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16,436 | <p>There are some good answers <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/12237/7921">here</a> on how to find an masters thesis topic, but I am looking for advice on how to advise undergrad students who are looking for a thesis topic. Finding a thesis topic is a little bit different at undergrad level because it is the first time. How can I best help a student find a good thesis topic at undergrad level which will help them to get into a good university for masters and/or PhD? </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16437,
"author": "OBu",
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"text": "<p>I did not read the answers regarding master thesis topic search, but at least in Germany I see no difference in search strategies. </p>\n\n<p>My personal opinion is: Look for something which is in the field you want to go into, find something which is challenging but manageable, and get a good advisor who helps you if you struggle. </p>\n\n<p>If you manage to find all three, you did a very good job. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16451,
"author": "WetlabStudent",
"author_id": 8101,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8101",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>An undergrad thesis is not expected to be mind-blowing or even necessarily that original (see <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/16470/42498\">@Cape Code's response</a> about Lit Reviews, often a great option). Look to make some incremental improvements on a paper you've read that really interests you. Maybe you did a project for a class that you did very well on and would like to explore a bit more deeply. Starting from scratch is quite daunting for an undergrad (even a grad student or professor).</p>\n\n<p>The least successful undergrad theses are often the ones that tried to be too groundbreaking and in the end the author had nothing because they couldn't make significant progress. Most theses are good enough to be accepted, if you get the work done. They do not have to be publishable. You usually only have about 1 year to finish an undergrad thesis, while completing a full load of courses. This is way different from a PhD or even a masters thesis where usually more time can be devoted. This is your first time at research, so have fun with it and don't worry too much about the consequences. </p>\n\n<p>Often an advisor might hand you a project to work on, but you should come to him/her with general interests and having already read some of their papers and personal website.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16470,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is always the option of asking for a thorough, methodologically sound, literature review on a given subject. Especially if you have too many students to allow them to do experiments in you lab for example. By allowing a certain freedom in the subject to pick, you give the personalized aspect without the risk of choosing a broad or unfeasible practical project.</p>\n\n<p>Literature reviews have the advantage of teaching the undergrad how people usually do research. It can also confront them to the diversity of scientific opinion or the large variation in paper quality and thus develop a critical approach to literature reading.</p>\n\n<p>I find these skills to be of great value at the undergrad level. And hey, the result might actually be useful to your research, which will be gratifying to the student.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/01 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16436",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11488/"
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|
16,438 | <p>Please refer to this previous question of mine:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8970/as-someone-with-low-grades-how-can-i-prepare-myself-to-study-msc-in-cs-in-usa">As someone with low grades how can I prepare myself to study MSc in CS in USA?</a></p>
<p><a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15760/would-it-be-a-good-idea-to-quit-my-job-to-prepare-for-the-gre-and-toefl">Would it be a good idea to quit my job to prepare for the GRE and TOEFL?</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I live in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Bangladesh</a>. With a background in IT, I am doing a job in a bank. I am 32. Honestly speaking I am done with my job. With an ambition to do a PhD from a USA/Canadian/German university, I have understood that my current job is actually going to get me nowhere.</p>
<p>Some answerers of the previous questions pointed out the importance of having a job in the related discipline, proving research capability, involving in research activity, being a part of a research group and so on.</p>
<p>After considering all these points, I am actually strongly planning to quit my job and get enrolled in a "Masters with thesis" program in CSE in a local university. My previous degree was in Information Technology which is, I guess, considered a professional discipline. So, I am going for a CSE degree. As far as I know, Information Technology degree is not considered a fundamental discipline.</p>
<p>My plan is this: (1) I shall complete a masters degree in CSE with a thesis, (2) write and publish one/two research articles and finally (3) complete GRE+TOEFL, if required.</p>
<p>And one more thing, I want to secure a funding either in the form of Assistant, Teaching Assistant(TA), Research Assistant, Research Fellow or anything else.</p>
<p>Please tell me about my prospect as a Masters-by-thesis candidate along with a funding after completing this series of actions.</p>
<p>Is the risk of quitting the job worth taken?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16659,
"author": "Daisetsu",
"author_id": 11711,
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"text": "<p>You're going to need to prove to admissions that you are better than the other candidates. Why should you be picked over all the other applicants who also have completed a masters degree and published a paper or two?</p>\n\n<p>The people I know who have been accepted to PhD programs have a passion for their field which drives them to do something extraordinary. Go ahead and get a masters, publish some papers, but make sure you have something to prove that you're worth a universities investment in your education.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16664,
"author": "BSSM",
"author_id": 11712,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11712",
"pm_score": 3,
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"text": "<p>PhD positions in universities are limited and given to outstanding students who have a potential for research. If your aim is to pursue your PhD in USA/Germany/Canada etc., I'd highly suggest applying for a Master's in those countries UNLESS your local university is well-known, with good professors and coursework. Your application will be evaluated on:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Your GPA & Test scores</li>\n<li>Reputation of university you're graduating from (Master's, undergrad) // And as Daisetsu says, the researchers you work with </li>\n<li>Research aptitude</li>\n<li>Reputation of the journals you're published in</li>\n<li>Your statement of purpose</li>\n<li>Letters of recommendation</li>\n<li>Previous work experience</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Also ask yourself, \"Why a PhD?\" What is your career trajectory and will a PhD help you? What about an MBA? How many years can you invest in this? </p>\n\n<p>To be honest, no one here can tell you your chances of getting into a University for a PhD apart from the admissions committee itself. Spend some more time reading up the requirements of the colleges you're keen on and then arrive at a well informed decision.</p>\n\n<p>Best of luck!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16666,
"author": "BSSM",
"author_id": 11712,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11712",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can't comment yet, so I decided to post another answer in case you end up missing the edit.</p>\n\n<p>Officially, there are no age limits when it comes to pursuing any degree. However, the main purpose of a degree is to enhance skills or gain experience in a different area. This requires a lot of commitment- both personally and in terms of time and money. That's why most people finish their studies early on. The more you're out of the habit of studying, the harder it is to keep up with the class too. It's also difficult to support your studies when you have a family to take care of. Note: I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it requires a lot of planning.</p>\n\n<p>With regards to MS by research/ PhD- again, the universities look at your fit for the program. If you have 10 years of working in marketing or accounts they <strong>might</strong> not consider you to be the best fit for a CS program.</p>\n\n<p>Again, ask yourself- \"Why?\" Make a list of courses that align with your previous education, your current job and your intended career. Then look at the universities that offer it and what their requirements are. That will give you a better idea. If a PhD is what you want, go to a research center in your area and ask if there are any openings for RAs or start thinking about your Master's.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/01 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16438",
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|
16,440 | <p>I'm a math Ph.D student in the US who has just accepted a four year postdoc--NSF postdoc at a US school interrupted by a year in Europe. For better or for worse, I am only slated to teach for two semesters in those four years--likely during the second semester of my 3rd year and 1st semester of my 4th. </p>
<p>I am planning to apply for tenure track positions in the US afterwards and am wondering whether the relative lack of teaching as a postdoc will adversely affect my application. </p>
<p>Should I be looking for volunteer teaching opportunities? </p>
<p>If it matters as a graduate student I had fairly extensive teaching experience, serving as sole instructor for courses in various levels of calculus, multi-variable calculus, and linear algebra for four years in addition to mentoring REU students and grading/TA-ing graduate and advanced undergraduate courses.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16442,
"author": "Bjørn Kjos-Hanssen",
"author_id": 11257,
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"pm_score": 4,
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"text": "<p>Two semesters of teaching in four years sounds almost ideal for a postdoc, so I would not be worried about that -- if you are aspiring to be a mathemagician rather than teaching-focused mathematician.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16445,
"author": "Benoît Kloeckner",
"author_id": 946,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/946",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I won't answer your question because I am in France and not aware of the practice in the US; but a similar question can be asked everywhere, so let me give an answer to the equivalent question in France.</p>\n\n<p>From my experience in a few hiring committees, teaching is secondary to research in the assessment of applicants, if considered at all. More precisely, an excellent research record seems to compensate almost any other consideration, and a very good research record leads hiring committees to barely look at teaching to see if it seems ok. I have seen a candidate be ranked very high (and be recruited elsewhere) without <em>any</em> kind of teaching experience (and a quite limited skill in French). So, for the sake of one's career, I would say that focusing on research is the winning move.</p>\n\n<p>In my opinion, this situation is very unfortunate, and I guess and hope that many other departments consider teaching more seriously. Also, for one's own sake, one should try itself at teaching and get regular practice before applying to jobs that will involve a significant amount of teaching. This need not be intensive though.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16449,
"author": "socialsciencedoc",
"author_id": 11154,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11154",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It depends on the type of job you are going for. If you want a job at a R1, then not having teaching experience hardly matters. If you are applying for regional universities or liberal arts colleges they will place much more importance on teaching (and since these job entail a much heavier teaching load, usually 3-3, but I've seen up to 5-5s compared to say, 2-2 at research Unis). Many of these schools will ask for a teaching portfolio as part of the job application instead of a teaching statement. You will have to submit past teaching evaluations, syllabi, and also the standard statement of your teaching philosophy. If this is what you are going for, you will want to have some of these material ready before you go on the job market. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16450,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Given your level of grad student experience, I wouldn't worry a lot. I think it will hurt you when it comes to jobs at liberal arts schools, but for a research university, it sounds like you already have a reasonable amount of teaching experience. Make sure you save any evaluations you have from grad school, as those could be useful if there's any question about your teaching. Similarly, with your teaching during the postdoc, make sure someone actually comes and observes one of your classes and can write a letter based on it. </p>\n\n<p>As general advice, I would be more worried about starting a TT job as an inexperienced teacher than not getting a job because of it. I personally had a relatively low level of teaching experience when I started my first TT position (one lecture course and 3 semesters of TAing) and I think it would have been beneficial for me to have a bit more, but I don't think it ever hurt me with a hiring committee. I think it doesn't matter a tremendous amount whether you get the teaching experience you do get as a grad student or as a postdoc.</p>\n\n<p>It is worth seeking out volunteer teaching/outreach projects assuming they don't consume too much time. They're often a lot more fun than teaching normal classes and they're helpful for NSF grants, etc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16454,
"author": "Lev Reyzin",
"author_id": 10,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My understanding is that at R1 US universities, for better or for worse, the reality is that pretty much nobody will even read your teaching statement. Unless your letters explicitly talk about how terrible a teacher you are, you should be fine.</p>\n\n<p>Anecdotal evidence: In my three years of postdoc-ing, I only taught the last semester (and only for fun), so it didn't even make it onto my applications which were due before that. It didn't stop me from getting a tenure track job at a math department.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/01 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16440",
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|
16,441 | <p>Can someone corroborate the fact above? If it’s true, how did it come to such a high number, do they have some slots reserved, or is it easy to enter German PhD programs? Would it also be easy for foreign graduates (in my case chemistry) to join a German PhD program?</p>
<p>Source 1 (<a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemiestudium" rel="nofollow noreferrer">German Wikipedia</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Rund 91 % der frisch diplomierten Chemiker begannen nach ihrem Abschluss mit der Promotion.</p>
<p>91 % of the recent chemistry graduates enrolled in a PhD program. [This does not imply they completed it.]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Source 2 (<a href="https://www.uni-due.de/isa/fg_naturwiss/chemie/chemie_hs_frm.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Universität Duisburg–Essen</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Wie jährlich durchgeführte Erhebungen der Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) zeigen, begannen in den letzten Jahren über 80 % der Absolventen nach dem Diplom bzw. Master mit einer Promotion.</p>
<p>According to yearly inquiries by the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) [Society of German chemists], 80 % of diploma or master graduates enrolled in a PhD program in the last years.</p>
</blockquote>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16444,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
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"selected": false,
"text": "<p>According to the <a href=\"https://www.gdch.de/index.php?eID=tx_nawsecuredl&u=0&file=fileadmin/downloads/Ausbildung_und_Karriere/Karriere/PDF/gdch-2012chemie.pdf&t=1391970038&hash=1df38456259e085387965d2b422d35ce4e0bf339\">German Chemical Society</a>, apparently 90% of master's recipients in chemistry <strong>do</strong> start doctoral studies afterwards.</p>\n\n<p>Partly this is because PhD \"admission\" is largely not an admissions process at all in Germany. Individual faculty members who receive grants can hire master's recipients as \"Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter\" (literally \"scientific worker,\" but \"research assistant\" is a better translation). They can do this without recourse to going through a department-level admissions process, and can skip outside advertising altogether if they have an internal candidate they can appoint instead. And, since many students follow the rule of \"Was der Bauer nicht kennt, isst er nicht\"—\"What the farmer doesn't know, he doesn't eat\"), many students do their entire education at one school.</p>\n\n<p>So yes, it's much easier to get a PhD position if you're already in Germany.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16447,
"author": "OBu",
"author_id": 10941,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10941",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The system in Germany differs from the PhD system in some points: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Usually there are no (or very little) courses you have to take. </li>\n<li>One assumes, you are capable of doing your own research projects (at least after a year or so)</li>\n<li>You are mainly involved in projects running at one institute - and it's up to the chairperson to select the person.</li>\n<li>You might have to do some work which is not (or just slightly) related to your PhD, like teaching courses, taking over part of the administrative work, etc. (this strongly depends on the group you are in).</li>\n<li>Often it is requested that you write one or more grant poropsals (and be successful so that the person coming after you is financed). This also depends on the group you are in.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I know of several proessors who say \"you are employee of the institute and you have the opportunity to use some of the time to work on your PhD\". You should make sure, your \"work for the institute\" overlaps significantly with your PhD-topic, otherwise you won't succeed.</p>\n\n<p>One reason why so many people in Chemistry have a PhD is, there are so many students and industry can just select the ones with the best qualification. I'm not very familiar with the situation in Chemistry, but I now some biologists and there is the same mechanism working.</p>\n\n<p>In other fields, it is quite different, e.g. in engineering, computer science, etc. the PhD-rates are significantly lower (I don't have numbers, but my guess would be <15%).</p>\n\n<p>One tipp at the end: If you can bring some money (e.g. a DAAD-scholarship), I expect your chances to be quite good.</p>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/01 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16441",
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16,459 | <p>I would like to apply for many math PhD programs in order to maximize my chance of success.</p>
<p>My main question is how should I ask for recommendation letters. In particular, should I ask for a generic letter (in the sense that it's addressed to "the admission committee") to use for all my applications? Or should I ask for multiple letters from the same person for every university I want to apply to (presumably the letters have the same content, except maybe in who it is addressed to)?</p>
<p>Also, most PhD application deadlines are in December. But I finished undergrad at the end of last year. Should I ask for these letters now so as to not increase the time between when the professors know me and when they write the letter (this may mean I'm sending a letter dated February in November), or should I ask closer to the deadline around November this year?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16460,
"author": "J.R.",
"author_id": 780,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/780",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I like the idea of asking now, while you are still fresh in the minds of your professors. </p>\n\n<p>If you already know where you'll be applying, and the number of schools is relatively low (say, three or less), then there's no harm in asking for three letters. Once you get much more than that, though, it might be better to ask for a generic letter from each professor. I know I wouldn't want to write six different versions of essentially the same letter.</p>\n\n<p>I would think that admissions committees are used to seeing fairly generic letters. So long as the content speaks well of you, I don't think it'll be counted against you if the letter is generic. (If that assumption is wrong, though, hopefully some folks will chime in here and let us know.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16463,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm going to give an answer based on my experience in the US, so it may not be applicable in other countries but:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Whether your recommenders use a generic letter is not a decision you get to make. You tell them where to send the letter, but at least in the US, you do not get to see it, and all you know about it's content is what they tell you. I would let them use their judgement about how to personalize it, though if there is something you think would particularly important at one school vs. another, it's a good idea to mention this to them.</p></li>\n<li><p>Similarly, when they write the letter is not something you have control over. In all grad school applications I've seen, the application is electronic and the recommender directly submits via a link that's generated when you fill out your application. They'll know when the deadline is, and will probably be annoyed if you try to insist that they write their letter months before the deadline. If you're applying to a place that still uses paper, submitting the application months before the deadline when your paper application isn't there is just asking for trouble.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>What <em>does</em> make sense is to write your recommenders now, and say \"I wanted to let you know that I'll be applying for graduate school in November, and I was hoping you would be willing to write me a recommendation. I wanted to let you know relatively early since I know that by fall it will have been a while since I graduated.\" Don't hesitate to remind them about interactions you've had, or about anything you think would look good in the letter. Professors often have to write many such letters, and if you put your good qualities at their fingertips, they're more likely to end up in the letter.</p>\n\n<p><strong>EDIT:</strong> Looking this over, I think I could have been a little more concise. Providing your recommenders with info is a <em>very</em> good idea; that's why I suggest that you do email them now. They can write a better letter if they know what you plan to do and if you remind/tell them about your accomplishments, etc. But when you ask someone for a recommendation, you can't really micromanage. You need to say where the letter needs to go and when the deadline is, but there's not much else you have control over. It is unfortunate that memories fade (though they'll fade less if you give a reminder of your existence now), but that's how it goes. That's just the price you pay if you don't apply to a Ph.D. right as you finish your degree.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 183665,
"author": "imtaar",
"author_id": 152998,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/152998",
"pm_score": 0,
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"text": "<p>Get a generic letter starting with "To Whom it May Concern", and send copies of that with your applications.</p>\n<p>I think in many universities, you need to apply early. So you may start applying and see if the university accepts those recommendation letters, because as told by Ben Webster, some universities may send the professor an electronic letter with a link or it may be a pre-formatted form of recommendation letter, which should be filled by the professor.</p>\n<p>But even if you apply a few months later, professors will not forget you and give you the recommendation letter in the way it is required.</p>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/02 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16459",
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16,461 | <p>I would like to attend some conferences this year, but we are running out of funding until 2015, so I need to look for other options. For instance, I organized a special session in a conference, and attained 12 speakers, so accommodation was free and also registration but not travel expenses. So my question is, if you do not have funding, which other options you know for attending conferences?</p>
<p>P.S. Given my position (PI of a research group), I can not ask for student travel grants, etc</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16603,
"author": "LordStryker",
"author_id": 9569,
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"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I know your question is based around the assumption that \"funding cannot be found\" but I write my answer as a challenge to this assumption.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Short answer:</strong> Sometimes you can go out and find funding in odd places.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Long anecdote:</strong> I was working in a research lab as an undergraduate. We had very little funds pretty much all the time being in an undergraduate-only institution (with respect to my field of study which is chemistry). We had some great work that we wanted to take to a fairly prestigious conference halfway across the country but we had no money to go. Myself and a co-worker knew how much this conference would mean to our boss so we decided to go on a crusade to find money to make this happen. We marched out of the lab with all pertinent information in hand and took it straight to the top. We literally walked into the president's office (of the Uni) and asked the secretary if we could meet with him. She was immediately concerned and amused at what we were trying to do. Of course we weren't able to see him straightaway, if at all, for our shenanigans. But she did allow us to make our case to her to see if she could help us out any. </p>\n\n<p>This turned out to be a very profitable and endearing experience. She dropped some contacts in various departments and suggested we go talk to them. She even left us with some business cards to take with us. We immediately contacted every single person on her list and, much to our surprise, we received some very positive responses. I remember one office in general, \"Undergraduate Enrichment\", which dealt directly with the promotion and advancement of undergraduates. They were nearing the end of the fiscal year and they had money lying around in some accounts that had not been used. Well, long story short, they gave it to us. All of it. We managed to pick up a little bit here, a little bit there, through a few departments, and were able to come up with all the funds we needed. It wasn't a cakewalk though. My friend and I went as far as to appear before Student Government where we asked for funds and had to present our case to, for all intents and purposes, a group of dimwits who were not only apart of Greek life, but ran Student Government strictly around the idea of advancing Greek life (i.e. they didn't give two squats about anything we had to say) and it was one of the most painful and grueling 40 minutes of my life standing before them. We managed to squeak about $500 from them which topped us off.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Summary:</strong> My friend and I dove in feet first and asked around for money. Found the funds in some of the oddest places. We went on the trip and were able to present our research in a prestigious conference.</p>\n\n<p>Don't give up my friend. Be proactive and think outside the box. You may walk away being quite surprised.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16613,
"author": "silvado",
"author_id": 3890,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3890",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If you don't have funding from your research group's resources, you obviously have to find someone else to cover the costs of your conference visits. It's not easy to achieve, but there's a number of options to pay for at least part of the costs, and if you can combine some of those, you might even be able to make this trip without stressing your own purse too much.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>I'm not sure whether that applies to you, but in some fields, there's conferences where invited speakers get paid everything, including registration, accommodation, and travel. Usually you have to be well connected and famous to get such an invitation.</li>\n<li>As you note in your question already, there may be ways to get a registration waiver and maybe even accomodation paid, for example by taking part in the conference organisation. That leaves to pay for travel, for example by the following:</li>\n<li>It is usually much easier to get travel costs reimbursed when giving a seminar talk at another research institution than for a conference. If you can arrange an invitation to a research institution close to the conference location, they may be able to cover your travel costs. It would be difficult for intercontinental travel, but for national or continental trips it could be a good opportunity to get part of the costs paid.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The base line is to be creative, to use your academic network, and to try to cover different types of costs from different sources.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16742,
"author": "nagniemerg",
"author_id": 11084,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11084",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I do not have ideas on how to obtain funding other than personal money. However, if using personal funds, you may have some options to decrease your overall costs. </p>\n\n<p>First note that I am not a tax professional. Attending conferences is normal for this type of business. You should be able to deduct travel expenses to any conferences you attend. This includes airfare, lodging, and, depending on distance, food. Because these are expenses not reimbursed by your employer, you should be able to write them off. Consult your tax professional.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/02 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16461",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/284/"
]
|
16,465 | <p>Things you should know:</p>
<ul>
<li>It was not a dream school.</li>
<li>It was considered "safe/moderate" i.e. the kind of students who get in
have more or less similar profiles like mine.</li>
<li>From graduate school student discussion forums , seems like no one else got
rejected.</li>
<li>This really hurts. If this school rejects me, what hope do I have with others?</li>
</ul>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16467,
"author": "gammapoint",
"author_id": 8647,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8647",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Speaking from purely personal experience, I wouldn't necessarily worry about it. Of course it's possible that your application was weak and that generally the other schools will feel the same way. On the other hand, it's also possible that something you wrote just didn't appeal to someone working on the applications at this particular school and you were looked over. In my own experience applying to graduate school I actually got rejected from some of my 'backup' schools but was accepted (and was given extra incentive to come to) one of my 'dream' schools.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 40280,
"author": "Paul",
"author_id": 28064,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28064",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>(I would have merely posted this as a comment in response to gammapoint but my lowly reputation will not permit me.)</p>\n\n<p>I was accepted by every program I applied to <em>except</em> my safety school.</p>\n\n<p>My experience when applying to undergrad schools was pretty much the opposite: I only got in to one non-safety school.</p>\n\n<p>My guess as to why something like this might happen is that sample sizes are a lot smaller (fewer applicants to a given grad program in a given year than to the undergraduate school), so your results are more likely to differ from what you expect.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 40362,
"author": "Yasha",
"author_id": 28181,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28181",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Graduate admissions are very different than undergraduate admissions. In undergraduate admissions, you can generally predict where you'll be accepted and where you won't. But graduate admissions - particularly PhD programs - are significantly more complicated. Because of quotas and financial obligations, they have to try to pick, on the first round, students that they actually think will attend. The reason for this is because, once they make a financial offer, they know you can hold on to it until April 15 or something, and during that time, they can't allocate that money for anyone else.</p>\n\n<p>So, if they see someone who is easily qualified for the school, but they suspect will get other, better offers, they'll likely just pass on that person in the first place, since they don't want to commit money to someone who won't end up attending. If they are mistaken about this, they may end up with a small and/or weak incoming cohort.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/02 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16465",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9186/"
]
|
16,475 | <p>I've recently applied for PhD programs in mathematics. I received an offer not long ago, and in light of this offer, there are only a few schools that I would consider an offer from. From past years results (and this year's), I expect to get results from two of them in the coming week, but another of them usually only sends out their final decisions three or so weeks from now (though they do, and have, sent decisions already to some applicants). I would like to make a decision fairly soon, and knowing about the status of my application at this final school would indeed make a difference in any decisions I make. When is it acceptable to ask them about the status of my application? Should I simply wait until they send me the result, or is it OK to ask earlier?</p>
<p>In more generality, so that this question might be useful to somebody that's not me: in general, when is it acceptable to ask schools about their admissions decision if they've not notified you yet?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16479,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If there's a specific reason, such as a deadline at another school, that it would be helpful to know your status, then I think its very reasonable to send a message to the graduate director at a program you're considering. Asking just because you're curious is generally discouraged, but if you have new information, then its reasonable to ask for an update. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17082,
"author": "Ryker",
"author_id": 4514,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4514",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would say that in general it is OK to ask if you haven't heard from the program in a long time or if you, say, see decisions being posted on The Grad Cafe. Sure, you don't want to be e-mailing them every week, but a short e-mail to the graduate department (not necessarily the graduate director, but the person listed under who to contact for graduate admissions) shouldn't hurt and they shouldn't be offended or annoyed by it. If they are getting swamped by such e-mails, it is not hard for them to just ignore them and not reply. If they only get a couple, however, they might actually give you a better estimate of the timeline.</p>\n\n<p>Personally, I also consider answering e-mails asking such questions to be a part of the job description of whoever is the contact person for graduate admissions. Yes, the graduate director should not deal with such questions, but that is why I also think the graduate director shouldn't be listed as the contact person. </p>\n\n<p>To sum it up, I only think it's \"inappropriate\" to constantly bugger them, but not to send a polite e-mail asking about your status. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/02 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16475",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
]
|
16,478 | <p>Is it common and acceptable for a postdoc to leave before his/her contract ends, for whatever reason? How early should a prior notice be submitted in this case?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16481,
"author": "Noah Snyder",
"author_id": 25,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In math, it's reasonably common for people to leave a 3 year postdoc after 2 years to take a tenure track job (or rather, it was reasonably common before the job market crashed). But fields which have postdocs attached to particular grants may be quite different.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16482,
"author": "Luke Mathieson",
"author_id": 1370,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1370",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In my experience (I'm a postdoc now, and hence also know a few other postdocs) leaving before the end of a contract is perfectly normal. The nature of postdoctoral work is that you have to be ready to take the next opportunity when it arises - other people certainly aren't going to make sure the timing lines up nicely for you! Of course if you leave very early in the contract, that might annoy people, but assuming you're reasonably sensible, everything should be fine. Remember that the people employing you have either been through the same process, or observed it over the years<sup>1</sup>.</p>\n\n<p>As for how early the notice should be, that depends on the contract and the labour laws where you are. There may be certain legal minimums that have to be observed, but the figure seems to normally be 2-3 weeks. Of course your employer may let you out early by agreement, but as your employer is probably technically the University, don't expect a bureaucracy to be particularly flexible.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Little side note, I gather this might be a bit different in the US, though currently in the process of changing (perhaps someone who went through the US system can add to this). A postdoc in the US has lower status that it does in Europe/Australia/New Zealand/..., so it might be the case that your employers <em>haven't</em> been postdocs at all.</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16483,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Usually, a postdoc is a normal contract between an employer and an employee, and as such, terminating it earlier than its date depends on the contract and/or the country. It should be normally specified on the contract, otherwise the laws of the country should apply. For instance, in the UK, I have had a notice of 1 month, in Italy, it was 3 months. </p>\n\n<p>It is normally acceptable for a postdoc to leave before the end of the contract, although it depends on the situation. If the employer does not provide any guarantee for further employment, and if the postdoc has found another offer, starting earlier than the end of the current contract, then that's the rule of the game. If the postdoc has found a much better offer (for instance, a permanent position), then that's also the rule of the game. If personal reasons are involved (going with a partner, going back to home country, etc), that's quite fair. </p>\n\n<p>By acceptable, I mean that the employer should normally not make any problem (assuming the legal obligations are fulfilled), and might even be supportive in the end of the contract. A case that might not be acceptable is to leave in the middle of a contract, breaking some work commitment (e.g., an experiment to run) for a reason that might not appear very strong. But in the end, it depends a lot on the relationship between the postdoc and the employer. The point to remember is that Academia is a small world, and that in general, it is worth keeping good relationship with former employers. In doubt, talk with your current employer, or with a mentor at the place you're working at to know what the rule normally is. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16485,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To add to previous answers: if your postdoc includes teaching, you should finish out the academic year, or at the very least finish the current term, and give your department chair as much notice as possible, so that they can find a replacement or adjust teaching assignments.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16487,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am currently a Computer Science postdoc in Europe. I have the understanding (and full support) with my professor that I will be gone if a faculty position presents itself. I guess, given that postdocs are really just researchers in queue for a faculty position, I am assuming other postdocs will have similar arrangements.</p>\n\n<p>Other than that, I am assuming whether your professor is annoyed by you leaving depends on how much he depends on you, how much time you give him, and how valid your reasons are.</p>\n\n<p>Before my current job I did postdoc at the university where I also received my PhD. I told my old advisor many months in advance that it would be good for me and my CV to leave my almer mater and home country, and he was fully supportive (== good reason, many months of changeover time). On the other hand, the same professor was pretty pissed when another postdoc quit his position to work in industry more or less without prior warning. <strong>Circumstances matter.</strong></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 46570,
"author": "user35424",
"author_id": 35424,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/35424",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If either or both parties are miserable, then this is not indentured service and therefore the contract should be terminated. However, the termination shouldn't be to the detriment of the lab i.e. if the PI needs time to hire a replacement, then the postdoc terminating the contract should stay on until the new hire is made and trained. </p>\n\n<p>Sometimes it's better to let a toxic person leave rather than remain for their technical skills. I hired a very unpleasant postdoc in 2012 and luckily she resigned while I was still trying to figure out how to work with her. Now she is probably making her new boss miserable. She never asked for a recommendation from me so perhaps her 5 month stint in my lab was overlooked when she was recruited. </p>\n\n<p>Postdocs out there take note: </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Your boss is not your mum or dad, so if you hate either or both of your parents, punishing your boss is just psycho behavior</p></li>\n<li><p>Your boss is not your mum or dad, so if either or both dote on you and spoil you, consider that your boss is not obligated to treat you that way. A postdoc is a trainee position but it's also a JOB. There are expectations and you are being evaluated by your boss/mentor and colleagues in your field. You are not a student anymore, so time is precious and is not to be wasted with drama and procrastination. </p></li>\n<li><p>If you regularly got 'A' grades as an undergrad and graduate student, beware that these top grades may have been due to grade inflation. You will now need to get used to the idea that there is grade deflation for academic professionals and faculty. Peer review (journals, grant applications) is harsh and often brutal and you have to deal with it. Your postdoc mentor is not your enemy and can help guide you through that process. </p></li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 60197,
"author": "Potterfan pi",
"author_id": 46144,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/46144",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It should be indicating in the contract, and as long as you are following the written contract, the professor should not take it against you. It is like any other job. </p>\n\n<p>Although, in my experience I have found professors who are not professional enough to respect that. It kind of questions the recruitment process for faculty positions, a mere PhD or some publications should not be the only factor when choosing a faculty member, it should also consider the moral ground, leadership skill and ability to motivate. The same way the professor is not your mom or dad, the student is not your maid. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 94505,
"author": "Evergreen",
"author_id": 78435,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/78435",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am a postdoc and I believe that it is right of the postdoc fellow where ever he wants to go though he/she should tell professor few months in advance so that professor can arrange some other postdoc. And if possible, it is better to finish your current project. Professors usually have funding and therefore it is not difficult to find the postdoc replacement for them. However, the postdocs are struggling for a permanent position that is quite competitive now a days specially in some high ranked universities.</p>\n\n<p>There are normally two situations I have observed from the research point of view that a postdoc likes to leave. One is that the professor does not provide good feedback to his progress due to either he has no time since he is more interested in applying for funding or he is not capable answering postdoc questions (it does happens). In both cases, postdoc should leave and make his career better somewhere. The second reason of leaving the postdoc is when the promises that professor did at the time of hiring are not fulfilled. For example, if professor tells you that we are doing empirical as well as theoretical study of such such things and postdoc job will be to make such and such models and analysis, however when you start working, you come to know that they don't have any data and they will get it right in the middle of your postdoc when half of your time will be elapsed.</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes you really feel that your research philosophy is not matching with the research objectives of your group. In such situations, it is beneficial for both to set apart as soon as possible so that professor's funding and postdoc's time can be better utilised.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 130143,
"author": "Max Gottlieb",
"author_id": 108452,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/108452",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In the USA, postdocs don't have a contract. Instead, there is an informal agreement between the postdoc and the advisor, that \na project be completed. If the project proves to be a dead end,\nthen another project is agreed upon. Leaving a project is viewed\nnegatively, because in the USA, the advisor typically must invest\nat least $300, 000 on salary and supplies for the project. If the postdoc leaves - that investment is lost. For the advisor, the\nfailure of completion of the project could jeopardize the success of future funding for their laboratory. In the USA, in addition \nadvisors must maintain a certain level of laboratory funding to \nkeep their laboratory space. So, no leaving the lab without finishing the project is not viewed favorably.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/02 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16478",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10936/"
]
|
16,480 | <p>I once wanted to do a PhD in the UK, but found out that the opportunities were limited for those coming from outside Europe (I did my PhD in Norway instead). I think it is still the case today. I am wondering why this is so. </p>
<p>EDIT: </p>
<p>Additional thought: I am wondering, for instance, if the vacancy were open to anyone in the world, would it not increase the chance of getting the best applicants? Also, what differences are there in the UK system compared to other countries (e.g. Norway) which open their PhD vacancies to anyone? </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16525,
"author": "rachaelbe",
"author_id": 11304,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11304",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Most PhD funding in the UK comes from Government run research councils, for instance the ESRC, who allocate funds to groups of Universities known as Doctoral Training Centres. Given the restricted level of funding available applications are only open to students who are citizens of an EU member state. Funding may also be available directly from individual University departments but this is so limited in availability that they tend to prefer their own graduates or current students. In either case a requirement for funding is to have a Master's level degree from a recognised University, which is often interpreted as being a UK institution. Basically it's a very small pot of money that's available so applications have to be restricted.</p>\n\n<p>To answer your edit: to get research funding in the UK (certainly for Psychology, and I assume for other subjects as well) you must demonstrate that your research falls into the national research plan. In other words, the UK government is only interested in certain areas of research which will be of long term benefit to the UK economy. While I accept that opening up funding to everyone irrespective of nationality would attract the best of the best, from the Government's point of view there would seem to be little point to spend money helping non-nationals get PhDs if, ultimately, the knowledge and skill sets which they have paid for are then lost from the country due to people returning home once the degree has been completed.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 31168,
"author": "L Platts",
"author_id": 9117,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9117",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Just to complement rachaelbe's comprehensive answer, the issue for the UK research councils is not so much the nationality of the applicant, but whether the applicant fulfils the residency requirement. </p>\n\n<p>In the case of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the other research councils are likely to have similar rules, in order to receive both payment of fees and a stipend, <strong>everybody</strong> needs to: 1) have settled status in the UK, meaning that there are no restrictions on how long they can stay, 2) have been been 'ordinarily resident' in the UK for three years prior to the start of the studentship grant, and 3) have not been residing in the UK wholly or mainly for the purpose of full-time education. This last is waived in the case of UK and EU nationals. Interestingly therefore, being a British citizen is not enough to qualify; British citizens must be ordinarily resident in the UK. For the ESRC, where there are shortages of suitable students (in advanced quantitative methods and economics), these rules have been relaxed in certain doctoral training centres. <a href=\"http://www.esrc.ac.uk/_images/ESRC-Postgraduate-Funding-Guide-DTCs_tcm8-28310.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">The full rules are available.</a></p>\n\n<p>I guess the reason for the residency rules is that the government wishes to fund students who already have a strong connection to the UK, i.e. those who are likely to want to remain in the UK after completion of their PhD studies.... I absolutely would agree that if the vacancies were available to everyone in the world, the quality of applicants would be higher. In advanced quantitative methods, it is difficult to find students who satisfy the residency criteria who would be suitable for the PhD programme and fully funded posts often end up being re-advertized. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/02 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16480",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10936/"
]
|
16,486 | <p>There has been quite a few questions about how to dress to an academic interview. However, no answer to these questions addresses what one should use to carry their things in. For example, is it acceptable to carry your things in a backpack, cheap shoulder/messenger bag made of synthetic materials, briefcase, expensive leather bag, purse etc? A backpack with a suit would look awfully strange. Maybe a cheap messenger bag would still look OK. Links to photos of acceptable/preferred bags would be nice. Is the etiquette different for post-docs vs. faculty positions?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16489,
"author": "410 gone",
"author_id": 96,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Bags, shoes, hats, it's all the same answer as for clothes. Post-docs vs faculty positions, it's the same answer. If you've any specific instructions from the panel who will interview you, follow them. Otherwise, follow local customs for smart professional attire. Err on the side of looking smarter and more professional. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16492,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1429",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I have seen them in all in faculty job talks in our department for the last few years. I have seen messenger bags, backpacks and briefcases; some of them have been made of expensive leather and looked really classy/professional and I have even seen them made of cheap, fraying materials.</p>\n<p>Either way, it does not matter - except maybe in incredibly conservative departments. We hired one of the folks who had a pretty cheap looking backpack. The fact that they had multiple publications in the top journals and conferences in their area probably mattered more. They were all wearing suits though.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16493,
"author": "Tara B",
"author_id": 5955,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5955",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think, at least in the UK (I couldn't be sure about other countries), this probably matters a lot less in academia than it would for a corporate job. The most important thing is probably that you feel comfortable with your choice. It's extremely unlikely that you would fail to get the job simply because of your choice of bag, but if you are feeling uncomfortable all day about, say, wearing a backpack with a suit, then that could end up having a negative effect on your interview performance.</p>\n\n<p>When I interviewed for my current job, I carried my larger items in my backpack, and I did feel a bit silly wearing a backpack with a suit, but fortunately I was offered to leave my backpack in the secretaries' office for the day, and I had all the things I really needed to keep with me in a small leather handbag. I think I would have felt uncomfortable carrying the backpack around with me all day (even though it was a good-quality and quite new one), especially as the other candidates were quite smartly dressed and didn't have backpacks.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16496,
"author": "Ellie Kesselman",
"author_id": 9490,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9490",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you wear a backpack on both shoulders with a suit jacket, it will make the suit bunch up in front and the sleeves look too short. Also, you will probably pop the button(s) if you wear the jacket closed. If you don't need to bring anything heavy to the interview and strongly prefer your backpack, then wear it on one shoulder only.</p>\n\n<p>As someone else said, choose to bring what you are most comfortable with. By comfortable, I am referring to the ability to quickly find whatever you might need during the interview. It is awful to be dredging through a bag or purse, trying to find something while one or more potential employers are waiting! I have done that, and it was flustering, distracting. The same is true about latches on a briefcase or satchel, if you choose that. </p>\n\n<p>An academic interview is so important. Even if you don't wear a suit, or don't have one, make sure that your shoes fit well, hair is combed, and your socks match. No one is likely to notice or care, but doing so costs you nothing and will minimize self-consciousness, especially if you need to stand to write something on a whiteboard.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 29176,
"author": "mako",
"author_id": 5962,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5962",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Borrow a professional looking bag or briefcase. I borrowed a nice black (synthetic material) shoulder bag for my interviews that looked better than my Chrome bag I use for commuting on my bike. Even as they say it should not matter, other answers suggests that faculty remember how professional or non-professional the bag a interviewee brought was for long periods of time afterward.</p>\n\n<p>In a job interview, you are trying to communicate that (a) you are professional and competent, (b) that you are taking the interview process seriously, and (c) that you the kind of person that faculty can imagine as their colleague (as opposed to their student). Looking professional and professorial is one way you can do all three things.</p>\n\n<p>Keep in mind that the way you appear is a sort of a package deal. If you have an less than professional backpack that looks like something a student would bring, it's probably not going to tip the scale either way, but it's not going to help and it probably will be noticed. If you are a student or a post-doc, people understand that you don't have the cash for a fancy bag. That said, if there's any way you can borrow a nicer looking bag from somebody for your interviews, the downside is low enough that I don't see why you wouldn't.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/02 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16486",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
16,498 | <p>I have seen several articles in internet about a general bias against hiring long term unemployed people in non-necessarily academic jobs, see for example <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/08/18/its-true-long-term-unemployment-can-make-you-unemp.aspx" rel="nofollow">here</a> and <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/02/02/the-long-term-unemployment-crisis-is-out-of-contro.aspx#.Uu9lePvT5sU" rel="nofollow">here</a>. <strong>I was wondering if there is such an unwritten rule in academia as well?</strong> </p>
<p>I am sure someone might say it is not the case and according to the rules X and Y, it is considered a discrimination and it is forbidden by law and so on. I am not asking what the written laws say. <strong>I would like to know if there is such a bias in hiring committees or not? And if there is such a thing how can a long term unemployed academic do to overcome this obstacle?</strong> </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16499,
"author": "sansuiso",
"author_id": 11141,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11141",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In any case (academic or not), you always have to account for any hole on your CV. The main idea here is that someone always loses skills when he doesn't have any activity.</p>\n\n<p>However, holes in CV can have many different root causes (disease, looking for a job in a country struck by the economic crisis, humanitarian work, taking care of children at home...). It is usually best to either write it down explicitly (disease for example) or to turn it into some positive, meaningful experience (humanitarian work, etc.). For example, someone who took care of children at home can have learned some organization skills, done some scientific blogging or contributed to some scientific tool on spare time. </p>\n\n<p>This will not always be accepted by a recruiter, but it's better than holes in the CV that just raise suspicion about one's commitment. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16504,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't think there is an unwritten rule, precisely, but I think once you are not employed in academia (even if you have a job somewhere else), your chances of getting a position in academia decrease extremely rapidly. Competition for positions is so massive, and there are so many well qualified applicants that I think someone who is not currently in an academic or research position is unlikely to be taken seriously. Not to mention that you typically aren't doing the kind of research and networking you need to get a position if you are unemployed (not always, but often). I think some fields where it's very hard to get work are a bit more forgiving (though, of course there there is even more competition), but this is part of what keeps people in adjunct positions, since it is a way of staying \"in the game.\"</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/03 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16498",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
16,502 | <p>I have submitted a paper more than a year ago, but still I haven't heard anything back from the editor. As of today I have no idea whether my paper has been accepted/rejected or is in a review stage. Only thing I know is that it has been received, for a got a confirmation of this soon after the submission. Needless to say that I've tried several times to get in contact with the editor to find out about my paper's fate, but I got not a single reply to my status update requests. What should you do in a case like this? I was thinking of writing to the editor again to let him know that I'm withdrawing the paper from him and submitting to someone else? Is this a good idea? Are there other paths one might walk down to?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16506,
"author": "Tara B",
"author_id": 5955,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5955",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Can you get hold of the editor's phone number? I've sometimes found it very effective to call someone when they haven't been replying to emails. However, I've only done this with academics I knew personally. But it still might be worth trying, before you take the fairly major step of withdrawing your paper after more than a year (the advantage of eventually having the paper accepted by the journal you currently have it submitted to is that the date of submission will be on the published paper, and of course this date will be much later if you submit it somewhere else now).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16512,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If the editor isn't responding, it's time to escalate. The journal's web page should give contact info for an editor-in-chief and/or a managing editor. Contact one or both of them and let them know that you would like an update on the status of your paper, but cannot get a response from the handling editor (include dates of submission, dates you sent emails, etc). They should take care of the situation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 108648,
"author": "MHL",
"author_id": 91596,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/91596",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>(It's an old question yes but would like to give another answer) I would seek to withdraw the paper from the journal with a letter to the editor stating the reasons so. I think there needs to be a time where you've 'waited enough'. For me 1 year is too much but for others, perhaps they have more patience and I think for you to be so patient with your to-and-fro to the journal speaks volumes about your character but it may not be so good for your manuscript.</p>\n\n<p>P.S. What was the final outcome of this?</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/03 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16502",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11564/"
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|
16,503 | <p>The following question was posted on Math SE, but seems to be more related to Academia SE:</p>
<p>Next year I will start studying maths at university. I'm highly interested in biomathematics, but in my country there aren't specific courses for students. At least there are very few Ph.D. programs. So I'm thinking of taking a 3-years degree course here and then a Master degree and Ph.D. in another country. Are there such courses in UK or US? If so, which are the entry requirements (in terms of, say, English language certificates, couses taken, etc)? How can I prepare to such courses? Are there any suggested readings?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16511,
"author": "Jochem",
"author_id": 11570,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11570",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I believe <code>Coursera.org</code> has a few MOOCs in biomathematics (or at least courses very closely related to it). </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 18963,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In Sweden there are many universities strong in bioinformatics. The requirements are not very high (they depend on the program), and everything is in English and free for UE citiziens.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 18966,
"author": "Michael Ward",
"author_id": 13838,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13838",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I know that pretty much every credited and decently reputable university has some sort of bioinformatics or biomathematics program. Even the school I currently attend, Indiana State University, which by the way is an absolutely shit school for ANYTHING except business adminstration, aviation and education, have a masters level bioinformatics degree, though I'm unsure about any PhD program. However, I know that Purdue has a program for it's computer science BA students to have what is called a \"focus\" (very common in majors like CS because of the breadth of where you can take it- also, criminology is very common to have 5 or 6 focuses as well) in bioinformatic data systems, and you can then pursue a masters or PhD with said focus.</p>\n\n<p>Basically, even though none of that really answered your question, pretty much every university you go to will have some sort of bioinformatics / biomathematics (which by the way, I don't know if they're the same thing because I've always heard it called bioinformatics, which is the math behind biology... so I'm assuming there the same thing) program, and if they don't, they will DEFINITELY have CS / Math programs that are completely relevant to the study and very easy to get you into grad school on the basis of the only thing you didn't learn about bioinformatics was the application of principles you learned from your math classes to said field.</p>\n\n<p>Also, most universities here in the US don't have specific requirements for transfer students beyond language certification. I.e., if you can speak decent English, which you can, then you'll be fine. Most of the Arabs in my Econ & CS classes right now can't speak a word of english at all and they're here so you'll be fine</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 18975,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes there are MSc as well as PhD programs in Biomathematics. You should look for programs in <em>Biomathematics</em> and/or <em>Mathematical Biology</em>; this field of study is also branded as <em>Systems Biology</em> quite often. A quick Google search returns quite a few hits both in UK and US. The Society for Mathematical Biology has a good (but I would say somewhat US-centric) list of such programs available <a href=\"http://www.smb.org/resources/education/degree.shtml\" rel=\"nofollow\">here</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Entry requirements usually depend on the program. Generally speaking good Maths and Stats (eg. Network/Graph Theory, Stochastics, PDEs) help a lot, as well as showing an interdisciplinary approach to your training. My best advice to prepare for such a course would be to be a great student. It is too early in your academic journey to focus exclusive in one area (eg. Stochastic Processes) and hope it will carry you through graduate school. Besides it will be very unlikely that a star-pupil in Maths will be denied entry to a graduate Biomathematics programme.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 44324,
"author": "posdef",
"author_id": 5674,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5674",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Bioinformatics is a bit of a collective name for many different cross disciplinary research fields. Essentially it's biology, mathematics, statistics and programming blended into a dough, and baked together. Consider bread, using the same ingredients you can make many different types of bread in the end. </p>\n\n<p>It's more or less the same with bioinformatics/biomathematics. I am a last year bioinformatics PhD with less than 6 months to dissertation. So far the people I have met that do similar work as I do, I could probably count with fingers on one hand. :) </p>\n\n<p>Instead of considering fields, and courses and programmes, consider which <strong>skills</strong> you want to acquire and what <strong><em>subjects</em></strong> you want to work on. Essentially, the question boils down to <em>what do you think is cool</em>? Are you interested in <a href=\"https://www.google.se/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRNA-Seq&ei=5B0-VcvzL4SvsAHc3YGgBg&usg=AFQjCNGbWeK5EWAfayAfyIxVlgd7nMP2WQ&sig2=FtRbiSQRLPy4jKzijsHLYw&bvm=bv.91665533,d.bGg\" rel=\"nofollow\">RNAseq</a>, or <a href=\"https://www.google.se/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0CDUQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FGenome-wide_association_study&ei=_x0-Var6JYeuswHju4D4Bg&usg=AFQjCNH9y6Mqwjh1jVb47Il7FMQkVL2g2g&sig2=-IBqb2Q00mwCUThbSC_LiA&bvm=bv.91665533,d.bGg\" rel=\"nofollow\">GWAS</a>? Are you interested in doing <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significance_analysis_of_microarrays\" rel=\"nofollow\">SAM</a>, or pathway dynamics? Perhaps signal processing for MS-based proteomics? </p>\n\n<p>There are literally thousands of interesting problems out there that require serious bioinformatics efforts. Which program you studied is a bit irrelevant as long as you have the right toolset of skills. </p>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/03 | [
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|
16,505 | <p>I teach at a large R1 state university, and I just received my teaching evaluations for Fall 2013. Usually I get excellent evaluations, but this time my evaluations for Calculus II were an unpleasant surprise. My numerical scores were mediocre, and representative student comments included: "Answers were obscure"; "can sometimes be cryptic when answering questions"; "didn't really answer questions".</p>
<p>These comments do <em>not</em> appear to be sour grapes, as the same students didn't complain heavily about the workload or grading of the exams. Moreover, I got excellent teaching evaluations when I taught Calc I a year ago, at the same university, with the same philosophy and style, with similar course policies, and with a comparable workload. Clearly, I did something wrong with regard to this course in particular.</p>
<p>I e-mailed both of my TAs, and only got encouraging comments ("I thought you did a good job"). I then e-mailed the class, and explained that my teaching evaluations were poorer than I expected, and asked students to offer criticism and suggestions for the benefit of future Calc II students. No responses.</p>
<p>So, apparently my teaching left room for improvement but I have no idea what to improve. This is quite uncomfortable -- is there anything useful I can do here?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16507,
"author": "Ben Norris",
"author_id": 924,
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"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here are two things you can do:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>1) Since the comments you mention have to do with the way you answer questions in class, perhaps it is time to explain your approach.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Sometimes all you need to do is explain at the beginning of a course why you are doing certain things. For example, if you do not like giving full answers to questions so that your students still need to work out part of the answer (and it sounds like that is perhaps the case), explain on the first day of class why you think this approach is beneficial. Perhaps you noticed that your students were more engaged and did better on exams after you started this approach. Let your students know that! It will help them buy in to the strategy. Explaining potential peculiarities of your instructional approach is especially useful if you are teaching the <strong>second or third</strong> course in a sequence, and you did not teach the earlier courses (this is the case). The students are used to different styles. If they were used to an instructor telling them the complete answer all the time, then they will not like what you do unless they understand it. You probably had fewer objections when you taught calculus I, since <strong>you</strong> set the expectations for those students on how a calculus class would go.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>2) Ask some of your colleagues to periodically sit in on your class. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is a good way to catch negative behaviors that you might be unaware of. The other benefit is appearing open to constructive criticism about your teaching. Having colleagues sit in on your courses also helps separate \"students did not like what I did\" from \"what I did was bad\". Just because students did not like, does not mean that it is a poor method of instruction (see point #1 above). </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16508,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are several ways this can happen. scaaahu provides one good reason, that students found Calc II harder than Calc I and was not prepared for it. Another reason could be that some person or group of persons in the student group infect the others with a sentiment. I have seen this happen and it only takes one dominant person to get others on the train.</p>\n\n<p>Your description of the evaluations and your digging into them, with no response form the students, should tell you that the problem primarily is not yours in terms of teaching etc. The only thing you may consider thinking about is how you introduced the class. Setting the tone at the beginning of the course (or earlier if that is possible in your system) and thereby preparing them for the course can be a powerful tool to reduce complaints. This is all about the expectations and if expectations are wrong, it may lead to discontent.</p>\n\n<p>As I was writing this a good response from Ben Norris was posted so I can only agree with that reply and let my anwser add to his.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16510,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Ben Norris's answer is excellent but I would add one additional point to it. When you are asking for constructive feedback from the students, you must do so in a way that students feel completely comfortable that their honesty is not going to come back to bite them.</p>\n\n<p>At the end of every semester, I email all of my students a web-based survey with some open and some closed questions specifically so I can get their honest opinion. Again, the key is that all responses are anonymous. I believe if I asked them to email me (not anonymous) I would get nothing but praise, which does not help me improve at all. While I do still get many positive comments, there are usually some small gems in there which help me improve.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16514,
"author": "Alex D",
"author_id": 11572,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11572",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>\"Answers were obscure\"; \"can sometimes be cryptic when answering\n questions\"; \"didn't really answer questions\".</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This makes it sound to me that students never really understood the core content of Calc II. It was a problem I personally struggled with and needed a tutor to solve. Often students will be able to complete homework and quizzes of Calc II content (especially tougher content of sequences and series), even though they don't fundamentally understand what is going on. Calc II is quite a course, as many students test out of Calc I and their first college math course is Calc II. With often a new way of thinking, and representations of problems that students have never seen, Calc II is extremely difficult. I'd suggest (especially with like Power, Maclaurin series, etc.) that you take extra time to explain to students at the most basic level what is going on and move forward. Relate it to real life scenarios if possible, and give a few examples of where such problems are used in real life. I think they're missing key connections which make understanding the course a lot easier. </p>\n\n<p>While I don't think you're a bad teacher, I think there is a slight disconnect here between you and your students. Obviously your level of understanding at the content is much higher than theirs, and what you may think is an easy subject to understand, could be the complete opposite to your students. While your students probably understand how to complete many of the problems in Calc II, from what you've said I doubt they have a true understanding of the content.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16515,
"author": "Noah Snyder",
"author_id": 25,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In my experience, the noise in course evaluations is around 1 point out of 5. My evidence for that is that I once taught the same course twice at the same time with the same book, the same syllabus, the same homework, and very similar exams. Not only was the evaluation rating on my teaching different by almost one point out of 5, but the ratings of how appropriate the book/homework/exam was were also different by around 1 point out of 5. I had another similar experience TAing two sections of the same course (where the quizzes and exams were set by the professor) and where the class got rated 6/7 in one and 5/7 in the other. Students' expected grades have a huge impact on the ratings. So although you should definitely pay attention to your student ratings, it's also very important to smooth out the noise.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16516,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Don't wait for the end-of-semester evaluation. It does not give us a chance to improve the students' experience. And it usually causes the teachers a lot of remorse and confusion. Instead, <strong>incorporate a mid-term evaluation</strong>. Send online questionnaire to students and solicit their comments on aspects like i) if their expectations are met, ii) if the objectives are fulfilled in a regular base, iii) challenges they face, iv) and suggested improvements. Address their concerns and lay out your revision right after you have checked the results.</p>\n\n<p>Use anonymous channels such as online questionnaires (Qualtrics or SurveyMonkey) or forum (TodaysMeet, which works like Twitter.) Compared to getting students' criticism from their e-mail, I think I will have better luck to talk a tiger into giving me its hide.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16522,
"author": "blankip",
"author_id": 11420,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11420",
"pm_score": 3,
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"text": "<p>Not only have I taught engineering courses for 10+ years and had to have students (corporate students) fill out evals after every 2-4 day class but I also built/run the company's evaluation system. In my opinion the following are things that heavily influence evaluations:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>The student's view of the topic. If students don't want to take your class because they hate math but yet have to fulfill a requirement then your evaluation will be lower - for sure. This is the #1 factor. You can easily see this if you add questions to your survey like \"What is your interest in CLASS_FIELD?\" (1-5) or \"Why did you take this class?\" (choices being part of major, liked topic, whatever, other).</p></li>\n<li><p>Students want learning to be easy. If you made them do a lot of nonsense work for little payoff they will not be happy. I had a teacher make us write these essays once a week and the 15 essays were 10% of our grade. Just a ton of work and it mattered very little to our grade. \"How would you rate the workload (I don't like that word but you get it) of the class taken?\"</p></li>\n<li><p>Be clear about your goals of the class. Make sure you discuss at the beginning what you will cover and a brief outline of chapters in a book, other materials covered, and if there will be class discussion questions not found in those. You do not have to tell them exactly what topics are on the test but there needs to be a happy medium between \"Know Everything\" and \"Here are the exact topics\". Your survey should have a question that says something like \"Were the tests and assignments reflective our your expectations from the syllabus?\"</p></li>\n<li><p>As a teacher you need to make sure that your goals are aligned with the school's goals. Is your goals to have happy students after your class? Seems like the easier classes would rise to the top then or the classes that are more topical at least. The way to truly evaluate you as a teacher is to test their retention of the materials at 3-6 months. Not a flat out test, but do they still understand the concepts of the class? Even this can have a lot of noise because batches of students will fluctuate (but you could fix this with a pretest).</p></li>\n<li><p>Culture and individualism. Nothing you can do in an anonymous survey to get around this. Basically there are certain cultures and groups that feel like a 3 out of 5 is really really good. While others may think that is horrible. You can label whatever but you cannot account for this noise in numbers. However you can figure out if this is the issue with blank essay boxes - at least one that is mandatory. If you really want a good mandatory feedback question (which is negative) \"What about this class would you change?\"</p></li>\n<li><p>Knowledge of the instructor and comprehension level of topic. You are teaching Calculus I and II right? Moderate level of difficulty. So you probably get some brownie points with students if you know your stuff well AND more importantly you can explain the difficult points in an easy to understand way. I see instructors at my company get good scores because they are an expert (maybe the only expert) in a field. Some of these people can barely form a coherent thought but still good scores. But still that is the expectation of some students - they want the best/smartest teaching them. So... \"What was your instructor's skill level on the classroom topics?\" (1-5) \"How well did your instructor explain classroom topics?\" (1-5)</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Now how do you make students fill out an eval. Well in my company (100 instructors) we tell them the eval is used to do attendance so they don't get credit without it. If your school cares they would do the same. If you want to know what range of questions get people to respond, I gave some hints but that is a different question.</p>\n\n<p>Also we tend to call our evaluations the \"happy forms\". This is because generally the instructors act all happy before giving the online surveys out (they are fully anonymous and they generally follow Kirkpatrick I). I have witnessed instructors saying all kinds of positive things to their class and even some passing out treats during the eval/survey. Of course students will give the instructor better scores. Your variance from one class to another could have had just as much to do with your attitude and mood the 30 mins leading up to your survey than compared to the entire semester. </p>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/03 | [
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|
16,509 | <ul>
<li>5.0 credits/year describes a full-time undergraduate course load at my school. </li>
<li>5.0 credits/2 years describes a full-time graduate course load at my school.</li>
<li>Students may not enroll in more than 3 credits/term (6/year or 1 extra class/term).</li>
<li>400 level courses at my school can count as a 0.5 credit toward either an undergraduate degree or toward a master's degree. </li>
<li>An undergraduate student may take a full course load of 400 level courses. </li>
</ul>
<p>My attempt to answer my question:</p>
<ul>
<li>Perhaps graduate courses require twice the work that undergraduate courses do.</li>
<li>But if that were the case, then one could take mostly 400 level courses and do nearly half as much work as she would do if she took graduate courses. </li>
<li>Perhaps 400 level courses require the same amount of work (say twice as much) as lower level graduate courses require. </li>
<li>But if that were the case, then an undergraduate student who enrolled in a full course load of 400 level courses would have enrolled in a course load equivalent to 5 credits/term when the university calls 3 credits/term an overload and prohibits students from enrolling in more than 3 credits/term.</li>
</ul>
<p>So why would a full-time master's program require a half-time course load?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17403,
"author": "Matthew G.",
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"text": "<p>It's not clear here if you think a 'half-load' of courses is too high, or too low for a Master's. </p>\n\n<p>Here's a perspective from my university. Here, your course work serves two purposes in your masters:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Course work is there to rectify gaps in your background. As a school with a huge international student population, we have a huge amount of variance in skill-sets. As a result courses are there partially in order to help make up for missing background, or to get the students onto more common footing. </p></li>\n<li><p>Introduction to topics. Here you're admitted without having to declare a supervisor or a topic. The first year of courses serves to introduce students to topics and professors-- possible supervisors. </p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>After two semesters, most students have paired off with supervisors, and have started their research, which will dominate their time for the subsequent 16+ months, until they defend their thesis. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 40901,
"author": "SE318",
"author_id": 31084,
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"text": "<p>I cannot speak for your program specifically, but at my university, each hour of class a week represents one credit.(There are a few classes that are different, but for the bulk this is true.) As an undergraduate, full time is considered to be 12-16 credits.</p>\n\n<p>I am now working on my PhD, and full-time is 6-8 credits, so half the number of credits that I was taking, but the amount of time I have to spend outside of these classes is much higher than the classes I took in my undergrad. Couple that with the fact that I'm also teaching classes and doing research, and I am rather busy.</p>\n\n<p>Now, I took some grad classes in my undergrad at an undergrad course load. In general, the professors would grade things differently for the undergrads in grad classes to compensate for the fact that they have more classes to worry about.</p>\n\n<p>That explains a little bit of the difference between grad and undergrad, but also, (I can't say for sure this is the case for your university as I don't know what university you are at, but...) in most grad programs, student's cant just \"choose\" to take 400 level courses. At my university, 400 level is considered undergraduate, so most graduate programs require courses at the 500-800 level(in which the workload increases quite significantly) You might take one or two lower level courses at the beginning of your grad work if they are prereqs for the higher level courses, but even then, sometimes those don't even count towards your credit requirements.</p>\n\n<p>In my case, all my required courses are 600+, so I don't really have the luxury of taking easy 400 level undergraduate courses.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 57862,
"author": "Kathy",
"author_id": 15364,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15364",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>At my university (in California), graduate classes require more work for the same number of units. This is in addition to our research and other activities. Our university counts 2 units of grad level as equivalent to 3 units of undergrad.</p>\n\n<p>In areas where enrollment is low, the university often has mixed undergrad/grad classes (my current class in cryptography is just such a class). In these classes, the graduate students do all the undergrad work as well as additional work. In this class, we have to read extra (higher level) papers, do extra reports, do extra presentations, etc. In other mixed classes, there have been more difficult tests or extra chapters assigned. I will receive 3 grad level units for this extra work, while the undergrads will receive 3 undergrad level units for their lower level of work. There's no incentive for them to enroll in the grad level class because they won't get their degree any faster. (For financial aid and work/study, the university looks at the student's grade level for determining full time, not the level of the classes they are taking.)</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/03 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16509",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9263/"
]
|
16,526 | <p>I work in the mathematics department of a university that has a new, small, mathematics bachelor's degree program, and no graduate mathematics programs. Some of our students are looking for advice on how to successfully apply for graduate school. I don't know what to tell them. Everyone in my department (myself included) applied to graduate school so long ago that I think our advice may not be relevant. I don't think anyone else who works for my university knows more than my department colleagues do.</p>
<p>What are good things for students at a small school to do to get into graduate school in mathematics? In particular, what are some things that might not be obvious to mathematics professors who've been out of graduate school for a few decades?</p>
<p>EDIT: In response to this question being put on hold for being "too broad", here is my modified question: <strong>What advice would you give students applying for graduate school in mathematics in 2014 that you would not have given them a decade or two ago?</strong> In other words, how would the advice differ? I am thinking both about what students have to do as undergrads and about the application process itself (which I assume is done online nowadays).</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16538,
"author": "Nobody",
"author_id": 546,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/546",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is too short for an answer. However, I do think it is worth an answer.</p>\n\n<p>Tell your students to get on this site ! There are plenty of questions and answers about graduate school admission. If they don't find their questions answered, then ask their own questions to get useful advices.</p>\n\n<p>Your students may have the same general questions as how to apply for admission. They may also have specific questions regarding their individual situations. The best advice is, get on an excellent, informative and reliable Q&A site and that's us!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16543,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I personally had the experience of applying to graduate school from <a href=\"https://simons-rock.edu\">a very small college</a> that has not produced many math Ph.D.s (though oddly enough, I'm not <a href=\"http://www.math.toronto.edu/~ryoung/\">the only 2002 BA graduate</a> working at an R1 university in North America) not <em>so</em> far in the misty depths of time. Of course, I only have a couple of data points, but let me try to give my thoughts.</p>\n\n<p>I think one thing is you've really got to get the basic stuff right: take the hardest classes available to you from the selections you have (and you should note in your letters that the student did this!) and ace them. Do well on the general and subject GREs. I assume you could have told them those. </p>\n\n<p>I think the biggest non-obvious thing is that it's essential to seek out experiences outside your small program. If you're at a large school with its own graduate program, probably you have all the resources you'll need at your fingertips, but in a smaller program, I don't think you really have the ability to fully prepare someone for graduate school. Study abroad is good for this (I went to <a href=\"https://www.budapestsemesters.com\">BSM</a> in Budapest, but there are other programs). So are REU's (I did the one at <a href=\"https://www.math.lsu.edu/reu\">LSU</a>). On a smaller scale, you might be able to take more advanced courses at a nearby college (for example, students at Smith and Amherst can take graduate courses at UMass), or do a guest semester somewhere in the US (like at the Penn State <a href=\"https://www.math.psu.edu/mass/\">MASS</a> program). </p>\n\n<p>These will, of course, be generally enriching experiences, but they also help by giving some real points of comparison. Graduate schools know what an A at BSM means (where they might not know it for your school); a professor who supervised you at an REU can speak with authority about having supervised many talented young people, and having some experience with which of them succeed in grad school. </p>\n\n<p>Another possibility is working at summer mathematics program like <a href=\"http://promys.org/program/counselors\">PROMYS</a> or <a href=\"http://www.mathcamp.org/index.php\">Canada/USA Mathcamp</a> (there are many other) though I think you should give some weight to activities like REU which are more likely to result in letters.</p>\n\n<p><strong>EDIT:</strong> I'll just note that what I've written about is still advice from the Web 1.0 world, but it's not so clear to me what Web 2.0 has changed about the admission process. I think it has made communicating with other people going through the process easier (for example, you can see in essentially <a href=\"http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=math%2a&t=a&o=&pp=25\">real time</a> which schools are sending out acceptances and rejections. This seems more likely to drive you insane than help though). I think for students at a smaller school this can be a boon (for example, the applicant profiles in <a href=\"http://www.mathematicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1523\">this thread</a> could be helpful for understanding where they might get in, though it's worth a reminder to take things with a grain of salt).</p>\n\n<p>I think one thing I didn't know was that it's very reasonable to contact the Director of Graduate Studies at programs that interest you if you have questions. Don't be a pest about it (only email if you have a real question), but communicating with applicants is part of the job, though my DGS may not appreciate me telling the internet that (sorry, Tom). </p>\n\n<p>The Web, of course, has also changed research about grad schools a lot. In theory, you can know a lot more about individual professors now than it would have been easy to figure out even 10, but especially 20 years ago. It's not super clear to me that this will help very much though. I generally feel like researching individual professors before starting grad school is a mug's game, since you're so likely to shift interests. I think it's much wiser to choose based on the program, and then worry about getting an advisor after a year or so of grad school when you know a bit more. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16685,
"author": "user45756",
"author_id": 11209,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11209",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Ben Webster has already wrote a great answer about how to get into a good math grad school, so I will not repeat that answer here. I do, however, want to interpret your question more broadly (what advice would I give to seniors applying for grad school?) and give you some advice. In particular, most of the things that I am about to talk about were not so much of problems back in the 70s, I think.</p>\n\n<p>No one tells you about the darker side of academia when you are an undergraduate student. But academia is really, really hard. Here are some cons of becoming an academic.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>the most serious problem by far is the fact that you do not have any choice on where you live. You just go to the best grad school that you got into, then after that, you apply to around 60 institutions for your postdoc job, and cross your fingers. Most schools give you two weeks to decide on your position, then off you go to some random city that you have never thought of. The same deal repeats for your second postdoc (if you are unlucky), or tenure-track. If you fail to obtain tenure, you might have to do another postdoc or tenure-track. So you are actively changing cities every 2-3 years for the next 10-15 years of your life. As an undergraduate student, this is not a serious problem, but when you have a significant other, and you are past 30, you really do want to settle down.</p></li>\n<li><p>academia is an extremely hierarchical society. Whether you get a job or not depends on your letter writers, one of which must be your advisor. As you obtain letters from people senior to you, it is often very difficult to express your opinions, as it is very easy to burn bridges. Academia is also very small; words travel fast. If you mess up in one place, chances are, everyone knows about it. Sometimes, it's not even your fault, but people can get very, very upset at you.</p></li>\n<li><p>the job market is very tight these days. The schools that I consider to be the top grad school are Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan and Chicago. These schools alone produce about 100 PhDs a year. I think that there are around 300 research postdocs available each year in the US (if you apply to every PhD producing institution, I think that you would send out around 80-90 applications; let's assume each school hires around 3 people, which I think is being generous). You can do the math.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>These are only the universal issues that apply to practically every PhD student. Then there are issues that apply more strongly to some people than others (elitism displayed by some mathematicians, competition among peers, difficult advisor, your thesis problem being scooped, etc.)</p>\n\n<p>So I advise that you need to be very, very sure that you really love math. I have been through many of these issues, and honestly, your love for the subject is the only thing that will keep you going. If you don't have the passion, you will regret your decision very quickly.</p>\n\n<p>There are also perks of being a mathematician, of course. I do enjoy the flexible schedule (aside from teaching and committee work, research can be done any time, anywhere), being able to travel to conferences, and the job security that follows, if you make it to the ranks of a tenured professor.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 27810,
"author": "Alex",
"author_id": 21251,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21251",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><a href=\"http://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-apply-and-get-in-to-graduate-school-in-science-mathematics-engineering-or-computer-science/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Matt Might's advice page here</a> provides some really useful tips of the kind you're looking for. The three of his tips that I found really useful for when I applied to graduate school two years ago (that weren't mentioned above) are as follows:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Consider <em>emailing</em> professors whose research interests you with a brief statement asking them about their work. As Might states on the linked page above,</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Tell them you were considering applying, and you're curious about the research opportunities available in the field. Comment intelligently on some research that faculty member has done. Attach any research you've done, and briefly summarize your research interests. That faculty member can then make sure your application receives a thorough review. Bear in mind that professors receive lots of form-letter spam from prospective students. It's painfully obvious when the email is form-letter spam, and most professors will summarily discard it. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>He suggests to email a month before the application deadline, but I emailed maybe 2-3 weeks before and it was still fine. He also has tips on how to send professors emails <a href=\"http://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-email/\" rel=\"nofollow\">here</a>.</p></li>\n<li><p>Consider writing your essays in <strong>LaTeX</strong>. You'd need to learn how to use it in graduate school anyway, and it makes you look more like a mathematician, so to speak.</p></li>\n<li><p>In your essays, put really important words in <strong>bold</strong>. I used this to emphasize the names of the faculty I was interested in working with, awards I had received, and my particular research interests (<strong>partial differential equations</strong> for example).</p></li>\n</ol>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/04 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16526",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6278/"
]
|
16,529 | <p>If a student needs a reference letter for graduate admissions or that sort of thing, some profs will ask the student to write a reference letter for themself before sending it off to the prof for minor edits and finalization. This seems to be a somewhat common practice given that some graduate schools ask for several letters of recommendation even when it is not reasonable for the student to have developed deep connections with that many professors, and that most professors are just too busy to write quality letters for all the students that ask them to.</p>
<p>Is it acceptable to write most of the reference letter and have the prof make minor edits? Do academic institutions frown upon this practice? Would it be considered an academic offense if a student wrote a reference letter for themselves and had a prof sign it?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16530,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
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"text": "<p>The question is clearly a grey-zone in that a range of scenarios exist from a self-written letter uncritically signed by someone and sent off to using the self-written text as a base for expansion and critical rewriting by the signee. The former devalues the whole idea of recommendation letters whereas the latter may not be too different from verbally asking about the purpose of the letter. I ask students to provide a text that contains information they think should be in the letter (based on, for example, what information is requested in the application) and then make the changes I see necessary to put my name on the letter. this means I add my valuation of their academic traits. I do this when students apply for money from minor funds but never if they apply for an academic job. A key aspect for me is that the letter will carry my name and I therefore need to stand behind it. </p>\n\n<p>The text I ask a student to provide provides me with details bout the project that I can consider and reject if I deem it not to be possible to support.</p>\n\n<p>Where this becomes problematic, to say the least, is if one would simply sign off on a letter, edits or not and don not even care what it contains. This will be contributing to inflation in the meaning of such letters. I happened to have a very strict advisor in this sense, and as graduate students we always considered whether or not it was useful to get a letter from (in this case ) him. But, the positive in the letter was a real positive. The problem was of course you never knew what sort of letters the \"competition\" provided in applications. Hence not taking letters of recommendation seriously causes inflation and reduces the worth of them. This is probably why personal references (in the case of job searches) who you contact over conference phone become more important.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16531,
"author": "David Ketcheson",
"author_id": 81,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81",
"pm_score": 4,
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"text": "<p>There are certainly different degrees of flagrancy here. I know some good professors who will ask for a short paragraph just to \"get the juices flowing\", but will then modify and expand it into a full letter. I don't think that is wrong, although I wouldn't do it myself.</p>\n\n<p>If the professor signs a letter written by the student without making any modifications, or if the final letter consists mostly of the student's words, I consider that fraudulent -- but it is primarily the professor's fraud. After all, the professor is the one signing his name.</p>\n\n<p>When I write letters, I require the student to give me all the relevant records as well as a description of what they think I should emphasize in the letter. Not a single word of their description would ever be pasted into the letter, and I don't use it as a starting point for the text. It is simply their opportunity to remind me of the impressive things they have done, which I will then write about if I agree.</p>\n\n<p>If I can't write a letter for them in my own words -- for whatever reason -- I will decline to write one at all.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16536,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<blockquote>\n<p>If a student needs a reference letter for graduate admissions or that sort of thing, some profs will ask the student to write a reference letter for themself before sending it off to the prof for minor edits and finalization.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Some profs lie, cheat and steal as well... occasionally in their professional life. Just because a practice is common does not make it right.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This seems to be a somewhat common practice given that some graduate schools ask for several letters of recommendation even when it is not reasonable for the student to have developed deep connections with that many professors, and that most professors are just too busy to write quality letters for all the students that ask them to.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It is certainly "reasonable" to ask for several letters of recommendation for graduate admissions. That many students will not have had substantial personal contact with faculty is something to keep in mind as one progresses through an undergraduate program. Also connections need not be especially deep in order to result in a good letter: if the writer can be confident that the student will succeed in the graduate program she is applying for, that is enough. Often a truly outstanding performance in a single course is sufficient.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Is it acceptable to write most of the reference letter and have the prof make minor edits?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>No, this is a form of plagiarism and academic fraud. What you pass off as your written word must actually be yours except where you explicitly document to the contrary.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Do academic institutions frown upon this practice?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Many of them do, yes.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Would it be considered an academic offense if a student wrote a reference letter for themselves and had a prof sign it?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It depends on the institution and probably the nation in question but in the United States: yes, it certainly could be. If I found out that this happened in an application that I read, I would at the very least throw out the entire letter; I would probably be inclined to dismiss the entire application. I would probably not contact the faculty member because in my view they are equally culpable (if not more so because they should know better), but I would be much more skeptical of letters coming from that person and even that institution in the future.</p>\n<hr />\n<p>The above takes a hard ethical line, as I am very frustrated with other answers to this and related questions that seem resigned that one must accept unethical behavior in this situation. But here is a different kind of answer:</p>\n<p>A graduate admissions letter that a student writes for herself is going to be a bad letter compared to a "real" letter written by a qualified faculty member. A graduate admissions letter is a communication between one mature academic and another: how would a 22 year-old young adult know how to write such a letter in a convincing way? Without having read hundreds or thousands of other similar letters, how would she know what the faculty want to hear? She wouldn't. If you write your own letter, you are at best forging an ineffectively written letter. Surely you deserve a better one?</p>\n<p>As for faculty being very busy: yes, we are. As for having lots of letters to write: yes, we do. But writing such letters is <strong>part of our job</strong>, so a faculty member who does not take time out to write a good letter is not a good faculty member, at least not in this aspect. Writing a good recommendation letter usually takes several hours and often more than one sitting.</p>\n<p>How can you help your professor write a good letter (on their own!):</p>\n<ol>\n<li><p>Give them <em>lots</em> of time to write the letter.</p>\n<p>Academics are busy, and our schedules are uneven. If you give me something to do six weeks in advance, then maybe in week three I'll find a spare afternoon and be able to do it. Leaving much less than a month for someone to write a letter is getting off on the wrong foot and already implicitly asking for less than the best possible letter.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Provide information about yourself rather than waiting for the faculty member to ask.</p>\n<p>You should not write the letter yourself, but you should certainly include all information that you think might be pertinent, and you are well within your rights to highlight certain information that you think might be especially pertinent. Preparing something like a CV but tailored for a good letter rather than a job would be ideal.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Do everything in your power to minimize the attendant clerical work in submitting the letter.</p>\n<p>Faculty members are busy and also, honestly, a bit lazy/snooty about routine work. If you tell me to mail a letter to a certain address, then there is going to be a whole day in which I print out the letter and don't get around to correctly putting it in an envelope. If the letters still need to be mailed (fewer and fewer do, and most but not all faculty members prefer to do things electronically), it would be wise to provide a self-addressed stamped envelope. If the submission is electronic, again try to ensure that the faculty member needs to do as little as possible. Ideally we get a website and a password, we enter those in, and we immediately upload the letter. Much more than that is asking for trouble. My own university makes faculty members jump through many more hoops to submit a letter, and this worries the hell out of me.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>3'. If your letter needs to be sent to multiple locations in a way which requires the faculty member to do something multiple times, see if you can figure out a way for the faculty member to submit the letter only once. E.g., perhaps there is an administrative assistant (AA) at your institution that will agree to receive the letter and take care of the nitty gritty of sending it to various places. You may have to ask for this, and you should ask, as nicely as you possibly can. Given the choice between getting a faculty member to do this clerical work and getting an AA to do it, you want the AA to do it: they are superior in every way. Always remember to be extra nice to the AA's: you want in fact to be nicer to them than the average person they have to interact with, as then they will notice and do better work for you than the average person they have to interact with. If you're asking an AA to do something which it is not absolutely clearly part of their job description, go ahead and ask but be extra extra nice: a small gift at the end is a classy move.</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li><p>Don't be shy about checking up on the faculty member to see whether the letter has been written.</p>\n<p>I frankly expect this, to the extent that if you ask me for a letter (including giving me all the information) and <em>never</em> check back again, I almost believe that you changed your mind and didn't really need it after all. It is totally acceptable to ask multiple times for the faculty to turn in the letter. I'm afraid that there has been "email alert inflation" in recent years, to the extent that if I only get one email about something, it feels almost optional. Really important things have a way of resulting in multiple emails coming at shorter and shorter intervals. Even to get me to write my grant reports they are not shy about sending several. You should always be nice about this – at any point the faculty member could in theory change their mind – but we are grateful if it is your mental energy which is being spent on making sure it gets done.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16541,
"author": "Steve Bennett",
"author_id": 11599,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11599",
"pm_score": 6,
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"text": "<p>I don't think this is a grey zone at all. Senior professionals in all domains, not just acadaemia, routinely sign letters that they did not pen:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Directors signing press releases written by communications managers</li>\n<li>Vice-chancellors signing letters to government officials written by deputy vice chancellors</li>\n<li>Academics submitting journal articles that were <em>written</em> by a co-author, although the research is shared.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>It's completely irrelevant who actually put the words together, unless there is a question over the copyright of the text - which there clearly isn't here. All that matters is that the person signing the letter stands by its content and takes responsibility for it.</p>\n<p>If you write a reference letter for yourself that is over the top, they won't sign it. No ethical issues here whatsoever.</p>\n<p>(I can't answer whether other institutions would frown on the practice for other reasons though.)</p>\n<hr />\n<p>Ok, some research.</p>\n<p>Guidance from p. 3 of <a href=\"https://www.hhmi.org/sites/default/files/Educational%20Materials/Lab%20Management/letter.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">"Writing a Letter of Recommendation"</a> (an addendum to <em>Making the Right Moves</em>, published by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Burroughs Wellcome Fund):</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Tip: Don’t ask the candidate to write a draft of the letter for you. Most heads of labs say this rarely saves time and sometimes leads to a weaker letter. It is better for the candidate to provide you with all the necessary information, from which you can then pick and choose as you write your letter.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>...and from p. 9, guidance for the applicant:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>You may be asked to write a draft of the letter. As mentioned on page 1, many heads of laboratories say this is not a good idea. However, if you are asked to do it, do it!</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>From <a href=\"https://www.petersons.com/blog/letter-of-recommendation-writing-one-yourself/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">"Letter of Recommendation: Writing One Yourself" on the Peterson's website</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>When requesting a letter of recommendation, don't be surprised if your instructor or supervisor hands the forms back to you and says, "Sure, why don't you go ahead and write the first draft yourself, and I'll revise it and sign at the bottom."</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>From <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20181125183303/http://studentbranding.com/writing-your-own-letter-of-recommendation/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">"Writing Your Own Letter of Recommendation" on StudentBranding.com</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>The “draft” that you provide to the recommender to sign shouldn’t be a draft at all – it should be a perfectly polished letter ready to be signed, sealed and delivered.</li>\n<li>Don’t be insulted when your supervisor decides to edit. They’ll want to apply their own language and voice to your content.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>[...]</p>\n<h4>In my experience as a supervisor . . .</h4>\n<p>I’ve been asked to write lots of letters of recommendations for students, but I’ve never felt strongly enough to throw the responsibility back at someone. That’s not to say I haven’t managed some phenomenal students; I just haven’t had someone come along who I think is up to the task. So, when he or she does come along, that person will really be top notch.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>From <a href=\"https://firsthand.co/blogs/job-search/how-to-write-your-own-recommendation-letter\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">"How to Write Your Own Recommendation Letter" on Firsthand.co</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>[...] While the standard practice is for references to write their own recommendation letters, it’s becoming increasingly common for time-strapped individuals to ask you to pen the first draft of a letter yourself. [...]</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>From <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20150906140114/http://businessmajors.about.com/od/recommendationletterfaq/f/WritOwnRecLet.htm\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">"Is it OK to Write My Own Letter of Recommendation?" in BusinessMajors.About.com's Recommendation Letter FAQ</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Question:</strong> Is it OK to Write My Own Letter of Recommendation?</p>\n<p><strong>Answer:</strong> The only time it is acceptable to write your own letter of recommendation is when the person you requested the letter from asks you to do it. Even then, it is important to be honest in the letter. Don't write anything the other person wouldn't have written. When you have finished, ask the person to look over the letter, verify the information, and sign. You should never forge someone else's signature.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I don't see much (any) evidence of any ethical quandaries in a professor requesting and submitting a letter of recommendation directly from the student. These examples aren't cherry-picked - they're the first few hits that came up when searching for phrases like "own letter of recommendation" or "letter of recommendation myself".</p>\n<p>In summary:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>Is it acceptable to write most of the reference letter and have the prof make minor edits?</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Clearly, yes - if requested to do so.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>Do academic institutions frown upon this practice?</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>No.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>Would it be considered an academic offense if a student wrote a reference letter for themselves and had a prof sign it?</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Hell no.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16563,
"author": "Irwin",
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"text": "<p>While I can believe that some unscrupulous professors would simply take the student's letter and sign it, the one prof that have asked me to write a reference letter have mostly done it as an exercise for me to evaluate myself. I wrote a letter and brought it to him and then he gave me feedback about the letter and what I said about it, and then showed me the entirely different letter that he ended up writing himself.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 55821,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
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"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In my field, because students often end up going many different directions (academia, industry, government, etc.) and occasionally come from different fields entirely, it's fairly common to ask for a first draft of the letter essentially to make sure that the tone and "message" of the letter reflects what the candidate wants.</p>\n<p>For example, one of my letter writers was a clinician, but the positions I was applying for had a large theoretical component. They could have written the type of letter they would for a medical student, but it would have been off-target, and likely would have caused the group reading the letter to go "Wait, what?" Instead, by drafting a letter for them, I could focus on the somewhat subtler point of the translational aspects of my work with them, which <em>was</em> relevant.</p>\n<p>The assumption is, no matter how well they know you, that <em>you</em> know you - and what you want/need - better than they do. It's especially helpful for pulling in things they don't know about. For example, do you have a particular publication that's in a journal that's a big deal for the people you're applying to, but less so for them?</p>\n<p>A draft allows for such a broad-strokes framework they can then work off of. I would be hesitant if they then don't put their own personal touches in.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 133133,
"author": "civilstat",
"author_id": 65935,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65935",
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"text": "<p>Even if you don't think it's unethical to write your own draft letter, it can be dangerous:</p>\n\n<p>Most such applications require several letters. If two or more letter-writers all ask you for a first draft, and you send them the same draft document, you don't know which parts they will choose to edit. It's possible that two writers will leave the same paragraph unedited, because they both stand by it... which means their letters will contain <em>identical wording</em>. This will raise serious red flags when the admissions committee notices!</p>\n\n<p>It's much safer to send the letter-writers your CV and perhaps a bulleted list of items or traits you'd like the writers to highlight.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/04 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16529",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11589/"
]
|
16,533 | <p>Throughout my life, I have always had some issues with what I, my peers and my teachers referred to colloquially as "paying attention". By this I mean a very specific ability to not make mistakes. Some very good examples are:</p>
<ul>
<li>A mathematically competent adult getting a calculus question wrong because of a simple arithmetic mistake, such as 5+3=15.</li>
<li>A well-prepared student getting a multiple choice question wrong because it was asking "which of the above are not true", but he mistakenly selected the ones that <em>are</em> true.</li>
<li>A skilled roboticist damaging an expensive circuit because he accidentally wired the components incorrectly.</li>
<li>Mixing up two terms which refer to different things, despite understanding very well the concept that either term refers to.</li>
<li>Typos and simple grammar errors.</li>
</ul>
<p>Note that I do not mean attention in the sense of being able to concentrate on and pay attention to a topic. I am specifically talking about the ability to not make mistakes (where mistakes are simple errors, which you know are wrong but do not notice at the time - <strong>not</strong> errors you committed because you lacked understanding of a key concept or because you didn't know any better).</p>
<p>While this "attention" obviously influences ability to do well on tests, it also affects my day-to-day work in 2 key ways:</p>
<ol>
<li>When performing an involved experiment, things such as mixing up samples, accidentally skipping a step of the procedure, forgetting to clearly label the samples and so on may ruin the whole experiment - either because the experiment no longer works when that simple mistake is made, or because the mistake has made the results uninterpretable.</li>
<li>When working with a tool that does not provide much automated error checking, I can end up producing data or programs that are incorrect due to some mistakes I made. It may take me a very long time to detect these bugs - and until I do, all conclusions I draw from my results are unreliable (and I am not aware of this!). Even after I discover the bug, the work done up to that point is still wasted.</li>
</ol>
<p><strong>So, my question: Is "attention" in this sense (ability to make few mistakes) a skill, or innate? Is there any way for me to improve this skill? Can it be trained, or is it an invariant quality of a person that they can only accept and accommodate?</strong></p>
<hr>
<p>Note that, for the "making mistakes when doing something complicated" problem, there exist the solutions of</p>
<ul>
<li>"break it down into simpler chunks which you are less likely to make mistakes with"</li>
<li>"restructure your complicated activity such that mistakes are rendered obvious".</li>
</ul>
<p>I'm not very interested in these sorts of solutions, because restructuring the task is not always possible, feasible and efficient. Some things simply cannot be made any less complicated than they are.</p>
<p>Also, while I welcome discussions of the physiology of this problem, it is very unlikely that my problem is ADD or a similar disorder. As the saying goes, to err is human - but some humans err more than others, and I am interested in understanding why (and more precisely, what strategies are available to make oneself err less).</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16537,
"author": "posdef",
"author_id": 5674,
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"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I was unfortunate enough to grow up in an academic upbringing (almost from pre-school up until university) that is a) purely competitive and b) relies solely on multiple-choice exams. </p>\n\n<p>We were drilled for years to try and avoid such small mistakes, since they prove to be extremely costly when millions of people take the same test. </p>\n\n<p>My only advice to you is to <strong>make a habit</strong> of checking your work, with <em>a clear set of mind</em>. I know it's not always possible (usually due to lack of time) but it's a <strong>very</strong> important skill to keep in mind that such mistakes do happen from time to time, and having some time at the end of a test/experiment <strong>entirely dedicated</strong> to checking your work is \"money\". </p>\n\n<p>To my knowledge there is no fail-safe way to avoid such mistakes. Humans aren't really designed (from an evolutionary point of view) to stay focused for extended periods of time, especially when implicit calculations occur. Which brings me to a \"corollary\" advice; <strong>make a habit</strong> of writing out all your thoughts/calculations <strong>explicitly</strong>. The benefit with that is that it allows you to immediately spot irregularities in your work when you go back and check your work later prior to the point-of-no-return (i.e. you hand in your exam, or turn on the electricity switch or whatever). </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16546,
"author": "Ondřej Černotík",
"author_id": 8164,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8164",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My experience comes from theoretical physics and I do not know how well that can apply to you but I will anyway post my experience.</p>\n\n<p>When dealing with calculations, one should evolve certain intuition for what can be right. For example, if you are calculating temperature of a gas in a problem from thermodynamics and you get a value of -20 kelvin, you must have done something wrong. Most of the time, it will be more difficult to know if one did an error in the calculation but one can still check if a given calculation scales with given parameters in an expected way or not. Such an approach is usually much faster than going through the whole calculation step by step (you just need to look at the result). On the other hand, it requires a good understanding of the problem you are solving (so that you know what you should expect) and some practice. Moreover, it can be used to find incorrect trends only; if you overlook a prefactor of two or three, you won't find it in this way.</p>\n\n<p>This approach also works with any numerical problems. By varying parameters of the calculation, you can check if you get the expected behaviour. The time requirements there might be worse, though; If you have a complicated calculation, running it several times with different parameters can be very time consuming.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 60246,
"author": "Captain Emacs",
"author_id": 45857,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45857",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I agree with the earlier answer, but I disagree with the questioner's non-acceptance of \"restructuring problems\". </p>\n\n<p>There are two main classes of checks I employ: plausibility checks mentioned above (which give you a high-level sanity check of what you could hope to expect) and self-imposing structural constraints which limit your ability to make undetected mistakes. </p>\n\n<p>You talk about tools with error checking. In programming, there are many ways of organising code in such a way that will make it difficult to fit together parts which should not go together. It is similar to putting in a special plug that will go only into the correct corresponding socket, and thus will avoid a short-circuit. </p>\n\n<p>In programming, apart from using strongly typed languages, for internal software, I am so paranoid that I litter my code with \"assert\" statements for any nontrivial assumption I make. This catches many bugs in the making. There are many tricks of that kind. When organising activities, developing a check list and following it, ideally with some kind of physical \"cursor\", can avoid mistakes. Generally, externalising your activity status can help, such as marking all terms you have operated on in a calculation.</p>\n\n<p>For highly critical processes, I usually create a parallel checking line, such as an independent line of computation or estimate. I'll give a more detailed concrete example of such a parallel check: </p>\n\n<p>I once had to use a formula from literature to estimate a quantity known from literature, but using my own experimental data. I didn't trust it, and did the recomputation from scratch, which took me two weeks of intense work. It paid off, though, as my computation resulted in a factor 2 discrepancy from the original publication. Then I plugged in my experimental data and everything fit beautifully with what was known till then. Had I tried the experimental data first, I probably would have wasted weeks on trying to uncover where the wrong factor 2 would have come from. </p>\n\n<p>Note that I intentionally did the theoretical computation first, without knowing that my experimental data would have given the factor 2 wrong value with the literature formula. This, to avoid temptation to fine tune the factor post hoc. However, in all likelihood, I would probably not have done that, either, and rather would have dropped the whole line of investigation as inconclusive. </p>\n\n<p>This checking procedure was very time-consuming, but the payoff was that it prevented sloppy work and erroneously dropping the hard-won experimental results as useless. I detest debugging after the fact, and generally find it easier to submit to a rigorous discipline to build up my results systematically. I specifically mention this strategy of mine, because the popular \"debugging after every substep\" (aka \"test-driven design\") may violate the questioner's constraints about how problems can be structured.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/04 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16533",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244/"
]
|
16,542 | <p>Inspired by the question <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16529/546">Is it acceptable to write a reference letter for yourself?</a></p>
<p>I have a related but somewhat different question: Given no choice, is it acceptable to write a recommendation letter for self?</p>
<p>This question is based on real cases. In non-English speaking countries, many professors don't know how to write good recommendation letters in English. The professor may know how to write papers in English in his field. But, when writing recommendation letters, he has limited vocabulary to write about his students. In other words, his English is not proficient. To make the matter worse, some professors may only be able to write simple English sentences. The professor may tell the student the contents of the letter in his native language and ask the student to translate it into English and then signs it.</p>
<p>The student may want somebody else to write the letter because he does not want the professor to do this unethical thing. But, the professor just happens to be his advisor (undergraduate or master). The student may want to suggest that his professor ask the professor's colleagues for help to write the letter. The professor may say no. Therefore, the student writes the recommendation letter for himself by translating the professor's draft in their native language into English.</p>
<p>Is it acceptable? If not, what should the student do?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16555,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Thanks for asking this question.</p>\n\n<p>In light of recent strong comments I have made on closely related issues elsewhere, let me say that I think that getting a letter <em>translated</em> from one language to another is an absolutely kosher academic practice. The classy thing to do would be to also include the original (e.g. how do you know that the readers will not speak that language?) and also indicate who the translator was.</p>\n\n<p>However, the translator should not be the student. That is a problem because:</p>\n\n<p>(i) It is an obvious conflict of interest.<br>\n(ii) Recommendation letters are often meant to be confidential, and this violates confidentiality. </p>\n\n<p>If you absolutely cannot get anyone other than the student to translate the letter then you should clearly indicate \"translated by the student\" and expect to have your honesty applauded and the letter largely dismissed.</p>\n\n<p>I must say that my heart opens up for a student who is living in a context where there is no qualified third party to translate a letter into English. I have been to academic departments in several non-anglophone countries and never encountered such a situation...but of course I have not been everywhere, nor to a random sampling, nor to any academic department in a \"third world\" country. That's a tough situation. Translating the letter yourself does not seem like the best answer.</p>\n\n<p>Let me also say the following: if you are a non-anglophone student whose English skills are far superior to those of the faculty at your university [and assuming that you are applying to anglophone graduate programs, of course!], then you might try to cultivate relationships with anglophone professors elsewhere in the world. Twenty years ago that would have been preposterous advice, but due to the proliferation of mathematical interaction via the internet, it seems very viable today. For instance there is a small but positive number of students with whom I have had sufficiently substantial interaction on MathOverflow and (more often) math.SE so that I would be glad to write them a strong recommendation letter. If you are a math student, you can always try writing to any professor and having mathematical interactions with them. They are not obligated to respond (I certainly do not always respond...), but they often do (I often do...) especially if you show them something truly promising. </p>\n\n<p>[At some point in the previous paragraph I forgot that I was supposed to be writing for a general academic audience rather than an academic <em>mathematical</em> audience. But since I am not sure how far my advice extends outside of mathematics, I will leave the m-word in.]</p>\n\n<p>Among US students applying to US graduate programs, it is increasingly frequent for at least one of three recommendation letters to come from the director of a summer undergraduate research experience (REU) than a faculty member at the university. Such letters are not necessarily the most penetrating -- they read very similarly, perhaps because of the implicit motivation to paint one's summer research experience in a positive light -- but they often get the job done, i.e., they lead to admissions.</p>\n\n<p>Let me also say that a letter of recommendation for graduate admission is not always the most important part of the application. If I get an application from a university that I have not heard of, and letters from faculty that I have not heard of and whose reputations I do not know, I can only take the letters so seriously no matter what they say. (And it is quite true that not everyone knows how to write a good \"American-style recommendation letter\". This does not necessarily get counted against the student; it just doesn't get counted for them.) If you are coming from an \"obscure program\" then your goal is to convince the readers of the applications that your training is equal to (or superior than!) the training that students in more familiar programs get. So it can be helpful to include very specific information about coursework: e.g. not just the title of the course and the course grade but the textbooks used. If you wrote a paper which does not make any research contribution but shows a solid understanding of graduate-level material, by all means include that as part of the application. Also be sure to take all the applicable standardized tests and do your best on them (and don't cheat on them!!). </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16565,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>No.</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>It is a breach of confidentiality.</li>\n<li>If the recipient of the letter is not informed that the student translated it, then that is (at the least) unethical.</li>\n<li>If the recipient of the letter <em>is</em> informed that the student translated it, then I see no immediate breach of ethics. But it's no longer a confidential opinion, may have been subtly altered by the student, and likely won't carry much weight as a result.</li>\n<li>In either case, how can the recipient be sure that the student's translation is true and unbiased?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The proper way forward, as I see it, would be to get the professor to write the letter himself and then get the letter professionally translated. Enclose copies of both the original letter and the translation, declaring that the letter has been translated into English (by either a professional translator or another professor).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16649,
"author": "WetlabStudent",
"author_id": 8101,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8101",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'd like to suggest instead of asking if you could self write the letter, send your advisor an email that says something like this. \"Thank you so much for agreeing to write this letter for me. We have done a lot of great work together over a long period of time and I'd like to highlight some things that you may wish to talk about in your letter (of course feel free to choose not to use any of these examples if you so desire): </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Example 1</li>\n<li>Example 2</li>\n<li>...</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This will allow your letter writer to at least have some phrases he/she could say in relatively good English, but you aren't actually writing the letter. The advisor will likely edit them and add more phrases, but at least it is a good starting point. This way, no confidentiality is breached because the advisor can still ignore all of your examples and you have no idea whether he/she chose to do so or not. I also like Pete Clark's idea of sending in an untranslated letter if it is in a language that can be easily translated in most English speaking institutions. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 158452,
"author": "Mox",
"author_id": 26785,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26785",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Send the original and a translated version, both electronic. Then the recipient can copy-past the content of the original letter into Google Translate and get something meaningful out to confirm the content of the translated letter.</p>\n<p>Slightly dodgier: write the recommendation letter yourself, in English, then translate that into your native language, have the professor read/sign that and the English version, and send both copies. Dodgier because you could be writing one thing in one language and a nicer version of the other, but I'll bet your recommender reads more English than they write.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/04 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16542",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/546/"
]
|
16,545 | <p>I am a postdoc at a university in the UK. Before I came here, a friend warned me that racism is common in the UK. True enough, during my first few months here, I have already received a couple of racist gestures and jeers, including one instance inside the university campus, possibly from a student. </p>
<p>What I would like to ask is this: what part can we play, as academics and students, to reduce such instances of racism in the academic settings? </p>
<hr>
<p>I come from Indonesia, and being Chinese, racism has been a part of my life. I have seen signs of improvement, but when I grew up, I still remember how it was. I am not complaining about UK, although I must admit that during my study in Norway, I experienced hardly any instances of racism or discrimination whatsoever. I am not asking which country is the worst. I share my experience just to show that it is real. I am not asking how to cope with racism, either. I am asking if there is anything I can do, or we can do, as academic community, to reduce instances of racism in academia, to make it a better environment for an increasingly international academic population. I am citing UK, because that's where I am now; it could have been another country. But wherever I am, I have a part to play in making it a better place. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16547,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
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"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Do unto others as you would have them do unto you</strong></p>\n\n<p>I believe that this is really the only thing that is in your control. </p>\n\n<p>As the popular song goes, \"<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RovF1zsDoeM\">Everybody's a Little Racist</a>\". :D</p>\n\n<p>You cannot change minds of people forcefully but you can only change the way in which you behave. </p>\n\n<p>Having said this, I don't think that I have faced any instance of racism inside the ivory tower in the US. Socially, yes. Academically, no.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16559,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Recognize that you may or may not have an implicit bias, and examine your own actions accordingly. This also goes for sexism. For example, rather than simply assuming \"I'm not a racist!\", sit down with something like the list of invited speakers for a conference and genuinely ask \"Did we include people of color? Did we include women? Were they more than tokens?\"</p>\n\n<p>Like all things in academia, reducing bias benefits from rigorous, systematic thought.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16560,
"author": "Simd",
"author_id": 37765,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/37765",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>One of the forms of racism that UK universities suffer from is that they use unfiltered student opinion to inform hiring as well as evaluation of academics. Academics with foreign accents or unfamiliar (or particularly formal) appearances that the students don't like then suffer. </p>\n\n<p>Interestingly this form of racism is widely understood and largely eliminated in the retail sector where no one would be allowed to choose the race of an employee based on the preferences of their customers. It is also a form of racism we could easily eliminate from academia if we honestly faced up to it.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>I think the point of my answer has been slightly lost (see comments below). The point is that the students are not asked \"Can you understand what the academic says clearly?\". They are merely asked to rate the academic using a number and are not required to give any reasoning. This hides any prejudices they have and allows the hiring/evaluation committee to use racial preferences without having explicitly to admit they are doing it. The committee just says \"They got low student evaluation scores\".</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16614,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are many things we can do, here are some that I have been doing as a foreign student in the US and now an edcuator. And hopefully it would help sparking some more new thoughts.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Aim for promoting diversity, NOT eliminating racism</strong></p>\n\n<p>Politically, you will have a lot more buy-in in organizing a \"diversity week\" than an \"anti-racism week.\" Racism is not something we can eradicate because it stems from the sense of superiority and difference in power, which will always exist in various degree. And in a personal level, given the same race/ethnicity, one person may think a certain treatment is totally fine while the other one may show a strong sign of being offended because the treatment promotes racism. You cannot win.</p>\n\n<p>In most cases, the more one tries very hard not to be a \"racist,\" the more difficult situations one can get into. A fun example: an African American colleague of mine went to watch <em>12 Years a Slave</em> with her husband and after the movie ended, a white couple came up and said, sorrowfully, \"You people really had it hard, didn't you?\" I found that attitude of \"We had treated your ancestors so badly that now I am going to make up for it,\" a bit of, well, racist.</p>\n\n<p>Instead, promote diversity. Diversity is less \"silo,\" it incorporates many other aspects like religions, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities, etc. What's more, it gives us some goal to achieve, something to build instead of some infinite amount of pests to destroy. This new goal will certainly improve your mental health and open up a lot more possibilities in improving the situation.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Promote critical thinking</strong></p>\n\n<p>Embrace critical thinking in both study and teaching. A lot of racism-related phenomena wouldn't pass the most fundamental critical evaluations. Equipping students with this invaluable skill will help them dissect the situation with higher clarity and certainty. Racism itself is very biasing, to the extent that it's nearly hilarious. For instance, if a member of Purple race commits an atrocious crime, the members of Green race tend to attribute the blame to the whole Purple race. While among the Purple race they tend to attribute the blame to the very criminal as a \"bad seed,\" outlier, or isolated incidence. A simple thinking exercise on situations like this one opens up discussion among students quite well.</p>\n\n<p>An additional benefit of being able to critically think on your feet is that you can instantly downgrade an intense racism argument to a logic-based, evidence-based discussion, pointing out the pitfall in their thought process rather than pointing out that they are a racist.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Know your history well, and be ready to listen to other's history</strong></p>\n\n<p>I found myself somehow have become the go-to person when someone has questions about my country. It is, to some degree, a polymorphic racism. Just because some girl is born in Japan doesn't mean she can dance like a geisha, just because some guy is from China doesn't mean he can recite all the characters in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. However, I do take this consultant role seriously, and try my best to be an ambassador. I tell them the good, the bad, and the disgusting, no reservation.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Don't check your identity tags too soon</strong></p>\n\n<p>This is somewhat similar to that poor answer with like 10 down votes. Sorry to say that but I do agree with that answer to a certain extent. I have never sorted out a clear list of identities for myself. It's not like I am in denial, my identities are always somewhere but I don't tend to flaunt them right at the beginning of an interaction. I feel that in a lot of the times, conflicts happen because we decided that the action or treatment has clashed with our identity a little bit too soon: You said something against penguins, and I am a penguin, so I have to be upset now and punch you in the face. I would, instead, opt for understanding where they come from first. If the situation is non-hostile, I would proceed to explain (with critical thinking and evidence) that it's not always the case, and move on. You can correct the information, you can never correct a person's attitude, they have to do that bit by themselves.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Find an optimal environment</strong></p>\n\n<p>Lastly, it's important that you are promoting diversity in a place that you feel reasonably tolerable and accepting. This whole process of achieving understanding is going to be very long, and it's not worth risking your happiness or even life just because you want to make a statement in a hostile place. In conclusion, don't cave in, be present and remind others of our existence. They don't need to like us, but they do need to know we are here to stay, with a strong will.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/04 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16545",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10936/"
]
|
16,552 | <p>I am in the process of leaving my PhD programme in life sciences at a top university in the UK. A PhD is simply not for me and I find the work/life balance to be intolerable; in addition, my PhD so far has included an industrial placement at a Fortune 500 company that was very eye opening and enjoyable. I am looking to leave academia permanently and apply for graduate schemes.</p>
<p>My question is whether it is better to leave the fact that I quit a PhD off my CV, or to have the failed PhD / MPhil on there, or to mask it as '18 months of lab experience' or something similar. Is it possible to make the fact I left a PhD sound good?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16554,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I guess it depends on the reason for leaving, e.g. I know several people who did not finish their PhD because</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>they got good jobs just before finishing the PhD. One may say that their next employers hired them just before they got into the official postdoc market.<br>\n(The offers were clearly based also on the expertise they gained during their work at the PhD project) </li>\n<li>the company they founded as side job (same profession) went well so they more or less gradually switched over to work at that full time. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Both are IMHO perfectly good reasons for not finishing the PhD.</p>\n\n<p>So e.g. if based on your experience at IBM you end up as their employee IMHO that is a perfectly good and also nice looking explanation for leaving the PhD. </p>\n\n<p>But I'd not leave the PhD formally before the next working contract starts - this way the CV will not have a gap. And after all, even if you don't like the PhD work that much, I think it is better to go on with that than to be unemployed: quitting PhD followed by being unemployed may leave a completely different impression from the situations I described above. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16564,
"author": "Irwin",
"author_id": 5944,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5944",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In my discipline (computer science), almost all of the people I know who declined to finish the Ph.D kept it listed on their professional profiles with a \"not complete\" note under it.</p>\n\n<p>They did list their experience though under \"work experience\", as \"Research assistant\" or similar and continue to keep their accomplishments listed.</p>\n\n<p>Overall, I think keeping it there, even if unfinished, is better than having a long gap of 2-3 years, because big gaps of nothing are going to look worse than employment in that period that you decided (for varying reasons) to not complete. You can explain away \"I decided not to do a Ph.D\" in a phone screen but it's harder to tell someone \"Well, I actually tried to get a Ph.D but didn't finish, sorry I didn't list it on my resume\".</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16567,
"author": "Lev Reyzin",
"author_id": 10,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My suggestion:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If you earned a degree along the way, certainly list that in the\neducation section. </li>\n<li>If you were a research assistant, put that in\nyour work experience.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I wouldn't add \"failed PhD\" or \"or incomplete\" or anything.</p>\n\n<p>Nobody will judge you for quitting a Ph.D. program if you decided you don't want to do research.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16568,
"author": "Tyler",
"author_id": 6292,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6292",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you're no longer interested in working in academia or research, having a PhD is often a strike <em>against</em> you in a job search. I regularly encounter negative bias against a PhD in professional and social situations. So unless you're applying for a job in a field that requires, or at least explicitly values PhD training, I'd list your 18 months as 'lab experience' of some kind. You don't want a gap on your CV, but you also don't want to trigger the negativity that too many people associate with the term \"PhD\".</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 30295,
"author": "smci",
"author_id": 12050,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12050",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here is my answer to <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30254/how-to-make-leaving-a-phd-program-seem-like-a-positive-thing-on-a-resume\">this similar question</a>, where the OP was leaving after 4 years not 18 months. 4 years is more into ABD territory so I think it was wrongly marked as duplicate. Anyway:</p>\n\n<p>Ok, this touches on multiple points:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>people who leave before completing PhDs (so-called 'PhD dropouts', which is <em>not</em> a disparaging term) tend to be either significantly better or worse than average PhD students (depending whether the cause was financial, lack of motivation, immaturity, departmental politics, failure to define topic, realizing your field or topic was not worth it/dead/useless/bad career prospects, or (shock horror!) a better opportunity arriving).</li>\n<li>your job is to help the reader understand which one you are</li>\n<li>but as you figured, the resume is not the place to overexplain. You also have the cover letter, the phonescreen, and the interview for that. So be succinct and upbeat, list specific skills, tasks completed.</li>\n<li>\"I figure that the 4 years of MA/PhD work on research projects gives me skills that are valid to most employers\". But you still need to list them succinctly. (You might have multiple resumes for different employers: one for publishers, one for CS, one for finance, etc etc.) Show us a sample of what you're saying? Also, state specific accomplishments or tangible results you delivered, especially since you're leaving. Any publications? or at least research reports? After four years, I'd expect several. If you list no accomplishments and no publications, then your resume will rightly get propelled into the trashcan/shredder at Mach 10.0</li>\n<li>\"All of my dissertation research was funded by a fellowship, and all of my various other research projects (where I wasn't principal investigator) were the result of competitions funded by N grants totaling $X. I have always designed my own research projects\". That's gold-dust. Authoring and winning grant proposals is highly valued.</li>\n<li>\"I guess I should qualify this by mentioning that my PhD studies were in the social sciences, and there seems to be a bit more leeway in terms of describing what we do.\" This is a cultural US vs European difference. Hence you see very different opinions <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30254/how-to-make-leaving-a-phd-program-seem-like-a-positive-thing-on-a-resume\">in responses to that question</a>. Use whatever job description is correct in your country. Just don't get caught obfuscating that you were an MA/PhD research student.</li>\n<li>Will you list your supervisor(s) as references? If yes, will they generally corroborate what you say? If no, why not, and who will you use?</li>\n</ul>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/04 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16552",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
16,575 | <p>In Australia we follow something known as the ERA ranking, when submitting papers to journals and conferences. My lab stresses publication in venues which are graded as only A or A(star), as per this system ( ERA-A increases possibilities of funding). In the area of biomedical engineering there is a specific conference which I found is ranked as ERA-A. Not a lot of international biomedical conferences are ERA A-ranked. </p>
<p>The problem is I found a lot of negative reviews about the conference organizers online and therefore am skeptical about sending my paper there. Yet, I also know that an ERA-A rank publication very early in my doctoral program can make a good impact on the committee, when my doctoral assessment review comes up later this year. Moreover, this will release some pressure/tension in terms of the doctoral review and I could go on to work on larger targets without worrying about the doctoral assessment ( since it would be considered good progress if I can show an ERA-A paper in the first year of my program). </p>
<p>However much I try, I have failed to understand how this conference gets a top australian rank, when there are so many negative things said online about these conference organizers. One possibility, is that this particular conference is the only one which may be famous. The other is a lot australian academics might have been ranking it as ERA-A. But if so, why only Australia? What does the rest of the world say? The third possibility is that the online reviews are dubious claims made to malign the organisation.</p>
<p>How to evaluate the quality of a conference like this?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16827,
"author": "pie11",
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"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>After taking a look at some of the feedback online, I would say your third possibility is correct. The websites speaking against IASTED sound as if they were all created by the same person/people, and they appear to be using keyword spamming to defame IASTED conferences. Actually, the malicious websites I saw were attacking not only IASTED, but the IEEE, WORLDCOMP, and several other major conferences.</p>\n\n<p>The BioMed series is in its eleventh year, and is technically cosponsored by the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. In fact, the IEEE EMB has been involved in many of the past iterations as well. Just a quick look at the information from last year’s conference (<a href=\"http://www.iasted.org/conferences/pastinfo-791.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.iasted.org/conferences/pastinfo-791.html</a>) shows established speakers from credible universities, including the chair, Prof. Aldo Boccaccini. I have colleagues who have worked on IASTED conferences, and they will attest to the double-blind peer review and plagiarism checks in place.</p>\n\n<p>I would trust the ERA rating; agencies like this are very careful as to which conferences they will endorse. Hope that helps!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21001,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 2,
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"text": "<p>You shouldn't take the ERA rankings too seriously. Ranking ten of thousands of journals was an enormous job, and they did amazingly well given the size of the task. However, in the process they made a few questionable judgment calls and every once in a while an <a href=\"http://symomega.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/the-arc-the-era-and-the-ejc/\" rel=\"nofollow\">outright mistake</a>. </p>\n\n<p>For example, in my field of mathematics, the list of A-rated journals looks rather good overall, but there are a few surprises and at least one journal I am convinced doesn't remotely deserve an A (Fuzzy Sets and Systems).</p>\n\n<p>I'd recommend asking your advisor or other faculty members for their opinion about the IASTED biomedical engineering conference (rather than relying on opinions from random people on the internet). If they are familiar with it, then they should have an opinion about whether the ERA A rating is well deserved. If they aren't familiar with it, then that is itself a bad sign. Not being familiar with a C journal in your specialty is understandable, but not being familiar with a genuine A journal would be more surprising.</p>\n\n<p>You can also investigate it yourself. Have they published any papers you've read or seen cited? Can you find any papers in their proceedings that impress or excite you? If so, then at least your paper would be in good company. If not, then that's another bad sign.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/05 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16575",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7142/"
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|
16,582 | <p>Looking around online, there are some statistics that foretell doom for PhD students; some examples of this:</p>
<ul>
<li>the number of faculty to retire in the next 10 years is at the lowest in 30 years.</li>
<li>the number of PhDs awarded is around 100,000, while the number of professor positions open is around 16,000.</li>
<li>there has been approximately 40% budget cut for math between 2008-2011 (but there was a hiring freeze put on most state universities in 2009-2010, if I remember correctly, so this may not be entirely accurate).</li>
</ul>
<p>For more statistics, see this:
<a href="http://marccortez.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/phd-job-crisis-640x4627.gif" rel="nofollow">http://marccortez.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/phd-job-crisis-640x4627.gif</a>
The creator of this argues that the number of grad students and postdocs is way too high, while the number of professors is on the decline.</p>
<p>I think that this is not true for math. Postdocs are considered to be a mandatory part in our career (and postdoc positions are quite competitive!), and while many people do a second postdoc, I rarely see people with more than two postdoc experiences. Also, there aren't so many adjunct positions; some postdoc positions are called adjuncts, but these usually expire in 1-3 years. So I would like to know the real statistics. In particular, I want to know these figures for last year (percentages with respect to the number of PhDs will also do):</p>
<ul>
<li>the number of PhDs awarded (all figures from here onwards applying just to the US)</li>
<li>the number of PhDs hired as postdocs at PhD-producing institutions</li>
<li>the number of PhDs hired as tenure-track professors at liberal arts colleges</li>
<li>the number of postdocs finishing</li>
<li>the number of postdocs hired as tenure-track professors at PhD-producing institutions</li>
<li>the number of postdocs hired as tenure-track professors at liberal arts colleges</li>
<li>the number of postdocs hired as postdocs at PhD-producing institutions</li>
</ul>
<p>To summarize, I would like to know how harsh the funneling process is in math; I know from experience that many grad students leave academia without obtaining a job as a postdoc. Is the same true of postdocs? How about the tenure-track level?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16583,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
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"text": "<p>Almost certainly the best information you'll find is from the AMS Annual Survey: <a href=\"http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/annual-survey\">http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/annual-survey</a>. I don't know that it will answer all your questions (in particular, it's mostly focused on newly graduating Ph.D.'s; it doesn't track where people end up after postdocs), but if the data isn't in there, probably nobody has it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16619,
"author": "David Ketcheson",
"author_id": 81,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This isn't an answer, but it's too lengthy to fit in the margin...</p>\n\n<p>I'm going to adopt a deliberately contrarian point of view here and criticize the assumptions underlying the question from a quantitative perspective. Since we're both mathematicians, I hope you won't mind.</p>\n\n<p>Just to make the point, you might go a step further back and compare the ratio</p>\n\n<p>(# of Master's graduates each year)/(# of admitted Doctoral students each year)</p>\n\n<p>to see how \"harsh\" the funneling process is at that step. But that's clearly ludicrous, since the majority of students getting master's degrees don't want to get a Ph.D.</p>\n\n<p>I think the analysis you're proposing has the same problem. A very large fraction of graduating Ph.D.'s don't want a university post-doc position. Many of them want industry jobs -- a mathematician friend of mine from grad school chose a position at Google over academic opportunities and is very happy. Others take government research jobs -- in applied math, named DOE lab post-docs can be much more competitive than university post-docs.</p>\n\n<p>The other big issue is that the academic job market is a global one, and increasingly so with each new year. Very many of the positions within the US are filled by foreigners, and very many individuals from the US happily take jobs in other countries. I know one individual who was offered an NSF post-doc <em>and</em> a named term assistant professorship at a top-three US university in his field, but turned them both down (along with multiple other offers) to take his dream job -- outside of the US. Your analysis would count all of these people as failure stories.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 44989,
"author": "Kimball",
"author_id": 19607,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19607",
"pm_score": 1,
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"text": "<p>To add to Ben Webster's answer, the most recent Notices of the AMS issue has a <a href=\"http://www.ams.org/notices/201505/rnoti-p533.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">Report on Academic Recruitment and Hiring</a>. It doesn't exactly answer your questions either, but it provides information on how many tenure-track versus non-tenure-track positions were listed and filled, which I believe is not in the Annual Survey (last I checked, this does tell you how many new PhDs get hired as postdocs versus tenure-tracks). </p>\n\n<p>Putting this data together with what's in the Annual Survey suggests that if you get a PhD in math, you have a good chance of getting an academic job (immediate from the Annual Survey), and eventually if not immediately a tenure-track job. (Note these surveys don't tell you how many tenure-track positions are filled by foreign candidates or new PhDs, or how many US PhDs get permanent foreign academic positions--so there's not enough information to get precise estimates for some of the things you asked about, but I think enough to be comforting.) </p>\n"
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| 2014/02/05 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16582",
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16,585 | <p>I want to cite a paper which was published online (Open Access) in 2012 and later published in a printed journal issue in 2013. Which publication year should be used in the citation?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16587,
"author": "DCTLib",
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"text": "<p>As StrongBad said, the general rule is to follow the guidelines outlines by the publication venue.</p>\n\n<p>If there is none, then as a rule of thumb, <strong>cite the journal version</strong>. The reason depends on the type of online publication:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>When the paper was an early access version of the later journal paper and\nthus identical, the journal paper in some sense replace the online access\nversion.</li>\n<li>When the 2012 paper was posted at arXiv.org or the like, then the later\njournal version went through peer reviewing, whereas the earlier version did\nnot. So the journal version can easily be more mature.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Note that one role of citations is to assign academic credit. Credit towards a paper that appeared in a reputable journal counts a bit more, so citing the journal version is also a courtesy to the author(s).</p>\n\n<p>If for some reason, for your paper, it is of importance who had an idea first (e.g., when you give a chronological overview of related work), you can just add a note like \"An earlier version of the paper appeared in XYZ in 2012\" to the bibliography entry of the journal version to make that clear. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16615,
"author": "yo'",
"author_id": 1471,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1471",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Each article, to be properly indexed, is assigned some <strong>minimum information:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Journal name given in a correct way. However, this can be 3 of more different things for one journal, e.g. \"JAir\" = \"J Aircraft\" = \"Journal Aircraft\" (randomly chosen journal that has 3 proper names); you can choose any, but usually the middle form is prefered (i.e., basic abbreviations, but not the shortest ones, those are known as \"astro. abbrv.\")</p></li>\n<li><p>Journal volume. Starts at one when the journal is introduced, and counts one by one in a way that is basically decided by the publisher, with some rules.</p></li>\n<li><p>(a) Article's first page, or (b) in cases of per-article page numbering, article code, or (c) in cases of per-issue/number page numbering, number of the issue in the volume (usually called just \"number\") and the article's firts page.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>There are two more bits of information that are <strong>usually required:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>At least one author's name</p></li>\n<li><p>Publication year</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>And there is one more thing that is more then welcome, but <strong>not necessary:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Article's title.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Every volume is published throughout only one calendar year (but multiple volumes can be published in the same year). <strong>The year of the publication of the article is the year of the volume in which it appeared.</strong> No matter if it appeared as \"e-first\" one year before, or if it appeared on arXiv 2 years before, or whatever.</p>\n\n<p>However, if you cite a paper that has appeared as an e-first on the journal's webpage, but has no volume assigned yet, you cite it as <em>\"To appear in Journal of Beer Drinking, 2013\"</em>, even if it's obvious now that it won't be in a volume in year 2013 (since it's already 2014 and the previous volumes are closed). In this case, it's necessary to provide more information to make the citation unique: advised is to provide the article title, which is usually unique in a reasonable time scope.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37534,
"author": "Richard",
"author_id": 28395,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28395",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You should cite the final article where possible. If the article is online but not yet in print, you should cite the DOI which is a permanent resource and will be updated by the publisher when the print volume is announced, so anyone linking to the online version will get the published version. I have noticed some journals taking up to 9 months to assign a print volume to an epub so the DOI is the only sure way to ensure that epub and print citations match up in the end.</p>\n"
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16,586 | <p>I work at a university at an Information Technology department. My colleagues claim we are 'computer scientists'. However, from what I observed, most of our work is pure implementation and often follows the Engineering Method, not the Scientific Method (see this <a href="http://www.sciencebuddies.org/engineering-design-process/engineering-design-compare-scientific-method.shtml">page</a>). What is the proper scientific output for research on a real life problem (how to transform a data model encoded in XML Schema into a useful web form for entering/editing data) that involves implementation of a new software (a new data model annotation language and a web form generator software)? Is the resulting software a scientific or an engineering result? What would constitute a proper scientific result?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16588,
"author": "xLeitix",
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"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Coming from a similar research area myself, I can say that in practice the borders between <strong>science</strong> and <strong>engineering</strong> are often not clear-cut in applied computer science. </p>\n\n<p>That being said, usually, the starting point of our research is indeed a hypothesis, but more of the style <em>it is possible to build a system that does X using Y in order to achieve Z.</em> (and, consequently, <em>this new way is better in some meaningful regards than the traditional way of doing it via X^</em>*). Naturally, the way to falsify such an hypothesis is to set out and do a proof-of-concept, optimally in a realistic setting, and compare it against the traditional way.</p>\n\n<p>Note that the proof-of-concept implementation here is <strong>not the scientific output</strong>. It is a vehicle for scientific validation. The <strong>scientific output is the knowledge that X can indeed be usefully done via Y to achieve Z</strong>. Maybe, the proof-of-concept can be improved into an open source tool or product (either by the researchers directly or by partner companies), but this <strong>productization</strong> is not science anymore - this is pure engineering (we know that it can be done, but now it needs to be done <strong>properly</strong>, which takes time, effort, and domain knowledge - all things that researchers often don't have in spades).</p>\n\n<p>As such, to answer your question:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is the resulting software a scientific or an engineering result?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It is not the scientific result, but it was used to validate the scientific result. It may be considered an engineering result (depending on the quality of the proof-of-concept).</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What would constitute a proper scientific result?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I strongly dislike the term <em>proper</em> in this context, as it implies an ordering of value between science and engineering.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16605,
"author": "Zai",
"author_id": 4318,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4318",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It depends on what area of Computer Science you're in. However, I think where things are getting confused for you may be in what you do with the thing that you built.</p>\n\n<p>In a \"scientific\" perspective, particularly for Computer Science, the key lies in explaining why. After building the system, your goal is not only to have accomplished the construction but to either:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Compare it with existing solutions to \"prove\" your unstated hypothesis that your system is better while explaining -why/what makes- it better; or </li>\n<li>If no solution exists, tie your solution in with previous work and explain not only how it solves this problem, but why it works.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>If what you do is you build a solution to a problem and stop there, without trying to explain the why or testing it against the often unstated hypothesis of \"my approach will be better than other approaches\", then that may be what you're referring to as an engineering method. </p>\n\n<p>The \"science\" or \"research\" method that you seem to be looking for is in the aftermath of building the system and seeking to add to the theoretical knowledge of the field by testing and explaining why your approach is faster/more efficient/easier to use/etc.</p>\n\n<p>This is, of course, in addition to the big two factors of reliability (is it reproduceable?) and validity (is this a problem people care about, does this move the field forward, are you using the correct measures to prove your hypothesis, etc.).</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/05 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16586",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11646/"
]
|
16,598 | <p>I have a habit of using two styles of in-text citation: with and without author name(s). The two examples below describe what I mean: (# here represents a bibliography index)</p>
<p>"...which is in agreement with simulations presented in <strong>Lastname et al. [#]</strong>."</p>
<p>and just</p>
<p>"...the X method <strong>[#]</strong> was here used to model..."</p>
<p>(in the latter case, reference # might contain an in-depth description of the X method).</p>
<p>I mix these styles freely, depending on what I deem to be appropriate in each individual case. Am I correct to do this or would you consider it to be bad style?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16599,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is absolutely nothing wrong with using different sentence patterns to introduce a citation. In fact, it gets quite tedious to read the same sentence structure over and over again. So, feel free, as you suggested, to use the style which is most appropriate for a given need in a given situation. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16600,
"author": "J. Zimmerman",
"author_id": 7921,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7921",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>To your title question</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Is consistency in citation style important?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><strong>Yes!</strong></p>\n<p>On first reading this, it sounded as though you were planning to mix two citation styles such as APA and Chicago. Obviously, this would be unacceptable.</p>\n<p><em><strong>However</strong></em>, in your example, you are using two entirely compatible forms for your in-text citations, which is perfectly acceptable. I would strongly prefer this over the awkward and boring alternative of using exactly the same form for every citation. Continue to use the form that is most appropriate for the situation. Variety is acceptable, even commendable, as long as you are not violating the standards for your documentation style.</p>\n<p><strong>Edit</strong>: To clarify the point above; mixing the <em>in-text</em> citation style <strong>Lastname et al. [#]</strong> and <strong>[#]</strong> is OK! What is not OK is using two separate documentation styles, for example, also using the in-text citation <strong>(Last name, year, page)</strong>, which is proper is APA documentation style, but not in Chicago documentation style!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16602,
"author": "Mangara",
"author_id": 8185,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8185",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes, this is fine, as long as you make sure that the names of the authors are part of the sentence.</p>\n\n<p>In general, mixing citation styles is not recommended. However, your examples both reference the citations in the same way: <strong>[#]</strong>. The other thing you should keep in mind is that sentences should still make perfect sense if all citations are omitted. To this end, I would change your first example to</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>\"...which is in agreement with simulations presented <strong>by</strong> Lastname et al. [#].\"</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/05 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16598",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11656/"
]
|
16,610 | <p>The normal case is that students should obtain a recommendation letter for graduate school from the professor under whom the student has performed research.</p>
<p>Currently, I am taking a course conducted by a field-famous professor, from whom I wish to obtain a recommendation letter for my grad school application. However, due to some reasons, <strong>I am not able to do research under him, which implies that our only connection is that course that I am currently taking.</strong></p>
<p>If so, maybe one year later, he may refuse to write me a letter, because he does not know me well, or even has forgotten me. Even if he is willing to write me a letter, being not familiar with me, he may not be able to write a decent letter for me.</p>
<p>(By "decent", I mean a letter that actually can help. I know that as long as he is willing to write me one, he can simply say "the student obtained a good grade from my course". I don't think this kind of letter will actually help, IMHO.)</p>
<p>So besides obtaining a good grade for this course and frequently asking valuable questions, <strong>what can I do to impress him so that I can obtain a decent recommendation letter for my future grad school application? How to make him understand me better?</strong></p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16611,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Visit the professor and explain your plans and your wish to have him provide a letter in a brief but structured way. Slip in some of your (positive) thoughts concerning his course and, if you were inspired by it, the importance of the course for your current interest. I do not think you can do more. If the person is not interested, I doubt you can do anything to change the view that would not be annoying in the end. It is possible the person has forgotten you but if you stood out even a little in the class, my bet would be the opposite. As I see it you only risk getting a no, and not much could be done to change that.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16612,
"author": "Mohamed Khamis",
"author_id": 703,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/703",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would suggest the following, but it all depends on the situation at your university, how much time and effort you are willing to exert for this, and how complicated are the reasons that make you unable to do research under him. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Unpaid research</strong>: Suggest to do some work under his supervision without a return (without being paid)</li>\n<li><strong>Teaching Assistantship</strong>: Try to be his teaching assistant in one of his courses, this will open a lot of doors for opportunities to approach him and give him a good impression about you.</li>\n<li><strong>Approach his students</strong>: If he has PhD students try to approach them and suggest helping out in something just for the sake of learning, by time you'll get in close contact with your guy.</li>\n<li><strong>Show off</strong>: the basic approach of all, drop at his office and brag about yourself, and ask him for a recommendation letter based on your relation during the course and your grades. Although I don't see this very meaningful, but I see some recommendation letters where the referees say how much the student has learnt during an internship that the referee had nothing to do with.. But it works and some universities accept such recommendation letters.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 98771,
"author": "James Peng Liao",
"author_id": 38854,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/38854",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is very good to let the recommendation to show you are very good at learning new things.\nAlthough it is not directly upvote your research skills, the strong learning ability helps find new research topics, and master the research-required skills fast.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/05 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16610",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8079/"
]
|
16,632 | <p>I'm a non-EU citizen, currently doing a postdoc in mathematics in Europe, and I'm thinking of doing a habilitation. Since my google search didn't yield much, I'd appreciate if you could please answer my following questions regarding habilitation:</p>
<p>1) If I understand correctly, habilitation is the highest academic degree you can receive and people do it for getting a permanent academic position in Europe.
How many years or how much/many publication does it normally take to obtain a habilitation degree?</p>
<p>2) Since you could be admitted as a PhD candidate, but not as a 'habilitation candidate' (but instead, say, as a postdoc) can you publish in your postdoc and write the paper(s) as a book and submit it for the defense of habilitation?</p>
<p>3) Suppose you do a one year postdoc in university A, and a second in university B, can you apply to university B for habilitation? How about university A?</p>
<p>4) If you do your PhD and postdoc in unrelated areas, or say even if you switch from pure to applied math, would that be a problem for getting the degree?</p>
<p>5) (Kind of vague question, somewhat opinion-based too) How much does the chance of getting a European tenure increase if you do a successful habilitation?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16638,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm starting this by answering some questions for <strong>Germany</strong>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>1) people do it for getting a permanent academic position in Europe.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Note that even being a professor does not imply a permanent position:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>junior professorships run 6 years, and according to <a href=\"http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juniorprofessur\">Wikipedia</a> only 8% of the junior professorships can be considered proper tenure track (applying for a permanent position at the same university without a public job advertisement), for another 4-10% of the junior professorships it is possible to apply for a permanent position at the same university, the remaining majority will not be considered for a permanent position.<br>\n\"Hausberufungen\" (\"in house appointments\" = offering the professorship to someone from the same university) are somewhere between extremely uncommon (having a fishy taste) and forbidden. </p></li>\n<li><p>Also regular professors can have a probation period before getting a permanent position.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How many years or how much/many publication does it normally take to obtain a habilitation degree?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>A junior professorship is 6 years and is supposed to be an equivalent alternative to the habilitation, I think that gives a first rough estimate. Besides, I'd recommend that you look into habilitations in your field: they are published in the respecive university libraries and nowadays usually available electronically. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>2) Since you could be admitted as a PhD candidate, but not as a 'habilitation candidate' (but instead, say, as a postdoc) can you publish in your postdoc and write the paper(s) as a book and submit it for the defense of habilitation?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Cumulative habilitations are very common. Again, look at some in your field.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>3) Suppose you do a one year postdoc in university A, and a second in university B, can you apply to university B for habilitation? How about university A?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No idea. But the habilitation is supposed to show that you can teach the whole field and one distinguishing criterion (from dissertation) is that also the presented research must cover some breadth. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>4) If you do your PhD and postdoc in unrelated areas, or say even if you switch from pure to applied math, would that be a problem for getting the degree?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Not sure, but as a habilitation in maths means that you are allowed to teach all kinds of maths I guess that would not be a problem. I know physicists and engineers who habilitated in chemistry (though doing the scientific work in a chemical institute). </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>5) How much does the chance of getting a European tenure increase if you do a successful habilitation?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Well, in practice in order to become a professor you either need a habilitation or become junior professor (for 6 years) and then successfully apply for a professorship. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>number of habilitations / year is about 1600. Approximately 650 professors are pensioned / year, so <a href=\"http://www.sueddeutsche.de/bildung/weniger-habilitationen-in-deutschland-keine-lust-auf-dicke-waelzer-1.1387701\">approximately 1/3 of the people who habilitate actually become professor</a><br>\nUpdate for maths & natural sciences: ca. 160 profs pensioned / ca. 260 habilitations per year => would correspond roughly to a 60 % chance.</p></li>\n<li><p>roughly 3% (total: 1439) of all professors (43 862) are junior professors, that is aproximately 240 new per year.<br>\nMaths & natural sciences: 305 of 7500 = 4%, corresponding to ca. 50 / year.</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juniorprofessur\">Wikipedia</a> says that somewher between 1/3 and 2/3 of the junior professors work at their habilitation despite being junior professors.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/BildungForschungKultur/Hochschulen/PersonalHochschulen.html\">Here's what the Statistische Bundesamt says about these subjects.</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17060,
"author": "just-learning",
"author_id": 10483,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10483",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As for France, you should rather google for the whole name (\"habilitation à diriger des recherches\") and look e.g. here for starters: </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation_universitaire\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation_universitaire</a></p>\n\n<p>(note that the contents is quite different from <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation</a> ).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17067,
"author": "Benoît Kloeckner",
"author_id": 946,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/946",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'll answer for France, but some answers may be field-dependent (I am in mathematics).</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>1) If I understand correctly, habilitation is the highest academic\n degree you can receive and people do it for getting a permanent\n academic position in Europe. How many years or how much/many\n publication does it normally take to obtain a habilitation degree?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It is the highest academic degree, but in France permanent positions are available earlier: \"maître de conférence\" (a kind of associate professor) and \"chargé de recherche\" (same but without any teaching duty) are tenured positions that only needs a PhD. Also In mathematics, I'd say that nowadays people are usually hired within 2 to 4 years after their defense. </p>\n\n<p>Habilitation is need for Professors positions, which are more or less equivalent to full professor positions. </p>\n\n<p>It takes usually from 6 to 12 years to complete a Habilitation (this is probably field dependent, and mathematics are certainly on the junior side).</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>2) Since you could be admitted as a PhD candidate, but not as a\n 'habilitation candidate' (but instead, say, as a postdoc) can you\n publish in your postdoc and write the paper(s) as a book and submit it\n for the defense of habilitation?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, this is common. In fact, usually one even only write a survey of their results and quote the articles. May be strongly field dependent, I do not know.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>3) Suppose you do a one year postdoc in university A, and a second in\n university B, can you apply to university B for habilitation? How\n about university A?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I would say that you would apply to university B. Most people apply when \"maître de conférence\" or \"chargé de recherche\" rather than postdocs, but it is not impossible to apply as a postdoc, there are famous examples. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>4) If you do your PhD and postdoc in unrelated areas, or say even if\n you switch from pure to applied math, would that be a problem for\n getting the degree?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Probably not an issue. You'll need to find referees and a jury that complements well if you want to present everything, but usually you do not include your PhD work. I chose not to present my earlier post-PhD work to get a more consistent Habilitation.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>5) (Kind of vague question, somewhat opinion-based too) How much does\n the chance of getting a European tenure increase if you do a\n successful habilitation?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In France, it would help to get a professor position; if you work abroad I do not think it is mandatory, but good referees report and the composition of the jury can help an application. It would actually <em>hurt</em> an application to a Maître de conférence position, as you would be seen as too senior for the job.</p>\n\n<p>Beware that Professor position are rather rare these years, and that Maître de conférence position do not have an internationally competitive salary (but outside the region of Paris, one lives quite well on it).</p>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/06 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16632",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6259/"
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|
16,635 | <p>I joined a new lab a while ago, and am having an issue with keeping the credit for my work. Two instances so far:</p>
<ul>
<li>I co-authored a series of papers with the professor and a senior graduate student. I was always the first author, and it'd be fair to say that I contributed 95% of the research work and 70% of the writing. Somehow the other student was invited to give several talks on our work at various department seminars. I hadn't known until recently when I accidentally discovered his slides in our shared repository. The problem is that, in his slides, he only put his name, and there was no mention of my name/no credit given to me.</li>
<li>Before joining the lab, I developed a research software, which was quite successful and widely used. When I joined the lab, I transferred the development to the lab, and a graduate student helped me to extend the software a bit. When programming, I always sign my code with my name: (C) 2010-2013 by My Name (Email). Just today, when I looked at the code (publicly shared on github), I discovered that the student had deleted my name from all the files and replaced with his name: (C) 2010-2013 by His Name (Email). He even hadn't joined the development until 2012. If people just look at the code, they would think he were the sole author.</li>
</ul>
<p>Of course I want to keep the credit for my work. But I don't know what I should do. I feel that there is a culture in the lab that people just don't respect the credit for shared work. I don't want to cause heat in the lab. Both those students have been in the lab for longer than me.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16637,
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"text": "<p>Ask him, politely, like if you were interested to compare your slides (maybe you also participate in seminars) or if you don't, pretend to be really interested in his slides to learn. Again, politely, tell him that you are happy that he used your work (\"oh, you did well showing our work\" something like this) and force him to include your name. </p>\n\n<p>About second issue, talk to him about it openly. But think about the long-therm consequences and short term consequences. Is it really important to keep that credit? Which are the colateral damages of putting this issue on the table? Are you leaving soon the department? Or, on the contrary, are you in tenure track?</p>\n\n<p>Anyway, if he is not cooperating, think about stealing his girlfriend :D (he'll learn how you felt about your software) And, at the end, you're lucky to be first author, you could be 2nd or 3rd author even doing everything.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16643,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Regarding the first point, the only conceivable reason for omitting your name is that the student was under the mistaken impression that in a presentation you only need the name of the speaker. It's not an uncommon mistake that students make when they're starting to present work. </p>\n\n<p>But the usual way to fix this is to have a big \"Joint work with X and Y\" just below the name of the speaker. And there's absolutely no reason not to do that. I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask the student to include your name on all presentations and even on abstracts announcing the presentations (again, using the 'Joint work with..' formulation. If the student resists, then it's time to go to the advisor. There is <strong>no reason</strong> your name should not be on the presentation if you've contributed to the work.</p>\n\n<p>Separately, how come this other student is giving all the talks if you're the primary author ? Maybe you should ask your advisor if you can give a talk on this at the next opportunity.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16644,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 3,
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"text": "<h3>Talks with one name only</h3>\n\n<p>Here I think that customs vary between having a long list of authors and a long list of collaborators* and only the <em>speaker</em> spelled out on the title, possibly including a long list of <em>authors</em> on the abstract. </p>\n\n<p>* e.g. a slide listing the contributions of all the collaborators.</p>\n\n<p>I'd recommend having a look how other people in the department handle this, and then maybe expressing astonishment (semi)publicly because where you came from it was handled differently. I think it is preferable to have a public discussion and the customs/style of the lab developing in some way than to offend everyone just because your previous lab put authors and not the speaker on the front slide.</p>\n\n<p>Related issue: I like to know who tells what about my work. But OTOH, I think it is quite usual that you don't recognize your own work when a collaborator presents it... There are also drawbacks to being spelled out on the first page of a talk.</p>\n\n<h3>Only student's name in code</h3>\n\n<p>I think this is much clearer. And, as you say the code is in a git repo, it is still easy to sort out things now. </p>\n\n<p>As a first step, talk to the student privately and request that he rolls back these changes and adds \"Contributions by \" (ideally a contributions line for each logical step in the development with date and name - but the git messages can do that as well) only where he actually contributed code. Of course, if he is the sole author of new files, those stay \"his\". </p>\n\n<p>I'm in a field where software isn't (yet) really a category of publication in the mind of most researchers. However, the usual result of not thinking about that is that there is no statement of authorship nor of a license. In contrast to that, deleting author lines is an active step.<br>\nAs a second step, I'd explain that deleting the authorship lines from source code is as serious as taking a colleague's manuscript and submitting it under his own name without even mentioning the collaborator. </p>\n\n<p>As a next level of pressure, you could explain to him that you talk to him privately as you do not want to unneccessarily endanger his graduation: from a legal point of view this is a clear violation of your author's moral rights (not necessarily copyright - although also the terms of the license could have been violated). Violation of author's moral rights is an offense that is extremely relevant for academia and thus may put him onto the fast lane to being thrown out of his programme without graduation.<br>\nWhich you also should keep in mind if you need to go to your boss with the problem: be careful not to destroy more than absolutely necessary here.</p>\n\n<p>(Always assuming of course that the copyright is actually yours as opposed to your previous employer's. But, if you find out that you just have author's (moral) rights, but not the copyright that is a point that makes it necessary right now to \"heal\" the legal issues by putting the proper copyright and authorship lines into the code ;-) )</p>\n"
},
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"answer_id": 16647,
"author": "blankip",
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"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Let's be real. They (well at least the grad student) are going behind your back on both of the issues to make themselves look better. </p>\n\n<p>Either they feel they have contributed much more to the project than you believe or they are just really unethical.</p>\n\n<p>When you say that you did 70% of the writing - is that the real writing or does that involve formatting and proofreading? I just know that a person in my field (tech engineer) who acts as an \"editor\" would not necessarily be credited on the discussions about the topic or paper but would certainly be credited in the paper itself. </p>\n\n<p>Need to handle this swiftly but show restraint. You first need to figure out if this is a problem with the lab or the person. You need to figure where you relationship is with the grad student and professor and whether you wish to continue either. </p>\n\n<p>If you want to stay on good terms with the grad student it is simple. You go to them and say - \"I know you switched my name on code, I know you are presenting these things as yours, please change these things or I will take the next steps.\" If this person wonders what the next steps are - and needs the threat as motivation - then they should be done to you. Then you move on to professor.</p>\n\n<p>If you talk to the professor about these things and he/she seems astonished and takes action see where that goes. If the professor doesn't offer an opinion you may need to go to the next level. </p>\n\n<p>I know for a fact that students have been expelled from universities that I have had affiliation with for removing copy-write/author information. This isn't an \"ooops\" case by the student. The git stuff is borderline dumb/illegal but the presentations are just the icing on the cake.</p>\n\n<p>Personally I wouldn't trust the student again. I don't know enough about the situation to comment on the professor. The other student could have easily conned the professor into thinking the stuff was theirs. I think some of the other answers are a little too conservative. If it were just the presentations I might agree with them but changing author info on code is blatant. I would not start ambiguous conversations acting like what this person is doing might/might not be \"incorrect\". They are in the wrong. Confront them or professor and follow chain of commands at school and git.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16657,
"author": "Kevin",
"author_id": 6030,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6030",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm an undergraduate student, so I'm not particularly knowledgable about these issues. I had a thought I think is worth bringing up, though: Both of the incidents you brought up involve students. Is it possible that the students are simply unaware of what's expected or otherwise made simple mistakes? If so, talking to them in person would quickly resolve the issues.</p>\n\n<p>I bring this up because it seems to me that you're in a position to get the students in question in serious trouble if you want to, possibly putting their academic futures in jeopardy. If they aren't being willfully antagonistic, it would be cruel to rake them over the coals (although it doesn't sound like you want to do so). Please take a gentler approach to start unless it is clear that they are deliberately acting selfishly.</p>\n\n<p>EDIT: @blankip made me think about my answer some more. The students' unethical behavior might be bad enough to warrant some kind of punishment, regardless of how aware they are of it, not just a heart-to-heart talk. My biggest concern is that it also seems unethical (or at least cruel) to me to try to have the students expelled, subject to legal action, or something similarly extreme when they're relatively new to academia unless it's clear that they were deliberate.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16660,
"author": "Daisetsu",
"author_id": 11711,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11711",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Presenting Your work</strong></p>\n\n<p>It depends on <em>how</em> the student was presenting your work. Was he presenting it as something he researched by himself, or was he presenting on some work that the lab had been working on. It can be valuable to present research results to other labs and even across disciplines. If he phrased it as just a discussion of the latest work in the field that should be fine. If it was phrased as \"this is what I did\", then there's a problem.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Copyright of software</strong></p>\n\n<p>What license was the software released under? Did you transfer the copyright to the university? Did you work on the software on university time? </p>\n\n<p>If you worked on it during university time this could be tricky question. Normally software is protected under copyright, but this could be seen as <em>individual works for hire</em>. Either way he shouldn't have removed your name and added his. The software should probably contain the universities/lab name for copyright with you AND him listed as contributors. You're an academic, so here's a paper to read on the topic. <a href=\"http://www.ifosslr.org/ifosslr/article/view/30\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.ifosslr.org/ifosslr/article/view/30</a></p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/06 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16635",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11699/"
]
|
16,636 | <p>I've read the following in a description of a workshop:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have about 15 participants and seek an “Oberwolfach style” with a relatively low density of talks.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I couldn't find anything about this style in Internet. But I found out that there is The Mathematical Research Institute of Oberwolfach, and according to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Research_Institute_of_Oberwolfach">Wikipedia</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>It organizes weekly workshops on diverse topics where mathematicians and scientists from all over the world come to do collaborative research.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the sense of this “Oberwolfach style” is still vague to me.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16648,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>This is indeed a reference to the <a href=\"http://www.mfo.de/\">Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach</a> (Oberwolfach Mathematics Research Institute), a conference center in the small German town of Oberwolfach.</p>\n\n<p>The Institute has developed a rather idiosyncratic style of meetings. The most common events are weeklong workshops on specific topics, whose participants are invited by the organizers. Speakers are chosen from among the participants on just one or two days' notice. The talks are indeed relatively \"low density\", perhaps 4 or 5 x 45-minute talks per day, so not all participants will give talks. Long periods are left unscheduled to encourage informal discussion and collaboration. </p>\n\n<p>The conference center is isolated and so most people don't leave the campus during the week. Participants are housed and fed onsite and meals are communal. As Aru says, there are also measures to \"encourage\" a more social atmosphere: seating is assigned and changes from meal to meal, and Internet access is not available in the guest rooms until 10pm or so (edit: Najib Idrissi's comment below suggests that this policy has changed).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16658,
"author": "user45756",
"author_id": 11209,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11209",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have been to Oberwolfach several times. Oberwolfach's schedule is something like two or three talks in the morning, followed by lunch and free time until around 3 or 4 (I don't remember exactly). Then they serve you cake, and you go to a couple of more talks before dinner.</p>\n\n<p>As there is no wi-fi in your rooms (until 10pm or so -- new addition!) you are expected to socialize and discuss mathematics with your colleagues during the free time, which often leads to fruitful collaborations.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/06 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16636",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11703/"
]
|
16,639 | <p><a href="http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010057" rel="nofollow">Ten Simple Rules for Getting Published</a> states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Rule 7: Start writing the paper the day you have the idea of what questions to pursue.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This sounds like very good advice, not just because you would pace out the act of writing your paper over the entire duration of your research, but it would also help you stay focused and keep track of your progress.</p>
<p>However, in practice, how is this possible? To start writing a paper, I must first know what format and style it should be written in. To know that, I would consult the guidelines of the journal in which I want publish. But the choice of journal depends on the quality of the research and notability of findings. But if I start writing on the day that I start my research, how can I know what journal the research will be good enough for?</p>
<p>For instance, if I shoot high and assume I am going to have a Nature paper, what do I do if a year down the line, it turns out that I was unable to succeed in reaching my goals and Nature would not possibly accept my research? Now I have to rewrite from scratch for another journal, and the time I spent slowly building up my Nature manuscript is wasted. I might as well have focused on research only at first, and left the writing part for last.</p>
<p>What journal's submission guidelines do I pick to follow this <em>Rule 7</em>? The most prestigious journal? The humblest journal? Some generic set of guidelines for "no journal"?</p>
<p>Rule 9 from the same text says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Rule 9: Decide early on where to try to publish your paper.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But how can you know ahead of time where you will be able to publish, especially if you don't have much experience publishing?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16640,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<ul>\n<li><p>Format and style should rarely, if ever, be your first concern in writing a paper. Your top objective should be describing good research to your readers. You need not worry about how to cite a paper or if you should use British or American English spellings at first. (Or at least not until you complete Rule 9!)</p>\n<p>Instead, what this is rule is advising you to do are tasks such as organizing your thoughts, collect references, write up your methodologies, and think about the graphics you will want to use to help illustrate your points. This is more or less the same advice given by people like George Whitesides in <a href=\"http://pubs.acs.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1305035664639/Whitesides-ACS-Writing-a-Scientific-Paper.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer\">talks</a> and as a <a href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.200400767/abstract\" rel=\"noreferrer\">"editorial column."</a></p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Knowing where to publish is not that difficult. Look for where the work you're drawing from is currently being published. If many of the papers you are citing are from journals X and Y, one of those will likely be a good home for your paper. Which one to select might be a matter of which audience you're trying to reach: for instance, <em>The Journal of Physical Chemistry</em> and <em>The Journal of Chemical Physics</em> cover very similar sets of areas. However, the former journal is mainly a chemistry journal, and the latter is primarily for physicists. (There is, as you might imagine, a lot of crossover.)</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16641,
"author": "Paul",
"author_id": 931,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/931",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A good indicator of where to publish and who is more likely to publish your work is to look at your citations. Its a good bet that a journal that you cite heavily has an audience interested in your work.</p>\n\n<p>As far as having an adaptable, journal independent formatting for your paper, you may want to write your paper in LaTeX. You can easily switch formats by changing the .sty files particular your journal of interest. These usually include predefined reference templates so that you can simply include a separate .bib file with your reference information and the necessary formatting will be automatically be generated.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16645,
"author": "Irwin",
"author_id": 5944,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5944",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I was provided this advice by a few successful professors (in computer science): keep a track for a \"small pond\" and a track for a \"big pond\". A small pond is a yearly conference that has a pretty small community, is reasonably specialized in its area, and is often accessible as far as acceptance rate goes. Every year, you should aim to have a paper here and get known in the community over time. A big pond is a yearly conference that is large, has good impact and reputation, and is more general to the field rather than to your specialization. Again, aim for this conference every year, but keep in mind that because it's bigger and more prestigious, it's also more difficult to get in.</p>\n\n<p>What ends up happening is that, almost by default, you get at least two yearly targets for publishing - and as a result you know where you're writing every year.</p>\n\n<p>This advice isn't exactly the same when it comes to journal writing, but the general principle can still apply. Pick a couple of journals that are well-known in your field: a specialized one and a more general one, and use them as your main targets.</p>\n\n<p>How do you select targets? Well, as suggested, the places that you cite are pretty good places to go to. Your advisor is likely to have a few favorite publication venues (and it's usually a good idea to publish with your advisor). When you read and write often, you will start recognizing which journals and conferences have respected papers in them, and what the bar is for getting accepted is.</p>\n\n<p>Overall: start writing early. Research questions, for example, are generally going to be similar no matter what venue you submit to. Your methods are not going to change based on the venue you write for. Your results are not going to change based on the venue you write for. It's safe to write these things down early.</p>\n\n<p>What does change with venue is the style guidelines (easy enough to just use a new LaTeX or Word template, or even to copy and paste) and the audience (mostly with respect to Introduction/Motivation and Implications/Discussion of results). It's important to choose the venue for these reasons - I personally consider it a bad idea to not customize the intro and the discussion sections to tailor it toward what a particular community expects.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16684,
"author": "David Ketcheson",
"author_id": 81,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I write while I do the research, but I don't attempt to write the text of the journal paper from the get-go. What I write at the start is essentially a set of research notes, which often gradually evolves into a lengthy technical report. The journal article is written by extracting the most valuable and interesting parts of the report and adding some expository elements (introduction and transitions).</p>\n\n<p>It's possible and sometimes worthwhile to \"publish\" the technical report as well, for instance on the arXiv or sometimes in an institutional series. In that case you may want to spend more time polishing the report itself. <a href=\"http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.1317\" rel=\"nofollow\">Here's an example of a 47-page report that's much too long for a journal article</a> -- at least, for most journals in my field. </p>\n\n<p>Sometimes it makes sense to submit all or most of the report to a journal with no page limits; for instance, <a href=\"http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.6651\" rel=\"nofollow\">this lengthy report</a> will soon appear in the <a href=\"http://www.lms.ac.uk/publications/jcm\" rel=\"nofollow\">LMS Journal of Computation and Mathematics</a>.</p>\n\n<p>As Pete Clark says in the comments, I find that the most valuable effect of writing as I go is that writing things down carefully clarifies my own understanding.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/06 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16639",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244/"
]
|
16,642 | <p>What is the longest gap of unemployment that will likely not affect your chance of getting an academic position (post-doc or faculty)?</p>
<p>For example if you graduate from your PhD in December or January but most post-doctoral/faculty positions in your field don't start until May-Sept, is a partial year's worth of unemployment looked down upon in future job applications? If not, what is the longest gap that won't look so negative while applying to future jobs?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16951,
"author": "MrWonderful",
"author_id": 11911,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11911",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Form a corporation. That can keep you employed until you get the position you want. Who knows, you might even figure out a way to make money in the process!</p>\n\n<p>For example, I am a software engineer. I have had a C-Corporation for the last 20 years. Whenever I'm between contracts / jobs, I work on something I've wanted to pursue personally. It could be writing an iPhone app, or integrating a PC into my home theater system. If it takes me long enough to find another gig, I'll list my experience doing whatever it was I accomplished as an entry in my resume. It keeps me from having unusually long gaps, and occasionally, I'll even generate revenue doing it.</p>\n\n<p>For another example, a friend of mine is a research chemist. Together, we designed a gas chromatograph that was accurate enough to be useful, yet inexpensive enough to be available to even high schools. This was a number of years ago and we were using a Commodore-64 to control the temperature of the oven containing the stationary phase coil, as well as collecting the detector data in real time. As we never brought this product to market, I would classify it as either an R&D effort, or a proof of concept project. Either way, it was useful from a resume perspective.</p>\n\n<p>I actually thought this was a helpful and viable idea and I would not have mentioned it if I didn't. </p>\n\n<p>Regardless, a little evaluation of a potential business opportunity probably wouldn't hurt most career academics.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 18507,
"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 you are using the term unemployed. Clearly someone with a paid academic position (e.g., adjunct teaching or lab tech) would not be considered unemployed. I am not sure if you consider an unpaid lab tech or a paid burger flipper as being employed. To me the real issue is being out of the field.</p>\n\n<p>If you cannot get a relevant paid position and but can afford to be without income for a few months, then a year gap, and probably longer, isn't problematic. In fact many labs will hire unpaid researchers. In this case you could continue to conduct new research, publish, apply for grants, and gain new contacts. You could likely stay in an unpaid position as long as you could afford it without any affects on future job prospects. If you cannot get an unpaid research position then it really depends on how long you can milk publications from your past research and produce new research without any affiliation to a research group.</p>\n\n<p>If you cannot get a relevant paid position and cannot afford to be without income for a few months you can sometimes find paid work in a related field. Working as a paid lab tech (e.g., washing test tubes) or adjunct teaching. These types of jobs won't help you publish more or get grants and in fact take time away from publishing, research, and getting grants. That said they can provide a limited set of new skills and cotnacts so are probably sustainable for a year or so.</p>\n\n<p>In the absence of getting even a peripherally related job taking an unrelated job (e.g., burger flipper) even for a short period (i.e., months) gap can be problematic. Not only will it slow down publishing, research, and grants it may make you less flexible about being able to take up a new related position (e.g., how much notice would you have to give). You are also not building new skills or contacts.</p>\n\n<p>A lot of the impact will depend on how important publication speed is in your field. If a few month delay in publishing will result in you being scooped, any gap is probably bad. Similarly the ability to do research without any resources will help you weather a gap. Similarly, if your field has new instigator grants with a clock that starts ticking upon graduation then gaps are bad.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/06 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16642",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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]
|
16,650 | <p>While researching career opportunities, I have stumbled upon an alumnus of the school I am currently at, who is a relatively new faculty member there. In a sense, this person's career is what I want <em>my</em> career to be like. It seems like they could offer me very valuable advice.</p>
<p>However, I do not know this person and do not know anyone they know. I thought I might write a polite email to them asking for advice, but I'm not sure what the prudent way to phrase it would be. And on that note, whether prudence would preclude even doing such a thing.</p>
<p>What's the polite way to ask a professor how to get a job like theirs (specifically, at an institution such as theirs)?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16651,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Send this person a brief e-mail, explaining the followings:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>How you found out about him/her, and give a 2-sentence introduction of yourself.</li>\n<li>That his/her career path and/or research interests overlaps with or inspires yours very much.</li>\n<li>Ask if you can have a phone conversation for 15 minutes to answer some questions. You can also ask for a meeting if he/she is nearby.</li>\n<li>List the brief questions that you plan to cover. Don't be too broad. Think if these 15 minutes are really the only time that he/she will be willing to talk to you, what would you like to get out from this?</li>\n<li>Provide 4-5 dates/times for him/her to pick, and invite them to suggest some dates if none of them works.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Avoid asking for reference letter, inside contacts, or any kind of favor beyond just formal career advices. He/she may not feel vested enough to do that, and if you push, he/she may close up. Also, don't attach any CV/resume; that would look like you're looking for a position.</p>\n\n<p>And also don't ask \"How did you get a job at an institution like this one?\" Zoom out and ask for the job search process he/she went through. Ask him/her to elaborate on the thought process and how the pros and cons were weighed. Once the topic gets going, you can probe a bit further, but the focus should be on the faculty member, not the institution.</p>\n\n<p>On the date, be on time, and honor the 15 minutes (or whatever you both agree upon) limit. At the end of the meeting, ask if you may ask for his/her opinion very occasionally through e-mail in future, and then establish the mentoring relationship from there.</p>\n\n<p>When you got home, follow up with a thank you e-mail.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>The tricks are:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Don't ask them to write back. Replying e-mail on this kind of issues takes a lot of time and thought, plus he/she may not know you well enough to know if the recommendations are suitable for you.</li>\n<li>Make it low stake. At most they'll lose are 15 minutes.</li>\n<li>Make it thoughtful by listing highly relevant questions. This shows that you really did look at their work and know something about it.</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16656,
"author": "user45756",
"author_id": 11209,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11209",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If your question is of the form \"how do I become a professor at the prestigious university X?\", then I don't think that it is worth contacting this professor. But if this professor has an interesting career that no one else has, then I suggest that you follow the steps that the others have suggested.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16661,
"author": "Daisetsu",
"author_id": 11711,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11711",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I've received emails from students before soliciting advice, or even sending me resumes asking to work in the lab. More often than not they had spent very little time even becoming familiar with our research or looking into the university. If you want a busy professor to give you advice, you need to earn it by proving that you're serious.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Get familiar with the research</li>\n<li>Look at the professors CV (this can show you the path they took)</li>\n<li>Know exactly what you want to ask, and make sure it's clear.</li>\n<li>Consider asking a student in their lab what they did (presumably they have a similar goal)</li>\n<li>EDIT: As a general rule, if English is not your native language have someone look over your email for grammar mistakes.</li>\n</ul>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/07 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16650",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244/"
]
|
16,653 | <p>I have applied for PhD scholarship in Computer science at a European university. My master is from Malaysia. Unfortunately, my application has not been selected (only 9 has been chosen among 116 applicants). </p>
<p>The email I received informs me that I can file an appeal form attached against the decision made by the committee. Although having a form is supposed to be helpful, I have not written such an appeal before and am not sure what to write. The form is one page (A4) and five lines of it starts with </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I expose</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and I have to fill the five lines and other five lines start with </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And therefore, Kindly ask you for.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The question is, what should I write here? I have no idea about appeals and their justifications and consequences. The only thing I can add since my original application is that another paper has been published. I really believe I am very strong candidate for the program as it conforms exactly to my research area (which I had published two conference paper in). </p>
<p>My question is therefore, <strong>what and how to write in the two sections of the form if I decide to write an appeal?</strong></p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16654,
"author": "user45756",
"author_id": 11209,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11209",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't understand.</p>\n\n<p>Are you certain that you would have been better than at least 107 other applicants? Are you able to demonstrate it? Or do you have strong evidence that somehow your application was discriminated against/overlooked? (Information of this kind is what should be in an appeal form)</p>\n\n<p>I also don't understand the format of your appeal form. The appeal form already have the words \"I expose\"? If you are writing it, it sounds very accusatory, and it probably won't win any extra points for you.</p>\n\n<p>Having two conference papers is pretty good, but I don't think that it is exceptional in computer science. Which conferences were they published in?</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16655,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>You don't say why you are appealing the decision. If only 9 out of 116 applicants got a scholarship, then it is overwhelmingly likely that they turned down many strong applicants. Do you have a good reason to believe that your application is stronger than the 9 who received the scholarship? </p>\n\n<p>I hope you're not under the impression that simply not having received an award is grounds for appealing the decision. What if all 107 unsuccessful applicants appealed the decision? The program would surely have to reconsider having an appeals process or perhaps even giving out the scholarships at all.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16663,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The appeal form is likely for situations when you feel that your application had strongly misrepresented your abilities. For example, you had some examinations recently re-graded and your grades were notably increased. Or you had previously been accused of academic dishonesty but have been cleared of blame.</p>\n\n<p>You cannot expect the admissions committee to thoughtfully reconsider all the other 106 unsuccessful candidates as well, as I'm willing to bet most of them feel rather hard done by as well.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16667,
"author": "J.R.",
"author_id": 780,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/780",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here's what I would ask: is there anything you could include in the appeal that you didn't already include in your application?</p>\n\n<p>You mentioned that you have published two papers. Did you mention that in your application? If so, that you don't really have any new information to give them – that is, you have nothing to \"expose.\" </p>\n\n<p>However, if that information was not included in the application for some reason (perhaps because you applied before the papers got accepted, or because there was no place on the application form to mention such accomplishments), then I would advise you to go ahead and file an appeal. Mind you, I'm not saying that your chances of success would be very high, but this might be one of those situations where you wouldn't have much to lose. </p>\n\n<p>If you decide to appeal, I would recommend keeping the appeal short and too the point. Too much rambling might come across as quibbling, and probably not help your case. Simply mention that you have something new to mention, and that you would appreciate it if they would kindly reconsider. Don't say, \"I think I'm a strong candidate;\" let your academic record speak for itself. And only inclide information that was not part of your original application; otherwise, you risk irking the committee. (I can imagine three folks in a room, looking at your paperwork with ire and disbelief, saying to each other, \"There's nothing new here – why is he wasting our time?\", or, \"Which part of ‘No’ does this fellow not understand?\")</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16669,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would say, do not waste time on the appeal. There is no shame to loose the competition when only 9 from 116 applications are selected. </p>\n\n<p>Learn that you can from this rejection (maybe some feedback have been provided) and write the next application. And one more later. </p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/07 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16653",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6416/"
]
|
16,671 | <p>In the book <a href="http://www.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book239646" rel="nofollow"><em>Doing research in the real world</em></a> by David E. Gray, there is a section on experiment design. When discussing validity and reliability, the author defines “criterion validity” as </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is where we compare how people have answered a new measure of a concept, with existing, widely accepted measures of a concept.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and a little later, in the “Reliability” part, there is a subheading “Equivalence”, which says </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Another way of testing the reliability of an instrument is by comparing the
responses of a set of subjects with responses made by the same set of subjects on another instrument (preferably on the same day). </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So if I got this right, we are both times measuring if there is a difference between the answer on our new instrument and another, existing instrument. </p>
<p>Is there a practical difference between the two concepts, or only a philosophical one? And whether practical or philosophical, what <em>is</em> the actual difference? </p>
<p><strong>Update</strong> The author discusses validity and reliability in general, then lists 7 different aspects of validity and 5 different aspects of reliability. "Criterion validity" and "reliability equivalence" are only one type of each, respectively. Please consider in your answer that this question is not about validity vs. reliability in general, but only about these two specific aspects. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16672,
"author": "marsei",
"author_id": 7767,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7767",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><code>Validity</code> is comparing the new results with the existing literature, without doing extra experiments.</p>\n\n<p><code>Reliability</code> is comparing the new results with some extra experiments that you carry on with some other settings/devices.</p>\n\n<p><em>I agree with @StrongBad that this question is off-topic, but there is no SE site on research in general and I think this question is quite interesting.</em></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16673,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Criterion validity</strong> concerns with <em>measuring the right thing</em>. For instance, GPA is likely to have criterion validity to measure a student's academic understanding. While the change in weight in the last semester has much less criterion validity to measure the same trait. Basically, if the measurement you use and the trait you want to measure has a high correlation, then there is likely criterion validity.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Reliability</strong> concerns mostly with <em>measuring the thing right</em>. For instance, if GPA can measure a student's academic understanding, and percent attendance can also measure a student's academic understanding, then GPA and percent attendance should correlate, aka, they are reliable. Before subjected to reliability assessment, the tests are usually checked if they are criterion-valid. However, it's possible to have two tests that are highly correlated (reliable) but invalid. Such as using dietary fat intake and serum lipid to predict a college graduate's earning potential.</p>\n\n<p>Notice that there a few different types of reliabilities, the one you cited is more about <em>alternate forms reliability,</em> there are also <em>test-retest reliability</em> and <em>inter-rater reliability</em>, etc. </p>\n\n<p>Practically, they are not interchangeable. Validity happens between the true trait (or behavior) and the measurements. Reliability happens between two measurements (or modes/instances of measurement.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16775,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Slightly off-topic as the terms you ask for are more specific, but:</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, there is some ambiguity as to what exactly is meant by different terms in this quality control/validation/method context.</p>\n\n<p>E.g. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>in machine learning the \"validation set\" is often used to optimize parameters - as opposed to proving whether or not the model \"does its job\" (a shortened version of one definition of validity). The latter is measured with the \"test set\" (again, in my opinion, a rather ambiguous name).</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"http://books.google.de/books?id=2iTNOip-scYC&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r#v=onepage&q&f=false\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Handbook of validation in analytical chemistry</a> spends several pages to compare and discuss differences between several definitions given in literature and norms specific to the field of analytical chemistry. The bottom line of these definitions is that in analytical chemistry, validity is not only about measuring the right thing (as @Penguin_Knight nicely explained), but also about measuring the right thing <em>right</em>. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I'd therefore recommend that you state what you are speaking about rather than relying on these terms.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/07 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16671",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/103/"
]
|
16,674 | <p>I would like to apply for graduate school to become a mathematics professor.</p>
<p>However, given that the opportunity cost of grad school is high and that I already have a stable, good paying job, I would like to know whether I have the talent and ability to be a math professor before I start. This is obviously a very difficult question to answer, but I'll explain my situation.</p>
<p>I believe I have above-average math talent, although I wouldn't consider myself a genius and I've had people in my classes smarter than me. However, I've gotten high marks in nearly all math courses and I've written a honors thesis which has also received very high marks. I've also worked as a research assistant. Basically, I think I've done pretty well and perform competently in all the mathematical challenges that has come my way so far.</p>
<p>But being a math professor requires original ideas and lots of publishing. I haven't had any significant original ideas, but it's probably true that most people at my level of education also haven't (correct me if I'm wrong here). My main concern is how do I know if I would be able to generate enough original ideas to keep publishing and maintain a successful academic career? Unlike working in mathematical modeling in the private sector, where one cannot really get "stuck" in the same way, it seems like a risk to be a professor since it's really hard to guarantee that you'll always be able to produce new research.</p>
<p>Do any mathematicians working in academia have any comments about how one knows if they'll be able to continually generate new ideas to produce publishable research?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16675,
"author": "Anonymous",
"author_id": 11565,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11565",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I was in the same situation as you.</p>\n\n<p>By good fortune, I lived in a city with an excellent mathematics department. I chose a graduate course that looked interesting and asked the professor if I could sit in on his course. He kindly agreed, and I did so -- including all the homework and a term project. He was impressed, wrote me a rec letter for grad school, and I had the good fortune to succeed -- I am now working as a math professor. So it's possible!</p>\n\n<p>I would definitely advise the same to you if practical.</p>\n\n<p>Also, I recommend that you ask this question to whoever will be writing your rec letters, as they are familiar with what it takes to succeed in mathematics graduate school. (If they are not, then you probably don't want to get letters from them.) If they believe you are strong enough to get accepted to, and succeed in, top programs, then that's a very good sign. </p>\n\n<p>You might consider hedging your bets by only applying to top (say, top 25) graduate programs. You can also get an excellent graduate education at second-tier schools -- indeed, I am a professor at such a school -- but you face longer odds if you graduate from such a school, and if you don't mind the prospect of being admitted nowhere, then being very selective is one way of partially mitigating your long-term risk.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, you might investigate what it is like to work at a not very prestigious institution, such as a regional branch campus of a state university. Would you prefer such a job to your current one? The answer to that question should inform how much of a risk you are willing to take.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck to you!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16680,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Do any mathematicians working in academia have any comments about how one knows if they'll be able to continually generate new ideas to produce publishable research?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I can remember freaking out about this as I was writing my first paper. It was the only publishable work I had ever done, and I remember thinking to myself \"What if this is the only idea I have in me? Or what if, instead of getting easier, generating ideas gets even harder as I have to scrounge around in deeper recesses of my brain?\"</p>\n\n<p>Fortunately, generating ideas turns out not to be as intimidating as it sounds. In practice, it's very rare to sit down in a chair and say \"I shall now think deep thoughts.\" Instead, any depth comes as a spin-off from much more mundane activities. You read papers, you idly wonder about things, you come up with questions you care about, you figure out how to investigate them, you grapple with technical obstacles, you study things you hadn't realized you needed to know, you chat with colleagues and ask them questions, you work with collaborators, etc. Each of these activities is pretty natural, and they all feed into each other in a complicated web. At any stage you may come up with or run across new ideas, but they are generated organically rather than being something you have to worry about explicitly.</p>\n\n<p>You can expect that a strong graduate program will bring you to the point where you can do this reliably. Of course some people will be faster or more prolific, some will have more striking or creative ideas, some will work on more important questions, etc. You can still improve many of these factors through practice and mentoring, but at that point the question is a little different. Not whether you can do research, but rather how to reach your full potential as a researcher.</p>\n\n<p>So I'd recommend not worrying about this too much. Doing research is a skill that most undergraduates don't have but that graduate schools can teach. Once you get up to speed, generating ideas doesn't end up being a bottleneck. [In fact, you'll end up having more ideas than you have time or energy to investigate yourself. This lets you suggest some to students to help them get started with research, without worrying that you are giving away a limited resource you need for your own research.]</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>However, given that the opportunity cost of grad school is high and that I already have a stable, good paying job, I would like to know whether I have the talent and ability to be a math professor before I start. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Doing good research is necessary but not sufficient for getting a job in a research university. It's difficult to assess talent and predict career success, but one way to get a crude approximation is by looking at what happened to past students in your position. When you are admitted to graduate school, you can look up former students of advisors you are considering and see what happened to them. For example, you can find lists of students using the <a href=\"http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/\">Mathematics Genealogy Project</a>, and then you can search for them on the web. This is certainly not perfect: some advisors don't have many students yet, job markets change over time, some former students are just not representative of your situation (if a potential advisor used to be at a less prestigious school, then placement records from that school are not so relevant), etc., and of course there's always random variance. However, it will give you a crude picture. If the advisors you are considering have had many students who got jobs you would like, then maybe you will too. If very few of them got jobs you would find acceptable, then you are taking a much bigger risk.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16701,
"author": "Benoît Kloeckner",
"author_id": 946,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/946",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One aspect of the question is whether you are willing to move. Even targeting \"only\" low-mid tier research universities, there are many more good applicants than positions, and if you want to end up in particular area then the risk not to find a job is very high. So, to get higher odds you should be ready to get a PhD somewhere, do a couple post-docs at different places, and then (hopefully) be hired in yet another place.</p>\n\n<p>Concerning your fear with the long-term ability to do math research, I would say that if you manage to find such a job, then you most certainly have what it takes. Sure, some of us loose their way, but it is usually because of particular events and possibly the way they handled it. In all cases I know, at the time of their tenure no one could see a difference between them and ultimately more successful colleagues.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/07 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16674",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
]
|
16,679 | <p>Currently I am in the last semester of my Master studies in computer science in Germany. I am further contemplating about the possibility of applying for PhD position somewhere in Germany, Switzerland, (and maybe Austria). There are other candidate countries as well, but these are the main ones.</p>
<p>In a year or so I should be done with this studies. I wonder what is the PhD application process for Germany and Switzerland. Are there scholarships offered? Is there a need for scholarship at all, or do you get paid as an researched directly from the institution where you get the PhD position?</p>
<p><strong>question added after edit:</strong></p>
<p>Is there a need to search and find for a supervisor (or professor), and explain him the idea for the research that you are planning to work on... or do you get the position and work on the topics which are treated in that research group. my question is both for Swiss and DE?</p>
<p>Can someone with similar experience tell me how these things work?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16682,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A good place to look for open positions in academia in CH is the <a href=\"http://www.eth-gethired.ch\">ETH-gethired</a> website. In Switzerland, you will usually be hired by the university or research institute and receive a salary (about 3.6 to 4.5k CHF/month). In exchange you typically have to do TA work (assisting with practical sessions in courses, correcting assignments, etc.) and sometimes technical tasks (taking care of lab equipment). In some universities (like the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, ETH and EPFL) and for some programs, a formal application to a competitive graduate school is also required.</p>\n\n<p>In some cases, you can get funded directly by the <a href=\"http://www.snf.ch/en/Pages/default.aspx\">Swiss National Science Fund</a> which leads typically to a lower pay but less or no teaching tasks. But it is seldom the grad student's task to secure funding. </p>\n\n<p>Scout the lab websites for positions not listed in my link, and don't be afraid to apply spontaneously as well, if a place sounds particularly interesting to you.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16683,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>In general,</em> doctoral studies in both Germany and Switzerland are paid research employees. In Germany, for instance, <em>Doktoranden</em> (doctoral students) are formally called <em>Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter</em> [\"scientific (or academic) workers\"]. They are paid as government employees according to a fixed scale, and have a contract outlining their duties.</p>\n\n<p>Now, for these programs, you apply as if you were applying to a job outside of academia, except you send a CV in place of a résumé. The hiring is done directly by the group of the professor who has the open position.</p>\n\n<p>There <em>are</em> some exceptions, primarily related to American-style doctoral programs. For these, your application is in a style similar to that of a graduate school in the US (form, letters of recommendation, statement of purpose, etc.). These are typically fellowship-based positions that carry a stipend. They usually also have a reduction in teaching and supervisory duties. </p>\n\n<p>In any case, however, you should never have to pay (or get an outside scholarship) to do doctoral studies in a scientific field in Germany or Switzerland.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16700,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I can speak for Austria (place where I did my PhD) and Switzerland (current place of employment), but my answer should be applicable for Germany as well.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I wonder what is the Phd application process for Germany and Switzerland. Are there scholarships offered? Is there a need for scholarship at all, or do you get paid as an researched directly from the institution where you get the Phd postion?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Both models exist, but the far more common one is that you are just employed as a researcher while doing your PhD. This has advantages and disadvantages. Typically these positions are financially rather attractive (at least as far as PhD student salaries go), currently at about 2400 EUR 14 times a year in Austria for full-time employment, a bit more in Germany, significantly more (around 5000 CHF 12 times a year) in Switzerland. All of these salaries allow you to conveniently live (no need for a diet of <a href=\"http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=12\">Ramen noodles</a>) in the respective places. On the other hand, as a researcher you are not \"just\" working on your thesis. In addition, teaching has to be handled, support in administrative matters will be part of your job, and you will need to work on matters of your research project that you find neither interesting nor advance your thesis work in any way.</p>\n\n<p>The application process is generally as for any other job - find out what jobs are offered, contact the person per mail, send in CV, (usually) do an interview via Skype, wait for an offer. The hardest part is probably finding out what research groups currently have job openings. Positions are generally not announced very widely (if at all). However, just because you cannot find an ad for an open position with a specific professor does not necessarily mean that he does not have a position available. Both places that I worked at had open positions <strong>almost at all times</strong> for a really qualified student. What <strong>really</strong> helps here are connections - do you know somebody who is already an \"insider\" in academic circles, maybe a PhD student or postdoc? If so, ask him to put you in contact with some faculty.</p>\n\n<p>If not, look for universities that you might consider joining, find out from their web page what faculty there handles your topic, and send them a <strong>short</strong> mail. Keep it crisp - both of my professors so far have been insanely busy, and any mail from an unknown person with more than one short paragraph will never be read carefully. Just tell who you are, what your current university is, and that you would like to talk about the possibility of doing a PhD. Give them a week to answer and then send a quick and friendly reminder (my current prof is the dean of the faculty, and given the size of his inbox mails sometimes do get lost - that does not mean that he is necessarily not interested). Maybe, the professor will put you in contact with one of this postdocs or PhD students to \"chat\" via Skype or in person (if possible) - consider this the technical interview, because afterwards the prof will ask the person that you talked to whether they think that you have the technical skills that are required for the selected field. What you should not do is send an overly long formal application - most professors get many of those from rather dubios applicants from the far east, hence formal blind applications are generally discarded unread. Don't be one of those.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>is there a need to search and find for a supervisor (or professor), and explain him the idea for the research that you are planning to work on... or do you get the position and work on the topics which are treated in that research group. my question is both for Swiss and DE?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You are generally not expected to \"come\" with your own topic. Your broad overall theme will be defined by whatever project / position pays your salary, and on top of that you are expected to define your concrete research project together with a postdoc and/or the professor some time into your PhD (say, about a year after starting). What you <strong>should</strong> know is roughly what interests you research-wise and contact only professors that <strong>really do this research</strong>. This sounds like a given, but I work in services and software engineering, and I have lost track of many applicants interested in robotics, AI, formal methods, etc. I have already discarded. Don't be one of those, either.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16802,
"author": "xeroqu",
"author_id": 9413,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9413",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In an ideal world, you would have already an interest in a particular research topic that you'd like to learn more about. I think that's the first crucial step before you do anything else.</p>\n\n<p>Assuming that you have selected your research area, you can look for researchers/professors that are defining the frontiers in that area and live in DE or CH. Once you shortlisted the names, which could take some time since you might need to visit each lab's website to find out more about its research, you should apply for <em>all</em> positions that you find interesting. Try to arrange interviews with the professors or group leaders and try to get an idea how your PhD life under his/her supervision would look like. Of course, it may be quite hard to extrapolate from a single interview but <em>it is better than pure email conversation</em>. Don't forget: PhD is kinda like a marriage with your supervisor. You need to get along with him/her really well.</p>\n\n<p>By doing the interviews, you can narrow down possible destinations for your PhD. I would then look for other issues: salary, city, culture etc. </p>\n\n<p>I know the salaries in Zurich and in DE since I lived and worked in both places as PhD student. In Zurich, the salaries are well above the average PhD salaries. With 60% employment (e.g., biology PhDs or some first year CS PhDs) you get ca. 3'000 CHF after taxes. For a 100% employment your salary becomes ca. 4'500 CHF after taxes, which is around triple the money you can make as a PhD in DE. Of course, the city is more expensive but you end up having more money in your back account compared to a PhD in DE. </p>\n\n<p>However, as I said above, your PhD topic and your supervisor's personality are much more important than your income. You should never forget about that. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34150,
"author": "Delio Mugnolo",
"author_id": 25340,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25340",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can speak for Germany universities and, with a good approximation, for Max Planck Institutes: Usually, you can apply for a Ph.D. position whenever you want (typically, with a CV) but you will be hired if and only if your favorite supervisor has by chance some unallocated funds. Unlike in other countries (say, France or Italy) there are no regular rounds of openings that allow a large number of graduate students, funded by the University or Institute as a whole, to simultaneously begin their doctoral studies.</p>\n\n<p>There are essentially two exceptions:</p>\n\n<p>1) You apply to a graduate schools, mostly funded by the DFG (German Research Council): Again, you can only be admitted if there are some unallocated funds, but it is often the School that accepts your application, and you might be able to switch from one supervisor to another one once you're in.</p>\n\n<p>2) You receive a grant from a third party, typically a foundation: there are many, mostly linked to political parties or religious institutions (and in that case you will have to prove that you are close to the political/social/religious vision of that specific foundation) or to companies. Once you bring your own funds and sometimes a small overhead, it is likely that most professors will be willing to supervise your studies.</p>\n\n<p>In any case, you will be usually hired as a wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (in bureaucratic language, the corresponding code is TV-L E13), whose net wage will oscillate between 1.600€ and 2.200€/month. CAUTION! In many fields (e.g. in mine: Maths) it is very usual (and sometimes even <em>required</em> by the DFG) that graduate students are hired only on a part time basis, you may see opening for something like \"TV-L E13 (66%)\". Even if you have a part-time position, very strict rules determine whether you can have a side job.</p>\n\n<p>(In most German universities you <em>may</em> enrol as a Ph.D. student: this will cost you little money (~120€/term) but will get you some benefits - cheaper meals in the university restaurant, cheaper bus/metro tickets and so on.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 86753,
"author": "PStoll2",
"author_id": 70991,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/70991",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In Switzerland, the application is quite straightforward: you have to contact the research group that you are interested to work with. There is no national selection or competition.\nPhD in Switzerland are usually better paid than in Germany but the salary may vary from nothing or CHF 2000 up to CHF 7000 per month. I mean, in Switzerland working conditions are very liberal and depends more on the competition with the market. Typically computer scientists or engineers will get more than archaeologists or biologists. More resources like open positions and careers tips are available at <a href=\"https://www.myscience.ch\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">myScience.ch a national website dedicated to researchers and engineers</a></p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/07 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16679",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9401/"
]
|
16,689 | <p>I'm a first-year undergraduate student in physics. Since starting my studies I've tried to get involved in research as much as possible. Recently, the team I work with encouraged me to submit an abstract about my current project (which is the first serious one that I've taken on) for an upcoming conference. I did and I got accepted with a poster.</p>
<p>Now my question is: <strong>How should I approach this to benefit the most? Or maybe there isn't even a point in me going at all?</strong></p>
<p>I'm under the impression that most of the typical advantages of attending a conference such as networking, or keeping up-to-date with recent advances aren't really applicable to me as I simply lack the necessary knowledge. So far I've only taken a basic mechanics course and I have some working knowledge that I've acquired while working at the lab but nothing beyond that.</p>
<p>Additional information: the conference is obviously not a high-tier one. Judging by previous editions, about 150 attendees are expected, around 1/3-1/2 of that international (this is all in Europe by the way). Travel funding is provided by our department [active participation, in form of a poster, was part of the requirements to get that funding].</p>
| [
{
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"author": "J.R.",
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"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>\"keeping up-to-date with recent advances aren't really applicable to me...\"</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Not so; that's a myth. Your poster got accepted, and that means <strong>you</strong> are now <strong>part of</strong> the \"recent advances\" in the field. </p>\n\n<p>So, go. Tell people what you are doing. No, people won't flock to your poster and ask for your autograph; however, chances are, someone there will find your work interesting. You might get to talk with people who have done similar work. You might get a few pointers. You might get some affirmation that you're working on an interesting problem. </p>\n\n<p>I went to a conference once where I was just starting out in the field. One of the world's most renowned experts attended my talk. Imagine my surprise when, a year later, my advisor returned from the same conference, he told me that this same expert approached him, and asked, \"Where is that student of yours? I really liked his idea...\"</p>\n\n<p>You never know what kind of benefit you might get over the course of a few days when everyone there shares expertise in some common interest. Sometimes it's someone who can help you out, or nudge you in the right direction, or motivate you, or challenge you (hopefully in a constructive way), or merely encourage you by nodding their head as you speak, seemingly interested in what you are doing. Maybe you'll end up with a business card and a contact number of someone who can help you down the road as your research progresses. </p>\n\n<p>Likewise, you stand to learn a lot from them, too. Who knows? Maybe someone will light a spark that will ignite a passion later. </p>\n\n<p>By the way, most people like talking about their own research. So, if you attend a session that interests you, but a lot of it goes over your head, try to sit with that speaker at the lunch table. I'd bet that, more often than not, he wouldn't mind explaining some of the fundamentals to a bright and curious student.</p>\n\n<p>Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I'd bet you'll come back a bit more rejuvenated, somewhat more enlightened, and a lot more encouraged. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16692,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Before the conference</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Usually the organization will release a conference directory. Read that before hand and highlight the sessions you'd like to attend. Have one primary and a secondary in case if the primary is a total bomb you have a second choice.</li>\n<li>Gather maps, travel apps or travel guide of the city you'll be visiting. Draft a few places for sightseeing. For guidebook, just a little one should be fine.</li>\n<li>Double check the dimension of the poster boards.</li>\n<li>Have your poster printed earlier. Don't wait till the last day. I usually opt for fabric posters because they can be folded and stuffed into the luggage.</li>\n<li>Sometimes you can reuse your posters (e.g. internal research day in your university, etc.) So, don't print any conference name or date on your poster directly. If the organizer requires you to display abstract number, print that on a separate piece of paper, and display that next to your poster.</li>\n<li>Pre-print some returning labels if you want to do some sightseeing around the city after the conference, you can mail the poster tube and conference materials back to home.</li>\n<li>Try to talk and see if any of your friends have friends in the city. It's easier to get a closer non-touristy look of the place if you have some local guiding you.</li>\n<li>Bring some push pins for your poster just in case.</li>\n<li>If you're planning to give out an A4 version of your poster, it's time to print some as well.</li>\n<li>Bring some business cards (or print some in case someone would like to contact you.)</li>\n<li>Work on a 1-2 minutes speech that summarizes your poster.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Once you're there</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Try going to the conference center the day before and weed out all the transportation problems.</li>\n<li>Identify the room and board for your poster before hand.</li>\n<li>When you are free to join presentations and look at posters, follow your previous chosen options. <strong>Don't be too greedy,</strong> if you aimlessly take in everything you will get overwhelmed and tired very soon.</li>\n<li>Some conferences organize local tours and dinner parties. Take advantages of those.</li>\n<li>Have some note-taking device ready for main points, resources or references. Also bring your phone w/ camera or digital camera with you in case you want to take a picture of a poster (with permission of the presenter.) <strong>Focus on comprehension, not recording.</strong> I have seen some conference attendants just walking around taking picture of every single poster as if they are rare birds. Meanwhile, they didn't even greet or talk to the presenters who were right there; it was sad to look at.</li>\n<li>It's absolutely okay that you don't know their subject. Just be straightforward: \"I study [whatever] so am not too familiar with this, could you tell me what are the implications or applications of your findings to the field/my field?\"</li>\n<li>Try challenge yourself by asking at least one question in each session or on each day.</li>\n<li>When manning your poster, ask any viewer if they'd like a summary, and give that 1-2 minutes talk that you prepared. Ask them to ask you any questions. Sometimes conversations take off, sometimes not. Don't feel awkward if nothing is said.</li>\n<li>Befriend the poster presenters around you, as they probably share the same research area as you do.</li>\n<li>During the off-conference time, do some sightseeing.</li>\n<li>Save all the receipts, boarding passes, etc. for reimbursement.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>After the conference</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Continue to travel if you have developed a travel plan.</li>\n<li>Evaluate what you learned, assess what interested you in the process, and what kind of techniques or information you can incorporate into your research.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Generally, don't confine what to learn. Because sometimes we don't know enough to know what should or should not be learned. Just be open, pick a good mix of topics that are about 50% that you are familiar with, 30% somewhat but not sure what they are, and 20% completely over your head.</p>\n\n<p>Also, don't just look at the academic side. Connect with people and learn something about how they craft their research, or how they speak eloquently, etc. It's not all about the contents.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/07 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16689",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11735/"
]
|
16,712 | <p>I am currently applying for a mid-range private school that teaches the career I want primarily (software engineering) and a prestigious public school for computer science (it doesn't have software engineering). So if I make it into the public university, I would evaluate between the specific career of the private one and the economic help of the public one, and choose the most appropriate one.</p>
<p>However, reading their entrance rules, I saw that if I decline the offer of admission in the public one, I could not apply to it again for the next two admission cycles (at two per year, that means a year and a half). What is the philosophy behind this? Applying to several schools benefits students, giving them more schools to choose from. And it also raises the funding because of the payment that is done to give the entrance exam (which is not one of the things public schools in my country can brag about). And it doesn't harm anyone, because the next one in the list would enter. The only collateral damage I can think of is extra administrative effort, but a year and a half vetted from applying to the university because of that seems too much for me. So, why? Is there some extra side effect that they are accounting for?</p>
<hr>
<p>The information @Pete L. Clark requested: I am living in Peru, and here the admission process in public universities is pretty simple: You just present your legal and education papers, pay for the entrace exam, take it, and see if you are admitted or not. So, everything boils down to that 3-days exam. But once it is finished, you are in.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16714,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I believe the issue here is that if a student has already been offered admission and turned it down, then the school has already given that student due consideration in reviewing the application. Reapplying in the following year means that the candidate was apparently unsatisfied with any of the offers of admission received, which included the school in question. So what would have changed in such a short period of time that meant the offer wasn't good enough <em>then</em>, but is good enough <em>now</em>?</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16715,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Programs don't like to be used as a \"backup\", because offers to people using them in this way delay offers to others, sometimes to the point that the other people give up and accept offers from yet-other places. Thus, making offers that fail tends to degrade the quality of candidates who will accept offers. Thus, since you declined once, obviously chances are good that you'd decline again, thus again somewhat-lowering the quality of candidates that will be made an offer early enough to accept.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16725,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I guess whether backup applications (and re-applications next time) are or are not a problem depends very much on how many prospective students do how many backup applications.</p>\n\n<p>No problem if a small percentage of prospective students apply for one other university. </p>\n\n<p>But if lots of the people who want to study apply at several places, you end up in a situation where the administrative part of the whole process runs into chaos because one or two more rounds acceptance letters and waiting whether the student accepts are needed. And of course, the chances that a student who ended up on the waiting list with you accepted somewhere else or meanwhile took a job because they thought it unlikely to get a place to study would be high. Thus, administration has <em>a lot</em> of additional work and also stress. You cannot start the application process too early (e.g. the final exam of the schools is needed). But you need to allow a reasonable amount of time for the student to accept or decline the offer of the univerity and students will tend to send the refusal late (or forget to send it at all) because they wait for acceptance of another university. If you are too late sending out the acceptance (for those on the waiting list), this is anywhere between stressful and impossible for the students to accept: they have to find housing and move, and if courses already started they also have to catch up with the learning.<br>\nAlso, universities cannot overbook like airlines.</p>\n\n<p>In other words, the situation becomes highly stressful for everyone involved: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>the university has a high unnecessary workload (n \"backup exams\" have to be graded for each student), </li>\n<li>university administration also has a high workload and pressure: they need to react <em>immediately</em> on the refusal letters of the students and may need several rounds of acceptance. </li>\n<li>Students who do not get accepted immedately at the university of their dreams have to stay ready for moving immeditaly without knowing where. Also the prospective student may \"hang in the air\" because they don't apply for a \"regular\" job / training while there is still a substantial chance of getting a late acceptance.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I'm wondering whether the fact that you have to pay for the exam is just another symptom of this same problem (or the univiersities' fear of that): both rules may be designed to keep down the number of backup applications. </p>\n\n<p>There are other ways to try avoiding this administrative mess: In my country (Germany) the most overrun fields of study have a central application: you file your <em>one</em> appliation including a statement of backup universities (and backup subjects) and then get an offer according to this. If you end up at a university that was not your first choice, you can anyways start there and try to change later on.<br>\nNevertheless, the last letters of acceptance are usually sent out when the semester has already started (to fill in places of students who accepted but didn't show up or because this is round 3 of the acceptance: the student on the waiting list declined). </p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/08 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16712",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11756/"
]
|
16,721 | <p>First, I must mention that I found these questions helpful:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5330/14341">Prospective PhD contacts potential supervisor but receives no answer after 2-3 emails, what to do?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/9644/14341">What to do when emails to a potential advisor are not replied?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1450/14341">Should résumés be attached in a mail to a professor?</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Yet, I am looking for more precise answers to the questions below. </p>
<p>I plan to apply for a PhD in Computer Science this year in several countries, mainly Europe, Australia and Canada. I am looking for a PhD with funding. As far as I know, I should contact potential supervisor as a first step. However, I am not sure about how much detail should be included in this first email. Specifically, with regards to the first email, I would like to hear advice on on the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Generally, how much detail should I provide?</li>
<li>Should I ask about the chance of getting funding?</li>
<li>Should I send documents or only if s/he asks for? </li>
<li>Statement of purpose/motivation, what is the right length? Is s/he ready to read two pages about every applicant sends him/her email?</li>
</ul>
<p>Taking into account that this is the first email to the potential supervisor and he might spend only 10 seconds scanning it, What is right answers for the questions above that make the supervisor starts a discussion rather than sending negative response or even ignore the email? </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16722,
"author": "Neo",
"author_id": 6898,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6898",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>At most write an email about 6-8 lines long; people are busy. You should introduce yourself, explain what kind of research you want to do, ask he/she if she is taking on a student, and reference a few of their recent papers that you are interested and why. Include a small CV attached in the email. </p>\n\n<p>If the professor responds, and offers to answer questions, then ask about funding. Statement of purpose length should be specified in the application process. Don't send your statement of purpose unless they specifically ask for it on their website.</p>\n\n<p>It really depends on the field, but using these general guidelines almost every potential advisor responded this application season. Just because they respond doesn't mean you will get in, but it should improve your chances if you come off in a positive light.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16724,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>My answer is going to extend up <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/16700/10094\">this</a> earlier answer to a similar, although broader, question.</p>\n\n<p>Some background: I have worked with two pretty well-known professors in Austria and Switzerland, and can provide some insight into how they tend to hire. I assume other professors have similar MOs, but not every person is the same, so your milage may vary.</p>\n\n<p>Indeed, for both of them, the first step towards starting a PhD is to send them a <strong>short</strong> informal mail stating your interest in joining their group. Your challenge is to get the professor interested despite him reading maybe a 100 mails a day. You can already see why a two-page text has a 0% chance of being read, same is true for an attached CV or an elaborate research proposal - you need to convince in maybe 10 seconds. Your second challenge is to separate yourself from the <strong>dozen or so other people</strong> that are trying the same every week, mainly coming from universities in the far east.</p>\n\n<p>In that light, here are answers to your questions</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Generally, how much and deep details should I provide?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I would go for <em>none</em>, honestly. Discuss concrete research ideas at a later point, when the professor has shown interest.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Should I mention anything about fund chances?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>God no.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Should I send documents or only if s/he asks for.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Statement of purpose/motivation, what is the right length? Is s/he ready to read two pages about every applicant sends him/her email?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Forget it. None of the professors that I worked with is interested in those <em>formal</em> application documents at any point during the process. They will either want to skype with you or have one of their senior staff skype with you, and then you would explain the things you would write into a SOP. To be clear - I have received a PhD student, a postdoc, and a senior postdoc position without ever being asked for a SOP or letter of motivation. Those are required only if hiring is done by a committee, e.g., for faculty staff.</p>\n\n<p>Here is an example of a mail that <em>might</em> work on the people that I know.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Dear FIRST-NAME,</p>\n\n<p>I am currently looking into options for getting a PhD. I have looked into your work on IMPORTANT-THING-PROF-IS-WORKING-ON, and I would be really interested in joining you on this line of work. </p>\n\n<p>I have recently graduated from XY with a degree in YZ, and I have a background in SOMETHING-RELATED-TO-THE-ABOVE. I have done internships at BIG-NAME-A and BIG-NAME-B and already published X papers on SOMETHING-RELATED-TO-THE-ABOVE during my masters.</p>\n\n<p>I would be happy if we could discuss matters further via Skype.</p>\n\n<p>thank you in advance,\nYOUR-FIRST-NAME</p>\n\n<p>YOUR-WEB-PAGE</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Note the informal tone. This might be a personal preference of the people I know, but an informal mail is significantly more likely to be read by both of my professors than a very formal one. Further, note that it will be required that you have some measure of achievements that the professor can relate to - graduating from a university that the professor maybe has never heard of alone will not be enough to get him interested. Already having published and/or having done internships at well-known companies (well-known also to the professor!), especially those that are known to have competitive selection schemes (e.g., IBM), helps a lot here. Do not bother sending your GPA etc. - people in Europe tend to not be interested in grades in my experience.</p>\n\n<p>Another thing that might help with the people I know is work on open source projects (e.g., being a committer or committee member to one or more Apache projects, having a well-maintained Github page with interesting tools and Gists, etc.), but this may be mostly because I work in software engineering (and people that know how software is built in real-life are very valuable to us).</p>\n\n<p>Another important topic is english language - if you cannot speak / write english well, <strong>let the mail be proof-read by somebody who can</strong> (according to the way the question is written, this should not be an issue for the OP, but this may be relevant to other readers). Mails in terrible english are almost always discarded immediately.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, the above sample contains a link to a web page. <strong>Have a personal academic web page</strong>. This is the place where you would put a <strong>good</strong> picture of you and all your academic achievements (papers, CVs, research interests, internships, links to open source projects you contributed to, industry projects that you worked on, whatever). Make it look professional and pretty.</p>\n\n<p>Note that this mail still has a high chance of being ignored. In that case, give the professor a week or so and then write a a one-line reminder as a reply or forward of the original mail. If he does not respond after that, <strong>move on</strong>. <em>Then he is just not that into you</em>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 45795,
"author": "Stephanie",
"author_id": 32695,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32695",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I spoke to many supervisors in my applications for Computational Biology PhD's in the UK and got very enthusiastic and positive responses and lots of offers. They pretty all went something along the lines of:</p>\n\n<p><em>Dear X,</em></p>\n\n<p><em>I am a X student at X and I've been looking at your work in X and I'm very interested in doing a PhD in this area, do you have any positions available? Also do you have any time to Skype so we can talk about your work? I have done X which is why I am interested in X and my experience is detailed further in my CV (attached).</em></p>\n\n<p><em>Best wishes, X</em></p>\n\n<p>Obviously omitting/changing details if they have advertisements for positions out etc which you can then say you have seen, I recommend making your CV as strong as possible and also offering to Skype shows you are willing to spend time talking to them! I also sometimes asked them whether they would consider me or checked whether they felt I was complementary to the group/had the right skills.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/09 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16721",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6416/"
]
|
16,726 | <p>I have written a couple of articles for two different daily newspapers. In them, I have discussed the issues of my academic field. Should I include these articles in my CV?</p>
<p>If so, under what title? Is press release appropriate? What is the most common and accepted term?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16727,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I do not think there is a standard ,unless such articles are commonplace in the specific field (e.g. journalism). I definitely think it is worth adding such materials to a CV since they indicate activity. You need to think twice, however, whether or not they provide a positive aspect when you use your CV. Suggestions for appropriate headers could be many. your suggestion sounds good., you could consider something like \"Scientific debate articles\" or something more descriptive that encapsulates their contents.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16728,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I have written a couple of articles for 2 different daily newspapers. In them, I have discussed the issues of my academic field. Should I include them in my CV?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, certainly, as long as you clearly separate them from your academic publications. Strictly speaking, they are form of publication, so it wouldn't be lying to list them together with your research papers under a vague enough title, but this would be a very bad idea. It would come across like you are trying to make your publication list look longer by inflating it with non-academic publications.</p>\n\n<p>[If the newspaper articles had nothing at all to do with your academic work, then mentioning them probably wouldn't make sense. However, it sounds like they do.]</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If so, under what title? Is press release appropriate? What is the most common and accepted term?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Definitely not press release, since a press release is something else: it's a document given to journalists to inform them about a possible story they could write about. Occasionally newspapers publish lightly edited versions of press releases, without gathering much more information, but this is considered bad reporting.</p>\n\n<p>I don't think there's a clear standard for how to list this information. You could list it in several ways: outreach, other publications (if you have a \"scholarly publications\" section, say), writing for the general public, etc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16745,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am very impressed that you wrote articles about academia that got published by daily newspapers. I think that information is well worth including on your CV.</p>\n\n<p>In terms of what to call it: I don't think there are any codewords here, at least none that will be reliably decoded by your entire intended audience. Rather, just clearly identify what you've done, e.g.:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Articles published in <em>Daily Xer:</em></strong> Title1, date1; Title 2, date 2;<br>\n<strong>Articles published in <em>City Y Times</em></strong>: Title3, date3</p>\n\n<p>If you feel like your readers might not know that the Daily Xer or the City Y Times is a daily periodical, you should include that information as well. </p>\n\n<p>In terms of where to put it on your CV: well, think about in what way writing these articles will be impressive and valuable to readers of your CV. Does it show off your high quality writing skills? Does it show your willingness and ability to communicate technical or insider issues to a very broad audience? And so forth. Once you figure out what is the \"primary virtue\" demonstrated by this activity, you will know where to put it in your CV (perhaps with a section of its own title, but the title should indicate to the reader how you answered the above question).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16756,
"author": "fileunderwater",
"author_id": 7223,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7223",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I definately think that you should add them to your CV, but, as other have mentioned, under a separate heading from you academic publications. My suggestion is to use the heading <strong>Popular science articles</strong> for these (if all of them are indeed science), or <strong>Newspaper articles</strong> for something more general. I've seen both of these used on CVs. \"Press release\" would not be suitable to use.</p>\n\n<p>The ability to express scientific results in layman's language is clearly valuable (both inside and outside of academia), so generally I see such an addition as a plus on the CV.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/09 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16726",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11571/"
]
|
16,730 | <p>My general question is; let's say that you are PI and apply individually or jointly with other research groups to a grant, and you get it. After some months, you move to another institution; can you generally "move" all the money and resources you were awarded with or should you abandon them?</p>
<p>The question goes for <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">H2020</a> projects or any other national or international funding schemes (NIH, NSF, UK, etc)</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16732,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>What is allowed depends on a number of factors. For example the funding agency may not allow you to move the grant. This is especially true if it is an international move or if the grant requires a resource that is not available at the new institution. It also depends on your current institution. They may not allow you to take equipment that was previously purchased on the grant with you. You new institution may also not allow you to bring the grant over if it does not provide sufficient overhead. If the time remaining on the grant is short, the two institutions may decide to not formally transfer the grant and work off of a sub contract instead. That said, generally for non-international moves you will be allowed to bring over the unspent money.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16734,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>And in particular this goes for H2020 projects.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This happened to a colleague of mine for FP7, I assume H2020 will be pretty much the same. Essentially, you have two options:</p>\n\n<p>(1) Find a <em>proxy</em> to formally finish the project on your behalf. That is, find somebody at your current institution with a high enough status that he is allowed to take over the project without much administrative quabbles (e.g., a senior professor), and formally hand over the project to him when you leave. You will of course still do the actual work - the handover is just a formality. Of course this requires a significant amount of trust and goodwill (on both sides), so you better be good friends with the person that proxies for you. As long as you both are at the same institution, the administrative effort of this solution is not too high.</p>\n\n<p>(2) Officially <em>transfer</em> the project to your new institution. This requires an amendment of your DOW (description of work), and the sanctus of your new institution, all partners of the project, and the european commission (i.e., of the PO and the responsible lawyers on EC side). This will take <strong>long</strong> - expect the entire process to take possibly a year or so. Additionally, there is a chance that some negotiations between you, your old institution, and your new institution are required (e.g., to answer the question to what percentage the overheads should be transferred to the new institution). H2020 proposals are good money for universities, and you should not expect your old institution to let go of such a project easily.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Edit:</strong> Clearly, option 2 is only available if your new institution is also eligible for H2020 funding.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/09 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16730",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/284/"
]
|
16,735 | <p>I am a self funded PhD student and have been told by my supervisor that her name should be first on any future journal I will be publishing during my studies under her supervision as "this is the only thing she gets from her PhD students".</p>
<p>I am just wondering if the ordering of author names matter? She is going to help me only by proof writing my article. All research will be done by myself. </p>
<p>Is she legally allowed to say it? Should I accept it?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16736,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In many fields first authorship signals who has contributed the most, scientifically, to the paper. Included in this is not only efforts to do experiments and drawing conclusions from the experiments but also to originate the ideas on which the paper is built as well as writing the paper. It is quite normal that the first paper a graduate student writes may have the main advisor as first author because of the wealth of input an inexperienced student may need. As time progresses, I would say the student should move to the first author position as the work becomes more and more independent. The goal is, after all, to train you to become an independent researcher. So the statement that the advisor should be first author on all you produce would not be considered reasonable in many disciplines.</p>\n\n<p>Should you accept it? From an ethical point, no. In reality, you need to think of your future and assess what effects such actions would result in. Not knowing the way publications normally look in your field it is difficult to say anything specific but when considering general authorship guidelines as detailed in, for example, the Vancouver protocol (do a search on Academia.se to see details) the person who fulfil all criteria should be an author and the person who contributes most should e first author.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16743,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I am just wondering if the ordering of author names matter?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In a small number of academic fields -- like mathematics -- the overwhelmingly majority of jointly authored papers list the authors' names in alphabetical order. In these fields, a non-alphabetical ordering of the authors stands out like a sore thumb: the average mathematician knows it is meant to look bad for the latter-listed author but is not sure exactly what it means. In a field like this, if you hear a potential advisor say this, you should say \"Thank you, I'll look for someone else\" and walk out the door.</p>\n\n<p>In most other academic fields, the ordering of the authors conveys important meaning in a manner which can be subtle and vary from field to field. There are some academic fields where being the <em>last</em> named author carries a lot of prestige, but in my understanding this is the kind of prestige awarded a very senior person. I don't know of any academic field in which putting the junior author at the end looks good for them.</p>\n\n<p>But anyway, here is another kind of answer to your question: the ordering of names must matter <em>to your potential advisor</em> or she wouldn't have brought it up! Therefore if you yourself are not sure what rights you are signing away in such an agreement, you should be especially skeptical. I think the first thing that you should do is look around to see how common this practice is among other faculty and students in your department. (If you are in an academic context far from the American one, it would be more prudent to do this even if you are in a field like mathematics than to immediately walk out of the office like I suggested above. I don't know what the standard arrangement is at every math department in the world...obviously.) This will be easy to check just by looking at the publications of the faculty members. Also asking the other students can help. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>She is going to help me only by proof writing my article. All research will be done by myself. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Proofreading is not the same as advising. An agreement where your advisor guarantees in advance not to advise you in most meaningful ways <em>and</em> that she will insist on first coauthorship sounds like an especially bad one. It also sounds unethical to me by the general standards of academic ethics, although subfield ethics may have a role to play.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is she legally allowed to say it?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Not every form of bad behavior is illegal (thank goodness). I can't speak to the law over the entire surface of the earth, but in the US there are certainly no laws pertaining to this kind of thing.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Should I accept it?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think that what potential advisor is really trying to say is that she does not want to be your potential advisor. Sometimes people have trouble saying \"no\" outright; this happens in academia (where the tenure process takes a good shot at making \"yes-men\" and \"yes-women\" out of academics) but also in life generally. A lot of times I have seen academics offer to do things for students only under quite unreasonable conditions that they clearly (to me) expect the students to turn down...only to have the student not know so clearly that the conditions are unreasonable and accept them. Of course both parties end up unhappy.</p>\n\n<p>In your case I feel reasonably confident that your advisor is trying to tell you to go away. What I am unsure of is whether she's telling it to <em>you</em> specifically or to all students generally: the rather oafish \"this is the only thing she gets from her PhD students\" seems to indicate that this professor is simply not onboard with the practice of having PhD students at all. But either way, I advise you to look around: probably you can do better.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/09 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16735",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11777/"
]
|
16,738 | <p>I want to translate an English book, but before translating it, I want to be sure if the author will permit me to do so.</p>
<p>I am not doing this for financial gain. Since it is a book about a new subject, my professor asked me to translate it, so that students in my country become better familiar with the topic.</p>
<p>Would you please provide me a good text to email it to the author?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16739,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In most cases books are published through a publisher and certain copyright laws apply that may be shared between the publisher and the author. Exactly where the right to decide on translations lie may vary. You therefore need to contact both the author and the publisher to look into what might apply and to what extent they are interested in such translation. My suspicion is that it will not be as easy as just getting permission to translate. When a book (or any publication) is translated, there will be a need to get a translation that properly represents the original content. A publisher may not be content with \"anybody\" translating the work, they may request some form of review etc. So, the bottom line is that you need to contact publisher and author to see what is possible and under what conditions. It is possible they accept translation into a different language for different reasons but they will most likely want to retain some form of copyright.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 35334,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While there may be lots of copyright issues and the publisher will likely need to be contacted. I think starting with the author is the way to go. The email can be rather simple and the content of your question is a good starting point:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Dear X,</p>\n<p>I would like to translate your book. I am not doing this for financial gain. I want students in my country become better familiar with the topic.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>You may want to include a little about yourself so the author realizes you are familiar enough with the material to translate it and have a use for the translated book.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/09 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16738",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11259/"
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|
16,746 | <p>I have an undergraduate degree, and I do some of independent research on my own, so I was thinking if universities have some kind of offer where I can use it, and I mean in exchange for my research I'll get the master degree without following the course, or anything that looks like that, any resources or references where I can look ? </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16818,
"author": "DCTLib",
"author_id": 7390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7390",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is the possiblitity to get a research-oriented Master, which is the thing closest to what you asked for. Here is the link to one example course that I found during a quick search:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.findamasters.com/search/masters-degree.aspx?course=15956\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.findamasters.com/search/masters-degree.aspx?course=15956</a></p>\n\n<p>You didn't state which field of study you are interested in and in which area of the world, so this is probably not precisely what you are looking for. However, as Nate Eldredge already wrote, you can't expect to spend only a single day at your Master's University. They will want to make sure that you meet their standards, and typically, this involves at least a moderate course load for a Master's degree. Also, the degree of independence in research that you are asking for is probably not the same than the one that you get there.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 91288,
"author": "Diego",
"author_id": 75184,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/75184",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Well, not exactly a Master but a PhD. In Norway, there's an option at University of Oslo called \"Dr.Philos. degree\" which may be awarded to academics who have qualified for a doctoral degree on their own, without formal supervision. Such candidates have no formal affiliation to the University of Oslo until their application for the doctoral examination has been approved and shall be an independent scientific work. It shall contribute to the development of new scientific knowledge and must be of sufficiently high quality to merit publication as part of the scientific literature in the field.</p>\n\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http://www.uio.no/english/research/phd/drphilos/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://www.uio.no/english/research/phd/drphilos/</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 91311,
"author": "jmite",
"author_id": 6069,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6069",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In Canada, many Master's programs are research based, and in general act as miniature PhDs. In addition, they are also often funded. There is usually a course requirement, but at least your second year will be primarily research.</p>\n\n<p>So while this isn't exactly what you're looking for, if you're wanting to do research, get paid for it, and get a Master's degree, you might consider a Canadian Master's program.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/09 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16746",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11780/"
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|
16,747 | <p>I am getting ready to submit a method paper which describes a dataset that I had created. However, I was late getting the paper ready, and a couple of other colleagues used the dataset in their own papers, and those papers are already online (I am coauthor in them).</p>
<p>The other papers do not describe in detail how the dataset was constructed. I am afraid that if cite them, it might harm my chances of getting my own paper on the dataset published. Any suggestions on what would be the right thing to do?</p>
<p>thanks!</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16818,
"author": "DCTLib",
"author_id": 7390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7390",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is the possiblitity to get a research-oriented Master, which is the thing closest to what you asked for. Here is the link to one example course that I found during a quick search:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.findamasters.com/search/masters-degree.aspx?course=15956\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.findamasters.com/search/masters-degree.aspx?course=15956</a></p>\n\n<p>You didn't state which field of study you are interested in and in which area of the world, so this is probably not precisely what you are looking for. However, as Nate Eldredge already wrote, you can't expect to spend only a single day at your Master's University. They will want to make sure that you meet their standards, and typically, this involves at least a moderate course load for a Master's degree. Also, the degree of independence in research that you are asking for is probably not the same than the one that you get there.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 91288,
"author": "Diego",
"author_id": 75184,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/75184",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Well, not exactly a Master but a PhD. In Norway, there's an option at University of Oslo called \"Dr.Philos. degree\" which may be awarded to academics who have qualified for a doctoral degree on their own, without formal supervision. Such candidates have no formal affiliation to the University of Oslo until their application for the doctoral examination has been approved and shall be an independent scientific work. It shall contribute to the development of new scientific knowledge and must be of sufficiently high quality to merit publication as part of the scientific literature in the field.</p>\n\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http://www.uio.no/english/research/phd/drphilos/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://www.uio.no/english/research/phd/drphilos/</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 91311,
"author": "jmite",
"author_id": 6069,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6069",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In Canada, many Master's programs are research based, and in general act as miniature PhDs. In addition, they are also often funded. There is usually a course requirement, but at least your second year will be primarily research.</p>\n\n<p>So while this isn't exactly what you're looking for, if you're wanting to do research, get paid for it, and get a Master's degree, you might consider a Canadian Master's program.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/09 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16747",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10474/"
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|
16,759 | <p>In most (or at least many) fields of academia, peer-reviewed publications are essential. For a compilation thesis, no papers means no PhD. For tenure, you need papers. To get grants, you need papers. Universities may distribute internal funds based on the number of papers per group. In short: <em>publish or perish</em>.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it is quite cheap to offer someone co-authorship. Send a nearly finished manuscript to a colleague/friend at another university for review... colleague reads it, offers some advice, perhaps just minor. First author offers co-authorship in return, and colleague has another co-authored paper for possibly less than a day of work. One can discuss if it is the right thing to do, but that is not my question here. It happens. <em>(NB: I am</em> <strong><em>not</em></strong> <em>suggesting such has happened in the examples listed below!</em>)</p>
<p>Criteria for co-authorship differ per field, but some papers have <em>a lot</em> of co-authors. Perhaps due to having an instrument that was used in an inter-comparison/validation study. Some examples of papers with lots of co-authors, not particularly extreme:</p>
<p><sup><sub>
Kasai, Y., Sagawa, H., Kreyling, D., Dupuy, E., Baron, P., Mendrok, J., Suzuki, K., Sato, T. O., Nishibori, T., Mizobuchi, S., Kikuchi, K., Manabe, T., Ozeki, H., Sugita, T., Fujiwara, M., Irimajiri, Y., Walker, K. A., Bernath, P. F., Boone, C., Stiller, G., von Clarmann, T., Orphal, J., Urban, J., Murtagh, D., Llewellyn, E. J., Degenstein, D., Bourassa, A. E., Lloyd, N. D., Froidevaux, L., Birk, M., Wagner, G., Schreier, F., Xu, J., Vogt, P., Trautmann, T., and Yasui, M.: Validation of stratospheric and mesospheric ozone observed by SMILES from International Space Station, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 6, 2311-2338, doi:10.5194/amt-6-2311-2013, 2013.
</sub></sup></p>
<p><sup><sub>
Milz, M., Clarmann, T. v., Bernath, P., Boone, C., Buehler, S. A., Chauhan, S., Deuber, B., Feist, D. G., Funke, B., Glatthor, N., Grabowski, U., Griesfeller, A., Haefele, A., Höpfner, M., Kämpfer, N., Kellmann, S., Linden, A., Müller, S., Nakajima, H., Oelhaf, H., Remsberg, E., Rohs, S., Russell III, J. M., Schiller, C., Stiller, G. P., Sugita, T., Tanaka, T., Vömel, H., Walker, K., Wetzel, G., Yokota, T., Yushkov, V., and Zhang, G.: Validation of water vapour profiles (version 13) retrieved by the IMK/IAA scientific retrieval processor based on full resolution spectra measured by MIPAS on board Envisat, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 2, 379-399, doi:10.5194/amt-2-379-2009, 2009.
</sub></sup></p>
<p><em>(Again, I would like to stress than I am absolutely not implying that there is anything inappropriate about these two examples!)</em></p>
<p>On the other hand, I rarely see papers written by sole authors, and I have the <em>impression</em> that such papers were more common in the past — but I have no evidence thereof. </p>
<p>Is there an inflation in the number of authors per paper? In other words, is the number of authors per paper increasing and if so, does this reduce the value of a co-authored publication?</p>
<p><em>Related: <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3108/1033">What is the average number of articles written per author in a year and has it increased recently?</a></em></p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16761,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are two types of dangers when it comes to publishing as a basis for evaluations. One is certainly as you mention more authors included although they have not fulfilled the basic criteria as for example outlined by the Vancouver protocol. A second effect is so-called salami-slicing where the results are sliced to produce as many publications as possible. There are tendencies such as these and journals have started to act against the by requesting disclosure of contributions by the authors. Salami-slicing should be corrected through the review process and may be more difficult to identify since reviewers and editors do not know the full extent of any particular project.</p>\n\n<p>Against all this is the fact that science has over roughly the past century (different in different disciplines) steadily moved towards larger groups and consortia performing research. This results in many co-authors, particularly on papers synthesizing results from the larger projects. The number of authors have therefore increased but due o several and opposing reasons.</p>\n\n<p>The value of co-authorship has therefore also changed over time. I believe the view of co-authorship varies between disciplines, maybe even a lot. In the disciplines with which I am familiar authorship alone is not sufficient to value a paper. For better or worse, we also look at the impact factor to try to assess the value of co-authorship. This means it may be possible to value a co-authorship of one key paper as more valuable than first authorship of another more run-of-the-mill paper. What this implies is that valuations are not necessarily simple arithmetic although that is certainly how it is often treated. In terms of a thesis, there was a time, not too long ago (when I finished my PhD), when single authorship was looked as the only acceptable form but now, it is a rarity. we do however, require all papers to be listed with a detailed author contribution.</p>\n\n<p>Clearly the main problem is different kinds of free authorships. as this becomes common so will actions to reduce the problem. Top journals have started this and I am sure many others will follow. At the same time the reasons for \"cheating\" must also be reduced which puts responsibility on persons evaluating applications where publications constitute a basis for decisions. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16769,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
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"text": "<p>I take <em>inflation</em> to mean that the number of co-authors grows faster than what the content/effort of the research merits: that would imply that if there is a non-negligible amount of such an inflation, it does affect the value of the authorship. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Number of co-authors per paper is increasing</li>\n<li>Co-authorship inflation is perceived as a problem</li>\n<li>Perceived amount of contribution depends greatly on the position in the author list: first, last and corresponding author are perceived as contributing much, middle authors are perceived as contributing only a bit. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Long version: </p>\n\n<p>First of all, the number of coauthors per paper is clearly increasing, e.g. <a href=\"http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/authors1.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">pubmed provides statics about such questions</a>:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/GI4Fc.png\" alt=\"average number of authors per paper over years\"></p>\n\n<p>Let me mainly take the optimistic position and list sensible valid reasons for increasing numbers of coauthors.</p>\n\n<p>Some are well known and widely discussed</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>large combined scientific efforts like big instrumentation, the practical implementation of such long author lists widely and somewhat controversely discussed.</li>\n<li><p>Increasingly interdisciplinary research</p></li>\n<li><p>But I think that also the density of researchers has increased, which greatly facilitates collaboration.<br>\nE.g. I'm in a 100 000 inhabitant university town. The university has about 20 000 students and 7 000 employees (incl. professors - not sure whether this count includes technical personnel or only research staff). That alone is more than the whole town had inhabitants in 1900. PLus we also have a university of applied sciences and a number of non-university research institutes. I'm in of those reseach institutes, with about 300 employees. So there are several thousand researchers with whom I can collaborate even person to person by bicycle/foot.<br>\nThis high concentration of researchers facilitates intra- as well as interdisciplinary collaboration. These papers then naturally have more co-authors. Say, an \"instrumentation\" group develops a customized sensor for a group tackeling some application and yet other people develop the data analysis for the paper. </p></li>\n<li><p>In addition, email, skype and cheap travel (plus I'm in the luxirous position that there are basically no legal travel restrictions as I'm German and EU citizen) makes it much easier than, say, 30 years ago to know, meet and collaborate with colleagues from all over the world.</p></li>\n<li><p>Specialization, particularly now that I'm at such a big institute.<br>\nE.g. where I'm now I usually receive readily prepared samples for measurements. Actually, being specialized on data analysis I often receive just the measured data (and I'm very lucky if people bother to have a chat beforehand on the design of experiments with me). Someone else prepares the samples and someone who mainly works on instrument development does the measurements. On contrast, where I was before everyone did all of that for their own topic and samples (of course also having emphasis on some part of this work flow). Of course all these people here contribute significantly to the paper.<br>\nBut it also means that there <em>is</em> a continuous distribution size of contributions. I've somewhere seen a notion that weights the papers by 1/total no. of authors.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Of course, also abuse of co-authorship, such as honorary authorship, does happen, and maybe the specialization can become a salami-slicing of contributions.<br>\nI very much like the possibility of including a \"contributions\" section and decided to do that whenever possible. I think it can help checking against the abuse. At the moment (in my field), I think the existence of such a paragraph alone is a quite strong sign of no abuse of co-authorship.</p>\n\n<p>But I think there are also valid reasons that mean that nowadays more authors are on a paper without the amount of work of the different persons involved having changed:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Nowadays, sometimes technicians who did a lot of the work (and often also contribute to the development of the lab methodology) are mentioned.</li>\n<li><p>Also I believe that students who do research nowadays have a far better chance to end up on the author list. </p></li>\n<li><p>Maybe a gray zone, which also depends on customs/tradition is how to deal with the higher-up levels of supervision:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.icmje.org/ethical_1author.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Vancouver</a> says: providing funding alone is not sufficient (and of course the <a href=\"http://www.dfg.de/download/pdf/dfg_im_profil/reden_stellungnahmen/download/empfehlung_wiss_praxis_1310.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer\">DFG goes along the same lines</a>)</li>\n<li>German tradition says: head of the institute is responsible for all that is going on in his/her institute, and thus is always included.<br>\nTo be clear here: this does <em>not</em> mean (and AFAIK has never meant) only an organizational responsibility, but a scientific responibility, i.e. supervision of the project. The gray zone IMHO comes from the fact that the proper contribution can superficially <em>look</em> similar to improper (i.e. no proper contribution) -- it is difficult to judge from the outside: A very good supervisor may guide in a way that is hardly perceived. If this good supervisor is looking after a good student, after putting his intellectual facilities to the project may find that the good student does well, and not many changes are needed. This is a proper contribution. Yet it superficially can look very similar to a bad supervisor who does not contribute his intellect to the project or paper and just waves everything through - regardless of whether the input is good or not. </li>\n</ul></li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>I think this paper is interesting: </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2247376/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Wren <em>et al.</em>: The write position. A survey of perceived contributions to papers based on byline position and number of authors,\nEMBO Rep. 2007, 8(11), 988–991.<br>\nDOI: 10.1038/sj.embor.7401095\nPMCID: PMC2247376</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In addition, we also asked respondents for their perception of general trends and attitudes towards authorship of scientific publications. <strong>Forty per cent of the respondents (35/87), for example, agreed that granting authorship to someone who does not meet journal authorship criteria was a common occurrence. Half of the respondents also agreed that author inflation makes it significantly harder to judge whether or not a candidate merits promotion.</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>While this does not answer the question whether there objectively is an inflation in co-authorship, it means that this is at the very least widely suspected and perceived as a problem.</p>\n\n<p>Also, the outcome of that paper IMHO boils down to: perceived as authors are the first, last and corresponding authors, the middle authors are generally perceived far less. </p>\n\n<p>Personally, I share the suspicion that a significant amount of co-authorship abuse happens. However, my field is small and I think I have a reasonably good overview of what is going on. This includes a (subjective) idea of where I'd suspect honorary authorship or small contributions and on the other hand also some idea of who likely contributed what (specializations) to the paper. In addition, of course the listing of the instituions makes a lot of that clear (e.g. if someone from a statistics department, someone from a clinic and someone from a spectroscopy lab is listed that gives me a very good guess who \ndid what).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16778,
"author": "pwaring",
"author_id": 11791,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11791",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>\"On the other hand, I rarely see papers written by sole authors\"</p>\n\n<p>A lot depends on the field you are researching. In the sciences you'll often find papers written by 6+ authors - probably because they're a collaborative effort between a team which might be spread across several institutions. In the arts, however, it's not uncommon to find single author articles - especially in fields such as classics and ancient history. If you look at the publications by staff in that department at the University of Manchester you'll find many single author papers:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/classicsancienthistory/people/\">http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/classicsancienthistory/people/</a></p>\n\n<p>Looking through the 100+ publications I cited in my ancient history articles, I can find only one which had more than one author, whereas in my computer science thesis there were only 12 with one author - most of which were unreviewed technical reports.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 19114,
"author": "blmoore",
"author_id": 8722,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8722",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Is there an inflation in the number of authors per paper? In other words, is the number of authors per paper increasing and if so, does this reduce the value of a co-authored publication?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Bit late but somewhat inspired by this question I did some research on author inflation within PLOS journals (due to their nice API). </p>\n\n<p>The full write-up is <a href=\"http://benjaminlmoore.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/author-inflation-in-academic-literature/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">here</a>, should you be interested, but the TL;DR is that author inflation does indeed appear to be happening, at least in this selection of journals mostly from the life sciences in recent years.</p>\n\n<p>Here are linear regressions per journal of yearly mean number of authors per paper:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://benjaminlmoore.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/plot_lm.png\" alt=\"Authors vs. times\"></p>\n\n<p>In one of the comments I was linked to a much <a href=\"http://blog.coudert.name/post/2014/02/21/Evolution-of-chemistry-writing-over-5-decades\" rel=\"noreferrer\">longer-term study</a> which revealed the same trend in a prominent chemistry journal.</p>\n\n<p>The second part of your question is harder to answer but cbeleites has given some good insight and references. +1 for a very interesting question.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 78020,
"author": "Ébe Isaac",
"author_id": 40592,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/40592",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>After reading <a href=\"http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.17555!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/521263f.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">the following article</a>, your count does not bring much of a surprise.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The paper, published in the journal \n <em>G3: Genes Genomes Genetics</em>, names 1,014 authors, with more \n than 900 undergraduate students among them. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The corresponding author was questioned as to whether everyone did make sufficient contribution. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The paper’s senior author, \n geneticist Sarah Elgin at Washington University in St. Louis, \n Missouri, says that large collaborations with correspondingly \n large author lists have become a fact of life \n in genomics research. “Putting together \n the efforts of many people allows you to \n do good projects,” she says.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If you really want a look at the paper, it is available here:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4426361/\" rel=\"nofollow\"><em>Leung, W., Shaffer, C. D., Reed, L. K., Smith, S. T., Barshop, W., Dirkes, W., ... & Yuan, H. (2015). Drosophila Muller F elements maintain a distinct set of genomic properties over 40 million years of evolution. G3: Genes| Genomes| Genetics, 5(5), 719-740.</em></a></p>\n\n<p>Well, if 1014 isn't enough, then how about 5000+ authors:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Only the first nine pages in the 33-page article, published on 14 May in Physical Review Letters1, describe the research itself — including references. The other 24 pages list the authors and their institutions. (<a href=\"http://www.nature.com/news/physics-paper-sets-record-with-more-than-5-000-authors-1.17567\" rel=\"nofollow\">Ref.</a>)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The paper has exactly 5,154 authors and is the paper to have the largest number of authors ever known. You can find that paper here:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.191803\" rel=\"nofollow\"><em>Aad, G., Abbott, B., Abdallah, J., Abdinov, O., Aben, R., Abolins, M., ... & Abulaiti, Y. (2015). Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in p p Collisions at √s= 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS Experiments. Physical Review Letters, 114(19), 191803.</em></a></p>\n\n<p>Back to the question, <em>does increase in the number of authors decrease the value of the co-authored publication?</em></p>\n\n<p>The honest answer would be, <em>it depends</em>. It depends on the field of publication as well the impact of the research produced along with so many other factors.</p>\n\n<p>Scientists are trying to popularise the word <em><a href=\"http://archive.sciencewatch.com/newsletter/2012/201207/multiauthor_papers/\" rel=\"nofollow\">'hyperauthorship'</a></em> as an umbrella term to cover such papers. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 86860,
"author": "H.Harzenmoser",
"author_id": 71079,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/71079",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As one of the authors of one of the two shown examples I can definitely say \nthat the long authors list is the result of a large cooperation, 19 of the \nover 30 authors listed come from more than 10 internationally distributed \ninstitutions. Validations are always large undertakings involving many data\nsources from other groups, and each group has to do some work for such a \npublication. Especially, in the space/satellite segment, data acquisition and\nresult retrievals cannot be done by a few persons, these are dekade long \nprocesses with many people involved.\nSo the trend to many authors is just a reflection of the fact that research\nis getting much more complex in effort, money, and material involved, the\ntimes when sole researchers can produce scientific results of large impact \nin their ebony towers are long gone. No surprise at all, and surely, not a\nsign of some \"science fraud\"...</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/10 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16759",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1033/"
]
|
16,770 | <p>In German, as well as in other languages, people have Non-English characters in their names. e.g. ß, the umlauts etc.. </p>
<p>I frequently face problems when flying, opening bank accounts, etc., particularly abroad, since replacing the ß with ss changes more more than 25% of my family name as compared to how it's written in my passport.</p>
<p>Obviously it is desirable to write one's name for submissions, the way one's name is written correctly. Can one expect to run into problems, and will sooner or later end up with different publications being published under different spellings of the name, or is it safe to go for the correct spelling?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16771,
"author": "Armand",
"author_id": 1428,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1428",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>First of all, always <em>be consistent</em>. Whatever you decide, that is what you will always have to use. </p>\n\n<p>Considering the first point, might be better to strive and use your real name as it is with the non-english characters. You will have less problems in the future to prove your authorship in case questions rise. Complain to systems who do not accept your non-english characters... </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16774,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Unfortunately. this is a very real problem for many people. Any major \"irregularities\" in the name of an author—particularly the <em>first</em> author—can cause problems. You don't even need to use non-English characters. </p>\n\n<p>I know this from first-hand experience. I have very little problems with most of my papers—except for those I have published with two colleagues as first authors, one of whom has a hyphenated last name and the other whose name contains an apostrophe (compound Dutch name). On a regular basis, I need to write places like Web of Science to correct the publication records (e.g., the paper is listed as a cited reference, but somehow they can't seem to connect it to the original record, depriving us unfairly of citations). This has actually been a bigger problem with the hyphenated last name—the paper has about six or seven citations (provable!), but only one is listed in Web of Science. (Google Scholar seems to find them all, though.)</p>\n\n<p>Other problems will also crop up in attendance lists, email accounts, registration for conferences, and other things where Unicode acceptance in databases is limited.</p>\n\n<p>Note, however, that your <em>professional</em> name does not need to match up with your <em>legal</em> name. For instance, many female academics keep their maiden name if they started publishing under it when they were graduate students. This is the case even if they've legally changed their name after getting married. And I agree with Armand that it is more important that you use a <em>consistent</em> name—once you decide which version you want to use, stick with it!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16799,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To make less problems with computer search and indexing tools of various perfectness, I would suggest to use consistently English characters only in your English publications. If the non English character is basically an English character with extra crown or something the like, probably it will not be any problems with the proof of the authorship.</p>\n\n<p>While of course keyboards can be easily configured to support national characters as well, think about the foreign users. Would they be capable of typing your special character into search box? Most likely, they will type the Latin equivalent instead. Smart search engines will treat it as the same, others may just not find the results. Various specialized sites with own databases may be important to you yet have less search capabilities than Google or Yahoo.</p>\n\n<p>The possible alternative is to use the widely known several letter Latin alternative of that character that may exists (sch, zh, etc). However search tools are even less likely to treat special character and its multi letter alternative as the same. Also, doubts if it is the same name are much more likelty.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16805,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>For the given problem which I assume to be \"Heß\", I'd go with the ß spelling:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>For me the most important reason for this recommendation is that in German \"Heß\" and \"Hess\" two different last names, and both rather common ones. Thus using the transliteration not only creates confusion whether or not the name was transliterated, but also roughly doubles the basis of people who could possibly be meant (e.g. inside Germany ca. <a href=\"http://www.verwandt.de/karten/absolut/he%25C3%259F.html\">20000 Heß</a> + <a href=\"http://www.verwandt.de/karten/absolut/hess.html\">18500 Hess</a>) </p></li>\n<li><p>Over the last decade or so, there has been a tremendous improvement of dealing online with characters outside the absolute standard latin character set. I think this will continue, so using the ß will become less and less of a problem. As you say, google already knows how to deal with it.</p></li>\n<li>Worst thing that happens in addition to maybe sometimes being transliterated to \"ss\" or even \"sz\" (which is <em>very</em> uncommon in German, so while Germans would be aware of the possibility that Hess could be a transliterated version of Heß, Hesz would be considered something really different) would be that you find your name misspelled with a β (beta instead of s-zett). However I don't think that this will happen much more frequently than people misspelling my \"natively pure ASCII\" last name by exchanging the last \"e\" by an \"i\" - and having a common problem means that scientific data bases know better how to correct it.</li>\n<li>People may not know how to pronounce it, but that is very common with any kind of foreign name. </li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16811,
"author": "yo'",
"author_id": 1471,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1471",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm strongly advocating for keeping your name unchanged, as far as:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>most software can write it down (software = Word, HTML and LaTeX probably);</li>\n<li>it's based on latin alphabet (that is, to every character you can assign a character on the English alphabet).</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>If you follow the Rule 2, you should be safe since most indexing software strips off all \"decorations\" from the letters.</p>\n\n<p>For me, I hate when my name is written without diacritics, because it's simply not me. And heavens, we're living in 21st century and we have unicode and stuff!</p>\n\n<p>Actually, <code>ß</code> is a true nutshell, since it has a unique transcription to English (<code>ss</code>), but it's not based on stripping diacritics. I'm not aware of how big difference is <code>ß</code> and <code>ss</code> in German.</p>\n\n<p><em>With my journal typesetter hat on:</em> I would allow <code>ß</code> in your name in an article. I wouldn't allow a cyrillic name, for instance, if the author insisted, I would keep both forms -- cyrillic and transcribed.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 28917,
"author": "albert",
"author_id": 12412,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12412",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>eventually the web will be internationalized and yes, by all means, no worries... </p>\n\n<p>unfortunately we still have work to do, so yes, by all means, be yourself...but be wary of compatibility issues: be they server, browser, ua, country-specific, etc., you're more than likely to run into an issue here or there trying to implement a non-english character in your name across the web... </p>\n\n<p>one example: i'm fairly sure that while approved for urls, the double german s in your name is not supported by iso-159, which unfortunately, seems to be the charset flavor of the month...i bet you can't have it in a twitter handle, per se; and even this example is going to widely vary, as each service is going to have its own details, and implementations....</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/10 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16770",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7959/"
]
|
16,784 | <p>I am currently working on a paper in the field of image reconstruction, or computational biology if you will. Now matter how I slice or dice it, it is one of these stories that cannot be told in 3500 words or so. Not only are there several equally important methodological points that need to be discussed to get a complete story, there is also quite a bit of background required to point out the subtle flaws in the currently popular ways of approaching this particular problem; and it takes some words to clearly point out what may appear to be a subtle problem from a distance, especially while making sure to be fair to everyone.</p>
<p>I don't intend to butcher what I feel is a solid and profound story for the sake of cramming it into some word budget. I am no fan of needless verbosity, but I really am going to need about 20 pages to do this right. I strongly prefer to publish in an open access journal. And I would imagine that an open access online journal does not have as much of an incentive to be stingy with word counts, no? PLOS computational biology would be a logical choice, yet they do have a restrictive word count. I can't find any open access journals that appear to be sympathetic to my plight.</p>
<p>Am I missing something? Or should I just write the whole article first, make that into the supplement, and then write a 3000 word teaser with nonstop references to the supplement to substantiate my claims? I am somewhat afraid that people will actually miss the point without an explicit disclaimer at the start of the 'article', along the lines of 'hey, if you want to read the actual story with a good flow to it, you need to start reading the supplement. this is basically just a drawn out abstract.'. If you are referring to the supplement, the convention is to refer to a figure of secondary importance; not to three pages of text you kind of have to read first to understand the rest of the article.</p>
<p>Does anyone have a helpful perspective on such a situation?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16787,
"author": "Nick Stauner",
"author_id": 10518,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10518",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Have you considered <a href=\"http://arXiv.org\" rel=\"nofollow\">arXiv</a>? They are open-access and handle quantitative biology e-prints. Here's an excerpt that may interest you from <a href=\"http://arxiv.org/help/sizes\" rel=\"nofollow\">their \"Oversized Submissions\" help page</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If you have trouble submitting a very long paper, such as a long review article with many small figures, or a thesis, AND you are sure that you have efficient figures, then contact the archive administrators to ask for an exception (be sure to quote the automatic rejection identifier and to explain the large size).</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16829,
"author": "fileunderwater",
"author_id": 7223,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7223",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>Plos One</em> do not have an explicit word count limit, and computational biology should be on-topic for them: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>There are no explicit restrictions for the number of words, figures, or the length of the supporting information, although we encourage a concise and accessible writing style. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>For further info see <a href=\"http://plosone.org/static/guidelines\">http://plosone.org/static/guidelines</a></p>\n\n<p>Also, have you seen that <em>Plos Computational Biology</em> has two types of articles, Research articles and Software articles, and that the 3500 word limit only applies to the latter (see <a href=\"http://www.ploscompbiol.org/static/guidelines\">http://www.ploscompbiol.org/static/guidelines</a>). For Research articles they only say: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Although we have no firm length restrictions for the entire manuscript, we urge authors to present and discuss their findings concisely.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/10 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16784",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11814/"
]
|
16,785 | <p>I am writing a paper with my adviser.
Some of the key contributions of our paper include:</p>
<ol>
<li>A computer simulation model of an inventory system</li>
<li>A set of simulation experiments and results to validate the simulation model</li>
<li>An implementation of an inventory policy which we propose</li>
<li>Simulation results of our proposed inventory policy and inventory policies which are currently used in practice</li>
</ol>
<p>We want to make our computer code freely available to others.
The simulation model was written in the Java programming language so other researchers should be able to run the code on their own computers fairly easily.
By sharing our computer code, we hope that other researchers will develop inventory policies which they can test using our simulation model.
(Of course, it would be beneficial for us if they would do so and cite us in their paper!)</p>
<p><strong>Question:</strong> What is a good way to go about sharing our computer code?</p>
<ol>
<li>Where do I host the code?</li>
<li>Which software license should we "publish" the code under?</li>
<li>How do I make it easy for other people to run the code?</li>
</ol>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16786,
"author": "Santosa Sandy",
"author_id": 11107,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11107",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In my opinion, It is related to the specific code you want to share.</p>\n\n<p>I just want to give an example, for JavaScript code you can share it on <a href=\"http://jsfiddle.net/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://jsfiddle.net/</a>\nWe can test our JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online in the web. There is also an option for inviting people to collaborate in developing our code.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16788,
"author": "Matthew G.",
"author_id": 1165,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1165",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To some extent, the answer will depend on what you wish to accomplish with this release. There was a fantastic <a href=\"http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~asampson/blog/sociallicenses.html\">blog post recently</a> on that precise topic.</p>\n\n<p>If the code is of great shape, and you hope others will build on it, then choosing the licence is going to reflect your philosophy. A BSD style license if you just want the algorithm and code out there, or perhaps a Copyleft (GPL) style licence if you want to make sure improvements return to the commons.</p>\n\n<p>If the code isn't in such great shape, but for transparency's sake needs to be out there, consider something along the lines of the <a href=\"http://matt.might.net/articles/crapl/\">CRAPL</a>, which acknowledges the messy nature of modern computational sciences. I think the preamble is worth quoting: </p>\n\n<pre><code>I. Preamble\n\nScience thrives on openness.\n\nIn modern science, it is often infeasible to replicate claims without\naccess to the software underlying those claims.\n\nLet's all be honest: when scientists write code, aesthetics and\nsoftware engineering principles take a back seat to having running,\nworking code before a deadline.\n\nSo, let's release the ugly. And, let's be proud of that.\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>As far as the actual mechanics of putting the code up, use <a href=\"https://github.com/\">GitHub</a> or <a href=\"https://bitbucket.org\">Bitbucket</a>. These services are going to give you code hosting, a home for the project, the ability to manage contribution, and the ability to track bugs and issues. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16795,
"author": "Irwin",
"author_id": 5944,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5944",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<h2>Answer to 1: Where should I host my code?</h2>\n\n<p>Depending on what your University offers you, you could choose to host it with the University, or perhaps with an open-source repository such as Github, Bitbucket, SourceForge, or similar.</p>\n\n<p>Many of these services have a \"paid\" subscription option for private repositories if those are required.</p>\n\n<h2>Answer to 2: What open-source license should I choose?</h2>\n\n<p>This question is relevant because we're having this discussion right now within one of our own research projects. I happen to know a little about open source software, having researched it in the past and having taught a few courses on it.</p>\n\n<p>Though there are a lot of open-source licenses out there, they really end up coming in two main families. They're either permissive open licenses (ex: MIT, BSD, Apache) or they are Free (GNU Public License v2 or GPLv3). Here's a brief lowdown by the <a href=\"http://opensource.org/licenses\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Open Source Initiative</a></p>\n\n<p><em>Permissive open licenses</em> These licenses generally allow you to release your code and anyone can do anything with them that they want as long as they retain certain copyright information with the code. In reality, this has a number of implications.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Someone could take your entire code base, create a product with it, and sell it.</p></li>\n<li><p>Someone could take parts of your code, put it in their own project (commercial or not).</p></li>\n<li><p>Because the license is more permissive, you yourself could take the code, close it, and then keep under wraps any future releases so you can make money off of the code or hide it from the public.</p></li>\n<li><p>Because the license is more permissive, you might generate more interest as a result. People may take code from other projects and use it to improve yours. On the flip-side, they could also make improvements for your source code and never share them back with you.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>On the flip-side, the GNU GPL is a Free Software License that disallows you from doing certain things. In that sense, it's more restrictive, but does so for a number of ideological reasons.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>If you release software under the GPL, you can't close-source it. Ever. It's going to remain in the open, and if someone asks you for the source code you are obligated by the terms of the license to provide it (if you host it on Github or another public repository, then you have already satisfied this requirement).</p></li>\n<li><p>A company could take the code and make products with it and sell it (it's their right to do so), but they would have to do so under the condition that any source code that they write for the project is also released under the GPL. Because of this, a lot of companies who make a lot of money writing software don't like this because they have to continually release code to the public. On the flip-side, any cool stuff that they do gets put into the public under the GPL, so you could fold it back into your project and improve it. They can't take your code, improve it, and then never share it again.</p></li>\n<li><p>If you happen to have used any GPL code in your project (let's say you took a few lines out of the Linux kernel or Git version control or whatever) then you'll have to release your code as GPL as well.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>In the end, the choice of license affects more about how you want the software to be used (and the eventual community it might bring in). If you plan to commercialize the software, (and implicitly allow others to do the same), then you might want to lean BSD. If you don't want people to take your hard work and profit off of it without showing you the results, then you want to go GPL. If you don't care either way, then you could probably just choose one. I think BSD is popular in academia precisely because of the commercialization aspect (for example LLVM is gaining a lot of traction because of its permissive license).</p>\n\n<h2>Answer for 3: How do I make it easy for others to run the code?</h2>\n\n<p>You make it easy to run code by engineering it to be easy to run and by being extremely detailed with your documentation.</p>\n\n<p>Packaging/distribution can actually be pretty hard and usually take more effort than most people would think. A good way to make the software easy to run is to test it on multiple machines. Make sure that you're not forgetting any of the libraries that you're using in your software project, for example, and when possible, try to use software libraries that are common and well-maintained. Use mainstream languages with easy-to-manage package repositories.</p>\n\n<p>When appropriate, use installers, installer scripts, Makefiles (distutils, which uses automake/autoconf is better), etc. Even shell scripts are better than nothing. If you can provide binaries and/or an installer, that will make things even easier. The problem is that this is a LOT of work!</p>\n\n<p>Accompany it with documentation. Ideally, the documentation will contain a description of how to set it up and run it, with descriptions of necessary packages/libraries, data that you might have to get, and what to type or click on. Usually, something called README or INSTALL will attract attention. Put the instructions on the web page as well, most of the hosting solutions also allow you to have web pages.</p>\n\n<p>Hope this all helps. The hardest part of the process is by far Step #3 and most people don't get as far as to use good techniques like installers, automake/autoconf, and so forth because it's a LOT of work and development often moves faster than you can write documents. However, no one is grading you on your style so it's often easier to get it out than it is to clean it up and prettify it first.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16797,
"author": "David Ketcheson",
"author_id": 81,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Matthew G. and Irwin have given great answers, but I'd like to provide some additional \nresources and references for those interested.</p>\n\n<p>First, take a look at answers to this similar question on scicomp.SE:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"https://scicomp.stackexchange.com/questions/1879/what-material-should-i-include-with-a-journal-article-or-post-online-in-order\">What material should I include with a journal article (or post online) in order to make my computational research reproducible?</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Reproducibility was the subject of a <a href=\"http://icerm.brown.edu/tw12-5-rcem\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2012 workshop at ICERM</a>; you'll find a lot of useful material on <a href=\"http://wiki.stodden.net/ICERM_Reproducibility_in_Computational_and_Experimental_Mathematics:_Readings_and_References\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">the wiki</a> and in <a href=\"http://icerm.brown.edu/html/programs/topical/tw12_5_rcem/icerm_report.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">the final report</a> (see especially appendices D, E, and F).</p>\n\n<h2>Archival/hosting</h2>\n\n<p><strong>Update</strong>:You can get a DOI and permanent hosting for a snapshot of your code via <a href=\"http://mozillascience.github.io/code-research-object/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Figshare</a> or <a href=\"http://zenodo.org\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Zenodo</a>.</p>\n\n<h2>Licensing</h2>\n\n<p>See <a href=\"http://wiki.stodden.net/ICERM_Reproducibility_in_Computational_and_Experimental_Mathematics:_Readings_and_References#Licenses_and_copyright.2C_citation\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this section of the wiki for an extensive list of resources</a>.</p>\n\n<h2>Making it easy to run the code</h2>\n\n<p>There are some sites and tools out there aimed specifically at this. These also solve the hosting issue:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://bitbucket.org/khinsen/active_papers_py/wiki/Home\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ActivePapers</a>: An ActivePaper is a single file containing all the software and datasets related to a research project.</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.runmycode.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">RunMyCode</a>: This service is based on the innovative concept of a companion \nwebsite associated with a scientific publication.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>A major hurdle is often re-creating the correct environment (including libraries and such) necessary to run the code. To overcome this, you could</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://wiki.stodden.net/ICERM_Reproducibility_in_Computational_and_Experimental_Mathematics:_Readings_and_References#Tools_that_capture_and_preserve_a_software_environment\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">distribute a virtual machine</a> or use Vagrant or CDE</li>\n<li>ensure that your code runs on some cloud platform, like \n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://wakari.io\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Wakari</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://cloud.sagemath.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">SageMathCloud</a></li>\n<li>Amazon web services</li>\n<li>Windows Azure</li>\n</ul></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>It can be useful to put your code in a <a href=\"http://wiki.stodden.net/ICERM_Reproducibility_in_Computational_and_Experimental_Mathematics:_Readings_and_References#Notebooks.2FPublishing_Tools\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">worksheet format</a>, where you can intersperse comments and even mathematical formulas (for instance, using the <a href=\"http://ipython.org/notebook.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">IPython notebook</a> or a Sage worksheet. <a href=\"http://nbviewer.ipython.org/gist/ketch/8554686\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Here is an example</a>.</p>\n\n<h2>Examples</h2>\n\n<p>Finally, <a href=\"https://github.com/ketch/effective_dispersion_RR\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">here</a> <a href=\"https://github.com/ketch/optimized-erk-sd-rr\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">are</a> <a href=\"https://github.com/ketch/diffractons_RR\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">some</a> <a href=\"https://github.com/ketch/downwind_IRK_RR\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">examples</a> of my own efforts. They're far from perfect, but may still be helpful.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16808,
"author": "Michael Durrant",
"author_id": 11825,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11825",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I recommend github.</p>\n\n<p>The other answers given are well detailed and include it but given a bunch of other choices. Choice is obviously good. Without specific advantages listed though I am suggesting you just go with github.</p>\n\n<p>My rationale is that I feel that github has become a clear leader in the field of code storing and sharing. It's underlying technology of git as a modern dvcs system has largely replaced older technologies such as svn. It now has over 2.8 million users which is quite impressive.</p>\n\n<p>Github is also great for code collaboration, allowing for multiple people to edit and merge their changes in in a controlled but decentralized fashion.</p>\n\n<p>Github allows you to have both public (anyone can view) as well as private repositories that you control view access to. For updating, you add the requested users ssh keys to grant update access.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16817,
"author": "jwenting",
"author_id": 11647,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11647",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>For my graduation paper I shared my code by printing it all out as a companion volume to the main research paper.<br/>\nMind this was pre-internet, and the paper (and code) was classified so very few people would ever read it. <br/>\nI did put it all on floppy and included copies of that with the printed paper as well.<br/>\n<br/>\nThese days, you'd likely put it on a server somewhere where all those who have access to the paper can access the code, and nobody else.<br/>\nOf course you will need to figure out who that will be. Most research papers are considered company secrets (or department secrets) and not for public distribution. Your code would fall under the same restrictions.<br/>\nJust throwing it out there on github, google code, or source forge without prior permission from your employers/coordinators isn't going to make you many friends, in fact you could end up with a rather hefty claim for damages and/or prison time for doing so.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16884,
"author": "Alexlok",
"author_id": 11867,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11867",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>All the answers above are great. I would just like to add that, if you plan to publish it on your lab's website or any personal website, you should also copy it somewhere else.</p>\n\n<p>In <a href=\"http://www.designntrend.com/articles/9739/20131220/significant-scientific-data-disappearing-alarming-rate-researchers.htm\">many fields</a>, it appears that data (<a href=\"http://gettinggeneticsdone.blogspot.fr/2013/01/stop-hosting-data-and-code-on-your-lab.html\">including original programs</a>) is disappearing all the time. When a lab moves to another University, closes, or undergoes any kind of restructuration, its website is likely to change, and data stored there can be lost. So, unless your University has a centralised repository, you should put your code where it can stay for decades, for instance on Github.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 106957,
"author": "cjs",
"author_id": 60119,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/60119",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There's lots of good advice in the various answers; I'm going to address only point 3, \"How do I make it easy for other people to run the code?\"</p>\n\n<p>The answer here is to automate as much as possible. This will have the added benefit of making your life easier, too, as you'll spend less time typing (and retyping) magic incantations and checking output.</p>\n\n<p>Start, as early as possible, with a top-level script (I usually call it <code>Test</code>) that builds and tests all your code. (This is always the first thing I write.) In your case it sounds like it's too late to start with it, but add it now and grow it in the same way.</p>\n\n<p>Every time you do a new checkout or clone of your repository, start by running the Test script. When it reaches the first error of any kind, consider how you could tweak the script to get rid of that error (if that's easy to do) or detect the error condition and give some informative message to the user. For example, if you depend on <code>libfrozzit</code> and its header files being present for you to compile, you may not be able to install it, but you can at least try to check for its presence and, if absent, fail with, \"libfrozzit not found. Install with apt-get frozzit-dev or yum install frozzit-devel?\"</p>\n\n<p>Write tests of any kind, whether basic unit tests or functional tests, for your code. Even picking the simplest function and sending one value through it, or running <code>myprogram --help</code> and ensuring it prints any message whatsoever, means you've started a test framework and makes it much, much easier for someone else to come along and add a test. If you can get up to, say, 5% test coverage of your code that's a significant benefit because even that much will be a great help to someone who's wondering if the code was built properly.</p>\n\n<p>Making code easy for others to build and run isn't magic, and can't be done by waving a wand or running a special tool. It's a matter of saying, every time you find yourself doing a manual tweak to get things to work, no matter how simple, asking yourself \"how would I automate away the need for that manual tweak\"?</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/10 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16785",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8802/"
]
|
16,790 | <p>We recently submitted a paper, and now I'm creating some slides about it for future presentation. There are papers that we have cited in our paper and I need to cite them in slides too because they are directly related to our work. What I would like to do is inline citing when you just mention author's name, or conference name, or the year. I have seen works in which what is mentioned is the first author's family name, e.g. <em>(Patterson, 2013)</em>. And I've seen those who just mention conference name and year, e.g. <em>(PPoPP, 2012)</em>. </p>
<p>I want to know which one is more appropriate, or actually correct? Where to use one, and where to use the other? Or should I use something different?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16798,
"author": "Federico Poloni",
"author_id": 958,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/958",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>As an applied mathematician, I like to go for the format [Author1, Author2 JST '99], where \"JST\" is an abbreviation for the journal. I truncate longer author lists with <em>et al</em>, and add initials in some cases to reduce ambiguity [Li RC, Guo CH, LAA '05]. With the help of a macro, I put the citations in square brackets (following the LaTeX usage), in a different color (dark grey) and font (<code>\\small</code>/<code>\\footnotesize</code>). </p>\n\n<p>Of course every solution to this problem is a compromise between brevity, readability and googleability, but it seems to me that this one works well in my field.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16813,
"author": "yo'",
"author_id": 1471,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1471",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Well, in my field, it's certainly the habit to mention only the authors and the year, unless it's really old. So I would have</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>Theorem [Doe, Soe, 2010; Smith 1997]</strong> There is ...</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The reasons are:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If someone needs the full citation, he has the proceedings / book of abstracts.</p></li>\n<li><p>The only interesting things in the citation are:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>It's not <em>your</em> result, you borrow it from elsewhere</li>\n<li>Which people did it -- quite likely you have some of them in the auditorium, they can get upset if you don't credit them, and they'll be pleased if you point them out.</li>\n<li>How old is it -- is it something known for years, or is it a \"hot result\"?</li>\n</ol></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>If you publish the presentation online after the conference, it might be a good habit to add the whole bibliography of the proceedings as a last slide. It can be in a small font since it's only for people to read it on the computer.</p>\n\n<p><em>The key of a talk is not to be precise, but to show the most relevant information!</em></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16814,
"author": "penelope",
"author_id": 4249,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4249",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My suggestion is probably not applicable to presentations using <em>a lot</em> of citations, or using them on a lot of pages (but then, I think a good presentation shouldn't cite too much, so it's okay).</p>\n\n<p>In addition to using whichever citation style best works for you ( (Smith, 1995), [Smith et. al., CSJ, 2007]*, or even just [1] ), plus changing the text color sounds like a good idea, why don't you <strong>add the expanded citation in the slide footnote in a smaller font?</strong> If it's not more than 1-2 or maybe 3 cites per slide, on no more than a few slides, it could work nicely and even allow you to use the basic [1], [2,3] citation style.</p>\n\n<p>Also it could be a good idea to <strong>include the list of most important citations on the last slide</strong> (maybe not showing it in the presentation, but useful for possible questions).</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><sub><sup>Something like this: <strong>:)</strong> </sub></sup><br>\n<sub><sup>* Smith, Jones and Doe: <em>\"Very important article\"</em>, Cool Science Journal, 2007</sup></sub><br>\n<sub><sup>or:</sup></sub><br>\n<sub><sup>[1] Jones and Smith: <em>\"Yet another important article\"</em>, 2000</sup></sub></p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16790",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11817/"
]
|
16,793 | <p>I'm applying to PhD programs in two fields and I am interested in the space between two fields, where one is applied to the other.</p>
<p>In my particular case I'm interested in researching Software Engineering as applied to Robotics. I will use a similar but slightly different case as an illustrative example between the fields of Software Engineering and Machine Learning, which I am also interested in. Software Engineering applied to Machine Learning could incorporate better ways, such as new language syntax, to design and implement Machine Learning Algorithms. The opposite would be using machine learning to solve Software Engineering problems, such as automatically discovering database regularities in a data mining application. </p>
<p>Essentially, I see understanding, researching, and being able to apply software engineering to robotics as an area that will expand enormously in the next 10-15 years, much like how software engineering research has expanded as applied to mobile devices and data centers.</p>
<p>I am very interested in both fields, but ideally I would be studying how to apply software engineering to robotics.</p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>How do I explain my interests to both Robotics and Software Engineering professors, respectively?</strong></p></li>
<li><p><strong>How do I communicate why this matters at all, and more importantly why it matters to them?</strong></p></li>
<li><p><strong>Should I focus primarily on Software Engineering programs, Robotics programs, or both to reach my goal?</strong> </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Answers based on analogous situations from other fields are welcome.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16794,
"author": "David Ketcheson",
"author_id": 81,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I know little about either of these fields, but will try to give a generally applicable answer.</p>\n\n<p>I think your best bet is to <strong>find an advisor who already has some appreciation for the intersection of these two topics</strong>. Convincing someone who only works on one of them that they are important together -- and that he/she should supervise a thesis involving both -- may be difficult. However, since the fields you mention can often be found within the same university department (computer science), the latter approach is also possible.</p>\n\n<p>To decide which type of programs you should look at, ask yourself <strong>in which field will I innovate</strong>? If you will apply standard software engineering techniques to do something new in robotics, focus on robotics. If you will devise novel software engineering ideas that are useful with respect to existing robotics applications, then focus on software engineering. Of course, the answer is rarely clear cut.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Important</strong>: if you're not substantially innovating within either field, it may be difficult to convince a committee that you deserve a Ph.D. (even though the combination may be innovative). You can't usually get away with work that is worth half of a Ph.D. in each field.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16807,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Bridging two topics is more complex than a simple PhD devoted to a single topic. You must be lead by a professor who is also highly interested in and <em>actually helps</em> with your research plan, not just \"allows\". Professor should take care to make a plan of the suitable PhD research project from this idea.</p>\n\n<p>So start from finding such a supervisor and drop the idea if you cannot.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16902,
"author": "trutheality",
"author_id": 11880,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11880",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think David Ketcheson's answer is the right way to approach it.</p>\n\n<p>One thing that I'd like to add to it is that you might not be that original: there are plenty of interdisciplinary programs that do this sort of heavy collaboration between fields, there could already be a program that focuses on what you want (or something close to it).</p>\n\n<p>Example: Machine Learning is the intersection of Statistics and Computer Science. There are Statistics departments that do ML research, there are CS departments that do ML research, and Carnegie Mellon University has and entire Machine Learning department.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17080,
"author": "Nicolas",
"author_id": 9665,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9665",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As David Ketcheson suggested, <strong>the ideal scenario</strong> would be to find an advisor who works in both fields. But even if you find one, he/she will probably have preferences on one topic or the other. Both fields are extremely wide and highly <em>\"trendy\"</em>.</p>\n\n<p>So, I believe it comes down to which field you would like to go more in-depth. Either find a highly specialized advisor in Robotics with some knowledge/applications in Software Engineering, or the opposite.</p>\n\n<p>From my perspective (as a Mechanical Engineer), I would suggest to go for in-depth research in Robotics, which has quite sophisticated dynamics, control and solid mechanics, and couple your research to Software Engineering, with for example the design of an efficient graphical interfaces for control purposes or advanced image processing techniques for trajectories planning. </p>\n\n<p>These are just examples, as I said before, both fields are extremely wide in terms of possibilities, so it is up to you and your advisor to find a middle-ground that suits you both.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16793",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11816/"
]
|
16,796 | <p>I am looking to apply for a PhD in the CS realm in the next cycle, particularly something with an AI flavor like Machine Learning or NLP. I am a bit of an anomaly in CS as I have undergraduate majors in a very different area (one was history...). I am finishing up a Masters focusing in signal processing at a well-renowned school and have a good GPA and top GREs. I was a CS minor undergrad, but started too late into college so I couldn't have gotten the major, although I took the core courses.</p>
<p>Although I finished undergrad with plenty of accolades (and I TAed in CS for 3 semesters), and I have excelled in the engineering courses at the Masters level, I am really concerned about my chances to get into a great PhD program. (There are a number of reasons why I want to pursue PhD, but at the same time, <strong>*<em>for me</em>*</strong>, the time commitment doesn't feel warranted if I'm not working with great faculty at a great institution.) </p>
<p>I have some research experience (an undergrad honor thesis in my majors--I know it's not exactly related--and I'm a co-author on a couple non-CS papers published in IEEE journals from some summer work), but nothing really in depth I've done on my own. My Masters is a non-thesis program so I've had trouble finding an adviser who'll take me on (I want to do a thesis anyway). I've also had trouble finding (and being accepted) to worthwhile summer research opportunities (academic settings related to my interests). I have actually really enjoyed my previous research opportunities, and I know that for PhD admissions it's research, research, research (and some recs). So here are my questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>How do I find my way into substantive research endeavors?</li>
<li>With my eclectic background, how can I rise above the thousands of CS undergrads with plenty of relevant research during the admission process?</li>
<li>Any suggestions how to sell my academic background as a positive?</li>
</ol>
<p>NOTE: Of course I think I'm qualified (every applicant does or else they wouldn't apply). I also think that my unique background is a bonus. I'm concerned that those making hiring/admission decisions will feel differently. (edited since first posting)</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for the advice!</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16803,
"author": "Superbest",
"author_id": 244,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Unless I am mistaken, \"next cycle\" is half a year from now. There are many ways to enhance one's PhD prospects, but many big ones are no longer available to you due to timing.</p>\n\n<p>Robert Peters in <em>Getting What You Came For</em> cites an ETS study about how important various parts of the PhD application are considered by committees, on a scale from 1 to 5:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>3.9 Undergrad GPA in major field</li>\n<li>3.8 Recommendations from faculty known by committee</li>\n<li>3.7 Undegrad GPA in last 2 years</li>\n<li>3.6 GRE verbal score</li>\n<li>3.6 whether undergrad major is related</li>\n<li>3.5 Undergrad GPA</li>\n<li>3.0 Educational or career aspirations</li>\n<li>3.0 Recommendations from faculty unknown by committee</li>\n<li>3.0 Whether applicant is known to the committee</li>\n<li>2.9 Academic achievements (papers, projects)</li>\n<li>2.9 Quality of undergraduate school</li>\n<li>2.7 Personal statement</li>\n<li>2.7 Interview</li>\n<li>2.6 Work experience</li>\n<li>2.6 GRE analytical score</li>\n<li>2.5 Non-faculty recommendations</li>\n<li>2.5 GRE Subject score (related to program)</li>\n<li>1.9 Other test scores</li>\n<li>1.9 GRE Subject score (related to undergrad major)</li>\n<li>1.6 Particular subscores on GRE Subject</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>You have half a year. Some of these things, like your GPA, obviously cannot be changed. What you can do is:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Try to publish or present at a conference</li>\n<li>Make sure you don't get low grades from any classes you are taking</li>\n<li>Make sure you get strong recommendations</li>\n<li>Study for the GRE, especially the verbal part</li>\n<li>Make contact with faculty at the programs you think of applying to</li>\n<li>Research thoroughly the programs you are interested in</li>\n<li>Start working on your Statement of Purpose so you have time to edit it</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16804,
"author": "mrsteve",
"author_id": 1570,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1570",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This depends in which country or \"world\" you live in.</p>\n\n<p>PhD programs and similar are very different around the world. </p>\n\n<p>You have:<br>\n- U.S.<br>\n- Uk<br>\n- Countries like Sweden<br>\n- Switzerland<br>\n- Central Europe like Germany/Austria<br>\n- India<br>\n- etc. </p>\n\n<p>Each country has a very different culture in general and a different university culture in turn, and also different resources.</p>\n\n<p>Just one example: in India PhD positions are hard to get, in Germany/Austria there are sometimes 5 applications for a single job, so just by chance it is easy to get a position.</p>\n\n<p>In research in technical disciplines (computer science, electrical engineering), my option is that the most important thing is mathematics. It is the hardest and most gerneral applicable topic. This is also, in my eyes, the most important topic for applied research.</p>\n\n<p>If you don't know mathematics it is hard to do functional programming. You need Category theory to use Monads, Functors, etc., to write programs in functional languages like haskell. There are state of the art programming languages based on Higher Order Logic and others that are based on Martin Löw type theory. Without an excellent mathematical background one is helpless.</p>\n\n<p>If you want to analyze and predict signals in electrical engineering, this is comparably easy if you know how to do harmonic analysis and state of the art statistics.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16796",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11819/"
]
|
16,810 | <p>If a journal is not indexed this way, is it an academically honorable one?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16812,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If we momentarily disregard from discussions regarding the cons of ISI and Thomson-Reuters who run the service etc. and focus on the usefulness of ISI indexed journals for ones career, the answer is yes, it is important at least to some extent. The importance is in part depending on your discipline since ISI indexing is not evenly distributed over disciplines. But generally speaking the ISI listing means the journal publishes papers that are referenced, which is an indication that it is research of some quality and importance.</p>\n\n<p>This does not mean non-ISI-listed journals are not \"honourable\". But, when choosing a journal in which to publish, you need to make sure it is read by other in your field so that your research is seen and your ideas known by others. You should make a survey of journals that are of reference and if you find ISI-listed journals there is a reason to consider them if your papers fulfill their quality criteria because they will be seen as prestigeous references when you are evaluated for a position etc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 103779,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't think \"honourable\" is the correct framework to think about. My general understanding is that most reputable journals will be ISI indexed, and so if you are considering publishing in a journal which is not, you should look hard at whether it is legitimate, and whether people in your field will respect publications in it. You should look at the same thing for ISI-indexed journals. \n There are many journals which <strong>are</strong> ISI-indexed, and I have no reason to believe are not run legitimately, which I have never heard of, and which I would never recommend to someone I know as a place to publish (I don't want to pick on any particular one, but if you go to Web of Science and search for the name of your field, you will find plenty of them). An article in a journal I have never heard of makes a very poor impression to me on a CV, so it is worth researching more carefully what the \"word of mouth\" reputation of journals is in your field.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16810",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11571/"
]
|
16,821 | <p>What is the best way to approach professors when looking for a Post-Doc position ? Are there any particular search tools for this type of position ?</p>
<p>I found a similar question on this website: <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15052/how-to-maximise-ones-chances-of-getting-a-good-postdoc-position">How to maximise one's chances of getting a good postdoc position?</a></p>
<p>My question is more directed towards the way one should contact potential advisors, specially if they are in foreign countries and a face-to-face meeting is not possible. Is it better to contact directly the Professor or rather contact fellow PhD/PostDocs of that laboratory ? Is an e-mail sufficient or should you try to contact that person through tools like LinkedIn or ResearchGate ?</p>
<p>What would be a good time to do so ? 3 months, 6 months, a year before finishing the PhD ?</p>
<p>Should one be specific on what you would like to work on or rather general so that more possibilities are available ?</p>
<p>I guess this is a really open discussion topic where there is not a "correct" answer, so feel free to share your personal views and experience.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16823,
"author": "Dave Clarke",
"author_id": 643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/643",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Context: <em>I'm not in mechanical engineering, but am a potential post doc advisor.</em></p>\n\n<p>Remember: ootential advisors are (almost) always on the lookout for good people, even when they don't have money to hire them, because they always have grants submitted, so any time soon they may receive another grant.</p>\n\n<p>It is fine to contact potential advisors directly, but beware that they will receive many such emails, including many that are easily considered as SPAM, due to their impersonal and indirect nature. This means that your emails need to be personal, and they need to quickly establish what you do and what value you could be to the potential advisor, for instance by finding a real connection with their research. </p>\n\n<p>Having a concrete research proposal is also a valuable idea, but beware that a potential advisor may not be interested in supervising a topic that is outside their core research focus.</p>\n\n<p>Contacting a potential advisor 3 months in advance would put you in the running for any positions that the advisor may have open.</p>\n\n<p>Contacting a potential advisor 6 months in advance might be a way of putting your name in the advisor's mind, but it would probably be too early to actually get a position. That said, the advisor may have applied for some funding, and this may come available after those 6 months. Then having your name in the advisor's mind would be a good thing.</p>\n\n<p>Contacting a potential advisor 12 months before you finish might be useful if there is a funding opportunity that you both could apply for.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, contacting the potential advisor 3 months before you finish might lead to an opportunity 12 months down the track, and so on.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16864,
"author": "dearN",
"author_id": 21,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Nicholas, I am a mechanical engineering PhD and have had success applying for post-doc positions. Here is my profile (which may be relevant):</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Not the best publication record in peer reviewed journals</li>\n<li>High throughput of papers at peer reviewed conferences (ASME-IMECE, ASME-HTC, APS DFD) and some allied niche meetings (Wolfram conferences, Suborbital researchers conferences)</li>\n<li>Significant teaching experience (teaching labs, undergraduate courses and graduate level courses since the opportunity presented itself). </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Now with my profile in mind, I applied to Post doc positions <strong>more than 12 months in advance of my graduation date</strong>. I applied for post doc positions in early to mid 2012 in anticipation that I would join or receive a positive job offer for early 2013 and mid/late 2013.</p>\n\n<p>When approaching professors through their emails or through post doc adverts, this is what I focused on: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>All</strong> my applications were via email to either the Professor/PI or through post doc websites such as academicKeys, MathJobs or <a href=\"http://www.cfd-online.com/Jobs/\" rel=\"nofollow\">CFD Jobs</a> and similar others. </li>\n<li><strong>All</strong> my applications leveraged my ability to churn out conference worthy results and my teaching skills and how they related to time management.</li>\n<li>In all cases, if I thought that my research was particularly relevant to the position I was applying to, I included a \"snippet\" of a figure or plot from my research in the cover letter and described it's applicability to the job.</li>\n<li>In some cases I also included that I was available to have a conversation via a telecon/videocon/skype meeting and a good 10-15% of the PIs responded to it by having a chat with me.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The last two bullet points resulted in a 100% success rate for <strong>me</strong>.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16821",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9665/"
]
|
16,824 | <p>I would like to apply to a PhD program in France, but I am having trouble understanding the admission process. How should/could I submit my application?
Is it proper to contact the Professor I would like to work with and ask about any openings? If yes, what should I include in my mail?</p>
<p>I am only familiar with the admission process in US institutions.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16830,
"author": "Olivier Simard-Casanova",
"author_id": 11840,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11840",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm a PhD candidate in France (economics) and yes, you can (and, in fact, must) contact a professor first. He or she will then direct you to source for funding and through the whole administrative process (the funniest part...).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16904,
"author": "Sylvain Peyronnet",
"author_id": 43,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>TL;DR: in France you have to find first the supervisor, then you apply for a funding. If you have a funding of your own, you have to find a supervisor to be admitted. In both cases : you need the supervisor first.</p>\n\n<p>There is various things to know when you apply for a PhD in France :</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>It is forbidden to be a PhD without having funding. In France a PhD student is considered both as a student and an employee.</li>\n<li>The funding can be a state funding, an industrial funding, a funding on a research contract (either from a national funding agency or a company), or you can also do your PhD while working elsewhere (some teachers in secondary schools are doing their PhD this way).</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Industrial funding and research contract are basically given to the supervisor, who can choose alone amongst all candidates. So for PhD with those fundings you have to contact directly the targeted supervisors.</p>\n\n<p>State funding is given by a committee to a bundle (candidate, subject), this means that a professor, with a subject, has to find a candidate and then propose to the committe this candidate on his subject. Then the candidate is on his own : (s)he will generally have to send an application letter, with a reference letter from the supervisor, and if (s)he is shortlisted, (s)he will have to make a short presentation (either on location or using skype or a similar service).</p>\n\n<p>Last case: you are funded on your own (job, external funding for foreigners). Even in this case, the procedure is that you find the supervisor, then you apply.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16824",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8940/"
]
|
16,825 | <ul>
<li><p>Are PhD students generally invited for such reviews? I was under the impression they would prefer someone with a Doctorate degree or more experience in the field.</p></li>
<li><p>What are the advantages/disadvantages of accepting to review? </p></li>
<li><p>The general discipline that the paper treats is related to my field of study but my active research is not necessarily related. Is it still OK to accept the invitation to review?</p></li>
</ul>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16826,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It is not unusual that PhD students get invited as reviewers, after all a PhD student will likely be a true expert in the field of the PhD. If you are a student during your first years of study, the request may be a little premature, generally speaking but if your are in your final year then it will be a good experience. What you need to consider is whether you can provide an insightful review of parts of or preferably the entire paper. You should have a sense of why you were invited, i.e. why your expertise may have been asked for.</p>\n\n<p>Peer review is a vital part of the publishing process so getting experience of reviewing other's material is very worthwhile. If you continue in academia this will be expected of you so you will have to start sometime. You can definitely add reviewing for journals in your CV, not mentioning what you reviewed but certainly for what journal you have reviewed.</p>\n\n<p>If yo have not done a review before you should probably ask someone (or preferable more than one) more experienced within your field for a brief outline of what should be included in the review and how to formulate the review.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16846,
"author": "yo'",
"author_id": 1471,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1471",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would just add to Peter's answer couple more remarks:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>It is <strong>important to write reviews</strong>. I can tell you that the list of names of people who don't do reviews is, at least amongst people I know, a \"public secret\". I mean, people who don't do reviews are known for it and it's certainly a negative thing.<sup>1</sup> On the other hand, if you reject because you don't feel strong enough to do it, that's fine. Still, there has to be \"first\" once.</p></li>\n<li><p>If it's your first review, <strong>tell that to the editor</strong> once you decide to do it. Just a brief mail: <em>I have recieved the preprint and I will review it. However, I would like to bring to your attention that this is the first review I am writing.</em><sup>2</sup> After all, in many cases (especially at conference reviews), you have to choose a \"confidentality score\" from 1 to 5, which exactly says how strong do you as a reviewer feel considering the review.</p></li>\n<li><p>Discuss with your supervisor. It's surely ethical to ask someone close to you for opinion/help, so don't hesitate to approach him if you feel so. You may agree with him that you read the article yourself, mark what things you consider problematic, and then he helps you classify which things are crucial and which are not, and how much positive or negative the review should be. After all, <strong>your supervisor</strong> is not only your research director, he <strong>is there to help you</strong> (but not to do your job) with all parts of the scientific work.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><sup>1</sup> There're people who reject reviews in Elsevier and Springer and some other publishers' journals, because they don't like the fact that these companies profit from it a lot. That's probably fine, too.<br>\n<sup>2</sup> It's in general good practice to reply to the editor and say whether you accept. Unfortunately, not many people do it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16877,
"author": "snim2",
"author_id": 11865,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11865",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<ol>\n<li>Yes, PhD student often have more time available than Faculty and they are actively keeping up with the literature themselves.</li>\n<li>Disadvantages - a good review takes quite a bit of time. Advantages - it's useful experience, you can add it to your CV, you will learn a little bit more about active work in your field.</li>\n<li>Yes, that's fine.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>In terms of writing a good review, you will find a lot of helpful advice from any Google search. The one thing I would add to that is that (at least in Computer Science) it is sometimes quite easy to spot reviews from PhD students as they tend to be harsh and unhelpful. As a student yourself you are probably used to getting a lot of feedback on your work, and that is good. Don't be tempted to take your frustration out on the poor person who has written the paper you are reviewing. </p>\n\n<p>Remember that at least part of the purpose of reviewing is to <strong>increase</strong> the quality of work in the field. If you review a paper which is rejected, likely it will be submitted elsewhere. If you accept the paper, the authors will improve it before final submission. So the purpose of the review, apart from quality control, is to tell the authors specifically how to improve their work. Avoid being vague in your criticism and avoid taking an unprofessional tone. Even if reviews are \"blind\", write as if the authors know you (and chances are that at some point you will meet them). Think about how you would wish your supervisors to give you feedback, and take your own advice.</p>\n\n<p>By far the best reviews I have ever had have not been the most complimentary ones, or reviews from the best places I have submitted to, but they have certainly been the most helpful. They contained comments like \"X is a poor presentation of the data, use the technique mentioned in paper Y\". Or, \"the author has used technique Z, this is outdated and should be replaced with W\". The worst reviews I have had may well have been correct in what they said, but they have also been rude and unhelpful. For example, \"X is not novel\" is a fine criticism to make, but to be <em>useful</em> you need to say where X has been done before.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/11 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16825",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8719/"
]
|
16,831 | <p>Is it legal to upload a paper to arXiv when it is under <strong>double blind review</strong> for one of the IEEE journals? I am suspicious that it may violate the double blind review requirements and I couldn't find any thing in the journal's homepage specific to this issue. In general IEEE allows preprint versions to be uploaded to arXiv.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16840,
"author": "jwenting",
"author_id": 11647,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11647",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Legal? Sure. There's no law against it.<br/>\nContract violation? Possibly, ask the editor.<br/>\nEthical? Something else entirely. Quite possibly not. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16844,
"author": "yo'",
"author_id": 1471,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1471",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You mix two things, especially in the comments to the answer by <strong>jwenting</strong>:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><em>Fair review process,</em> which in the journal you chose means double-blind review.</li>\n<li><em>Free access to information</em>, which in your opinion seems to mean that the article should be open-access.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>While the second can be true, it cannot mean you break the first one. So: It's quite wrong to pre-publish an article if it's under a double-blind review. At least unless you have a permission from the Editor to do so. Once it's accepted, it's just between you and the copyright transfer rules of the journal.</p>\n\n<p>Since IMHO violating a contact is basically illegal, my opinion is that pre-publishing it is very likely both illegal and nonethical.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16876,
"author": "E.P.",
"author_id": 820,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/820",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As jwenting points out, there is nothing illegal in doing this. Further, since you don't really have much of a contract (yet) with the journal, there are few possible negative outcomes from this - apart from immediate rejection of your submission. Most importantly, though:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>In all situations where you do not know if it's OK to do something with a paper, either before or after publication, <strong>ask the journal first</strong>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Certainly, do <strong>not</strong> attempt to upload your paper to the arXiv (or similar repository) whilst your paper is under double-blind review (or any type of journal submission, really), without informing the editor. Failing to do this can be interpreted as acting in bad faith and it is likely to set the editors against you from the start.</p>\n\n<p>Having the manuscript freely available (and possibly easily googleable) completely negates the purpose of the double blind review, as it publicly divulges your identity as the author of that manuscript. I would see this as the conflict of two things you want: (1) you want to publish in this highly-respected journal, which at least partly built its reputation through things like double-blind review, and (2) you want your paper available to everyone as soon as possible.</p>\n\n<p>Those two things are incompatible, and you need to choose one of the two. You're not giving away much; you simply need to sit on the paper for maybe a month or two (or however long the review process takes) and you can then upload your eprint. You're not \"opposing information dissemination\", you're under an embargo of sorts, which is perfectly reasonable and which you're submitting to voluntarily through your choice of journal. (Note, in particular, that public policies that mandate the open access of taxpayer-funded research do not usually require this until six months <em>after</em> the publication; they definitely do not apply before it.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16993,
"author": "fermat4214",
"author_id": 11839,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11839",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I have just received an email from the editor and I am writing it here</p>\n\n<p>Dear Dr. * * *,</p>\n\n<p>We cannot prevent an author to upload her/his paper to Arxiv. However, because of the double-blind process applied in Communication Letters, we don’t encourage it.\nThere is only one restriction: Your paper should stand alone without any supplementary material and/or reference to an ArXiv post.</p>\n\n<p>Sincerely,</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 26852,
"author": "John Smith",
"author_id": 20412,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20412",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Certainly, do not attempt to upload your paper to the arXiv (or similar repository) whilst your paper is under double-blind review (or any type of journal submission, really), without informing the editor.</p>\n\n<p>I definitely <strong>do not</strong> recommend to do it. First, an Editor, of course, will say no as he must follow the review policy. Secondly, if your paper is indeed of high quality, there is always a risk that your idea could be leaked (it is normal that people communicate with each other about topic in your paper). If you decide to submit to arXiv, you should follow the rule “don’t ask, don’t tell”. So, you should never ask Editor anything about arXiv, and the Editor, who understands this problem, would not say you anything about arXiv. It is a normal practise now when the paper goes to journal and to arXiv at the same time.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 26858,
"author": "John Smith",
"author_id": 20412,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20412",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have many publications in peer review journals. Let me share my experience. If you have a high quality manuscript, I recommend you to submit the manuscript to a journal and also to upload it to arxiv. Do not ask Editor anything about arxiv as it is completely counterproductive. If due to some reasons your manuscript is rejected from the journal, you will save your idea in arxiv at least. Further you can refer to your arxiv paper for future peer review journal publications.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 123538,
"author": "xmp125a",
"author_id": 51476,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/51476",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Even it is legal, is is subverting the process of <strong>double blind</strong> review. I would not do it, but of course, I understand that the advantage it may bring to you may be tempting.</p>\n\n<p>At least in my field it is widespread practice of lab submitting multiple papers to very competitive conferences which take double blind review extremely seriously, and then doing everything they can to actually reveal themselves as the authors (e.g. lab head goes on the \"tour\" of good universities presenting exactly the same work which is in the review process, hoping that the reviewers of the submitted papers will be in the audience).</p>\n\n<p>I don't like, it is cheating, even if it is nominally legal.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 134825,
"author": "Franck Dernoncourt",
"author_id": 452,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/452",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>No</strong>. I checked with the IEEE customer service and they told me one cannot upload a paper to arXiv when it is under double blind review for one of the IEEE journals. See details below if interested.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>I asked the question to one of the conferences (viz., <a href=\"https://2020.ieeeicassp.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ICASSP 2020</a>) publishing their proceedings in IEEE and here is the response I received:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>IEEE policy permits authors to post their articles to the preprint \n repository arXiv. Posting rules for each stage of the article life\n cycle are: </p>\n \n <ul>\n <li><strong>Pre-submission</strong>: Before submission to an IEEE publication, the papers may be posted anywhere, including to arXiv. </li>\n <li><strong>Upon acceptance</strong>: Upon acceptance to an IEEE publication, the arXiv posting must be updated by replacing the pre-submission version with\n the accepted version. The accepted version must have the IEEE\n copyright line (© 20XX IEEE) but no other changes may be made. The\n version suitable for posting is available on the Completed Articles\n page of the IEEE Author Gateway: \n <a href=\"https://authorgateway.ieee.org/ag/public/landing.jsp\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://authorgateway.ieee.org/ag/public/landing.jsp</a>. </li>\n <li><strong>Upon publication</strong>: When the article is published, the posted version on arXiv should be updated with a full citation to the IEEE\n publication, including DOI. No other changes may be made. </li>\n </ul>\n \n <p>Visit the IEEE Author Center for more information on SPS sharing and\n posting policies at <a href=\"https://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>However, that didn't specify whether one can submit a paper to arXiv after the paper submission deadline and before the notification of acceptance (i.e., while the paper is under review). So I emailed [email protected] about it and got the following response:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Sharing of a submitted paper is allowed under the following circumstances:</p>\n \n <ul>\n <li>On authors' personal and employers' Web sites</li>\n <li>On institutional/funder Web sites if required</li>\n <li>For authors' own classroom use</li>\n <li>Only on Scholarly Collaboration Networks (SCNs) that are signatories to the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers' (STM) \"Sharing Principles\"</li>\n </ul>\n \n <p>For more details, see <a href=\"https://conferences.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/get-published/post-your-paper/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://conferences.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/get-published/post-your-paper/</a>. Thank you for publishing with the IEEE.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I then asked whether arXiv counts as a \"Scholarly Collaboration Networks (SCNs) that are signatories to the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers’ Sharing Principles\", and I got the following response:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Thank you for your inquiry. ArXiv does not seem to be included on <a href=\"https://www.howcanishareit.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.howcanishareit.com/</a> , which is the Web site that lists the permitted SCNs. Some SCNs where the article can be shared are listed there.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That being said, I would advice to double check with each conference you are targeting to make sure that they don't have any extra policy on top of IEEE policies.</p>\n\n<p>FYI: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_journals_by_preprint_policy\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_journals_by_preprint_policy</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/88273/452\">Why would a conference discourage authors to submit their papers to pre-submissions platforms (e.g., arXiv) before submitting them to the conference?</a></li>\n</ul>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16831",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11839/"
]
|
16,832 | <p>The recent question <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16831/is-it-legal-to-upload-a-paper-to-arxiv-when-it-is-under-double-blind-review-for">about the legality of uploading to arXiv</a> made me realize that I don't have any understanding of why one would upload to a preprint site. (I don't work in a field where they seem to be common.)</p>
<p>Why would one be concerned about getting a manuscript on arXiv, if it's already under review with a journal? </p>
<p>Is it because of the long publishing timeline of journals? (That could explain why computer science — which publishes much more in conferences — doesn't seem to do much with them.)</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16833,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 8,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>In mathematics, there are several reasons to post to the arXiv:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>It provides free access to papers that might otherwise be hidden behind paywalls. Of course you could achieve this by posting on your web page, but your web page may move or disappear, while the arXiv is far more stable. This means it's better for archival purposes and it's better suited for citations. [Note that this is not just about preprints: it continues to be relevant long after publication.]</p></li>\n<li><p>It attracts readers. Many people pay close attention to arXiv postings in their area, in a way that doesn't happen as much with journal tables of contents. I don't have statistics, but my impression is that a substantial fraction of the people who learn about my papers do so through the arXiv. If you can get noticeably more attention for your research with almost no additional effort, why wouldn't you?</p></li>\n<li><p>It establishes priority. Submitting to a journal does not: if you submit to a journal without circulating your work publicly, then you may still end up sharing credit with anyone who makes the same discovery before your paper is made public. The way to establish priority is to distribute your work so widely that any competitors cannot credibly claim to have been unaware of it. Submitting to the arXiv is the easiest way to show that you have done so: it's widely read, and it preserves all versions of the article with time stamps.</p></li>\n<li><p>It's conventional. This varies somewhat between subfields, but once arXiv use reaches critical mass in a given area, it becomes the standard way of announcing to the world that you have completed a paper. At that point, <em>not</em> posting to the arXiv looks strange.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Compared with other fields, mathematics and physics are anomalous in making heavy use of the arXiv, with physics even more so than mathematics. As I understand it, in high energy particle physics the arXiv replaced an elaborate system of paper preprint distribution that was used in the late 80's (and it rapidly became popular since it was obviously better than the paper infrastructure). Usage spread to other areas of physics, from physics to adjacent areas of mathematics, and then further into mathematics.</p>\n\n<p>Things are trickier in other fields, because many of the advantages depend on network effects. If nobody in your field pays attention to a server, it's not conventional, and it counts for little or nothing regarding priority, then there's less reason to post to it (although it still has some value). I'm not surprised that it catches on only slowly and spreads primarily to adjacent fields, but I expect green open access servers like the arXiv will become more popular over time.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16834,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As I see it, the main reasons to use arXiv and similar preprint servers are:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>To disseminate your paper without waiting for the peer review and publishing process. This is a serious issue - in mathematics, for example, peer review often takes a year or more, and it can be several more years before your paper gets to the front of the queue to actually appear in print.</p></li>\n<li><p>To make the paper permanently available to readers who don't have a subscription to the journal where the paper is published.</p></li>\n<li><p>In some cases, to disseminate and solicit comments on a paper that may not quite be ready for publication, while at the same time establishing priority.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Incidentally, from the computer scientists here, I've gathered the impression that CS uses arXiv very heavily, to the point that it practically supersedes journals as a way to distribute papers. Perhaps I'm mistaken, or it varies by subfield?</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16909,
"author": "walkmanyi",
"author_id": 1265,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1265",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Let me add one point not mentioned by other answers so far. </p>\n\n<p>In fast moving fields (e.g., most of computer science), a great benefit of publishing technical reports in recognised/citable series (at least an ISSN) and/or arXiv is to get a citable reference <em>before</em> publication in a more serious venue, such as a conference, or a journal.</p>\n\n<p>So the workflow is as follows:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>write and polish a paper</li>\n<li>before a submission to a serious venue, publish it as a TR/arXiv preprint (unless this clashes with a double-blind, or copyright policies of the target venue)</li>\n<li>submit to the target venue</li>\n<li><strong>right the next day you can write a next paper referring the work you published as a preprint. It can be either an incremental work, or something else using the result you achieved recently, etc. All this you can do way earlier than the paper really appears in proceedings, or a journal issue.</strong></li>\n<li>if the work was accepted at the target venue, good for you</li>\n<li>if it wasn't, you still can refer to the work, while improving it and submitting next time/elsewhere/etc.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>As you see, the turn-around time is what this is all about. Of course one should be later careful regarding replacing references to TRs with references to the really published stuff in CR versions - if there's time/space for it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 24425,
"author": "Manu",
"author_id": 18225,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/18225",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If papers were posted on the arXiv before submission then I argue it would be easier to branch out. I also think it would increase the quality of submissions and the speed of progress. Overall, it should benefit your community and so, albeit indirectly, yourself.</p>\n\n<p>I quote from <a href=\"http://emanueleviola.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/only-papers-on-the-arxiv-can-be-submitted-for-publication/\">this blog post</a> an illustration.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The current system reinforces the partition of research into\n (sub)areas, making it hard for an outsider to leave their own. Of\n course, it is good to have a domain of expertise and produce deep\n results in it. Still, I think it would be better if it was a little\n easier to work in different areas.</p>\n \n <p>To illustrate the difficulty, suppose you want to start working in\n new, hot area X. To learn the background, typically you have to read\n papers. However, for every paper that you read, it is not uncommon\n that there is another one which is or was under submission. Indeed,\n the community is producing great results the majority of which is\n rejected due to capacity constraints. So unless these works are on\n electronic archives such as the arXiv, you don’t have access to them.</p>\n \n <p>Who does? The experts of area X, to whom these papers are sent so that\n they can be properly evaluated. But it may be hard for reviewers to\n ignore submissions until publication. Suppose for example you have\n been working on problem Y for months and now you are asked to review a\n paper that solves Y. Are you going to ignore this information and keep\n working on Y despite knowing that you will be beaten? Also, when the\n paper does come out you’ve had a long time to internalize its\n implications.</p>\n \n <p>The edge currently given to an insider over an outsider is months if\n the paper is accepted right away; it may be years otherwise.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 78660,
"author": "Dmitry",
"author_id": 63671,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/63671",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Some researchers (supposedly from respectful schools) will use preprints as a way to hack the double-blind process and to try to impress possibly hesitating reviewers with their name or the name of their institutions. Preprints usually appear in Google Scholar if you work in that field.\nSo, by the time the paper gets to the reviewer he or she already knows who wrote it. In my opinion that violates the double-blind process, but the official position is that it does not, at least in conferences where I submit. Is anyone aware of different policies?</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16832",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1165/"
]
|
16,837 | <p>I'm a third year undergraduate right now. I submitted a review on Cell motility, waited 6 months and got a rejection. The first reviewer appointed the manuscript as "publishable with corrections" and gives recommendations. The second reviewer didn't like it at all and made harsh comments. It seems that the first reviewer went throughout a longer analysis of the manuscript (based on his careful comments), while the other discarded it quickly, without too many protocol. The Editor's comment at the end sounds a bit like "We could be friends in the future, but go somewhere else this time".</p>
<p>Although I agree with the majority of their points and I know most papers are rejected nowadays (so I'm not desperate with this issue), I'm confused. Is the papers worthy of revision and resubmission (to another journal) or should I tank it? I've to be careful with duties (Thesis, Assistant job, etc.) because I don't want to spend an extra semester at College due to this nuisance.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16839,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Congratulations on submitting a paper as an undergraduate that one referee found to be publishable with corrections. That's impressive.</p>\n\n<p>Are you really the sole author on a biology paper as an undergraduate? Biology is not my field (I'm a mathematician), but that sounds unusual to me. Even if you are, you must be doing the research under the supervision of some faculty member, right? If so: <strong>ask them for guidance</strong>. </p>\n\n<p>From where I'm standing, I would think that what one referee at a reputable journal finds publishable with corrections should be publishable by another journal, and perhaps even one of roughly equal quality. But you should not take the word of someone from a different field who doesn't know your work or your manuscript. Again: ask for guidance from a faculty member.</p>\n\n<p>P.S.: The fact that the referee with a more balanced recommendation looks like they did more work and understood the paper better is unfortunately a familiar phenomenon to me. The refereeing process in academia is far from perfect: it works well when the referees decide to be conscientious and fair...but there is almost nothing inherent in the process which forces referees to be conscientious and fair or even allows one to discern with anything approaching certainty whether any given referee has been conscientious and fair. It is a bit frustrating. All I can think to do is to try to apply the golden rule and hope for karmic benefits to accrue eventually (if I may mix metaphors slightly).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16843,
"author": "posdef",
"author_id": 5674,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5674",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, congratulations are in order!</p>\n\n<p>Secondly, without deeper understanding into the field noone here can really tell you whether or not it's worth reworking and resubmitting. Even with deeper knowledge in the field without seeing the manuscript in question, and the reviews, it's hard to say anything. The only person that can and will most likely give you valuable feedback on this is your supervisor, or whoever is last name author on the manuscript. </p>\n\n<p>In general papers typically get rejected more often than they get accepted, sometimes on sound reasons, sometimes on petty differences and small issues, and sometimes based on arrogance of the editors/reviewers (if you happen to bash a technique or an idea they are emotional about). The common practice in those situations is to make the best out of the reviewers' comments and either resubmit to the same journal (unless of course the paper was rejected by the editor based on not being interesting for that journal), or more commonly to another journal. </p>\n\n<p>Sometimes your interpretation of the impact of your work might differ from those of others (like editors) in those cases aiming for a journal with slightly less impact factor, or broader scope, might help. </p>\n\n<p>Good luck! </p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16837",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11847/"
]
|
16,841 | <p>I am a research scientist, and as part of my role I am expected to perform some form of public outreach and engagement. I enjoy outreach activities and giving public lectures. </p>
<p>I have a suspicion that free public lectures are usually poorly attended. I suspect that the attitude is one of "Well, it's free and you get what you pay for". Certainly the quality of artistic performances that I've seen is strongly correlated with entrance fee. </p>
<p>While it is a reasonable expectation that my Faculty would pay for the costs of lecture room hire, advertising, possibly even tea and biscuits, I wonder if there is an advantage of charging a nominal fee to attend, to overcome the low-quality perception of a free lecture. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16842,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I doubt exclusivity as represented by an entrance fee would attract people to a lecture. After al, it is the subject that is of importance. thus the advertisement is key and the way you set your topic in a wider perspective. If the topic concern people such as climate change, environmental issues, medicine to mention a few, people will come. It will be more difficult to attract people to topics they either do not know anything about or are not interested in (or in the worst case, is not widely reported in media). Thus, my negative perspective is that the success of attracting an audience is to a large extent a question of how the topic is known by and an interest of the public.</p>\n\n<p>So, I would advice against charging for the lecture and put all efforts into making the lecture as interesting as possible for the intended audience. And, to do this by coupling the topic to a larger picture that is relevant to the public. And finally, if you do not get a huge audience, it does not mean there is anything wrong with your research or lecture, public interest varies over time and research can have huge relevance for important aspects of society and life without attracting a wide audience.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16848,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I remember this issue from my econ 101 class (far too long ago). The teacher said <strong>\"As the price of something goes up, demand goes down, all else remaining equal.\"</strong> A student responded <em>\"But if you increase the price, you increase the 'perceived value' of your offering thus more people will want it then your demand will increase.\"</em></p>\n\n<p>One saw things from a marketing perspective and one saw from an economics perspective.</p>\n\n<p>The teacher, however, responded that <strong>the student's statement is generally only true for luxury items</strong> which demand higher than normal market prices for their category of product.</p>\n\n<p>I believe your thinking is in line with the student in this story. I would not consider a talk from an academic to be a luxury item (even for a 'rockstar academic'). I would go along with Peter in his answer and posdef in the comment: The cheaper (best=free) the lecture, the more likely I am to go and the more likely I am to encourage my friends to go, since they cannot complain about it being too expensive.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16860,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think whether or not charging a fee is a feasible idea depends on the circumstances. There are several factors at play here.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>Your role.</strong> This is the hearer's primary perception of you. E.g. I think it is quite common that authors who read from their book charge some fee. This would be perceived like the artistic performance you mention, and it is also the case for journalists talking about e.g. political topics. On the other hand, it is really (at least here) uncommon to charge entrance fees for scientific lectures for the public. </p></li>\n<li><p><strong>The topic.</strong> The \"norms\" of fees for lectures may vary according to your topic.</p>\n\n<p>If you are talking about some medical topic and charge even a nominal fee, I think there is a risk of repelling people more than one could attribute to the fee: you may leave a slightly \"fishy\" impression that you are talking <em>for the fee</em> and thus maybe you are saying what you think the audience wants to hear as opposed to giving an independent opinion. Just like the default opinion is \"be cautious\" if the lecture were sponsored say, by a pharma company.</p>\n\n<p>I don't think it would matter in this case if the fee is so nominal that it doesn't even cover the rent for the lecture hall. Of course in this case, you could turn the argument and say \"I'm charging a fee of you, dear audience, so that I do not need to go to pharma industry for sponsoring\". </p>\n\n<p>For topics which are also discussed politically, I think the reasoning should be roughly similar. Though people are used to hearing speakers that have a clear political opinion, and there are scenarios where it would probably be perceived as normal if entrance is charged (see the book author reading). </p>\n\n<p>If on the other hand you are going to give an awesome experimental lecture, I think no concerns about your integrity would be linked to the fee. People may be willing to pay just as they pay the entrance fee for a science museum.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Note that none of these points looks like drawing a larger audience (unless maybe the fees are to cover extra advertisement), just like repelling some or not.</p>\n\n<p>A completely different consideration: <strong>Why not choose a smaller lecture hall?</strong> It is not very pleasant to be in an empty-looking lecture hall, neither for the speaker nor for the audience. Much better if the hall small enough to be well filled. And a slightly overfilled lecture hall leaves the nice impression that far more people did come than were thought to come... May also be creating an impression that this lecture is an insider tip.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16871,
"author": "snim2",
"author_id": 11865,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11865",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If your work is publicly funded in some way, then your outreach should be free. If attendance is poor, consider finding some other venue for your outreach, such as an event hosted by a school or museum where you will have a more \"captive\" audience.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16883,
"author": "Not Quite An Outsider",
"author_id": 10390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10390",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A possibility that I have not seen mentioned: contribute the lecture as part of a fundraiser.</p>\n\n<p>This stems from the belief that while information should be free, the actions of distributing it should not. If you find an organization (possibly even on campus) toward which you are sympathetic and might have such returned because of the subject matter of your lecture, you might offer the lecture as part of a fundraising effort, requesting a minimal contribution.\nThis may achieve both goals of increasing its perceived value (as suggested elsewhere in this thread) and having you perform more of a service than just delivering information. A side benefit is that the recipient organization normally will handle the logistics of scheduling the talk and getting the audience.</p>\n\n<p>Check with your university on approved ways of doing this: I have not done anything like this in this millenium, so the rules may have changed.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16841",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1424/"
]
|
16,847 | <p>I'm already in the second year of my PhD studies and my advisor insists on pursuing a very vague track, in order to produce <em>some</em> results that <em>may</em> be publishable. The problem is that the topic itself was extensively studied in the past two decades and there's little maneuver space without overlapping with others' past ideas (it's in applied Computer Science). My adviser seems to be constrained by his grant committee to have a solution for the topic's problem using a certain kind of technique that will be outperformed by other, more specific algorithms right from the start. Although it has other benefits, they're not interesting for this particular topic (since they're not going to be used in any way). </p>
<p>To put it simple, how can you tell your advisor that what they want you to do is like killing flies with TNT and then have the denotation site rebuilt in order to get rid of those flies? (in an elegant way, of course).</p>
<p>I should mention that my advisor has a different area of expertise than the one chosen for my PhD program and often seems not to having the slightest hints on what state of the art means for that particular field and why it is important not to reiterate past methods and algorithms just because they can be applied in a slightly different field from the one they were initially proposed for.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16856,
"author": "Alexandros",
"author_id": 10042,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10042",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I believe you are rushing ahead of yourself. In popular areas as applied CS, all areas one way or another may be considered overcrowded. Take any hot topic right now and you are going to see multiple publications with incremental updates / improvements. Still, a new dataset or a new test case ignites new research and so-on. No CS problem may be considered entirely solved. The fastest algorithm may be impossible to use for some datasets, its preprocessing may not scale and slower algorithms may be more parallelizable and more attractive to use. New hardware (CUDA / multiprocessor chips) change the way we write algorithms and so-on. There is a not a single criteria for what is the \"best\" solution. Stil, this is something you cannot know just by a literature survey.</p>\n\n<p>Have you actually implemented any of the previous solutions to get a grasp of their advantages / disadvantages? Will you be able tomorrow to implement on your src code the state-of-the-art in this suggested problem or you assume it is too perfect to improve (to avoid the trouble of actually doing the implementation). Have you asked /contacted any of the authors if they can provide datasets or binaries for their solutions? Have you actually created multiple datasets to test previous solutions (and yours)? Or is everything just in your head. If yes, you must get them out of your head and into your PC. </p>\n\n<p>If you actually implemented a quick and dirty (1-2 months) implementation of your advisor's suggestion, get some insight of how it behaves and 100% confirmed that your results are much worse than state-of-the-art solutions then no one (including your advisor) will object to you changing direction (no one likes dead ends). But this time will not be wasted. You have learnt what went wrong, you improved your coding skills and you see the research area more clearly. Maybe then, you can even come up with a test-case where your solution is way better than previous works, you perhaps know how to combine this problem with other related sub-problems and you have a solution that works (although not optimally) to partially satisfy the grant's requirements.</p>\n\n<p>So, out of the books / papers and start writing some code!! It is more fun after all.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16873,
"author": "snim2",
"author_id": 11865,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11865",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is difficult to say very much about this without knowing some of the details of your research area. However, I think you are probably being a bit harsh on your supervisor, for a couple of reasons. </p>\n\n<p>Firstly, every PhD student has to start somewhere, and replicating work from a good paper, or otherwise solving and already solved problem, is a perfectly reasonable way to getter a better understanding of the area you are working in. You will gain an appreciation for some of the subtleties of the area and some insights that will help inform your future, hopefully more novel, work.</p>\n\n<p>Secondly, if this is part of a funded project then it has to be done. Gaining experience on a funded project, especially if you can collaborate with others, is good training for your future career and a good way to make contact with people you might work with in future. It may also be that follow-on funding from this work could become part of your own future work on your PhD. </p>\n\n<p>Thirdly, if you can get a publication out of this work, even if it only obliquely relates to your PhD topic, will help you establish a reputation. When you come to your viva, if you have a authored few publications it will be difficult for your examiners to fail you since you have already demonstrated an ability to work at PhD level, as validated by the fact that your papers have been peer-reviewed.</p>\n\n<p>I could go on, but you get the picture. Your supervisor probably has a number of reasons for wanting you to take this work on and it would benefit you to talk these reasons over quite openly. Don't assume that the work has no value!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16903,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you have serious doubts about the value and success of your PhD project, try to change the supervisor and the laboratory. It is the job of the supervisor to persuade you that the project will succeed under the normal expected work input from your side. </p>\n\n<p>The supervisor may use arguments like he and his laboratory has multiple published works in this area, there are some preliminary results that show good prospects, it has never been a failed PhD project under his supervision, etc. If heard and proven, these may be reasonable to consider. From the other side, your case as described looks miserable, if you see everything correctly.</p>\n\n<p>Most important, do not try to suggest and push alternative topic yourself as you are not competent to do this. Even if the supervisor would yield at the end, your idea may actually be worse.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16847",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11853/"
]
|
16,852 | <p>When delivering a presentation at an academic interview, what are some keywords which should be included in the title of the presentation? Should the title be in the first person? What are some good examples? </p>
<p>The position I am considering is <strong>assistant professor / lecturer</strong></p>
<p>I imagine some choices to be:</p>
<ol>
<li>The interview presentation for JACK JAY</li>
<li>The presentation for lecturer at Uni Awesome by JACK JAY</li>
<li>JACK JAY'S presentation as candidate lecturer at Uni Awesome</li>
</ol>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16855,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Just throw it out here. Perhaps others can upload their suggested topic slide as well? That would be fun.</p>\n\n<p>I don't like to appear to be overly kissing-up, so I'll opt for toning down the university. My talk would have been broadcasted and posted for a while at the institute so the audience should know why they are here. So I'll just focus on up-playing my topic and who I am.</p>\n\n<p>It'd be prudent to clarify with the hiring committee chair on the format and topics to be covered. But beyond that, just be at ease with the format stuff; focus on the contents. Be very, very certain that you cover just enough background to show you can think in breadth and depth, explain what your research questions are, and present your methods and results in alignment with your questions, and state briefly the implication. For job talk, leave a few minutes to elaborate how your work can grow into your career path, and highlight potential synergistic collaboration with some hot areas that your target institute is good at (e.g. \"I'll also love to collaborate with the specialists at your Marine Dietary Assessment Center to cast a more critical look at the diet-obesity association.\") You'll need to read their website/reports up on that. Find some friends, colleagues, and mentors to sit in your practice sessions.</p>\n\n<p>Best of luck!</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/erQ9h.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 27637,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>You don't need to include <em>any</em> of the proposed titles in your presentation. They all come across as stilted and affected, and are entirely unnecessary.</p>\n\n<p>Instead, if this is a public presentation, treat it as you would any other such presentation: indicate the title of your talk as you normally would have it, and so on. </p>\n\n<p>If this is the \"private\" presentation to the faculty, then you should give it a title representing your current and future research interests. You don't need to say \"what\" the presentation is for—again, the location of the talk should be sufficient.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16852",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/67/"
]
|
16,858 | <p>I have a lecturer at university that I find very hard to understand. My lectures are taught in English, but my lecturer is of East Asian origin, and English is not his first language.</p>
<p>I find the lectures incredibly hard to follow, just trying to understand what is being said requires a substantial effort, and I find the material is challenging in any case.</p>
<p>There is <em>no textbook</em> for the course, but we are given printouts of the lecture slides that are used in the lectures (six to each side of an A4 page). While the lecture slides do contain the material, they don't explain it like a good lecturer would.</p>
<p>I've spoken to my tutor about the course, telling him that I find it very hard to follow the lecturers. Many of my peers feel a similar way to how I do.</p>
<p>Finally, let me point out that I bear the lecturer no ill will; I just want to do well on the course.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16859,
"author": "John Doucette",
"author_id": 1125,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1125",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Partially this will depend on how specific the course is. If this is a general \"Graduate level intro to X\" class, my first suggestion is to look for an equivalent course provided on one of MOOC sites. For instance, if your course was an introduction to machine learning, you might have a look at Andrew Ng's <a href=\"https://www.coursera.org/course/ml\">course</a>.</p>\n\n<p>At the graduate level however, its entirely possible that the material you're being taught is difficult or impossible to find online (it could be a professor's seminar course afterall, in his or her specific research area). If this is the case, consider asking the instructor for more resources. He may know a good textbook from when he learned the material, or might be able to suggest lecture notes from another school that are available online. Phrasing this as \"I'm looking for more to do and more to read!\" can be a good strategy for getting help without offending the instructor, if you are concerned about this.\nYou might also try talking to other faculty members in this area (if there are any at your school). In my experience, most faculty members are happy to take a little time for one-on-one instruction if you're polite and genuinely interested. This is especially true if you're in the same lab. At minimum, these people may know of resources that your own instructor does not.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, if you have to tough it out, there are good study strategies that you can use. A great starting point is to form a study group with the other students. If they're getting it, they can explain it to you. If not, you can figure it out together, and at least you'll know it's not you alone.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16874,
"author": "snim2",
"author_id": 11865,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11865",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think you are dodging the more difficult question - should you confront the lecturer about this problem? The answer is definitely <strong>yes</strong>. The lecturer is a professional, he or she will want to gain honest, helpful feedback to improve their performance. They are probably completely unaware that students are finding it difficult to understand the lectures, and they will not become telepathic in time for you to sit your exams. So, be polite and professional about it, but find a way to let them know. Use email if you have to. And in the mean time search out Google Scholar to gain a better understanding of the material.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16891,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As a lecturer in Asia, I appreciate what you are saying. I have some colleagues who are Asian who are quite clear when they speak English and others with whom I require a minute or two to even recognize when they are speaking English because their accent is so strong. You have to work with what you've got.</p>\n\n<p>While you could confront your lecturer, as snim2 said in an answer, you need to be delicate about this. The lecturer could find you condescending or insulting. Even if the lecturer does not think you are being purposefully hurtful, making a lecturer self-conscious about his accent might make him an even worse lecturer (of course, it could help, depending on his personality).</p>\n\n<p>I would recommend talking to the lecturer and simply say something like this: <strong>Hi teacher, I'm finding it necessary to read more about this topic in order to do well in your class. Could you point me in the direction of some reading material that I can use to improve my understanding of your subject?</strong> (then stop talking)</p>\n\n<p>Once you have the reading materials, focus your learning there, perhaps with some genuine emails to your lecturer, if he allows.</p>\n\n<p>Even the lecturers I've met with horrible English will happily go out of their way to find some material for you to read. Either they will recommend a textbook, some articles, or they will have some material they have collected on their own. I don't believe I have ever met a university lecturer who would be offended by this approach nor have I met one who would not support a student with such a request.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16942,
"author": "ikarus",
"author_id": 11908,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11908",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Try getting familiar with the terms used in this area. Our first DSP lecture was about \"disco time systems\", took us half an hour to realize it was \"discrete\". </p>\n\n<p>I would aks if he/she could use slides with some bullet points on it. Do not mention \"everyone\" has problems understanding him/her, this might be embarrassing because you talked about it with others. Just say you have (sometimes) problems following.</p>\n\n<p>No experiences or assumptions made about how this is perceived in asian cultures.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 60926,
"author": "Jonathon",
"author_id": 29052,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/29052",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have seen this problem solved two ways.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Get the professor to write extensive slides, which he can use in class. Many professors just read slides they preprepared for the lecture anyway, and this is the best thing a professor such as this can do to increase his understandability.</li>\n<li>Get transferred to, or just start attending, other currently ongoing versions of this class. Often the class is being taught by multiple professors concurrently. Often they even cooperate and teach the same things on the same day.</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 60935,
"author": "JenB",
"author_id": 26776,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26776",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Is there a class representative? Many universities get the students to elect someone. If there is such a person, there should be some arrangement to meet with the lecturer to discuss general issues.</p>\n\n<p>The representative could take an approach along the lines of 'several of the international students are having difficulty understanding your accent and are finding the slides are not detailed enough to capture all the information. Would it be possible to provide links to readings in the slides and/or slow down a little when speaking'.</p>\n\n<p>If there is no representative, then perhaps you could ask the tutor to approach the lecturer. You would probably need to get a few people to confirm to the tutor that it's not just you. Alternatively, the tutor could say to the lecturer that several students are not understanding and he/she would like to recommend some reading materials and could the lecturer provide the tutor with something for each topic.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 102183,
"author": "xmp125a",
"author_id": 51476,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/51476",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As a lecturer who tries to make the courses understandable to students, I find this situation horrifying. I only hope this is a graduate course, for two reasons: 1) there could indeed be a problem with available lecturers for the specific class you are taking and b) the classes on graduate courses are usually smaller and the lecturers more available for 1-to-1 discussions.</p>\n\n<p>If it is a graduate course, perhaps you can ask the lecturer or your classmates for additional material. If it is introduction to AI, then I don't understand the warning not to find additional resources: the field is so old that there are literary hundreds on textbooks on this topic. What on earth could not be relevant for \"introduction to artificial intelligence\"?</p>\n\n<p>If it is an undergraduate course, then you have a real problem, but perhaps even simpler solution. Disregard what lecturer has told you and get a good book or two on introduction to AI. You apparently have slides, so you should have very good idea of which topics are covered, and find a book that covers most of it. Learn using the book, and use the classes to just keep tabs on the lecturer's progress.</p>\n\n<p>Now, in the long term this person should not be teaching undergraduate course. Not all people are good speakers and teachers, and this can do real damage to the institution where you are studying. There is perhaps no way to solve this by students, but faculty themselves should have enough reason to prevent this guy from teaching again. It is hard and painful, but he may be excellent scientist and he should work as a scientist, not lecturer.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16858",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4579/"
]
|
16,862 | <p>After my PhD (Mechanical engineering) in 2013, I have been employed as a "visiting assistant professor-TERM" for 2013-2014 at the same university (in the USA). In this time I have been applying for several post-doc and faculty positions all around the world. The following fortuitous situation has now developed:</p>
<ul>
<li>I was interviewed for a post doc position at a famed lab in Europe and received a job offer. This job offer is contingent on me getting security clearance for this lab and getting a long term visa. One of the ground rules laid out was I would not accept other post-doc positions.</li>
<li>Prior to this post-doc interview, I had interviewed for faculty position at US universities. Fortuitously a few weeks after this post-doc job offer, I have been offered full time faculty position at two other universities in the USA.</li>
<li>Now the reason I did apply for post-doc jobs is that they would help me build my network, publish more and help with an eventual faculty position!</li>
<li><strong>I am in some moral quandary now:</strong> I know that I have given the post-doc PI my word and I will not renege on it. However, the faculty positions are definitely more lucrative and long term.</li>
<li>I accepted the post-doc job because I was asked to make a decision soon and since I am a foreigner, timing is everything for me and a "job in hand is worth two in the bush" <code>Groans at quotation</code>.</li>
</ul>
<p>The options (likely and unlikely) that present themselves to me are:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Unlikely:</strong> Postpone the faculty positions to Fall of 2015. I don't think these universities would want to do that.</li>
<li><strong>Likely:</strong> Angle for better pay/better title at the post-doc jobs.</li>
</ul>
<p>I am hoping that given the experience in this forum, people could throw some light on this situation.</p>
<p><strong>Edit: Advantages and disadvantages of these positions</strong></p>
<p><strong>Advantages and Disadv. of Postdoc:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><p>(+) Great change of work, reputable lab, exposure to different work culture, deadlines, work pressure, expanding professional network on both sides of atlantic</p></li>
<li><p>(-)1-2 years only, relatively poor pay</p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Adv. and Disadv. of faculty position</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><p>(+) Faculty position nuf' said. Much Better pay, "long" term</p></li>
<li><p>(-) Will miss out on once in a lifetime post doc at great lab</p></li>
</ul>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16863,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Maybe I shouldn't start the answer with the judgey part, but if you don't feel like you can accept the faculty positions because of your previous commitment, why the hell didn't you pull your name from consideration the moment you accepted the European job? On my personal list of academic job hunting sins, not withdrawing your name from a position you've decided you can't accept is much worse than declining a postdoc offer for a TT. So, there's really no ethical choice at this point, so you may as well do what's best for you long term.</p>\n\n<p>That said, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the possibility of starting the TT job with a delay. This is very common in mathematics (my field); I've done it, and I know dozens of other people who have as well. I can imagine reasons it would be harder in mechanical engineering, but it's worth a shot. An important thing to remember as a job candidate is that once you have the offer, the tables are reversed. They've shown their hand, they've made a time, financial and psychic investment in you, and their other candidates are slowly slipping away as they wait for your answer. They really want you to say yes, so a concession like letting you take an initial leave is a small one. After all, they don't even need to pay for it! Universities are very flexible about letting you do things if they don't have to pay for them.</p>\n\n<p>I mean, really they should want you to do this, since you'll come to them better trained, with more fresh ideas, and a wider perspective. So sell it on those grounds, and I bet you'll succeed.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16865,
"author": "Matt Reece",
"author_id": 6108,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6108",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It's an inherent risk when hiring good postdocs that they could get a faculty job offer and leave. Take the faculty job offer and decline the postdoc offer. It's what almost everyone in your position would do.</p>\n\n<p>(Trying to get a year off from the faculty job so you can work at the postdoc job for one year as promised is a very reasonable thing to do first. But I think it's generally a mistake to decline a faculty offer in favor of a postdoc job, unless you are very confident you can get an equal or better faculty offer in the near future.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16869,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>A job offer which is contingent on a visa and (especially) on a security clearance is not a present job offer but the promise of a future job offer if certain conditions are met. I had a PhD student who wanted to accept such a job, but his security clearance didn't come through in time for him to start the job (note: I'm not saying that he failed his security clearance; it just wasn't resolved in time, even though he started the procedure months in advance). Thank goodness my student was also pursuing other job offers: he is now in a one-year temporary position with the intent to start the aforementioned postdoc next year...still assuming his security clearance comes through.</p>\n\n<p>I am a little confused about the \"no other postdoc offers\" clause. Surely it cannot be that <em>just by applying for that job</em> you promised not to apply for other postdocs? (Why would anyone apply for a job under those conditions??) And as I understand what you've wrote, you haven't signed any forms or officially accepted anything but only given your word to someone that you intend to take the job. (If you did intend to take this job, then as Ben Webster writes, you certainly should have written back to other jobs that interviewed you and informed them that you are off the market. That was a mistake. I wouldn't beat yourself up about it too much though: none of us gets much experience in these matters from the point of the job applicant. Later we get the rest of our career looking at things from the other side, and \"the right thing to do\" becomes increasingly clear.) </p>\n\n<p>If you haven't formally accepted the postdoc -- and you can't do so before a security clearance comes through, in my understanding -- and the tenure-track job is much more desirable to you, than I think you are legally 100% in the clear in taking the tenure-track job. Ethically speaking: well, you haven't acted in the best possible way, as mentioned above, and I would not lightly go back on my word to a senior academic who did me a great service....so it shouldn't be a light decision, but in my opinion it would still be understandable and ultimately acceptable if you took the tenure-track job under these circumstances.</p>\n\n<p>It would indeed be a classier move to explore the option of deferring the tenure track job and taking the postdoc for one academic year, or even one semester. Deferring a tenure track offer is quite common in the contemporary academic world: in my department (mathematics, University of Georgia) about half of our recent hires have completed a postdoc and arrived one year later, and recently we had someone <em>start</em> a one-year postdoc at UGA with a tenure-track job waiting for her afterwards (which she did then go on to take). You should understand though that that simply may not be possible for reasons having little or nothing to do with their desire to have you: the decision will probably be made rather on their ability to find personnel to cover your academic responsibilities. </p>\n\n<p>Finally, it may also be a good idea to communicate your thoughts to your putative supervisor. Maybe she will be totally okay with it, and with her blessing your conscience should be pretty clear. Or maybe changing your mind will cause trouble for her in a way that you don't see. Either way it seems respectful to keep her informed.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16862",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21/"
]
|
16,866 | <p>If research was done and paper was mostly written at institute A, but then it finally got accepted while the author moved to institute B, say, 3 years later. Should the affiliation of the author be</p>
<ol>
<li>Only Institute A: because 95% of the support was from here, and work was done here</li>
<li>Both Institute A and B: in some sense, both institutes supported the work</li>
<li>Only Institute B: this is where the author is affiliated at the moment</li>
</ol>
<p>related: <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11151/changing-affiliation-on-publication">Changing affiliation on publication</a></p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16867,
"author": "WetlabStudent",
"author_id": 8101,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8101",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Firstly, <strong>some journals have specific rules about what counts as an affiliation</strong>. So if the journal has such rules you should follow them. These rules are variable, and I have seen all three of the options included. In my opinion, affiliation should match your current contact information <strong>and</strong>, on top of that, match any affiliation where you conducted the research, if possible. Note this means options (2) is best. If the journal has a rule precluding option (2), be sure to thank any institution you don't put as an affiliation in the acknowledgment section. All universities deserve credit for what they contributed. That said, in my experience the majority of people in this situation (not a huge sample size), use the affiliation that either matches their current contact information or their contact information from when they submitted the paper. However, this doesn't mean it is what they should do.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16868,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>There are no fixed rules but I would opt for your option (2). The affiliation is intended to aid in facilitating contact with the author but is of course useful to a department to show count the paper as a product from that institute. By listing your former address first indicating that that is where you did most of the work and then adding the second as <em>present address</em> provides the best and useful information for all parts. Option (1) means your present location is not disclosed which is a missed opportunity to locate you. Option (3) has the disadvantage that your former department are not associated with the work you performed there. So although all are acceptable, (2) would be the best (most polite and useful) way in your situation.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16866",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
16,870 | <p>There are now many different ways to increase your research visibility: Google Scholar, laboratory/faculty/industry or even personal websites, and LinkedIn, to name a few.</p>
<p>In your opinion, how does <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><strong>ResearchGate</strong></a> fit into all of this? Is it really a good way of increasing the visibility of your publications and finding fellows with common research interests, or is it just a "waste of time"?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17025,
"author": "L Platts",
"author_id": 9117,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9117",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I personally find one aspect of <a href=\"http://www.researchgate.net\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ResearchGate</a> very useful, although I find that its benefit for me is only in small part due to any effect it has on my research visibility. Perhaps others can say more. But I do find it very helpful for keeping up with the state-of-the-art in my area.</p>\n<p>I’m in an interdisciplinary social/medical science field where people publish in a very wide range of journals, and I try to keep track of several pieces of literature. So for me <a href=\"http://www.researchgate.net\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ResearchGate</a>, in letting me follow researchers to see what they’ve published recently, is a nice complement to journal Tables of Contents. It’s a nice way to keep track of what others are working on without too much effort. I choose to follow both researchers I’ve met and strangers who recently published a useful article and might publish more in the same area.</p>\n<p>To do this, I have the settings organized so that I am not following any “interesting Topics”, only people. This avoids having questions and answers in my live feed (which I find totally useless). Consequently, my live feed contains only new articles other academics in my fields are adding, and going through this from time to time in a moment of procrastination is fantastically useful. Of course, using ResearchGate in this way is only worth it if a large-ish proportion of researchers in your sub-fields are on the site.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17036,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My experience with <a href=\"http://www.researchgate.net\">ResearchGate</a> has been negative. I was searching for a paper online, and a <a href=\"http://www.researchgate.net\">ResearchGate</a> page came up. I signed up as a member because they promised to send me a pdf of the paper. They never sent it and instead sent unrelated spam.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 23718,
"author": "Has QUIT--Anony-Mousse",
"author_id": 17690,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17690",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It's hard to predict how this will develop in the future. As is, I have yet to hear any positive success stories from my peers. <strong>All I've heard of ResearchGate are complaints about their invitation spam</strong>.</p>\n<p>If you sign up (or are already signed up), make sure to <strong>carefully check all settings</strong>. There are some "hidden" settings that will repeatedly send out "Invitations" and even "Invitation reminders" to your peers (make sure to disable this right at signup time, before "claiming" a single paper!). You can imagine that if your peer gets a dozen of them each week, he will get annoyed. And ReseachGate uses your name for the invitation, so he will <strong>get annoyed at you</strong>.</p>\n<p><strong>Before "requesting" a paper on Researchgate, make sure they have signed up</strong>. Otherwise, use regular email (even better, just use regular email right away!)\nWhen you request a paper from a non-user, they will be sent an <em>invitation letter</em>, but they <strong>cannot answer without joining</strong>: ResearchGate does not include contact information in your request!?!</p>\n<p>Other than that, I have the impression that ResearchGate is mostly used by students, not by established researchers. Therefore, do not expect many high-quality interactions to happen.</p>\n<p>Most of my peers that were on RG once, seem to have left. This is not a good sign.</p>\n<p>If they don't manage to get high-quality interactions to happen soon, their name may end up remaining associated with spam. They may have been too aggressive at boosting their user numbers quickly. The <strong>overall idea is good</strong>, but they need to find a way to get <em>quality contributions, not only quantity</em>. As is, I see them only strong on the quantitative side so far...</p>\n<p>Honestly, in my opinion, there is one thing really important for the visibility of your research:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Make it available. Publish with open access or a publisher where you can put the preprint on your webpage. Make sure that <strong>Google Scholar indexes</strong> it because that is what <em>everybody</em> I know uses for searching literature. You must get Google Scholar to return a PDF link for your article.</li>\n<li>Make it available. Also put data sets, detailed descriptions, source code, etc. on your web page; offer collaboration.</li>\n</ol>\n<p>If you make it easy for others to build upon your work, they are more likely to do so. In particular, you <em>must</em> make it easier to build upon your work, than on alternatives. Making an RG profile does not really help; effectively it just means your data is spread to one more site. Instead, put a lot of information on your homepage.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://yann.lecun.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Here is an example.</a> <strong>I'm convinced that one of the reasons why he has been very successful is that you can download data and software and tutorials right on his homepage</strong>. Compare to his <a href=\"http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yann_Lecun\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ResearchGate profile</a> (I was even surprised he has one) - it's a dead duck, absolutely useless. A Google Scholar Profile may be much more useful, as it will be linked from any article, making it <em>easy</em> for people to reach your other publications. Again, the <a href=\"http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WLN3QrAAAAAJ\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">same example</a>: Google Scholar does a much better job at providing an automatic publication list for you.</p>\n<p>IMHO, Google Scholar is a must, <em>because</em> the profile will make it easier to get updated on your other publications. I visit Scholar profiles quite often; in particular to see the latest and the most cited work of an author of which I <em>already</em> have discovered a good article.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 23724,
"author": "Dr G.",
"author_id": 17698,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17698",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><a href=\"http://www.researchgate.net\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ResearchGate</a> is pretty much like <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Linkedin</a> or <a href=\"http://www.academia.edu\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Academia.edu</a>. I prefer Academia.edu because it doesn't send me an email every time someone looks at my profile. At the same time, Academia.edu doesn't look as visually aesthetic as ResearchGate. On the other hand, you have Linkedin which is for professionals, not really academics. However, a lot of academics are now setting up their profiles because Linkedin is most likely the first place employers or other researchers go first.</p>\n<p>In my opinion, it's not bad to have an account in as many places as possible to allow as many people as possible to see your profile. You can also sign up on Google Scholar and it will assign your papers to your profile, or you can insert papers that Google does not find.</p>\n<p>Basically, it's entirely up to you and how you want your information to be spread!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 24048,
"author": "Vicent",
"author_id": 4132,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4132",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't really think that <a href=\"http://researchgate.net\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ResearchGate</a> is a waste of time.</p>\n<p>EDIT:</p>\n<p>As this answer was being downvoted because it was not originally focused on <a href=\"http://researchgate.net\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ResearchGate</a>, following I try to explain why this social network is not a waste of time for me.</p>\n<p>You can already search for journal articles and or researchers in <a href=\"http://scholar.google.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Google Scholar</a> and <a href=\"http://www.scopus.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Scopus</a>, to name just a few. <a href=\"http://researchgate.net\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ResearchGate</a> gives a social approach to it. In<a href=\"http://researchgate.net\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ResearchGate</a> you can <em>follow</em> researchers, so that you can get notified when any of them publishes new papers, for instance. Moreover, you can set your profile and tell other researchers what you are dealing with, what topics you are interested in, and so on.</p>\n<p>I think it could still be quite more useful if some functionalities were added (maybe adding the ability to create, announce, and promote à-la-Facebook <em>events</em>, which means conferences, workshops, symposiums, etc., for instance), but it is actually becoming <em>the social network</em> for scientific researchers, in my humble perception.</p>\n<p>THE REST OF THE ORIGINAL ANSWER:</p>\n<p>I personally recommend having your own academic profile on the following social networks/tools:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://researchgate.net\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ReseachGate</a>, It is nearly the <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Facebook</a> for researchers, so you just <em>must</em> be in.</li>\n<li>A personal website (better if it is hosted by your University) - With all your contact information, teaching and research info (the info that you consider to be interesting for those people that are looking for you on the Internet). Keep it as clean and simple as possible.</li>\n<li>LinkedIn - More professional than academic. One doesn't know when it can be useful.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Optional but also interesting:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"http://www.twitter.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Twitter</a>, A simple and fast way to share short messages, interesting pieces of info, etc. with your <em>audience</em>, whoever they are.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><a href=\"http://About.me\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">About.me</a> or similar, A kind of landing page that you can configure to show all your very basic information, together with links to all your Internet profiles, etc. all with a minimalist and nice touch. You can add it to your e-mail signature.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>A blog, Basically a place where you can say things. It could be integrated into your website.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37432,
"author": "Alex",
"author_id": 28312,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28312",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>ResearchGate is a counterproductive vehicle for the spread of publication news. It does an incredibly sloppy job of assembling information on scholars (e.g., catches only about 350 of my over 1000 citations at ISI and 3500 at Google Scholar and Hazing's Publish or Perrish). It lures one in with an appeal to recognition of other authors who are friends or co-authors.</p>\n<p>Perhaps its operations are guided by the old Russian adage that "if something is worth doing, it's worth doing wrong."</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 40337,
"author": "Jays",
"author_id": 30745,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/30745",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I was never a member of ResearchGate or tried to be one. But at one point I was spammed with emails from ResearchGate of former collaborators, with whom I published or did not publish, and it still goes on. There are also researchers included who I personally don't know.</p>\n<p>I was asked constantly to confirm the authorship of some of my papers. This turned me completely off, and I think it is simply a spam company. A company, which wants to do serious business does not use this kind of method.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 52289,
"author": "Cosima",
"author_id": 39153,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/39153",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think that ResearchGate can be a useful tool to promote your research and contact peers, <strong>if you invest quite some time</strong> in it. It does not happen automatically. You must work to find people with relevant work for you, and follow them (and also occasionally unfollow some people) - so that you get a minimally lively and relevant news feed.</p>\n<p>As scholarly communication goes, until now I have only received a letter from a professor via RG, but he was an established figure, so I was really happy to get a message from him. I also promptly started to read his older publications which were great, so this was an added benefit. That is, I think the best advantage of ResearchGate consists in how it creates <strong>alternative paths for exploring the scholarship universe</strong>: instead of jumping from text to text you jump from text to author to text. This is more lively and it leads you on surprising paths, sometimes.</p>\n<p>Also, I enjoy finding established scholars from my interest topics on RG (and Academia.edu), browsing through all their publications, and clicking "Follow". I like the idea of a connection with them - especially when, occasionally, they "follow" back. It's a variety of entertainment, I guess.</p>\n<p>Still, in terms of visibility, I think that my publications do get more views and downloads compared to my personal site - well, partly because I don't know how many they get there. At least, I can say that it gives me <strong>occasional joy when I see some view & download numbers</strong> on ResearchGate. (All these considerations also apply to Academia.edu, which has a much nicer - or not so evil- marketing strategy).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 67273,
"author": "Quizzical Creature",
"author_id": 47906,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/47906",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think it is worth mentioning that ResearchGate's policy on invitations has improved. This is what they say on the matter:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>One way to make sure that your publications gain maximum exposure among your peers is by inviting your co-authors to join you on ResearchGate when you add publications to your profile. If you’d like your co-authors to join you, just make sure that the Invite my co-authors to ResearchGate box is checked when you’re adding publications and, where possible, an invitation will be sent to them. By clicking Preview, you can also choose which of your co-authors you would like to invite. Invitations will only be sent to the co-authors selected; ResearchGate does not email your co-authors on your behalf without your knowledge or consent.</p>\n<p>You can customize your Invitation settings at any time. To do this, go to your Invitation settings and choose which of your co-authors you would like to invite by selecting them from the list. If you would like to disable invitations entirely, simply click Turn off all. If you have turned off invitations, you can always turn them back on again by selecting Turn on all.\nWe take personal data and anti-spam policies very seriously; our processes are compliant with European and U.S. regulations and are audited on a regular basis.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>There are still plenty of problems with the site. Here is an extensive list of things a computer scientist thinks should be addressed <a href=\"http://ptbcs.blogspot.ca\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://ptbcs.blogspot.ca</a>. He seems to be keeping the list updated with new problems or improvements.</p>\n<p>ResearchGate has only sent invitations from me to two people. One of those I was unhappy that they had sent an invitation as it was not clear they would do that. But I immediately realised this would be an issue and disabled the setting.</p>\n<p>I think ResearchGate has huge potential and many benefits if used appropriately. But as @Cosima mentioned, you need to invest some time setting things up, making sure the settings are appropriate. Facebook went through similar problems with privacy and has since improved. When I first joined the site several years ago, I was hugely disappointed and quickly realised that I would have to wait and see if it amounted to anything. I finally feel like the site is going down the right path. Most of my colleagues and peers are now on the site, I see their citation updates and the metrics are improving. I recognise the site's current major flaws, but am optimistic about its future role in the research community.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 145940,
"author": "einpoklum",
"author_id": 7319,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7319",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<h3>For me, it's an asset.</h3>\n<p>I've been using ResearchGate for about three years now. At first, I would also get a lot of emails from them: Weekly stats, "people are noticing your work", are you an author of this paper?". I played with my settings and the undesirable ones stopped; completely, or somehow my junk filter picked it up. <strong>Now I pretty much get no email from them.</strong></p>\n<p>On the positive side:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>I <em>have</em> found interesting and useful papers on RG which I didn't find elsewhere. (I mean, perhaps I could have, but I found them there first without knowing what I was looking for exactly.)</li>\n<li>I <em>have</em> used it to request and obtain the full text of papers about whose existence I knew but didn't have publicly-accessible full text.</li>\n<li>A few people who are close to my field have written me due in part or in full to noticing me on RG.</li>\n<li>Several people (not as many as I would like...) download papers of mine every week.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>So there. It's a net asset for me.</p>\n<p>Caveat: Some people claim that seemingly-unrelated solicitations to publish in obscure venues - which I do receive - are due to my RG presence or even due to RG passing on aggregated data to such advertisers. I can't say to what degree this is the case. But even this possibility does not change my bottom line view.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16870",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9665/"
]
|
16,879 | <p>I have been working on a graduate level research project, with the bonus of being listed as a co-author if I make a significant contribution (which I likely will). I am still an undergraduate, but have significant experience (professional and educational) in the field.</p>
<p>My question is: Is this a big deal? If I go to grad school in that field, would this allow me to obtain a PhD quicker? </p>
<p>What if I don't go to grad school, but choose to work in the field, would being listed as co-author on a research project of this level hold enough weight to warrant listing on my resume?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16880,
"author": "Irwin",
"author_id": 5944,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5944",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It doesn't exactly \"allow you to get a Ph.D quicker\". However, you would have more experience in academic writing than if you hadn't contributed to the writing in the paper. Writing a paper isn't just \"writing\" a report - a lot of analysis, interpretation, and technical work goes into papers and these are skills you want to have as a Ph.D student. Being a co-author on a paper will make your application stand out.</p>\n\n<p>If you go into any job, you can list this as a project that you have worked on. If you are familiar with the contents of the paper, then you can talk about it as if it was another project that you've worked on. Having your name on the paper is verifiable and can look pretty impressive especially if you are familiar with the details.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16881,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The benefit will hopefully be that you get to learn how to prepare and write a scientific paper. If you continue to graduate school then having been involved at this level will obviously be a positive. If you are not planning to continue with research you will still benefit from learning the process since academic writing is something you will likely continue doing in a professional role. In addition you will have some insights into how papers are written which may help you read and assess papers and reports. Since communication through written reports is key for any academic work this will be of use to you. It may not count for very much when applying for a job but you should also consider the skills you will improve when taking part in such a process.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16882,
"author": "BrenBarn",
"author_id": 9041,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9041",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It won't let you get a PhD quicker, but it will improve your chances of getting into PhD programs. It will also give you valuable experience in the process of writing a paper and getting it published. This could result in you publishing more papers during your grad school career (because you'll be better at it), which could improve your chances of getting a desirable job after you finish your PhD.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16879",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5836/"
]
|
16,886 | <p>Let's assume that I've contacted professors in the United States and referred to them appropriately as "Dr. Smith" or "Professor Smith" based on their having attained a Ph.D. </p>
<p><strong>If they respond to me informally, should I continue to address them formally? If so, for how long?</strong></p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16887,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>\"Dr. [Last name]\" is more common and also more versatile because it covers people with a doctoral degree but not involved with academic organization. If you do know that person does teach or you are/were in his/her class, then \"Professor [Last name]\" works as well.</p>\n\n<p>The formality can be toned down when the other side writes something like \"Please call me [First name].\" Otherwise, keep using \"Dr.\"</p>\n\n<p>If you feel that it's safe to be more collegial while the other side still keeps addressing you formally as Mr. Hundt or Dr. Hundt, you can take the initiative to say \"Please call me Andrew.\" Usually, a socially viable person (notice that social skills can be scarce among PhDs, but give it some patience and eventually this will happen) should reply and say, \"Please call me [First name] as well.\" If not, look pass the awkwardness and keep using Dr. [Last name] until perhaps you two get to meet and be more acquainted during the meeting.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16889,
"author": "J. Zimmerman",
"author_id": 7921,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7921",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>For email, the general rule of thumb is to address the person in the same way in which they sign their emails to you. If they always sign as \"Professor\" or \"Doctor\", you should address them by the same title. If they sign informally; i.e. \"Chris\" or \"Dr. J.\", address them by that name.</p>\n\n<p>It gets a little more complicated when speaking face to face, and here I tend to err on the side of formality, and use Doctor or Professor unless and until they ask me to do otherwise. As @Penguin_Knight states above, you may need to take the initiative and ask them to call you by <em>your</em> first name and hope they get the hint. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16894,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>This is so highly dependent on particular universities -- let alone particular regions -- that it is probably best just to ask students and faculty what is the culture at their particular university.</p>\n\n<p>I will give one example. At most American universities you should begin by calling all your instructors by \"Dr.\" or \"Professor\", although in some cases your instructors will be neither one of these and should probably say so in response. For anyone who is either a Doctor (i.e., has a doctoral degree) or a Professor (in the United States this usually means \"is on the tenure track\", but already there are variations...), it seems a bit rude not to use one of these two appellations. When students call me \"Mr. Clark\" I assume they are just forgetting that they are not in high school anymore. But whether \"Dr.\" or \"Professor\" is preferred is highly variable. At my university it seems that \"Dr.\" is the go-to appellation: I have even heard other faculty refer to me as \"Dr. Clark\" when talking to students. Nevertheless I prefer being called \"Professor\": getting my PhD was nice. Getting a tenure-track job took place three years later, and that's when I really made it big. However at some places you call people \"Professor\" because you are not sure whether they have a doctorate, and for the ones who do, \"Dr.\" is the superior honorific. Et cetera...</p>\n\n<p>(I believe I learned some of this from Paul Halmos's <em>Automathography</em>, which I highly recommend to all academics and not just to mathematicians: to mathematicians I would <em>require</em> that you read it if I could! He goes on to explain more nuances than I did above.)</p>\n\n<p>What you call your instructor also depends on things like their age, their gender, and honestly perhaps even their ethnic background. As a tenured Caucasian male, the desired aura of authority is already there: I don't have to do anything special to summon it. On the other hand I am still \"young\" -- closer in age to some of my students than some of my colleagues -- so if I met a student in a non-academic context I would not want any deferential treatment. (This is also a generational thing: telemarketers, phone company employees and so forth now call me and refer to me by my first name, and I wonder where our civilization is heading...) I am totally okay being called by my first name by any university student. Whether they are similarly okay doing so is another question, but I encourage this behavior particularly from former students and in contexts outside out of the university campus. If I were 65 years old and wearing a suit, calling me by my first name would seem less appropriate. (In fact I had to steel myself at first to call all of my colleagues by their first names, even the ones who were famous mathematicians before I was born. But that is definitely contemporary American academic culture: any of my colleagues who calls me \"Dr. Clark\" is signalling that they want to strangle me.)</p>\n\n<p>I feel that it is especially important not to use less formal appellations for female faculty. I covered a colleague's class a few weeks ago, and one of the students asked a question, beginning with \"Miss Matic said...\" And my answer began \"Well, first things first: it's <strong>Dr. Matic</strong>...\" I then got the student to agree that that was the correct thing to say before moving on to address the question. Also I feel honorbound to stand more carefully on honorifics when addressing minorities. It is sad to me that contemporary American society has not gotten past the point where this seems necessary...but it hasn't yet. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16923,
"author": "JamminJimP",
"author_id": 11893,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11893",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>By definition, Doctor is reserved for individuals who have completed their doctorate. </p>\n\n<p>(<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)</a>)</p>\n\n<p>I would think most educators that have taken on the arduous task of completing their PhD would be offended by students addressing non-PhD professors as 'Dr.'. Although there are several PhDs I know who prefer NOT to be addressed as 'Dr.', I would never make that assumption unless specifically requested to refrain from doing so.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 31048,
"author": "Ryker",
"author_id": 4514,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4514",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Honestly, I have always assumed the \"appropriate\" thing to do would be to call them by their title until they tell you to just call them John or whatever. This can drag out quite a bit, though, but in my mind, if someone is addressing me with a title, and I feel they can address me by my first name, I'll definitely say so. So I suppose the same could be said for faculty. If they feel that a change is appropriate, they should or would tell you \"Please call me John\", but if they stay silent on the matter, then that would imply they feel it's fitting for Dr.'s or Prof.'s still being thrown in the mix.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 81190,
"author": "Karl",
"author_id": 45983,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45983",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I may be unaccustomed to customs at US universities, but if someone addresses me "informally", i.e. with my first name or "Hey", (that was the point of the question, right?) I will do the same towards him.</p>\n<p>A professor expecting anything else should quit university, and become a <s>high</s> middle school teacher.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16886",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11816/"
]
|
16,888 | <p>I am a US-based researcher who recently accepted a postdoc in Sweden. My offer letter states that I will be entitled to a 6-week annual vacation during my appointment. Being from the US where I have been in charge of structuring my own schedule (except for teaching), this obviously confuses me for several reasons. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>First, I am not sure if we are legally entitled to vacation days in the US, but even if we were, I have never seen people officially take "vacations" in the US. This is, in my mind what school administrative staff or office workers do, not academics. Over the past years, I have structured my work and vacation time around my teaching schedule and figured out when to rest and when to work on my own without having to count days or ask my department's permission. Of course nobody cares when I take vacations as long as my vacation time does not overlap with my teaching schedule. </p></li>
<li><p>So the fact that my new department is emphasizing "legal vacation hours" is a little strange. What does vacations mean when I will likely be spending whatever free time, rushing to finish my manuscript, grant proposals, or course prep anyways? </p></li>
<li><p>Also, does the fact that the school is counting vacation days mean that I have to be in my office during "normal work hours"? I've never heard anything sillier, because for academics, number of hours in office does not equate productivity, and I actually like switching up my work location time to time rather than being stuck in an office! (In the US, I only show up to school about 3 days a week-- mostly when I have to teach and want to be in office. Other days, I just go to a local cafe to write. If possible, I'd like to keep things this way...)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I'm wondering if anyone can clarify what academic vacation means in Europe and if it really differs from the US? </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16890,
"author": "walkmanyi",
"author_id": 1265,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1265",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Welcome to European vacation regulations :-).</p>\n\n<p>You are entitled to X days of vacations per year. Literally. There's no hook to it. You simply ask the employer, basically your direct supervisor (head of the group, department, dean?), and if there's no reason to say \"no\", they will approve it. Of course taking time off during days when you are teaching needs to be explained very very well, but if your vacation days do not interfere with teaching obligations, or similar duties, you will be given the time off. That's it.</p>\n\n<p>Normally at universities, unless you have a very fussy boss, nobody cares when you take vacations time (still recall non-interference with teaching), but most people take several weeks off in the summer and people with a family also during school vacation periods (country dependent). In companies, the system tends to be stricter, you should plan any longer breaks several months ahead and coordinate with your colleagues so that it does not happen that everybody leaves for two weeks and a company stops. At universities that is a non-issue, though.</p>\n\n<p>Legal vacation time means you are entitled to that time. The employer is obliged to give you that time off. Suppose they will refuse to approve your vacations when you wish to take them (e.g., when you work in agricultural sector you shouldn't leave at the harvest time). In that (rare!) case, they will have to select and offer you another period of (usually at least two weeks of uninterrupted) vacations period some other time in the year. </p>\n\n<p>But there is another potential surprise for you. If you won't take all your vacations in a year, since you are entitled to that time, it will be (in all countries and places I worked, but there might be local differences) shifted into the next year when you will be entitled to the standard X days per year according to the union negotiations PLUS whatever carry-over from the last year. The regulations regarding how far into the future that contingent of vacation days can be pushed differ, but normally the carry-over is useful in the very next year in full. Sometimes you might even be obliged to take it. Because if not, the employer might have a problem - again, you are entitled to vacations. And the employer can even force you take time off in order to use that vacations budget. The reason is that they don't like the idea of accumulating and then even making use of several months of vacations in a row.</p>\n\n<p>As for being in the workplace during working hours, again, regulations differ but most of the time there is at least a certain period (10oo-15oo?) when you are obliged to be there. But in reality at universities I never heard of anybody making any fuss about this (except for Eastern European universities, where it can be a matter of local department politics - but that is of no concern to your case). Think about it as a legal issue. If something happens to you at office hours (a car accident), it might be considered a work-related accident, so the employers try to counter-act that by requiring you to be in the office unless allowed not to.</p>\n\n<p>Later edit:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What does vacations mean when I will likely be spending whatever free time, rushing to finish my manuscript, grant proposals, or course prep anyways?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You structure your time. It doesn't have to be the way you describe. What use does an employer have of burned out and stressed out employees?</p>\n\n<p>Even later edit:<br/>\nJust for completeness, being entitled to take vacations also means that often you will be able to trade days off for salary. Usually the union contracts regulate, or prevent this, but for example when you are leaving, the employer will either compensate the unused fraction of the annual vacations budget by money, or will force you to take it right before leaving the position - during that time you will receive the regular salary up to the date of leave.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16917,
"author": "David Richerby",
"author_id": 10685,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10685",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The parts of the question about vacation days have been answered above. Formally, you're supposed to arrange your vacation days in advance; in practice, this usually means going to the person you report to (e.g., the professor you're working for as a postdoc) a reasonable time in advance and saying, \"I was thinking of taking X time off; is that going to be OK?\" The answer is usually yes, unless you're supposed to be teaching in that time, in which case you'll need a really good reason to be away and you'll need to arrange cover. \"Reasonable\" just means, you know, reasonable.</p>\n\n<p>The simple answer to the \"Can I work in a cafe instead of my office?\" part is that it's up to your employer, so ask them. You will probably find that your employment contract specifies your \"normal place of work\" as being the university department. However, academic staff are usually trusted to work sufficient hours in a suitable place without being managed in detail. As long as the people you're working with are happy for you to work outside the office, that's fine. If you're working collaboratively with somebody else, you might be expected to spend more time in the office than in cafes, so you're available for discussions but I doubt anyone would demand you work in the office just because \"that's where you're supposed to be.\"</p>\n\n<p>In summary, it's probably not going to be an issue. You and the people you're working with will quickly figure out something you're all comfortable with.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16924,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This answer will just clarify Swedish conditions since that is where you are heading. The following applies to Swedish universities and other state employment:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>A fixed number of days of vacation are given by law and varies a little depending on seniority and other factors. The basic number is 35 workdays a year. If you are employed a shorter time the number decreases directly as the fraction of the time of a year you work.</li>\n<li>Vacation days are salaried and you also receive a smaller amount extra for vacation days.</li>\n<li>You will be asked to place your vacation days in advance. You can always change the dates later.</li>\n<li>You will not be insured for work-place accidents by your employer on your vacation days. This means you should retract vacation days if you actually work when you should be on vacation.</li>\n<li>You cannot save more than 31 days of vacation in total to be carried over from one year to the next. </li>\n<li>When you complete your position, days of vacation not taken will be reimbursed as payment.</li>\n<li>A work week is 40 hours and you should normally be at work. However, there are possibilities to get permission to work from home, particularly during summer.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In reality no-one really cares if you work or not on vacation days but as I stated above there are possible negative effects one should be aware of. No-one cares where and when you work. As a post-doc you will probably not be involved in much bureaucracy and so all you need to figure out is when your collaborators want you to be there and learn the local <em>modus operandi</em>.</p>\n\n<p>I would not advice you to be invisible since part of a career in academia means involving yourself in activities and politics of departments. People will probably not be very up-front with their opinions about your presence/absence but will not look very favourable on someone who gets a salary and an office and never shows up. A funny law in Sweden is also the coffee(tea)-break, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. this is a time and place where you socialize with others in the workplace apart from immediate colleagues. You absence from these will not go unnoticed. This will not prevent you from working elsewhere for weeks at a time if you wish but showing some presence outside of mandatory chores will likely be expected.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16929,
"author": "penelope",
"author_id": 4249,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4249",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394/peter-jansson\">Peter Jansson's</a> answer is right on the spot. I'd just add a few more pieces of advice and "exemplary" cases I picked up along the way:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>most people here in Europe will refer to their PhD/postdoc as a <em>job</em> rather than <em>school</em> (you're not going to school, you're working)</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>it's almost the <em>perfectly evaluated job</em>: people judge you by how much you produce, not how much time you behind is in you office chair (of course, the "almost" part comes from all the things <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394/peter-jansson\">Peter Jansson</a> already warned you about: you should be there and visible)</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>if you have an obligation away from the office, or in some cases, it's simpler to work from home, nobody usually has a problem with it. Last year, I think I had maybe 5-6 days when I did not go to the office at all and worked from hom, and another 5ish when I had obligations in the middle of the day and would spend half a day working from home.</p>\n<p>Some of these included after-flue recovery (e.g. I felt fine but was coughing frequently... I worked from home as to not disturb my noise-sensitive officemate), some tasks were just simpler to do from home (some tests etc.).</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>People in Europe actually would like you to have free <em>free</em> time and not to rush all the time: (this might be a bit special cause I'm in France, but) I strongly suspect that our lab cafeteria is closing at 5:15PM to deprive people of coffee and make them go home.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>This whole "free time" of course does not work: I know people coming to the office around noon and leaving between 10PM and midnight on a regular basis. Nobody minds...</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>... unless you don't have any overlap with your team and especially your supervisor. You should have a schedule that overlaps with their at least partially.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Where I am, it's not really sunny really often, and there's a lot of people that start missing the sun very soon. I had a friend who would spend every single sunny afternoon in a cafe (working) instead of the office. He was sharing the office with his supervisor -- and it was okay.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>It is very rare for you to be able to take a long chunk of vacations at once (except for 1st year PhDs): precisely cause of deadlines, proposals and other things that wait for nobody.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>One of the most frequent uses of vacation days among European PhD students is extending their conferences and other official travel. The university does not generally mind for which days they buy the plane tickets, so virtually anybody takes a few days up to a couple of weeks of vacation at every cool, exotic and new conference location they're sent to :D</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>But, basically, you should feel your team/lab dynamics. If it's a very coherent team, you might want to be there for the morning and/or afternoon coffees and lunches between often and always, otherwise you get a bit more flexibility. Of course, it might be that you got a postdoc in a very strict lab, but I don't think that is very common.</p>\n<p>On the other hand, the lab/office can be a nice and fun place (even a nice, modern, spacious above ground facility with enough windows and sun ;)). You might just arrive and realize you <em>want</em> to spend time in the office: I realized I much prefer working <em>only</em> in the office, staying longer or coming earlier when needed. It helps me to stress out much less about work, especially when I'm away from the office and supposed to relax.</p>\n<p>And lastly, I just want to add that I was almost as surprised with your description of US-(non)-vacation system as you seem to be with the European system.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/12 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16888",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11154/"
]
|
16,893 | <p>I am wondering how the search committees take into account feedback that is provided by faculty members who meet one-on-one with a candidate. I am curious about both the process as well as how the committee considers the feedback when making their decision.</p>
<p>So, for example, does the faculty member who meets with the candidate email the committee as soon as the discussion is done to write about how the meeting went? Are they evaluating the candidate on "culture fit", technical prowess, teaching/research, etc.? Do they have veto power over a candidate? Do they meet with the search committee and discuss candidates after everyone's met with each one? Is it the same faculty who meet one-on-one with the candidates, or does it depend on who's available that day?</p>
<p>I'm rather interested in the process of how it works, for those who have been on search committees, and that is why I ask this question. I am most interested in responses for research interviews for institutions in the United States but experiences from other locations would be valuable as I am sure that the process is not identical even within one country (or even one department).</p>
<p>This <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/946/interview-strategies-for-faculty-positions-to-focus-on-their-research-or-your/947#947">question</a> is highly related, but isn't specifically addressing what I am wondering.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17643,
"author": "Anonymous",
"author_id": 11565,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11565",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I've been on a hiring committee twice. We don't typically have formal \"one-to-one\" meetings, but we do make a lot of time for informal discussions with the candidate and one or more faculty.</p>\n\n<p>Each time, we have hired in an area which I'm very interested in but only know a very little bit about. So, I always have \"stupid\" questions in the back of my mind which I can ask to the candidates. This gives me a good opportunity to be favorably impressed by them.</p>\n\n<p>Another thing I like to do is start talking about my own research area. Sometimes candidates will know at least a little bit about it and will ask very interesting questions. This also makes a positive impression, especially when it leads to a long discussion.</p>\n\n<p>I don't care much about \"culture fit\", but candidates do, and they often ask a lot of questions about my university, the department atmosphere, and what the city is like.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17656,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>I am in a US R1 institution in a department of computer science.</em></p>\n\n<p>All departments have their own style. Ours is something like this:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Each candidate is \"governed\" by a search committee (we often have multiple searches in different areas) consisting of 4-5 faculty.</li>\n<li>Each candidate is \"hosted\" by one specific person on the committee: the host's job is to be the candidate liaison to the process, as well as managing the interview schedule, and making everything run smoothly from the department's point of view</li>\n<li>Immediately after the interview, the host sends out mail to the faculty requesting formal feedback via email. The host will also typically buttonhole people in the hallway to get informal \"vibes\" as well. </li>\n<li>after the formal feedback is collected (and anonymized depending on how things go), and after all candidates have been interviewed, the search committee sits down to assess the pool.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>At this stage, faculty feedback plays the following role (the committee has already discussed the technical merits and strengths/weaknesses of the candidates):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ul>\n <li>Is there a clear consensus in favor of a candidate ? </li>\n <li>Are there candidates that are drawing strong (and well-founded) opposition from the faculty ? </li>\n <li>If the committee decides to choose one particular candidate to put forward to the faculty at large, will there be significant opposition,\n and why ? </li>\n <li>what is the overall sense that the faculty appears to have about the candidates in general ?</li>\n </ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>After this is done, the committee might choose to:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>present a candidate as a consensus choice</li>\n<li>present two candidates as co-consensus choices that the faculty at large can vote on</li>\n<li>decide that no candidate has crossed the bar for a faculty-wide vote.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>To answer your specific questions that aren't covered above:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>no one person (not even the chair!) has a veto over hiring someone, but obviously people closer technically to the candidate will have a \"weightier\" opinion. The way our structure works, it's possible (though unlikely to happen) that the committee will nix someone that the faculty all like, which is a sort of collective veto</li>\n<li>faculty are assembled to meet the candidate based primarily on possible match of interest, and occasionally also for tactical reasons :). The host will make sure that people who are stakeholders in the hire meet as many candidates as possible. But there's of course an element of \"who's available that day\".</li>\n</ul>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/13 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16893",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5944/"
]
|
16,898 | <p>Or how would you like to be addressed?</p>
<p>As a graduate TA, I went by my first name. But I thought that some students were becoming too friendly. They took things for granted (for example, asking for a homework extension every week without even bothering to make up an excuse, or showing up to my office hours and interjecting with comments meant to be funny but came out sounding obnoxious).</p>
<p>I will be an assistant professor next year, and I am wondering whether asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the rudeness that I've encountered.</p>
<p>But how do you ask? Sign my email Dr. LASTNAME? That sounds pretentious. Should I just use initials (FL for FIRSTNAME LASTNAME)? I sign all my emails with my first name, but doing that for students is an open invitation to call them by my first name. How do people transition from a graduate TA to someone with a PhD in front of a class full of undergraduate students?</p>
<p>**EDIT: I have had several students be truly rude to me, but in keeping with the spirit of anonymity, I did not describe in detail what happened. But My colleagues were shocked and appalled at some of the behaviors that I have encountered.</p>
<p>That said, I do very well with evaluations, often nearing perfect score, and my students score well above average in multi-section calculus classes. As you might imagine, my classes are fairly well-attended with high level of participation. Of course there are pros and cons of familiarity, but I am somewhat puzzled at this display of lack of authority in my classroom, as all of my colleagues also go by their first names. I hope this is more information.**</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16905,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Like JeffE's comment, I always prefer students to call me by my first name. My male <strong>and</strong> female, Asian <strong>and</strong> white colleagues also prefer to be called by their first name. There are some exceptions where they insist on some title according to local custom for showing respect. However, I do not have the problem you describe (students expecting unreasonable things and acting in completely unprofessional ways). The reasons that I do not have to deal with these problems is because I simply do not accept them.</p>\n\n<p>Actually, I am fairly strict but also fair and I always try to be open, transparent, and predictable to my students. They know if they arrive to class late, they are absent. If they submit late, they fail. They want more time, they won't get it. </p>\n\n<p>I do not see how what I allow them to call me (excluding rude names) would result in overly familiar behavior. Indeed, many of my Asian colleagues are far closer to students than I would ever allow myself to become. The ones who demand more formal forms of address are the ones who seem to get the closest with students. Perhaps this is how they remind students that they are still the teacher.</p>\n\n<p>In short, student behavior is driven by your attitude towards them and you can convey a tone of seriousness in the relationship without requiring formal salutations.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16907,
"author": "Mark Meckes",
"author_id": 101,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/101",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As earthling says, student behavior toward you is influenced by a lot more than how you have them address you. But that doesn't mean that how they address you isn't a factor.</p>\n\n<p>This can depend a lot on the culture of your institution and department. If all the other faculty in your department have students address them by last name, and you stand out as more informal, it may well make it more difficult to establish authority in the classroom. (Especially if you are, e.g., younger / more soft-spoken / shorter / more female than many of your colleagues.) On the other hand, if the students are used to addressing all of the faculty by first name and you stand out as more formal, you may come across as either unfriendly or as trying too hard. You should ask your new colleagues about what the common practice is in your new department. (But you also don't want them to think you're overly worried about student interactions. Explain that you're just trying to get to know the local culture so you can fit in.)</p>\n\n<p>Whatever you decide, you can establish what you want to be called with how you introduce yourself at the beginning of class. (Amazingly to me, many instructors never think to introduce themselves to the class.) At different institutions (with different cultures, and at which I held different positions), I've either started the first day of class with \"I'm Mark\" or \"I'm Professor Meckes\". If you do decide to go by last name, you should definitely not sign email to students with only your first name. I use my full name; many other people I know use initials.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16908,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I want to add to the other answers by taking a wider look. The way students and teachers address each other is not only a difference between universities etc. it is also a cultural difference. Some cultures (countries) are more title oriented than others. In Sweden (and the rest of the Nordic countries), titles were largely laid aside in the late 1960s/early 1970s. If a Swedish student approached me as \"Professor Jansson\" I would almost be shocked. If a foreign student did the same I would not react since I am aware that titles are handled differently around the world. Being aware of differences should therefore be in everybody's mind and also that adhering to local customs may be necessary, regardless of ones opinion on the matter. It should be said that laying titles to the side is not the same as removing politeness and respect. So awareness of the local culture shows respect and etiquette but realizing cultures vary is also a sign of tolerance. As long as both parties tries to be respectful and help each other to find the proper (local) way much will be gained.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16911,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I will be an assistant professor next year, and I am wondering whether\n asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the\n rudeness that I've encountered.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, what students call you will probably have some impact on how they behave, but I would not stress about it. As you say in a comment, many white males (myself included) don't have these types of authority issues. On the other hand, my wife used to regularly have students tell her inappropriate personal things because they think she is their mother or act inappropriately because they think she is weak/helpless. The way to resolve these issues is to tackle them head on and not change what they call you.</p>\n\n<p>As a male I keep my office door open when meeting with students to prevent accusations of sexual misconduct. My wife keeps her office door open to try and prevent sexual misconduct and to cut down on the student crying. She has developed a low tolerance for students going off topic and stops most in their tracks by asking if she should call the student counselling services.</p>\n\n<p>In the US and UK system, I find that telling students what you expect and making it clear you are not their friend from the first day of class helps a lot. If you are a women you also need to make it clear you are not their mother. Tell them extensions require a doctors note or a death certificate. Tell them that personal issues should be taken up with counselling services. Point out that sexual misconduct and bullying is not tolerated in your classroom and that you will report any and all incidents. Then explain you have office hours and what types of issues can be discussed during them. Finally, explain how they can contact you (e.g., no text messages and grammatically correct emails). Somewhere in this introduction, you can tell them what to call you.</p>\n\n<p>As for signing an email, don't. A signature is redundant with information in the message header and in this case can only cause problems. An auto attached footer with your full name and titles and contact information is fine.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16918,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>(Localized answer: I'm in Germany and in my work experience also [the north of?] Italy thinks along the same lines. Both languages have the concept of changing pronouns as well as first name vs. last name to express different grades of formality and closeness)</p>\n\n<h2>Spoken interaction with students</h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>The default here is to address TAs by \"Sie\" (formal pronoun) and last name. Addressing in everyday spoken language by Dr. is becoming more and more unusual, it is still the default with people who are much older and/or are known to put much emphasis on this formality. Same with Prof., the default being slightly more on formal side. Needless to say, the TA or prof also adresses the students by \"Sie\" and last name.</p></li>\n<li><p>For mass courses (labwork practica where I have different groups of students on every occasion or seminars), we just stay with the formal way of adressing. These courses typically have a comparably low number of one-to-one interactions with the student.</p></li>\n<li><p>When students join our research group, I offer the \"Du\" (informal pronoun): this is done by (re)introducing yourself \"By the way, I'm Firstname\".</p></li>\n<li><p>As a student I found it <em>very awkward</em> if the teachers weren't clear about this: in our culture it is clearly up to the more senior (also or even mainly professionally more senior) person to offer to drop the formalities. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<h2>e-mails</h2>\n\n<p>For inner-German emails I'd still consider it rude not to put an opening line and a closing line to the body. For e-mail exchange with other countries I adapt to their customs as far as I know them. In my language the way the recipient is adressed and the email is signed state how formal or close the relaionship is to be. This is information the email adresses and the full email signature cannot provide. The full signature below the \"--\" line is the place where full professional grades and position go.</p>\n\n<p>Emailing with students without these \"instructions\" may be perceived as rude or also as <em>insecure</em>. The mass-course email starts with \"Dear Mr./Ms. X\", or less formally \"Dear seminar group A\" and ends with \"Best, Firstname Lastname\" or less formally just with \"Firstname Lastname\".</p>\n\n<p>I close with abbreviation (\"VG C\") only with close collaborators. In that case, opening and closing line may be dropped as well. </p>\n\n<h2>Students becoming <em>too</em> friendly</h2>\n\n<p>I'll try to live up to the stereotype that Germany are direct to the level of being rude. Here are my thoughts:</p>\n\n<p>In German language, the concept of <em>too</em> friendly with a negative connotation does not exist, friendly is unambiguously positive. From that perspective, I'd say that your \"too friendly\" is a euphemism for something along the lines of presuming and rude, not respecting you. </p>\n\n<p>Now <strong>in the described situation I'd try hard to avoid any euphemisms about the student behaviour</strong> as they may be perceived as a sign of you lacking confidence in yourself, and submitting to the badly behaving student: your language offers them a very easy way to ignore your request. If that happens (and I'd think it more likely to happen with rude students...), good-bye to the student respecting you. </p>\n\n<p>Even (or maybe: particularly?) in a culture that relies less on formal distinctions (like the formal way of adressing) if someone doesn't know and doesn't get the hints how to behave themselves, it may help to tell them in clear words what is expected and that not behaving accordingly leaves a very bad impression. I'd take them aside to tell that, and I'd make a point that I don't particularly grudge this first time - but that I'm concerned because in a professional environment such non-respecting behaviour may cut their throats.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16922,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Do not worry too much about it. The way you're being addressed has very little to do with the respect students give, otherwise all these tyrants in the history would have been very respectable. Just go with how your peer professors being called, and use that as a benchmark.</p>\n\n<p>And more importantly, try not to pick one imperfection and magnify it to out of proportion. Zoom out and evaluate these:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>\"... asking for a homework extension every week without even bothering to make up an excuse... \" Does the syllabus specify that there has to be an excuse? If not, why do they have to give one (or worse, make one up?)</li>\n<li>\"... office hours and interjecting with comments meant to be funny but came out sounding obnoxious... \" Hmmm... I can't understand what the problems are. If it's crossing the line, then casually, with a bit of humor, tell them jokes will be for another time, focus on the questions on [the subject].</li>\n<li>Did teaching and learning actually happen?</li>\n<li>On the flip side, with this \"friendliness,\" are the students also more willing to ask questions and give comments in class? When you walk by the groups during their discussion, did they immediately incorporate you, or close up?</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Overall, may I humbly suggest you not to stand out there, getting all ready to be offended? In the contrary, when these \"bad\" behaviors happen, an educator should use the opportunity to teach, not to internalize the (real/imaginary) lack of respect, get all angry and proceed to pout for the rest of the day. We are their first line to test their professional interactions, and both the students and the teacher will benefit by being leaning towards more reflective than judgmental.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>And finally to answer your question. I teach in the US and go by my first name. One year, I decided to keep a beard (bad decision, please don't ask) and all the students called me professor. Having tried both, I will not think twice opting for first name-based interaction.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16925,
"author": "Patlatus",
"author_id": 11894,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11894",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Another localized answer.</p>\n\n<p>I live in Ukraine and when I was doing PhD, I was giving also some Calculus workshops instead of my supervisor, so undergrads were calling me by my first name and father's name.</p>\n\n<p>It is common practice in many post-soviet countries and probably many Slavic countries.</p>\n\n<p>I would probably preferred if they called me Sir [FirstName] or something like that instead of calling me by my first name and father's name.</p>\n\n<p>Also I have never send emails to my students, so I didn't have to sign my emails.</p>\n\n<p>Anyway, I have done some wrong things like accepting their friend requests in social network. I shouldn't do that because they didn't take me seriously and were trying to solve some formal issues through social network.</p>\n\n<p>I think it doesn't really matter how to sign your email. More important is how do you allow to treat yourself, you shouldn't allow students to bully you or something like that.</p>\n\n<p>I allowed my students to treat me too informal, now I realize it was a huge mistake. I shouldn't ever do that.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16931,
"author": "Brian S",
"author_id": 9209,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9209",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>What about the perspective of a student on the subject? I went to school in south Texas (Houston, to be specific), as location may be important.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Every TA I had (graduate and undergraduate) was addressed by his or her first name, including myself when I worked as an undergraduate TA.</li>\n<li>Almost all of the professors were \"Professor LASTNAME\" or \"Doctor LASTNAME.\" There were two major exceptions I was aware of:\n<ul>\n<li>One of my computer science professors went by either \"Doctor LASTNAME\" or a <em>nickname</em> with approximately equal frequency. I personally always used his nickname, as my father would always use the name when speaking to or about him. (My father was a graduate TA when this particular professor was an undergraduate.)</li>\n<li>There was a particular adjunct professor whom I always called by first name. In this case, I was the exception to the rule, because this professor was a close personal friend (and drinking buddy) of my father.</li>\n</ul></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In addition, the man who taught the \"Game Content Creation\" course was called by his first name, and he was not actually (directly) employed by the school; he was the lead developer at a local game company which occasionally poached from the school's CS department. He worked with the head of the department to create the course when he learned the school had a license for 3DS Max which was going unused by any course at the school (the Architecture department would point at 3DS Max, say \"this exists and some people use it,\" and then go back to AutoCad).</p>\n\n<p>Even the professor who I had a close, friendly relationship with (the head of the CS department), I still called \"Professor LASTNAME.\" In fact, to this day I think it would feel strange to call him by his first name. (Heck, I think I would feel strange calling my high school CS teacher anything but \"Mister LASTNAME,\" and the two of us grew very close over the years.)</p>\n\n<p>As far as emails go, all of the professors and TAs I exchanged emails with signed their email with \"FIRSTNAME LASTNAME,\" occasionally with their department, position, and contact information as well.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16936,
"author": "Nick Stauner",
"author_id": 10518,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10518",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>FWIW, this however-many-th-generation European-American (i.e., \"white\") man had some authority issues while teaching an undergraduate course on personality psychology once upon a time in <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">SoCal</a>. I had just turned 28 at the time, so I still thought I could relate well enough to people less than a decade younger, but I was wrong. If there's one simple lesson about how to address students that I learned, it's to avoid giving them <em>anything</em> to object to. I guess I should've said \"simplistic\", because that's impossible; in sufficient numbers (I had a class of 220+), <strong>they will find something objectionable</strong>:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>I insisted I was not a professor, but a graduate instructor (single-quarter appointment, no PhD at the time, was still a grad student at that university), and actually got a comment in my evaluations from someone who thought I was shirking my responsibilities by denying the fact that I was a professor. <a href=\"http://eubie.com/genme.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Kids these days</a>...\n\n<ul>\n<li>I told them I wasn't a professor in so many ways, I thought that would produce complaints in itself. I used my first name wherever possible; probably only said my last name once. They still called me Professor Stauner. I think it's just habit—even they couldn'tve been <em>that</em> inattentive.</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>I sometimes used emoticons to try to avoid the <code>teacher = robot</code> fallacy. Again, I was 28, a white dude, and <em>the instructor</em>, so I thought I could get away with it in <em>my class</em>. I even thought it might help me seem less intimidating, which I've sometimes gotten from others. Maybe it did...but one particular student just thought that was incredibly unprofessional, and that I should be forbidden from ever teaching anyone again in this life or any other. Clearly you can't win 'em all, much less control them.</li>\n<li>The course catalog was updated late, so someone signed up expecting <a href=\"http://www.psych.ucr.edu/faculty/funder/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Professor Funder, PhD</a> instead of Graduate Instructor Nick, M.A. (at the time). This person felt the need to blame me for not being Professor Funder in his/her evaluation comment. I guess I can understand that; he's a pretty awesome lecturer...but I wasn't exactly chopped liver myself, even then.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>To answer your question directly, I'd echo many others here in pointing to culture as an important factor, because IMHO, it mostly comes down to <strong>how your behaviors fulfill or defy expectations</strong>. Best practice probably is just to blend in until tenure, then play the game however you see fit (i.e., however is <em>best for students' education</em>, regarding which this is probably irrelevant). I'll echo this part too: choice of signature isn't going to solve authority problems, no way, no-how.</p>\n\n<p>That being said, it's an <strong>interesting empirical question, and I'd love to see someone research it</strong>: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Operationalize rude behavior as words or contiguous phrases in evaluation comment transcripts</li>\n<li>Code with multiple judges; 3–4 ought to suffice (calculate and report <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-rater_reliability\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">inter-rater reliability</a>)</li>\n<li>Test for group differences using the signature factor you've described as an independent variable</li>\n<li>Supplement comment transcripts with counts of behavioral observations during class by TAs, if available, to make it a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_analysis_of_variance\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">multivariate ANOVA</a></li>\n<li>Probably consult questions like <a href=\"https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/70558/32036\">this one on Cross Validated</a> about how to handle the Poisson distributions of counts as dependent variables.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I'm sure some academic journal would want to publish those results, even if the effect is small.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16945,
"author": "trutheality",
"author_id": 11880,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11880",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you want a guideline regarding how the students should address you, go by the culture of the department, if the other professors are using last names, use last names, if they're using first names, use first name, if there's no clear pattern, use whatever is comfortable to you. If you sign your emails \"Firstname Lastname,\" it's not an invitation to do anything, since full names are awkward to use in conversation, and it puts the burden on the other person to decide how to address you.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I am wondering whether asking my students to call me Dr. LASTNAME would resolve some of the rudeness that I've encountered.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><strong>It won't.</strong> If someone is being inappropriate, react immediately and let them know.</p>\n\n<p>Regarding <strong>favors</strong> like extensions and flexibility, you need to be clear from the start on what your policy is, <strong>outline the policy in the syllabus, and stick to it</strong>. It's not just a matter of respect, but also a matter of fairness to the students: if the students that aren't playing by the rules are getting their way, the rest of the students are being put at a disadvantage. There will of course be situations where the policy will need to be broken, but those should be extreme (death in the family, student hospitalized/severely ill, natural disaster, global war, etc.) and rare.\nSticking to the policy also applies to office hours, btw. You are obviously free to move your office hours for your own reasons, but being overly available to students outside office hours can be a bad thing if it gets out of control.</p>\n\n<p>Disclaimer: I'm not a professor at the time of this writing.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16953,
"author": "user11914",
"author_id": 11914,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11914",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you earned your advanced degree why not use it? You shouldn't expect to be friends with your students either. Kids today seem to have all too few figures of authority in their past and they end up being horribly prepared for careers.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16980,
"author": "littlekellilee",
"author_id": 11933,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11933",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I was a student for 7 years and had lots of TAs. My brother was a TA for a couple of years too.</p>\n\n<p>My favourite TAs were the ones who let us use their first names, because it would give a more relaxed tone to the class. When you're in the lecture, the person teaching is meant to be called \"Professor\" or \"Dr\" because that's what he is. In the tutorials and labs, you prefer to call them by your first name because they're really just one of you, but with more education. It gives the students the feel of having someone who can relate to them teaching them.</p>\n\n<p>That being said, you're the one who sets the guidelines with students, and the name they call you has little to nothing to do with it. My brother had people in his class trying to add him to Facebook. He would decline, and eventually set his privacy settings tighter so that no one could find him unless they had a direct contact. He even set his Twitter to private because of that. </p>\n\n<p>You should walk into the tutorial the first day and state clearly \"If you miss the deadline, you will fail or get a penalty each day it's late.\" and then say that you have deadlines for marking and every person who asks for an extension is pushing back the date it will be graded for everyone. If you stick to it with only exceptions for students with doctors notes, they'll know they can't mess with that. The first time you give a kid an extension with no good excuse, or even a semi-good excuse, you're telling that student and everyone that student talks to that you give extensions out. It will be hard to start this now unless you tell the class that they've been taking advantage of extensions and that you won't give any out, but you need to commit to it.</p>\n\n<p>As far as students being disrespectful, you should state at the start of the semester that you take the respect laws very seriously. You can even do this now if you're finding it too much of a problem. Then even read some of that rule (respectful speak, respect between teacher and student, etc.) and give examples that are close to reality so that they understand what you're talking about. Even state what the repercussions are. Look very annoyed so the students realize you're not saying this out of needing to, but out of necessity.</p>\n\n<p>Once you're an assistant professor, you'll have an easier time with people being too informal with you, unless you do things like make lewd jokes or say things like \"It's due around now.\" Just be firm with you treat them and they should stay in line.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 76448,
"author": "Hadi",
"author_id": 61204,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/61204",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think that if you behave with a strong personality and delegation of responsibility for your students, then you wouldn't worried about the challenge and dilemma with them. Also calling you with first or family name depends on your academic culture, city, and country. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 76594,
"author": "Chris Cirefice",
"author_id": 15360,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15360",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>(An answer from an undergraduate in the U.S.; cultural differences will probably apply)</p>\n\n<p>I took a Computer Science intro class 5 years ago. I had a great professor (a TA), who preferred to be called by his first name. I was <strong><em>infinitely</em></strong> more comfortable with this lecturer, and so I had no qualms in asking office-hour-questions (less intimidation factor), and <em>gaining valuable knowledge because of it</em>.</p>\n\n<p>You can't know how your students will interpret this type of change until you start. Students expect, and <em>want</em> an authority figure in their university courses. Yet, they might be more comfortable in a 'friend-like' setting, where rank, title and authority are less of an issue than what they <em>learn</em>. As a student, the most effective combination (for me) is the following:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Create an open and <em>relaxed</em> environment as the instructor: let students call you by your first name. This creates a more open atmosphere, where rank, title and authority are less of an issue for the student than their learning perogative.</li>\n<li>Ensure that students respect you: <strong>clearly</strong> define expectations (usually in the syllabus), so that students are aware of what you expect\n\n<ul>\n<li>Ensure that students do not take advantage of the 'first-name-basis'\n\n<ul>\n<li>if your policy states that you don't accept late work, <em>make no exception to the rule</em></li>\n<li>if your policy states that being 5 minutes late to class equates to an absence, <em>make no exception to the rule</em></li>\n</ul></li>\n</ul></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>As long as you remain <em>authoritative</em>, yet <em>lax</em>, your students will do what students will: some will respect and adore you, some will slack and resent you. That is the way of the world.</p>\n\n<p>Given the above, you have a significant <em>advantage</em>, in my eyes, by allowing students to address you familiarly. You allow students who feel more comfortable doing so avoid the pitfall of \"<em>this professor is so intimidating and smart that I can't go to their office hours because they'll resent me for asking basic questions and make me feel stupid</em>\", yet you remain an authority figure for those who prefer to address you as 'professor'. Of course, whether or not students are intimidated by you is partially dependent on your social behavior as a whole, and not just the title. But speaking from experience, having had professors who were very strict with their titles, the feudal-esque authoritarian role does not sit well with a lot of students, as it puts them in the 'peon' (laborer, serf, etc.) level compared to you, which in my opinion is <strong>not</strong> conducive to a learning environment.</p>\n\n<p>Moreover, the argument that students will take advantage of the 'lax' state of address is <em>completely</em> ridiculous. You, as the professor, have <em>absolute authority</em> to lay out the rules in your syllabus. If students don't follow those rules, what does it matter whether they call you <em>Joe</em> or <em>Professor Johnson</em>? You can easily state, for example, that you will ignore email requests that do not fit a certain format. You have that power. What does your title have to do with it?</p>\n\n<p><strong>All in all</strong>, as a student, I would prefer if professors were more lax on the title aspect of their career, and focused on the academic aspect. As long as they ensure that guidelines (laid out <em>in the syllabus</em>) are followed, state of address/title has little to do with it the pedagogy.</p>\n\n<p>(An answer from an undergraduate in the U.S.; cultural differences will probably apply)</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/13 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16898",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11209/"
]
|
16,906 | <p>I have an upcoming interview/campus visit for an assistant professor TT position with a US R1 university in the sciences. They have asked that I bring a details about my desired startup package to the campus visit. I have never heard of anyone being asked for details about their startup package prior to an offer being made. </p>
<p>This seems to have two effects. First, to some extent my startup package depends on what is already available in the department and the interests of the department. Second, it seems it potentially changes the negotiations. With an offer in hand, you can ask for more in your startup package, since they may not give you what you want, but they won't take the offer away. If I ask for too much in my startup package before having an offer, they may not even make an offer.</p>
<p>I guess I have three questions. First, is it common for US universities to ask for details about the desired startup package prior to making an offer? Second, how does this change what I should include in my startup package request? Third, can I ignore this request and only give them a general outline of what I need to do my research?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16921,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I've also never seen this at universities in the US (or elsewhere in the world) but I've seen it a lot in industry. I'm guessing someone came in to 'shake things up' or they hired a consultant and are trying things differently this time. Therefore, I will answer with respect to industry which I'm guessing will actually be applicable in the end.</p>\n\n<p>It is a common negotiation technique to get 'the other guy' to make the first offer with the belief this puts him in a weaker position. This seems to be what they are doing and as you stated in your question, when they make the first offer you are indeed in a stronger position.</p>\n\n<p>In your last question, could you ignore their request and simply not give them a number, tread lightly on this point. Some hiring people will become angry when you don't follow the rules and will count it as one reason not to make you an offer at all (or lower your offer because you are unable to follow simple instructions).</p>\n\n<p>As far as how to actually handle the negotiations, like any negotiations, it is MUCH better if you are negotiating from a stance of understanding how you can work together to benefit each other. That is, don't get locked into a 'the more I get, the less you keep' train of thought. The goal is to be creative and find a way that you can actually ADD value to the equation and then divide that new value between the both of you...leading to the win-win settlement.</p>\n\n<p>The problem is if you must make some kind of an offer blind and you have no personal rapport developed with your counterpart, it is very difficult to go down the win-win path. At that point, I would see if you can find a way to change the situation and start building some kind of relationship (even a telephone call can make a huge difference with regards to finding a genuine win-win solution).</p>\n\n<p>If you are stuck and you cannot have any any meaningful conversation before you give a number, then the best I can say is to make a serious statement about what you would like but make it in terms of ranges (say between $100 and $120 <em>[replace with reasonable numbers for you]</em> per month depending on the rest of the details). By offering a range you have retained some flexibility but allowed them what they demanded: Something. </p>\n\n<p>As you might guess, they may lock in on the lower number. However, you have not committed to that lower number firmly because of 'the rest of the details' you included.</p>\n\n<p>Congratulations and good luck!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16947,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It's very unusual: I've never heard of this happening before. Since they're asking about the startup package (and not salary, which is less elastic at a university) that changes things slightly though.</p>\n\n<p>You might be able to get away (at a first approximation) with a list of things you need (without specifying a price tag). Typical elements of a startup package include summer salary, support for students early on, space for offices/labs, and equipment. All of these can be specified without particular price tags: i.e you need support for X students for Y years, lab space to support this kind of machine, or these many students, and so on. </p>\n\n<p>If you're pressed to put a price tag (which would be also unusual), then you'll have to have some number ready for things that you can price (equipment for example, for which you could add a generous inflation factor). For other things you can ask them ! (how much does a student cost, what is typical lab space, and so on). Again, the goal is to provide as little information as possible while satisfying the unusual requirement. </p>\n\n<p>In addition, if you're asked to put a price, you should preface with \"while it's a little unusual to ask this now, and while I can't be certain what things will cost once I'm in a position to purchase them\", and ask first whether there's some flexibility in these numbers. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16948,
"author": "Bitwise",
"author_id": 6862,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6862",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Something to keep in mind: The reason that startup packages are typically negotiated at a later stage is because they are not a major factor in determining whether to take someone for a tenure-track position. I think that in your case, even though you are asked for this during the first interview, it will still not be a major factor.</p>\n\n<p>This means that unless your startup package requests are extremely unusual or the university is unusually poor, this will probably not affect the outcome. So I would not worry about this aspect too much.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/13 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16906",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929/"
]
|
16,910 | <p>Suppose candidate A has only published alone, and in an alternate universe candidate B has an identical list of publications, most of which are with coauthors. All else being equal, would a typical hiring committee rate A higher?</p>
<p>I suspect the answer depends highly on the field; I'm especially interested in (pure) math.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16935,
"author": "vadim123",
"author_id": 7222,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7222",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This depends not only on the field, but also on the institution doing the hiring. At some places, a joint publication and a sole-authored publication are identical in terms of \"credit\" toward promotion decisions. At the other extreme, other institutions consider a three-authored paper as one-third credit. There are many in between as well. Truly elite places don't care about how many papers or the authorship, but whether you've amazed the world.</p>\n\n<p>Further, if the publication record is substantially more or less than expectations for the position, the authorship doesn't matter. A place that expects its hires to have a dozen papers won't be impressed by an applicant with 5, even if they're sole-authored. A place that expects one or two will be delighted with the same 5, no matter how many authors.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16943,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>All else being equal</em>, solo papers can only be weighted more highly than joint papers in hiring decisions. This is probably especially true at the very top: e.g. a joint <em>Inventiones</em> or <em>Annals</em> paper makes your application look fantastic. A solo publication in either of these journals is a golden ticket for many academic jobs.</p>\n\n<p>Things get much more complicated when one tries to determine <em>how much more</em> to weight solo papers than joint papers. To the best of my knowledge few departments or universities have hard-and-fast rules or even written guidelines about this, so much of this evaluation goes on in the minds of the individual evaluators. The truth is that in some situations jointly authored papers will count to exactly the same degree as solo authored papers, and in other situations the existence of coauthors will cause the work to be substantially discounted. </p>\n\n<p>There is a dramatically increasing prevalence of joint papers in the mathematical profession. Thirty years ago they were quite rare; and they are even more common now than at the beginning of my career, which was not much more than ten years ago. There are now, for instance, certain conferences and workshops in which several people sign up in advance to work on a certain problem under the guidance of a senior mathematician. And then everyone who came to the workshop gets their name put on the paper, even if everything they did was under the guidance of someone else. This is a model much closer to that of the laboratory sciences than what used to be common in mathematics. In my opinion, it is time for the profession as a whole and various groups within the profession to put down in writing some feelings about the merits of joint papers. Of course this will be hard to do since the matter is so complicated: it matters whether your coauthors are \"senior\" or \"junior\" to you, it matters whether they have supervised you, it matters what percentage of your papers are joint and whether your papers are always joint with the same coauthors....</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes I see certain publications listed on young people's CV's and think \"I find it unlikely that they had a significant intellectual contribution to that work.\" That's a problem both ways: i.e., people may be wrongly evaluating the merits of this type of work in either direction!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16949,
"author": "Noah Snyder",
"author_id": 25,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This situation is very complicated. First, there's no hard and fast rule as different mathematicians have different opinions. Second, it really matters how individual facts (like whether one paper is coauthored or singly authored) fit into a larger picture.</p>\n\n<p>People want to hire candidates who have demonstrated that they have their own research program and their own direction. Coauthored papers can hurt with this. This is especially true if a candidate has too many papers coauthored with their advisor, or almost no singly authored paper, or too many papers coauthored with a single more senior person, or all papers coauthored with the same person. (Of course, other factors like letters can counteract against this narrative.)</p>\n\n<p>On the flip side, people also want candidates who are influential on their field. Coauthored papers are one way to show that other people are interested in your research program. (Of course there's other ways to demonstrate this, like giving talks at great places or letter writers say you're influential on them.)</p>\n\n<p>In general my impression is that a paper with n authors counts as less than a singly authored paper but as much more than 1/n of a singly authored paper, and that in some sense the perfect situation is to both have effective collaborations <em>and</em> also do good work solo.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/13 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16910",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11884/"
]
|
16,919 | <p>Some people use ps over pdf format for their paper.</p>
<p>Are there some advantages of ps format over pdf format?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16920,
"author": "Jukka Suomela",
"author_id": 351,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/351",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>No.</p>\n\n<p>There are no advantages of PS over PDF.</p>\n\n<p>Any modern computer system that can display PS files can also display PDF files. (The converse is certainly not true.)</p>\n\n<p>Any modern computer system that can produce PS files can also produce PDF files. (Again, the converse is not true.)</p>\n\n<p>Any material that you can present with a PS file can be presented equally well with a PDF file. (Again, the converse is not true.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17004,
"author": "Federico Poloni",
"author_id": 958,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/958",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As for the final format, no, there are no significant advantages, as the other answers point out. There are however a couple of quirks in TeX (which is the standard typesetting program in many fields) regarding ps and pdf support.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"http://www.ctan.org/pkg/pstricks-base\" rel=\"nofollow\">pstricks</a>, which is a popular package for producing drawings, only works if you compile to a <strong>ps</strong> file (there are workarounds, though).</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"http://ctan.org/pkg/microtype\" rel=\"nofollow\">microtype</a>, which is a package for making automatically small typographical adjustments to the document and producing a better-looking line breaking, only works if you compile to a <strong>pdf</strong> file.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So users of the former package are encouraged to use ps, while users of the second are forced to use pdf. Of course there are converters in both directions, so it is not a binding choice.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17006,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>PDF was carefully designed by Adobe to fix some problems with PostScript as a format for interchanging files (as opposed to printing). PostScript was a full-fledged programming language, which means that its behavior could be impossible to predict. For example, people have written programs in PostScript that do things like emulating a calculator. In PDF, they removed just enough of the programming capabilities to make the behavior of a PDF file more predictable. (In technical terms, they made it Turing-incomplete.) This is a good thing, since you don't want to trust someone else's software to run on your computer every time you open their document.</p>\n\n<p>This was all great in theory, but more recently Adobe added more programming features back into PDF (by adding javascript), and in fact there are now some security issues associated with PDF. Therefore there is no longer any clear security-based reason to prefer PDF, but in any case PS is essentially obsolete as a document interchange format, and if you give someone a PS file today, they are unlikely to know what it is or how to open it.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/13 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16919",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/218/"
]
|
16,933 | <p>I have never seen this happen in other research labs in my university and I am trying to get into the mind of my advisor and understand what his intentions are! We are an HCI lab of two people. In last year, we have hired and fired <em>seven</em> people. They get hired, work for a month or two, my advisor is not satisfied them and removes them from the team. </p>
<p>My professor is new to the lab, it was given to her upon joining in Summer 2012. Another PhD student and myself have been working since beginning of the lab before the professor. We are the only permanent fixtures. </p>
<p>I am the defacto programmer and I program all the projects in lab. I had asked my advisor for PhD last week, as I completed my thesis defense last year, but she said she needs to check her funding and will get back to me. At same time she is putting out a word to other professors that she needs good RAs.</p>
<p>In the interim, an established tenure professor in our department in operations research had asked me to join his lab as PhD student for a project in data mining. He said I am very good at Computer Science and he needs my skills for his projects. I had asked him if its common in his lab to change people constantly and he told me there were only four people working in his lab for past 5 years and he said always asks for input from his own students in lab before contacting anybody for RAs.</p>
<p>The professor I am currently working with has never asked me or the other PhD student for advice before taking on people or firing them. It puts an uncomfortable pressure on me as I feel that she is not happy with my work and looking for replacement. I really don't like working with new people every two months. So why is my advisor doing this? </p>
<p><em>How frequently do you hire and fire people in your labs?</em></p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16934,
"author": "vadim123",
"author_id": 7222,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7222",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It may be uncommon to have high turnover, but so what? You don't know the circumstances of those hires -- perhaps they were favors or trial runs that were likely to fail. Or maybe your advisor has high standards, or just got unlucky. </p>\n\n<p>You might not enjoy the high turnover, but that should be a small factor as compared to your own degree, future job prospects, and own job security. If you're worried about these, you should address these issues directly with your advisor (and not the indirect issue of lab turnover).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16940,
"author": "user11904",
"author_id": 11904,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11904",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This certainly isn't normal - when people complain about the high turnover in academia they're normally talking about contracts of one or two years rather than a couple of months. However, as @vadim123 says, perhaps there are reasons.</p>\n\n<p>IMHO the most important thing is whether your adviser and fellow group members are people you feel comfortable working with, and whether they are giving you the support you need for your research. If not then you'll end up being miserable and producing bad work.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16944,
"author": "Namey",
"author_id": 7930,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7930",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First, it is uncommon to hire and fire people that quickly in almost any context. Evaluating and hiring good people takes time. Training people to do anything useful takes time: usually more than two months of time. What you're describing is incredibly inefficient and, as you note, bad for morale. It's also bad hiring practice in a small lab to not conduct a group interview with the potential coworkers. To be frank, your adviser does not seem very good at the HR aspects of running a lab.</p>\n\n<p>However, as a counterpoint, it depends very much on the funding situation. A new professor, unless they're particularly lucky, may not have very much funding on-hand. Especially if their funding agencies pay out the award in installments, they may literally have to let people go because the funding has run dry. To be quite honest, a new professor supporting 2 full-time PhD students and their own summer salary is already looking at an annual outlay of $100k-$150, at least in the US (most of which is tuition, since they're supporting two students through grad school). Many grant agencies (e.g., NSF) typically award $100k-150k per anum grants. So they could be scraping very low on their funding and have to cycle through people for that reason (e.g., can afford them for the summer, have to dump them in the fall due to tuition costs). Funding has been particularly tough the last few years.</p>\n\n<p>Secondly, if they are not sure if they can cover your tuition, but the other professor certainly will? It's possibly time to jump ship to the other guy. Currently, having just finished your masters and early in your PhD, this is the best time to do so. If I were you, I would do the following: </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Talk to the tenured professor to ensure this is a serious offer, backed by grant or internal money. Inquire about how long currently awarded funds are likely to last.</li>\n<li>If the situation sounds good, ask if it would cause any political problems to talk it over with your adviser. Ideally, you want to do this (they are a reference), but not if it might sink the sure offer.</li>\n<li>If it won't ruin the new opportunity, tell your current adviser the situation and ask the same questions (is there money, how long).</li>\n<li>If they're comparable, choose the one that seems like a better fit for your interests and your academic security.</li>\n<li>If it's lopsided, go for the funding security and find a way to work your research into what you are doing. To be frank, I would avoid any PhD that you can't get funded for. If there's not enough money in the area to train you, why would there be enough to hire you when you finish?</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Finally, if your adviser takes it personally that you are exploring other opportunities when they can't assure you funding next semester? Jump ship. A boss who takes things personally is a bad boss. I had a great programming intern last summer, who we would have loved to keep as an RA. Unfortunately, a big chunk of funding was delayed due to Congress playing chicken. A company affiliated with the university offered four years worth of tuition and stipend, guaranteed. We do work he is more interested in and we could almost certainly cover him over that whole period. But the key word is \"almost.\" I told him that I would not blame him at all if he took their offer (which he did). I hope he's doing great over there. If your adviser doesn't have that attitude, it's time to go.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16950,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The scenario you describe is not uncommon in my lab. Let me explain why:</p>\n\n<p>In my department, we get some funding for RA work for M.S. students \"free\" (i.e. out of department/university funds, not research grants). The rationale behind this is that is valuable for M.S. students to get some research experience, so the department/university wants to make it possible for more students to get these positions.</p>\n\n<p>We therefore have a fairly low threshold for hiring students for these positions. We obviously prefer to hire talented students - we ask other faculty to recommend students to us from their classes, etc. But since the money is \"free\", we're not as selective as we would be in hiring for positions that are paid out of our grant money.</p>\n\n<p>As a result, there is a lot of turnover in these positions - we hire a few students, try them out for a semester. If they don't work out very well, we don't hire them again the next semester so someone else can have a chance. If they are talented and hard-working, then we hire them back, and also offer additional support out of research grants on top of the department-money stipend they're already getting.</p>\n\n<p>Not all labs in the department do this. Some feel like it's worth it to use the department funds to cast a wide net, in hopes of picking up someone good, and to give many students a chance to gain experience. Others will hire very selectively because they don't want to waste time and energy on random M.S. students, many of whom won't work out.</p>\n\n<p>Perhaps something like this is going on in your lab?</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/13 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16933",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7937/"
]
|
16,937 | <p>Assume you are just about to finish your PhD and you are facing the decision of whether to go for a postdoc position or for an assistant professorship. Which one should you choose?</p>
<p>Let's ignore the salary for the sake of this question. Then which of the two is better? What about the benefit of short-time employment and getting to work with lots of different people (in case of postdoc) vs. being stuck at one place for several years (assistant professor). Is it beneficial to work with different groups or is it irrelevant? </p>
<p>Does a career involving several postdoc positions look like the individual could not get other (''better'') employment (even if they deliberately chose one over the other)? </p>
<p>Will a postdoc position give you more time for research because you don't have to teach or have to teach less? </p>
<p>Is it generally better to seek professorship rather than postdoctoral fellowship?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16938,
"author": "vadim123",
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"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The typical perspective for U.S. people in this situation is to try to balance the following three items:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>The desire for a permanent, tenure-track job, and its associated stability.</li>\n<li>The desire to do as much research as possible in one's life.</li>\n<li>The desire to not starve to death.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Generally those just completing their PhD's are not eligible for tenure-track jobs that have a large research component, because their track record is insufficient. Therefore it is common to take a postdoc (or two, or five) to bolster the research record. This has the immediate effect of meeting the second and third goals, and has the potential to open up more research-oriented tenure-track jobs. However too many postdocs and it becomes more difficult to get tenure-track jobs (and further postdocs). The implication is indeed as you suggest, that these positions have been taken because the individual could not get a suitable tenure-track job.</p>\n\n<p>Very few people consider \"assistant professor\" negatively because of being \"stuck at one place for several years\"; the only reason to turn down such a position is because it may be a bad fit, as compared to the sort of place one wants to be.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16939,
"author": "Chris Leary",
"author_id": 11905,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11905",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Vadim makes some valid points. The one I would amplify on is how good a fit the school with the assistant professorship is as far as your career goals are concerned. You've got to be careful. When I started out, I thought I could go to a small school, build up a research record, and move on to a research university. It didn't happen. I started out at a small school near a research university. My school had an atmosphere that totally discouraged research (I wish I had known that). Teaching three courses a semester wasn't that bad, but keeping fifteen hours of office hours a week was. Throw in committee work, etc., and there wasn't a lot of time to do much research. The school I'm at now has a base teaching load of four courses a semester, and expectation for advising, committees, and so on. They claim to support research, indeed it is a significant component for advancement, but the general climate works against any serious work. What output I have managed, not nearly as much as I wanted, has been a struggle. That being said, I have certainly managed to satisfy Vadim's goals 1 and 3. As far as goal 2, let's just say that I'll need something to do when I retire, assuming I can remember anything.</p>\n\n<p>So, again, be careful. Personally, if you have the ability I would opt for a postdoc or two. But be realistic about what you want your career to look like ten, fifteen, or twenty years down the road. Then, do what you think gives you the best chance to get there.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/13 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16937",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
]
|
16,946 | <p>I'm interested in teaching a class at the community college level. I'm not interested in it as a career, but rather because I like teaching people about computer science. How likely is it that I would be able to teach a evening class at a local community college with a masters degree (Computer Science).</p>
<p>I don't have a lot of formal experience teaching (TA/tutoring). I spent most of my time doing research in the lab, but during that time I mentored/managed/herded a number of undergrads.</p>
<p>Maybe being a TA would be a nice way to get my feet wet and see if it's for me. Is that possible, now that I've already graduated? </p>
<p>I have a regular 9-6 job that I would have to work around.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17408,
"author": "neuroexpat",
"author_id": 12390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12390",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My mother teaches English at a community college. I know her TA graduated from a different university. Her TA is also my best friend from kindergarten and after said TA's parents died, my mother has been very involved in her TA's life. So I know that it is possible to TA after you've graduated, but it would help to have some connection to the college. However, there might be more of a demand for TAs in CS than in my mother's field.</p>\n\n<p>One way to \"get your foot in\" might be to take classes at the college. My mom had applied for jobs at this college for years, but it was only after she took a few classes that she got her job. Her classes were in other departments, but when her professors found out she was interested in working there, they introduced her to people in the English department. Suddenly she wasn't \"random applicant\", but rather \"that person my friend introduced me to and I had that nice conversation with\". </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17469,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I teach physics at a community college and have been on a number of hiring committees for full-time positions, as well as participating in a bunch of hires of part-timers. Different departments and different individuals have different priorities. Some full-timers who have a master's might actually feel threatened by a PhD applying for a part-time position. Often we get applications, for both full- and part-time positions, from people with PhD's that clearly show that the applicant has no real interest in teaching and thinks it should be easy to get a community college job as a fallback. A PhD will typically be somewhat of an advantage in applying for a part-time job, especially if the course to be taught is at a high academic level (e.g., differential equations). The bigger problem is your lack of teaching experience.</p>\n\n<p>There is a lot of randomness involved, and you can maximize your chances if you're in a big urban area and apply for a lot of jobs. Sometimes a full-timer gets sick or there is some other last-minute reason to hire someone to teach a class. In these emergency situations, you basically have to be available, meet the minimum qualifications, and give a non-disastrous interview.</p>\n\n<p>The fact that you want to teach in the evening is a good thing. Many full-timers don't want to teach evening classes, so often those are the hardest to find a teacher for.</p>\n\n<p>I think MHH is right that this discussion is going to be more valuable if we widen it to include full-time positions. For full-time positions, the value of a PhD seems to vary greatly. At my school, for example, the math department has 3 PhD's and 27 people with masters', while the natural science division has 21 with PhD's and 11 with masters'. One department clearly considers a PhD more important than the other does. This may be partly because the math department's offerings are bottom-heavy with remedial classes. For a full-time position, there will typically be a list of minimum qualifications, which are set by law, and a list of desirable qualifications. The two biggies on the list of desirable qualifications are teaching experience and a PhD. It helps if you have both.</p>\n\n<p>When we hire for a part-time position, we're hiring someone to teach a specific course. If the course is low level, then we don't care as much about whether the candidate has a PhD. When we hire a full-timer, theoretically we want someone who can teach every course their department offers, but realistically we usually have something more specific in mind. When someone with a master's is hired full-time, usually that person ends up getting slotted into teaching gen ed courses, remedial courses, or other low-level courses for the rest of their career. Many people are very happy in such a slot, e.g., I hear that many folks in math see teaching remedial math as their ideal job, and they have no interest at all in teaching calculus.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17471,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
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"text": "<p>My parents met in English graduate school. They became more enamored of each other than their program, so they each got out with Master's degrees and taught community college (full time, at the \"associate professor\" level) for many years. This was a little while ago, though; my father passed away in 2000 and my mother has been retired for about ten years.</p>\n\n<p>In my parents' day, some of their colleagues had PhDs, and my understanding is that the main reason that they never had the academic rank of \"full professor\" was the lack of a PhD. (Nevertheless salaries were decent, based in part on a strong teachers' union, in which my father played a key role way back when.) Degree inflation in academia is an ongoing process, and I would expect that a higher percentage of community college faculty have PhDs than before. Also the precise meaning of the term \"community college\" varies quite a lot from one region of the United States to another. I now live in Georgia and eventually noticed that almost nothing is called \"community college\" around here, but some PhD graduates from my department (mathematics, UGA) go into to teach in what I think are, more or less, what would in other regions be called \"community college\".</p>\n\n<p>I think the fact that your goal is to teach some courses rather than have a permanent job / get benefits / get a competitive salary makes your goal much more reasonable. Most community colleges have a substantial percentage of \"adjuncts\"; in my understanding it is quite rare for these people to have PhDs. Wanting to teach courses at night should also make you desirable -- more in some areas than others, but overall it is a definite positive. Also, I would have to think that just about any academic institution in the country teaches courses on computers at this point, so that's a good choice too (the number of people who know something about computers is also quite large, but having a master's degree should get you in the door). </p>\n\n<p>Maybe you know this already, but many courses at the community college level are at the level of a high school course: e.g. many community colleges offer no mathematics course more advanced than \"business calculus\". (This of course does not mean that such classes cannot have significant intellectual content or that you won't sometimes get very good students: they can and you will. As Richard Feynman liked to say, \"We are not that much smarter than each other.\") You should check to make sure that what they mean by \"computer science classes\" is compatible with the courses that the institution(s) is offering: as above, this will probably vary significantly from one place to another.</p>\n\n<p>But overall, what you suggest sounds very possible, sounds like it could be fun, and sounds like you will be rendering a real service to people. I hope it works out for you: good luck.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/13 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16946",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
16,954 | <p>I have been fortunate enough to get accepted with 5 years guaranteed funding to my 2nd choice graduate school. While the guarantee is great, the funding is only for 9/months out of the year. Would it be rude to ask them to guarantee summer funding to me for the first year until I can write a grant to get on a RAship? I know I should be more appreciative, since not everyone gets funding, but just an increase of about ~3k a year would make living there so much better and I do not want to accept an offer at a lesser institution just because of money.</p>
<p>What would be the most polite way of doing this?</p>
<p>I want to make it clear that I am not trying to get more money for the sake of getting more money, moreover that I am just not comfortable with so little money and such a high living cost in that area.</p>
<p>Thank you for your time. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16955,
"author": "user45756",
"author_id": 11209,
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"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have never heard of graduate students negotiating salary. Where you go to graduate school matters a lot in your career; I have seen many sub-par people from top graduate schools obtain pretty good positions afterwards just on the merit of the fact that they go to a great school; so, another student on your school's waitlist would be just as good as you would be in the future, if they were admitted in your place, assuming that you are not exceptional (which I am assuming, since you said that you are thinking of going to your 2nd choice school). That is, the institution holds all the cards.</p>\n\n<p>At postdoc or tenure-track level, negotiation happens because you have expertise that no one else can replace. But right now, you are quite replaceable, so it doesn't make sense to negotiate.</p>\n\n<p>You could ask, but I can guarantee right now that negotiation will not happen.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16956,
"author": "cc7768",
"author_id": 9882,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9882",
"pm_score": 3,
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"text": "<p>First off, congrats! That is very good news.</p>\n\n<p>I can commiserate with you on the expensive living in grad school (I'm in NYC...). Maybe in other fields it is more common, but I haven't seen very much negotiation in Economics. It seems that there is sometimes a little talk between the student and school to make sure that they even get the funding, but the funding packages we receive seem relatively fixed. I do know that we can get more funding by working as research assistants or teaching assistants. If your funding is a fellowship (basically no catches, you get the money without being required to do anything extra) then you should ask about getting funding by working as an RA or TA. Also, have you received your funding letter? A lot of the schools that I have friends at only have a month or two that you don't actually receive funding. Your best bet is to check with the secretaries or PhD coordinators at your school.</p>\n\n<p>All that being said, probably the best way to find out more is to email some of the other grad students at that school and ask what they have done to stay alive during the summer months when there isn't funding.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16961,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>You can always ask, and the polite way to do it is simply to ask politely, while indicating that you have a strong interest in enrolling in the program. The best circumstance is that you have a financially superior offer from another program which is of equal or slightly better quality. Then the graduate program in question may see a small amount of additional funding as a reasonable expense to ensure your enrollment. (If the other program is more than a little bit better, then everyone will be expecting you to go to the better program...unless you have personal reasons to want to go to the less good program, in which case you do not need a financial incentive.) </p>\n\n<p>user45756 \"guaranteed\" that such a request would not lead to summer funding. Of course no one person could possibly make such a guarantee, and I have <em>very occasionally</em> seen additional funding given to graduate students to help attract them to a program or keep them in a program. But user45756's answer is still accurate in spirit: in the overwhelming majority of cases you get what you get. </p>\n\n<p>However the expression <strong>The squeaky wheel gets the grease</strong> is very applicable to academia: people who ask for a little bit more* tend to get a little bit more. Your request for summer funding is unlikely to magically result in a higher starting salary, but it may well result in your being placed higher on lists for various summer funding opportunities. I think it is a good idea to say something like \"I understand that additional funding may not be possible, and I very much appreciate your offer. However, I am sincerely concerned about quality-of-life issues while enrolled as a graduate student, and I would very much appreciate being told of any other funding, scholarship or teaching opportunities that are or may become available.\"</p>\n\n<p>*: It is true though that people who don't know the culture well enough sometimes ask for <em>a lot more</em> when they think they are asking for a little bit more, and that often causes them to be taken less seriously or ends negotiations. (Imagine if you had an assistant professor job interview at a public American university and, after shaking hands with the department chair, told them that you were holding firm at a $100K starting salary. It is more than likely that you've just talked yourself out of any possibility of a job offer.) There is a real art to asking for something in a way which makes clear that you will be grateful for <em>any</em> response that you get, not that you feel absolutely entitled to getting your precise demands. A graduate student asking for extra funding should make extra clear that they are \"just asking\" and will be grateful for any response they will get. I remember one long-ago friend who was hoping that the MIT mathematics department would \"get into a bidding war\" with some other department of comparable quality. Of course that didn't happen, and though he did start a PhD program somewhere quite good, I could tell from this behavior (I was a first year graduate student at the time) that he didn't quite get the academic culture. I believe he dropped out within a year. (And then I lost touch with him, but I am willing to guess that he now makes much more money than I do...)</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/14 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16954",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6898/"
]
|
16,958 | <p>If a person is working in the industry and wants to ask a few questions to an academic researcher (based on a paper published by them), what is the correct protocol to follow? </p>
<ol>
<li>Should they disclose their affiliations right away? Should the academic ask for it right away?</li>
<li>Should they say 'I don't want to tell you why I'm asking this for, but can you please tell me so and so'? Should the academic insist on knowing?</li>
<li>Any other consideration?</li>
</ol>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16959,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am not aware of any specific protocol, nor do I think there needs to be. I think that every academic is somehow <em>responsible</em> for the work in their published papers, and that responsibility includes at least some degree of responsiveness to questions about those papers. But, as usual, some ways of going about this will do better in eliciting responses. For me, I would want to know that the person who is contacting me about my paper (i) actually understands it, at least to a sufficient degree and (ii) that corresponding with them about my work will actually be helpful. This includes some degree of knowledge of what they want to do with the work in question.</p>\n\n<p>[I should say though that I work in parts of pure mathematics in which it would take a truly brilliant mind to find direct industrial applications. So most of my correspondence is from students, other mathematicians, or people who aspire to be one of the above. For people who work in more applied fields, please discount this answer accordingly.]</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Should they disclose their affiliations right away? Should the academic ask for it right away?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If you mean \"I am asking this question on behalf of my work for Company X\": I think so, yes. When correspondents do not identify themselves in this way, I am less likely to respond at all, and if I do, I will usually ask for some identifying information.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Should they say 'I don't want to tell you why I'm asking this for, but can you please tell me so and so'?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Does <em>anyone</em> want to answer a question which is framed in that manner? I would help out a good friend who came to me in this way, but not a stranger. </p>\n\n<p>In general, asking for help from an academic and not being willing to be forthcoming about what it is used for doesn't sound right to me. If you are just prevailing on the goodwill of an academic to publicly explain her work, then have the good grace to say what you need it for. If on the other hand you are actually trying to extract further expertise or information used for some proprietary purpose, then just writing to ask for it doesn't sound appropriate to me. If you want to use someone's professional expertise for some proprietary purpose -- or really any purpose other than just advancing your own knowledge -- then you should invite the professional to enter into a paid consulting relationship, it seems to me. In such a relationship, how much information about the use of the professional's expertise will be provided is something to be negotiated in advance. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16962,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Best, read one or more of they articles carefully, say you have read it and like it. To make sure this is not just a polite phrase, talk about something inside the paper that would show you really understand it and are interested in it, ask some questions that may be interesting to you. </p>\n\n<p>You will need to invest some work to prepare for such a conversation, but this is an excellent starting point from where you can then continue without any formal protocol.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/14 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16958",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2643/"
]
|
16,960 | <p>I am a PhD student. I've never taught a lecture-style course before. I just filled in for my advisor at the last minute, giving a lecture in an undergrad course.</p>
<p>I taught from the lecture slides that my advisor had prepared, drawing diagrams and examples on the whiteboard where I thought it was warranted. I stopped often and asked if anyone had questions, and if nobody did I posed questions to them, e.g., "What do you think is the benefit of this system over that?" "What did you learn about X?"</p>
<p>My impression was that approximately 30% of the class was pretty engaged, asking and answering questions, etc., 50% were taking notes and paying attention but not really speaking up, and the rest were zoned out. I think this is normal (from what I remember from being an undergrad), so I thought I was doing OK.</p>
<p>However, towards the end of the lecture, a few students said that I was going much faster than normal. And, I did get through more slides than my advisor said I should expect to, so they're probably right.</p>
<p>My question is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What clues do you look for to "read a room" to tell that you're going too fast, even though people seem to still be "getting it"?</p>
<p>What can you do to slow down, beyond asking if anybody has questions and bringing up more examples (I can only think of so many examples)?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I am asking specifically about teaching undergrads, because I think they are more difficult to read than postgrads, or senior academics in the audience of a conference talk. But I would appreciate answers that apply to the latter scenario as well.</p>
<p>Also, I understand that things like clickers and discussion groups can make a difference, but I am asking specifically how to improve my lecturing, not how to restructure classes so I spend less time lecturing.</p>
<p>A related question is <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5236/how-to-improve-myself-as-a-lecturer">How to improve myself as a lecturer</a>, where one answer says "Never assume that students follow you" and suggests you "see if they get the idea, sort of get the idea, or don't get it at all." I tried to do this, and it seemed like the students that were willing to engage <strong>were</strong> "getting it." Apparently they were getting it, but I was still going at a speed that made their heads hurt :)</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16966,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
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"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are probably many different solutions to your problem. I will focus on what you could consider with your presentation. I think it is very easy to be too fast: you know the material, you feel awkward if there is a silent moment, nervousness/adrenalin kick etc. So there is a basic property of lecturing that prompts one to go faster than we may think.</p>\n\n<p>When using slides you present ready written material for the students to copy. This means they write things while you speak, and what they write may not be what you are talking about. As a result they may split their focus and get confused. In the old days, the lecturer usually wrote on the board while talking. Hence students saw, heard and wrote the same material in the pace it took the lecturer to write it. I do not think the lecturer managed to talk about one thing while writing another, so the whole lecture hall was in sync and at a pace most could follow. This automatic adaption mechanism is partly lacking today, and it is possible to overload slides. It is of course possible to provide slide sheets of the slides to the students, but that will not promote a slow-down <em>per se</em>, and I do not think it helps understanding either, because students tend to not take notes as a result (I have no proof of this, but it is my experience when using such sheets).</p>\n\n<p>So if possible, I think breaking up your presentation to lecture more interactively on a white board may help, apart from breaking the monotony of a slide show. To do breaks with questions is a very good way to keep students focussed to continue with that. You also need to think about what students need to take notes, so that they actually have a chance. Finally, I would recommend you to take a course in university pedagogics. In many countries in Europe, such courses are mandatory for teaching and also a requirement when applying for positions. I do not know how this applies in your neighbourhood, but having a course in pedagogics is never wrong; hopefully you can find one.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, reflecting on these matters is good, and you gain experience as you teach. There are also scientific sources such as the <a href=\"http://www.ashe.ws/?page=186\" rel=\"nofollow\">Journal of Higher Education</a> and <a href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291468-2273\" rel=\"nofollow\">Higher Education Quarterly</a>. There are many other sources, and a search on Google scholar on relevant keywords should give additional useful hits. Hopefully your university allows access to some of these journals.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16967,
"author": "SoB",
"author_id": 11923,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11923",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>In my experience it's easy to be misled by a few good students who are able to engage with you and answer your questions. This doesn't mean the majority of students feel the same way of course. I always try and bear in mind the weakest (and often the quietest) students in the class and try and not be lured into accelerating due to a few bright sparks at the front.</p>\n\n<p>Asking if there are any questions or bring up examples is a good way to try and gauge the classes response. But if the class is shy or unresponsive (as is often the case initially) I find it very hard to know whether I'm boring the pants of them or they're completely lost.</p>\n\n<p>A simple trick is to give a short relatively straightforward exercise and ask everyone to do it there and then. It should only take a minute or two. You can then briefly walk through the students and ask them how they are getting on. It should become obvious if many of them are struggling. Walking among the students and directly interacting with them isn't going to suit everyone though and if the class is large (or the seating is inaccessible) it will be more difficult. But it's crucial to get some feedback and if that means taking a more proactive approach then why not? I make sure to smile and encourage them since some students will be nervous if the lecturer asks how they're doing.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16974,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One thing I've done in the past but no longer have need of – because I have restructured my courses to do less lecturing and more in-class activities (which you said you did not want to do) – is to simply help the students communicate non-verbally.</p>\n\n<p>At the start of class, I used to tell them: \"OK, I know that I know the material well, and I know you are unfamiliar with it, but I don't know how unfamiliar, so there will be an issue of how fast I am going. I can't stop all the time and ask, so here is how you can tell me to speed up or slow down: If I see everyone nodding their heads up and down I assuming that you are saying, 'Yes, I understand that.' This will make me speed up. If I see you stop nodding, then I will assume you are saying, 'I think I might understand that, but I'm not sure,' and I will start to slow down and start repeating myself in various ways to make sure you get it.\"</p>\n\n<p>After this introduction, I would start. I started with the simplest material, and everyone was nodding. I started going faster. 75% still nodding; the others were asking questions of those 75%. No worries. I started going faster. Well, eventually, I was covering material so fast, everyone stopped nodding and stared at me with their eyes glazed over. We took a 5-minute break and continued.</p>\n\n<p>All-in-all, actually, it worked quite well, other than the fact that I ended up going as fast as I did. As Peter wrote, we naturally speak about our subjects far faster than students can absorb the information, so having some signs from the students is exactly what we need. My suggestion is that you don't guess the signs, but rather you help them to understand how they can control the speed of the session.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16975,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It sounds like you've done many of the things that one should do in lecture to feel the \"needs of the room\". Well done ! It is indeed true that undergrads are harder to read for the reasons you mention. </p>\n\n<p>How long is the lecture ? When I teach 80 minute lectures, one piece of advice I was given that I continue to use is to force a 5 minute break in the middle regardless of how I think the room is doing (I have an alarm on my phone set for that time so that I don't forget). The five minute breaks allows students to get some water or take a bathroom break (things that can impair concentration), and it also gives people time to reflect on what they've been hearing and ask questions more \"privately\". You can also recap the first half of the lecture when you restart. </p>\n\n<p>In a 50 minute lecture, you might find this less useful. However the typical attention span of a person is around 15 minutes (based on numerous studies that I don't currently have citations for - sorry JeffE), and so even in this shorter setting, forcing a break at around 25 minutes might provide the same kind of reset mechanism. </p>\n\n<p>While this doesn't solve your problem entirely, it's a low-cost solution that can be used without extra work/prep. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16979,
"author": "Nick Stauner",
"author_id": 10518,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10518",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One of my favorite teachers during my undergrad program was my honors mathematics professor. I originally started taking honors classes in high school precisely because I hated slow-paced classes, and was sick of the boredom. Overall, this move didn't spare me entirely, of course...but in that particular math class, <strong>the pacing was wonderful</strong>. It might not have been if it wasn't an honors course, but that wouldn't have been my professor's fault: it would've been a matter of the rest of the class preferring a different pace than me.</p>\n\n<p>This professor always kept in tune with the class' preferences across a variety of differently challenging topics in a very straightforward manner: he <strong>polled the classroom at the end of (nearly) each lecture</strong>. It only took a fraction of a minute. It might've gotten just a little bit irksome, but I'm sure it paid off. There were times when the majority was less than happy, and the method often revealed some difference of opinion. After a few weeks, we got quite used to his polling system, but it could've been introduced quite plainly in one day with a PowerPoint or scale of voting options drawn on the blackboard. Simply, his options were: <code>too fast</code>, <code>just right</code>, <code>too slow</code>, and if he felt it necessary, he would sometimes add <code>way too fast</code> or <code>much too slow</code> as a fourth option or follow-up question. <strong>The class would vote by show of raised hands.</strong> For the most part, people weren't too shy to vote, even if it was to express uncertainty.</p>\n\n<p>This might not be the case outside of an honors course, where I would expect academic self-confidence and participation in general to be weaker...but I tried this a bit myself when teaching an upper-division (non-honors) psychology course at a separate university halfway across the country (USA). I varied the structure of the questions a bit too much, and was occasionally confusing as a result, but would usually make an effort to <strong>introduce the options</strong> I had in mind <strong>before taking votes</strong>. I got a lot of good feedback about a variety of concerns this way without even realizing that the classroom was clicker-equipped, much less with any effort to set them up or read their results.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Other functions of in-class polling:</strong><br>\nIn one particular class, I asked late in the quarter, \"How many of you aren't getting the grades you want, but feel you are keeping up with the lectures and reading material and don't know what else to do?\" Then, \"How many simply can't keep up with the lectures and reading material?\" More people answered affirmatively to each than I was comfortable to see. This was probably the most useful feedback I received in the entire course, including course evaluations afterward (the only institutionally mandated form of feedback, sadly) and my own open-ended, short written response question administered halfway through about each student's primary concern with the class. For the people who didn't know what else they could do, I reviewed the variety of resources I'd made available to them, and suggested a few ways in which they could help each other study by using the normally available systems the university provides online, including a Q&A forum and wikispaces for student-coauthored study guides. For those who simply couldn't keep up, I slowed the pace overall, held a review session outside the normal class hours, and made the final test somewhat more forgiving. I wish I could say it was enough for those students, but at least I can say I tried everything I could think of, and as a result, it could've been worse.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/14 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16960",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365/"
]
|
16,970 | <p>Short: It's easy to find bibliographical info, but how to guess page numbers? </p>
<p>I'm writing a paper in English. I want to cite certain book, originally published in French. It is translated to English and Russian. I own a Russian translation. I'd like to reference English translation. I don't have access to other language versions and I'm not going to purchase them.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16971,
"author": "modular",
"author_id": 11496,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11496",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>After expressing my question, I understood that I can find the English translation in Google Books and look into contents with page numbers. So I can have references like <code>(1998, 36-67)</code>. Actually I can even search within a book, so I can find exact page numbers for the passages referenced.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16994,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Regarding your original question, if you have access to a Russian translation and you want to cite the English translation, but you do not have access to the English translation, then you really need to focus on citing what you have access to.</p>\n\n<p>Now, I understand it turns out you do have access to the English version as stated in your answer but for future reference, you should not cite a version of a text you do not have acces to. The reasons are more than simply that you don't know the page numbers. It is possible that there is a problem in the Russian translation but the English version does not have that problem. Likewise the opposite could be true. Basically, the two versions could be slightly but meaningfully different. Because of this possibility, you should only cite what you have access to. Otherwise, cite through a third-party \"Jones wrote in 2001 (cited in Simpson, 2005).\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17002,
"author": "yo'",
"author_id": 1471,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1471",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You should cite the version you have available, since section numbering, pagination etc. can get shifted. The proper way to do it is to simply cite both, for instance:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>[Doe06] John Doe. <em>Prostory.</em> Nakladatelsví XYZ, Prague, 2010, 512 pp. Translation of: John Doe. <em>Spaces.</em> Publisher ABC, New York, 2006, 480 pp.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This way, the citation contains the necessary information, and this is completely acceptable. Second option is to make it two citations:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>[Doe06] John Doe. <em>Spaces.</em> Publisher ABC, New York, 2006, 480 pp.</p>\n \n <p>[Doe10] John Doe. <em>Prostory.</em> Nakladatelsví XYZ, Prague, 2010, 512 pp. Translation of [Doe06].</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 29349,
"author": "Federico Poloni",
"author_id": 958,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/958",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Don't cite page numbers, <strong>cite chapter and section numbers</strong>. They won't change irrespective of the translation. Also they are less likely to change after small corrections in reprints.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/14 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16970",
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"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11496/"
]
|
16,973 | <p>Do people in the industry consider HCI a non-technical field? Do they expect an HCI researcher to have more design and social science skills than technical ones?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16977,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1429",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am a little puzzled by your career goal and perhaps, this is rather early for you to decide.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Your immediate goals are:</strong></p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Software Developer</li>\n<li>Data Scientist</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p><strong>Your future goal is:</strong></p>\n\n<p>Entrepreneur</p>\n\n<p>As far as I am aware, you don't <strong>need</strong> a phd to be a software developer and certainly not for an entrepreneur. So, discussion about a PhD in HCI is moot there.</p>\n\n<p>There are also excellent data science jobs available with a bachelors or masters degree pre-requisite but a PhD can certainly help there.</p>\n\n<p>A PhD candidate in HCI usually goes towards one of three ways - </p>\n\n<p>They can gravitate towards usability design/usability studies/usability analysis. This requires ~60% knowledge in social sciences (e.g. theory, experimental design) and ~40% knowledge in the computing sciences - basically in applications (e.g. applied ML, application development)</p>\n\n<p>They can also gravitate towards data analysis i.e what industry calls data science (I am not a fan of that term). For that, ideally they should have ~70% data analysis knowledge (ML is not the only approach for analyzing data) and ~30% social science knowledge. (i.e. if you are in the Facebook data science team and studying rumor propagation then you better have a very good intuitive grasp of cascades, diffusions and homo/heterophily theory). Many data scientists have 0 knowledge of their domain - which is both a reflection of their demand as well as the inchoate state of what \"data science\" actually is.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, there are those rare few who manage a zen-like balance between social and computing sciences. They are equally good in qualitative and quantitative methodologies and have appreciation for all spheres of knowledge. Generally, I find these folks in academia (which is not to say that you won't find such folks in industrial research - you will!)</p>\n\n<p><strong>Answers to your particular question:</strong></p>\n\n<p><strong>1. Do people in the industry consider HCI a non-technical field?</strong></p>\n\n<p>No. This depends on what your specialization is and what you have done so far.</p>\n\n<p><strong>2. Do they expect me to have more design and social science skills than technical ones?</strong></p>\n\n<p>No. Not necessarily. Again, this depends on who you are and what you have done so far.</p>\n\n<p><strong>3. Finally, does having a PhD in HCI hinder my chances to achieving my career goal</strong> </p>\n\n<p>Yes, but its not a function of HCI but the fact of being enrolled in any PhD program. As I pointed out, you don't need a PhD to do software development or to be an entrepreneur. There is some advantage in having a PhD if you want to go specifically into data science but you can also see many counterexamples in industry - those who enter the data science domain with a MS and do extremely well.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore, your current plan of action depends on what you want to do immediately. I urge you to ponder and self-reflect whether spending a sizable chunk of your adult life in a PhD is really worth it for you if all you want to do is to write code or start a business or analyze data.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Most</strong> PhD candidates from my departments and other similar ones in the US (CMU, UDub, GaTech etc.) either go into academia or into industrial research. I know of a few examples of folks who dropped out of their PhD with a MS because they realized that they don't want to do research but they want to contribute to industry in other ways.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16981,
"author": "littlekellilee",
"author_id": 11933,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11933",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If your goal is to be a software developer, they see your HCI background as a plus to their developer, because you'll understand tasks better and see things that they may not. If you don't have experience in things like UX, design, and user studies, don't apply for the jobs that need them, because they will test you on it. If you do want those jobs, good news! You have two years still to learn those things!</p>\n\n<p>I have a BSc in CPSC with a concentration in HCI and a minor in Visual Studies and Art History. I took the minor because I wanted to learn how to express my ideas better. Eventually I'll go back and get a MSc in HCI. There are multiple HCI jobs open, but you usually do need that experience that you mentioned as you'll be doing things like designing the interfaces and doing research on what is good and what isn't. I am a Software Developer at my job, though a front end software developer. They loved the idea of a person who had HCI and design in their background and respect my opinions on it, but they have other people who do the designs. This sounds like the type of job you want. If that's the case, simply put your degree on your resume with detail on what you learned and excel in because of it, but only apply for software developer jobs. They will respect what you did for school and it can only help you.</p>\n\n<p>To answer your first question, I have always had my HCI concentration be considered technical because I did work with HCI in school. In other words, I made the designs, coded it myself, and defended and tested to show that it was GOOD human computer interaction. So I guess for you, it's only technical if you've been doing work with your concentration in a technical way. If you have people creating the designs and user stories for you, and the low-, medium-, and high-fidelity mock-ups, and then you just implement them, that's not HCI technical, you're just coding while someone else does the hard HCI stuff.</p>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/14 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16973",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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]
|
16,976 | <p>I am an Indian student. I am not related to any kind of mathematics research. So I do not have proper idea about it. I may join in as a PhD after a few months. I want to get a picture of the research status in India.</p>
<p>India has several mathematics research centres, institutions and universities. I want to know the status of mathematics research in India. How many and which of them are of international standard? What about the impact factor of their mathematics publication? What is the status of computer science, which is almost neglected by Indian Mathematicians. Is my idea true? I know that none of our institutions and universities in top 200 of the world ranking. Please give me some idea on it and sufficient resource so that I can convince myself.</p>
<p>Suppose I have completed a PhD in India. Will it be accepted internationally. When? Why and Why not?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16978,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
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"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>You have a lot of questions all interspersed within your question block so I will try my best to answer. Here is a disclaimer:</p>\n<p><strong>Disclaimer:</strong> I have been a graduate student at the Indian Statistical Institute</p>\n<p>Mathematics research, especially in theory, is pretty good in India. The top institutes (in no particular order) are:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore</li>\n<li>Indian Statistical Institute (Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai)</li>\n<li>Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai, Bangalore)</li>\n<li>The IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) at Kharagpur, Kanpur, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai</li>\n<li>Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai</li>\n<li>Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai</li>\n</ol>\n<p>All of these are quite good internationally and attract the best Indian students. The entrance exams are quite tough and many of the BS, MS students go on to do PhD at top world institutions. Those who stay, are also quite good and publish papers in the usual top journals. The problem is neither funding nor red tape in my opinion.</p>\n<p>The problem is that compared to most "top" mathematics departments, these institutes are rather small (i.e. ISI Bangalore had ~only 20 full time faculty in my time and of those, 10 published regularly). You see, its only in recent years, that regular publications have become quite the norm and its usually being driven by younger faculty (usually those who have done their PhDs from US or Europe).</p>\n<p>Please see <a href=\"http://www.isibang.ac.in/%7Eathreya/Research/prepub.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">him</a>, <a href=\"http://www.isibang.ac.in/%7Ejay/research.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">him</a> and <a href=\"http://www.isibang.ac.in/%7Ersreekantan/CV.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">him</a> for reference in theory and on the applied, computing side, <a href=\"http://www.isibang.ac.in/%7Ebsdsagar/Publications-BookReviews.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">him</a> [He is my MS thesis adviser] This is one small example from one school. I can assure you that the situation is similar in the other schools that I mentioned.</p>\n<p>Most Indian PhDs go on to do postdocs internationally. Why just last year, we had a postdoc (who finished his PhD in ISI Kolkata and was joining IIT Bombay this year) in the ML lab here. He was great and very smart.</p>\n<p>In conclusion, if you get a PhD in Mathematics in India and do good research while you are at it, I don't see why you shouldn't get international postdocs. Tenure track job positions will be restricted to the Indian subcontinent and south east Asia because USA and Europe have their own PhD glut problem. But, thats cool because most of these schools I mentioned are hiring very well. In fact, I plan to apply for several tenure track positions in CS departments in India when I graduate.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16982,
"author": "Faheem Mitha",
"author_id": 285,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/285",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In terms of information, I doubt I can improve on Shion's answer. However, I'll add some comments.</p>\n\n<p>First, a disclaimer. I don't know much about Indian academia, but I was a grad student in math for a while, a long time ago, at TIFR. It did not go well. I also know (knew, perhaps) a fair number of Indians doing research mathematics.</p>\n\n<p>First India nominally has a <em>lot</em> of universities. However, the vast majority of them are not research universities. At least in mathematics, my impression is that most of them don't count for much on an international research scale. That, of course, does not necessarily mean you will get a bad mathematical education there. It all depends on personal experience, including one's advisor (sometimes out of the way places have good research people), the local academic community, including other students and faculty, and the general atmosphere of the place itself. Plus the internet, with sites like Mathoverflow, is definitely having a levelling effect.</p>\n\n<p>In any case, the important places for mathematics, as Shion says, are the handful of (mostly government sponsored) research institutes. There are also the various IITs, which do have math departments, which for the most part are better than the \"regular\" universities, but probably not as good as the research institutes.</p>\n\n<p>If you go to study at the research institutes, I think you can get quite a good mathematics education there. I don't think it is any worse than the education you would get at a good Western university, and in some ways it may be better. For one, thing you will experience less distractions. See below. For example, the School of Maths at TIFR was, and I expect still is, quite a high powered research place, and has good connections with the international research community. There are regular visitors from abroad to give talks and visit. TIFR Faculty travel abroad frequently on visits, giving talks, taking sabbaticals and so on.</p>\n\n<p>However, some caveats.</p>\n\n<p>First, as Shion says, they are mostly smaller places (though I think the TIFR school of maths is quite substantial). Second, as a math student, you are likely to find yourself <em>extremely</em> socially isolated. These places pay very badly, regardless how good a mathematical education they impart. They also tend to be located in expensive metropolitan areas. For example, the TIFR is located at the tip of South Bombay. Bombay is possibly the most expensive place in India. You won't have enough money to do much of anything. Plus, of course, you'll be very busy studying.</p>\n\n<p>These institutes are additionally typically not part of a university campus, so you aren't surrounded by the considerable variety of people and happenings you experience in a regular university environment. You'll be stuck with your fellow students, postdocs and faculty, for the most part.</p>\n\n<p>These issues are to some extent true of a mathematics student anywhere, but they are, in my opinion, more extreme in India. I was a grad student in the US, and it was not nearly so isolated.</p>\n\n<p>There are some advantages for an Indian citizen to being in an Indian research institute as opposed to say a European or US university, however. First, you won't have to put up with being treated like a third-class citizen, and being constantly pushed around by government and university bureaucracy. Second, you'll have all the time in the world to do your research. Indian research institutes, unlike Western universities, don't bother their students with things like teaching duties. Since they aren't regular universities for the most part, they don't have much by way of undergraduate students anyway. There will probably be opportunities to teach courses if you want, though, if only at neighboring colleges.</p>\n\n<p>So, to summarize if you don't mind going years at a stretch doing not much but study maths, you'll be fine.</p>\n\n<p>A final word about areas represented. I think Indian math research institutes skew heavily towards theory. I think there is some CS, but again theoretical. The TIFR for example is entirely theoretical, though I believe there are some people there who do consulting. My impression is that the IITs are more applied. If you are interested in things like machine learning, those might be better places to look at. Areas like statistics are also poorly represented. There is ISI, but not much of anything else at the level of statistics graduate study.</p>\n\n<p>Some of this may be factually inaccurate. I am sure some of it is biased. Factual corrections appreciated; I am always happy to learn.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17048,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This may be institution dependent rather than \"country dependent\". If the university or other institution publishes a lot of international publications, these works will probably be known for the foreign scientists reviewing your potential future application (they must be competent in the area!). In other words, you need to care more about the status of your institution, laboratory and supervisor rather than about the general status of the country.</p>\n\n<p>It is possible to see problematic laboratories and unsuccessful research projects everywhere. No country is protected.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 99175,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think Shion and Faheem already gave wonderful answers from different perspectives, and I want to add mine: </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>If OP would be open to expanding their interests to Theoretical Computer Science, there is MSR India too, which does great work in addition to the places Shion mentioned. </p></li>\n<li><p>I know of <em>quite</em> a few now tenure-track faculty members in the US who obtained their Master's degrees from some of these top Indian places. And they went on to do their PhDs at amazing US universities. </p></li>\n<li><p>As an Indian who did her Master's in the US, worked for a few years, then went back for a PhD (all in the US), I do wish I had stayed in India for my Master's. While I was in the US doing my MS, it took me a long, long time to adjust to the quarter system, the way you are graded in classes, the way you collaborate, how funding works, etc. I also somehow very suddenly got \"tunnel vision\" and in the second year of my MS, focused exclusively on getting a job after my MS (as opposed to focusing on doing good research). I think I wouldn't have had that if I had stayed in my own country. </p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>All the best to you! </p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/14 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16976",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8569/"
]
|
16,983 | <p>I’m approaching the end of my PhD adventure and I’ve started looking around for job opportunities. Recently, I found a job posting that fits my career goals quite nicely, but it has more managerial ingredients in it than pure research. It is concerned with managing/coordinating multiple research teams – something I’d like to do eventually but maybe at a later stage after gaining some more research/management experience as a postdoc.</p>
<p>Yet, I found the job description really encouraging:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Requirements: experience in project management or a strong desire to learn it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That’s why I decided to try my chances anyway. Lucky enough, I'll be interviewed for this position.</p>
<p>In the past, I have had students (BS, MS) who did their theses and semester projects under my supervision. Additionally, I’ve had a graduate-level course on general management and took the lead role in a small research project. Even though these experiences were valuable, this job would arguably require managerial skills at a higher level. </p>
<p>So, my question is as follows: What type of difficulties/changes should I expect from this transition that I may undergo: from a technical PhD to a research manager/coordinator?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17120,
"author": "littlekellilee",
"author_id": 11933,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11933",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If you've taken Project Management classes and have taken lead roles in regards to projects and BS and MS students, you'll find Project Management to be a more intense version of that. For example, you'll be needing to ensure everyone is working at the pace they should, getting the needed work done, and be prepared to figure out ways to remedy issues that occur. You will be working closely with stockholders, include managerial people, customers, etc, and you need to have the ability to answer any questions they may have regarding your project, even though you yourself are not the one directly creating that content. You'll need to figure out how to effectively communicate with people under you to get a sense of what they're doing and how things will impact the project. Be prepared to do scheduling of the project, which includes figuring out things in terms of Man Hours required for project in contrast to what you have available as resources. A lot of these things are similar in respect to what you've done in school, though to a higher degree: there's more riding on it, and these people aren't grading you, they're expecting it to be done right the first time.</p>\n\n<p>As far as difficulties, if you have done all the above in classes or with your BS and MS students, then just be prepared for the faster pace and higher volume of stockholders. It can be a bit overwhelming, but doable.</p>\n\n<p>Having a technical PhD will help you in these situations, because you'll have a better understanding of what your workers need to complete their tasks, how fast it will take them, and what it is exactly that you're working on. In fact, it will give you a leg up on other candidates or PMs that don't have technical backgrounds. If you can listen to a technical explanation of what's happening, and relay it to stockholders in a way that non-technical people can understand, you'll be fine.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 103154,
"author": "PhDWomen",
"author_id": 86908,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/86908",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Doing PhD research usually means following waterfall methodology or iterative waterfall, while most project management requires Agile and Scrumban. You just need one course on project-management methodologies and you can be in and be even better than other project managers who have no PhD experience</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/14 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16983",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9413/"
]
|
16,985 | <p>Having just spoke with my advisor, and speaking on occasion with other professors, I have come to the impression that one should not "subpublish." Let me say what I mean. I'm a 3rd year graduate student right now, and the professors I talk to seem to say that it is not a good idea to publish many small papers along the way to a result: that is, holding fixed the total mathematical content across <em>N</em> papers, it is best if <em>N</em> is minimized. I was trying to understand why. My advisor cited the reason of "reputation" and I have invented my own reason that perhaps there is an upfront cost to the process of writing and submitting a paper so that although effort per length may be constant, it is to my advantage to pay the upfront cost as few times as possible. (Finding a referee is the only upfront cost that comes to mind, but keep in mind I've never done this before.)</p>
<p>Can someone expand upon how reputation is relevant here i.e. for <em>fixed mathematical content</em> why it looks bad to come out with many small papers? Are there also benefits to the community or the knowledge pool that I'm trying to expand however slightly by writing such papers if it all comes at once in one big paper? One would think that if I "subpublish" that actually since my results become available more immediately that it would benefit the community if I did so. The only person it would seem to possibly hurt is me if I were to get scooped.</p>
<p>Are there other ways in which upfront costs to the whole process of publishing may happen?</p>
<p>I am interested in all my questions in both advantages and disadvantages to me, and also to those who would use my work.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16986,
"author": "BSteinhurst",
"author_id": 7561,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7561",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>To address the reputation aspect:</p>\n\n<p>Think about a typical reader of your papers. Most likely they will only look at one paper you have written. Unless you impress them with that one paper the likelihood of them reading anything else you have written depends on whether that first paper convinces them it is worth their time to read another. So the more content that is in each of your papers the more impressed the reader will be with you. If the first paper of yours someone reads has a small amount of mathematical content then they probably won't expect too much from any of your other papers. </p>\n\n<p>In your formulation the ideal <em>N</em> may not always be 1, but each paper should actually have something worthwhile in its own right to say. You shouldn't expect someone to read more than one paper to get to only one meaningful idea. </p>\n\n<p>A side comment, the author does not find referees. The editor does. Sometimes the author may suggest candidates but the editor or the suggested referee can always say no. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16987,
"author": "WetlabStudent",
"author_id": 8101,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8101",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is highly field specific. In many STEM fields, multiple small papers are preferred because the field moves very quickly and people would get scooped if it took them 2-3 years to write a paper. This is much less of a concern in mathematics. Most mathematicians are very careful and take their time to write thorough and complete larger papers. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16988,
"author": "bubba",
"author_id": 11940,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11940",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In some situations, people will judge you by counting the number of papers you have written. Administrators in funding organizations or universities might do this, for example, or HR people working for job search agencies or prospective employers. They won't read the papers, and they wouldn't understand them even if they did. So, in these situations, more papers is better. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16989,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In math it's generally better to aim for fewer, longer, better papers. There's nothing wrong with publishing short papers if that's what best fits your discoveries. However, given the choice you should not publish your results piecemeal as you derive them, but rather try to collect and polish them and craft coherent, substantial papers. There are several reasons for this:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Publishing partial results piece by piece makes it harder to write understandable papers. A few papers later, you'll wish you had done things a little differently, and you'll start writing things like \"by the same idea as in the proof of Lemma 3 in [15]\" because the statement of Lemma 3 doesn't quite say what you need now. But it's too late to change it, so your next paper is either cryptic or repetitive, and neither one impresses readers. Or you find an ad hoc way around it, but your paper ends up being a little less natural. Basically, this is a form of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt\">technical debt</a>. Once you have enough technical debt, the only good solution is to write a clean exposition from scratch. Every topic eventually reaches this point (which is one reason we have expository papers and books), but in the meantime you'll minimize the problems if you gather related ideas in one place and write them as a coherent unit. </p></li>\n<li><p>If you break your work into papers in unnatural ways, you risk looking desperate for publications. Each individual paper may look like you don't understand the big picture or don't think your work is going to amount to anything substantial. These are not messages you want to send to readers.</p></li>\n<li><p>If you want a serious research career, you need to publish in good journals. Taking a long paper in a prestigious journal and breaking it into three short papers in less prestigious journals is bad for your CV. Experts might know those three papers amount to something substantial when combined, but a non-expert looking at your CV won't be able to tell.</p></li>\n<li><p>Many people in your subfield will form an opinion of you without having studied your work carefully. For example, plenty of people who have never read any of your papers will see you give talks at conferences or will see references to your work. Because they don't have a global context for your work, to a first approximation they will judge you by how good they think your average paper is.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>One would think that if I \"subpublish\" that actually since my results become available more immediately that it would benefit the community if I did so.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If you reach a nontrivial milestone that is genuinely exciting or useful for other people, then that could be a good reason to publish a paper now, rather than sitting on the result while you try to complete a larger project. On the other hand, there's much less value in presenting a steady stream of partial results taken out of context.</p>\n\n<p>Of course career pressures sometimes interfere with ideal publishing. If you're going on the job market soon, then writing a suboptimal paper now is probably better than writing an optimal paper later.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 16992,
"author": "Benoît Kloeckner",
"author_id": 946,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/946",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>(My answer somewhat overlaps with previous answer, but contains parts that in my opinion need to be said. Beware that I am a fundamental mathematician, and that my advices should be taken with extra caution in other fields.)</em></p>\n\n<p>I would say that in most cases a good way to go is to <strong>get each paper tell one story</strong>. This both means that the story should be complete, and that there should not be two stories in it. </p>\n\n<p>Now, in many cases choosing the perimeter of a paper is a subtle issue and your interest and the interest of the community do not necessarily align completely.</p>\n\n<h3>Pros for publishing several smaller papers:</h3>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>It can be difficult to get a long paper published in a good journal, because of a limited number of pages published each year (this sounds weird at a time when most papers are distributed electronically, but many math journals have this issue). For example I had a long paper, containing different independent results on a common object, rejected by a journal after the referee found the results nice, but the paper too long for its worth. Maybe one of the result would have been equally sexy on its own, and the paper would certainly have been much shorter.</p></li>\n<li><p>Your CV will have more lines, and this can sometimes help. Every hiring committee I attended to put an emphasis (too strong in my opinion) on the number of papers of each applicant.</p></li>\n<li><p>If there are different results that may be of interest to different communities, putting them in one paper mean that they will appear in only one journal, maybe not read by both communities, and that there will be only one title and one item and review in each database (MathReviews, Zentrallblatt). This can make one or both of the results more difficult to find, less visible, therefore less useful to the community.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3>Pros for publishing less, longer papers</h3>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>It can be difficult to publish a short paper in a good journal, as it might appear as not tackling a challenging issue. Of course, a short paper solving a long-standing open problem will be easily published, but when you have to convince an editor and a referee that your question is good and that answering it deserves merit, short paper may (unfortunately) hurt you.</p></li>\n<li><p>Long papers can impress people on CV. I have heard in hiring committees remarks like \"she publishes 30 pages papers, this is serious work\" or \"Ok, he has a lot of papers, but he mostly seems efficient in maximizing the number of CV lines from little mathematical content\". If your introductions are all the same, it can look like salami publishing; in our <em>publish or perish</em> era, one is expected to salami publish without looking like he or she is salami publishing.</p></li>\n<li><p>Sometimes, two or more results complement each other and are together worth more than the sum of their individual worth. In this case, a unique large paper may be much better than several smaller papers that individually will look minor.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3>Concluding comment</h3>\n\n<p>You see that I gave each argument both ways. This is why I think the issue is subtle, and that each case has to be considered closely. The \"one story\" guideline can help but is not very precise. Finally I would advise to try to maximize the benefit of readers (remembering they have limited time); try to imagine what a referee that does not yet know your work will feel reading your paper, and make your choice so that he or she thinks \"what a nice result!\" (the result needs to be somewhat impressive by itself, but also to be clear and clearly delimited). In most cases and in the long run I believe it will also be close to maximize your own benefit.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 44893,
"author": "Community",
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"selected": false,
"text": "<p>@Jeff-Publishing your work in fewer larger papers or more smaller papers depends on your level, which means that when you are in your formative years, I recommend you to publish your work in more smaller papers and when you are in your summative years, I recommend you to publish your work in fewer larger papers </p>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/14 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16985",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
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|
16,995 | <p>I am soon to finish a long PhD, and am thinking about postdoctoral applications. </p>
<p>As a PhD student I did a lot of quality work and have some publications in respected journals/conferences. However, I did not develop my own research ideas or objectives as a PhD student. This was just the state of affairs and there wasn't much I could do about it. Also, while my work so far is primarily applied and methodological, I am interested in theoretical work. I do not want to continue doing the kind of work I have done so far. </p>
<p>I have a couple questions under the theme of the title:</p>
<ol>
<li>Do I need to sell my PhD work as my own idea in a postdoc application, or is it reasonable to be honest? </li>
<li>Will it arouse suspicion in an application to propose research in an area which is not closely related to my PhD research? </li>
<li>If I want to be able to develop my own ideas as a postdoctoral researcher, should I seek to clarify that goal, seek positions which advertise that option explicitly, or conceal that goal and instead simply do so once I have a position?</li>
</ol>
<p>More general question:</p>
<ol>
<li>From my observation and reading, there's an art to developing a research objective/question. Ideally, I would like to have some kind of guidance in doing so. In my experience that is unrealistic. How can I seek meaningful mentorship, but somehow frame it in a manner that allows me to move forward and to maintain financial and intellectual freedom from the mentor? </li>
</ol>
<p>In my experience for students from mathematics and physics the answer to (2) is often "no". However, coming from an applied area wishing to do more theoretical work, the standards are unclear to me. </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17001,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 2,
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"text": "<p>First of all, let me say that your choice of words really rings an alarm bell with me. The general impression is that you are very ready to be inhonest, and (in agreement with that) your default position seems to mistrust your future employer and you seem to expect suspicion as opposed to taking in the situation openly.</p>\n\n<p>Now if someone does not trust me, a natural question for me is: why should I trust them? I would not want to work with someone with this attitude towards work. And moreover, I wouldn't want to have someone messing up the working atmosphere in my group. </p>\n\n<p>(But don't worry: I'm not in the position to hire anyone.)</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Do I need to sell my PhD work as my own idea in a postdoc application, or is it reasonable to be honest?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I'd say it is even <strong>necessary to be honest</strong>, and it is most probably futile to try to get away with anything else. Academia is a small world, and phone, skype and email reach very far nowadays. Particularly if you say that your field is so small that you do not care to name it here.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Will it arouse suspicion in an application to propose research in an area which is not closely related to my PhD research?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No. But you should have a positive reason to apply there.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If I want to be able to develop my own ideas as a postdoctoral researcher, should I seek to clarify that goal, seek positions which advertise that option explicitly</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I'd say that you are <em>expected</em> to develop your own ideas in a postdoc position.</p>\n\n<p>So: Yes, why not. I had interviews where we discussed openly how much own ideas would be possible, welcome, and what the bottomline of things-that-need-to-be-done-no-matter-what would be. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>From my observation and reading, there's an art to developing a research objective/question. Ideally, I would like to have some kind of guidance in doing so. In my experience that is unrealistic. How can I seek meaningful mentorship, but somehow frame it in a manner that allows me to move forward and to maintain financial and intellectual freedom from the mentor? </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I can ensure you that there are good mentors and leaders, including also mentors and leaders who are even good at teaching leadership in research. But such learning can only work if you trust your mentor. That in turn makes financial and intellectual dependence a non-issue. It may not be easy to find a good mentor. But on the other hand, you could also learn from someone who is not your direct supervisor. That way, you'd have the financial and intellectual freedom.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>But: if you feel you need mentoring how to develop research questions, how can you feel ready to apply for a postdoc position?</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I did not develop my own research ideas or objectives as a PhD student. This was just the state of affairs and there wasn't much I could do about it.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>How come? How could your supervisor prevent you from thinking your own thoughts and from having your own opinion and judging of what needs to be done and how? As a research professional, crititcal and independent thinking is one of your core tasks.</p>\n\n<p>Remember: you were a professional already when you started the PhD. If that wasn't necessary, it would be appropriate for an apprentice to apply for a PhD position.<br>\nAnd if you had gone to work in industry instead of in academia, you'd aslo have been profesionally responsible for everything you do. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17078,
"author": "trutheality",
"author_id": 11880,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11880",
"pm_score": 0,
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"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Do I need to sell my PhD work as my own idea in a postdoc application, or is it reasonable to be honest?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You need to <strong>honestly</strong> show how your work is your own and you need to show that the research question you worked on is important. The people hiring you want to see that you do groundbreaking work on important problems, they aren't looking for a story about how an original research problem came to you in a dream. You need to talk about what you did. You should devote very little space to what other people did, if any.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Will it arouse suspicion in an application to propose research in an area which is not closely related to my PhD research?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Not if you justify your interest in the proposed research. It would be good to show some sort of conceptual connection between the proposed research and the previous research, but probably not essential if the proposed research is something \"hot\" in your field.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If I want to be able to develop my own ideas as a postdoctoral researcher, should I seek to clarify that goal, seek positions which advertise that option explicitly, or conceal that goal and instead simply do so once I have a position?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Developing original research ideas (under constraints) is usually the point of a postdoc. It's not really something you need to clarify, and not something that needs to be in the ad. Do make sure that the ad is compatible with your intended research direction, obviously.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>From my observation and reading, there's an art to developing a research objective/question. Ideally, I would like to have some kind of guidance in doing so. In my experience that is unrealistic. How can I seek meaningful mentorship, but somehow frame it in a manner that allows me to move forward and to maintain financial and intellectual freedom from the mentor?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The postdoc isn't the PI. At a postdoc position there will usually be a few senior people who can be your mentors. So you'll get mentorship.</p>\n\n<p><em>Meaningful</em> mentorship isn't exactly something you can ask for (or that can be given on-demand). It's like friendship: it doesn't really make much sense to \"ask for meaningful friendship,\" it's something that develops with people who are the right fit for you.</p>\n\n<p>Intellectual freedom is sort of implied in the position, as mentioned before. The postdoc's job is to do original research on a particular topic. Obviously there are constraints to what research you can do, but that's true at all levels: everyone has constraints on the research they do.</p>\n\n<p>As for financial freedom... I'm not entirely sure what one needs to do to get fired from a postdoc, but I think that having original ideas isn't that thing.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17079,
"author": "vadim123",
"author_id": 7222,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7222",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Time for some tough love. What your future employers want is a steady stream of scholarship, increasing in quality, quantity, and self-sufficiency. This includes both those hiring you for a postdoc and those hiring you (hopefully) for a permanent position afterward.</p>\n\n<p>Normally to switch from subject A to subject B requires time and produces a gap in the stream. This is very bad. Even if there is no gap, switching topics renders much of your hard work publishing papers less relevant to future employers. All other things being equal, I would prefer to hire a specialist in subject B rather than someone who straddles both B and A.</p>\n\n<p>If you're Terry Tao, you can work your way through the entire <a href=\"http://msc2010.org/Default.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">MSC 2010</a>; that's just being brilliant and prolific. However if you're a mere mortal it's a bad idea to switch specialties until at least after tenure.</p>\n\n<p>PS. If you are less than forthright about how experienced you are at working independently, this cannot possibly lead to a result in your favor.</p>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/15 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16995",
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16,996 | <p>On 13th August 2013 I received the following email. I have cut and pasted it below. I haven't bothered to insert back any of the links, but can do so if anyone is interested. I would not normally post private email to a public forum, but this is obviously a form letter, one step up from spam.</p>
<p>At the time I dismissed it as one more attempt by a journal to get me to do something for nothing as usual, but then I got a followup from the same person on 12th February 2014. It is in my experience fairly unusual to get a followup to this kind of invitation.</p>
<p>I thought it would do no harm to ask people here what they thought. I haven't changed my mind on it. I don't see any advantage to the proposed work. They aren't offering any money of course. It is not a publication. It isn't an opportunity to get involved in a collaborative project. It looks like a opportunity to become some kind of unpaid new-fangled Web 2.0 type editor for some kind of new-fangled web research platform. It would probably be lots of work. So, I don't see anything in it for me. I'm not sure what is in it for the journal either.</p>
<p>So, to summarize my questions in a convenient fashion.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Is there any reason anyone one can think of that I might want to be
involved in something like this? Note - I'm by no stretch of the
imagination a senior researcher. Such an invitation <em>might</em> make sense for
a senior researcher, but I don't see why such a person could not simply
create his own web site to showcase his research.</p></li>
<li><p>Why is the journal trying to organize something like this? I don't
quite see what is in it for them either. Perhaps just the opportunity
to make money off submissions to an ersatz journal?</p></li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p>I came across[LINK][LINK] your “SNPpy--database management for SNP
data from genome wide association studies.” published in “PloS one”
and thought that it would be an excellent fit for the "Research
Topics" initiative in Frontiers. We have recently partnered with
the [LINK]Nature Publishing Group [goo.gl] to expand our
researcher-driven Open Science platform, and I would like for you to
consider suggesting a consolidated topic of the latest research and
perspectives from your field in a Frontiers journal. </p>
<p>However please note that our invitation is not restricted to the
subject of this work. You are free to propose a Research Topic of your
choice.</p>
<p>This [LINK][LINK]short video [goo.gl] gives you a better overview on
the potential of Frontiers Research Topics.</p>
<p>You may also want to browse on the [LINK][LINK]Research Topics
homepage [goo.gl] and [LINK][LINK]here [goo.gl] to check the final
format of a Frontiers Research Topic as an e-book.</p>
<p>Like in the example above, Frontiers will create a dedicated homepage
for your Research Topic, where you can manage contributions and
maintain an ongoing dialogue with post-publication feedback from the
research community.</p>
<p>If you are interested in pursuing this project, all it takes to get
started is:</p>
<p> - A title and a short description of your Research Topic;</p>
<ul>
<li>A list of contributors you plan to contact.</li>
</ul>
<p>If you wanted to find detailed information on how to launch a Research
Topic, please browse [LINK][LINK]here [goo.gl].</p>
<p>Please let me know if you are interested in organizing a Frontiers
Research Topic, and do not hesitate to contact me by phone or email
with any questions. I’m looking forward to your reply.</p>
</blockquote>
| [
{
"answer_id": 16997,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>As far as I can tell, a \"Research Topic\" is a collection of papers on a specialized topic. It's basically a special issue of one of their journals, although it's presented slightly differently, and they charge publication fees for the papers.</p>\n\n<p>What really turns me off is the publisher's spamming practices. I've had exactly the same experience you have: they send what's pretty obviously a form letter (populated with your name and one publication title/journal, seemingly randomly selected) and then some months later send a passive-aggressive reminder asking for a reply. Maybe this is a coincidence, but I also got a follow-up message from them on February 12, so perhaps they sent out a whole wave of them on that day. In any case, the fact that they feel they have to advertise by spamming makes me suspicious, and the reminder messages are irritating.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20030,
"author": "liw",
"author_id": 14743,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14743",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would suggest a response such as:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Thank you for repeated offer to participate in a frontiers research\n topic. I decline your offer on grounds of not agreeing with this model\n wherein researchers are invited to produce articles seemingly with the\n sole purpose of publishing and get them to invite their peers to\n contribute as well. I am a vehement supporter of open acces\n publishing, but I do not support publishing ‘for the sake of\n publishing’, whereas I also feel that structures to stimulate\n collaboration between researchers should not be run primarily by\n commercial partners. </p>\n \n <p>Frankly, the practice of actively recruiting researchers to provide\n articles is tempering my initial enthusiasm for Frontiers. </p>\n \n <p>Best regards,</p>\n \n <p>my name</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20080,
"author": "anonymous neuroscientist",
"author_id": 14776,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14776",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This topic has received some discussion recently: at least some of these invitations appear to be revenue driven, with no specific reason related to the advancement of science per se. Read reports here of followup emails that received answers indicating an indiscriminate approach that would, in my book, qualify as SPAM. </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/11/05/i-get-complaints-about-frontiers/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/11/05/i-get-complaints-about-frontiers/</a></p>\n\n<p>I think frontiers should be taken to task about these practices, and their wikipedia page edited accordingly. \nI opened a Talk on this here</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3aFrontiers_%28publisher%29\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Frontiers_(publisher)</a></p>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/15 | [
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16,998 | <p>I have started solving problems from the American Mathematical Monthly. While I will definitely continue this, I am not sure how much this will help for math graduate school admissions (assuming I submit my solutions and they are recognized by the Monthly). How significant would multiple solutions to Monthly problems be in admissions? What about having the published solution to a problem? One issue is that I don't know how difficult the problems are presumed to be: all I know is that I personally have solved at least one of them! </p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17007,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It probably depends on the committee members, but I wouldn't expect it to help much.</p>\n\n<p>If you get a really clever solution published, or they publish a problem you submit, that could make a difference. It certainly wouldn't mean as much as a research paper, but it could be viewed as the same sort of thing on a smaller scale.</p>\n\n<p>Otherwise, the potential impact is not large. Solving Monthly problems would be viewed favorably, as evidence of talent and effort, but it's not likely to mean the difference between admission and rejection. (Still, it's worth listing on your CV.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17191,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I agree with the other answer, but just to add another data point:</p>\n\n<p>You might as well list it on your CV, but you shouldn't expect it to help very much.</p>\n\n<p>I did (along with a few others) graduate admissions for the math department at UGA for four years -- and in fact am about to get involved in it again later this week, despite not being on the committee anymore -- and I remember exactly one student who listed it on his CV. It was sort of interesting but not particularly impressive, and if I remember it right we did not admit him in the end. He had a rather distinctive name and, while flipping rapidly through the <em>Monthly</em> problems in the months and years since then, I've noticed that he has submitted several more problems as well. I am starting to wonder what happened to this student...but I wouldn't go so far as to say that I regret the decision we made.</p>\n\n<p>In general I have to say -- and this is a very personal opinion, not a professional one -- that it seems to me that \"problems\" sections in journals like this are a bit old-fashioned. They do not seem to play a nontrivial role in contemporary mathematical life. I remember having exactly two conversations about Monthly problems:</p>\n\n<p>1) As a first-year graduate student, I did solve a Monthly problem. (This was the one and only Monthly problem that I can remember having thought about for more than five minutes, and I think it is telling that, while I usually have quite a good memory for mathematical minutiae, I remember precisely nothing about the problem.) Rather I remember standing in a mezzanine outside of the mathematics department and telling a fellow student that I had solved a Monthly problem. She politely congratulated me. I asked her whether I should actually submit the solution. She said that she couldn't see why not. I ended up not submitting the solution (thus I can't be completely sure that I correctly solved the problem...and it is telling that I don't care very much!). Okay, that was not my most riveting anecdote.</p>\n\n<p>2) This is slightly more amusing. As a postdoc I remember having lunch with one of my close friends. He told me that he was flipping through the problem section of the Monthly and his eye was caught on a problem that had been proposed...by him. He racked his brains about this and did not succeed in recalling anything about the problem or his submitting it. He did have a friend who was involved with editing the problems section at the time, so he guessed that must have had something to do with it (his friend was very conscientious; it is not plausible that he would have done it as a joke or prank).</p>\n\n<p>I'm not saying that most Monthly problems are easy: on the contrary, I am a relatively experienced, relatively successful research mathematician, and I still sometimes at least pass my eyes over these problems while flipping towards the reviews, and I rarely if ever see one that I think \"Oh, surely I could solve that very easily.\" I'm just not really sure what the point of solving them is: I have plenty of other math problems that I'm trying to solve! It's a little like math contests, only adults can participate too. </p>\n\n<p>To be honest, I think that MathOverflow has significantly overtaken solving Monthly problems as being a minor way for young people to show their talent. There are a small number of undergraduates that I would admit in a heartbeat because I have come to see their brilliance on MO (and to a lesser but still probably sufficient extent, on math.SE). Most of these students are so brilliant that they do not condescend to apply to my graduate program, and I assume that if they did the rest of their application would be so superior that I would not have to spend much time explaining to my colleagues doing the admissions why their performance on math Q&A websites makes me confident that they will be excellent graduate students...but still. </p>\n\n<p>I also think that participation on MO and math.SE is really better than solving problems or doing well in math contests...not better in an absolute sense, but closer to what mathematicians actually do and thus more indicative of academic mathematical career potential (as opposed to raw talent; certain kinds of raw mathematical talent are less useful to a career mathematician than one might think!). Still not that close, of course: the fact that I have a higher reputation on MO than any of several Fields Medalists and other true luminaries that regularly contribute there is ample evidence of that. </p>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/15 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16998",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10739/"
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|
17,005 | <p>Do I need a consent to record audio of a presentation at a scientific conference in USA (provided that the conference does not explicitly prohibit such recording)? I'm guessing since it is not a private conversation, it's okay to record it.</p>
<p>This question is out of curiosity. I do not actually have clear intentions of recording talks.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17008,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
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"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I don't know the relevant laws, which may vary between U.S. states, but I wouldn't focus on the legal question. Regardless of whether you have the legal right to make a recording, you should not do so without the speaker's permission. If someone asked me, I would probably give permission, but making a recording without asking feels creepy and inappropriate. If you go around doing this in academia, it's likely to be viewed as unprofessional, and some speakers will become angry.</p>\n\n<p>Even if you ask, people may wonder why you want a recording. (Are you stalking the speaker? Are you going to scrutinize the recording to try to find misstatements? Are you working on competing research and trying to document exactly what was said in your competitor's talk?) If you have a compelling reason to make a recording, it's worth explaining why. For example, perhaps it could help accommodate certain disabilities. Otherwise, you can certainly ask, but it may come across as a weird request.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17018,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In general, most large conferences in the US <strong>prohibit</strong> unauthorized audio and visual recordings of conference presentations. Smaller workshops may not explicitly do so, but you should not take this as blanket permission. As Anonymous Mathematician suggests, many people will wonder why you want to record their talk. </p>\n\n<p>Now, if you have a compelling reason to want to follow up on a presentation later, the best way to do this is to contact the presenter after the session, and let her know that you'd like a copy of the presentation, if possible. This is usually preferable to making a recording, which could in principle get you into trouble if \"caught.\"</p>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/16 | [
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|
17,010 | <p>The faculty senate at my school recently took a position on a professional issue that was highly confrontational toward the administration. After union negotiations resulted in a pay raise, the senate reversed itself on this issue. It was later revealed that the original position had been advocated by the union as a way of applying pressure in contract negotiations. Some but not all members of the faculty senate knew about the union's advocacy of the action. There was no direct or logical connection between the professional matter (the hiring of a vice chancellor) and the contract negotiations. A large number of union officers are also on the senate.</p>
<p>Do other schools have rules or standards of ethical conduct that cover this type of conflict of interest? Is it considered normal for there to be so much overlap between the union leadership and the senate, or for the senate to act so closely in concert with the union as part of labor negotiations?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17008,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I don't know the relevant laws, which may vary between U.S. states, but I wouldn't focus on the legal question. Regardless of whether you have the legal right to make a recording, you should not do so without the speaker's permission. If someone asked me, I would probably give permission, but making a recording without asking feels creepy and inappropriate. If you go around doing this in academia, it's likely to be viewed as unprofessional, and some speakers will become angry.</p>\n\n<p>Even if you ask, people may wonder why you want a recording. (Are you stalking the speaker? Are you going to scrutinize the recording to try to find misstatements? Are you working on competing research and trying to document exactly what was said in your competitor's talk?) If you have a compelling reason to make a recording, it's worth explaining why. For example, perhaps it could help accommodate certain disabilities. Otherwise, you can certainly ask, but it may come across as a weird request.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17018,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In general, most large conferences in the US <strong>prohibit</strong> unauthorized audio and visual recordings of conference presentations. Smaller workshops may not explicitly do so, but you should not take this as blanket permission. As Anonymous Mathematician suggests, many people will wonder why you want to record their talk. </p>\n\n<p>Now, if you have a compelling reason to want to follow up on a presentation later, the best way to do this is to contact the presenter after the session, and let her know that you'd like a copy of the presentation, if possible. This is usually preferable to making a recording, which could in principle get you into trouble if \"caught.\"</p>\n"
}
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| 2014/02/16 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17010",
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|
17,012 | <p>I am a CS/EEE person. A resident of India. I am hoping to apply for an internship in either BARC or TIFR. These are internships related to research. A senior told me that having a Research Internship in his CV counted against him for a technical job interview.<br>
Is this true? Should I rather apply for a Technical Internship instead? The kind of job I am looking to do later is a technical one, not one related to research. </p>
<p>CS/EEE -- Computer Science / Electrical and Electronics Engineering<br>
BARC -- Bhabha Atomic Research Centre<br>
TIFR -- Tata Institute of Fundamental Research</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 23868,
"author": "ashlinry",
"author_id": 17803,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17803",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't think this would count against you. It could perhaps be beneficial to have both research and conventional internship experience, but I think the research experience could only help you.</p>\n\n<p>Personally, I have not done any research (I am a Computer Science and Business student), but I do know some people who have had both research positions and conventional internships, and they said that interviewers often focused on talking about their research experience (and these people also got extremely good jobs with companies that a lot of CS students dream of working for).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 23878,
"author": "krammer",
"author_id": 2823,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2823",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can answer this question from my undergrad experience and work ex in India. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Short Answer</strong>: No, having research experience doesn't hinder your chances of getting into a technical job. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Long Answer:</strong>\nHaving a good research project/internship demonstrates your deep thinking abilities and capacity to do challenging work often with minimal guidance. Good companies often admire these skills. In addition to this, research internship along with good implementation part(CS specific), count heavily to your favour.</p>\n\n<p>The advise of your college senior (without any offense) is directed primarily towards service sector companies and is misleading. The reason is not that your research internship would not give you proper skills for the job, but that your research experience may give them an indication that you would leave the job for higher studies. There are many other factors such companies consider for minimizing the attrition rate and maintaining high reserve manpower, and research experience is certainly not at the top of that list. </p>\n"
}
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|
17,013 | <p>Some time ago, a recently-graduated PhD has sent me a physical (book) copy of his dissertation. The graduate works in a somewhat-related field, but is personally entirely unknown to me (I have some loose connections to the advisor, though). I was reasonably confused by this - I personally have never heard of a custom of sending physical theses to anybody besides maybe parents. I was 100% convinced that I received the dissertation in error (also because the mailing was addressed to my name, but using a wrong department name).</p>
<p>Last week I by chance got hold of the graduate and told him that he sent me his thesis by accident, and asked whether he wants to have it back. He seemed confused and a little bit annoyed that I wanted to give his thesis back - it turns out he actually sent me the book on purpose, assuming that I would be interested in his work. <strong>He told me that he thought it is customary to send a finished PhD thesis to people that he thought might profit from its results.</strong></p>
<p><strong>So, is this a thing, at least in some fields? If so, why not just send the core papers or a link to a digital version of the thesis?</strong> Mailing out printed copies seems extremely expensive, and also (at least for me) very unlikely to result in anything else than me having another book gathering dust in my office shelf. I am honestly very unlikely to read an entire thesis, <em>especially</em> if I only have it in a dead-tree book version.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17014,
"author": "Pieter Naaijkens",
"author_id": 22,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>This is not uncommon in the country where I did my PhD (the Netherlands). There you have to print a reasonably large amount of hardcopies anyway, typically people get around 200-300 copies in my field. It is not uncommon to send some copies to researchers that you genuinely believe may be interested in the work, usually people that you have been in contact with before, or are in contact with your advisor.</p>\n\n<p>The cost of the thesis printing and mailing is generally reimbursed by the university (of course, all within reasonable limits). In countries where printing the thesis is not so common, I can imagine that the practice of mailing around copies is not common.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17015,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In some countries you print a large number of copies (as stated by Pieter Naaijkens), in some only a single digit number which should then be distributed to a specific set of recipients. Regardless it is not unusual that a person might distribute copies to people that might have some interest in it. It is, however, not a must and the recipients is up to the author. When you send a thesis I think it is wise to write an accompanying letter explaining why the thesis is sent to the specific person. To send them without such a personal note may come across as a little odd and can of course be misunderstood. </p>\n\n<p>I did my PhD in the US and made a larger number of cheap copies (do not remember how many) to distribute among friends. I sent a few to others whose research I had built on. This was outside of the, at least then, mandatory five bound copies. In Sweden, where I now reside, printing of about 250 is mandatory and the student can print additional copies at their own cost. We recommend students to think about sending their thesis to people they can imagine would be interested in it. Since the life time of a thesis is usually quite short, most will soon be properly published, it is a good way to advertise your PhD and your work right after you have completed the work.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17032,
"author": "David Z",
"author_id": 236,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/236",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This varies by country and probably by field as well, which means I can only speak from my own experience in physics, in the US. What my experience says is that it is exceptionally rare to do this. Typically, a student will have one copy of their thesis printed and bound for their adviser, one for themselves, one or two for the university library if required by policy, and perhaps one or two for the student's parents, if they're interested. Each one of these copies costs $50 or more, and costs are borne by the student, so there is a large incentive to print as few copies as necessary.</p>\n\n<p>More recently (in the past few years), I believe a lot of universities have switched to electronic archival of theses, which means the campus library no longer requires a printed copy. In these cases, a finalized PhD thesis might never get printed at all, depending on the preferences of the student and the adviser.</p>\n\n<p>Certainly, to me, it is unheard of to send unsolicited printed copies of the thesis to other researchers. Of course, in physics some PhD theses are uploaded to <a href=\"http://arxiv.org\">arXiv</a> for electronic distribution, so interested researchers can get access to them that way.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17041,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have, so far as I can remember, physical copies of three PhD theses that were not written by my own students. (I do not have a physical copy of my own PhD thesis.) Two of these were indeed PhDs from the Netherlands, where they bind the theses in an attractive way and clearly send them out rather broadly. One of them is from an older student in my department, whose work was very influential to me.</p>\n\n<p>I have certainly been happy to have all of these theses. The one from the student in my department I have certainly consulted at length. The other two less so, but a colleague of mine once borrowed it (and then duly returned it). I am not aware that any of these three theses are freely available on the internet, so it is not purely an empty gesture.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Last week I by chance got hold of the graduate and told him that he sent me his thesis by accident, and asked whether he wants to have it back. He seemed confused and a little bit annoyed that I wanted to give his thesis back - it turns out he actually sent me the book on purpose, assuming that I would be interested in his work.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>As you've probably realized by now, your behavior was a bit rude. What are the chances that someone sent you a PhD thesis by accident?? Offering to give back something that someone sends you without first inquiring into the circumstances in which they sent it is really not great behavior. When someone gives something to you -- in circumstances other than a bribe or some similar kind of implicit <em>quid pro quo</em> -- the polite thing to do is say \"Thank you.\" It would be a classy move to apologize to the person whose thesis you tried to give back.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17056,
"author": "just-learning",
"author_id": 10483,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10483",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Perhaps it could be of interest that in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe there exists a tradition of sending to many places in the country where the Ph.D. studies are done (especially major libraries and universities) not the full Ph.D. thesis but the so-called thesis summary (\"autoreferat\"). The sending is usually done by the institution where the Ph.D. studies are done and takes place <em>before</em> the viva, so that, at least in theory, the interested parties may visit the viva and ask the questions to the author of the thesis. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17065,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I sent printed copies of my thesis to the people I mentioned in the acknowledgment section. That is about 20 persons. I obviously didn't think they would read it, and in fact the content was already obsolete at the time it went through the printer, it was more of a way of marking the event, and well, letting them know that I thanked them in my preamble.</p>\n\n<p>I would not be surprised, however, that someone would get puzzled if I sent them a copy and they had no direct tie to my work. I mean, I don't send pdfs of my articles to people I think would be interested in reading them...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17090,
"author": "Gery",
"author_id": 12056,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12056",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Totally uncommon to me. I'm doing my PhD thesis and if I were that student, I'd send first an email asking whether there is an interest or not. In any case, I'd not expect that someone will read my thesis (book) just for fun or because <em>that might interest you</em>. Even PhD supervisors complain reading PhD theses that look like books!</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/16 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17013",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094/"
]
|
17,016 | <p>I'm a master student and I'm the phase of preparing my thesis. I've searched many papers related to my thesis but I'm a bit confused in what to focus. Do I need to take only a paper (or few papers) and to focus basically on that?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17017,
"author": "J. Zimmerman",
"author_id": 7921,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7921",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>NO.</strong> Undergrads may get away with using one (or a few) papers to synthesize the essence into their own viewpoint, but at the post-grad level you should be reading for width and depth, which means using every seminal work in your field as well as exploring the newer papers on the topic. This is particularly important since you state that most of the published research in this area dates from 2007.</p>\n\n<p>And even though you feel that you are not prepared to tackle original research in this area, consider at least having a section outlining possible future research.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17024,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I think the best answer to this question has already been given as a comment:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>You should ask your advisor. The fact that you are asking this question suggests that you and your advisor haven't discussed in detail what your thesis should consist of. It's important to have this conversation, even aside from the particular question you are asking here. (You don't want to risk discovering much later that you and your advisor had different visions for what the thesis should be like.) </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is a good answer to so many questions on this site (I have started to think that there should be an \"Ask your advisor!\" closure option), but it seems especially true here. From the OP's comment I can see that the master's thesis is being done in <strong>mathematics</strong>. The expectations and requirements for a master's thesis in mathematics are so highly variable across institutions and countries that I can think of almost nothing (other than \"Ask your advisor!\") which would be guaranteed to be universally applicable.</p>\n\n<p>In mathematics programs in the US, it is especially unclear what work constitutes a master's thesis, especially in pure mathematics. Unlike the situation in many other countries, there are relatively few full-time master's students in American universities, even compared to the number of master's degrees awarded: in my experience, more master's degrees go to talented, ambitious undergraduates who get them alongside their bachelor's degrees, or to PhD students who have decided to drop out of the program and get a consolation degree. In my case I got a master's degree along with my bachelor's degree at the University of Chicago, and for such a top university you might be surprised to hear how minimal the requirements were: I had to complete all nine trimester courses that first year graduate (i.e., PhD) students take (I did so over two years) and pass a <em>pro forma</em> foreign language exam. [In particular <strong>I did not write a master's thesis</strong>.] When I went on to my PhD studies (at Harvard) I found that I was about as well prepared as most of the other students. I don't recall that my having a master's degree came up once during my five years in a PhD program...with the possible exception that some students would, a year or two into their program, fill out paperwork and pay a small fee to get a master's degree, whereas I already had one of those so chose to keep my money.</p>\n\n<p>Having been heavily involved with the graduate (mostly PhD) program at the University of Georgia in recent years, I can say that here a master's thesis is whatever the advisor and student agree that it is, subject to the approval of two other committee members. Writing a thesis is one route; there is another route involving more coursework and some exams. Among master's thesis advisors I've talked to, the sense is that the student should take the thesis as an opportunity to engage with some piece of mathematics at a deeper level than they have done before, to the extent that they have <em>mastered</em> it and can show this mastery with an original (or at least, independent) exposition. This description seems rather at odds with the one given in another answer to this question:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>NO. Undergrads may get away with using one (or a few) papers to synthesize the essence into their own viewpoint, but at the post-grad level you should be reading for width and depth, which means using every seminal work in your field as well as exploring the newer papers on the topic. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is probably a correct description of some academic fields, but not for mathematics. Very few mathematics undergraduates are reading \"real\" math papers at all. The task of reading, understanding and writing about even <em>one</em> \"real\" math paper may in fact be sufficient for a master's thesis. There are even certain papers out there for which rewriting them so as to contain the level of detail and completeness that would satisfy a master's thesis committee would be a real service to the mathematical community. I think that most PhD students in mathematics do not <em>use every seminal work in [their] field</em>: I didn't, for instance. </p>\n\n<p>I am not saying that just any old thing will suffice for a master's thesis in mathematics: I am saying that the <em>global</em> requirements are very few, so it becomes more important to talk to your advisor. </p>\n\n<p>I have so far supervised one master's thesis. My student carefully read and wrote about two papers concerning geometry of numbers and Legendre's Equation ax^2+by^2+cz^2 = 0. She then tried to extend the techniques of the second paper to diagonal quadratic equations in n \\geq 4 variables. Much of this was easy, but the key was the existence of a \"magic sublattice\" defined in the three-dimensional case by the necessary congruence conditions for Legendre's Equation to have a solution. After much trouble (and some help from me), she was eventually able to prove that for more than three variables such a magic sublattice did not exist. She wrote up a thesis which contained expositions of the two papers she read plus a proof of this result (plus a few more small things, totalling a few pages). I remember that she was concerned that her thesis was rather short: 45 pages double-spaced. I thought her thesis was an unusually strong one and told her so. (If people are wondering, I think her result is not yet publishable -- it's along the lines of showing that a certain proof strategy cannot work, and such things are hard to publish in mathematics -- but that the work could be continued and made publishable. I honestly think that makes it an above average American master's thesis in mathematics.)</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/16 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17016",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11969/"
]
|
17,022 | <p>It has often been said that there is no such thing as a dumb question. And yet - perhaps due only to inattention, lack of sleep, or hunger - otherwise brilliant people sometimes manage to ask some pretty inane questions during talks. ("Yes, but how does the rover manage to drive around on the moon in the first place - shouldn't it just fall back down to Earth?") Or worse: make false or bizarre assertions. ("I don't see how your thrusters can possibly provide enough lift, given that the moon is made out of cheese!")</p>
<p><strong>Question:</strong> How do you answer these kinds of questions in a way that makes <em>everyone</em> feel good about the interaction?</p>
<p>There are sort of three parties to consider here: yourself, the person asking the question, and the rest of the audience. You could, for instance, amuse and satiate the rest of the audience by poking fun at the person ("True, but why would you want to leave a paradise made of cheese?"). Humor <em>might</em> win over the audience, but the person who asked the question will spend the rest of the time ignoring the talk and thinking about how little he likes you. In contrast, you don't want to pander ("Ah, interesting point - I didn't realize the moon was made of cheese. Is it Gruyère or some kind of Stilton?") because, although the person asking the question now feels respected, the rest of the audience thinks you're a schmuck.</p>
<p>Perhaps the question could be re-phrased as:</p>
<p><strong>Question:</strong> how do you convince someone they're mistaken without making them feel stupid? (And what if they're stubborn?)</p>
<p>This situation is especially delicate if the question-asker is an established and respected member of your field (since their questions and opinions will automatically carry some weight and authority) - or worse, a person interviewing you for a job! I'm interested in both external tactics (i.e. what do you say?) as well as internal strategies (i.e. how do you put yourself in a mindset where you're unlikely to react with rude or snarky answers in the first place)?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17023,
"author": "TheWanderer",
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"text": "<p>This might work better if you are a non-native english speaker. You could try repeating the question: \"If I understood you correctly, you are asking me whether the moon is made out of cheese?\". This could give the asker the chance to snap back into reality. If he confirms, then all is permitted.</p>\n\n<p>If you are a non-native speaker, you should be given at least one free chance to be repeated a question without annoying the audience :)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17026,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>We are in full agreement that there are in fact dumb (or, more accurately, non-productive) questions, and I do not think that it is your responsibility as a speaker to make the asker of the question feel better about himself to the expense of the rest of the audience.</p>\n\n<p>When this sort of thing happens to me, I try to answer <strong>accurately, politely and to the point</strong> as I see it, just as I would try to answer any other question:</p>\n\n<p>Q: \"I don't see how your the thrusters can possibly provide enough lift, given that the moon is made out of cheese!\"</p>\n\n<p>A: \"I am afraid we have to disagree on the assumptions here. In my experience, the moon is likely not made out of cheese, hence this is somewhat of a non-issue in practice.\"</p>\n\n<p>I would do the same if giving an interview talk. In that case, I would assume that the asker is likely just testing me. Rambling on, evading, or taking the suggestion seriously might actually be perceived as a negative in that case. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17028,
"author": "David Richerby",
"author_id": 10685,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10685",
"pm_score": 8,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If somebody asks a dumb question, they're not going to feel good about the interaction whatever happens. If possible, get them back on the right track but avoid saying anything that could be interpreted as sarcasm and move on as quickly as possible.</p>\n\n<p>The most likely thing is either that the questioner has missed something obvious or misunderstood something you said. So, in your first example, just point out that the rover is held there by the moon's gravity and move on. They're going to be embarrassed to have missed something so simple so it's important that you don't make them feel any worse about it; at least they'll probably understand the rest of your talk, now. In the far less common case of somebody making an assertion based on something that just isn't true, point out that the thing isn't true (\"Well, the moon isn't made of cheese.\") and move on. If they want to debate the point, offer to discuss it after the talk but don't let them derail you: everyone else in the room, you included, came for a talk about your thruster design, not an argument about whether the moon is a dairy product.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17029,
"author": "trutheality",
"author_id": 11880,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11880",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Two useful responses are (1) to ask to rephrase/elaborate the question, and (2) to ask to discuss the issue after the talk.</p>\n\n<p>Both of those</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Give them time to think about their question a little more.</li>\n<li>Give you time to hear them out and figure out why they asked that question.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Discussing the issue after the talk has the added advantage of preventing anyone from getting embarrassed in front of a large audience.</p>\n\n<p>This also addresses the \"mindset\" issue: the question might seem stupid only because it is asked in a profoundly stupid way. If you leave open the possibility that you misunderstood the question, a lot of embarrassment can be avoided on both sides.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17035,
"author": "user11459",
"author_id": 11459,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11459",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'd say to try to think up of a \"smarter\" question that is related, but more difficult, and answer their dumb question in the context of answering the smarter one. It would allow everyone to move forward feeling good, and the person that asked the question would be grateful for it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17038,
"author": "user258613",
"author_id": 11995,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11995",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Just answer the question. You will spend less brainpower and not waste time. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Question:</strong> \"Given that there are 24 letters in the American alphabet, why does \"l\" come before \"a\"?</p>\n\n<p><strong>Answer:</strong> <code>[If I understand your references[context] properly][As far as I know]</code> , there are actually 26 letters in the American English alphabet. \"A\" actually comes before \"L,\" at least as far as I've learned in <code>[give reference.]\"</code></p>\n\n<p>Then just move on like nothing happened. Because nothing has.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17044,
"author": "Sez",
"author_id": 11999,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11999",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The problem with dumb questions is their ability to make you <strong>stop in your tracks with your mouth open</strong>, when you're supposed to be the hardened professional. Its not a good look.</p>\n\n<p>I've spoken on IT subjects to some reasonably large crowds of paying attendees.</p>\n\n<p>Here's what I do to avoid the deer-in-the-headlights effect that weird questions can have.</p>\n\n<p>I immediately respond to the question, by acknowledging it. That puts me back in control of the room, and makes my mouth shut (instead of hanging open in amazement) and gets the folks in the room looking at me instead of the questioner. </p>\n\n<p>To respond I tell them what I think of the question, but I use <strong>these two euphemisms or code-words</strong>:</p>\n\n<p>Instead of saying a question is</p>\n\n<pre><code>crazy, insane, stupid, or barking mad\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>say its</p>\n\n<pre><code>intriguing\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>And instead of saying a question is</p>\n\n<pre><code>pointless, inane, destructive, or insulting\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>say its</p>\n\n<pre><code>interesting\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>To get this down you have to practise it. Use your colleagues as guinea pigs when you practise your talk, and ask them to come up with some stupid questions so you can ace these \"code word\" responses.</p>\n\n<p>Tell your close friends, work associates and fellow speakers how you will use these euphemisms or code words (interesting and intriguing), and then when they hear you say </p>\n\n<pre><code>\"OK, that is an interesting question\"\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>they'll know you mean </p>\n\n<pre><code>\"WHY WOULD YOU SAY SUCH A THING - ARE YOU MAD!\"\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>You can get some back-up then. If you're really heating up with a flush of horror, and losing it up there, your friends in the know can come and rescue you by chiming in with something.</p>\n\n<p>Let's say, even after that you've got nothing. You've played for time with the response above, saying the question is \"Intriguing\", but the question is so off the wall you <strong>still</strong> have no way to answer it.</p>\n\n<p>Now what you can do since you have got control of the floor again, is you can go back to the audience with it.</p>\n\n<pre><code>\"Show of hands - who here has an IT security plan for cosmic rays?\" \n</code></pre>\n\n<p>Be careful. You don't want the audience to laugh at the guy, so make it clear you're taking the question seriously, or at least semi-seriously. </p>\n\n<p>The result you're looking for is that others see the question as low priority. Then you can offer to \"take it offline\" and speak to the questioner after you get off the stage.</p>\n\n<p>By the way, don't worry that the intriguing and interesting code words will become known and you'll be seen as not being sincere. Its a bit of an \"in joke\" and if folks know it they can have a bit of a chuckle with you. </p>\n\n<p>Its still about the most polite way I know to say something is a bit mad, without really offending people.</p>\n\n<p>Hope it helps.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17045,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Since the OP specifically mentions the case of job talks and none of the other answers do, let me concentrate on that in my answer.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>1) In a job talk, unless you specifically know otherwise, you should assume that everyone in the audience is someone who could have a direct hand in hiring you.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In the job talk I gave at my current university, a graduate student asked me a question about the arithmetic of Fano varieties. I began my response by carefully explaining what a Fano variety was and then quickly moving on to say that things like the circle method worked when the variety was \"sufficiently Fano\" in a certain precise sense. By the end of the day I learned that the person who asked me the question was not actually a graduate student but rather a youthful-looking tenured professor in algebraic geometry. In other words, she had forgotten more about Fano varieties than I would ever learn. Nevertheless, despite the fact that my answer was pitched a little too low for her, it <em>did</em> answer her question in a helpful and not condescending way, so she found my more-careful-than-necessary explanation more charming than offensive, and she joined me for lunch the next day. After I accepted the job, she quickly became one of my closest colleagues. </p>\n\n<p>Corollary to 1: In a job talk, you cannot afford to answer anyone's question in a way which pokes fun at them with the hope of gaining points with the rest of the audience. The one person who got snubbed will remember that at the hiring meeting more than everyone else put together.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>2) In any talk [i.e., a one-shot performance, unlike a course] you need to answer any single question in a way which keeps the overall talk on track. You don't want to spend more than a minute answering any single question, even if you know the answer and are happy to give it.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Thus you need to answer all questions in a globally efficient way. Since the question is about \"stupid questions\", I presume this means questions that you know the answer to. (If you don't know the answer to a question in a talk, probably the best strategy is to <em>clearly acknowledge</em> that in the moment you do not have an ideal answer, but that you'll think about it and be happy to get back to the questioner later on. It is tempting to stop short and wrestle with the question a bit -- this shows some positive traits, especially if you come out with the answer -- but it violates rule 2) above.) Moreover a \"stupid question\" is probably one for which the answer will not be enlightening to the rest of the audience, anticipate something that will come up later, or otherwise be worth spending much time on. </p>\n\n<p>So I think the best way to answer a \"stupid question\" in a job talk is: directly, politely, and quickly. E.g.:</p>\n\n<p>\"Assuming I've heard and understood you correctly, the answer to your question is X. I'd be happy to elaborate, but I think it won't be so relevant to what I want to talk about today, so can we take this up after the talk?\"</p>\n\n<p>Note that this phrasing creates a polite amount of reasonable doubt that a stupid question was asked after all. </p>\n\n<p>If all goes well, the questioner will drop the point and you can move on. Unfortunately, especially if the questioner is a high-status faculty member in the department, they may not want to drop it. In this case you should ask them to repeat the question, and you should take another crack at answering it, then say something like \"And now I really feel like I need to move on, so that I can get through what I came here to say. But please feel free to talk to me about it afterwards.\"</p>\n\n<p>Let me also say that I know a few \"big dogs\" who ask stupid questions that I have trouble believing are actually sincerely stupid questions. In other words, it is not unheard of that someone \"plays dumb\" during a job talk. I do not condone this behavior -- on the one hand, an interview is a two-way street and the would-be employers should be modelling their best future behavior just like the would-be employees, and on the other hand it is not so clear to me what constitutes a good response to such bad behavior so I'm not sure what they're hoping to gain (I hope it's not just trying to derail candidates that they have already decided they don't like: how ogrish) -- but I have seen it happen. But the above strategy is designed to combat this type of question as well: you want to give little to no offense but become minimally derailed. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17046,
"author": "Mike S",
"author_id": 12009,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12009",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>\"There are [almost] always three sides to a disagreement, your side, the other person's side, and the right side which is somewhere in the middle.\" Loosely paraphrased from a talk by Napoleon Hill.</p>\n\n<p>Assume that it is your fault (something that you said or did not say) that lead the person in the wrong direction.</p>\n\n<p>\"The earths gravitational field is of no significance at this stage of the expedition; this is one of the factors that allow for the possibility of prolonged exploration and experimentation.\"</p>\n\n<p>\"The surface of the moon has a terrain that is very similar to some places on earth and through careful analysis and experimental data our team has concluded that the thrusters will achieve between 7 and 8 thrust juice on each of the potential launch sites.\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17059,
"author": "RationalRabbit",
"author_id": 12031,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12031",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Ben Franklin puzzled over how to disagree with other members of Congress in a manner that would not alienate others - especially when the facts were on his side . He had discovered that, simply by changing a few phrases, he came closer to that goal than he could have imagined. Instead of saying, for instance, \"All scientific knowledge clearly rejects that assertion\", you avoid the direct disagreement entirely by saying \"It is my considered opinion, and I believe, from what I have studied on the subject, that the moon's surface is composed of quite different material. If you feel you have new knowledge on the subject, please get together with me after the presentation. I'd be very happy to discuss this subject with you.\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17062,
"author": "vadim123",
"author_id": 7222,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7222",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are many nice answers already to OP; however this will attempt to answer the related question that was not asked:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How do you recognize that a question you've been asked is \"dumb\"?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The answer is that you can't. While the question may in fact be dumb, it is also possible that the question is very good and you have misunderstood or misheard it. Perhaps the question you thought was about the moon rover falling back to Earth was actually about the moon rover falling over due to its testing having been conducted back on Earth. </p>\n\n<p>As the other answers have shown, there is no really satisfying way to answer a dumb question, so better to assume that the question is not dumb and rather that you have failed to understand it. My advice is to say that you're having trouble understanding the question, and asking the poser to give you more clarification after the conclusion of the talk. </p>\n\n<p>If indeed it's a dumb question and everyone in the room (but one person) knows it, this defuses the public situation and lets you deal with the poser in private. If you have misunderstood a good question, this allows you to discover this in private rather than embarrassing yourself. And if it's an off-the-wall question that could be either good or bad, this allows those people not interested (i.e. everyone) to leave and not have to endure the exchange.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17074,
"author": "BWSherwood",
"author_id": 12043,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12043",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Carl Sagan was a master of this. He would look at the person kindly, with interest, and answer politely and to the point. 'It has been show that the moon possesses its own gravity well and that holds the rover to it.' or 'It has been shown that the moon is not in fact green cheese, but is made of off rocks and minerals not so different from the earth'. etc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17076,
"author": "Mad Jack",
"author_id": 11192,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11192",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>For job talks and exams, another point to consider when formulating an answer to a \"dumb\" question is that the question posed by one attendee may in fact be a jab at another attendee. On my committee I had two faculty members that, putting it lightly, did not get along with each other. During my prelim and defense, I had to tread carefully when responding to questions from either of these two individuals in an effort to \"keep the peace.\" </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>... as well as internal strategies (i.e., how do you put yourself in a mindset where you're unlikely to react with rude or snarky answers in the first place)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In this case, my internal strategy suggestion would be to keep in mind that the question may not be what it seems, e.g. may not be \"dumb,\" as I explained above.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17102,
"author": "Bohemian",
"author_id": 12077,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12077",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is only one way to answer all questions (other than obvious \"joking\" ones): Answer it seriously, just like you would a \"smart\" question.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>I must share with you guys a question I heard asked at a cooking class. After the chef went through the quantities of a simple recipe, a student asked:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How do you make less?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The chef paused briefly (the stupid question light was clearly \"on\"), but answered it properly:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>You add less ingredients. Keep the proportions the same, say half of everything.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>ie, he answered it \"seriously\".</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17116,
"author": "Jos Bosmans",
"author_id": 12093,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12093",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Sometimes you can avoid humiliation for the person who ask the question by pretending they mean something else than the obvious, like they're using a metaphor or hyperbole. For example, you could start an answer to the question about the thrusters by saying:</p>\n\n<p>\"I assume when you say that the moon is made of cheese, you are in fact referring to the dust filled craters where the soil composition is indeed as soft as a cheddar cheese.\"</p>\n\n<p>And then you can continue answering about the physics of lifting off a rocket from a soft soil. This way the asker rather gains credit from the public for his amusing way to ask the question, instead of being humiliated.</p>\n\n<p>Likewise in the question about the rover, you can answer about the problems of traction based propulsion on a low gravity body, pretending that's what the asker wanted to ask all along. In this case, you'd probably get some weird looks, but when the person who asks the question is indeed a well respected member of the scientific society, everybody in the audience will assume there's some kind of \"high level\" joke going on and they're just missing the point.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17118,
"author": "littlekellilee",
"author_id": 11933,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11933",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Your intent is to not make them feel dumb. You need to assume every question is real, regardless of what it is, and so you won't be surprised by anything anyone says.</p>\n\n<p>The first step would be to repeat it back to them. Maybe you thought they said something like \"How does the Rover not fall to the Earth?\" when they really said \"How does the Rover befall on the Earth?\" Two very different questions but they sound somewhat similar, and the second question is a little less dumb (despite being strangely worded). Assuming you heard it right, this will allow the user to hear the question again, which might spark them to think about it and say \"oops! Never mind!\" and laugh it off.</p>\n\n<p>If you did hear it correctly and they're still curious, simply answer it like you would any other question. Don't just outright say \"Gravity.\" and then move on, instead explain the moon's gravitational acceleration and how that affects the Rover's ability to move. If they ask about the moon being made of cheese, explain what the moon's surface is made up of instead of saying \"It's not made of cheese.\" Saying something along the lines of \"The moon's surface is a composite of.... This provides a solid base for the Rover, and allows the thrusters to work as expected.\" would be much better for the student's ego, and provide extra information.</p>\n\n<p>Everyone has asked a stupid question in their lifetime, and you have to think about how you would want to be treated in that situation. If your professor laughed about it, along with the rest of the class, you'll feel not only extremely embarrassed but upset that your question wasn't answered. Having a realistic answer that not only helps you to understand the content better will eliminate embarrassment and cause the students to not be scared to ask questions in the future.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17206,
"author": "Jonas Kölker",
"author_id": 12154,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12154",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Simple: Tell them the facts.</p>\n\n<p>If they've committed a simple slip of the mind, they will accept your correction. Everyone else will recognize it for what it was and—hopefully—be tolerant of the kind of error they could just as easily have committed themselves. (If the questioner is surrounded by nasty jerks, <em>you</em> can't fix that. Even more not-so when considering the format and time constraints of a Q&A session.)</p>\n\n<p>If they persist in their error and they hold a fringe view, offer to debate them after the formal Q&A. If they persist in their error and they're a substantial minority (or more), announce that you will give priority to any question about something else, but proceed to debate them.</p>\n\n<p>In that way, those not interested in the debate will know that you want to satisfy them, while those interested in the debate know that you're not just ignoring them.</p>\n\n<p>If you debate the questioner(s), good debating manners apply:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Clearly state your own position and how you arrive at it.</li>\n<li>Demonstrate that you listen to the opposing side by reflecting their arguments back to them.</li>\n<li>Try to narrow down the scope of disagreement; in particular, try to find any root disagreements which could be the cause of subsequent disagreements.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>(For example, if they disagree with you about whether 2+2=4, they may start from the premise that whatever Big Brother says is true. If you know <em>that</em>, you can skip all arithmetical arguments.)</p>\n\n<p>If you keep narrowing the scope of the disagreement, the discussion must sooner or later come to a point where the two sides look at the same evidence and arguments and come to two different conclusions. At that point, I think everyone will have learned what is possible to learn from the discussion, and so it's appropriate to move on.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32950,
"author": "Charles Stewart",
"author_id": 24914,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24914",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you can use your answer to recapitulate something you said in your talk, do so: if the 'dumb' question shows they didn't follow something you said, it is quite likely that others also didn't follow. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 147688,
"author": "flow2k",
"author_id": 80524,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/80524",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Direct them to resources and references. </p>\n\n<p>\"The moon is not edible in raw form, as I understand. Dumbledore's papers on lunar culinary excursions discuss this in considerable detail\" or \"Snape's classic text explains this much better than I can here.\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 147689,
"author": "Daniel R. Collins",
"author_id": 43544,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43544",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here's a rhetorical tactic that I think gives the best results, but requires some advanced mental stretching, and is not something I can always pull off:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Find a nearby context in which their statement is <em>correct</em>, and then re-contextualize.</strong> </p>\n\n<p>This allows you to start off by saying that they're sort of, or mostly, right, and what you say afterward as means of correction will be perceived as much less offensive. I find that most of the time the crazy thing someone is saying actually would be correct in some slightly different situation. The problem is doing the immediate mental search of the \"sample space\" for the scenario in which the statement is correct.</p>\n\n<p><em>Example 1:</em> Q: \"But I was told that the equation <em>x</em>² + 1 = 0 has no solution?\" A: \"That's correct when one is restricted to the domain of the real number line. But remember, in this section of the class we're now using the domain of complex numbers, where it does have solutions.\"</p>\n\n<p><em>Example 2:</em> Q: \"How does the rover manage to drive around on the moon in the first place - shouldn't it just fall back down to Earth?\" A: \"That would actually happen if Earth was the only body in the universe with a gravity field. But remember, the Moon has its own powerful gravity field, so objects close to its surface will be held there more strongly than to the Earth.\"</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/16 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17022",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9538/"
]
|
17,033 | <p>I have been in a rush to accomplish academic goals since I remember myself. Started my PhD right after undergrad and did my Masters on the same time. Now I am about to submit my thesis and feel kind of burned out, having spend so many years in a far from perfect working environment. </p>
<p>Academia has always been my goal (I like both teaching and research and I am not interested in industry), which is why I started a PhD on the first place, but I really feel I need a big break to think clearly of what I really want before applying for a post-doc. I also read this somewhere: "The rest of your life you are going to be a scientist. This could be your last chance to be something else. Take it."</p>
<p>So I thought a "late gap year" would be ideal for me. I would get to travel, which I love, volunteer in wildlife conservation and in schools of developing countries and take some time to clear my mind, so that when I am back, I can take the right decision for a post-doc and be totally dedicated in it.</p>
<p>Up to now I have a decent resume with a 5th paper in preparation (including first-authored) and several international conferences, fellowships and awards. However, I am very concerned on the impact such a gap would have on my CV, since I want to apply in high reputation universities/institutes, where competition is fierce. </p>
<p>Should I tell a future PI I did a gap year and if not, what would be the appropriate excuse for a year off? Also would this gap have an impact in future job-seeking (mainly for positions in academia)? Finally, I am also worried about the reaction of my current PI (who has been asking me lately, which lab I am planning to apply for a PD) when I tell him my plans. The last thing I want is a reference letter from an angry PI.</p>
<p>*<em>EDIT</em>*My field is Molecular Biology. I performed my PhD research at several European countries and I am flexible with post-doc positions (Europe/Israel/US/...) depending on the projects available.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17037,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>As usual, if you include information about geographic location (both the current one and the one(s) in which you intend for the future) and your field, you can get more specific advice. Advice which is generalized across all the world's academia is at times extremely superficial.</p>\n\n<p>I will speak from the perspective of American academic mathematics. In this subculture, taking a full year off before starting a postdoc looks bad: the competition for postdocs is extremely fierce right now. For every postdoc position there are at least five other people who wanted that position but couldn't get it. So employers really want to give jobs to people who are sure that they want them, not those who are feeling \"kind of burned out\" or \"need a big break to think clearly of what I really want\".</p>\n\n<p>If you take a full year off <em>instead</em> of applying for postdocs, then unless you have something amazing to show for yourself at the end of that time, the year off will definitely hurt your applications. Whether or not you can actually do work during a \"year off\" seems highly field dependent: in mathematics this is certainly possible; in laboratory science this seems much less feasible. </p>\n\n<p>Here is some advice that I would offer you:</p>\n\n<p>1) If you want to take some length of time off, try to secure a job upon return <em>before you take the time off</em>. </p>\n\n<p>If this happens then in some sense you do not really have an employment gap, and that will look much better on your CV.</p>\n\n<p>2) Consider taking a smaller amount of time off than a year. </p>\n\n<p>A year is a really long time to put aside one's career. In fact many people would have trouble supporting themselves (especially if they have families or dependents, which I guess you do not) over such a long unpaid stretch. It is also more than enough time for your academic skills to atrophy. In some academic fields (pure mathematics not so much, although in some subfields this could still come into play) a year off is enough to make your entire research program less fresh and cutting edge. Anyway, imagine that you are competing with many talented young people who spent the first year after getting their PhD working their butts off. Do you really want to spot them an entire year headstart? As other people remarked in a closely related question: whether it is fair or not, you should imagine that a big clock in the sky starts ticking the second you receive your PhD. From that point on, people will be evaluating your work not just in an absolute sense but relative to the time elapsed from that point. Adding in an extra year makes almost anyone's profile look much less strong.</p>\n\n<p>I think you should consider taking a shorter amount of time off: either a semester or a long summer. As the American academic calendar runs, you will have a built-in vacation of about three months just by virtue of being an unemployed PhD over the summer. I really enjoyed this time: I moved into an apartment downtown in the city where I grew up but hadn't spent more than a few weeks at a time for my entire adult life. It really was refreshing and recharged my batteries. However, it also depleted my savings: by the time the new semester rolled around, I really needed the paychecks. </p>\n\n<p>If you need much more than three months' break from a career, you should ask yourself: are you sure that this career is really for you?</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 87036,
"author": "einpoklum",
"author_id": 7319,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7319",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First and most important point: <strong>Taking a breather for your emotional well-being is much better than feeling remorse, fatigue and possible burn-out later.</strong></p>\n\n<p>Other than that...</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>A lot of people have \"gap\" in their academic activity by working in industry - which can be a lot longer than one year. Women often have gaps when giving birth and taking an extended period of time to care for their (or should I say our?) newborn children. And there are other kinds of gaps. So even if these gaps are not the highly-regarded norm, they're still a de-facto norm.</p></li>\n<li><p>We're not all robots who care about nothing but immediate fast-track academic rat-racing. Will you get penalized for this when seeking a post-doc? It's certainly possible; but are you sure you want the \"advantage\" of appearing to be someone who's under stress to perform all day everyday and can be leaned upon a lot?</p></li>\n<li><p>I'm nearly certain that during your year off you will end up doing something that you could be proud to present as what you've done during that year.</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/16 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17033",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11985/"
]
|
17,050 | <p>While writing a paper I discussed its first draft with a certain colleague (he is from a <em>different</em> university, so it is not likely that he will be automatically ruled out as a reviewer as suggested in the Visoft's answer). He made a few helpful suggestions but by and large didn't like the paper: he would like the results to be compared with the ones one could obtain using his favorite method -- but this is a separate piece of hard work, and his favorite method is, to put it mildly, far from being universally recognized by the community of experts in the field.</p>
<p>I would like to acknowledge his helpful suggestions in the paper but at the same time I would like to rule him out as a possible reviewer (some journals give you an opportunity to let them know whom the paper should NOT be sent for review).</p>
<p><strong>QUESTION:</strong> How should one word the acknowledgment of this colleague's helpful suggestions in the paper in a way compatible with excluding him as a possible reviewer, so that the editor who will handle the paper does not get confused by the whole situation and honors my request to exclude this person from the list of possible reviewers? </p>
<p>Also, which is the best way to state the reason for excluding this person from the list of reviewers (conflict of interests, or something else)?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance.</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17052,
"author": "visoft",
"author_id": 8955,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8955",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>learning, welcome to Academia StackExchange.</p>\n\n<p>In my opinion you should add the name of your colleague to the acknowledgment section of your paper because he gave constructive hints:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>\"The authors would like to thank Mr. xxx for the helpful suggestions regarding chapter X, \" etc.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Most of the editors rule out automatically reviewers based on their affiliations or proximity with the authors (previous work together, previous shared affiliations, etc). So there are very small chances that a colleague of yours be your reviewer. I only heard of this situation once, on some conference.</p>\n\n<p>If the journal asks you for a list of possible/avoidable reviewers you can list him/her here. However, the list is just a suggestion and the editor might choose another reviewers. Best reason for reviewer rejection is, in your situation, to explain that you worked together. </p>\n\n<p>On a side note, you might mention other methods and rule them out based on some (semi)objective criteria (rarely used, without available implementation, debatable, etc). Anyway, be prepared to accept the reviewer's comments even if they require implementing some rare and weird techniques.</p>\n\n<p>Hope it helps!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17053,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, I assume that you do not mean \"colleague\" in the narrow sense of someone at your institution? That would make a (nearly?) universally inappropriate choice of reviewer, right?</p>\n\n<p>Regarding your question: I must admit that I don't have much direct experience with \"suggested excluded reviewers\". I am almost never asked that question on papers I submit; I think I might have done so once: when I did it, the idea was to help out the editors by pointing to someone that they might have thought had a lot of directly relevant expertise but that I knew would not actually be so interested in reviewing the work in question. The point is that I interpreted this as a (ever so slightly pathetic, I might add: I think this occurred at, by far, the lowest quality journal I have ever submitted to) request from the editors for me to help them out in finding a good person for the job, not excluding potential reviewers for \"conflict of interest\" reasons.</p>\n\n<p>Because of this I am not totally clear on what constitutes a \"conflict of interest\" for a reviewer: in doing any referee work one volunteers to give one's professional opinion. I don't have any \"academic enemies\", but moreover I once recommended for rejection a paper by one of my closest friends: and it was a very good paper; I just thought that it was not good enough for the journal to which it was submitted. (Because I knew the person I also felt that he could get a better publication by working on it a little longer, and in fact that is what happened: about a year later he published a magnificent paper in a higher quality journal.) Oh, back to you: is it clear that your colleague would actually be an inappropriate referee for the paper? Were his opinions about doing the alternate method actually fully <em>professional</em> opinions, or is that just his more personal reaction to the paper, reading it in terms of his own interests? Moreover, does his alternate perspective really lack validity in some sense? If so, then wouldn't a good editor not choose him anyway? </p>\n\n<p>To summarize the above: it is not clear to me that \"X already read my paper, and he didn't like it so much\" is a sufficient reason to exclude X as a potential referee. You wonder what the language of exclusion should be, and I agree: you'll have to work a little harder to paint this as a <em>conflict of interest</em>: I'm not seeing that.</p>\n\n<p>But okay, now a direct answer: well, they asked you if there's anyone you'd like to exclude, so it's really up to them to evaluate the reasons. If you don't want this person to review your paper I would say so using exactly the reasons you've told us: then it is up to the editors to decide whether to grant your request.</p>\n\n<p>Let me give one other piece of advice which may seem a little shady at first but which I claim is mostly practical:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Consider not acknowledging your colleague in the first version of the paper you submit, knowing that you will put this acknowledgment back in the published version.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Concerning this, let me first say that you cannot do it if his contributions were beyond a certain point: it would then simply be academic dishonesty. But many acknowledgments are subjective largesse: you have not just won an Academy Award, so you don't thank every single person that helped you.</p>\n\n<p>Anyway, the reason why I recommend this if it is possible is to short-circuit the dopey editorial practice -- <strong>which I have seen happen several times</strong> -- that the editors send a paper to a certain reviewer <em>because she is explicitly acknowledged</em>. What a frustratingly lazy practice this is. </p>\n\n<p>The editors who ask the author's opinion on referees tend (in my direct experience) to be lazy types, who just might choose someone in the acknowledgments...and might do so thinking they are doing you a favor! So the idea of delaying the acknowledgment to forestall a bad editorial choice seems ethically defensible to me. Finally, if the editors are asking for the author's opinion perhaps they will also ask you for especially plausible referees? If so you should think hard and suggest really good choices: i.e., the most qualified people, not necessarily the ones who would like your paper the best.</p>\n\n<p><b>Added</b>: After airing out my advice to unacknowledge your former collaborator X, I am having trouble standing by it. Based on what you say there is a good chance that X actually would be the referee, and if he can then see that your paper has been modified according to his advice but that you have not mentioned him, then it is possible that he might be personally hurt by it and that this might come out in the referee report. I think the \"unacknowledgment\" suggested above is only feasible if the version of the paper you're submitting does not bear any mark of X's helpful suggestions. As I said, whether X is an appropriate referee for your paper really is up to the editors to decide. You can help them out by giving them all the appropriate information. Doing much more than that could be ethically problematic...</p>\n\n<p><b>Added</b>: Upon further reflection I can only <em>clearly</em> remember the practice of being asked to referee a paper in which I was acknowledged happening once. I'm sorry for the inaccuracy. However that one time was from a leading journal, and I made sure to ask whether the editor was aware that I had been acknowledged in the paper, and he was.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17092,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is a normal procedure. When sending a manuscript together with the letter to the editor, it is normally possible to list several researchers or laboratories as competitors, not appropriate for the reviewing of this publication. This is especially appropriate if topics overlap and a lot depends on who will publish first.</p>\n\n<p>The editor will simply pick some other competent reviewers. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17108,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As has been suggested by others it is easy to exclude people from being reviewers. You usually provide a cover letter for your submission and you can point out that certain persons have been involved with the work but are not authors. You can thank the person any way you want in the acknowledgement. A person who is involved in work and who is asked to review a paper should also decline with the obvious excuse that they have a conflict of interest. Thus everyone in the process has some obligation to keep reviews on track and objective. It is furthermore possible and even requested at the time of submission to list persons who may have conflict of interest or who are \"non-preferred reviewers\" due, for example, to personal conflicts etc.</p>\n\n<p>So to answer the main question. you can phrase the acknowledgement anyway you want, it is not the place to list people who may have a conflict of interest, you should do this in the cover letter or, if the submission system provides it, when non-preferred reviewers should be listed. The cover letter, is however, the best place since you can describe the problem to the editor.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17050",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10483/"
]
|
17,051 | <p>I have a desire to teach at one of the colleges/universities in my area. I think my experience in industry and my own educational background would be an asset to an IT program. However, I'm finding that when looking for positions, all require previous teaching experience. This requirement exists at the technical college, local community colleges and two universities in my area. </p>
<p>I'd like to start by teaching a night class or two. How does one go about translating valuable industry experience (combined with Bachelor and Masters degrees) to the teaching requirements that are desired by the institutions?</p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17054,
"author": "user26732",
"author_id": 12028,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12028",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Get in touch with the institutions you mentioned and offer to substitute. Like everyone else, teachers get sick from time to time or have to go on leave for a variety of reasons after the term has started. When you offer to substitute, you are offering a solution to a problem that is almost an emergency--most professors do not have understudies (yes, large universities have TA's but smaller institutions were mentioned in the question0. Once you have substituted a bit, you will be in a better position to know if you like teaching and you will have at least a minimum amount of experience. </p>\n\n<p>You didn't say whether teaching experience in your field is required, or just teaching experience in general. If it's the latter, you could go overseas and teach English (or teach in an ESL program) or take an education course that provided for hands-on experience. </p>\n\n<p>But I think the easiest way would be to substitute. You could also contact high schools as well, they try to put an emphasis on IT when they can and someone with your industry experience--even if just a few days per month--would be a real catch. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17075,
"author": "Irwin",
"author_id": 5944,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5944",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Look for positions for sessional/part time instructors and apply.</p>\n\n<p>An example posting might be <a href=\"https://www.uoguelph.ca/sessional_ta/sessionjobpost/se28180-mathematics-and-statistics-math2170\" rel=\"nofollow\">Sessional Instructor</a> or <a href=\"http://jobs.uoregon.edu/unclassified.php?id=4253\" rel=\"nofollow\">Adjunct Instructor</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Most of them require some evidence that you've done well in a similar course, so it may be prudent to have transcripts handy. It may also be prudent to email the department directly and say that you're interested in adjunct teaching and to ask about opportunities that they have, and to express your qualifications.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17077,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I've seen community colleges hire people with less than a master degree to teach IT. These people did have quite a few industry certifications, held respectable positions in the local community, etc. I heard people at the school saying \"If anyone questions that person's qualifications, we have enough to support our decision.\" The CC in question was in a very small town, which I think had a lot to do with that decision.</p>\n\n<p>In the end, your qualifications might be just fine. The issue is whether a school needs someone. The only way to know the answer to that question is to ask. Meet with the appropriate people at some local schools and explain your situation. It is quite common for schools to use adjuncts: partly because they are cheaper, and partly because they have current industry experience.</p>\n\n<p>I have never seen a school which is angry when presented with an additional labor choice. So, you do no harm by scheduling a meeting to see if they would be interested.</p>\n\n<p>As far as the teaching experience, that is more easily gained than you might think. You can see <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11422/2692\">my answer</a> here to a <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/11416/2692\">related question</a>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17084,
"author": "Mad Jack",
"author_id": 11192,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11192",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>From my own personal experience, I recommend seeking out adjunct positions at the community college level. To get some teaching experience, I sought out a school in my hometown which also had apprenticeship-type programs and they were looking for someone to teach a semester's worth of courses for these students. All I had was a M.S. in engineering at the time plus some industry experience. Seek out the current faculty at some community colleges in your area and ask them if they know of any positions for which you could take on as an adjunct. As far as I know, the position that I was able to obtain was not advertised; I found out about it from a professor at the school.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17182,
"author": "J.R.",
"author_id": 780,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/780",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It wouldn't hurt to find out who does the scheduling for the department, and meet with them in person. Tell them your career goals, and ask them to keep you in mind should any unexpected openings come up. Leave them a business card. </p>\n\n<p>Nothing may happen for a year or two. But, sooner or later, a professor is bound to retire, or take a sabbatical, or be unable to teach because of an illness. A college may be all set on paper, but then have a sudden, last-minute need to hire an adjunct. </p>\n\n<p>This approach requires a little bit of luck, and a mighty good first impression, but it could open a door for you down the road. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21836,
"author": "Raydot",
"author_id": 13535,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13535",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One thing no one has said: Being good at your job does not necessarily make you a good teacher. I have been the lead tech faculty for two good sized schools and have watched a lot of top-notch professionals flame out very quickly (almost including me!). </p>\n\n<p>Make sure you look into the practice of teaching and have a plan so that when you go in for an interview you've got something to say about how you plan to approach your courses. </p>\n\n<p>As for actually finding a job, universities ALWAYS need technical teachers. Don't listen to the pooh=poohers who say you can't do it without a Ph. D. In a lot of ways not having one but having boatloads of industry can work in your favor. You also seem to be thinking \"IT,\" but lots of schools have programs in subjects like web design and they're hard pressed to find teachers! Take a good look at all of the curriculum offered and see where else you might be a good fit.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17051",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12026/"
]
|
17,066 | <p>Research is an activity, a process to obtain knowledge, which has been greatly empowered by the scientific method. </p>
<p>We can collect lots of information about research, consider impact factors, etc.</p>
<p>There is data and information there, that data could possibly become knowledge through some analysis, hypothesis testing, and in general terms <em>research</em>. So what I'm talking about here is research about research, meta-research.</p>
<p>First of all, I'm interested to know whether this has been done in the past.</p>
<p>Second, if this has been done (I guess so), I would like to know by what name, so that I can search for it. It's easier to find information about fluid dynamics when you know it stands by the name of fluid dynamics.</p>
<p>BTW: I'm not interested in philosophy or epistemology, but science and hard verifiable facts.</p>
<p>There may be some lack of that, whatever that is. Related article: <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-statistical-errors-1.14700">Scientific method: Statistical errors</a></p>
| [
{
"answer_id": 17068,
"author": "SoB",
"author_id": 11923,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11923",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There has been some research done on citation patterns. See for example <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_analysis</a>. A recent post asked <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16759/is-there-an-inflation-in-the-number-of-authors-per-paper\">Is there an inflation in the number of authors per paper?</a>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17069,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Are you asking about scientometrics?</p>\n\n<p>From Wikipedia: \"Scientometrics is the study of measuring and analysing science research.\" <a href=\"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics\">http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics</a></p>\n\n<p>It's a major field of study in its own right, with its own journals, etc. </p>\n\n<p>Citation analysis, mentioned by James Barrett, is one area of scientometrics; there are many others. For example, formal studies of the prevalence of research fraud also fall in this category.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17071,
"author": "BSteinhurst",
"author_id": 7561,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7561",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The sociology of science is another possible avenue. It may not qualify as the most data driven way to study science but it does shed some interesting light on the effects of intermediate reports, naming of concepts, and funding strategies amongst many other topics. You may liken it more to the study of scientists rather than of science per se. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17072,
"author": "Piotr Migdal",
"author_id": 49,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science\">Philosophy of Science</a>, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science\">History of Science</a>, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_scientific_knowledge\">Sociology of Science</a>, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics\">Scientometrics</a> to name a few meta-sciences.</p>\n\n<p>(General trick for meta-science: use <em>X of Science</em>, where <em>X</em> is a science.\nTo generalize it even further, for meta-X, use <em>X of Y</em>, for some <em>X</em> in <em>Y</em>.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17091,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In bioinformatics, it is common to do the data mining, generalization and normalization, putting together results of multiple past research projects. See for instance the <a href=\"https://www.genevestigator.com/gv/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Genevestigator</a> project that does normalized analysis of multiple available micro-array experiments. </p>\n\n<p>The idea behind this project was that while raw data obtained by different laboratories are largely of the same type, the subsequent processing and normalization is often too different to make the numeric results actually comparable. The project collects raw data and applies the same normalization for them.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 17275,
"author": "tom_q",
"author_id": 11883,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11883",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>If the objective of meta-science is to determine what are the good ways to perform science</strong>, it immediately runs into a major methodological hurdle: it is necessarily going to beg the question. That is why work by e.g. Popper counts as \"merely\" philosophy of science. So if that is the meaning of your question, then the question <em>\"Give me meta-science that is not philosophy of science\"</em> is similar to <em>\"give me an answer to 2+2 that is not 4\"</em>. It will only result in bad answers, because you are excluding the only good answer.</p>\n\n<p><strong>If the objective of meta-science is to better understand what happens in the practice of science</strong>, then you cannot exclude sociology of science, as science is a social activity (you mention impact factors yourself: I do not think any discipline is better suited at understanding those than sociology, or the related field of scientometrics).</p>\n\n<p>So the question is poorly formulated and cannot be answered satisfactorily. The current first answer (Piotr Migdal) would be the best answer if the question was modified in such a way that it can be answered.</p>\n"
}
]
| 2014/02/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17066",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7571/"
]
|
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