now, the <strong>journal's policy on prior publication is not a legal issue, it is a question of scientific (or editorial) policy. It is decided by the journal's editorial board, and should be explicitly spelt out in its guidelines for authors</strong>, journal policies or another similarly titled document. Some journals, like those of the American Chemical Society, have a very <a href=\"http://pubs.acs.org/page/jacsat/submission/prior.html\">strict policy on prior publication</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The <em>Journal of the American Chemical Society</em> considers for publication only original work that <strong>has not been previously published</strong> and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. When submitting a manuscript, an author <strong>should inform the editor of any prior dissemination of the content in print or electronic format</strong>. This includes electronic posting of conference presentations, posters, and <strong>preprints on institutional repositories and any other Web sites</strong>. <strong>Any content that has been made publicly available</strong>, either in print or electronic format, and that contains a significant amount of new information, if made part of a submitted manuscript, <strong>may jeopardize the originality of the submission and may preclude consideration for publication</strong>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Thus, this journal would reject any manuscript that was posted on arXiv (or anywhere else), because it is not considered <em>original material</em>.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><strong>Now, what about you?</strong> Well, you have to find out what your journal's policy is, and act accordingly. If the journal policy forbids prior publication, then accept that you made a mistake, find a journal that doesn't have such requirements (it depends on fields, but it should not be too difficult), and submit it there.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, if the journal policy does not forbid such prior publication, then you only made a smaller mistake: not informing the editor. Thus, if you want to appeal the rejection, you may want to write an apologetic letter to the editor with that information (along with answering the other comments of the reviewers). As you say that this was not the main reason for the rejection, I wouldn't advise appealing though (chances of success are very slim).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13653,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While you may not have done anything wrong, violating a journal's preprint publication policy is a big deal. In fact it is such a big deal that if you did something wrong and this was the reason for rejecting the paper, the editor would have told you off in no uncertain terms. More likely the editor got a recommendation of \"reject\" from one or more reviewers, quickly looked at the reviews and decided that the decision was warranted and forwarded on the decision. The editor's review of the reviews may have been so cursory that he/she didn't even notice the comment about the arXiv preprint.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 85413,
"author": "Mohaqiq",
"author_id": 9709,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9709",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Maybe too late to answer. You can check the archiving policy of journal here <a href=\"http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/search.php\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/search.php</a></p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/25 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13644",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5851/"
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|
13,661 | <p>I am currently doing final year project on a subject which I did not have a very good grade(I took three courses in this subject with grade A-, A and B+, only top 5-10% can earn a grade of A and A+). I am quite interested in it and plan to continue in this subject in graduate school. Will this grade have bad effect for my application? Can I indicate my interest clearly in my PS given that my grade is not perfect?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13666,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't believe there is a serious stigma associated with an undergraduate getting a B+ in a graduate-level course. It is generally understood that undergraduates taking true graduate-level work (with graduate-level course numbers, etc.) are taking exceptionally advanced subjects, relative to their own preparation. Therefore, it is entirely understandable that you might have an A-, B+, or even a B in a graduate-level subject without it having a strong impact on your chances for graduate-school admissions. Exceptionally weak performance (corresponding to \"failing\" grades—usually C+ or lower) would be an exception to this, but I see no reason here why you should worry too much.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21180,
"author": "RoboKaren",
"author_id": 14885,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14885",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One solution to this would be to ask the instructor of the course to write one of your letters of recommendation. If you were indeed performing at a graduate-level while still an undergrad, then he or she should note this in his/her letter. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/26 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13661",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9165/"
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|
13,668 | <p>I've heard a claim recently that GRE scores correlate more strongly with family income levels rather than academic success. Is there any validity to this claim? Does anyone know of any study correlating GRE scores with this factor?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13978,
"author": "J. Zimmerman",
"author_id": 7921,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7921",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>According to <a href=\"http://www.fairtest.org/facts/gre.htm\" rel=\"noreferrer\">this article</a> on the <em>Fair Test</em> website,</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The GRE is particularly susceptible to the influence of socioeconomic class. ETS' own research has shown a strong relationship between family background and test scores. One study of applicants who scored between 750 and 800 on the exam found that only 4% of these high-scoring test-takers had fathers who had not completed high school; around half had fathers with bachelor's degrees or more, and of these, a whopping 90% had fathers with graduate or professional degrees. <strong>When family income was held constant, most of the test score differences between races disappeared or shrank dramatically.</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The correlation between GRE scores and future academic success is much lower, according to the same source.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The ability of the GRE to predict first-year graduate grades is incredibly weak, according to data from the test's manufacturer. In one ETS study of 12,000 test takers, the exam accounted for a mere 9% of the differences (or variation) among students' first-year grades.2 Undergraduate grades proved to be a stronger predictor of academic success, explaining 14% of the variation in graduate school grades. An independent non-ETS study found an even weaker relationship between test scores and academic achievement - <strong>just 6% of the variation in grades could be predicted by GRE scores</strong>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 68704,
"author": "Ooker",
"author_id": 14341,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14341",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Another article from <em>The Atlantic</em>: <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/the-problem-with-the-gre/471633/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">The problem with GRE</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>ETS studies have also concluded the GRE particularly underpredicts for women over 25, who represent more than half of female test-takers. Research from as far back as the 1960s leads experts to believe that the inconsistencies in GRE performance trace to a combination of factors including access to coaching, a disparity in educational opportunities that better prepare some students for the test, the content of the test, the way students are tested, and even the student’s own insecurities regarding race and gender. Sternberg puts it bluntly: “<strong>The GRE is a proxy for asking ‘Are you rich?’ ‘Are you white?’ ‘Are you male?’</strong>”</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/26 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13668",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/931/"
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|
13,669 | <p>I am applying to teaching jobs at small liberal arts colleges. They typically ask for the standard things: cover letter, CV, research statement and teaching statement. I feel as though a compilation of student comments and data taken from students in my classes (rating my enthusiasm and preparedness in particular) makes my application much stronger. After all, these are the types of things people look for when it comes to tenure review, so why not for a job application? My question is: </p>
<p>Is it inappropriate to include such additional materials in a teaching application?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13672,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Unless the call clearly states that nothing more must be included you should do so. As you correctly identified such information provides insights into you success in teaching. An option could be to simply include a summary in the CV or make it part of the teaching statement, as support that your teaching ideas produce good results. In short, add the material but make sure it is condensed and clearly structured. I have added such material to applications (for promotion in my case) and had someone sign off that the summary reflects the material on which it is based.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13695,
"author": "fileunderwater",
"author_id": 7223,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7223",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This would be appropriate as long as the call does not clearly discourage supplementary information (e.g. by saying that you should only include reseach and teaching statements + CV), and could strengthen your application, especially when applying to a teaching position. However, only include summary scores (such as %-students satisfied or student test results), and maybe one or two student comments. However, I would be hesitant to include comments altogether, since it is obvious that these might have been cherry-picked. A quantitative summary is much more informative. Do not include lengthy appendicies of raw evaluation data (which I've seen in applications), since this will only add clutter and make your application appear less professional. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/27 | [
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]
|
13,671 | <p>I am going to apply for the masters program in computer science to various US based universities. I am eager to apply to their professional courses which do not have thesis/projects in their curriculum, commonly known as MEng and MCS programs. These courses are more inline with the industry needs and that is where I eventually want to go after graduation.</p>
<p>As an international applicant if I apply to a program stating that I want to get a job in US because of better opportunities and doing masters there would help me in achieving my goal would it be frowned upon by the admission committee? How else can some convince that this is the right program for him?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13672,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Unless the call clearly states that nothing more must be included you should do so. As you correctly identified such information provides insights into you success in teaching. An option could be to simply include a summary in the CV or make it part of the teaching statement, as support that your teaching ideas produce good results. In short, add the material but make sure it is condensed and clearly structured. I have added such material to applications (for promotion in my case) and had someone sign off that the summary reflects the material on which it is based.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13695,
"author": "fileunderwater",
"author_id": 7223,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7223",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This would be appropriate as long as the call does not clearly discourage supplementary information (e.g. by saying that you should only include reseach and teaching statements + CV), and could strengthen your application, especially when applying to a teaching position. However, only include summary scores (such as %-students satisfied or student test results), and maybe one or two student comments. However, I would be hesitant to include comments altogether, since it is obvious that these might have been cherry-picked. A quantitative summary is much more informative. Do not include lengthy appendicies of raw evaluation data (which I've seen in applications), since this will only add clutter and make your application appear less professional. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/27 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13671",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6542/"
]
|
13,676 | <p>I am writing a paper, need some review. I want to send it to IEEE, without the name of my co-authors. I might get acceptance. I need to know, in that case, will I be allowed to add my co-authors or not?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13677,
"author": "Pavel Zaichenkov",
"author_id": 8964,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8964",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In general this depends on the conference regulations, so the advice is to check them.</p>\n\n<p>Usually you must put information about all authors before the submission deadline. For instance, <a href=\"https://edas.info/doc/authors.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">here are the rules</a> on EDAS submission system regarding this matter.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>You can add other authors later and you can change the order of\n authors. Note that some conferences do not allow that you add or\n delete authors after the submission deadline, to prevent that authors\n try to defeat the conflict-of-interest detection mechanisms by\n omitting authors.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13679,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n<p><em>I am writing a paper, need some review. I want to send it to IEEE, without the name of my co-authors.</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Short answer: <strong>Hell no!</strong></p>\n<hr />\n<p>Depending on the editorial policies of the venue you submit, they may or may not allow to add co-authors during the review process. Some may even accept you to add co-authors after acceptance of the paper.</p>\n<p>However, note that in all cases, <strong>it is unethical not to have a correct/honest list of co-authors</strong> at time of the first submission. <strong>All persons who have made significant scientific (or “intellectual”) contributions to the work should be co-authors</strong> in the submitted version of the paper.</p>\n<p>“Hiding” co-authors during the first submission, even if you intend to add them at a later point, is a clear ethical violation. It probably also violates the journal's (or conference's) policy, which typically stresses the importance of having an appropriate authors' list (and even sometimes provides criteria for authorship).</p>\n<p>The reason that editors may allow you to add authors is for special cases or circumstances. The main reason why it would be used is when, during revision of the work to address reviewers' comments, someone who wasn't a co-author of the initial manuscript has been brought onto the team. For example, if you asked someone to run some extra analyses and his contribution warrants authorship of the revised manuscript.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13684,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I agree with F'x's answer, but let me expand on it a little: intentionally submitting a paper without listing your coauthors is a potentially career-ending mistake. If I caught you doing that at a journal I edit (or as a referee), I would fully inform everyone - your coauthors, department head, university administration, etc. - and I expect it would lead to severe consequences, such as expulsion from grad school or tenure denial. Ethical violations vary in how serious they are, and deliberately omitting coauthors is among the most serious.</p>\n\n<p>Even if you confess and ask for your coauthors to be added, people may not believe you always planned to add them. Instead, some people will suspect that you initially intended to take all the credit but lost your nerve or feared getting caught. You may know that was never your plan, but your word won't mean much when you're already confessing to something unethical.</p>\n\n<p>It will be even worse if you get caught during the process. For example, one of the referees might already be aware of who is involved in this work, or might even be a coauthor. If they turn you in, you'll be in a particularly bad situation.</p>\n\n<p>In either case, your coauthors will likely be furious with you. They presumably don't think the paper is ready to submit (if they do, then you should submit it with their names on it!), and they also don't want it circulated with just your name on it. Regardless of the journal's policies, you'll have to answer to your coauthors.</p>\n\n<p>Even if you manage to salvage your career, this will stay with you forever. In short, don't do it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13686,
"author": "Trylks",
"author_id": 7571,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7571",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As @F'x and @AnonymousMathematician said, don't do that by any means.</p>\n\n<p>If you feel there is some good reason that @Suresh cannot find then on the basis of that reason you can request a <a href=\"http://www.computer.org/portal/web/peerreviewjournals/author#aui_3_2_0_1225\">double-blind review</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Due to the way you worded the question, my guess is that you don't have good reasons to do that. You should agree with your co-authors whether you want to send a paper or not before sending it for review.</p>\n\n<p>Besides of the ethical reasons provided, there could be legal consequences, AFAIK you are not the holder of the copyright of what your co-authors did, and if you disclose, publish or attempt to publish some information without their consent then they could start legal actions. If you had their consent, holding their names for the review would be very dodgy and ruin your reputation.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore, to answer the question: \"will I be allowed to add my co-authors or not?\", the answer is \"no\", and it doesn't really matter if you try to add them or omit them, this has many chances of backfiring in a dreadful way. Hopefully you didn't send it already, if you did and no review was started then withdraw it asap. If the reviews started, then start to apologize deeply to everybody.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/27 | [
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"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9175/"
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|
13,678 | <p>What are the typical (median or maybe third quartile) scores on the math subject GRE for successful applicants to a math program at the PhD level, in applied math, at a Group 2 or Group 3<sup>1</sup> school?</p>
<p><sup>1</sup>This is a ranking system the American Mathematical Society uses for graduate programs. Generally, Group 1 schools are considered the best, while Group 2 and 3 schools tend to be smaller and less prestigious.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13965,
"author": "tqw",
"author_id": 9366,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9366",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This may not exactly answer your question though... Below are \"official\" statistics for two group-one (?) pure math programs. Note that whether a score is \"acceptable\" might also depend on whether you are domestic student or not (based on the Ohio State data). </p>\n\n<p>(Since my reputation is too low to add more than two links in an answer, I can't provide more information at present. But I'll definitely update this answer once my reputation grows...)</p>\n\n<p>Ohio State University: <a href=\"http://www.math.osu.edu/graduate/apply\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.math.osu.edu/graduate/apply</a></p>\n\n<p>\"There are no a-priori minimum scores for the test set by our program. However, admissions become rare below the 50th percentile. The distribution of percentiles of subject test scores of Ph.D.-applicants we admitted between 2009 and 2012 is depicted below.</p>\n\n<p>The data over the four admission cycles includes 125 domestic (in red) and 129 international (in pink) applicants. <strong>The median percentile for domestic students is 67, the one for international students is 95.</strong>\"</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/9bODe.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n\n<p>University of Pennsylvania: <a href=\"http://www.math.upenn.edu/grad/graddata.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.math.upenn.edu/grad/graddata.html</a></p>\n\n<p>\"<strong>Scores on the Advanced Math Subject Test of the GRE should be at least 750</strong>, though applicants with somewhat lower scores may be admitted if the rest of their application is sufficiently strong. <strong>The average GRE scores of the students who entered our Ph.D. program</strong> in the recent past were: Verbal: 597; Quantitative: 789; <strong>Advanced Math Subject Test: 820.</strong>\"</p>\n\n<p><strong>Edit</strong>: More data...</p>\n\n<p>Cornell: <a href=\"http://www.math.cornell.edu/m/Graduate/app_details.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.math.cornell.edu/m/Graduate/app_details.html</a></p>\n\n<p>\"Most successful applicants score 700 or above on their GRE subject test.\"</p>\n\n<p>Georgia Tech: <a href=\"http://www.math.gatech.edu/academics/graduate/faqs-graduate-admissions#MINGRE\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.math.gatech.edu/academics/graduate/faqs-graduate-admissions#MINGRE</a></p>\n\n<p>\"The PhD entering class in Fall 2006 had the following averages: ... Subj 795\"</p>\n\n<p>UIUC: <a href=\"http://www.math.illinois.edu/GraduateProgram/apply-phd.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.math.illinois.edu/GraduateProgram/apply-phd.html</a></p>\n\n<p>\"Mathematics subject GRE scores of entering Ph.D. students in 2013: upper quartile 850, median 790, and lower quartile 690.\"</p>\n\n<p>Penn State: <a href=\"http://www.math.psu.edu/grad/phd/faq.php\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.math.psu.edu/grad/phd/faq.php</a>\n(\"Listed below are the average scores of students accepted to our program for the last several years...\")</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 31787,
"author": "Anonymous",
"author_id": 24274,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24274",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The NRC data has information on average GRE tests for EVERY math school:\n<a href=\"https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Amalxehk80PwdHRYSUpuWVVaa0VVVWRidXR6X21LZ0E#gid=0\" rel=\"nofollow\">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Amalxehk80PwdHRYSUpuWVVaa0VVVWRidXR6X21LZ0E#gid=0</a></p>\n\n<p>Here's some caveats: the NRC data is known to have issues. \"Average GRE scores\" in the spreadsheet doesn't specify what it means. There are several possibilities:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>it's the mathematics GRE test</li>\n<li>it's the general test</li>\n<li>NRC didn't specify which test they wanted when they sent out the survey to the schools, so for some schools it is one and for some schools it is the other</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>And there are two clear indicators of issues:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>the prevalence of the number 800</li>\n<li>the prevalence of the number 777</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>These wouldn't appear in true averages. So take it with a grain of salt, or maybe a bucket of salt.</p>\n"
}
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| 2013/10/27 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13678",
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|
13,687 | <p>I teach at a community college, and my experience with textbook reps is that they're very friendly and persistent, but ultimately all they've really done is to give me a copy of their book and try to convince me to adopt it. There are certainly many unethical things about textbook publishing, but as far as I could see, they were decisions made by executives in New York (e.g., bringing out new editions to kill off the used market, or shrinkwrapping the book with useless trinkets so that it couldn't be returned). In online discussions, I've often heard people who seem to be students make claims that professors were "bribed" to use a particular publisher's book. I never believed these claims, and when I asked these people to supply evidence, they never had any.</p>
<p>But recently I was talking to a colleague in another department, and he told me that his department would never change their book for a particular course, because his colleagues got ethically questionable inducements from the publisher. When I asked him what they were, he said that the publisher would, e.g., repeatedly invite faculty who were using the book to "meet-the-author" events in Florida. He said that these faculty had grown to expect this as a perk that they were regularly offered as an unspoken quid pro quo for continuing to use the book. I didn't ask him for hard evidence of his claim, and I don't know what form of evidence he would have available.</p>
<p>Is there really any hard evidence that publishers do this sort of thing, or is this an urban folktale?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13951,
"author": "J. Zimmerman",
"author_id": 7921,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7921",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>There is some hard evidence that textbook publishers do occasionally offer inducements to professors for adopting their texts. The abstract of <a href=\"http://jmd.sagepub.com/content/20/3/258.abstract\">this paper</a> in the Journal of Marketing Education reports that </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>With respect to publisher incentives, 32 respondents reported that they had been offered and 18 reportedly received an inducement from a publisher related to textbook adoption...</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Ricki Lewis, author of <a href=\"http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/12259/title/FREEBIES-AND-OTHER-INDUCEMENTS/\">Freebies and Other Inducements</a> found that \"monetary enticement to adopt a book, although not rampant, does happen, and not just in economics. In science, these extras are encountered in large introductory biology and chemistry courses--but less so in physics and geology classes, which tend to attract fewer students.\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 56646,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A couple of years after asking this question, I came across the following article:</p>\n<p>"Selling Out: a Textbook Example," Thomas Bartlett, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 27, 2003</p>\n<p>The article is paywalled, but you can easily find the full text by googling. It documents a number of clear instances of such inducements, and even quotes several teachers who explain that they knew it was unethical to take the money, but they did it because they wanted some cash. Some choice quotes:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I bought a house in June, and I needed a washer and dryer.</p>\n<p>I think most people are susceptible to twinges of guilt. I'm not susceptible to those twinges of guilt.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Apparently the most common form that this bribe takes is that teachers are paid to review a textbook. In some cases they get paid regardless of whether they adopt the book, but in at least one case documented in the article the company, North West Publishing, only paid reviewers if they also adopted the text. In many cases, the payment is made to an entire department and is said to be in return for contributions of material to the book by faculty members, but the payments are disproportionate to the value of the contributed material.</p>\n<p>In November 2015, I heard about another instance of this kind of bribery. State legislation in 2012 created the California Open Education Resources Council, made up of faculty from the UC, Cal State, and community college systems. The council was supposed to pick 50 core courses. They were then to establish a "competitive request-for-proposal process in which faculty members, publishers, and other interested parties would apply for funds to produce, in 2013, 50 high-quality, affordable, digital open source textbooks and related materials, meeting specified requirements." As of 2015 this appears to be a second failed initiative (the first being Governor Schwarzenegger's free digital textbook initiative for K-12), and one of the roadblocks appears to have been a controversy over a practice by the publishers of paying faculty to adopt their open-source books. On the face of it, this seems a little odd -- why pay people to adopt a book that is free? The publishers' illogical public justification is that they are doing this because making the materials free takes money out of the collective pockets of faculty who have written books. This makes very little sense, because the people they're writing checks to are not the same people as the ones who have written free or non-free books. Presumably the motivation for paying for adoptions is that the publishers intend to make money off of ancillary products and services, such as $120/semester subscriptions to mandatory online homework systems.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 56666,
"author": "Corvus",
"author_id": 27900,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27900",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Other leading tricks: (1) Offer a lucrative \"accuracy checking\" gig to recent adopters, (2) Create a special university-specific version of the text with e.g. an appendix of university-specific requirements and \"share\" the revenue with the \"coauthor\" department. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 59036,
"author": "Oswald Veblen",
"author_id": 16122,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16122",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I haven't been offered any free trips by publishers yet, but in my area (mathematics) someone once pointed out a different incentive the publishers provide to our discipline. </p>\n\n<p>At the largest mathematics conferences in the U.S., there are \"exhibits\" which publishers use to show off their books. There is a significant fee to rent space for these. Publishers also purchase advertising for the conference program, provide name tags with the publisher's name, and other such things. This has the effect of subsidizing the conference, reducing the cost for faculty to attend. </p>\n\n<p>I think there is an ethical question to consider about this framework. In the end, students who buy the textbooks provide the funds that the publishers use to purchase exhibit space and advertising, which in turn defrays the cost of the conference for professors. </p>\n\n<p>It seems reasonable to ask whether this helps to discourage the professional societies who sponsor the conferences from setting up committees to develop free courseware -- committees of that sort seem like one way to get \"respectable\" freely reproducible course materials, and the lack of action by mathematics professional societies seems particularly noticeable. </p>\n"
}
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| 2013/10/28 | [
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|
13,691 | <p>Before I state my query, you should know two things about me:</p>
<ol>
<li>I'm an EE graduate</li>
<li>I'm working in field of VLSI for past one year.</li>
</ol>
<hr>
<p>I'm applying for Masters in <strong>VLSI</strong> for fall-2014 and I'm in a dilemma here.</p>
<p>I've approached my head of department and a lecturer from my department for getting letter of recommendation. I only need one though. These are the reasons as to why I'm conflicted in deciding between the two. </p>
<ul>
<li>My head of department has a PhD in VLSI while my lecturer is just a postgraduate. </li>
<li>My lecturer has guided me for my thesis project in my final year of my undergraduate course. My final year thesis project is NOT on VLSI.It is on power systems. </li>
<li><p>My lecturer has taken classes for me while my Head of department has not taken any class for me . So she doesn't have any benchmark to judge my academic capability. She knows me as a student body member who has organised technical events though.(Which is why she agreed to give me recommendation, that and the fact that I had a discussion with her on my current job responsibilities)</p>
<p>My other two recommenders are my technical manager from my workplace and a teacher who took Integrated circuits during undergrad level- (again not a PhD)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Whom should I choose? I am confused because My head of department has that PhD tag( none of my other recommenders are PhDs) . So I'm in doubt as to whether I should go for her credentials or take one from my senior lecturer( in which case none of my recommenders will have that PhD tag)</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13692,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One possibility is to get letters from both. Some application web sites will not accept more than the standard number of letters, but others will, so you should check first. It's considered obnoxious to assemble an unreasonably large number of letters, since it wastes the time of your recommenders. However, one extra letter could be reasonable in your case.</p>\n\n<p>Another is for them to write a joint letter. I've seen this occasionally, with a graduate student and faculty member co-writing a letter of recommendation for an undergraduate (where the grad student knows more about the undergraduate's work, but the faculty member has more perspective and credibility). You should treat this carefully, so you don't inadvertently offend the lecturer by suggesting that their recommendation is not valuable by itself. However, it could be one way to handle a strict limitation of three letters.</p>\n\n<p>If you have to choose one, I'd probably go with the lecturer, since the head of department has neither taught nor supervised you, so her letter is unlikely to be as informative as the lecturer's. However, you would have to decide based on the specifics of your situation.</p>\n\n<p>I'm assuming you can't replace either of the other two letters, since the course on integrated circuits is obviously relevant and I imagine your technical manager can say a lot about your background, experience, and abilities in VLSI (since that's what you are doing).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13698,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In general, if you are applying for a <em>research</em> degree, then you are better off getting letters of recommendation from people who can comment on your ability <em>as a researcher.</em> Even if the person is a well-known expert in the field, that won't do them a whole lot of good if they can't comment on <em>your</em> abilities in the field.</p>\n\n<p>Your department head has neither observed your work in classes nor supervised research for you. How much detail she can provide on your capabilities is therefore greatly in doubt. You have taken classes and performed research with the lecturer. Therefore, your lecturer can evaluate you more thoroughly and provide evidence supporting those claims. </p>\n\n<p>So, unless you have some additional absolutely compelling reason to obtain the letter from the department head, I would go with the instructor who actually knows your work.</p>\n"
}
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| 2013/10/28 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13691",
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|
13,700 | <p>As you might see from my history I don't have a good relationship with my advisor. Recently we wrote a journal paper together based on my thesis. I wrote the introduction, analysis and the description of the app we had developed for our research. In crude terms, I wrote 15 pages of the 23 page journal paper. My advisor told me that our draft was submitted to this journal three weeks ago, yet I never received any notification from the journal that I was listed as author or co-author.</p>
<p>I went into the help section of the journal to figure if they do send emails to every author and it seems you do need an email to register as co-author. Confirmation <a href="http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/pdfs/SubmitGuide_S1M_1.pdf" rel="noreferrer">here</a>. </p>
<p>According to the guidelines, if the co-author is not registered with the journal, their email should be provided. Its quite obvious I should have received an confirmation email and my advisor only has my .edu email so there is no way another email address could have been used. I have written a journal paper to IEEE as co-author before and I had received an confirmatory email saying I was listed as co-author. I am afraid of confronting my advisor about this as I need co-operation to graduate and in my thesis defense, but I was curious to know if I will get an email if I am listed as co-author? More importantly, should I be listed as author or co-author in this case, when the work is based on my thesis and I wrote most of the paper?</p>
<p>I called the 1-800 number and when I told them the submitter's last name (my advisor) and the paper title, they confirmed that my advisor was listed as sole author. They told me that they had to un-submit and resubmit the journal paper to add me as co-author and they gave me contact of a University professor for further inquiries. I have all the email proof of my work (for instance emails where my advisor asks me to write intro and I would reply with the intro text attached and so on). I am seriously upset right now. I have my thesis defense in December and I fear that if I confront my advisor, things will screw up. Can you please advise on what I should do right now?</p>
<p>PS: I was told that I am listed in Acknowledgement section in the end, which is completely unfair. The Deciding officer (it seems he is the final authority in these cases and RIO reports to him) at my University is the vice president, who was my advisor's PhD Advisor half a decade ago. They are both from same city of a foreign country and are close family friends. Rumor has it that the Vice President rejected multiple highly qualified candidates to get my advisor for Asst. Prof. Position. All my friends are asking me to drop it because I don't have many bullets to go after them, but they can completely screw me up or set me up for something if I go against "one of their own". I am still evaluating what to do.</p>
<p>PPS: Thank you for all your advice. Even though I don't know any of you personally, you were very kind in giving me your time and advice. I cannot thank you all enough. I spoke with a full professor in another deptartment in Engineering. He asked me to stay put till December until the paper is published. He was of opinion that the University is a big cesspool and they only way to clean it is to "get the people" who are doing this publicly and shame them. I do not know if I am being used as pawn right now in University politics or what I should do. I spoke with other people too and all they said was "Is not getting an authorship on journal worth more than not earning the degree". It seems sole authorship does carry extra weight age in front of tenure committee. The whole situation has completely shattered my faith in academics, and the fact that I am part of a state university makes this even more depressing. By the way, one of the two editors of this journal was on advisor's PhD committee. So many people have advised me not to contact any of them. In academia everybody seems to know everybody, in fact it seems more like a cult. I am just doing a Masters now, I always had plans to do PhD and explore my curiosities and see what I can achieve with perseverance, hard work and to test my mental capabilities to their limit, but I am done. I quit. I never felt so depressed for a very long time. Academia these days seems to run by industry practitioners who had previous experience at corporate politics and are good at it or by businessman who wear good clothes, have good people skills and just show off while delegating all the work to GRAs and underlings, and that's not what I am and will never be. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13701,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes, web submission software <em>can</em> send authorship confirmation emails to all co-authors, but not all journal publishers actually configure it to do so. I can confirm that at least one journal by Taylor & Francis does not send confirmation emails to people other than the corresponding author.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13704,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There may be nothing to worry about. In ScholarOne (the web submission system being used), the submitter is supposed to enter contact information for all the authors, but an impatient submitter might skip that. As long as you are listed as an author on the paper itself, I'd bet the web submission stuff can be fixed after the fact (it might annoy people, but it's unlikely to derail publication). Probably the person you called at the publisher just checked the ScholarOne metadata without examining the submitted PDF, in which case you don't know for sure whether it lists you.</p>\n\n<p>Instead of provoking an angry confrontation, I'd focus on first figuring out whether you and your advisor are in agreement on authorship. I'll assume you have not explicitly discussed this question, since if you had, then you should have ended up with agreement one way or the other, or at least known you disagreed.</p>\n\n<p>As a first step, you could bring up the question. For example, you could write \"I realized recently that we never explicitly discussed authorship of our paper. I've envisioned myself as first author and you as the senior author, since I wrote much of the paper and it is based on my thesis work. However, I should have discussed this with you before submission. What's your take on the author ordering, and how did you handle it in the submission?\"</p>\n\n<p>Then you can decide what to do based on her response. If she explicitly says you're an author, then I'd trust her on this. You could still discuss author ordering, based on the conventions in your field.</p>\n\n<p>If your advisor says she doesn't think you should be an author at all, then you'll have to discuss this issue. It would be counterproductive to accuse her of dishonesty or of trying to steal your work. Instead, you should just try to make the case that your contributions justify coauthorship. You could refer to guidelines for this journal or for your field in general to help you argue.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13705,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It is an <em>unambiguous violation of ethics</em> for a collaborator to be dropped from the list of authors.</p>\n\n<p>If you wrote a significant contribution to the paper, <strong>you are in the right.</strong> Your supervisor has no ground to stand on. You should <em>ask</em> your supervisor (don't accuse!) if he/she has included you as a co-author. If a mistake has been made, the sooner it's fixed the better. You could also have a good claim to first authorship, though that is something to decide between authors.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Edit: a little humour - full credit goes to <a href=\"http://upmic.wordpress.com\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Nik Papageorgiou / The Upturned Microscope</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mrv8v.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13716,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I am seriously upset right now. I have my thesis defense in December and I fear that if I confront my advisor, she will screw me up.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Simply as a matter of self-interest, your adviser probably doesn't want you to fail your defense. The work is being published in a journal, and at least one of the names on the paper is hers. If it's then being judged as academically inadequate for a PhD, that reflects badly on her.</p>\n\n<p>Also, if she's really as bad as she sounds, she'll have a reputation at your school, and many of the people on your committee will realize that.</p>\n\n<p>A more realistic concern is that this is also the time when you're going to be applying for your first job, and she may not give you a good recommendation. E.g., if you're applying for a postdoc at another university, people there probably don't know her personally and don't understand your situation. Once you get past the hurdle of getting that first job, you no longer have to depend on your adviser for a recommendation. One option to consider would be to get that job lined up before starting a big row over authorship of this paper.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/28 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13700",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7937/"
]
|
13,713 | <p>Sometimes, I feel to contact some of the eminent researchers in my field for any of the following reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Appreciating their research publication (recent times). They publish in top conferences, which are usually not hosted in my country or nearby.</p></li>
<li><p>Requesting comments on some of my research hypothesis</p></li>
<li><p>Sometimes just because I am a die hard fan of them. For example, probably the only reason I continued with research in Computer Science was due to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth">Don Knuth</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Sometimes, to know what they think on some specific research area that has propagated due to there work. (Probably looks like some journalistic work)</p></li>
<li><p>For knowing how did they tackle the pressures or certain situation during their PhD or research. (Yes, it's vague but these questions come to mind and probably should be answered by oneself or personal interaction, but adding it for the sake of completion)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Since, most of them are located outside my country, I can't visit or phone them. So, how are such emails perceived. Is it appropriate to send such emails, given that they are expected to have very busy schedule and it would probably waste their time?</p>
<p>Though I have mentioned my field as Computer Science, the question should be applicable to all the fields. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13714,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While many of these topics are excellent points to start a 1-1 conversation, I seriously doubt whether you'd get much of a response over email. This is not to say that they wouldn't appreciate your praise, but that there may not be anything to reply to in particular. </p>\n\n<p>I suspect an email will get a better response if you have specific questions about <em>research</em> content: ideally, a question related to something in a recent paper that isn't entirely obvious. For example, in my field it's sometimes the case that someone sketches a proof idea in a conference paper without a full version, and fleshing this out requires some clarification from the authors. </p>\n\n<p>Of course, you can always add in a question from your list as extra cargo. Then it's a little more likely that someone will reply. </p>\n\n<p>More generally, think about it this way: if you never met someone before, and they came up to you and asked you questions that might be construed as personal (especially 5), or that require you to come up with opinions on the fly (2,4), you might hesitate to respond. The same thing, but without the pressure to say something, will happen over email. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13715,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Here are some of my strayed thoughts.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Think from return of investments, of yours and your idol's</strong></p>\n\n<p>If you ever perceived that your e-mail would be a \"waste of their time,\" then why send it? I feel that most eminent researchers have a trait of \"ignore everyone and head for their goal;\" getting acknowledgement and acceptance is probably not their primary concern. A specific e-mail describing how their work has inspired your study/project is probably fine, but I wouldn't go so far to expect they would reply and give specific comments on your hypotheses.</p>\n\n<p>From your point of view, instead of using the energy and bandwidth to send the e-mails, there are a lot more you can do:</p>\n\n<p><strong>There are many ways to show your appreciation</strong></p>\n\n<p>First, they would probably like to see their work being formally cited and, more importantly, applied to the field or crossed into other fields. Each idea geminated from their work is an appreciation by itself, and in the mean time you can also enhance your publication and research paradigm. The plus is: if you have done enough of it, the big shot may actually contact you and give comments.</p>\n\n<p>Second, you can help preaching the researcher's ideas and agenda. You can write blogs, answer other people questions, use their works in your journal clubs or lectures, etc. to subtly introduce the researcher's teaching to the public. Better yet, refine the researcher's ideas, and incorporate into yours. Become a spiritual successor with your own unique approach. And let your career be inspired by the researcher.</p>\n\n<p><strong>You can learn from someone without establishing communication</strong></p>\n\n<p>For some more senior researchers, look for their auto-biography, biography, interviews, and documentaries that feature them. I will probably never be able to talk to Itzhak Perlman, but I learned a lot about him through books, websites, documentaries, and musics that he plays. (And actually, he has a Youtube channel as well, but I am suffering from too much fanboy shyness to write any comment.)</p>\n\n<p>For younger researchers, try look for their blogs, Youtube channels, open courses, or even biographies of their mentors. All these may help you become more familiar with them.</p>\n\n<p>Another way is to indirectly know them. Most of these researchers would have a lot of students or proteges, who may be closer to your rank and more likely to communicate with you. You may build a relationship with them, and learn a thing or two about their interaction with their mentor.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Try technology</strong></p>\n\n<p>For their new publications... nowadays most online journals allow leaving comments online. You may try to say a nice thing or two there. If they write a blog, that's even easier. Some researchers maintain a LinkedIn page or a Twitter account, try connect with them and follow them. Hope for the best.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Use other famous people as leverage</strong></p>\n\n<p>If you really want to communicate with them, also try using other organizations. For instance, you can write to some online radio station and suggest an interview topic and some guests, which of course will include your idolized researcher. You can also write to some prominent podcast hosts and give them a couple reason to invite so and so for an interview. Make good use of crowdsourcing, invite your peers and friends to support your petition.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Some heroes/heroines are better left a bit mysterious</strong></p>\n\n<p>This is sad but occasionally painfully true. Some famous people are better left not known at personal level. They could be immensely arrogant, they may not have a nanogram of social skill, they may be a jerk... Unless I have reconstructed a pretty concrete and reliable image about the researcher from different sources, I would probably want to keep them as what they are in my mind, and as an inspiration for my work.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13722,
"author": "Trylks",
"author_id": 7571,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7571",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>We can be exahustive here.</p>\n\n<p><code>If</code> they feel like writing that kind of things to strangers <code>then</code> they most likely have a blog that you can follow, that saves a lot of time for them, by broadcasting. <code>If</code> they do, you can write comments in the blog, that could be appropriate and extend posts and discussion, which is good for them (a chance to clarify something), for you (getting answers, yay!) and for anyone that reads the post and then the comments (and doesn't need to ask the same again...).</p>\n\n<p><code>If</code> they don't feel like writing that kind of things to strangers <code>then</code> most probably they won't reply. In that case you will be wasting their time (that's bad) and <em>your</em> time (that's worse; selfsteem, please :P ). Thus that's probably not very wise.</p>\n\n<p><code>If</code> you have questions not covered in the aforementioned blogs, you can ask here, to a crowd of anonymous people. There are many people giving great answers (really, I know my profile is the closest one in distance, but you should check somewhere else). <code>I know</code> we are not so famous and important and wise and everything, <code>but</code> we try to do our best and even if <code>we can understand</code> that you may prefer the advise of other people, we <code>still</code> have a little heart and that hurts. :(</p>\n\n<p>:P Personally, I think it is normal to feel admiration for people that basically are, in some aspect or another, what you want to be and struggle to be in the future. It is probably useful and interesting to get some insight from them, and understand their perspective (personal and professional) on many questions, if you are going to idealize someone and have an idol, probably a rock star is a worse option than a researcher, but I'm not sure whether idealizing and idolizing researchers is any good anyway...</p>\n\n<p>This answer may be biased because I tend to underestimate the relevance of mentoring and I consider more important talent and hard work. I'm also to some extent opposite to you, I admire and appreciate some people, but I'm more introverted, so my natural reaction is thinking to myself: \"Stay quiet and don't bother them, you despicable maggot!\" (This is clearly worse than idolizing them).</p>\n\n<p>As a final advise, keep your extroversion, it's good for you. That means you will have plenty of things to speak about when you go to a conference and chances to do so. You will love conferences, so focus on publishing to go there (you should focus on publishing anyway). If you like visiting places then that's another big plus.</p>\n\n<p>So work hard and remember, we (a bunch of anonymous people) will always be here whenever you need us, remember us when you get to be famous. Also, write a blog.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13723,
"author": "PLL",
"author_id": 1277,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1277",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In a nutshell: <strong>Sending a polite email on an appropriate topic is pretty much always acceptable. However, don’t automatically expect an answer.</strong></p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>The second part is important. The eminent researcher is probably a busy person, and you have no particular moral claim on their time and attention. Don’t make it sound like you feel entitled to their assistance — “Hey Mr. Tao! I need to understand the Green–Tao theorem for my masters thesis. Please can you explain it to me in simple terms? P.S. my thesis is due next Tuesday.” And don’t be disappointed if they don’t reply.</p>\n\n<p>That said, don’t despair either — don’t feel “oh, it’s not worth writing because they’ll never reply to a nobody like me”! Some may well be too busy or dismissive, but many are also genuinely kind people, and very generous with their help. Others (I have a specific rather famous person in mind here) are simply incorrigible curiosity-hounds, and will happily get caught up for hours by an intriguing problem from a random stranger when they’re supposed to be grading final exams. So they may well reply — just don’t presume it.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>On the other hand: what’s an appropriate topic?</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Questions about their research can be fine, provided you’ve done your homework. For instance, <a href=\"https://mathoverflow.net/a/144823/2273\">I had a question on mathoverflow recently</a> which looked like it might have been answered by a particular researcher, but nobody could find the specific paper, and it was possibly unpublished. Writing to ask e.g. “Do you recall which of your papers on $\\tau$-categories might contain or imply a result something like […]?” is certainly OK.</p></li>\n<li><p>Questions about practical matters that may be their responsibility are good — at worst they can always hand it off to someone else. “I’m applying to your department’s PhD programme, and it wasn’t clear to me from the website if students are expected to have a potential advisor in advance. If so, are you potentially accepting new students at the moment? I am very interested in your work because…”</p></li>\n<li><p>Plain fan mail is OK, as long as it’s sincere and you’re not trying to get something for it! Nobody’s going to mind hearing “Please excuse my writing out of the blue; I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your talk at such-and-such conference. As a non-specialist, I really appreciate the effort you put into making it accessible to a wide audience.” However, if this is followed up by “Incidentally, I am applying for a job at such-and-such department. Do you have any insider advice you can share?” then the initial compliments will look a lot less sincere. Don’t do this!</p></li>\n<li><p><em>Possibly</em> questions about your own research. The two big questions here are: again, have you done your homework; and is there a good reason why you’re asking them, not someone else? Asking “I read your paper, and had an idea of how to generalise Theorem 5.3, by such-and-such approach. Do you know if somebody is already working on this question, or is it open?” should be fine. Asking “I had such-and-such new idea in your field. Can you spare the time to give me feedback?” makes you sound a bit like a crank — for this, you should be running it by a colleague first, or a colleague-of-a-colleague, or if you don’t know anyone close to the field yet, try and find someone less famous and with at least <em>some</em> specific connection to you (e.g. geographically closer) that you can write to first.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>What’s <em>not</em> appropriate:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Asking for significant favours (unless you have a personal connection of some sort).</p></li>\n<li><p>Asking them to explain their research to you because you don’t want to read their papers. (That’s what helpful strangers in internet forums are for!)</p></li>\n<li><p>Personal questions (unless you’re a serious journalist writing e.g. a book on drug use among academics; but in that case you should know about how to get in touch with sources appropriately already).</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/29 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13713",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2823/"
]
|
13,717 | <p>My spouse and I are both finishing Ph.D's in math and applying for math postdocs in the US. We work in different areas of math, but there are many departments in which both are prominently represented. A postdoc position in the same place is not an absolute must but a big plus for us, and would likely be a deciding factor if choosing between offers.</p>
<p>My question: would adding a statement in the cover letter to the effect of
"My spouse xxx is also applying for this position" be helpful, or is it more likely to disqualify both of us in the eyes of departments? We have different last names, so someone who does not know us well personally would probably not know we are together.</p>
<p>The advice for tenure track applicants seems to be not to divulge such personal information until the interview, but there are no interviews for math postdocs so I'm not sure whether the advice would be different.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13718,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think the advice that applies to tenure-track applicants also pertains to postdoc applicants. Employers aren't allowed to ask about two-body problems in terms of interviewing and hiring candidates. There's no need to force the issue ahead of time.</p>\n\n<p>If you get an offer, then you can discuss the two-body problem. Otherwise, I wouldn't make an issue of it before then.</p>\n\n<p>(Of course, the challenge is trickier for postdocs in most fields outside of math, because in those disciplines, postdocs are normally hired by individual faculty members, rather than at the departmental level.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13719,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>I'd not risk it: you have more to loose by mentioning it than to gain.</strong> It seems fairly unlikely that this would be a motivating factor for the department to offer you both a position, but it could be interpreted badly (such as <em>“I won't come if you don't offer us both a job”</em>).</p>\n\n<p>This answer is not based on personal experience with US post-doc committees, but post-doc hiring in general.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13725,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As someone who actually has experience chairing a postdoctoral hiring committee in math in the US (maybe F'x has? <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/630/13\">s/he is an international wo/man of mystery</a>...), I think the answer is \"it's unclear.\"</p>\n\n<p>I think there's no question that mentioning your spousal situation in connection with a job will increase the probability of you both getting jobs and decrease probability of either of you getting jobs; it's impossible to be sure how those things will balance. There's an extremely real danger that if a school knows about your situation, they'll just decide they have no chance of getting you and give up; on the other hand, if a school has a reasonable number of positions (for example, the University of Michigan), and you and your spouse are reasonably hot commodities, there is some chance a school will try to grab you both, but only if they know before whatever crucial meeting they have. That's not a very likely turn of events, but it has happened (note the importance of at least one, and hopefully both, of you being a hot commodity, <strong>and</strong> of the school in question having a large number of positions; if they have only one position, this won't work very well). </p>\n\n<p>In part, you have to decide for yourself how scared you are of not getting a job vs. how scared you are having to take a job separating yourself from your spouse. No one on this site can tell you, but maybe your advisor or another trusted mentor can help you work that out. If you're planning for a research career in mathematics, you should also give some thought to doing the best postdocs possible (maybe requiring separation) to have better leverage on the TT market (I know that sucks, but the two-body problem generally sucks).</p>\n\n<p>If you decide you would like the committee to know about your spouse, you then have to figure out when and how to tell them. I wouldn't depend on anything being noticed in your cover letter; there are a lot to read, and such a subtle thing will go unnoticed. As other answers point out, there is some chance of coming off as presumptuous. It's probably more reliable for one of your letter writers to mention it (bonus: this requires you to have a discussion with the letter writer about your situation). You can also broach the subject with someone you know at the school via email (or ask your advisor to do this). Another useful trick is to include a link to your spouse's homepage on your homepage (though that could be easily missed as well; still I'm more likely to read a homepage than a cover letter). </p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/29 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13717",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
]
|
13,726 | <p>I am submitting a paper to a machine learning/computer vision conference. Is it worthwhile to include some source code of my implementation so that the reviewers can test it themselves or gain a greater understanding of my idea? It will take time to clean up my code and make sure it is anonymised.</p>
<p>Is this a common practice? If so do reviewers pay attention to the code?</p>
<p>Is it worth the time to prepare anonymised and clean code?</p>
<p>The code will be included as a ZIP archive through the paper submission website. After the paper has been accepted I intend to release it with an open source license.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13727,
"author": "seteropere",
"author_id": 532,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/532",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This largely depends upon the reviewers and the field customs. Some reviewers, specially in journals, may ask for source code. However, it is unlikely that in Computer Science conferences reviewers ask for source code specially when the paper is well-written.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13730,
"author": "Trylks",
"author_id": 7571,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7571",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Should I supply code as supplemental material?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, but it would be better if you published it in an open access fashion.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is this a common practice?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If so do reviewers pay attention to the code?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Depends on the reviewers.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is it worth the time to prepare anonymised and clean code?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That depends, don't do more than necessary.</p>\n\n<p>Also read:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003285\">Ten Simple Rules for Reproducible Computational Research</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://faculty.washington.edu/rjl/pubs/topten/topten.pdf\">Top Ten Reasons to <em>Not</em> Share Your Code\n(and why you should anyway)</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://wiki.52north.org/bin/view/Documentation/BestPracticeOpenSourceForUniversityResearchers\">Open Source Software Publishing for University Researchers</a></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13778,
"author": "Faheem Mitha",
"author_id": 285,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/285",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Making code available is <em>always</em> a good idea, as long as the code works. It is probably a good idea even if it doesn't, since even non-working code can help reviewers and users/readers of your work to understand details of your implementation that your paper does not cover. However, if the code does not work, you should clearly indicate this in the source. In the case of working and tested code, bear in mind that sufficient documentation to run the code is highly desirable. You only mention reviewers, but you should also be thinking about general readers of your paper.</p>\n\n<p>I think it is probably reasonable to supply a current snapshot of the code to the paper as a zip archive (or similar) for reviewing purposes, but why not just put it online directly as a Git or Mercurial repository on Bitbucket, Github, or similar, and reference this on the paper? I also recommend making repositories available in more than one place, in the interests of redundancy. For example, I have used both Bitbucket and Google Code for my Mercurial repositories. This has various advantages over a zip archive file; for one thing you can push corrections and other changes to your repository, and everyone will immediately have access to them.</p>\n\n<p>If you are concerned about releasing your code before your paper has been published might mean someone else will \"scoop\" you, that seems unlikely to me. At least, it is not something I've ever worried about.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16800,
"author": "Eelco Hoogendoorn",
"author_id": 11814,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11814",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Absolutely, yes. </p>\n\n<p>If you don't release code, then your work is not de-facto reproducible; and if you will get me as a reviewer, I will do everything in my power to either get you to publish code, or get rejected. Rare exceptions to the contrary, where an implementation is trivial. But implementations are rarely trivial; and often a great place to sweep a lot of quirks under the rug which conveniently arnt mention in the paper.</p>\n\n<p>Granted, it is not hard to get away with not providing code; journals are particularly lax at enforcing or even adopting standards, even though most people in the field will decry the lack of reproducibility of published work. But nobody will resent you for providing code either. Writing code you actually feel comfortable releasing out into the open requires work of course. Time which you could spend doing other things. If you don't feel comfortable zipping up your code and providing it right now, that's probably a good indication that any papers written about said code arnt ready to be published yet either.</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, there is a tension there, between doing what is right scientifically, and doing what is right for your career. But as for me as a reviewer; no code == no publication.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/29 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13726",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4360/"
]
|
13,728 | <p>As everybody knows, research experience helps in one undergraduate's admission to a PhD program. It would be even better, if the undergraduate has a publication out of his or her research experience.</p>
<p>However, for a full-time undergraduate, it is quite difficult to devote too much time to research since one still has the school work to deal with. <em>(Maintaining a high GPA is also important, isn't it?)</em> Given the time limitation by this or other reasons, the <strong>undergraduate</strong> may face the following dilemma.</p>
<p>The <strong>quality</strong> of work is <strong>low</strong>, but the undergraduate has <strong>no time to improve it</strong>. </p>
<p><strong>Should the undergraduate publish it to a random and low-tier conference to at least have a publication?</strong></p>
<p>OR </p>
<p><strong>Should he or she just make it a technical report instead of publishing it?</strong></p>
<p>In other words, during the PhD admission, <strong>how do the admission committees or professors view a low-quality conference paper?</strong> Do they take it as an advantage in the sense that most of the undergraduates have none. Or do they start suspecting the student's research potentials? <strong>Does a low-quality "1" win a "0" in this case?</strong></p>
<p>FYI, the field of interest is EECS, but any generic comments are also very much appreciated!</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13729,
"author": "JeffE",
"author_id": 65,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If the quality of the work is low, the student should neither publish it in a lower tier conference nor publish it as a technical report. They should either make the time to improve it or toss it in the trash. A <strong>bad</strong> publication, no matter what venue it's published in, is worse than no publication at all.</p>\n\n<p>Similarly, a \"publication\" listed in a CV or described in a statement of purpose that isn't retrievable via google (unlike most technical reports, which <em>are</em> googlable) is also worse than no publication at all, because we can't tell if the applicant is lying. (Sadly, some applicants are lying.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13739,
"author": "Armin Mustafa",
"author_id": 9136,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9136",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have a different opinion:</p>\n\n<p>I think you should push it forward for publication in a national conference, not international (because quality is low)</p>\n\n<p>The weightage for this will definitely be less, But it leaves a different impression if you have some published work.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/30 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13728",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8079/"
]
|
13,731 | <p>When you review papers submitted for publication, is there an “optimal” length for reviews?
In my experience as an author and referee, I have seen a large range of review lengths (for reference, a paper in my field is typically between 3 and 8 printed pages):</p>
<ul>
<li>Zero length: for some of the papers I have authored, the reviewer just clicked the “accept as is” or “reject” checkmark on the review sheet, without adding any comment (at least, not any comment visible to me). It's not so common, but it has happened.</li>
<li>Short length: a lot of time, I received reviews who consisted of a single paragraph.</li>
<li>Medium: one full page, maybe two pages.</li>
</ul>
<p>Although I have never received any such long reviews, I have myself written on a few occasions reviews that exceed two pages, including once or twice a four or five-page review. These were cases where the paper was good, but could be (in my view) much improved and some of the aspects/consequences had escaped the authors' consideration.</p>
<p>I am wondering <strong>how useful reviews of various length are to editors</strong>. I often consider that “unmotivated” reviews are useless, as they do not give any real insight about the paper to the editor. For example, if the editor gets two conflicting non motivated reviews, how is she to decide?</p>
<p>On the other hand, although I write some from time to time, I have never received long reviews, so… <strong>is this something frowned upon?</strong></p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13733,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Reviews can be of quite varying length but obviously the extremes indicate some problems.</p>\n\n<p>A review consisting of \"Accept as is\" would be highly suspicious in my mind (as an editor). It usually means the reviewer has not done any work, essentially no manuscript is that close to perfect (although it may of course happen). A review of \"Reject\" without additional comment is equally pointless (I am then assuming the journal has some form of quality check before accepting for review). An absence of comments is just a big warning sign since there is no perspective on why the MS is either perfect or perfectly worthless.</p>\n\n<p>Considering the length of a review, it is governed by two factors: the quality of the manuscript and the personality of the reviewer. To some extent longer reviews indicate more questions to be resolved. At the same time some reviewers may be more nit-picking than others so that also influences the length. Based on my experience as an editor, I would say, as a rule of thumb, that at least a page of (single spaced) comments would be a basis for a descent review for a normal manuscript (15-20 pages double spaced excluding references, tables, figures) in the field experiment/observation based science where I work. A review of more than three or four pages of (single spaced) comments would be unusual and probably involve comments down to spelling issues. \"A decent review\" involves providing clear and constructive comments that will allow the editor to value the manuscript and the author to improve the manuscript.</p>\n\n<p>So I would not say that a long review would necessarily be frowned upon, it clearly depends on how constructive it is. If someone spends a lot of effort improving language and grammar (which does not necessarily constitute the expectations from a review) that could be very useful. Normally such comments may be made as revisions in a file rather than a written report. So length is not a major issue, constructiveness is.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13742,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>An \"accept as is\" option is useful after resubmissions; it signifies that no more work needs to be done. However, it is unusual to see that happen in an article on the first round of submissions. (I've had that happen precisely once in my career.)</p>\n\n<p>Otherwise, I would say that the more detailed a review can be, and the more precise the suggestions for improving the paper are, the better it will be.</p>\n\n<p>One to two pages is typically the norm; however, I have submitted a few three- to four-page reviews when I thought an article was already quite good, but could be better.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, if a paper is already of relatively poor quality, I will explain the methodological or other significant flaws, but skip over an analysis of minute points; (it's simply not worth the time to rearrange the furniture when the roof is going to collapse any minute.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 23563,
"author": "Andreas Blass",
"author_id": 14506,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14506",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Speaking from the point of view of an editor: One of the best reviews I ever got was longer than the paper. The author, a young researcher, had proved three theorems, one of which I recognized as a known result. So I asked the original discoverer of that known result to referee the paper. In my cover letter, I mentioned that I recognized one of the theorems as his, and asked whether the other two theorems had enough novelty for a publication. It turned out that the other two theorems weren't new either. The referee could easily have just given citations for those two theorems and recommended rejection. Instead, he gave me (or, really, gave the author) a long, clear explanation of the state of the art in that subject, and he suggested some open problems that the author could try working on. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 105061,
"author": "Stanley M. Howard",
"author_id": 88572,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/88572",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As an author, reviewer, and key reader of a respected engineering journal, I can offer some perspective. The shortest review I received was one I solicited from a highly-respected professor at a prestigious university. His review was basically “This manuscript is not written well enough to be reviewed.” </p>\n\n<p>The longest review I have received as an author was about five bulleted comments some of which were optional revisions and some minor but necessary clarifications; the shortest was one minor comment approving the manuscript. </p>\n\n<p>As a reviewer I have on several occasions completely rewritten a non-English language author’s manuscript as a gratis professional service. To my surprise, I received thank you letters from the professional society publications chair and the editor thanking me for my ‘laudatory’ service. I took that to indicate my effort was unusual. </p>\n\n<p>My shortest key reader review summary was to a VERY famous author who after a 22 page derivation, which he summarized as ‘simple’. With feigned seriousness, I ‘required him to remove the word ‘simple’ since he was on this uncustmary occasion communicating with mortals.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/30 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13731",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700/"
]
|
13,732 | <p>I have just finished a BSc degree in maths at ETH Zurich and I am now planning to continue with an MSc and a PhD in Japan. </p>
<p>My question is this: is it possible to do an MSc at one university and then do the PhD at a different university? </p>
<p>In Europe this is not only socially acceptable but nothing unusual. But as far as I know, Japan is different; how different I don't know. I would very much like to apply to one university for the MSc and then relocate to somewhere else for my PhD. But I'm rather worried that this may mean that the professor supervising my MSc will lose face. And of course, I can't just ask them directly because they might not tell me the truth out of politeness. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 14984,
"author": "Aaron Hall",
"author_id": 9518,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9518",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Institutions prefer their recognized terminal degree to be the final education before its graduates continue in their careers. By doing so, the graduates provide the evidence of the efficacy and value to society of the institution's academic programs.</p>\n\n<p>However, as you have said, in Europe, the MSc is not recognized as a terminal degree. An institution in Europe from which you might graduate with a MSc should expect, if you continue your studies, for you to be successful in the program to which you apply.</p>\n\n<p><strong>The correct way to ensure that you contribute to the local reputation of the institution to which you consider applying is to ask them if the degree is intended to be a terminal degree, or if it is considered strong preparation for the terminal degree that you wish to pursue.</strong> </p>\n\n<p>You should also inquire about this at your terminal degree school of interest, and you should strongly consider the advice that the institution you want to pursue your terminal degree at gives you in that matter.</p>\n\n<p>For example, I inquired at Columbia about their PhD in Economics, and they suggested, as I expected, that I complete a Masters in Statistics first. </p>\n\n<p>Communication, in the spirit of your notable tactfulness, is the best way to ensure that you meet the expectations of the institutions that you are interested in.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 14993,
"author": "Nobody",
"author_id": 546,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/546",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you enroll in one of the <strong>13</strong> universities of the\n<a href=\"http://www.uni.international.mext.go.jp/\" rel=\"nofollow\"><strong>Global 30</strong></a> project, an elite program, which offers degree programs in English. You can use the their <a href=\"http://www.uni.international.mext.go.jp/course/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Course</a> web page to find out detailed information.</p>\n\n<p>If you want to do MSc and PhD in different universities in Japan, I am afraid you don’t have much choice in Global 30 schools. And not every Global 30 school offers the program you want. For example, you only have <strong>less than handful</strong> of Math graduate programs available in Global 30.</p>\n\n<p>If you are proficient in Japanese, it is another story. You do have plenty of choices. As far as I know, Japanese graduate students switch schools for various reasons, too.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 31417,
"author": "Greg",
"author_id": 14755,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14755",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In Japan, most of the (Japanese) students stick to their university. Partly because of convenience and the costs of moving and entering a new university. It used to be \"stick till death\" for many, but nowadays it is more common to go out and work/study at other universities, too. It is especially true when one tries to enter to a more prestigious university. </p>\n\n<p>One piece of advice: don't measure yourself to the Japanese students. The expectations and opportunities are completely different. </p>\n\n<p>Also, Japanese students are available in large number, so most professor see students as commodities, and most professor do not really care if an average students leave or not. At MSc level supervision is not a really involved commitment on the part of the professor, so do not feel like having bound for life. Also if you choose a new place that has good relationship with your professor, he may even support you.</p>\n\n<p>I don't understand however your motivation: if you are unfamiliar with the system and how to get accepted, how to find good positions etc, why would you like to flip from one university to another? As far as I know Math is a particularly slow field, so the chances that you got out something serious during your MSc is slim. Jumping from one place to another, one topic to another may have a bad influence on your options to produce high quality work.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 48235,
"author": "erik",
"author_id": 32870,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32870",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Is it possible? Yes. Is it common? Not really.</p>\n\n<p>In general, Japanese students will only change university after finishing their MSc if they are able to enter a higher-ranked university. For example, someone from Osaka U may move to U Tokyo to do their PhD, but most students stay where they are. I don't think the supervisor loses face in such a situation, partly because the student goes somewhere better and partly because MSc students in Japan are a dime-a-dozen (and mostly job-hunting all the time anyway).</p>\n\n<p>One thing to consider is that it will take some time to adapt to the very different environment. This might mean your progress is initially slow, and it could be difficult to produce sufficient results in two years to warrant moving. I recommend you try to get into one of the top schools (U Tokyo, Kyoto U, Tokyo Inst. Tech., etc.) from the start. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/30 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13732",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9218/"
]
|
13,751 | <p>I'm an early PhD student and one of my research foci is conservation biology. Of the various focal topics of my research, this is the one that I feel most passionate about. (And within conservation biology, habitat loss/disruption is the issue that holds the highest degree of intrinsic interest for me.) However, like many in conservation bio I am somewhat dismayed by what I see as a lack of actual impact stemming from conservation research — that is to say, a lot of research gets done but not a lot actually changes because of it.</p>
<p>I realize that environmental policy is a huge issue that extends way beyond the bounds of academic research, and that the challenges of enacting science-based policy are many and are often seen as being best left to policymakers and policy advocates rather than researchers. However, I am finding that I am increasingly interested in charting a career path that puts me in a place where I can work to bridge the divide between research and policy, where I have a chance of making conservation bio a more effective field in terms of real-world results (even if my part in such an effort is a small one) and where I can ideally be involved both with doing impactful, effective research and also with seeing the results of that research be put into action.</p>
<p>My question is this: what would that career path look like? My goal up to now has been to try for a professorship in academia (as insane as that job market is these days) or else in the statistically likely event that I don't make it there to look for a similar research-oriented job, perhaps with a museum or with the government. I'm still in the first year of my PhD, so this plan is still pretty hazy but that's the general outline of it at the moment. I realize I have a long way to go (at least another four years of PhD work and a postdoc or two) before I'm in a position to take a shot at becoming a PI, but I think it's important to have at least a rough idea of what the ultimate end is. Looking realistically at the PhD program I'm in, I think I have as good a shot as anyone at "making it".</p>
<p>I'm becoming less sure though that that path (what I think of as the "traditional" career path for PhD students in the sciences) is one that will necessarily put me in a position where I can have a hand in conservation policy and in shaping the direction of my field, which are goals that are becoming increasingly important to me. I know that there are ways to do research that is more impactful (I found this article very edifying: <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/236190887_Achieving_Conservation_Science_that_Bridges_the_Knowledge-Action_Boundary/file/504635178e8cfe5a13.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Cook et al 2013, Achieving Conservation Science that Bridges the Knowledge-Action Boundary [PDF]</a>) but I don't feel that impactful research is really incentivized by the systems of reward and prestige that prevail in academic research, such that putting too much of a focus on actionable research can actually be detrimental to one's career.</p>
<p>I'm trying to think outside the box a little bit now, to get a sense of what trajectory I should be putting myself on if I want to do more "meaningful" conservation work while still using the research background that I am developing in my PhD program. I love research. I love doing science, and I even love working in academia as crazy as it sometimes can be. I'm not committed to the idea of a high salary (not that professors normally make a particularly high salary) though I would like to do something that gives me a modicum of financial security at a modest standard of living. I'm not averse to working in academia, or in government, or for an NGO or a private corporation or anywhere else as long as I can be connected to research and have the opportunity to turn conservation research into conservation action. I just want to do research (or at least be involved with research in a way that lets me put my skills to good use) that actually makes a difference out in the world.</p>
<p>Do any of you have any suggestions for career tracks that I should look into? Perhaps you yourself are already in a job that you feel has the characteristics that I am looking for? Maybe you are able to offer me a new perspective on academia that will allay my reservations about a lack of impactfulness in my hypothetical future work there? Or perhaps you see opportunities for researchers of any stripe to make important contributions to the work of conservation management and policymaking from whatever role they may end up in, by being advocates or advisors or activists outside of the lab?</p>
<p>All kinds of advice would be appreciated. Reading material, personal anecdotes, and any resources or tips or insights you have will all be welcome.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13756,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't know anything about your specific area of interest. But to have impact in your field, it might help to seek out examples of people whose career you'd like to model. What trajectory did they follow, and as far as you can tell how did their choices help with the impact they had ? </p>\n\n<p>One of the advantages of a Ph.D (not necessarily an academic career) is that it acts as a signifier to open doors. For example, in my line of work, there are many people with Ph.Ds who have immense impact on technology from jobs at research labs, or companies. Their Ph.D gave them access to jobs in these venues, and the rest was up to them. </p>\n\n<p>It might be that in your area, a Ph.D is almost a necessity to even be part of the conversation (whether in doing research, or affecting policy). It might also be that the people impacting policy do so from an academic perch (hence the point about searching for role models). </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 49269,
"author": "Confusedderpina",
"author_id": 37506,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/37506",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I went through a similar question and considered getting an education in law after my biology education. From the little research I did I noticed that lobby groups and legislative type careers seem to have the most impact in bringing about real change. However, I don't know where that leaves you having already completed a PhD by that point in the future.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/30 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13751",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9105/"
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|
13,752 | <p>I have started doing PhD 3 months ago and I still don't have that much progress. What I found is that I spend more time on learning about web development, which I can choose not to do, and this will make me focus more on my PhD and I'm sure I will do better. However, the problem is that web development is like an addiction for me. </p>
<p>Web development is not like doing something else (it requires learning stuff so my mind will do a lot of hard work) and when I do that and come to do my research work in PhD I feel bored.</p>
<p>Now I decided to stop doing web development and focusing on PhD but how can I guarantee not to come back to that in 2 or 3 days? I tried that one month ago and I found myself coming back to web development and not focusing that much on PhD.</p>
<p>Any ideas or suggestion on getting rid of this habit? </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13754,
"author": "Aaron",
"author_id": 1228,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1228",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You can probably get paid more doing web development. Normally you have to like research a whole lot for a PhD to be worth it, compared to doing something more lucrative and in-demand like web development. </p>\n\n<p>If on top of everything, you enjoy that more than research, I would recommend at least spending some time to reevaluate your motivation to go through with a PhD. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13755,
"author": "J. Zimmerman",
"author_id": 7921,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7921",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It sounds as though you are having a hard time finding motivation for pursuing your PhD. You don't mention the focus of your research, but one idea would be to modify the focus so that it aligns better with your addicting hobby of web-development (I'm not familiar with CS, so I have no idea how this would work in actual practice. Others will better be able to advise you on that.)</p>\n\n<p><strong>Become interested in your research.</strong> Assuming that you have compelling reasons for staying in your current area of research, you will need to have a genuine passion for the subject, or completing the PhD will become well-nigh impossible due to lack of motivation. See <a href=\"http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2013/10/22/how-to-learn-boring-subjects/\">this article</a> by Scott Young on how to learn boring subjects; his advice also holds for renewing interest in something. See the key points below.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Don't pick degree programs you hate. Although there are times when you may have to take courses you don't actually like, avoid a career made up of tasks and information you hate.</p></li>\n<li><p>Don't confuse boring and difficult. It is easy to avoid something as boring, rather than admitting that it is difficult. </p></li>\n<li><p>Find the 'real-world' connections. Math isn't boring when you begin to see the connections and overall patterns--ditto for many other subjects/areas.</p></li>\n<li><p>Discover the context. Take the time to explore the background, and understand why these [proofs, theorems, whatever] are important for where we are now. Young recommends reading Wikipedia articles on lunch-breaks for this purpose.</p></li>\n<li><p>Make stories and pictures. Learning is a creative activity--the product is the intangible connections and stories in our minds. Mnemonics and stories can be interesting even when the subject is not. (Use this for the necessary but boring parts of research.)</p></li>\n<li><p>Use the knowledge. Using even part of what you learn in a separate project will help cement the learning, and will also be interesting. (And anyway, isn't this part of the purpose of a PhD, to apply knowledge in new ways?)</p></li>\n<li><p>Realize that not everything will be fun--<em>more interest</em> is better, even if relative differences still exist.</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/31 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13752",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9230/"
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|
13,757 | <p>I was wonder if anyone knew if it is possible (and how) to download an entire journal (as if it would be printed) from ieeeXplore ?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13799,
"author": "Robert Ivan",
"author_id": 8402,
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"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I believe that violates the terms of use for IEEE Xplore. I don't know if you are an IEEE member, institutional subscriber, etc., but the terms of use for institutional subscribers states the following:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Institutional subscribers are NOT permitted to do the following: [...]</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Download or attempt to download an entire issue or issues of a publication contained in IEEE Xplore.</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n<p>You should first view the terms of use for IEEE Xplore at <a href=\"http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/termsOfUse.jsp\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/termsOfUse.jsp</a>, and if you have questions contact Xplore support via the contact form <a href=\"http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/techform.jsp\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/techform.jsp</a>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13806,
"author": "jb.",
"author_id": 117,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/117",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Well, to put legality aside merging pdfs into single file is rather easy (I assume that you can download individual articles as pdfs). </p>\n\n<p>You need ghostscript program (avilable on any modern linux, and I guess also for windows) and then issue command: </p>\n\n<pre><code>gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOUTPUTFILE=combinedpdf.pdf -dBATCH 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>which will merge <code>1.pdf</code>, <code>2.pdf</code>, <code>3.pdf</code> into <code>combined.pdf</code>. </p>\n\n<p>If you want to mass download articles you can use this firefox plugin: <a href=\"https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/firefox/addon/downthemall/\" rel=\"nofollow\">https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/firefox/addon/downthemall/</a></p>\n\n<p>Anyways: please mind that you might be bending or violating terms and conditions using these techinques. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/31 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13757",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9236/"
]
|
13,759 | <p>What is the typical size for a conference poster? Is it "ask the organizers", or can I safely assume that I'll get a default size, and that there will be enough space to hang it at the poster session?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13760,
"author": "fileunderwater",
"author_id": 7223,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7223",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>You'll have to look at the conference announcement or contact the organizers. The space allotted to each poster is usually clearly stated in the conference announcement, and there are a number of different poster sizes being used, common ones being e.g. A0, A1. However, sometimes you are free to use the poster boards as you see fit (i.e. only provided a maximium limit).</p>\n\n<p>If you are interested, here are also some resources/guidelines for constructing posters that I've used earlier:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.makesigns.com/tutorials/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Poster Tutorial</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.sicb.org/newsletters/fa97nl/sicb/poster.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Mortal Sins in Poster Presentations or How to Give the Poster No One Remembers </a> </li>\n<li><a href=\"http://bildmakarna.kib.ki.se/posters/tips/index_en.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Tips for creating scientific posters</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20140913113832/http://www.cns.cornell.edu/documents/ScientificPosters.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Scientific Poster Design (pdf)</a> - has lots of examples of what you <strong>shouldn't</strong> do when it comes to colour choice and design. </li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13761,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There's no real “default” size. It should be communicated by the organizers, as part of the various practical details of the conference. If not, double check, but otherwise you can ask them.</p>\n\n<p>If, for some reason you cannot ask, it is relatively safe to assume that it's either vertical or horizontal A0. So, if you could not get the information from the organizers and want to play it safe, restrict yourself to 84 cm in both directions, that way you'll be fine.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/31 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13759",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/958/"
]
|
13,765 | <p>I currently have a paper submitted to <a href="http://www.pnas.org"><em>PNAS</em></a>. We had two rounds of revisions, and following detailed suggestions from one reviewer, we have improved our proposed algorithm a lot: its complexity is now significantly lower, and the idea he suggested makes the overall method more robust in handling noisy signal.</p>
<p>I feel that this reviewer's contribution extend far beyond his original role, so much that I feel it would be ethically honest to have him as a co-author. To be crystal-clear: if he was not a reviewer, but a colleague with whom I had discussed this before submitting the paper, he would clearly be entitled to authorship, no question.</p>
<p>But… he <em>is</em> a reviewer, so I am wondering how (if at all) we should ask him to join as co-author. Right now, I am ready to submit the twice-revised manuscript, and I have no doubt that it will be accepted (second review was “minor revisions”). The options I can see are:</p>
<ul>
<li>In my cover letter for the revised manuscript, explain the situation to the editor and ask him if he could (with the reviewer's agreement) lift anonymity and allow the authors' list change.</li>
<li>Wait for the manuscript to be formally approved, and only then write to the editor asking for the same thing.</li>
<li>Do nothing, for example because it is frowned upon. This would pain me greatly, because the reviewer really contributed very significantly to the algorithm, and I believe he should be able to claim authorship for this contribution (if he sees it fit).</li>
</ul>
<p>So, what are accepted practices? How should I handle this matter?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13766,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'd ask the editor now, assuming the reviewer has clearly stated that the paper should be accepted (at least conditionally on certain changes). The worst case scenario is that the editor will suggest waiting, and even if that happens I don't think the editor will be upset or offended.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, if the reviewer has made critical comments and hasn't specifically stated in the comments to authors whether the paper should be accepted, then I would wait until the conclusion of the reviewing process, just to avoid looking like you are trying to bias the outcome.</p>\n\n<p>This doesn't sound like a plausible issue in your case, but I've experienced it once as a reviewer. I made a lot of critical but apparently useful comments on a paper, and the authors offered coauthorship when they submitted a major revision. I don't think they meant this to be manipulative, but I wondered whether one effect would be to remove a critic from the reviewing pool for their paper (in which case I might be replaced with someone more favorable).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13767,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Seconding other comments and answers: surely no one would be <em>offended</em> if you tried to make such an offer...</p>\n\n<p>However, as already noted, if your offer is made prior to final acceptance, it might be misinterpreted, as your trying to clinch acceptance.</p>\n\n<p>And that possibility surely has to be systematically excluded, so a foresightful editor and/or journal would surely not want to set such a <em>precedent</em>. A journal would not want authors to (be able to) solicit reviewers as co-authors, since this would create a conflict-of-interest situation, and cast doubt on the general validity and impartiality of their refereeing process!</p>\n\n<p>That is, while it would be weird and awkward to publicly state such a policy, I would anticipate that the journal/editor would object <em>as a matter of principle</em>, to putting the reviewer on as a co-author.</p>\n\n<p>Sensible reviewers would also understand this situation, for similar reasons, and <em>in advance</em> would expect no reward beyond \"job well done\". Even the anonymity of the referee should be maintained, as a matter of principle. Thus, we do often find effusive thanks to \"the anonymous referee\"...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13788,
"author": "Yuichiro Fujiwara",
"author_id": 7075,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7075",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I also have an experience of being asked to become a co-author by the authors of one paper I refereed. It wasn't a journal of the PNAS caliber, but it's a good specialized journal.</p>\n\n<p>I don't know exactly when the authors asked the editor, but he asked me if it was ok to disclose my identity to the authors because they told the editor that they wanted to include me as a co-author. It seems that the editor was fine with accepting the manuscript (maybe with another round of external review with another fresh referee). But I suggested submitting a revised version as a joint-work to a different journal, and we did so in the end.</p>\n\n<p>In any case, I'm not sure if the reviewer is expecting such a request. As a reviewer, if I can't recommend publication, I always try to improve the manuscript I am reviewing as much as possible within a reasonable timeframe and, if possible, make it potentially acceptable for the journal. This may include proving a stronger theorem than the main result given in the manuscript, repairing critical errors in a proof, and so on.</p>\n\n<p>From my experience, this practice doesn't seem extremely uncommon in design theory (which is my expertise), and I have also benefitted greatly from excellent referees. So, I don't expect anything from the authors, and I do the same when reviewing manuscripts in different fields (although it's practically impossible in some fields I work in because editors want reviewers to carefully read a paper in a very short period of time).</p>\n\n<p>But if you do want to include your reviewer as a co-author, I tend to think that you might want to ask the editor that after a final editorial decision is made for the reasons stated in other answers. And you shouldn't be surprised if the reviewer declines the offer. Probably he or she isn't expecting it; the referee most likely just got excited while reading your great results and a bit \"carried away.\" Such an offer would be helpful if the reviewer is a student or postdoc on the job market, or is trying to get tenured though.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 27386,
"author": "Andreas Blass",
"author_id": 14506,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14506",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It seems to me that you could reasonably tell the editor now that (1) you think the reviewer's contributions warrant co-authorship, but (2) you realize that offering co-authorship to the reviewer before the review process is complete would improperly interfere with that process, and (3) you therefore ask the editor to wait until the review process is complete and only then forward your offer of co-authorship to the reviewer.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/31 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13765",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700/"
]
|
13,768 | <p>I have 100 slides but most are light weight with pictures. I am afraid it is too much because I can't get it under 1 hour in my rehearsal. I have noted that some slides take me more time to explain. Any suggestions other than reduce number of slides? Maybe use some kind of timer.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13769,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Why are you fixated on the number of slides? What matters is the story you tell, the important messages that people who listen to you will be able to take home after the presentation. Sure, you'd like to say more, but that's not how it works. <strong>Don't plan to talk faster, to run through your talk at lighting speed</strong>. <strong>If the content doesn't fit the time frame, drop some things</strong>. You may not want to hear it, but you have to.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Another hint, maybe too late for you, but which I find useful: there are two things which are very interesting to <strong>know about yourself as a speaker</strong>:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p><strong>How fast do I usually go?</strong> I.e., for a typical presentation, how many slides per minute do I do? This allows you to get a rough idea of timing, for future presentations, even before rehearsing (or allow you to skip rehearsing at all, once you become good at it!).</p></li>\n<li><p>In real circumstances, <strong>am I faster or slower than during rehearsal?</strong> This depends somewhat on circumstances (being tired, being excited, etc.) but it is still interesting info. For example, I know that I tend to digress more during real talks than rehearsals, which means when I time myself I know I have to leave some margin. On the other hand, some people talk faster on the stage.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>When my students preparer for their first conference talk, I usually ask them to think of the above, and write down their timing. It is useful to prepare later talks, and also their PhD defense!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13770,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To add to already good answers and comments. A rule of thumb often quoted is \"number of minutes in talk\"/2 but this number has a huge standard deviation. So both much more and less can still be good. Clearly you need to make sure you get your message across. I have seen someone using up 30-40 slides in a presentation in five minutes but then it was a way to create a \"manual animation\". It was nevertheless very efficient and gave the desired result. </p>\n\n<p>The problem is that you need to consider, how much <em>detail</em> you need to explain your main points. You also need to think about how much time you need to discuss each slide. It is easy to just make loads of bullet points and actually not <em>tell</em> anything. In this case you need to consider your audience. If the target of the talk is your fellows in the department then they are not as deeply involved as peers within your sub-discipline. If the audience requires more background you probably cannot use a vast number of slides because people will soon lose track. With a specialist audience who can understand the slides more intuitively, you may be fine.</p>\n\n<p><em>Speed</em> is also a factor. If you have to much material you need to speed up and you are more likely to not finish on time. You need to pace yourself and consider how your talk will be perceived. A rushed talk is never fun. The result may well be a presentation where you think there are gaps. But that is how it is. You need to make decisions about what must be included and what could be discarded. Sometimes you can add the discarded material (figures) to the end of the talk in case someone asks questions where they can be used for the answer. That usually comes across as being well prepared.</p>\n\n<p><em>Reduction</em>. Since you ask if how you can reduce the slides, I will suggest looking at each and every one and think: <em>Is this necessary?</em> I am particularly thinking about figures. <em>Necessary</em> in this case means if it tells something unique that is used to build towards the conclusion(s). A follow up question before deleting it is perhaps <em>if it can be merged with another slide?</em></p>\n\n<p>Finally, and as a side comment, I do not think that you are new to Beamer is at fault. Using Beamer/LaTeX is great and for me the fact that producing a slide is slower than in, say, PowerPoint is a bonus. It helps me from just generating too many slides since I have time to think about each and everyone as I go through the process.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/31 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13768",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9242/"
]
|
13,771 | <p><em>Disclaimer: I am quite fresh as a researcher, even more as a reviewer.</em></p>
<p>I am reviewing a paper that appears to report a well-conducted empirical study, with proper data analysis. The results of the article are interesting and relevant for the journal.</p>
<p>However, I am very concerned with how the paper was written. I will provide some of my concerns of the report here:</p>
<p>Besides many grammatical errors - which I forgive as English is not my main language as well - the article is badly structured and often confusing. It fails to clearly state the research questions. No all the hypotheses are well supported by the literature review. It omits several key studies in the literature review. It often makes strong claims without a proper reference. It often fails to quantify stuff, falling to the tedious "a lot", "many", "few", "circa", etc. It is quite mysterious on certain aspects of the research design-e.g., a control group is suddenly mentioned without really clarifying what constituted the control group, and the paper reports that the experiment is not even a controlled experiment.</p>
<p>In sum, <em>for the first sections</em> I have nearly a comment for each of the manuscript paragraphs. I will do my best as a reviewer. I will provide all possible suggestions for improving the manuscript. Whereas I am confident that the results of the study are interesting, and that the research design is sound, I don't know if failing to clearly write the manuscript is a reason for suggesting rejection or for recommending major revisions.</p>
<p>Where is the line in this case? The journal does not clarify this in its reviewer guidelines.</p>
<p>In case of suggesting a major revision, what if the authors still fail to provide a clearly written and organized manuscript in a second round? Could I still request for major revisions?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13772,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1429",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<ol>\n<li><p>I would recommend emailing the journal editor to ask for some of these clarifications. There might be certain unwritten policies endemic to that particular journal.</p></li>\n<li><p>In general, you can ask for multiple rounds of revisions (major or minor) until you are satisfied. Peer review is supposed to be an iterative conversation. However, as I mentioned earlier, there could be certain journal policies regarding the number of revisions which you might get addressed if you talk to the editor.</p></li>\n<li><p>As a reviewer, if you feel that the article should be rejected, you are free to make that claim. However, personally, I always give at least one chance to a paper (however horrible it is) to redress my comments.</p></li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13773,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Journal instructions vary so exactly what can be done may also vary. But, as a reviewer you re \"only\" suggesting a verdict based on your review. An editor will make the final decision based on your and one or more reviews. </p>\n\n<p>One question you can ask is whether the revisions you suggest can easily be accommodated within some reasonable time frame. As an example, I edit a journal where we allow six weeks for \"major revisions\" (three for minor). Unfortunately, this time frame may not be obvious to anyone but the editor. But, you probably get a sense if the paper contains enough good science to be worth waiting for or if a new submission at some later time would be better.</p>\n\n<p>Usually, you provide a report that is passed on to the authors in some way but you also provide a confidential note to the editor. I suggest that you detail your qualms about the paper and try to explain your thinking about the potential for this paper and whether it may benefit from either rejection and possibly later resubmission or by taking it down the \"major revision\" route. You can then provide you sense of how much time might be required for the changes so that the editor obtains a sure footing for the decisions. It is always good to receive a little of \"pros and cons\" from the reviewer.</p>\n\n<p>In the end the editor will make the choice and it will be based on more views than just yours. Providing the best substantiated view you can will most likely be welcomed by the editor</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13779,
"author": "JeffE",
"author_id": 65,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>It fails to clearly state the research questions. No all the hypotheses are well supported by the literature review. It omits several key studies in the literature review. It often makes strong claims without a proper reference. It often fails to quantify stuff, falling to the tedious \"a lot\", \"many\", \"few\", \"circa\", etc. It is quite mysterious on certain aspects of the research design-e.g., a control group is suddenly mentioned without really clarifying what constituted the control group, and the paper reports that the experiment is not even a controlled experiment.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I strongly recommend including this paragraph <strong>verbatim</strong> in your referee report.</p>\n\n<p>This description is not obviously consistent with your claim that the paper \"appears to report a well-conducted empirical study, with proper data analysis\". Is it actually possible, even in principle, to have a well-conducted study without a crisply stated research question or a clearly-defined control group, or a proper data analysis that uses \"a lot\" and \"circa\"?</p>\n\n<p>These are <em>very</em> basic flaws, independent of the authors' first language. If they were spread throughout the paper, they would be sufficient to recommend rejection. If these problems appear only in the introduction (and later sections clarify the research questions, experimental design, and so on), then they may not warrant rejection, but they certainly require major revisions.</p>\n\n<p>The discrepancy between the initial sections and the body of the paper suggests that a student wrote the former, and the PI wrote the latter. At least, I hope that's what happened. It's appropriate to be gentle (but firm) with the student, but a bit less forgiving of the PI for not advising the student better.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In case of suggesting a major revision, what if the authors still fail to provide a clearly written and organized manuscript in a second round? Could I still request for major revisions?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<h2>Yes.</h2>\n\n<p>If the authors' revision does not sufficiently address the concerns in your initial report — regardless of whether your concerns are about presentation or content — your response to the editor should be \"The authors' revision does not sufficiently address the concerns in my initial report; therefore, I cannot recommend acceptance.\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13780,
"author": "gerrit",
"author_id": 1033,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1033",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The difference between a major revision and a rejection can be thin, because after a rejection people can of course still significantly improve the article and resubmit. Many journals have a deadline to submit a revision. In this case, I think:</p>\n\n<p>If the required work can reasonable be performed in the time scheduled for a revision, then recommend a major revision. If the work is <em>so</em> substantial that it would take a lot more time than that, then recommend rejection.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 115310,
"author": "einpoklum",
"author_id": 7319,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7319",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>So, I'm in your place, reviewing the paper, and these are my (=your) findings:</p>\n\n<p>The good:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>\"A well-conducted empirical study\"</strong></li>\n<li><strong>\"Research design... [is] good\"</strong></li>\n<li><strong>\"proper data analysis\"</strong></li>\n<li><strong>\"The results ... are interesting\"</strong></li>\n<li><strong>\"The results ... are relevant for the journal\"</strong></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The bad:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>\"I am very concerned with how the paper was written.\"</strong> -> suggesting it could be written otherwise</li>\n<li><strong>\"grammatical errors\"</strong> -> Rectifiable.</li>\n<li><strong>\"article is badly structured\"</strong> -> suggesting a different structure would be good.</li>\n<li><strong>\"article is ... often confusing\"</strong> -> given what you've written above, the confusing parts can be rewritten or removed.</li>\n<li><strong>\"It fails to clearly state the research questions.\"</strong> -> So it <em>could</em> state relevant questions; or none.</li>\n<li><strong>\"No all the hypotheses are well supported by the literature review.\"</strong> -> What, people can't make their own hypotheses? What you can really complain about is:</li>\n<li><strong>\"Omits ... key studies in the literature review.\"</strong> -> Solution is obvious.</li>\n<li><strong>\"makes strong claims without a proper reference\"</strong> -> Claims can be weakened to fit the actual results.</li>\n<li><strong>\"Fails to quantify stuff [:] ... \"a lot\", \"many\", \"few\", \"circa\", etc.\"</strong> -> Rectifiable.</li>\n<li><strong>\"It is quite mysterious on certain aspects of the research design\"</strong> -> Still, you decided it was well designed. Mystery could be dispelled, apparently.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h2>Recommendation: Resubmit after major revision</h2>\n\n<p>Plain and simple. If the good part makes you want to publish the thing given a perfect writeup, then at worst they need to rewrite their paper. No \"lines\" here.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/31 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13771",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
13,774 | <p>I find the SE sites, especially Math.SE, MathOverflow and CompSci.SE, extremely useful for solving specific problems I encounter during my research. But I have one concern: if I ask a question in an SE site, and then describe the same question in a paper (whether I got an answer or not), then this might be considered a breach of the anonimity requirement, because, one of the reviewers might be a member in one of these sites, see my question and know that I am an author of that paper.</p>
<p>Is it possible that my paper will be rejected because some parts of it were published as questions on the web?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13775,
"author": "zoned post meridiem",
"author_id": 9244,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9244",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I think there's two parts to the question, one about anonymity, one about content.</p>\n\n<p>In terms of anonymity, it's unlikely that your paper would be rejected, at least in my field (which is not math/CS). While papers are submitted anonymously, in reality, reviewers sometimes have a good idea of who the author is. A reviewer can recognize the submission's subject area and approach from other work you've published/presented, or be tipped off by little things like the citation of an unpublished thesis (which likely only the author would know about). If reviewers think they know the author, and there's a conflict of interest, they contact the editor; if they don't see a conflict of interest that would bias them toward or against who they think is the author, they just review it. That's been my experience at least.</p>\n\n<p>In terms of content, it's a bit dicier. I know this isn't something you're asking about, but I figured I'd address it for completeness sake. I assume that you're referring to questions that are fairly small, narrow, and specific, and whose answers don't make up the core of your paper. If so, no problem. But an editor or reviewers might take issue with you using answers you get here as your own, especially if they're central to your argument. You probably know that already, and I've never seen it occur in any blind review I've done, but I feel better including this caveat in my answer to your main question.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13776,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You should carefully check the Creative Commons Attributions Share Alike (CC-BY SA) license agreement under which this site operates. You will find a link at the lower right corner of this page or simply use the <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">link</a>. The license essentially tells you that you can use and distribute the material, even commercially, provided that you make correct attribution and that any material that builds on it is shared under the same license. The license can be waived through permission (see the CC-BY SA page).</p>\n\n<p>So from this perspective you are not doing anything wrong as long as you follow the license. I also do not think any journal, editor or reviewer would hold use of an SE site against you as long as the material can pass review, the license is followed and that the source for your information is provided. Also check <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1580/4394\">Attributing contributions to academic work that occur in Stack Exchange</a> for more information.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13777,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It's becoming a common practice to cite answers on SE if they get used in papers. I'd strongly recommend (at least for the second question) that you cite answers you get. There is indeed a risk that this violates anonymity requirements (because you're not supposed to cite material that can reveal your identity), but you can get around that by merely citing \"an answer on the stackexchange forums\" with \"identity withheld to preserve anonymity\". </p>\n\n<p>In this way, you make it clear whether the result is yours or not, without breaching rules. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/10/31 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13774",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/787/"
]
|
13,781 | <p>I'm currently a first year undergraduate student in pure math but recently I've become interested in neuroscience and related fields. Is it possible to pursue neuroscience and cognitive sciences without a medical degree?</p>
<p>If yes, do you know any universities in North America or Europe that accepts people with pure math degrees in programs that are related to neuroscience and bio-mathematics?</p>
<p>Sorry if my question is too naive, I don't have much information about academic stuff yet.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13785,
"author": "Henry",
"author_id": 8,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>At least in the US, a neuroscience or cognitive science PhD program generally admits people with undergrad or masters degrees, which generally can't be medical degrees since many US schools do not offer medical degrees at those levels.</p>\n\n<p>So the answer to your first question is yes.</p>\n\n<p>As for the specifically a math background, I expect that most schools would consider such an application. Even in fields that have corresponding undergrad majors, it's not uncommon for people to enter PhD programs from very different undergrad studies. An application would have to address the question of having an adequate background and understanding of what the field is like.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13789,
"author": "BrianH",
"author_id": 6787,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6787",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In one word: absolutely!</p>\n\n<p>For Psychology the top rated public university in the US (<a href=\"http://psych.wisc.edu/index.php/graduate/prospective-graduate-students/admission-and-requirements/graduate-school-admission-requirements\" rel=\"nofollow\">UW Madison</a>) states absolutely no specificity for an undergraduate degree for consideration, and in fact no psychology department I could find in my short searching stated any such requirement. Even most engineering schools, for example, don't require an undergraduate degree in engineering for consideration (though they often state a preference) - and this includes what in the US we refer to as \"Industrial Engineering\", which includes a variety of fields that do work in the cognitive sciences.</p>\n\n<p>For neurology, the picture is a bit different, but the answer is still \"yes\". For neurology there is \"clinical neurology\", which are usually programs geared towards medical students (those seeking a medical degree - not necessarily who already have one). However, for pure \"neurology\" degrees the fact is the same - they don't universally require a similar undergraduate degree.</p>\n\n<p>However, on the other side a word of caution - some degree programs state a preference for a related undergraduate degree. <a href=\"http://www.neuroscience.pitt.edu/programs/masters/\" rel=\"nofollow\">The University of Pittsburgh Neurology</a> department states:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>\"In general, successful applicants have a BS degree in neuroscience,\n biology, chemistry, or psychology with a cumulative grade point\n average of at least 3.4 (on a 4.0 scale), and a cumulative Graduate\n Record Examination score of at least 160 verbal, 150 quantitative and\n a 4.5 in analytical writing.\"</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Every department sets its own requirements, and just because one says \"in general...\" doesn't mean they don't admit people who don't fit their exact stated mold - just that your chances will be higher. </p>\n\n<p>Being an international candidate (I assume), you'll probably have to apply to more programs as the chance for admittance is generally small per application to US schools (it's not uncommon for schools to accept 50% of domestic applications, and but only 1-10% of international applicants), but again - this is not all that uncommon.</p>\n\n<p>If you had the opportunity, it wouldn't hurt to try to direct some independent study or work towards even a single mathematical problem that relates to something like decision or control problems or statistics - which you could then provide as an example of proof that you are interested in cognitive sciences, etc - but you don't have to. </p>\n\n<p>Bottom-line, you will have to figure out what angle of attack you'll want to have on the cognitive sciences. It is a very big field, and you can technically do cognitive science in the field of Business (especially Behavioral Economics), Psychology (where most undergraduates are required to take a course in cognition), Engineering, Multidisciplinary design/art programs (like Human Computer Interaction), Computer Science (especially in Artificial Intelligence), Neuroscience/Neurology, Linguistics, and even Philosophy. None of these require medical degrees, either.</p>\n\n<p>On the downside, if you don't also acquire a medical degree they generally won't let you cut people open and play with their brains or run them through radioactive/high-magnetic machinery by yourself (but you can collaborate with people who can!). If that's OK with you, no medical training is required.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/01 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13781",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9256/"
]
|
13,782 | <p>The author <em>Anonymous</em> has 74,305 publications in the Scopus publication database. Those include 32,476 peer-reviewed articles, most from the 1980s and 1990s.</p>
<p>Why would anyone write a peer-reviewed paper anonymously?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13783,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In one case that I know of (Anonymous, 1969; J. Glaciol) the article summarizes a then new report on terminology. The paper is published in a high impact journal in the field but is not a research article and not a review article, just a summary. The purpose was to inform the community and after that people reference this paper rather than the report, which before internet was hard to get. </p>\n\n<p>The reason why the authors were anonymous in this case was that they felt no-one in particular should be personally associated with this summary (get credit as if it was a scientific paper when it really was not). The report was made through a large international effort with international peer review. So from this perspective, the Anonymous author has a function to fulfil. The material becomes possible to reference and it is not tied to a person but a community. It would, of course be possible to call the group working on the report something and then use this communal name instead of \"Anonymous\" as is also sometimes the case in larger projects.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13786,
"author": "Bitwise",
"author_id": 6862,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6862",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I searched for the author Anonymous in PubMed (the life sciences publication database), and found 26 results, which shed some light on your question.</p>\n\n<p>Some paper titles:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>\"I was sexually harassed as a junior by senior doctors: it still goes\non, and it needs to stop\"</li>\n<li>\"My own story: dealing with depression\"</li>\n<li>\"A mind surrounded by a moat: a first-person account of cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis\"</li>\n<li>\"Trying to overcome racism in the NHS\"</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So in many cases the authors are describing a sensitive experience or medical condition they have and they do not want others to know about. Alternatively the author could be a whistle-blower. It may also be used in some cases where the editor wrote the piece but does not take credit, but I am guessing this is usually not the case.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 89305,
"author": "user11599",
"author_id": 43281,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43281",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In one famous case, a statistician had to use a pseudonym (he used A. Student instead of Anonymous, but basically the same idea). William Gosset was employed by Guinness as a researcher and I'll just quote <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sealy_Gosset\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Wikipedia</a> here:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Another researcher at Guinness had previously published a paper\n containing trade secrets of the Guinness brewery. To prevent further\n disclosure of confidential information, Guinness prohibited its\n employees from publishing any papers regardless of the contained\n information. However, after pleading with the brewery and explaining\n that his mathematical and philosophical conclusions were of no\n possible practical use to competing brewers, he was allowed to publish\n them, but under a pseudonym (\"Student\"), to avoid difficulties with\n the rest of the staff.[2] Thus his most noteworthy achievement is now\n called Student's, rather than Gosset's, t-distribution.[1]</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 89318,
"author": "Shake Baby",
"author_id": 46838,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/46838",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><a href=\"http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01584980\" rel=\"noreferrer\">This paper</a> was published anonymously as a critique for lack of mathematical foundation on optimization literature. The paper shows a ridiculous algorithm that meets all accepted criteria for having a sound theory supporting it. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Editor's note: This manuscript was transmitted, torn and tattered, to Mathematical Programming by Philip Wolfe with a letter, stating, in part: “I have refereed many papers which proposed optimization algorithms without studying their effectiveness; it will save me much time to have here a single reference I can cite, saying ‘This algorithm solves all the problems yours does and, on the available evidence, equally well.’ I therefore recommend publication ⋯ and hope that the author will come forward to receive ⋯ what he richly deserves.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 175699,
"author": "Miguel Tomás",
"author_id": 134607,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/134607",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Publishing anonymously made (makes) sense in a society where internet comunications is not part of a citizen's daily life of living (and work). For all the reasons already presented here. Mainly due to safety concerns.</p>\n<p>(...)</p>\n<p>That reality changes to the oposite (of of being unsafe) when is meet the above internet requirement. Europe, in 2005 (ish) meet that minimum requirement. In today's european digital reality (2021), publishing anonymously is no longer safe, nor advantageous. Even when considering top secret "military" projects.</p>\n<p>(...)</p>\n<p>To better understand what i just said, i invite the reader to study how prototyping and business creation is made (online) with all available to read, listen and see, from idea conception to a running business. And I'm refereing to well known businesses such as was the case of google 20 years ago and more recently any open source businesses demostrate.</p>\n<p>(...)</p>\n<p>One must also consider, patenting and patents are now available to download and study for free. With all the business frenesim well known nowadays, best protagonized by Elsevier.</p>\n<p>This leaves academia (some in panic , others static) behind, when forcing their scientific method while forgeting to include the latest technological adavances into their research activities.</p>\n<p>(...)</p>\n<p>In summary,</p>\n<p>research laboratories are required to open to the world outside, and when doing it, gain access to:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>real live data for their resarch project studies and activities. This results in bigger datasets on presented findings when publishing</li>\n<li>in turn, live data, aquired from any IoT data acquisiton device, leads to the creation of biggest dataset available in history (a dream come true for any true scientific researcher). And to cope with all that data ocean is needed automation tools such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>If the reader missed, all above is already happening in a publicly acessible enviroment, not anonymously. Think for instance geo located data.</p>\n<p>(...)</p>\n<p>Finally,</p>\n<p>I consider to be more urgent , the chalenge of overcomming vertical rankings in science, for instance incresase the number of <em>index</em> used in sci. metrics, at the same time a researcher gains access to above metioned digital tools and devices. While doing it, research activities will enable faster scientifc prodution, with increased collaboration*, cooperation*, partnership* all happeing #live, in real-time and more importantly asynchronously (with minimal disturbance of a research daily work schedule).</p>\n<p>In the end, the researcher can expect great improvements in quality of published research. Publicly knowing is a safer practice to deliver science in the world. (and more)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 185175,
"author": "user43012",
"author_id": 156433,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/156433",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Why not?</p>\n<p>Actually, why would anyone write not anonymously?</p>\n<p>What's the real point behind a list of names, especially in a scientific article?</p>\n<p>Papers are written for the purpose of the advancement of science.</p>\n<p>Not for personal advertisement.</p>\n<p>Names can still be registered with the journal editor and/or with a regulatory organisation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 185183,
"author": "Anonymous Physicist",
"author_id": 13240,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13240",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Scopus has 82,000,000 documents. You have found that less than one in a thousand is attributed to anonymous. The consensus view is that papers should not be published anonymously.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/01 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13782",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
13,796 | <p>I'm writing a philosophy essay. The essay is required to answer a particular question by analyzing, in turn, four particular philosophy essays; the essay needs to follow the outline below.</p>
<ol>
<li>Restate the question.</li>
<li>Introduction.</li>
<li>Analyze essayW by Mills</li>
<li>Analyze essayX by Shue</li>
<li>Analyze essayY by Locke</li>
<li>Analyze essayZ by Hospers</li>
<li>Answer the question with information from essay analyses. </li>
</ol>
<p>Where do I need to write (Author, Date) in my analyses? Each analysis will be about an essay, and will reference that essay in most of its sentences. Do I need to include the same citation in every sentence that references that essay? That seems like it would aggravate the reader.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13797,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I am not knowledgable about the specific best practices in philosophy, but I would say that you should cite in the least obtrusive fashion, while still being unambiguous.</p>\n<p>For example, if your four essays have four different authors, and you do not cite other works by these authors, I would:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>Cite each essay when you first introduce it, e.g. in the introduction.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Then avoid using citations, e.g. simply saying <em>“Hospers relies in is essay on concepts X and Y”</em></p>\n</li>\n<li><p>In the first sentence to each of the separate analyses (your parts 3 to 6), make clear what essay you are looking at and cite it again:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In this section, we offer a detailed analysis of <em>essayY</em> (Locke, 1698), looking in particular at …</p>\n</blockquote>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13816,
"author": "Jeromy Anglim",
"author_id": 62,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/62",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I often see this issue when reading student lab reports in psychology. So for example, a student is paraphrasing a number of claims made by Smith (2000), so they write:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>X is related to Y (Smith, 2000). The cause of some stuff is blah blah (Smith, 2000). Then the system does that (Smith, 2000). But several reasons for this include A, B, and C (Smith, 2000). </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>One problem with this form of writing is that it does not make explicit the link between statement and citation. There are many possible links between citation and statement (e.g., Smith asserted a claim; Smith conducted research and obtained a finding; Smith is one reference among many where a generally accepted fact in the field is asserted; etc.).</p>\n\n<p>In general, if you are writing critical commentary about a particular article, then your writing style will need to be explicit about claims made in the target paper and what is your analysis. One way of restructuring the text is to make the author explicit in the text. E.g., </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>Smith (2000) proposed</strong> that X is related to Y. <strong>He found evidence that</strong> the cause of some stuff is blah blah. <strong>He went on to show that</strong> the system does that. <strong>He proposed</strong> several reasons for this including A, B, and C.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Note the full in-text reference is provided in the first sentence. The remaining sentences make it clear that the propositions are related to the citation in the first sentence. Furthermore, the connecting words (e.g., \"proposed\", \"found evidence\", etc.) provide further information on where the propositions came from (e.g., theory, mere assertion, empirical evidence, etc.).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32766,
"author": "Charles Stewart",
"author_id": 24914,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24914",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The brief answer is, yes, you need to cite your source each time you refer to it. If you have ten places you make use of a paper, be they quotations, justification of claims made, indications of further places providing supporting evidence, then each of these ten uses must be backed up by an inline citation. However, as Jeromy notes, this is not as onerous as it sounds, since if you write in a natural style and describe who carried out the work, then you only need to add the date in parentheses. The <em>Chicago Manual of Style</em> (CMoS) provides several other mechanisms to minimise the amount of text taken up by inline citations, which is important for readability.</p>\n<h2>Background on Chicago's author-date system</h2>\n<p>The current (16th) edition of the <em>Chicago Manual of Style</em> (abbrev. CMoS-16) gives extensive documentation on how its author-date citation style is defined and to be applied in chapter 15: the style is one of two supported citation styles, the other being the notes&bibliography approach, where citations are generally given in footnotes using the title of the work, rather than the date. Note that both the author-date and notes&bib citations styles are used in philosophy: <em>Proc. Aristotelian Society</em>, e.g., uses author-date, while <em>Ethics</em> uses notes&bib. The system described in the 16th ed. is a substantial simplification of that in the 15th edition of CMoS: make sure you refer to this edition.</p>\n<h2>Example</h2>\n<p>The following citations might appear in the body of a text. I've put an example of using a citation possessively, which can help quite a bit in making citations blend naturally into text.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Strawson (1950)'s critique of the theory of descriptions put forward by Russell (1904) has generated a considerable literature (e.g., Donnellan 1960, 1978; Dummett 1973; Kripke 1977; Ludlow and Neale 1991). Ludlow (2005) provides an overview of this body of work.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Then there should be a references section at the end containing each cited work. I've given examples of works with multiple authors, two works by the same author, citations from a book as well as from journals. Note that titles of books and journals are italicised; titles of articles and book chapters are placed in quotation marks.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Donnellan, Keith S. 1966. “Reference and Definite Descriptions.” <em>Philosophical Review</em> 77:281—304.</li>\n<li>————————. 1978. “Speaker Reference, Descriptions, and Anaphora.” In P. Cole (ed.), <em>Syntax and Semantics 9: Pragmatics</em>. New York: Academic Press, 47—68.</li>\n<li>Dummett, Michael A. E. 1973. <em>Frege: Philosophy of Language</em>. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</li>\n<li>Kripke, Saul. 1977. “Speaker Reference and Semantic Reference.” In French, Uehling, and Wettstein (eds.), <em>Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language</em>, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 6—27.</li>\n<li>Ludlow, Peter, and Stephen Neale. 1991. “Indefinite Descriptions: In Defense of Russell.” <em>Linguistics and Philosophy</em> 14:171—202.</li>\n<li>Ludlow, Peter. 2005. “Descriptions.” <em>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</em> (Summer 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Retrieved from <code>http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2005/entries/descriptions/</code>.</li>\n<li>Russell, Bertrand. 1905. “On Denoting.” <em>Mind</em> 14:479—493.</li>\n<li>Strawson, Peter F. 1950. “On Referring.” <em>Mind</em> 59:320—334.</li>\n</ul>\n"
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|
13,801 | <p>I was wondering the correct format for citing when including both book edition and the page range of the chapter.</p>
<p>From owl purdue on citing chapter (APA):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of
chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), <em>Title of book</em> (pages
of chapter). Location: Publisher.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Would the correct format then look like this?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of
chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), <em>Title of book</em>
(<strong>Edition, pages of chapter</strong>). Location: Publisher.</p>
</blockquote>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13797,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I am not knowledgable about the specific best practices in philosophy, but I would say that you should cite in the least obtrusive fashion, while still being unambiguous.</p>\n<p>For example, if your four essays have four different authors, and you do not cite other works by these authors, I would:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>Cite each essay when you first introduce it, e.g. in the introduction.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Then avoid using citations, e.g. simply saying <em>“Hospers relies in is essay on concepts X and Y”</em></p>\n</li>\n<li><p>In the first sentence to each of the separate analyses (your parts 3 to 6), make clear what essay you are looking at and cite it again:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In this section, we offer a detailed analysis of <em>essayY</em> (Locke, 1698), looking in particular at …</p>\n</blockquote>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13816,
"author": "Jeromy Anglim",
"author_id": 62,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/62",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I often see this issue when reading student lab reports in psychology. So for example, a student is paraphrasing a number of claims made by Smith (2000), so they write:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>X is related to Y (Smith, 2000). The cause of some stuff is blah blah (Smith, 2000). Then the system does that (Smith, 2000). But several reasons for this include A, B, and C (Smith, 2000). </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>One problem with this form of writing is that it does not make explicit the link between statement and citation. There are many possible links between citation and statement (e.g., Smith asserted a claim; Smith conducted research and obtained a finding; Smith is one reference among many where a generally accepted fact in the field is asserted; etc.).</p>\n\n<p>In general, if you are writing critical commentary about a particular article, then your writing style will need to be explicit about claims made in the target paper and what is your analysis. One way of restructuring the text is to make the author explicit in the text. E.g., </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>Smith (2000) proposed</strong> that X is related to Y. <strong>He found evidence that</strong> the cause of some stuff is blah blah. <strong>He went on to show that</strong> the system does that. <strong>He proposed</strong> several reasons for this including A, B, and C.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Note the full in-text reference is provided in the first sentence. The remaining sentences make it clear that the propositions are related to the citation in the first sentence. Furthermore, the connecting words (e.g., \"proposed\", \"found evidence\", etc.) provide further information on where the propositions came from (e.g., theory, mere assertion, empirical evidence, etc.).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32766,
"author": "Charles Stewart",
"author_id": 24914,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24914",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The brief answer is, yes, you need to cite your source each time you refer to it. If you have ten places you make use of a paper, be they quotations, justification of claims made, indications of further places providing supporting evidence, then each of these ten uses must be backed up by an inline citation. However, as Jeromy notes, this is not as onerous as it sounds, since if you write in a natural style and describe who carried out the work, then you only need to add the date in parentheses. The <em>Chicago Manual of Style</em> (CMoS) provides several other mechanisms to minimise the amount of text taken up by inline citations, which is important for readability.</p>\n<h2>Background on Chicago's author-date system</h2>\n<p>The current (16th) edition of the <em>Chicago Manual of Style</em> (abbrev. CMoS-16) gives extensive documentation on how its author-date citation style is defined and to be applied in chapter 15: the style is one of two supported citation styles, the other being the notes&bibliography approach, where citations are generally given in footnotes using the title of the work, rather than the date. Note that both the author-date and notes&bib citations styles are used in philosophy: <em>Proc. Aristotelian Society</em>, e.g., uses author-date, while <em>Ethics</em> uses notes&bib. The system described in the 16th ed. is a substantial simplification of that in the 15th edition of CMoS: make sure you refer to this edition.</p>\n<h2>Example</h2>\n<p>The following citations might appear in the body of a text. I've put an example of using a citation possessively, which can help quite a bit in making citations blend naturally into text.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Strawson (1950)'s critique of the theory of descriptions put forward by Russell (1904) has generated a considerable literature (e.g., Donnellan 1960, 1978; Dummett 1973; Kripke 1977; Ludlow and Neale 1991). Ludlow (2005) provides an overview of this body of work.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Then there should be a references section at the end containing each cited work. I've given examples of works with multiple authors, two works by the same author, citations from a book as well as from journals. Note that titles of books and journals are italicised; titles of articles and book chapters are placed in quotation marks.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Donnellan, Keith S. 1966. “Reference and Definite Descriptions.” <em>Philosophical Review</em> 77:281—304.</li>\n<li>————————. 1978. “Speaker Reference, Descriptions, and Anaphora.” In P. Cole (ed.), <em>Syntax and Semantics 9: Pragmatics</em>. New York: Academic Press, 47—68.</li>\n<li>Dummett, Michael A. E. 1973. <em>Frege: Philosophy of Language</em>. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</li>\n<li>Kripke, Saul. 1977. “Speaker Reference and Semantic Reference.” In French, Uehling, and Wettstein (eds.), <em>Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language</em>, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 6—27.</li>\n<li>Ludlow, Peter, and Stephen Neale. 1991. “Indefinite Descriptions: In Defense of Russell.” <em>Linguistics and Philosophy</em> 14:171—202.</li>\n<li>Ludlow, Peter. 2005. “Descriptions.” <em>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</em> (Summer 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Retrieved from <code>http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2005/entries/descriptions/</code>.</li>\n<li>Russell, Bertrand. 1905. “On Denoting.” <em>Mind</em> 14:479—493.</li>\n<li>Strawson, Peter F. 1950. “On Referring.” <em>Mind</em> 59:320—334.</li>\n</ul>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/02 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13801",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9268/"
]
|
13,803 | <p>I'm a pure math phd student and the supervisor gave me two papers so as I find an idea to research but the subjects are unrelated and I can't concentrate on one of them and can't decide which one is likely to be a fruitful subject, What should I do?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13804,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First, it depends on the country you're in, the type of funding you're applying for, and probably to a smaller extent on your field of research.</p>\n\n<p>In case you already have an agreement with a supervisor, then you should probably look to him for advice on choosing a topic, but make the choice yourself. Given that he sent you papers on these two topics, you can probably assume (absent any evidence to the contrary) that both would make a good and fruitful subject. Thus, choose with your heart: what problem is most exciting to you?</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13827,
"author": "Armin Mustafa",
"author_id": 9136,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9136",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I understand your situation because I recently started my PhD.</p>\n\n<p>You do the following:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Try to come up with ideas from those two papers</li>\n<li>Apart from that try to come up with own ideas of yourself</li>\n<li>Take all the ideas with you in a meeting with your supervisor and tell him frankly what you want to work on.</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13829,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is a tricky question. In principle, of course, it's best if one comes up with one's own question/project. However, it is all too easy to accidentally, from inexperience, choose a too-hard, or boring-to-experts, project, or, more subtly, a project in which neither you nor your advisor has any special insights to give you an edge over anyone else.</p>\n\n<p>Especially if you are hoping to make a run at the \"research post-doc\" game, you'll want to have done Ph.D. work that is of interest to experts in that field. A novice has the obvious difficulties ascertaining whether a given topic might be of interest to experts, but your advisor should be able to clarify this. I have seen examples of people working enthusiastically on a PhD topic, and finish the degree, only to have no one care at all, and no job offers result.</p>\n\n<p>Also, I don't think it's the case that a \"smart-enough person\" can pick random problems (that are of interest to experts) and expect to make significant progress merely by wanting to. While it's true that \"fresh eyes\" can be helpful, literal inexperience is rarely useful. I tend to think that one's advisor should give \"insider advice\" about un-obvious possibilities for progress.</p>\n\n<p>Thus, in reality, I think that the true choices available are something like first choosing an advisor based on their expertise. Then ask them for guidance. Presumably they will not dictate a project, but merely suggest, giving <em>you</em> choices... but it is very important to continue the iteration of \"getting advice\", rather than just privately making a choice and assuming it is wise. Lacking the information and experience your advisor should have, it is essentially impossible to make good choices on your own. Tentative choices, to be discussed with your advisor, yes.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13830,
"author": "Paul Hiemstra",
"author_id": 4091,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4091",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think in general the role of the PhD should increase trough the course of the project. In the beginning, the supervisor will have a significant role, both in selecting the subject and performing daily duties. This is needed imo to get the unexperienced PhD going. Later, the role of the PhD increases, and the supervisor takes a more passive role. </p>\n\n<p>In the Netherlands, it is customary to write four journal papers as a PhD (4 years). While the first might be an idea that your supervisor came up with, your last should probably be your own idea.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/02 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13803",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9271/"
]
|
13,815 | <p>I teach a writing course designed to prepare international students for graduate school, mostly social science majors. The students have no experience writing academic papers. I have found that lists of sample TOEFL and GRE writing topics, such as <a href="http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/TOEFL/pdf/989563wt.pdf">this list of sample writing topics</a> found at ETS, serve as good essay topics for these students so that they can practice organizing their ideas in writing. These topics are: (1) simple; (2) can be addressed by students from any major or culture; (3) and can be supported by the students' opinions, not research.</p>
<p>Next term, the course will focus on introducing research methods. Were can I find topics that are: (1) similarly simple; (2) can be handled by students from any major; but that (3) will require students to rely on academic journals for support? I need students to practice gathering information, evaluating the credibility of sources, and assembling their ideas and evidence without getting bogged down in the complexity of the subject.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13826,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>When I have taught research methods for undergraduate work, I find that it is best to give the students a lot of freedom while still requiring acceptance for the topics. I do not think giving a list of acceptable topics is the way to pique the interest of students.</p>\n\n<p>It is better in my experience to guide them and let them know that <em>they</em> know their field better than anyone outside of that field, so they are capable of finding a suitable topic by themselves.</p>\n\n<p>I have had students who choose \"I want to study the effect of someone smiling at you.\" It could be an interesting topic but, since my students are all business majors, I give them the restriction is that it must be related to business. When they submit this topic, I hand it back and ask them \"How does this relate to business as I said all research in this module must?\"</p>\n\n<p>I guess I could provide them a list but I really think that will just end up limiting them. Better to coax them out of their shell and get them to really start thinking and choosing and living with the consequences of their decisions. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13838,
"author": "Samuel Russell",
"author_id": 4429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4429",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As far as I am concerned research methods are disciplinary in nature. Even restricting your topics to social sciences, and your research skill focus to literature reviews, I'm not sure you're going to be able to craft topics suitable for all social science disciplines.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/03 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13815",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/600/"
]
|
13,818 | <p>I learn math on my own. And I sometimes end up generalizing theorems. I do not claim that these generalizations are ground-breaking. However, I feel these generalizations are not entirely obvious at first-sight. </p>
<p>Could I publish a paper on such a generalization?</p>
<p>Making this more relevant to the community at large, how do you know when your "new" ideas are paper-worthy? Should one pursue research directed only by external trends? As in, if I were to publish a paper, should I only look for current areas of research in order to conduct research that would be relevant to academia today?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13820,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is a very hard question in general, and is defined by a combination of absolute standards and community opinions. It's very hard to answer your specific question (\"can I publish these results\") and I don't think this community is the right forum to even ask that question. </p>\n\n<p>But your second question is a good one. There are some things to keep in mind:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>make sure your ideas are indeed new. It's easy when working independently to be aware of the published literature, but not be aware of the large cloud of \"folklore\" knowledge that floats in the air of a community. You'll get a paper rejected because something is \"well known\", even though you can't find a specific reference and no one provides one. To figure this out, it would help to approach an expert in the field, or at least someone you trust. </p></li>\n<li><p>What kind of research you pursue is a complex combination of external trends and your interests. If you go too much towards external trends you might not find much pleasure in it. If you go too much towards personal interests (unless you have impeccable taste) you might find yourself isolated. It's all about balance. Similarly, while looking at current areas of research will tell you what's likely to be publishable, that's not the same thing as what's interesting or useful. Again, having some contact with people in the community might help a bit. </p></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13824,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The only way to \"know\" if your material is publishable is to know the literature on the subject. I used \"know\" because all publications go through per review and that is the final hurdle your paper must pass before the answer is given. So the question really becomes what must be done to pass peer review? </p>\n\n<p>So you need to know your subject by finding and reading all relevant literature. An interesting personal observation is that it is easy to think you know more than you really do if you are not familiar with a specific field. Getting yourself up to date is hard work. Apart from the research literature, there is of course need to master the basics. As editor and reviewer I see many manuscripts presenting measurements that in themselves might be good but where interpretations are shallow and sometimes trivial because they have missed relevant research. Remember that journal rejection rates, although they vary, can be from below 50% to up to 90% for the more prestigious journals. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13836,
"author": "ppr",
"author_id": 9282,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9282",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Even professional scientists cannot know if their last idea is original and new (and so, if it is worth publishing). </p>\n\n<p>Today science is too big, too complex and too separated in different specialties to allow one person to have a general overview (this is the \"<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Science\" rel=\"nofollow\">Big Science</a>\" issue).</p>\n\n<p>However, there are people who are specialist of evaluating scientific contributions. There are <em>referee</em> of Journals.</p>\n\n<p>So my answer would be to try to be published. Even if the paper is not accepted, it is the opportunity to have feedbacks, references and to see what your idea deserves.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13840,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Complementary to Suresh's and Peter's more comprehensive answers that you should <em>definitely</em> take into account: (+1 to both) </p>\n\n<p><em>Use ArXiv</em>; ie. publish it yourself. Go ahead and write your findings down and put them in public. This will be a good exercise as : </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>you will be covered for plagiarism etc. and you 'll be also able to refer other people's attention to it. It will be immensely easier to attract people attention to something tangible than just referring to \"some idea you think it is great\". As Torvalds said : \"<em>Talk is cheap. Show me the code.</em>\" (or Maths in your case).</li>\n<li>people you do not know, can actually find you; or even cite you for that matter. I know a lot of people who regularly read ArXiv papers to keep up to speed with the bleeding edge of stuff. You might be lucky and really get some attention from people that actually care for your work.</li>\n<li>you will see for yourself if what you wrote can be formulated in a research paper and it doesn't come across as some ''back of the envelope'' calculations. You might even identify where feedback from a collaborator would be helpful.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>If you think you are up to something good, put it up there. Worse case scenario: nobody bothers and you never know if you were right or wrong.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/03 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13818",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7573/"
]
|
13,819 | <p>If you review a paper which relies on results some other paper and you do not have access to that paper, is it acceptable to contact the editor and ask whether the author can provide a copy of the referenced paper? Are requests like this reasonably common?</p>
<p>Or should the referee simply take the word of authors that their conclusions based on the referenced paper are correct, even without seeing that paper?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13821,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Yes, if the paper is crucial to the work, I don't think there is anything wrong with asking the editor to provide it to you. I think the editor would probably check for it himself first (in order to save time), and if not possible would relay your query to the authors. As an extreme measure, if the editor was unwilling to do this, I would simply consider writing back saying you are unable to fully review the paper because access to this crucial reference was not provided.</p>\n\n<p>So, in short: <strong>do not let your lack of subscriptions get in the way of doing of thorough review</strong>.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Now, there are some other ways around this. First, maybe you can find that paper in the usual ways: through interlibrary loan or on the “grey market” (ask a friend who's got more comprehensive subscriptions that yours). Second, maybe the editor offers reviewers some service that can be of help already (for example, Elsevier journals offer a 30-day free access to the Scopus database to their reviewers). </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13825,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are two aspects of the question: Should you try to find the necessary information (papers) to do a good review? And should you contact the author of the paper you review to ask for other sources written by that author?</p>\n\n<p>It is clear that you should attempt to gather all information you deem necessary to perform your task as reviewer. Since journals typically only accept published materials to be used for sources (with the possible exception of unpublished data or personal communications) you should be able to find such information given some time and work. That said, I doubt that many would keep a review on hold just because they have not been able to find a specific source unless that source is absolute key for a critical (in the negative sense) aspect of the paper. It is, however, possible to inform the editor that you have not been able to check up on this particular aspect since you are unable to obtain a copy of the paper within a reasonable time. Although it is always possible to purchase papers from publishers, I do not think we consider such actions within the expectations placed on a reviewer.</p>\n\n<p>Now, the second aspect about contacting the author for more information should be handled with care. As an editor, I would first of all want to be aware of such communications. Peer review is based on an objective evaluation for materials and although a simple request is not likely to change much it simply removes part of the desired distance between author and reviewer. One solution to this, which I would prefer is for the reviewer to contact the editor and ask for the material (from the editor or from the author through the editor). It has not happened to me that i have received such a request but I would not consider it other than a positive. I would also add that if a reviewer is lacking some key piece of information (as stated in the previous paragraph) I would greatly appreciate knowing about this weakness in the review. Given such information, I could, as and editor, add key comments of requests to the author to improve the paper in some respect.</p>\n\n<p>As a side-point, I would like to add that some papers that totally rely on other previously published on, for example methods and error discussions, should include enough of a summary to make the paper stand on its own in its entirety. It is thus possible to request a major revision with the explicit wish to see additions to the paper to remove the necessity to have to read other papers for key aspects. I fully realize the delicate balance in such requests since no-one is striving for excessively long publications.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/03 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13819",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/648/"
]
|
13,831 | <p>After a few years of graduate school, I've noticed that I may not be asking questions and making criticism in the workshops in the best way. By "best," I have two goals for comments. The first (selfish) goal is to develop a reputation for being a intelligent, insightful colleague with good comments. The second goal is to effectively communicate my concerns to help others improve their research. Luckily these goals are mutually reinforcing.</p>
<p>Observing others in my department's weekly workshop, the questions that usually get the most attention are those that are phrased quite strongly, even aggressively. </p>
<p>My tendency has always been to be polite and not try to put someone on the spot about their work. I gently communicate the problems I see with the work. As a result, presenters often do not listen. They brush off the questions as if they are unthreatening and thereof of limited concern.</p>
<p>I do not want workshops to be a threatening or aggressive environment, but it seems like only questions that get the presenter's adrenaline flowing regularly warrant proper consideration and response. Maybe I'm going too soft and I can find a middle ground without being one of the aggressive (sometimes rude) ones. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13832,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I am not sure that your questions at a conference are necessarily a major concern. If you look at how science is propagated, conferences are typically a step before publication. Therefore, it is noble of you to think of it as a point where you can provide constructive comments to authors about their work. However, the most critical point comes when work is published and peer-reviewed.</p>\n\n<p>Based on your experience at conferences (which I to some extent share) you can ask yourself the following: Is the author/presenter interested in your comments. If he/she is, then it would be counter productive to ignore your questions. The question-and-answer format, on the other hand, is too brief and fragmented considering the time constraints of a presentation schedule to be the forum for constructive criticism. That is probably also why the more aggressive questions dominate. In the end, there is nothing wrong with approaching a person during a break to initiate a deeper discussion. you will then also get a better feeling if your comments are welcome.</p>\n\n<p>A final thought. I tend to think as the saying: <em>it is sometimes better to be silent and seem a fool than to speak and prove it</em>. You can exchange \"fool\" by whatever trait you wish.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 29116,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Just a couple of thoughts on this (not so recent) question:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The first (selfish) goal is to develop a reputation for being a intelligent, insightful colleague with good comments.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If everyone went into a workshop or conference talk with the primary goal of \"developing a reputation for being an intelligent, insightful colleague with good comments\", then...yikes. Chaos would ensue. Luckily I've never seen this; the closest I have seen is in faculty meetings, where often I feel that being a good colleague requires me to say something from time to time just to be heard, rather than because I think I am contributing something absolutely essential to the discussion. It is, frankly, one of my worse habits: I shudder to imagine what would happen if all of my colleagues behaved the same way.</p>\n\n<p>You should speak up in a talk because you think that something you say will be directly helpful to the speaker or to others, or because you didn't fully understand something the speaker said <strong>and</strong> you have reason to believe that a quick question and answer could set you back on track. I don't think that you should aim to make yourself heard specifically to impress your colleagues: that seems too likely to backfire, <em>either</em> because what you say is not as insightful as you think or because the speaker and the audience will not appreciate your commandeering more than your fair share of the speaker's time.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The second goal is to effectively communicate my concerns to help others improve their research. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, that's a good reason to speak up. What you say about \"too soft\" questions getting brushed off by speakers sounds like a \"local phenomenon\" rather than a general truth about such talks. Where I come from, too-pointed questioning is more likely not to have the desired effect: a speaker either becomes flustered and the entire talk becomes (at least!) temporarily derailed, or to avoid that they say \"I don't know\" and move on without really thinking about the question. For several years this type of thing happened often in response to questions of mine that I didn't even realize were so pointed, so I have (somewhat) learned to correct in the opposite direction: by trying to ensure that my questions are friendly and do not come off as quizzing or challenging the speaker. But mine is not a universal truth either: I think it just depends on the local culture involved, maybe even the specific group of people in the room.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I gently communicate the problems I see with the work.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If you feel like you see a <em>problem</em> -- rather than just asking a question about something that you may not properly understand -- then pointing this out during the talk itself may not be ideal. The following <strong>is</strong> in my experience a universal truth: people don't like being told they're wrong. Do you want them to stop short and try to \"fix\" their work on the spot? I think that if you really have something to say which vitiates a substantial part of the talk, it will be better for all involved if you wait until after the talk and speak solely to the speaker about it. (Admittedly, <em>j'accuse</em> moments in talks can be pretty entertaining for the spectators: see e.g. the beginning of <a href=\"http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=118&part=all\" rel=\"nofollow\">this wonderful story</a>. Spoiler alert: as amazing as this beginning event is, yet more amazing is that it is not what the story is really about at all.)</p>\n\n<p>I might go so far as to say that it is not really \"fair\" to raise a serious objection during a fixed-duration talk. The speaker has other things on her mind and plate besides understanding and addressing your specific concern. Often in a talk it turns out that the brilliant professor's lightning-quick refutation of the speaker's work is not actually a refutation of the speaker's work: it was based on some kind of misunderstanding or miscommunication (e.g. people using terminology in subtly different ways or elided technical hypotheses). When this happens the majority of the audience cannot really follow what happened and goes away with a vague impression that something was wrong with the speaker's work. That's not really fair.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/03 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13831",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7934/"
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|
13,834 | <p>I am writing a blog post citing several paywalled papers. Could I also put graphs, diagrams or photos from these papers in my blog post under fair use?</p>
<p>My field is medical object detection and I would like to show examples from the papers where the authors show in which cases their algorithms fail.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13835,
"author": "james234",
"author_id": 7937,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7937",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Personally I have contacted the first or authors directly and asked them for permission and most of them have replied within 2–3 days. Also my librarian had advised me to refer to <a href=\"http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Sherapa/Romeo</a> (a listing of journals and their policies). Some journals are very lenient and wouldn't mind using images if you have explicit permission from author. Important thing to note is once journal is published, the author waives away all his rights and only journal paper has rights on the work.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13837,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Whether the articles were paywalled or not, you should resolve your problem in three steps:</p>\n<ol>\n<li><p><strong>Content license</strong>: check if you can find a version of the figure with liberal licensing terms. The paywalled version certainly does not fit the bill… but you may find the same figure (or a similar one) in a pre-print version of the paper, under a different license.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><strong>Obtaining permission for use</strong>: even if the content is not available under a free license, the publisher can grant you permission to reproduce the image. Nowadays, many publishers use a nice interface called Rightslink. If you look for example at this <a href=\"http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja4067207\" rel=\"noreferrer\">random article</a> from the American Chemical Society (which is far from being the most liberal of publishers), you can see a “Rights and permissions” link. In that particular example, the publisher will grant you reproducing of up to 4 figures of the paper on the internet, even on a for-profit website.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><strong>Fair use</strong>: the fair use doctrine is a tricky, murky area of US copyright law. It's not as wide as people generally assume. It has to be judged on a case-by-case basis: see <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use\" rel=\"noreferrer\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/fair-use-copyright-and-images-faq/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">there</a>. See <a href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/04/26/is-reprinting-a-figure-fair-us/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">here</a> a notorious case from back in 2007 which is very close to your particular case.</p>\n<p>So, my own conclusion on fair use: it's nice in principle, but unless you're ready to hire a lawyer to double-check (or get formal training on that), just play it safe.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/03 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13834",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2698/"
]
|
13,842 | <p>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? </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13843,
"author": "David Ketcheson",
"author_id": 81,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>At my institution, most researchers have more than one grant. It is extremely common over a wide range of disciplines, at least in the USA.</p>\n\n<p>Often, one is required to include the \"level of effort\" in each grant proposal; i.e., the percentage of one's time that will be spent on that project. That number is never 100%; more often, it may be 10-50%.</p>\n\n<p>In many fields, the \"principal investigator\" on the grant may do only a small part of the actual research, with the bulk being done by students and post-docs. This part is very field-dependent. In some fields, full professors at top universities are expected to have very many grants simultaneously, or at least some very large grants that involve a lot more than the full time of a single person.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13844,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here's one example: the National Science Foundation in the US funds academic researchers. Usually the researchers draws some amount of summer salary from the grant (the rest - most of the grant money - goes to student support and travel). But you can be supported by different grants for different fractions of your summer. It's not impossible to have four active grants, each paying 0.5 months of your summer salary. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13847,
"author": "Pieter Naaijkens",
"author_id": 22,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You would have to check the conditions of the grants to be sure. This answer is based on my experience with some European grants. Especially for \"personal\" grants that pay your full salary, it is often not allowed to have multiple of such grants simultaneously. In addition it there are often conditions to ensure you are not being paid twice (from different grants) for the same thing.</p>\n\n<p>The situation in Europe is different from the US in the sense that university employees are paid all year round, not only during the teaching semester. So they don't have to source additional income in summer.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/04 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13842",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/184/"
]
|
13,853 | <p>I teach a group of bright students who will interrupt the material presentation with questions that will be answered in the next slide or sentence. I appreciate that they are thinking ahead but I have times when I just need to get the information out there and then discuss it when everyone has had time to process.</p>
<p>What advice can you give me? What are best practices for this?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13854,
"author": "Jim",
"author_id": 7902,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7902",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You stated the question very well: you want to lower the number of 'easy questions' (the ones that are natural at this point), but not discourage them to ask questions altogether. Apart from the usual 'we will get there in a moment' response I see two ways of doing it.</p>\n\n<p>If you think it is seriously needed you could have a conversation with them about it. You say they are bright students so they probably will see the value in restraining themselves a bit. You could possibly formulate some sort of policy:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>It is always OK to ask a question immediately if there is something that you did not understood.</li>\n<li>If you have a question of curiosity (like 'but mam, if that is true what does it imply for X?') then you could wait a bit.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>If you do that and pause regularly enough (may be not once per lecture but 10 to 15 minutes) so they can ask their questions, then they will not be frustrated yet allow you to deliver the course without too many interruptions.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13856,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think it is good to have students feel free to ask questions. I often get similar question in lectures and just answer by either moving to the next slide and continue the lecture with a \"good question, I was just getting to that\" or \"good question, I will get to that in a moment\". The result of that is hopefully that students get more and more comfortable with you covering material and with that security questions may actually decrease over time. yes, it is frustrating some times but it means the students are concentrating on your lecture and that is really what you want so don't change.</p>\n\n<p>One can of course ask oneself what is causing the questions. Is it that the material could be presented in a better way (order). use the comments to reflect on the way you present the material and try to see if you can \"defuse\" such questions by some re-organization.</p>\n\n<p>One practical matter is to make sure your present the core points first before discussing how you arrive there. Then the route will be more clear and the wait for the culmination avoided. I am of course not certain this is valid in your case but you can consider approaching the train of thought in a different way than \"normal\".</p>\n\n<p>With time (running the lectures a couple of times) you probably get a good picture of what are repeating questions and you can actually use them in your lecture by saying \"you may now wonder why [something] and I will get back to that in a moment\" (or what may be appropriate. Do not be afraid to experiment!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13859,
"author": "David Robinson",
"author_id": 1340,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1340",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>When I get such questions from my students, I always answer the same way: \"I am <strong>so</strong> glad you asked that!\"</p>\n\n<p>I think it's a mistake to view such questions as a negative phenomenon that should be avoided and prevented. For one thing, the question shows that the student is paying attention and drawing the proper conclusions. But consider the benefit to all the other students, those who might not have formulated the question yet: the question serves as proof that what you're teaching is useful.</p>\n\n<p>Consider two alternatives (using an example from computer programming):</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><strong>Teacher</strong>: And that's how you let a user input a number.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Student</strong>: What if you want to take many numbers from the user? Do you have to copy and paste the same code over and over?</p>\n\n<p><strong>Answer A</strong>: Please save your questions until after I show you loops.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Answer B</strong>: I'm <strong>so</strong> glad you asked that! Avoiding copy and pasting code is an important habit for computer programmers. So let's talk about <em>loops</em>...</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>The student's question served as a perfect setup for the next lesson, and in a way that convinces other students that the lesson is practical and necessary. It's like teaching with the Socratic method (\"why is this useful? ... because it...\"), except that you have an accomplice in the audience instead of having to talk to yourself.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13861,
"author": "Kyle Hale",
"author_id": 9299,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9299",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Another option that I saw once and I thought was, frankly, pretty great:</p>\n\n<p>In my Introduction to Logic class my professor taught from Powerpoint slides, and the slide was divided into two sections, the main section on the left, and a small column on the right. The column on the right was titled \"Questions You Probably Have\" and was exactly that. Underneath each question in bold it either said \"Next slide!\" or \"Ask me!\" And so, inevitably, people would ask the \"Ask Me!\" questions and he would click the \"Ask me!\" link and it would jump to a tangential slide and he would go into the details.</p>\n\n<p>And if someone asked him something not on the slide, he would always say, \"Great question!\", give the questioner a bonus point on the next exam (even though he did this no one abused it, I'm sure he had a plan if they had, but it was another amazing thing he did), And as he answered it he would scribble a few notes. Before the next class, he would show us the new slide he'd created (or the new text in the next slide) for that question and ask us if it made sense now.</p>\n\n<p>Basically, as a shortcut method it covered all three of the core issues this sort of thing entails: </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>\"Here's what's coming up next.\"</li>\n<li>\"Yes, yes, you are very clever for thinking of that.\" </li>\n<li>Getting a coherent lesson together that encourages feedback.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Also, it was kind of meta and spooky when the slides really would predict questions I'd have, when really it was just the material presented itself the same to hundreds of other people before me.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13863,
"author": "David E Speyer",
"author_id": 1244,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1244",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I agree with all the other answers, but I would make one more very practical suggestion: Consider putting more material on your slides! If you have 50 slides and students are always asking about material on the next slide, then putting it onto 25 slides will remove half the instances of this.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, this can be taken too far, but it is worth considering.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13867,
"author": "Scott Smith",
"author_id": 9302,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9302",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I find that when I interrupt people, it's often because I know that if I wait until there's a lull, I'll have forgotten my question.</p>\n\n<p>For people without faulty memory, it's still a good habit not to blurt out a question the moment it pops into your head. I find that most of my questions are answered if I just hold on to them for a minute or two.</p>\n\n<p>In a formal classroom setting, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask students to hold their questions until you've finished talking (or, if you can remember, when you prompt for questions). For those, like me, who can't hold on to a thought for more than five seconds, there is pencil and paper...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 14464,
"author": "Caffeinated",
"author_id": 621,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/621",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>How about giving a summarized, quick answer and then saying \"I'll have more details soon\"</p>\n\n<p>Personally, if someone asks me a question and there's a \"summary version\" I like to give that at least give that summary info.</p>\n\n<p>I think it's worth experimenting with. I wish I had an example. Well here's a the basic idea:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Student: \"Is there a difference between how we see stars and planets\n in the sky?\"</p>\n \n <p>Professor: \"Yep, one of these celestial objects twinkles. Reflect on\n that , and I'll give the full monty after I finish this.\"</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I totally realize it can be annoying/vexing to be a little derailed, but if we want to accommodate the curious students, we may be best served by giving them a snap-shot/summary/challenging-yet-telling answer without feeling derailed. The fact is that a snap-answer of \"I'll get to that soon\" is a little useless. Well at least to me</p>\n\n<p>Good luck, no doubt instructing is an art!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 14480,
"author": "Hesham ELMAHDY",
"author_id": 9033,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9033",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>From my experience, most questions are due to the need to feel clever.. less are due to the need to understand more. In both cases, instructor has to appreciate the question. Whether or not you will immediately answer, is a different issue from having to making the student feel appreciated.</p>\n\n<p>Psychology is an important part of learning. Hence, it is an essential part of teaching is to make students feel good. Your immediate response must be positive:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Good question</li>\n<li>I like it when you think ahead</li>\n<li>That is the right question; congrats</li>\n<li>etc</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Then, it depends on your judgement if you want to answer immediately, or simply say:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>your answer is coming up in a moment</li>\n<li>stay tuned</li>\n<li>etc</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>alternatively, some people defer questions to the end of session. That has more negatives than positives. I prefer to keep them engaged and encourage them to challenge my ideas.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 41366,
"author": "Daniel Wessel",
"author_id": 26614,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26614",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would try to find out whether it's due to:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>a structural problem in the lecture,</li>\n<li>students trying to demonstrate to each other that they are clever, or</li>\n<li>the students' eagerness to work with the material.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>If it's the first, the questions will focus on the basics to understand it and it's important to address them. Perhaps restructure the lecture to address them first. I'd check which questions were asked when and whether I could improve the thread of the presentation.</p>\n\n<p>If it's the second or the third, it might help to ask the students to write down those questions that are not immediately relevant for understanding what is said, but more for application and borderline cases or whatever. You can do a question \"break\" after each unit -- indicated by a special slide that also summaries the previous material. It will take some work to enforce the rule change, but the questions break might allow the smarter students to play with the material and the slower ones time to process what was said. And once students trust you that you do this they might refrain from interrupting. A good \"table of contents\" or advance organizer in the beginning of the lecture might also help.</p>\n\n<p>One last thing, when it comes to questions, there's rarely a need to pick the students immediately. Just nodding that you have seen the question and continuing until you come to a break might also work. (If you acted differently beforehand, it might be necessary to explicitly explain the change to the class.) After a couple of \"Thanks, you already answered the question.\" the interruptions could reduce.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/04 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13853",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9295/"
]
|
13,868 | <p>I just started working with this professor, I am beginning to really like the work they are doing in his lab. When do you think I should ask him if I can do a PhD under his tutelage?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13869,
"author": "Stephen Tierney",
"author_id": 4360,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4360",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This depends on how far out you are from starting your PhD (are you a first year undergrad, halfway through a masters or somewhere in between?).</p>\n\n<p>Ideally you should ask as early as possible so that if you are rejected you have time to find someone else. Although the earlier you ask the less likely you are to be accepted, since you may not have shown ability or determination yet. I feel that the best time to ask is probably after the professor has indicated that they like your work.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13876,
"author": "David Ketcheson",
"author_id": 81,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would tell the professor that you're interested right away, but don't necessarily expect him/her to say yes or no immediately. Rather than saying \"would you advise my Ph.D. research?\", just say, \"I'm planning to do a Ph.D. and I'm interested in working under your supervision.\"</p>\n\n<p>You'll probably get a \"let's see how this first project turns out\", but it will be easier to discuss in the future and the professor will know you are interested.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/04 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13868",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9306/"
]
|
13,872 | <p>I was wondering if I should include my high school details in the resume of my graduate school application ? It's unclear about this bit since we are not actually submitting any proof of high school records during grad school application( they only ask for undergraduate details).
But my high school final examination details are particularly good (better than my undergraduate credentials infact!)</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13873,
"author": "Nobody",
"author_id": 546,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/546",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>No</strong></p>\n\n<p>You already explain why: <em>they only ask for undergraduate details</em>. The graduate school admission committees already have too many applications to look at. Don’t over-load them</p>\n\n<p>Your idea is actually counter-productive. If your high school record is better than your undergrad credentials, they would wonder why your academic achievement is regressing instead of progressing.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13874,
"author": "avi",
"author_id": 6240,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6240",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>No. </p>\n\n<p>It's actually a bad idea to include documents which are not actually required. Some universities even specifically mention not to send documents which are not required. </p>\n\n<p>And also as @scaahu explained, it will give an negative impact as you did poorly in undergraduate compared to high school.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13886,
"author": "JeffE",
"author_id": 65,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I have to disagree slightly with the stark \"No\" answers.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Only when those details provide evidence of your potential for <em>research</em>.</strong></p>\n\n<p><em>Some</em> information about your high-school experience <em>may</em> shed light on your research potential. Certainly you would want to mention winning the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Science_Talent_Search\">Intel Science Talent Search</a> or the <a href=\"http://ioinformatics.org/index.shtml\">International Olympiad in Informatics</a>, or describe the peer-reviewed research papers you published as a high school student.</p>\n\n<p>But your high school <em>grades</em>? No, leave them off.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13930,
"author": "Nasri Harb",
"author_id": 9355,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9355",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I won't do that. \nit is a waste of time. for a master's degree and pHD, I would use only my university achievement. \nCompleting graduate studies gives an employer a positive signal.\nHowever, social conditions (different in each country) may oblige you to write your previous education.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 26349,
"author": "Tom Au",
"author_id": 755,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/755",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Ordinarily the answer is no, because it is no longer relevant to your aptitude for college, let alone graduate studies.</p>\n\n<p>But if you won some national (or even local) science fair award for research in your current (or a related field), that would be relevant.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 52497,
"author": "FormerVal",
"author_id": 39367,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/39367",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think that someone should include an accomplishment such as \"valedictorian\" on a resume, if nothing else from high school. I would especially do this if the high school was quite large. I was the valedictorian at a large high school and I put it on my resume even though I have completed graduate school. I have received negative feedback from a few people about it, but when I looked up their backgrounds, they didn't have any accomplishments even similar to those that I have at all... I mean, these people didn't even have a 3.0 GPA in college. Therefore, I chalked the \"stark NO\" responses to jealousy. People with similar accomplishments to mine seem to have no problem with me putting that one accomplishment from high school on my resume.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/05 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13872",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9186/"
]
|
13,875 | <p>I'm in the midst of creating a series of videos to teach statistics online. Do any of you have a list of common do's and don'ts that can make a big difference?</p>
<p>Also, how does one assess how much to explain a topic, since you do not get instant feedback by looking at facial reactions to a given concept?</p>
<p>In real classroom scenario, it's quite easy to course correct if someone didn't understand the original thought, but in video, you have just one shot. The student either gets it or he doesn't.</p>
<p>Any way to minimize this?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13881,
"author": "Chris Gregg",
"author_id": 4461,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4461",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Do's:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Do your best to pretend there are students in the classroom. Obviously, don't ask questions to the void, but scan the room, move about as you might in a real classroom (but don't go off camera), and take \"normal\" pauses if you're writing on a board. This is an example from a short video I made for some of my pre-algebra students, and there weren't any students in the classroom at the time: <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=est2X6-BVkw\">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=est2X6-BVkw</a></p></li>\n<li><p>Write big enough and clearly enough so the video picks it up. In the video I linked to, I realized that the pen I was using was pretty crappy, so I switched to a better pen (although I probably should have redone the entire clip). Even better is the way Khan Academy does it, with a digital board that he writes on during the lecture.</p></li>\n<li><p>Make sure you have a good microphone, preferably one that is wireless that you put on your shirt/lapel. There is nothing worse than trying to watch/listen to a video that has poor sound.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Don'ts:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Don't block the board!</li>\n<li>Don't be afraid to make a few mistakes that remain on tape. You can spend too much time re-doing videos for simple mistakes. If you make a mistake and recognize it immediately, fix it as you would in a real classroom. If you find a mistake in post-processing, feel free to overlay the video with a text box that fixes the error -- no one will care. Obviously, you can re-record if you wish, but keep in mind what your time is worth.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How does one assess how much to explain a topic?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is one of those times you have to do the best you can and try to elicit feedback from the students after they watch the video. The reason I posted the video I linked above is because I realized that a number of students didn't get it when I first taught the topic.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In real classroom scenario, it's quite easy to course correct if someone didn't understand the original thought, but in video, you have just one shot. The student either gets it or he doesn't.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Well, that's one difference between face-to-face instruction and online video instruction. This is what email correspondence with the professor is for. You can also consider posting response videos to frequent questions you've been asked via email.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 13884,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Wow, I am on the same boat! Way to go!! Anyway, I'm slowly experimenting as well and am happy to share what I know.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Synchronous or asynchronous, or both?</strong></p>\n\n<p>Foremost, you'll need to decide if your online module is going to be synchronous or asynchronous. </p>\n\n<p><em>Synchronous</em> module involves real-time interaction. For example, online conference where students can type in comments into a twitter-like platform or directly ask you through microphone. The pros about this format are that you can clarify any problem instantly and the format mimics class-room interaction; the cons are that one technical error can throw the whole class into chaos, and multi-tasking in talking, reading, typing, and clicking through slides require some skill. It'd be better to have a teaching assistant to comb through the incoming messages and give you a synopsis of students' question.</p>\n\n<p>The number of enrollment matters very much as well. If there are a few students only, you can afford to tune up the interactivity (e.g. more discussion, Q&A, etc.) If the enrollment is high (from my experience, more than 20 or so,) then the format may have to be less spontaneously interactive: perhaps a relatively longer lecture, coupled with break-out group discussion, and a big wrap up as a whole group.</p>\n\n<p><em>Asynchronous</em> module is a bit more like learning anything online. For example, online presentations/workshops through which students can learn the materials at their own pace. Comments and evaluation are usually done through blog post, e-mail, or forums. The pros of this formats are that students have a lot of flexibility, and the lecturer usually has to devote one large fixed chunk of time to set up the workshop, and it can run itself (more or less.) The cons are that the preparation is extremely intensive and assessments have to be carefully chosen and planted here and there to make sure the course is working.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Hybrid or fully online?</strong></p>\n\n<p>Some online course would mix in-class lecture and online together. For example, students may meet at a classroom for the first two weeks to learn about the requirement and format of the class plus some fundamental background lectures. And then they'll go back home and switch to online. Some other hybrid model may involve coming to class every alternate week, etc. The pros are quite apparent as the lecturer can establish a real presence, and it also provides some opportunities for networking between students, which is a crucial component especially in graduate schools.</p>\n\n<p>Another sub-genre of hybrid online teaching is called \"<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_teaching\" rel=\"nofollow\">flipped classroom</a>,\" through which students will watch the lecture in advance, complete the assignments, and come to class for more challenging group exercises, case studies, or journal critique. I am actually planning two classes using this format and hopefully I can get a real sense of what a difference it may make.</p>\n\n<p>You may also conduct your course fully online... that way no one have to travel, leading this format to have probably the lowest carbon footprints, if limiting such is part of your aspirations.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Microlectures</strong></p>\n\n<p>For video lectures, length matters. I'd suggest breaking up your lecture into one-idea, one-bite chunks. Formats like <a href=\"http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7090.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">microlecture</a> will be a good place to start. For me, I usually try to explain an idea within 10 slides in 20 minutes, which is usually the attentions span for someone sitting in front of a computer. Never make hourly videos; they are a pain to download and very tedious to sit through. Pausing and coming back later is possible, but it's better to capitalize on the online features and make learning (esp. technical subjects like statistics) more modular.</p>\n\n<p>One good way is to incorporate some <strong>Interspersed exercises</strong>. For instance, after the microlecture on normal distribution, build in some exercises asking the students to check the <em>z</em>-score table, or answer some online quizzes about application. What exercises to put in there depends on your class objectives and competencies to be taught.</p>\n\n<p>You also mention that:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In real classroom scenario, it's quite easy to course correct if\n someone didn't understand the original thought, but in video, you have\n just one shot. The student either gets it or he doesn't.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>which is not totally true. As long as your script is clear and correct, students can always replay the video to listen again. They can also try the exercises to evaluate themselves. From the exercises you can detect problems and misunderstanding to some extend, and provide feedback accordingly. I would like to emphasize that this is a pretty different generation we are looking at, <em>gen Y and after are actually much better as a communicator online than in person</em>. In the tool paragraph I'll talk about some ways to let student provide feedback or ask question about the video.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Combine self evaluation + formal evaluation</strong></p>\n\n<p>As mentioned above, build in plenty of self evaluations within and between students: online quiz, blog post, comments for others' post, exercises, etc. Let the students know in advance that how they will be formally evaluated for grades.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Be present and don't be always present</strong></p>\n\n<p>One \"curse\" of being an online teacher is that students think you're as convenient as the materials you put online. This can be bad cause you may get an e-mail at 3:30 am and you happened to have forgotten to mute the phone that night. Be very upfront about your availability and honor the promised office hour. You can use online communication such as Skype, Google Chat, etc. to communicate with students. Also, make sure to give them an expected time for your response (I have been using one office day, which seems doable.)</p>\n\n<p><strong>Use the right tools</strong></p>\n\n<p>Looking for the right tools has been the biggest deal for me by far. I broke my class into three major components:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Lecture: I use a few ways and they all have their own advantages. MS Powerpoint with voice recording is amazingly easy. Users can also correct and re-record on each single slide if you're not happy about it. Adobe Presentation has been wonderful, you may even edit the soundtrack and record over with the corrected script. Both are quite friendly to multimedia such as embedding videos. <strong>Invest in a good microphone</strong>, for recording lecture on screen, a headphone with built-in microphone (around $30) and a quiet room will work fine. For recording real lecture, have some school IT unit hook you up to a wireless microphone. Video lecture + speech submerged in echo + difficult subject = withdrawal.</p></li>\n<li><p>Software demonstration: I use a software called <a href=\"http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Snagit</a> to take screenshot video of all software demonstration. The software allows users to export it as movie files, which can be linked to the lectures.</p></li>\n<li><p>Other materials: I use a wiki platform to host all materials. I also authorized all student as editor so that they can maintain a project page in the wiki and collaborate.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Some teachers start going online by videotaping the lecture and upload that online. I feel slightly negative about this approach because it does not exploit the pluses of going online. However, if someone so wants to do that, I'd suggest investing some time to identify a software that allows picture-in-picture. One camera can focus on the lecture, one zoom onto the board or show the slides. Having said that, I have to admit that in most of the \"online\" lectures I have watched, the board writing is mostly illegible. I haven't incorporate writing into my work, but if I have to, I'll consider to:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Use a 3-D project to show my writing onto the board. There you can use thicker pen or play with the zooming to make sure all space on the white screen is used. An added benefit is that projecting on screen does not cause glaring on the video, while a white board may show glaring that obstructs the text.</p></li>\n<li><p>Use a drawing pad and a very simple drawing software (even MS Paint) as your writing tool.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>For students' feedback, I have been having some luck with online forum and tweeter-like bill such as <a href=\"http://todaysmeet.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">Todaysmeet</a>. Todaysmeet allows your to open a chat thread in which student can post questions or comments. You may even archive them if you wish to. Most online meeting software (such as Adobe Connect) also builds in some \"raise hand\" button; users can click that to initiate a question.</p>\n\n<p>As for video, look for some video markup tools so that student can bookmark a certain section of your video, generate a link and send it to your with related questions. They can, of course, mention the video link and time stamp as well. E.g. \"I have a question about a point at 12:45 of the video on [link to the mp4, etc.].\"</p>\n\n<p><em>Provide ONE and ONLY ONE official announcement site</em> where students can get the most up to date announcement. Because online teaching involves a lot of software and different forms of communication, it's easy to fall through the schedule not knowing some is due or a new lecture has been released. Make sure all announcement can reach the students' official e-mail address.</p>\n\n<p>Lastly, I cannot stress enough <strong>i) pilot run, pilot run, pilot run!!</strong> Try all modules and make sure they work on at least Mac and PC. You may want to check the course shows up correctly on iPad and Android pad as well. For a very similar reason, don't use any Adobe Flash to make animation. <strong>ii) have a plan B, plan C... plan K</strong>: Isolate your critical control points and prepare a second plan if the control point falls through. For example, if you decide to use Skype for an online talk, but Skype's server goes down, think 1) how to contact the students? 2) Where to re-establish the meeting? etc. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Study guide</strong></p>\n\n<p>Because you're not there to guide them in person. It's crucial to have a very protocol-based syllabus. I adopted the idea from Smith's <a href=\"http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0787994421\" rel=\"nofollow\">Conquering the Content</a>. For every single session, list:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p><strong>Learning goals and outcomes:</strong> After the session, what will the student know and learn to do?</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Learning resources:</strong> List all resources including the required and optional reading, supplementary websites, journal articles etc.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Learning activities:</strong> Describe the flow of learning, provide due date or schedule.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Self assessment:</strong> Lay out how the students can assess their learning.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Formal evaluation:</strong> Lay out how you'd assess their learning.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I like this approach very much. Smith particularly emphasizes not to put time-sensitive information in your video, instead, put them on this learning guide. For instance, in the video you can say \"refer to the suggested journal article\" instead of saying the exact title. That way, you can just update your learning guide without the need of re-recording your video, saving some time to renew your lecture every year.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Closing remark</strong></p>\n\n<p>Sorry for this really long post. I still have a lot to say but I guess I have long passed the socially acceptable length of SE responses. Teaching online is a fun challenge, and all I have described here are just a fraction of this domain. There are online interaction, engagement, etc. which are other cans of worm. If I were to do it again, I'd start simple by switching 2-3 classes to online as an experiment, and build from there. It's dangerous to go online in a semester, I'll invest a good 6-month period to be familiar with all the tools. I'd also suggest planning the whole course before putting anything online, because that helped me eliminate a lot of irregulars, and make the format a lot more uniform.</p>\n\n<p>Hope these comments would help, and have fun!</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/05 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13875",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9311/"
]
|
13,883 | <p>What are some good (preferably open-source) software for making illustrative videos to explain one's research? I am currently looking for software to make a small video on my research topic that could complement presentation slides. The video may not delve into all technical details, but should summarise all technical content in a compact and entertaining way. </p>
<p>One source that I know of is <a href="http://www.sparkol.com/products/videoscribe" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Videoscribe</a> (<a href="http://www.videoscribe.co/scribes#video-wSmPIBJWXGM" rel="nofollow noreferrer">sample video</a>), but I have not tried it yet. Are there other/better alternatives, especially open-source? </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13891,
"author": "Thomas",
"author_id": 6984,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6984",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Not free or open-source, but my institution offers licenses to <a href=\"http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Camtasia Studio</a>, which seems to be the best package out there for slidecasts/screencasts.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.educreations.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Educreations</a> is a a comparatively much simpler - and cheaper - tool that allows you to create videos but doesn't play as well with slides.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 93597,
"author": "CherryQu",
"author_id": 773,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/773",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A friend of mine who is very good at academic video-making says he only uses iMovies these days for video editing. He uses QuickTime to capture screen and audio recordings when he needs to.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/05 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13883",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411/"
]
|
13,889 | <p>I am extremely dissatisfied with the Master's program I just began and plan on dropping out ASAP. I currently have no interest in finding another graduate program and instead wish to pursue a job outside of academia. As I see it my two choices are to either stick it out for the rest of the semester and just try to maintain C's, or to simply walk away from it and accept the F's because the drop deadline has passed. </p>
<p>The main question I have is how much more damaging is the option of just walking away mid-semester? </p>
<p>I realize that certain employers will view the situation differently, but I am just seeking opinions here. I have no idea of what industry I would want to work in or how that might affect your answers. Or if anyone has advised students in similar situations, I would greatly appreciate similar advice. </p>
<p>As for my records before this program, I got my BS in applied math and graduated with honors. I am hoping that I can bank on this earlier performance and explain the reasoning behind dropping out to potential employers. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 13953,
"author": "Henry B.",
"author_id": 4146,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4146",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would stick it out and get the best grades I can. I would try to monitor my stress level and do things I enjoy as well. The important thing is to finish things in a clean way and not let yourself get to the point where you drop everything and leave.</p>\n\n<p>The job market is extremely competitive these days. A master's degree can have a big effect on what pay you receive and how far you can go in certain industries. You might not feel like a master's degree is worth it now, but you might want to go back to school for a different degree or even to complete the same degree. It's hard to predict what the situation will be for you in 5 years or 10 years. Bad grades now can restrict your possibilities for years to come. Who knows? You might be thinking about getting an MBA in a prestigious program in 10 years and find yourself stuck having to explain some bad grades from years before.</p>\n\n<p>Your first one or two years of work, people might ask about your GPA as well, and leaving the graduate school off might be tricky as it might leave gaps in your employment. Although, I have seen it work to just not put what year you got your undergraduate degree.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 14425,
"author": "jorderon",
"author_id": 9590,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9590",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am a little surprised your professors won't work with you to allow you to quit gracefully. If it's for you and you're just moving on I would think they would accommodate you.</p>\n\n<p>The shorter your time in grad school the less bad it looks for quitting, assuming the employer cares at all. If you have, say, all complete coursework and just didn't write your thesis/dissertation, that may be looked upon less favorably than just quitting after a semester. This might tell an employer you can't finish things.</p>\n\n<p>Many more people walk away from graduate school than finish it, and figuring it out quickly won't reflect negatively on you if you can frame it as if you were moving on, instead of failing out. You can better form the \"it wasn't for me\" narrative if you've been decisive about that. It's good that you've figured out its not for you so quickly.</p>\n\n<p>Unless you want to work in specialized fields or teach something, a Master's degree isn't required. Employers will nearly always take relevant experience over credentials when applying for a job, and I find they tend to prefer experience, with the credential being a nice plus.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 54539,
"author": "vonbrand",
"author_id": 38135,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/38135",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Dropping out mid-class is a red flag. It marks you as somebody who has left unfinished business behind, with no clear, compelling reason. I would hesitate to hire you, as you might do the same in the middle of some critical task.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 54560,
"author": "John_dydx",
"author_id": 8901,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8901",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It's important to understand the advantages of pursuing a postgraduate qualification especially in a quantitative subject like mathematics. The truth is the job market is very competitive and whilst an undergraduate degree shows that you are hardworking and you've been through formal education and can think logically, it doesn't necessarily equip you with all the skills you need to thrive in industry. Hence most undergrads still need to be retrained on the job. This largely depends on what type of job you are aiming for but most mathematical jobs in industry require additional skills like programming and advanced numerical skills which not all undergraduates have enough time to develop. I guess you must ask yourself the question \"what additional skills will I possess by completing this masters degree?\"</p>\n\n<p>Employers are not only interested in a string of degrees on your cv, they are interested in the skills you have to offer their enterprise. I agree that quitting a degree is not a good attribute for the cv and you should have a strong reason for doing so. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 55716,
"author": "Daniel Burks",
"author_id": 42267,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/42267",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am going to have to disagree with some of the answers stating that dropping out of programs does not look bad. I have been on many hiring committees for a government agency. In general there are way more qualified (to over qualified) applicants than there are jobs and we are usually looking for reasons to take people's resume(CV) off of the stack. In my mind someone who has committed to a program and then quit shows me that they are willing to quit, whereas someone who only has a bachelors only means they have not really done anything yet. Don't get me wrong, there are lot's of reasons someone might leave a program, but you will usually not get the chance to explain what yours is.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2013/11/05 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13889",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9323/"
]
|
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