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20,322 |
<p>There are essentially two ways for plotting three-dimensional data:</p>
<ul>
<li>Colour maps (or heat maps)¹:<br>
<img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/rwVSw.png" alt="enter image description here"></li>
<li>Surface plots:<br>
<img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/TMsB7.png" alt="enter image description here"></li>
</ul>
<p>While surface plots are quite nice to visualise data if you can interactively move the perspective, they often obfuscate aspects of the data if you only have one perspective at hand – as it is mostly the case in papers or presentations. And even if the data is benign for surface plots, I have not yet met an example where it adds anything to the colour map, at least in my opinion. This holds for the case where the two are combined, i.e., the surface is coloured (as in the above example).</p>
<p>As surface plots are still used, even by people who are otherwise making very good plots, I wonder whether I am missing something here. Thus my question is: Given that I have evenly sampled, three-dimensional data and that I can only show one image to visualise it², <strong>is there any argument or situation due to which I should use a surface plot instead of a colour map?</strong> In both cases, assume optimally chosen plotting parameters, such as the colour scheme or the viewing angle. Also, you can assume that the plot is being used in an academic context, e.g., a paper, presentation or poster. In particular, the audience can be expected to be able to read such a plot and things like fanciness should not be an argument.</p>
<hr>
<p><sup>¹ This example is just to illustrate the types of plot. I am not asking about how they specifically should be presented.
² And thus, showing a video or multiple perspectives is not an option.</sup></p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20329,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>As everything, it depends. Here is a 3d plot of a mass-spectroscopic peak in time and mass to charge:\n<img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/nZIjf.png\" alt=\"zoomin\"></p>\n\n<p>You can get a pretty good idea of its shape and how important noise is. Also, as it is a wireframe, you can see what is behind. If you want to see several of them I can show you too:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/lm0l8.png\" alt=\"zoomout\"></p>\n\n<p>Now the thickness is not so obvious, but still, you get a nice idea of the whole thing. You can immediately see the relative intensities, and patterns like the uppermost corner, where there are several peaks parallel to each other (which is an important feature of my data), with falling intensities.</p>\n\n<p>For the show off, I generated a bigger slice with Blender, that gives a nice feeling of how the data looks like, including the long \"ridges\", parallel peaks, noise, and profiles:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/0vlDl.jpg\" alt=\"blender\"></p>\n\n<p>In this case, I don't care some peaks are covering each other because the exact positioning is quite random. If I do a heatmap I get this:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/kd57O.png\" alt=\"heatmap\"></p>\n\n<p>I can overlay more information, like the red lines on top, but now we have lost track of the relative intensities, actual shapes, and level of noise.</p>\n\n<p>In my case, the 3D works because the position of the peaks is quite random, and the exact shape varies from experiment to experiment. Also, intensities and noise are important, and one needs to keep them in mind. But if you want to plot a function (say, a kernel density), where the exact shape is important, and relative values are not so much, a heatmap or a contour plot are usually a better choice.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20330,
"author": "Piotr Migdal",
"author_id": 49,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are four questions, in the order as below:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>what you want to show or put the emphasis on?</li>\n<li>which visualization makes the data as clear as possible to read and interpret?</li>\n<li>what is typical way of showing data in your field (to reduce confusion)?</li>\n<li>(optional) does it make sense in black and white? (some people print papers; sometimes displays have poor color display)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In the case you have shown, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_map\" rel=\"nofollow\"><strong>heat map</strong></a> looks much more clear; <strong>surface plot</strong> may have some visual appeal (arguably), but obfuscates the data (some places are hidden, it is harder to read numerical values and see symmetries). Also, it may be good to consider <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contour_line\" rel=\"nofollow\"><strong>contour plot</strong></a> with values on contours as it is printable in black and white.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20337,
"author": "nivag",
"author_id": 14115,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14115",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think the choice here is mainly a question of taste. Personally, I always prefer the the colour map type plots but I know some people who strongly prefer surface plots. The brief arguments for each are as follows:</p>\n\n<p>Colour map:</p>\n\n<p>Pros:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Less possibility of hiding or misleading data by obstruction.</p></li>\n<li><p>More accurate representation of the data (no perspective effects).</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Cons:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Can be hard to plot selected areas and similar things (although not impossible).</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Surface plot:</p>\n\n<p>Pros:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Look nicer (I strongly disagree)</p></li>\n<li><p>Can be useful if you want to show multiple things on one plot, e.g. height with one area selected (you colour the selected area but put the height surface)</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Cons:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Very easy to hide some data behind something or make it unclear.</p></li>\n<li><p>I find it sometimes difficult to \"unwrap\" the image to get back to the height.</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20322",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7734/"
] |
20,323 |
<p>I know you should build a good network with your professors as early as possible, not only it will help your study, but also you can get great recommendation letter from them. </p>
<p>But not all students aim at graduate school when they start their undergraduate, for example, I only became interest in research and decide on going to graduate school after my third year of undergraduate. At that time, I have done a research project with a professor and certainly I can ask him for one. However, most schools require 2-3 recommendation letters.</p>
<p>I know a good recommendation letter should speak about the candidate research potential instead of 'did well in my class', but in my case, only my undergraduate adviser can speak about that. What should I do besides asking recommendation letter from professors I get A grade in their classes? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20363,
"author": "sevensevens",
"author_id": 14754,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14754",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I decided I wanted to attend grad-school at the end of my junior year - here is what I did</p>\n\n<p>1) I had done research with one prof, so I had one good reference in the bag.</p>\n\n<p>2) My senior year I was voted president of the ACM, and had a faculty advisory (2nd reference). Knowing I wanted to attend grad-school made the extra time I put into this make sense.</p>\n\n<p>3) Third reference came from a prof I had taken several classes with and who worked with the other 2 references on several research projects.</p>\n\n<p>4) Due to an incompetent class adviser (not academic) incorrectly signing me up for the wrong class, I had to wait an extra year to graduate. This gave me extra time to strengthen my application. Look around for a summer research opportunity.</p>\n\n<p>NOTE: I'm not suggesting delaying graduation for a year to get into grad-school. There were several downsides to having that happen to me. Just start looking at everything more strategically, and if a situation presents itself to allow you to strengthen your application take it - even it it means sacrificing in the short term. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20364,
"author": "vector07",
"author_id": 14719,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14719",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here are some thoughts. Figure out what classes you took that</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>are most similar to the type of graduate school you're applying for, and</li>\n<li>you did well in.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Then set up a meeting with your former professor(s) of those classes to tell them a little about yourself, why you're planning on going to graduate school, and the situation you're in. I think any professor, and especially those in your future area of study are going to be very understanding of your situation and happy to help you out. It might help to talk with them a little about your research experiences and/or furnish them with a CV/resume detailing those and other experiences so that they may write a nice letter for you.</p>\n\n<p>I think short of taking off some more time, doing research in a second lab, etc, you don't have much choice in this matter! But never fear, I think the letter from your advisor is going to be the one that carries the most weight.</p>\n\n<p>EDIT. Just wanted to add, in the process of deciding which professors to talk to, take a gander at <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9341/how-do-i-make-sure-i-get-strong-recommendation-letters-for-faculty-positions\">this post about getting a 'strong' recommendation</a>. Lots of good advice there. One idea that might be particularly applicable to you is asking whichever professor you talk to about where they think you should apply, etc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20439,
"author": "Superbest",
"author_id": 244,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Of course, the best solution to this problem is not to have it in the first place. Being proactive and thinking about the future is sometimes a rare talent, especially in 18 year olds fresh out of high school, but then again grad school is supposed to select the exceptional individuals.</p>\n\n<p>There is a world of difference between a recommendation from someone you worked with, and from a mere acquaintance. The latter kind rarely benefits your application in a meaningful way, and can sometimes even hurt it. No matter how enthusiastic your instructor is, unless the course is at least a project-centric course (eg. grade is based entirely on your individual term project), they will not be able to make a good, in depth argument for your abilities, and the recommendation will therefore be weak.</p>\n\n<p>The point of the recommendation is that the admissions committee will read it, and decide whether you have potential to be a good researcher. How can they, if the recommendation does not talk about your research at all? And how much better if instead of hinting at your potential indirectly by citing course performance, the recommender can just say \"this person has potential to be a great researcher because I have personally seen that they are good at research\"? </p>\n\n<p>This is why there is a qualitative difference. This can be a big problem when applying to a very selective program. What if you apply to a program where the committee has a philosophy that \"an application is only as strong as its weakest link\"? Even if you are quite exceptional otherwise, you can get eliminated early on because there are many other applicants who are also exceptional, but don't have a recommendation problem.</p>\n\n<p>Also, similar to how a lukewarm recommendation can mean \"I think this person is a bad candidate, but I am not being negative out of politeness\", a recommendation from someone who only taught a course can mean \"this person is a slacker who never bothered to do real work, so they can't find any supervisors to recommend them\".</p>\n\n<p>The best way to remedy is really to obtain more \"good\" recommenders. Because you want people who supervised you, the solution is obvious: You haven't been supervised by enough people who will vouch for you; you must undertake more projects and be supervised by other people whose recommendation will carry weight.</p>\n\n<p>If still in school, look for faculty whose lab you can work in. If that is difficult, try approaching a former (or current) instructor with an idea for a theoretical or computational project (this requires less commitment from them, so they may be easier to convince). It doesn't necessarily have to be original research, so long as you can come up with a relatively long term (at least half a year) project where you are the primary contributor. It could also be (more) valuable to spend a summer working in a lab at a different university.</p>\n\n<p>If out of school, delay your application by 1-3 years, and look for work as a lab tech at a university, institute or private company. Make sure not to displease your boss.</p>\n\n<p>A related problem is working for a long time with the same person, for instance an undergrad who spends 3 years in the same lab. This is actually better, because you can accomplish much more in 3 years, and you can have a very impressive project to sell yourself with. The issue is that you will have only one supervisor - but hopefully after 3 years, you will have networked with collaborators and other scientists and will not have a problem there.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20323",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14682/"
] |
20,324 |
<p>I'm a PhD candidate in Computer Science and I'm working on my first paper that should be published in a peer-reviewed journal (until now, I published only papers in conferences).
My project is a FPGA memory module, which uses a specific approach (the main idea) to obtain better performance in terms of access philosophy and capacity.</p>
<p>Now, the mentioned idea is naturally the bulk of the paper, with the math, proofs, algorithms, etc. behind it. But, since the module was synthesized and tested, I feel obliged to address its obtained "measures".</p>
<p>The process generated quite a lot data which become even more after the simulations were done. So, I'm not sure what charts/tables are appropriate to analyze and publish in a paper? (e.g. input->output delay for a range of inputs; parameters like max clock, number of logic elements; perhaps even (parts) of the schema; etc.)</p>
<p>As this seems a bit specific, I would like to broaden the scope of the question. Namely, the general issue here is how to filter data which does not directly contribute to the understanding of the main idea, but is the result of a finished project and can be used to reinforce the researched concept with practical measurements and simulations. This obtained data is large, so I'm asking for guidelines what could be considered concise enough to put into a paper. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20326,
"author": "410 gone",
"author_id": 96,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Read a couple of dozen papers that are similar in nature (that is, in terms of the method and how the research question is addresssed) to yours and are in your target journal. Look at how they've supplied the sort of detailed information you're talking about.</p>\n\n<p>As a rule-of-thumb, put it all into supplementary information. And then follow the advice of your edit and peer-reviewers, if they advise moving things. If there are particular numbers that contribute to your main narrative, put those numbers in the body of the paper, too.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20336,
"author": "Peteris",
"author_id": 10730,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10730",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<h2>Use the Internet</h2>\n\n<p>Put the raw dataset in an easily accessible format (and it's description) on a public online repository, preferably in one actively maintained by your institution - most of them seem to have such resources.</p>\n\n<p>If it \"does not directly contribute to the understanding of the main idea\", then simply refer to the relevant URL in your paper - the data is still useful in verification, replication, and further analysis by others.</p>\n\n<p>Do make sure that the repository and URL is one that would stick around for decades, not only a couple of years. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20324",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14133/"
] |
20,325 |
<p>I am analysing data from a commercial instrument. I need to set a threshold that has to do with the precision of the instrument, so I looked up the value from the manufacturer's online specifications. How do I cite it?</p>
<p>The university does not have any official policy, and other papers in the field either don't mention it explicitly, or give the value without citation, but I believe this is actually a quite relevant number, and thus should be specified and quoted.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20327,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Basically, you can cite this user's manual just as you would any book-like publication. The only difference is that you don't cite the name of an author:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><em>User's Manual for Foo Instrument, Model Bar</em>. Random City: XYZ Corporation (Year).</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>or whatever is the appropriate reference style for your work.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20339,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Adding to the existing answer, in some cases citing documents that are not accessible to the research community is discouraged (e.g. a manual that is delivered with the equipment). In this case you could also say: 'We used the Foo Instrument (Manufacturer, City, Country) and set the threshold to 0.86 according to the manufacturer's manual'.</p>\n\n<p>If the manual is accessible online, which seems to be the case here, you should cite the url with the date and time you accessed it.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20325",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587/"
] |
20,332 |
<p>I am seeking some help to find research papers (preferably in the area of Markov chains) for my undergraduate research for reference. Any guidance on how to find research papers in general for undergraduate level research will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20335,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The most useful advice I've ever gotten about finding research papers: Book an appointment with a research librarian.</p>\n\n<p>Get in touch with your university's library and see if you can make an hour or so appointment, or if they offer workshops or classes on searching the literature. There job is, quite literally, to know how to find information, and generally they're more than happy to share their expertise. Even as an experienced graduate student, I got things out of my visits with them.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20338,
"author": "Matthew G.",
"author_id": 1165,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1165",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Academic knowledge is connected through a web of citations and references. Once you have a piece of that web, you can follow the threads towards other papers. </p>\n\n<p>Start at the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain\">Wikipedia Page</a>, specifically the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain#Notes\">Notes</a> and <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain#References\">References</a> sections. </p>\n\n<p>See if any of the links there take you to a PDF... look for DOI numbers, or PDF in the link. If not, use Google to try to find a paper. Start reading it. </p>\n\n<p>Look for a word or phrase you recognize, and want to know more about, or something seems about the direction you want to go. Likely, this will be cited... look in the references section of that paper, then google that paper (or follow the kindly provided <a href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0001870870900344\">links</a>). </p>\n\n<p>You're traversing a web of references, so you'll come back to the same papers sometimes. If I were you, I'd keep notes about each of the papers I look into.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Title</li>\n<li>Authors</li>\n<li>Link to PDF</li>\n<li>Single sentence summary. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Once you've been doing this for a day or so, you'll notice that there are some authors who have a good connection to the topic you're interested in. Look up their university web page; Often they'll have a list of their papers. </p>\n\n<p>Essentially, you are crawling the web of references yourself. Keep following the links, keep track of where you've been, where you want to go. </p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Oh, one other thing: Google Scholar is a decent choice for getting an overview of a topic because it will sort papers by reference count: Highly cited papers often contain important information; Be it an excellent summary or a novel insight. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20332",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11185/"
] |
20,340 |
<p>My graduate program is a non-research based. However, I am interested in writing and presenting a conference paper. Is it possible for me to do this even as I am not into research work?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20341,
"author": "Layla",
"author_id": 6144,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6144",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Of course you can submit any paper you want. There are a lot of people, for example in the industry field, that submit papers to conferences.</p>\n\n<p>But as they have stated in one comment, as soon as you start preparing a paper, that per se converts you into a researcher.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20359,
"author": "sevensevens",
"author_id": 14754,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14754",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes - I've attended several research presentations by people who are not \"academic\" researchers, and who just wanted to present the results of an interesting project. Several companies encourage workers to submit papers as this</p>\n\n<p>1) Increases the prestige of the company</p>\n\n<p>2) Even if you do not patent, by publishing you have made your idea un-patentable by creating prior art. So you've also protected your IP. (NOTE: I'm not a lawyer)</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20340",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14947/"
] |
20,358 |
<p>I am writing a paper describing some of the research I have done. As part of my work I have developed an open-source library and made it available on Github. </p>
<p>How should I link to it? </p>
<p>Should I cite it in the bibliography or make a footnote with the link to the software?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20360,
"author": "Peteris",
"author_id": 10730,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10730",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Such resources, especially if they are a supplementary to the paper, i.e. in some sense a part of it, should be referenced in a footnote and not in bibliography.</p>\n\n<p>Do include not only the URL but also a short description; and do try to keep that URL valid - once you publish that link, it's frozen forever.</p>\n\n<p>It also helps to include the opposite citation. In the readme file of that library, include full citation information of your paper. This will allow others to gain extra information about the methods, and also give you citations if/when others build upon your work.</p>\n\n<p>Some publishers also support binary attachments for supplementary information. If they do, you should use it - prepare a package of the current stable version and upload it there. It allows for reproducability, as a specific version is referenced which relates to the actual paper, and not some improvements done in 2020 that change everything; and it also attaches all relevant information together with the paper at the publisher's site, which will stay valid even if that github repository goes away for whatever reason.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20361,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In previous papers, I've used something like (source code available at github.com/fomite/brilliantwork) when describing the software methods used.</p>\n\n<p><em>However</em> <a href=\"http://figshare.com\">Figshare</a> now allows you to directly import a repo from GitHub, which will give you a DOI you can reference as a citation. This also provides a benefit for having a \"snapshot\" of the repo at the time of publication, for repositories that will continue to be worked on. That, plus the ability for me and other people to cite the repo directly (and thus be able to get some traditional citation metrics to show the impact of the software), is what I'll be doing in the future.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20443,
"author": "E.P.",
"author_id": 820,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/820",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The specifics depend on your field, and I think most areas have very loose guidelines as to what to do in these situations. The only hard-and-fast rule is that you need to get it past your reviewers and your editors, who will tell you if the style is inappropriate. Other than that, the most important thing is that you yourself are happy that the citation is getting your GitHub repo the most visibility possible. Finally, you should consider your paper from the perspective of readers that may want to use and cite your code, and who will naturally look to your writing for how to do that.</p>\n\n<p>In general, I would recommend citing the code in the bibliography, as one more reference. The advantage of this is that your article's references will be listed and indexed separately, and (with luck) this will register as links pointing towards your repo, which will become more of an advantage if more people cite it. Such a citation should have</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>the name of the programme,</li>\n<li>the URL of the repository, and </li>\n<li>a clear indication of the version cited and its date.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>An example citation is</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>G. A. Worth, M. H. Beck, A. Jackle, and H.-D. Meyer. The MCTDH Package, Version 8.2, (2000), University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany. H.-D. Meyer, Version 8.3 (2002), Version 8.4 (2007). See <a href=\"http://mctdh.uni-hd.de\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://mctdh.uni-hd.de</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You should also describe the code within the text when you first cite the code, and provide a complete enough description within the paper that readers do not need to go read any additional information to continue reading your paper, because it needs to read like a single, coherent piece of work.</p>\n\n<p>Alternatively, you can cite it in a footnote, indicating the name of the code and its location. This would be a good place to include the description if it is brief. Another choice is to do this in the acknowledgements, as giordano <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20358/how-should-i-reference-my-github-repository-with-materials-for-my-paper#comment42538_20358\">points out</a>. However, I think these make your code less discoverable to both humans and search engines.</p>\n\n<p>As I mentioned before, you should mould your citation of the code in the way that you'd like others to cite it. It is also desirable that you include, within the pages describing code online, a description of how you want people to cite the code. Some examples are <a href=\"http://www.cfs.dl.ac.uk/licences/serial_licence.pdf#page=3\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">GAMESS UK</a>, <a href=\"http://www.pci.uni-heidelberg.de/tc/usr/mctdh/guide83.pdf#page=9\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">MCTDH</a> and <a href=\"http://molcas.org/documentation/manual/node10.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">MOLCAS</a>, or the ones in <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15374/should-i-cite-conference-papers-to-acknowledge-usage-of-tools\">this question</a>. Having such a description will strengthen your position should referees or editors not like your preferred style. You set the terms on which your code gets cited!</p>\n\n<p>Finally, as others have mentioned, you should make sure that the URL you point to is stable, as you will be unable to change the link in the published paper once it goes out. This is a separate question altogether, and there are a number of ways to do this - including supplementary information to the article itself, separate repositories for academic code, and of course GitHub itself - and you should strive for the most stable solution possible. Is it likely that the repository will someday get closed or moved? If so, you should consider alternatives.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20446,
"author": "Aron Ahmadia",
"author_id": 404,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/404",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A citation is a reference to a research object. Prior to the DOI, this reference contained the information somebody would need to physically locate the research object, whether it was a book, journal article, or dissertation. Although the jury is still out on how to provide general references to digital research objects, a Git repository contains a canonical reference, the SHA1 hash of the commit.</p>\n\n<p>If you would like to refer to your Git repository in such a way that it is easy to locate in the future, you should provide not only the URL where it is now, but also the short name for the repository, the lead author[s], and the SHA1 hash of the commit that you produced your results with.</p>\n\n<p>Here is an example URL from GitHub that contains the commit: <a href=\"https://github.com/hashdist/hashstack/commit/4c72950a0f6eb9cc1cf63cd640f3e6b82c9ce9c0\" rel=\"noreferrer\">https://github.com/hashdist/hashstack/commit/4c72950a0f6eb9cc1cf63cd640f3e6b82c9ce9c0</a></p>\n\n<p>I don't recommend uploading your code to Figshare until they've fixed their ability to accept code licenses.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Update 14 May 2014</strong></p>\n\n<p>GitHub and ZENODO have partnered together to upload code for a DOI under a flexible license. Obtaining a DOI for your code should be as simple as following the instructions on the GitHub Guide to <a href=\"https://guides.github.com/activities/citable-code/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Making Your Code Citable</a>. Here's an overview of the instructions:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Choose your repository</li>\n<li>Login to ZENODO</li>\n<li>Pick the repository you want to archive</li>\n<li>Check repository settings</li>\n<li>Create a new release</li>\n<li>Check everything has worked</li>\n<li>Mint a DOI</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>It's really that easy. There's no current reason not to use this as a default approach for citing your software.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 186137,
"author": "a3nm",
"author_id": 17423,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17423",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In addition to referencing the repository within the paper, you should also make sure that the link between the paper and repository is part of the paper metadata. Specifically, if you are depositing the paper on <a href=\"https://arxiv.org\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">arXiv</a>, you can use the latest <a href=\"https://blog.arxiv.org/2020/10/08/new-arxivlabs-feature-provides-instant-access-to-code/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">feature</a> that integrates with <a href=\"https://paperswithcode.com/about\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Papers with Code</a> to record the link between your paper and its implementation.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20358",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14953/"
] |
20,387 |
<p>I remember of some article that was published in which the author showed a world map with circles that represented the number of articles published by country and their frequency in which a groundbreaking academic work was released in each country(One of them was represented by the size of the circle, the other by the color of the circle). But I can't find it now, could someone help me find it? I've googled some things but was unable to find it - my native languange is not english, so I ran out of permutations of words to find the article.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20388,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can picture the image you are talking about, but I'm having trouble finding it as well. There is however an interactive world map here, which is broken down by institution, rather than country: <a href=\"http://academic.research.microsoft.com/AcademicMap?TopDomainId=2\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://academic.research.microsoft.com/AcademicMap?TopDomainId=2</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20396,
"author": "JRN",
"author_id": 64,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/64",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Perhaps you're thinking of the map below? It's Figure 1 of the paper <a href=\"http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130130/srep01167/full/srep01167.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Global Multi-Level Analysis of the `Scientific Food Web'</a>.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/5kRzm.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/5kRzm.jpg\" alt=\"World map of knowledge production and consumption in 6 major geographic areas of the world (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa).\"></a><br>\n<sub>(source: <a href=\"http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130130/srep01167/images/srep01167-f1.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">nature.com</a>)</sub> </p>\n\n<p>The caption is \"Figure 1: World map of knowledge production and consumption in 6 major geographic areas of the world (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa).\" An additional note: \"Circle size reflects the number of papers $P_i$ produced by the corresponding entities $i$. The inner circle is for 2000–2002, the outer one for 2007–2009. The size of the pies represents (A) the relative proportion of citations $C_i$ that the entities earned in the 6 geographic areas, (B) similar for references $R_i$ recorded in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database. The number of papers and citations have increased over time in all geographic areas, but their shares of references and citations have changed. For example, Asia reaches higher shares recently, characterizing it as an emergent scientific power, which has become almost comparable to North America or Europe. Note that, in the three leading knowledge producing areas, the majority of references cites papers published in the same geographic area, i.e., proximity matters.\"</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20387",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/347/"
] |
20,391 |
<p>I was working with my advisor on a research topic for six months and we had some results. The important idea was his, but the initial idea was mine and we worked on it together. Now my advisor has published the results without my name in the authors. The paper is in an important conference.</p>
<p>What do I do ? Is this normal ? Should I talk to my advisor about how I get my name in a paper ? How do I approach that topic ?</p>
<p>I'm his only PhD student and he has joined the department recently.</p>
<p>Edit : The paper was written by my advisor but we derived the results together, although his contribution was more important. He included my name in acknowledgements. Should I risk upsetting my relationship with my advisor over this ?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20399,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>You asked, </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is this normal?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The answer is <strong>no, it's not normal</strong>. If two people work on some research together, the \"normal\" thing is for them to write the paper on it together, and for both to be authors on the paper.</p>\n\n<p>It's possible that you seriously overestimated your contribution to the work and don't actually deserve authorship. Even in this case, it's clear you were involved in the research and it's <strong>not normal</strong> for your advisor to go ahead and publish it without discussing it with you first. </p>\n\n<p>(When I publish work that involves students whose small contributions do not warrant authorship, I always discuss it with them first. I explain why I don't think they can be an author, give them a chance to state any disagreement, and also tell them what additional work they could do in order to merit authorship.)</p>\n\n<p>However, the latter (your contributions did not merit authorship, and your advisor failed to discuss this with you) is somewhat more forgivable than the former (your contributions did merit authorship and your advisor published without you anyways). (You do say your advisor is new, and probably inexperienced in advising.)</p>\n\n<p>To answer</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What do I do?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You should <strong>talk to your advisor</strong>. This is the only way to really understand which case you are dealing with.</p>\n\n<p>You can bring this up in a non-combative way without upsetting your advisor; for example, you can ask \"What do I need to do in order to deserve authorship on future papers?\" This gives your advisor an opening to discuss why he thinks you didn't deserve authorship on the conference paper, and for you to respectfully state your perception of the situation.</p>\n\n<p>There may still be a chance for you to get some credit for this work, if you come to agree with his point of view that you didn't do enough to deserve authorship on the conference paper. For example, once you and your advisor have come to an agreement on what it takes to get authorship, you can propose that the two of you work together on an extended version of his conference paper for a journal - on which you will be an author :)</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, it's also possible that after this conversation you believe you <strong>did</strong> deserve authorship, and that your advisor published your joint work without you for no valid reason (i.e., committed misconduct). In this case, the best advice I can give you is to start looking for another advisor.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, the lesson for the future is: <strong>talk to your collaborators about authorship early and often.</strong></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20457,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A previous answer here (now deleted) states an unfortunate truth of the matter—what your advisor did was wrong, but rectifying the situation could be very complicated.</p>\n\n<p>The primary issue is whether or not the paper has been formally published in the conference proceedings. Once that has happened, it's too late to change the authorship credits. Basically, any such move would lead to retraction—which, as has been established on this site and many others, such as <a href=\"http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/\">Retraction Watch</a>, is a huge black mark in the career of any academic.</p>\n\n<p>We don't have all the information here, so it's impossible to say for certain if you've done enough work to merit co-author credit, but let us assume for the sake of argument here that you do. The challenge here is that, unlike ff524, I do not believe that there's likely to be any sort of positive resolution here. Not including you as a co-author on a publication (conference paper) is either incompetence or unscrupulous. In either case, the relationship between you and your advisor is probably not going to be a fruitful one in the future. (If your advisor is incompetent, you shouldn't be working for him; the same applies double if your advisor is unscrupulous.)</p>\n\n<p>If it's possible, I would suggest finding yourself a new advisor.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20391",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14965/"
] |
20,394 |
<p>I am just finishing my PhD and I have now been on the job market and started to speak at many universities. I have realized it is a time commitment for a person to host a seminar speaker and am really grateful for the experiences that many of my hosts have given me at these universities. For this reason, I have made a policy of sending thank you notes to those that host me when I visit another university's seminar. These notes that I write typically just say thank you for taking time to host me and funding my visit (if they funded it). It also thanks them for their input and questions about my work if they gave me a useful idea. One of my colleagues has told me this is odd, so I wanted to ask:</p>
<p>Is writing thank you notes to someone for inviting me to speak and hosting me at their university overkill? Is there any negative outcome that can happen from doing this?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20395,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I agree that sending a <em>paper</em> thank-you note is a little unusual. There's nothing wrong with it, of course. You may come across as slightly eccentric, but academia has plenty of people like that!</p>\n\n<p>A thank-you <em>email</em>, on the other hand, is perfectly usual.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20408,
"author": "Jørgen Fogh",
"author_id": 14864,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14864",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have had the pleasure of taking a few courses with <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Danvy\">the most thanked man in computer science</a>. I think part of the reason so many people have thanked him in their papers is that he consistently teaches his students to show appreciation for people's help and to be helpful themselves. The students he advices also tend to do well in their careers. I think there is a causal relationship (although he also picks good students).</p>\n\n<p>By all means, keep showing appreciation for people's help. Even if paper thank-you notes are unusual in your field, just send them anyway.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 177220,
"author": "Lalith Yagnavalkya",
"author_id": 148630,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/148630",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If I share my knowledge to people in my seminar, why should I be thanking them? They should thank me.</p>\n<p>Is this correct or should I stick with the formality of putting a "Thank You" slide in the end of my ppt presentation.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20394",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12656/"
] |
20,401 |
<p>This question has two parts. First, a comparative question. Second, a broad question about why PhD students get so stressed and complain so much. </p>
<p><strong>Do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?</strong></p>
<p>In my limited and biased experience, yes. More generally, there are so many websites about how hard life as a PhD student is. So many memes. These are clearly all composed by current or former PhD students. My cohort's facebook feeds read like journals written in prison. Party conversation demonstrates <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/25-deeply-painful-phd-student-problems-besides-your-thesis">a general obsession with complaining about life in a PhD program</a>. People often half-joke about how starting the PhD program was <a href="http://whatshouldwecallgradschool.tumblr.com/post/84928585186/my-advice-to-prospective-students">a horrible mistake</a>. PhD students have even been <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXvv5sTqNa4">roasted on <em>30 Rock</em></a>. And they're often <a href="http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1047">weirdly nervous about trivial stuff</a>. Yes, these are online comedy bits, but they are funny because they capture something <em>true</em>.</p>
<p>Many jobs are stressful and I believe that people in other fields handle their stress better <em>or, at the very least, feel compelled to maintain that appearance</em>. I started my PhD a bit later than average. Before doing so I worked in a few other fields, some of them more stressful than academia by reasonable standards (higher consequences of mistakes for oneself and/or for others, faster pace work environment, higher likelihood of being insulted/embarrassed by supervisors, what have you).</p>
<p><strong>Why do PhD students complain so much?</strong></p>
<p>I see a few reasons why PhD students have such a hard time. </p>
<p>Admittedly, there is a lot of work. But there are lots of jobs where you need to work very hard for long hours.</p>
<p>In many disciplines, there is no clear management structure where someone can tell you <em>what</em> to do when and <em>when</em> you are done. Of course, this can be stressful. </p>
<p>Because of the nature of theoretical innovation and research, one is never "done" with work. There is only a choice of when one is going to <em>stop</em> for the day or <em>stop</em> on a particular project (e.g., by submitting for publication).</p>
<p>Many PhD students have spent little time outside of school and academia. Most of their schooling until the PhD program was very structured with short-term goals. In a PhD and now they are responsible for defining their own projects.</p>
<p>PhD programs may attract uniquely stressful, driven people.</p>
<p>Maybe the idea of being a "student" fosters immature attitudes about the work environment, even though PhD students must deal with real adult workloads. People in many other lines of work have no illusions about their obligation to handle their workload.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20411,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Two factors that I think are the most relevant:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>PhD student is one of the lowest salary/education ratio. The best students, with highest grades, doing the highest level coursework get fairly crappy salaries (when any). In Spain, where I am from, getting the best grant the Ministery offers barely allows you to rent a shared flat and eat cheap. Sweden, where I am now, is one of the best countries to be a PhD student regarding salary and conditions. One salary is enough to provide a living and housing for two people. Still, a first job for a STEM graduate usually means three times more salary.</li>\n<li>Uncertainity. A junior in a company is assigned a clear task with a goal, where the manager, seniors, etc. are sure are achievable goals. In research, no one can know this. You don't really know what you are doing is even possible until you get it. Sure, you have advisors, but they can only guess what is going to be. In short: nobody really knows what they are doing.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Also I think there is a sense of unifying community. People that make land surveys and mapping (for example) may be subject to similar conditions, but they will feel no sense of familiarity with the perks of the life and work of a librarian. Grad students, no mater what is their field, have something in common, and thus a sociologist can very well relate to a mathematician as well as an slavic philology expert. So, a map maker can whine as much as a grad student, but they will not see the same echo.</p>\n\n<p>Also, anyone who has gone to university knows a bunch of grad students. That is much more reach than aeronautic engineers, that are mostly related with other engineers. Grad students in a general term are much more common that many other particular professions.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20412,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>(one important comment - this all relates to PhD students in Europe, where you usually get an actual salary while doing your PhD. I have no experience about grad student life on a stipend, as in the US)</em></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No, I don't think so. Sure, PhD students complain about their job. So do all other professionals. I have been in software engineering for two years before my PhD, and people have certainly complained a lot there as well. My non-research friends just as often bitch about their jobs, bosses, work conditions, salary, etc. as my fellow researchers. Just a peek at workplace.SE already gives you a confirmation that being dissatisfied with your work conditions is not a thing specific to PhD students.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I believe that people in other fields handle their stress better or, at the very least, feel compelled to maintain that appearance.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I do not agree at all. I have seen so many people act unprofessionally inside and outside of academia (due to stress or personal issues), it is not even funny. Your perception is entirely opposite to mine.</p>\n\n<p>My favorite story in relation to that is that of a very senior full professor storming out of a meeting with tears of anger in her eyes, because she felt than another professor in the meeting was not valuing her experience in a topic sufficiently). She has later excused herself and stated that she was going through a personally hard time. Unprofessional behaviour is not inherently a grad student thing.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>My cohort's facebook feeds read like journals written in prison. Party conversation demonstrates a general obsession with complaining about life in a PhD program. People often half-joke about how starting the PhD program was a horrible mistake. PhD students have even been roasted on 30 Rock. And they're often weirdly nervous about trivial stuff.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, the complaining PhD student is a meme by now. That does not mean it has to be true, although such memes tend to have a bit a self-fulfilling nature. The question is, when you look at the prison-like FB posts of your cohort, how many complaints are tongue-in-cheek, and how many are serious \"this is all so f*cked up\" statements. I should also add that looking at only your cohort may give you a false impression of generality, as you all attend the same school, maybe are even advised by the same professors. Basically, if something is \"off\" in your environment, it would explain why your cohort complains, but says very little about other universities (like the ones I have experience with).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20419,
"author": "JeffE",
"author_id": 65,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<h2>No.</h2>\n\n<p>To quote Drew Carey:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? You know there's a support group for that. It's called <strong>everybody</strong>. They meet at the bar.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20424,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I very much doubt it. See JeffE's summary. There are dozens of memes about complaining - law students, med students, engineering undergrads, administrative staff, IT people...seriously, just about every profession has its memes about how much their jobs are terrible.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Why do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<ul>\n<li>They're not being paid very much, and for many of them, their friends - who had similar educational backgrounds - who didn't go to grad school are now making money, and the opportunity cost is pretty vivid.</li>\n<li>The PhD is a problem that requires unbounded effort. Until the day you defend, there's always something you should be doing. At the same time, there's rarely something you <em>need</em> to be doing <em>that day</em>. Handing someone a years long, unstructured time management problem is going to cause some stress.</li>\n<li>There's not necessarily a way out. For CS, Physics, Math etc. there may be escape hatches into industry, but for many STEM PhDs, and almost all humanities PhDs, there's really no net-benefit for your degree outside of academia. You've got an expensive (in opportunity cost and time), specialized set of knowledge that no one cares about. You can see this reflected in some surveys - Physics PhDs tend to be somewhat more happy than their Biology counterparts.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How can I handle this socially and professional?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You can try to avoid it, although do realize that \"shared suffering\" is a social bonding experience, and these people will be your colleagues. You will be missing some of that.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I certainly hope that this climate does not continue into faculty life</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I have some bad news for you.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20429,
"author": "Christian Clason",
"author_id": 13852,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13852",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>(As suggested by jabberwocky, I have moved the last part of my answer to <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20482/13852\">https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20482/13852</a>).</em></p>\n\n<p>While I don't think the question is worded constructively, this is a relevant and prominent issue in academic life. First, the question whether PhD students complain more than other professional groups is not really helpful, so I will ignore it (others have given enough counterexamples) and instead focus on the other part, namely \"why do they complain?\"</p>\n\n<p>As has been noted, doing a PhD is a time of uncertainty and huge external and/or internal pressures, on a scale -- both in time and magnitude -- usually unprecedented for the student. Complaining about it is a coping mechanism (one of a range of possible mechanisms, whose efficacy will vary from person to person). It is also a valuable bonding activity. This is a crucial point, since your research as a PhD student is often so specialized that you can't profitably talk about it to anyone outside a small circle of fellow specialists. On the other hand, the external circumstances of doing a PhD (deadlines, interactions with your advisor or lack thereof, run-ins with the administration) will be instantly familiar to any graduate student, no matter what the field (witness the popularity of PhD Comics, which is not limited to mechanical engineering). Add to that the fact that many graduate students are pursuing their PhD away from home and thus their social circle mostly consists of fellow students, and it's not surprising that most interactions outside possibly a small circle of close personal friends are dominated by this topic. (In fact, complaining around your personal friends as you would among peers is the fastest way of losing them.)</p>\n\n<p>Regarding your comment </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>My friends who are in PhD programs complain much more (or at least\n more publicly) than my friends who aren't in PhD programs.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>They probably complain much more <em>to you</em> about their professional life, since you're a professional peer of the former but not of the latter.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20401",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7934/"
] |
20,403 |
<p>I am a PhD student halfway through my journey. After I published a few papers, I am getting review requests from some medium rank conference and journal editors. While certainly it is an honour for me, doing good review takes some time since I am not an expert of my broad field with everything at my finger tip. Does review experience add something to my CV particularly if I want an academic career? I am really sorry if the question sounds too shallow or cynical but I want to know whether I can cite the review experience to prove my worth as a researcher to a prospective hiring committee. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20404,
"author": "Marc Claesen",
"author_id": 7173,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7173",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>An important part of an academic career/CV is <em>service</em>. Reviewing, editing, hosting conferences, ... falls under this category. So yes, it is important.</p>\n\n<p>You seem to consider it to be a potential waste of your precious time. This is false. Depending on your field, reviewers have earlier access to new work than others which is always beneficial.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20406,
"author": "410 gone",
"author_id": 96,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As Marc Claesen says, it does give you earliest access to new work, and it is a chance to give back to the academic community, and boost your CV at the same time.</p>\n\n<p>But the usual caveats apply:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>This would be a significant chunk of time, so discuss it with your supervisors / advisors before agreeing to take it on, and listen to their advice.</p></li>\n<li><p>If you do it, do it in moderation: don't let it displace your core work, which is getting the PhD finished.</p></li>\n<li><p>Do it only if and while it contributes to your PhD: it can do this by honing your research skills, and/or by increasing the body of relevant literature that you're familiar with.</p></li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20407,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Doing reviews is both a necessary contribution to the publication system and a merit carrying with it several positive aspects. As a scientist you are expected to contribute and, thus, you have to start at some point. To start reviewing lower profile publications is a good thing and you should of course think about whether you can contribute good insights or not. There is nothing wrong with declining a review stating you feel it is outside your expertise. That said you may provide a different angle on a problem and your name has hopefully been chosen because you have become known for good work.</p>\n\n<p>In the beginning reviews probably take a very long time to complete as with everything new. But, as you read other peoples work you have an opportunity to look at how others write and express science (not necessarily in a good way). This can help you develop your own skills. I also find that reviewing papers give me an opportunity to read about new science and think more deeply about a specific problem than what I usually have time to do with a published paper. Thus, I would stress the learning opportunities in the review task as important. That it takes time is a given, a review that does not take time is either sloppy review work or because of a really terrible paper to review.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20425,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are several reasons, as a PhD student, that you should consider spending time reviewing papers, even if you view it as an unrelated demand on your time:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>It helps you know, and shape, your field. When you graduate, you will supposedly be an expert in your field. Being able to critically engage with the research being done in it, not only as a reader but as a reviewer, is an aspect of that.</li>\n<li>It gives you a glimpse into the other side of peer review. It's easier to engage with reviewer comments, in my experience, if you've been on the other side of the process as well.</li>\n<li>As some people have mentioned, service is an important aspect of your CV, and having done reviews not only checks that box, but adds a list of journals who consider your expertise important enough to have you act as a reviewer.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Reviewing papers won't be the reason someone hires you, but it is a component of your professional development. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21157,
"author": "user2379888",
"author_id": 9365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9365",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I referee papers if one of the following conditions holds:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>It's something I know well and can quickly evaluate the paper</li>\n<li>It's something I want to know more about, and will learn something by doing the review</li>\n<li>I owe the editor or author a favor</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>It is good experience for graduate students to do this, but it should not distract you from your own scholarship and coursework. So yes, by the time you complete your degree, it would be good to have done this a couple of times.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 88188,
"author": "Jens",
"author_id": 72189,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/72189",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Doing reviews at your stage for sure helps you a) to better understand the review process, b) see how other researchers deal with your comments in the revision letter and c) it identifies you potentially already as a scientist in a certain field.</p>\n\n<p>Besides that, as a Ph.D. student you should rather write papers, instead of reviewing them. Also, they eat up quite some time if you do it right. Hence, my advise would be not to spent too much time on reviews, let it be only two or three maximum. Save your time for better, you will need it. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20403",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7437/"
] |
20,405 |
<p>My primary interest is in Data Mining. Secondary interests are Intrusion Detection and Energy Efficient Buildings.</p>
<p>I have done projects in data mining approaches for intrusion detection. I have also done research in data analysis on energy consumption patterns in smart-buildings.</p>
<p>I will be applying for graduate school (MS) shortly. Now, how do I proceed writing my statement? Should I lay more emphasis on Data Mining? Which professors should I mention I want to work with? Ones doing data mining research, or the ones doing network security/sustainable energy research?</p>
<p>My main concern is finding potential advisers. I believe if I can find some before the application, I can find out their requirements and write a statement accordingly. This in-turn might help me get admission in the desired school as well.</p>
<p>My question here is whether I should look for researchers in data mining (which I have applied in my works) or intrusion detection/sustainable energy (the domain where data mining technique was applied)</p>
<p>I understand that chances of me finding advisers that share interest in both data mining and (intrusion detection/sustainable energy) is very less. So which advisers should I target?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20404,
"author": "Marc Claesen",
"author_id": 7173,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7173",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>An important part of an academic career/CV is <em>service</em>. Reviewing, editing, hosting conferences, ... falls under this category. So yes, it is important.</p>\n\n<p>You seem to consider it to be a potential waste of your precious time. This is false. Depending on your field, reviewers have earlier access to new work than others which is always beneficial.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20406,
"author": "410 gone",
"author_id": 96,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As Marc Claesen says, it does give you earliest access to new work, and it is a chance to give back to the academic community, and boost your CV at the same time.</p>\n\n<p>But the usual caveats apply:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>This would be a significant chunk of time, so discuss it with your supervisors / advisors before agreeing to take it on, and listen to their advice.</p></li>\n<li><p>If you do it, do it in moderation: don't let it displace your core work, which is getting the PhD finished.</p></li>\n<li><p>Do it only if and while it contributes to your PhD: it can do this by honing your research skills, and/or by increasing the body of relevant literature that you're familiar with.</p></li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20407,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Doing reviews is both a necessary contribution to the publication system and a merit carrying with it several positive aspects. As a scientist you are expected to contribute and, thus, you have to start at some point. To start reviewing lower profile publications is a good thing and you should of course think about whether you can contribute good insights or not. There is nothing wrong with declining a review stating you feel it is outside your expertise. That said you may provide a different angle on a problem and your name has hopefully been chosen because you have become known for good work.</p>\n\n<p>In the beginning reviews probably take a very long time to complete as with everything new. But, as you read other peoples work you have an opportunity to look at how others write and express science (not necessarily in a good way). This can help you develop your own skills. I also find that reviewing papers give me an opportunity to read about new science and think more deeply about a specific problem than what I usually have time to do with a published paper. Thus, I would stress the learning opportunities in the review task as important. That it takes time is a given, a review that does not take time is either sloppy review work or because of a really terrible paper to review.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20425,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are several reasons, as a PhD student, that you should consider spending time reviewing papers, even if you view it as an unrelated demand on your time:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>It helps you know, and shape, your field. When you graduate, you will supposedly be an expert in your field. Being able to critically engage with the research being done in it, not only as a reader but as a reviewer, is an aspect of that.</li>\n<li>It gives you a glimpse into the other side of peer review. It's easier to engage with reviewer comments, in my experience, if you've been on the other side of the process as well.</li>\n<li>As some people have mentioned, service is an important aspect of your CV, and having done reviews not only checks that box, but adds a list of journals who consider your expertise important enough to have you act as a reviewer.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Reviewing papers won't be the reason someone hires you, but it is a component of your professional development. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21157,
"author": "user2379888",
"author_id": 9365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9365",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I referee papers if one of the following conditions holds:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>It's something I know well and can quickly evaluate the paper</li>\n<li>It's something I want to know more about, and will learn something by doing the review</li>\n<li>I owe the editor or author a favor</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>It is good experience for graduate students to do this, but it should not distract you from your own scholarship and coursework. So yes, by the time you complete your degree, it would be good to have done this a couple of times.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 88188,
"author": "Jens",
"author_id": 72189,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/72189",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Doing reviews at your stage for sure helps you a) to better understand the review process, b) see how other researchers deal with your comments in the revision letter and c) it identifies you potentially already as a scientist in a certain field.</p>\n\n<p>Besides that, as a Ph.D. student you should rather write papers, instead of reviewing them. Also, they eat up quite some time if you do it right. Hence, my advise would be not to spent too much time on reviews, let it be only two or three maximum. Save your time for better, you will need it. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20405",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14974/"
] |
20,414 |
<p>This topic has already been described to some extent, e.g. here:</p>
<p><a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20270/is-verbatim-copying-text-with-citation-considered-plagiarism">Is verbatim copying several paragraphs of text with citation considered plagiarism?</a></p>
<p>But I do no think that it has been completely discussed, especially in the context of related work and abstracts.</p>
<p>When I am writing the section about related work in my papers, I tend to describe the work of each other related researcher in a few sentences with my own words and referencing their papers. However, in a current paper that I am writing I have realised that the abstracts of more than a few papers that I want to mention are so well written and are so concise that I cannot do any better. Writing my description would be just a waste of time, and result in a less concise text.</p>
<p>So I am thinking about copy-pasting two or three sentences from the abstract of each referenced paper. And possibly adding, removing, or changing a word or two that may not be relevant in the context of the paper that I am writing, so it's not really a plain copy paste.</p>
<p>I have read that it may be a good idea to put quotes, but I find quotes, especially their immoderate use, as bad style.</p>
<p>Can I get in trouble for this? I would not go that far in considering anything of this as plagiarism, as the work is referenced and I am not taking credit for someone else's work.</p>
<p>Personally if one would do the same with my work, I would not be concerned at all, on the contrary, as long as not more than a few sentences are taken and the work is properly referenced, but you might have a different view.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20415,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>So I am thinking about copy-pasting two or three sentences from the abstract of each referenced paper.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This seems absolutely appropriate, as long as you quote them correctly. Which brings us to:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I have read that it may be a good idea to put quotes, but I find quotes, especially their immoderate use, as bad style.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It is not only a <em>good idea</em> to do that, it is required. You <em>need to</em> make explicit that those are verbatim copies. The semantics of copying text from a paper and summarizing the key points yourself are different for a reader, and you need to make this difference explicit by demarking which parts you have taken in verbatim.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Can I get in trouble for this?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I would not go that far in considering anything of this as plagiarism, as the work is referenced and I am not taking credit for someone else's work. Personally if one would do the same with my work, I would not be concerned at all, on the contrary, as long as not more than a few sentences are taken and the work is properly referenced, but you may have a different view.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This reminds me a bit of a few high-profile cases of plagiarisms that were going around lately in the german-speaking areas. Often, the excuses presented by the accused authors were similar (\"hey, the text I copied wasn't really that important - it was just the introduction after all!\", \"I cited it anyway, I just did not make clear that the text is actually copied from there\", etc.). These excuses never fly. Be rigorous with your handling of sources. Everything else is just playing with fire.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20416,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You can quote of course, but if you copy-paste without making clear this is a citation, then not appropriate. The smallest copyright unit is normally a sentence that must be rephrased.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20436,
"author": "Matthew Martin",
"author_id": 14992,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14992",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I cannot see that there is any exception to using quotes and providing the full, correct citation. It is honest and correct, anything less just doesn't cut it.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20414",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11306/"
] |
20,417 |
<p>I have been trying to write a paper. Reading the introduction part I am getting different behaviours from different papers. </p>
<p>Some papers cover themselves more than 50% with introduction content as if they are the only source of information present anywhere while some give it very briefly expecting user to be well aware.</p>
<p>As a reader I never expected to learn the concept from paper intro part itself but from books and then read papers. I rather think that introduction section shall be used to provide very brief intro and references for further understanding. Repeating an algorithm that's present in 500 books makes no sense.</p>
<p>I need some tips on writing introduction part that its just about enough or is it mandatory to repeat info to make it somewhat complete in itself ?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20420,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>How much detail to provide in the introduction depends on the circumstances. The minimum requirement is to give enough context and references that a diligent reader could fill in any missing background, at the cost of some extra work. However, that's a pretty undemanding requirement; a few papers fail to do this, but they generally fail by not even trying. It's often valuable to do more to make life easier for the reader. How much more depends on who you expect will read the paper, and on what you believe they want or need from the introduction. (Some papers are read only by impatient experts, while others attract a broad audience.) What's considered appropriate may vary between fields or even subfields, but here are a few general principles:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Targeting an audience for your papers can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you aim at a very specialized audience, it becomes much less likely that anyone else will read your papers. Attracting a broader audience is on the whole a good thing, both for scientific progress and for your own career, so it's best not to limit your audience unnecessarily. If modest changes will make your writing much more accessible, then they are probably a good idea.</p></li>\n<li><p>It's easy to overestimate how much readers really know. In an ideal world, every researcher would remember all the details of everything they ever studied, but life doesn't work that way. Of course you can't re-teach things from scratch (and shouldn't even try), but sometimes a brief reminder can be really helpful. This is particularly true when the details matter: if the reader really needs to know exactly how a certain algorithm works to understand your paper, then restating the algorithm can be worthwhile even if you suspect most readers will already be somewhat familiar with it. Those who already know the details can easily skim just enough to convince themselves that their version is the same as yours, while those who don't can read more carefully.</p></li>\n<li><p>The introduction plays a crucial role in describing the context and explaining why you did these things and what the consequences are. It may not be the part of the paper that most excites you, but it will almost certainly be the most-read section (not counting the abstract). The purpose of your paper is to communicate your discoveries, and making the introduction more accessible is sometimes the best way to achieve this.</p></li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20421,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The general guideline is \"just enough.\" However, the \"enough\" differs audience to audience, even the article is on the same topic.</p>\n\n<p>Knowing who are going to read it would decide how broad and deep the introduction should be. Say we are writing about <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra\" rel=\"nofollow\">Olestra</a>. In a more general publication like a magazine or a blog the introduction may need to include what it is, how it is being used, its chemical properties, its impacts on health, and perhaps some controversies surrounding the compound. In public health or nutrition journals, it may just merit a parenthetical explanation. However, in a food industry journal, the name itself is sufficient.</p>\n\n<p>When in doubt, err on telling more. A well-structured but slightly longer introduction is far less offensive than a cluster of very well selected but illogically laid out arguments.</p>\n\n<p>Another point worth mentioning is that length is perhaps a proxy of the breadth and depth of the introduction, but I think the overall structure of the arguments surpasses length. Generally, I'd focus on an engaging <em>opening</em> that summarizes what is known. Use proper languages here to hint the level of the article. Then, discuss the <em>problems or challenges</em>. Afterwards, how would your work <em>act</em> to address the aforementioned problems and challenges. And lastly, how would your work <em>resolve</em> the suggested problems.</p>\n\n<p>As a reviewer, I'd look for the interconnections between all these components rather than focusing on the length.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20422,
"author": "Hana Bzh",
"author_id": 14954,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14954",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As Grace Fleming wrote <a href=\"http://homeworktips.about.com/od/paperassignments/a/introsentence.htm\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">on about.com</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The introductory paragraph of any paper, long or short, should start with a sentence that piques the interest of your readers.</p>\n<p>...that first sentence will lead into three or four sentences that provide details about the subject or your process you will address in the body of your essay. These sentences should also set the stage for your thesis statement.</p>\n<p>The thesis statement is the subject of much instruction and training. The entirety of your paper hangs on that sentence, which is generally the last sentence of your introductory paragraph.</p>\n<p>In summary, your introductory paragraph should contain the following:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>an attention-grabbing first sentence</li>\n<li>informative sentences that build to your thesis</li>\n<li>the thesis statement, which makes a claim or states a view that you will support or build upon.</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n<p>You can check this link for more about each section of the paper.\n<a href=\"http://abacus.bates.edu/%7Eganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWsections.html#introduction\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWsections.html#introduction</a></p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20417",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14432/"
] |
20,423 |
<p>I'm an undergraduate in Computer Science who's has just completed his 2nd year. However I could not get an internship for the summer leaving me extremely tense about the future since there would be only one summer left (i.e., the summer of 2015 since I graduate in 2016).</p>
<p>I intend to apply to graduate schools in North America and Europe after my UG. However since I will have only one internship under my belt (assuming I bag one in summer 2015) will it put a damper on my prospects? Or is it the place of and quality of work done in my internship (coupled with good recommendation letters—which I doubt I will get) that would be far better than the number of internships under my belt?</p>
<p>I'm in the process of building a portfolio of real-life projects to demonstrate my skills and capabilities. I am also contributing code to open-source organisations in the next two months à la Google Summer of Code (however without the formal recognition) on a totally voluntary basis. Will that help in overcoming lack of an internship between my second and third year? What else can I do that can help me build a better application for graduate school?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20452,
"author": "Leon palafox",
"author_id": 2806,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2806",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you are applying to a PhD, that portfolio of real life projects might not matter much.</p>\n\n<p>In Graduate programs, they are very interested in proof that the student is capable of pursuing research, which is usually proven via a BS Thesis or a couple of Publications. Here in the US, many take a year off to work in some lab to get both a letter of recommendation and at least a publication in some conference. </p>\n\n<p>I'm evaluating having a Grad student right now, and I would certainly would be more interested in him/her having proof that they know what grad school is all about rather than showing that they are good programmers.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20961,
"author": "Ellen Spertus",
"author_id": 269,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/269",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The short answer is a lack of internships is not a problem.</p>\n\n<p>The long answer has two cases:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>MSCS programs in the United States are profit makers for\nuniversities. It is much easier to get into an MSCS program at a\ntop university than the PhD program at the same university. \nResearch experience is a plus, but I don't think industry experience\nmatters. Grades and recommendations from professors are most\nimportant.</p></li>\n<li><p>CS PhD programs in the United States almost exclusively admit\nstudents that they are willing to fund, so they are much harder to\nget into. In addition to strong grades and letters of\nrecommendation, schools want to see that you are capable of working\nindependently at research. The best way to do this, as Leon palafox\nanswered, is to have research experience, including a thesis and/or\npublications. Next best is to have completed projects not required\nfor any class. That shows you are capable of doing a project\nwithout its being broken down into lots of steps with intermediate\ndeadlines. I'd say Summer of Code-like experience is at least as\nvaluable as an industry internship. It shows passion and the\nability to work independently. Incorporate that into your essay,\nand get a letter of recommendation from someone on the project (or\nfrom a professor at your institute if one is nominally supervising\nyour work for internship or independent study credit).</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I am not knowledgeable about admission into programs outside of the United States.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20423",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14637/"
] |
20,431 |
<p>I am from engineering, and I would like to know if I am able to find a job in industrial research lab after finishing my master, will there be any advantage or disadvantage compared with entering the same lab after finishing PhD? Possible advantage may be that I have more industrial experience as I enter the lab earlier, and possible disadvantage may be that without a PhD position I cannot be promoted to certain senior positions or lead a project. Are these true? Are there more advantages or disadvantages for this?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20450,
"author": "Leon palafox",
"author_id": 2806,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2806",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>These are some experiences I've seen with people with similar dilemmas.\nIn my area, computer science, many people used to go to Yahoo after their Masters or BS, and for a time it was well.</p>\n\n<p>After the Yahoo huge layoff, I met many people who were being denied high level positions because they did not have a PhD, we are not talking entry level position, but people with many years of experience in the industry.</p>\n\n<p>I do not think a PhD is essential to move ahead in the company, but it sure is a huge help if you have one. Also, I'm not sure the research experience you will have in an industrial research lab will be comparable to the research experience you will have as a PhD student. Not that one is better than the other, but Grad school has certain liberties that industry does not. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20453,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>For many <em>research</em> positions in industry, a PhD is a requirement to apply for the job. With just an M.S., you simply cannot be considered for these positions. Some research jobs I have seen in industrial labs <em>are</em> available to candidates with either a PhD or an M.S. with several years of industry experience, but I don't see as many of these.</p>\n\n<p>Industrial research labs often also have non-research positions (e.g., staff programmer) that do not require a PhD. However, these positions tend to not be on the research \"track\": you cannot easily be promoted from \"staff programmer\" to \"junior member of technical staff\" in many companies. If you are interested in doing creative research, staff programmer jobs are not a direct path to research scientist jobs.</p>\n\n<p>Smaller companies tend to be more flexible, so that it may be easier to get a research job without a PhD in a tiny company than a large global one.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, this can vary by industry and geographic region. (My experience is in the field of telecommunications and computer networks, in the United States.)\nYou can find out more about your particular field of interest by going to the \"Careers\" page of the labs you are considering, and looking up the requirements for the jobs that you would like to do.</p>\n\n<p>However, as a rule, if you are interested in doing creative research (and not just working in a support position in a research lab), you will have more opportunities available to you with a PhD than without one.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20431",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14682/"
] |
20,435 |
<p>My research group has regular group meeting but I usually think it is not effective. In particular the research area of the group is very diverse, every time I just listen on something I cannot understand and have totally no interest on it, and I believe other members think the same way as I do when I am presenting. While it is a good way to expose to something new, and know other group members what they are doing, <strong>this is not effective for my own research</strong>. I know group meeting has its point (<a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2785/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-weekly-research-meetings-that-advisers-often-have-wit">What is the purpose of the weekly research meetings that advisers often have with their research group?</a>), but how can it be conducted in a more effective way?</p>
<p>As a supervisor:</p>
<ol>
<li>How frequent should a regular group meeting be? It depends on the field, and I hear something like daily to three months.</li>
<li>When should a regular group meeting be? I know some groups insist on Monday morning, some groups choose Friday evening which is terrible.</li>
<li>How long should a group meeting be?</li>
<li>What level of detail should a supervisor comment to one's work? From every experimental concepts, to a vague conceptual suggestion?</li>
</ol>
<p>As a student:</p>
<ol>
<li>What should a student prepare before a group meeting to have an effective meeting? To present every problem he/she faces, or just some significant results (if there is)?</li>
<li>Should a student question other's member work? Sometimes it may be constructive, but it can also be an interruption.</li>
</ol>
<p>If you are a faculty, how do you conduct your group meeting? As a research student, what can you suggest for an effective group meeting? An effective group meeting can greatly help on one's research work, otherwise it is just a drain of energy, time and motivation. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20440,
"author": "David Ketcheson",
"author_id": 81,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>You have a lot of questions interspersed within your question, but it sounds like the main issue is</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>the research area of the group is very diverse, every time I just listen on something I cannot understand and have totally no interest on it, and I believe other members think the same way as I do when I am presenting.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I have had the same problem in the past. I'm a professor who works in a variety of related subfields, some very theoretical and some fairly applied. Most of my students and postdocs have been focused exclusively on either something theoretical or something applied, and their backgrounds range from computer science to mathematics to electrical engineering, so there is often a disconnect when they try to communicate what they are doing. Here is my advice.</p>\n\n<h2>For students:</h2>\n\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Try to broaden your focus and interests.</strong> It is natural that you have a very narrow research focus as a grad student, but if you want to get and keep a job afterward you'll almost certainly need to broaden your focus. I find that in general the best researchers almost always have broad interests (though they are able to focus their energy narrowly when needed). Group meetings are an opportunity to become acquainted with topics that are on the horizon of your current knowledge.</li>\n<li><strong>Use group meetings as an opportunity to improve your communication skills.</strong> Teaching non-experts about your work is a critical skill in any research career. Other students in the group do not know nearly as much as you about your research topic, but that doesn't mean that you cannot make it interesting and accessible to them. Often this means leaving out the \"details\" and explaining just the essence of a problem. Trust me, some day soon you will need to make your work interesting and intelligible to people who are much further removed from your specialty.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<h2>For advisors:</h2>\n\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Help students to present their work in a way that the others can understand.</strong> Often this means prompting the student, especially at the beginning of a presentation, to add important assumptions, motivation, or background. The student has started to take these things for granted, but without them any non-expert is quickly lost.</li>\n<li><strong>Don't let the conversation drift too far into a very specialized discussion.</strong> If you and the student are the only ones who have any idea of what is being discussed, it's probably time to say \"let's discuss this further after the meeting\".</li>\n<li><p><strong>Use meetings for skills development</strong>. This was already mentioned in <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2790/81\">this related answer</a>. Instead of focusing exclusively on research, group meetings can also include discussions of things like:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>How to write papers</li>\n<li>How to read papers</li>\n<li>How to search the literature</li>\n<li>How to manage a bibliography</li>\n<li>How to give good presentations</li>\n<li>How to write a proposal</li>\n<li>How to keep a lab notebook</li>\n<li>How to keep up with newly published research</li>\n<li>How to stay organized and be productive</li>\n<li>How to referee a paper</li>\n<li>Software tools for all of the above, and for research</li>\n</ul></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>These topics are useful and interesting to anyone involved in research.</p>\n\n<h2>Answers to other parts of the question</h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li>I hold group meetings once a week, and they last 1-2 hours</li>\n<li>Students are strongly encouraged to question and comment on each other's work</li>\n<li>We meet at lunch time, and there is food. That doesn't sound important, but I think it is.</li>\n<li>I try to save very detailed comments for my one-on-one meetings with students. Otherwise, the group meeting can devolve into a conversation between the advisor and just one student.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20442,
"author": "Trylks",
"author_id": 7571,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7571",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<ol>\n<li>Frequency: depends on the size of the group. When someone has some new result that they are going to present (in a conference or any other venue) this may be useful to practice, etc. Therefore the frequency depends on how often people are producing results. This is also an opportunity for everybody starting something new to ask whether there is someone with some related expertise that could be useful (I prefer mailing lists for this specific thing).</li>\n<li>Time:people have commitments. Chose some time that fits everybody. I'd suggest before lunch to have the chance to continue the meeting <em>while</em> (not instead of) having lunch.</li>\n<li>How long should it be?: As long as needed, as short as possible.</li>\n<li>General comments: useful for everybody. E.g. in the style of the presentation. What is specific for each person or group should be commented directly to them (thus without boring anyone else).</li>\n<li>Student preparation/presentation: Whatever s/he has to present according to point 1.</li>\n<li>Questions: Yes, everybody should participate. <em>All</em> questions and interruptions should be at the end of the presentation.</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20444,
"author": "gerrit",
"author_id": 1033,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1033",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Group meetings are very important, and I think it is worthwhile to organise them very well, to make sure they are focussed, to-the-point, time-effective, and that everybody participates. I remember my time as a graduate student as having very efficient group meetings, and most of my points below are based on my experiences back then.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>How frequent should a regular group meeting be? It depends on the field, and I hear something like daily to three months.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I think weekly is good. If people want to discuss significant results, one should not wait too long. However, too often takes away too much of peoples time.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>When should a regular group meeting be? I know some groups insist on Monday morning, some groups choose Friday evening which is terrible.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I've experienced groups with group meetings on either Monday afternoon or Tuesday afternoon, and I think both are good. However, I don't think it is the most important aspect. Personally, I don't like to have meetings during lunch. Although I understand the motivation, I believe it is important to have a break from work at some point.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>How long should a group meeting be?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>When I was a graduate student, we had group meetings of <em>at most one hour</em>. We would typically have between 5 and 10 people attending the meeting (normally everybody in the group who was not away travelling). Each week, one person would be the moderator, and one person would be taking notes. Those roles would be alternating, providing everybody with useful experience in managing meetings or taking notes. We'd start with general announcements, and then everybody had the opportunity to present some plots. Some weeks, few if any people had anything to present any new results or bring up anything for discussion, and we might be done in 20 minutes. Other weeks, the role of the moderator was essential to keep the meeting to one hour.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>What level of detail should a supervisor comment to one's work? From every experimental concepts, to a vague conceptual suggestion?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>What I think is great about group meetings, is that <em>it is not only the supervisor commenting</em>. Naturally, it can happen that discussions lead into details. Although beneficial for the people directly involved in the discussion, it may be a waste of time for others. When this happens, the moderator (see above) would intervene (also in the interest of time) and suggest for a discussion to be proceeded "offline".</p>\n<p>This hits two birds with one stone: the meeting is limited in duration, and the meeting focusses on overall discussions of broader interest.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>As a student:</p>\n<p>What should a student prepare before a group meeting to have an effective meeting? To present every problem he/she faces, or just some significant results (if there is)?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I think it is not useful to present every problem he/she faces in front of the entire group. Some problems are best discussed one-to-one with the most expert colleague (scientist, engineer, technician). But if you have any significant results — like a first version of a plot that may end up in a paper, or anything warranting scientific discussion — that can be good to show.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Should a student question other's member work? Sometimes it may be constructive, but it can also be an interruption.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Depends what you mean by <em>questioning</em>. I think a student should certainly comment on other members work if this is helpful. In the worst case, the comment is not relevant and the student learns something. Communication is essential to science, and communication with all members in the group has more benefits than communication exclusively between supervisor and student.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20478,
"author": "tk1974",
"author_id": 15034,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15034",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<ol>\n<li><p>As a participant, and this applies to all kinds of meetings inside and outside of academia, it depends on whether it is a structured or unstructured meeting. It also depends on whether it is instructor led or student led. In both cases, having an agenda for the meeting will make it more effective; more on this below.</p></li>\n<li><p>If the purpose of the group meetings is to brain storm in a collaborative environment, examine each others work, offer insights from unbiased but informed perspectives, and generate discussion, then an unstructured format is generally preferred. This gives participants the freedom for expressing ideas that may have a limited time value and impact. But this is also only valuable if there is a moderator to step in and control the discussion, allocate time to the points to be discussed, and everyone is a participant. If no one is, then there is little value to holding the meetings.\nThe most effective way to create the agenda for this, as well as determine the length of the meeting, is for the moderator to poll the participants on what points they wish to discuss. This can be during the last meeting, prior to the meeting through a communications medium, or at the beginning of the meeting. In all cases there should be common agreement that the agenda, once decided, is fixed and that all other discussion points will carry over to the next meeting if they are important enough.\nTime wise, it should be reasonable; only an hour or two at most. More than that and you start to suffer attention span attrition. Frequency is based on need; if there is no need, then there should be less frequent meetings.\nBut I will not say that there should be no meetings; because that would signify that all of you have no interest in socializing with your peers, and do not consider peer and instructor review valuable. Which would not be beneficial from a professional standpoint.</p></li>\n<li><p>If the purpose of the meeting is for everyone to present current findings and receive pointed guidance, then a structured meeting is preferred. The agenda is based on who has something to present; which all of you should, even if it is only current actions undertaken in your research. The danger of structured meetings where everyone is a participant, regardless of inclination or material, is that they can be extremely long if there are a lot of presenters; and also tedious if there really isn't anything to report and they are filling white-space.\nThe easiest way to create the agenda is to have a roster of the group and to have them brief their findings in the order that they are on that roster. They each have a set time to give out their information. The instructor then gives his guidance and possibly polls the group for opinions. Then the groups moves on to the next presenter.\nStructured meetings with definite presentations require some legwork in the background. The most efficient way to get through multiple presenters is to have all of the presentations consolidated to one computer, either merged into one slide deck, or organized by briefer in the same folder. Who does that is something I'm sure the instructor will notify all of you about.\nTime should be based on how many are in the group.</p></li>\n<li><p>There are pros and cons to both approaches. The effectiveness of either depends on the participants and the instructor. If your meetings are not effective for any of the participants, then maybe you need to suggest to the group (off-line, during, or private session with the instructor I leave to your discretion) that the point of discussion for one of those meetings should be the effectiveness of those meetings. And then determine what each of you individually needs to take away from it, as well as what ways you are all collectively going to improve the quality of those meetings.</p></li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20916,
"author": "qoobit",
"author_id": 15181,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15181",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>At my group we use some <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Agile methods</a> from software development industry. Among others, we have short stand-up meetings and longer sprint sessions.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20435",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14682/"
] |
20,437 |
<p>Could my institution get into legal hot water if we were to make copies of blank Scantron sheets? If so, are there good free alternatives for machine readable bubble sheets?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20438,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Yes, there are some <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_mark_recognition#Open_source\" rel=\"nofollow\">open source alternatives</a>. Scantron's software and hardware is proprietary. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 96687,
"author": "Magpie",
"author_id": 80566,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/80566",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The scantron forms and similar forms are not subect to copyright. US Copyright Office Title 37: Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights §202.1 Material not subject to copyright. (c) Blank forms, such as time cards, graph paper, account books, diaries, bank checks, scorecards, address books, report forms, order forms and the like, which are designed for recording information and do not in themselves convey information. </p>\n\n<p>So to answer your question, no. As long as the school or university doesn't photocopy the actual scantron sheets from Scantron. inc. But it's not illegal for them to create their own version of the scantron sheets that can be readable by the official Scantron machine itself. </p>\n\n<p>Plus, there are numerous companies, not even associated with Scantron. inc. in any sort, That sell scantron compatible sheets for cheaper prices than the 'official' scantron sheet. Amazon and eBay are full of them. So, yeah... </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20437",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14538/"
] |
20,445 |
<p>I hold a BS in Mathematics with a minor in Statistics and I've been out of school for several years. I recently began applying to part time online master's programs in Statistics and Computer Science. I've been accepted to the online MSCS program through Johns Hopkins University and I'm hoping to be accepted to the online MAS (Master of Applied Statistics) through Pennsylvania State University as well. My goal is to earn both degrees, and with expertise in both disciplines become the ultimate statistical programmer!</p>
<p>The catch here is that I don't want to (and can't really afford to) leave my current job to pursue school full time, hence the part time online programs. I could do one degree after the other, but that would be another 8-10 years I'd be in school, all the while working.</p>
<p>It's useful to note that I'm already a statistical programmer. Degrees are helpful, especially if at some point I'd like to transition to being a full-fledged statistician or a more general-purpose programmer. In my mind at least, it offers a level of career flexibility not readily attainable with just a bachelor's or even a single master's.</p>
<p>But my question is this: <strong>Is working 40 hours/week and taking two online master's level courses at a time in two different subjects from two different institutions completely insane?</strong> My family sure thinks so. Does anyone have experience or input they could share?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20448,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Better to do one or the other. What you don't want to do is to fail out of either program. Pick the better/more prestigious one and do it. Also, I don't see how stacking up masters's degrees really helps you. I can see how one masters would help, but I don't see what value the second would add.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20449,
"author": "Not Quite An Outsider",
"author_id": 10390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10390",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>In my first semester as an undergraduate, I tried to take a double load of courses, and was dissuaded by the adviser assigned to me. I tried it anyway and failed one of the courses I had registered. (They let me do a big load in a later semester, with some success.) If I had stayed focused on my registered courses and let the courses I audited slip instead, I would not have that on my record. Also, I might have developed a different attitude toward that university.</p>\n\n<p>Learning when not overachieve, or when not to make the attempt, is a hard lesson for many. Many years later, I am finding that I could have restructured my life, changed certain behaviours, and perhaps led a more efficient or satisfying or productive life. Fortunately, I still have some time to make changes.</p>\n\n<p>In addition to the comment above about the proposed course likely being insane, and to seek help in real life (off the Internet) to pull it off anyway, I recommend a values inventory. The current program (one job, two degree programs) may seem feasible and cool and might nurture some internal aspect of pride; that doesn't mean it is good for you, or in line with how you will want to live your life.</p>\n\n<p>Even if you don't know what you want to be when/if you grow up, checking in with yourself on what is important, and what you value, is a beneficial exercise you should repeat throughout your life. If you can (rationally and not maniacally) convince yourself that this use of time is in line with your current and possible future values, then go for it! It doesn't matter if you are crazy if you are enjoying yourself and not hurting yourself or others, but you may have to explain it to a judge or police officer; be prepared. If you aren't sure, ask for guidance, and avail yourself of the options that work and school might offer.</p>\n\n<p>Either way, good luck to you.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20445",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15000/"
] |
20,447 |
<p>I am doing my graduation project to become a Software Engineer. The project aims to study the behavior of freelance developers to subsequently design a process that allows more quality and efficiency.</p>
<p>To know the freelancer behavior I have made a survey, but I don't know what is the best way to publish the survey and get responses; after which I'll post an article.</p>
<p>I have published the survey in at least 7 forums, but in most of them my post has been closed for spamming.</p>
<p>Can any one tell me some advice for doing the survey? (on internet)</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20488,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If you're using forums, don't just make a thread and then write:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Class project, please fill out this survey. Link: www.xxxxxx984asdfac. Thx!!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Most of the time these annoying threads can trigger shutting down or be simply ignored as spam.</p>\n\n<p>I'd recommend picking a few major forums and actually start a communication with the administrators. In no more than a few hundred words explain who you are, what questions you're trying to answer, and how your results may help both parties. If the outcome is positive, here are a bunch of wishes you can usually ask for:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Pin your thread at the top for a fixed amount of time to enhance visibility.</li>\n<li>Tap into their membership e-mail or online messaging network for an announcement and about 2 waves of weekly reminders.</li>\n<li>Provide you with important statistics including open rate, click rate, bounce rate, initiation rate, and completion rate. These are all necessary if you are to publish your results in an academic journal.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Try to enhance your credibility by, in the mail to the administrator and the message to the users:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Detailing the motive of your survey, what kind of questions respondents should anticipate, and how long would it take.</li>\n<li>Getting an institutional review board approval, and report so in the announcement.</li>\n<li>Explicitly mentioning the measures to ensure respondents' confidentiality and/or anonymity.</li>\n<li>Explaining how the results will be used, and even be fed back to the communities that have helped you filling in the survey.</li>\n<li>Being real and present by providing your official contact information (names and school e-mail are sufficient). Invite respondents to contact you if they have questions about the study. Check with your supervisor and department for policy of using the school's name.</li>\n<li>Clearly stating the opening period of the survey.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>You can also try contacting companies that hire freelancers, or talk to websites that organize freelance jobs.</p>\n\n<p>I'd also suggest to make duplicates of your survey so that each forum will have their own referral link. You can pool the data later and compare the differences between forum. If you just make one survey you may not be able to figure that out at the end. Putting a \"where do you learn about this survey?\" question may also help, though probably not as objective.</p>\n\n<p>Now, if you don't care about knowing all those rates, and just want a quick turn around of data, you may use your network to contact some high profile people in the field and see if they are willing to broadcast that for you. Most of the time, a tweet from them would be quite effective.</p>\n\n<p>I also agree with the comments asking you to pay a visit to some social science faculty. At the very least, make sure your questions are examined by some professional for validity. Most researchers also do not mind share with you some templates of the survey introduction.</p>\n\n<p>Some other technical strayed thoughts:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Do make a copy of online survey for each major source. Aka forum A will have its own link, and forum B will have its own link, etc. That way later you can stratify them in the analysis.</li>\n<li>Invest in a good online survey service. Make sure not to enroll in those with limited responses. It'd be very annoying for the 501st respondent to get a \"quota full\" warning if your free service account only allows 500 responses.</li>\n<li>Write good questions and include only relevant questions. Again, talking to some researchers will help a lot.</li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550605/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys (CHERRIES)</a> provides a good list of components you should include in manuscript. Read them before you start data collection and make sure you have thought about all these factors.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Lastly, check if someone has already invented the wheel for you. Secondary data sets may have already covered information you wish to collect. For example <a href=\"http://www.bls.gov/nls/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">National Longitudinal Surveys</a> maintained by the US Department of Labor (I just went ahead and assume that you're interested in the US market) does ask question about freelancing. They even once released a <a href=\"http://www.bls.gov/news.release/History/nlsyth_12202001.txt\" rel=\"noreferrer\">report</a> about this.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20511,
"author": "eykanal",
"author_id": 73,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To borrow from Willie Sutton:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Why do I rob banks? Because that's where the money is.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You need to put your surveys where the people are. I've seen a few studies that used <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/simple.surveys\" rel=\"nofollow\">Facebook</a>, which lets you specify exactly which demographic should see your survey. <a href=\"http://help.surveymonkey.com/articles/en_US/kb/What-will-my-Audience-results-look-like\" rel=\"nofollow\">SurveyMonkey</a> can also help put your survey in front of the people you'd like to see. I know that I had a lot of success putting up advertisements across campus offering to pay for participation, but that was for a study that involved more than just a single survey.</p>\n\n<p>I would also suggest what was said in the comments... talk to the local economics, psychology, and sociology departments to see if they can give you any assistance with this. Researchers in all those areas will face this problem all the time.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20447",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15006/"
] |
20,461 |
<p>I am working on a PhD in chemical engineering, and my advisor mentioned to me today that I'm on track to finish in about half a year. I only have one class left to fulfill the course requirements and I have a few papers published, with a couple more almost finished.</p>
<p>Personally, I'm in no hurry. I love grad school and working on research. However, from the perspective of a getting a good job, would a PhD at 23-24 years of age or additional research publications in high quality journals look better? Once I graduate I plan on either doing research in industry or working at a startup. I don't plan on going into academia.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20462,
"author": "Lev Reyzin",
"author_id": 10,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In my field (computer science, broadly), my impression is as follows. It is of course an over-generalization. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If you want to go into academia or industrial research, then what you\ndo during your Ph.D. matters much much more than how long you took,\nthough if you take more than 6 years to finish it starts to look bad.</p></li>\n<li><p>On the other hand, if you want to go into non-academic industry, you\nmight impress people with a fast Ph.D. because you'd show yourself to be the sort of person who can finish big things fast.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>If you're only 2.5 years in, unless you have an offer from someplace and need to finish ASAP, and especially if you're enjoying your Ph.D., I wouldn't rush to graduate that quickly.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20465,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My overall impression is that prodigies and <em>Wunderkinder</em> are not all that eagerly sought after in industry—particularly in fields associated with chemical engineering (my discipline). Twenty-three or twenty-four, however, is not <em>too</em> young, but it's probably right on the cusp.</p>\n\n<p>However, if your work has reached the point of maturity, and you and your advisor feel that there isn't much for you to gain by remaining in graduate school longer, then it's time to move on and find a job. Of course, in the current economic climate, job searches can last many months, so even if you were ready to defend in six months, you might not have anywhere to go to afterward! (Unless, of course, you start your job search now, which may delay the time it takes you to finish, and so on.)</p>\n\n<p>One final possibility that does cross my mind is the possibility that the funding being used to support your work is running out, and there isn't a follow-up source available—hence the notion of being able to finish soon being introduced.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20470,
"author": "Antiohia",
"author_id": 15026,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15026",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Another (similar) opinion from the computer science field:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If you want to continue with research, then it doesn't matter whether you have done your PhD in 2 or in 5 years. If you have still interesting things to do on your topic, why not doing them? However, think about your motivation. Now you have the goal to finish your PhD. After an year you will no longer have a goal and continue researching. Will it still be interesting for you? </li>\n<li>If you want to go in the industry (especially in startup), then you really don't need to do more research. In some cases it is even seen bad when you have done research, as this is quite different from the kind of (simple, imperfect, fast) work that is mostly needed in industry. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I would take my decision depending on my interests and not depending on what looks good. Both alternatives look fine, it is much more important whether continuing research on the topic is interesting enough for you or you want to have it behind you.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20543,
"author": "Floris",
"author_id": 15062,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15062",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Ask yourself what your PhD will mean in your career. For some people, it's simply a \"certificate of competence\" - it shows they are a good researcher, they can think independently, create original thought, test hypotheses, write coherently...</p>\n\n<p>For others, it is a sign that they have mastered a specific field.</p>\n\n<p>If you fall in the first category, then by all means finish and move on. I work \"in industry\" and have hired a number of people like this. The first thing I tell them is \"your PhD is a license to learn\". Once that message sinks in, they realize that our particular field has so much more to learn, and they can become quite effective.</p>\n\n<p>If you fall in the second category, then ask yourself if your current environment is the place to continue honing your specific skills. If it is, and you are enjoying yourself - stick around. Finish your PhD and stay on as a post-doc, maybe. It's not wrong to finish fast; it depends on who you are, and who you want to become.</p>\n\n<p>Either way - you are in the enviable position of having choices. Make sure you realize how lucky you are.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20558,
"author": "Dave31415",
"author_id": 15074,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15074",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you don't want to stay in academia and want to further your career as much as possible, get the PhD as fast as possible and start working. No one will care about how many years you spent in grad school and they also won't care very much about your number of publications. They will care about work experience which is what you would be building over the next few years. </p>\n\n<p>If you really enjoy grad school, don't mind missing about on money and want to spend a lot more time learning, then you may want to stay.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/08
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20461",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5958/"
] |
20,473 |
<p>As a beginner researcher, several years ago, I sent some (2-3) papers to a quality journal (with ISI IF). The papers were rejected.
Now I am preparing a manuscript, which is in my opinion much more mature.
In the meantime I had some papers published in other journals.
Now I am considering the same journal again, because of the topic.
Is it a good idea ? Or is there going to be some bias because of earlier rejections ?
Just to clarify: this is a completely new manuscript.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20474,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is perfectly legit. You are not forbidden to submit ever again to a journal that has rejected one of your earlier manuscripts. Indeed, rejections happen for everyone. It is best not to take them too badly.</p>\n\n<p>Now, it would be a different story if you resubmitted the same paper that was previously rejected, or a version with only minor updates. Sending an entirely new manuscript, or a much more mature version, is unproblematic.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Or is there going to be some bias because of earlier rejections ?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Important journals get <strong>many</strong> submissions, the majority of which they have to reject. I think it is very unlikely that the responsible editor even remembers that you already had a paper rejected a few years back. And even if (s)he does, it is unlikely that (s)he holds it against you. As I said, rejection is something that happens to every researcher, at least now and then.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20475,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In addition to xLeitix's answer, which hits on most of the main points, I would add one further suggestion, if the manuscript is a revised version of a previously rejected manuscript.</p>\n\n<p>As part of the cover letter to the editor, you should indicate that this is a resubmission of the previous paper. You should also outline <strong>clearly</strong> what has changed from the previous manuscript to the current one: what have you added or removed, and how the present manuscript is an improvement over the previous version. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20494,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Not only is this a good idea, but its relatively common, and a decent publication strategy overall. Given a particular topic is likely to have more than one journal, a way to decide where to submit is to submit it to the \"top\" journal that you think you have a shot at getting into (you shouldn't submit work that has no chance - its a waste of your time and theirs), and then letting the paper \"slide\" down the rankings as it gets rejected.</p>\n\n<p>Rejection doesn't even imply that you submitted to the wrong journal, or that the work wasn't worth trying to get in there - the vagaries of editorial discretion, publishing cycles, and reviewers mean something might have had a legitimate shot at getting in but just missed this time. The next paper? Start the process over again.</p>\n\n<p>Unless your submission is egregious enough to be <em>memorably bad</em>, the odds of the editors holding rejections against you, or even remembering you specifically, are pretty low.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/08
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20473",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14164/"
] |
20,476 |
<p>People in my program complain a lot and usually not in good humor. How can I handle this socially and professionally? </p>
<p>Some of these people are my friends and some are no more than peers. In general I want to be respectful but not allow them to harangue me with complaints. Generally, <a href="http://whatshouldwecallgradschool.tumblr.com/post/39774996944/my-advice-to-first-years-worrying-about-exam" rel="nofollow noreferrer">much of this advice</a> does not help.</p>
<p>For now, I try to avoid social gatherings with a high concentration of people from my program. When they get together, the complaints take over conversation. At the department, I can spot someone (or a group) having a stress crisis from a distance, and I keep my distance.</p>
<p>I certainly hope that this climate does not continue into faculty life.</p>
<p>[Migrated from other question <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20401/why-do-phd-students-complain-so-much-and-how-to-best-handle-it">here</a>. There were some useful pieces of advice, so I hope that respondents will move their points]</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20479,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>(as suggested by jabberwocky, I have moved the last part of my answer from <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20401/why-do-phd-students-complain-so-much/20412?noredirect=1#comment42706_20412\">here</a> to this question)</em></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>People in my program complain a lot and usually not in good humor. How can I handle this socially and professionally?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I have experienced that \"dissatisfaction\" can also be very infectious. Dissatisfied people often and strongly complain to their co-workers and co-students, which, over time, gives those people the same sense of dissatisfaction. For instance, in my old lab, we had one office room of people that were constantly dissatisfied about our work environment (all the other students in other rooms felt differently). Any new student that would be seated in this office would, within weeks, also start to complain a lot. As such, I think your goal</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In general I want to be respectful but not allow them to harangue me with complaints.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>is very good. Try not to let other people convince you that life is terrible.</p>\n\n<p>I am not sure whether entirely avoiding social outings is the right strategy, though. This will make you an outsider of your cohort, and you will have to spend <strong>a lot</strong> of time with these people in the next years. At parties, a usual strategy to avoid any topic that you do not want to talk about (politics, sports, or whether your life is terrible) is to avoid the groups that are currently talking about the annoying topics and focus your attention to people that are discussing something more interesting.</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes, people will come directly to you to complain one-on-one about their problems. In such cases, one strategy is to acknowledge that they are feeling bad, but provide a more positive light on their case. When you do that regularly, two things may happen. In the best case, the complainer actually takes your words to heart and starts seeing things a bit brighter. If that does not happen, he will at least stop complaining to <em>you</em> specifically, because he is actually looking for somebody who echoes his feelings.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20482,
"author": "Christian Clason",
"author_id": 13852,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13852",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p><em>(as suggested by jabberwocky, I have moved the last part of my answer from <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20429/13852\">here</a> to this question)</em></p>\n\n<p>Kvetching is a perfectly normal part of mental and social hygiene, but to what extent depends on the person. It is also a self-affirming activity: If complaining leads to positive social experiences (people you talk to relate to your experiences and opinions and share them), you will do this more often. If unchecked, this vicious circle can easily cross your tolerance threshold for complaining (which is different for each person). So, first of all you should keep in mind that \"too much complaining\" is your subjective view, not an objective truth (absent a concrete case of someone spending the day complaining instead of working and then failing to meet a deadline). Of course, if you'd rather have less complaining around you, it's perfectly legitimate to try to break that circle. </p>\n\n<p>The best strategy (outside of avoiding complaining peers, which you apparently now follow) is often to lead by example: Do not respond to complaining with your own complaints (especially not with ones about their complaining), but try to steer the conversation to happier grounds by</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>getting them to relate positive experiences about their PhD;</li>\n<li>mentioning ones you might have had (without showing off -- this one can be tricky);</li>\n<li>taking an interest in their lives outside of academia.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In short, show them that they can have positive social interactions without complaining. If enough people around you feel the same way as you do, this usually works.</p>\n\n<p>To your final remark: This is by no means limited to PhD students (or even academia) -- you get similar \"hot spots\" among early-career faculty simultaneously applying for permanent positions (in Europe) or trying to get tenure (in the US), or among tenured faculty of any seniority any time a major evaluation (of a grant or institute) or reaccreditation is imminent. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20490,
"author": "Piotr Migdal",
"author_id": 49,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As a PhD student who like to complain (partly as a PhD student, partly as a Slav) and work/live in such environment: it's not much about etiquette (at worst, they will <em>complain</em> about your behavior), but about social contacts.</p>\n\n<p>If your goal is to avoid complaints (especially non-productive ones):</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>DO steer away from sensitive topics (especially if it is not a new topic, e.g. \"We already had a discussion about the odds of getting tenure; if we have nothing more to add, let's talk about X...\"); some people have their weak points you don't want to touch,</li>\n<li>DO try to focus on something positive (sometimes non academia-related topics can be the best/safest),</li>\n<li>DON'T try to persuade that they don't have a problem (it's like persuading someone that (s)he is not feeling pain),</li>\n<li>DON'T start complaining by yourself (it is a positive feedback mechanism),</li>\n<li>DON'T start conversations with \"how is your thesis?\", or in tougher cases, not even \"how are you?\",</li>\n<li>DON'T talk that other have worse (not many people are happy when hearing about others being unemployed or anything),</li>\n<li>DO focus on their opportunities (in academia, science, non-academic job market, seeing an cool city while on a conference, etc),</li>\n<li>DO try to focus on facts and actions rather than pointless complaints (see below). </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Some people complain no matter what and no matter what is the topic - then you can't help. </p>\n\n<p>With respect to complaints, PhD students are often smart and analytical. Saying that complaints never solve anything but one should focus on cold diagnosis and action often helps (or at least - halts some complaints). See (a bit different context, but somewhat related):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>[...] People who struggle against the system (in this case, national education, but you can insert here any academic or political institution you don't like), or try to reform the system from the inside, often end up bitter and frustrated. Large institutions evolve at glacial speed, so whatever aspects one might want to reform, instead of fighting the resistance of matter it seems more fruitful to find a niche and expand from there. [...] <strong>We’d have got nowhere if we simply complained about the Polish education system and stopped at that.</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>from my text <a href=\"http://warsztatywww.wikidot.com/en%3aindie-camp-for-hs-geeks\">An independent camp for high school geeks</a>, emphasis mine</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20496,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As I said in the other question, you can avoid some of this, but shared suffering is a bonding experience - you and your cohorts will have the experience of having been \"in the trenches\" together, and this can be a fairly powerful bond with people who will be your colleagues in the future. Especially for those who are \"just\" your peers, those kinds of links can be important.</p>\n\n<p>I think there's also a reason people complain in social settings in academia - some amount of stress and suffering is universal, but success is largely personal. Everyone can commiserate about quals, or NIH pay lines, or how brutal a particular class was, but at any given moment far fewer people are riding the high of getting a paper accepted, going to a conference they're looking forward to, landing that prestigious postdoc, etc. Focusing on that also highlights those people who <em>aren't</em> experiencing that. When I was in graduate school, the complaining was about things that happened to you <em>because you were a graduate student</em> not because they were your fault - everyone was stressed, everyone was poor, etc.</p>\n\n<p>Some thoughts of mine on dealing with it:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Don't dismiss the complaints. A lot of people want to know they're not alone, and just writing off their problems - however trivial or annoying you might find them - isn't going to make the social situation better.</li>\n<li>Refocus the conversation on shared experiences that are funny or odd or some how enjoyable, rather than just complaints. The professor with the oddball anecdotes, the antics of the students you are supervising, etc.</li>\n<li>Know things about your cohort's lives outside of school. It's a lot easier to not complain about school if you have something else to talk about.</li>\n<li>As @PiotrMigdal said, put the brakes on a little harder when things turn to sensitive topics - that doesn't go good places.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20579,
"author": "Eric Lippert",
"author_id": 10893,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10893",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>In general I want to be respectful but not allow them to harangue me with complaints</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Good answers so far. I would add that I have found that different complainers have different goals for their complaining. Compare and contrast these two conversations:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Professor Bedfellow is always on my case to get the grading done faster, it's driving me crazy how awful people are here.</li>\n<li>Have you tried talking to the professor about it?</li>\n<li>Yes, but prof just says \"I'm busy!\" and I should come back later. It's awful!</li>\n<li>Have you tried asking the admin to schedule a short meeting?</li>\n<li>Yes, but the admin hates me. People in this department are awful!</li>\n<li>Surely the admin will do their job even if they dislike you.</li>\n<li>Yes, but by the time I get a meeting it'll be too late! Everything is awful!</li>\n<li>AAARGH YOU ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO DEAL WITH.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>vs</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Professor Bedfellow is always on my case to get the grading done faster, it's driving me crazy how awful people are here.</li>\n<li>That's terrible.</li>\n<li>The prof just says \"I'm busy!\" and I should come back later. It's awful!</li>\n<li>How irritating that must be for you.</li>\n<li>And the admin hates me. People in this department are awful!</li>\n<li>How vexing.</li>\n<li>By the time I get a meeting it'll be too late! Everything is awful!</li>\n<li>Boy, that must be frustrating.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In the first conversation the joy of complaining is secondary to the actual goal of the conversation, which is to infuriate the person trying in vain to solve their friend's problem. This is a Why-don't-you-Yes-but conversation and the first person to get frustrated loses.</p>\n\n<p>The second conversation seems exactly the same, but the friend this time is commiserating rather than playing Why-don't-you-Yes-but. </p>\n\n<p>My point is: if the complainer is looking for people to have a game of why-don't-you-yes-but, and you play that game, they'll keep on coming back to you if you play. If that's what they're looking for and you just nod and say \"You're right, everything is awful\" over and over again, they'll get bored and look for someone else to frustrate.</p>\n\n<p>Now, if the person is genuinely just looking for someone to say \"yes, that's awful\", then you deal with that by <em>not saying that more than once</em>. Let them get in one complaint and then change the subject until they get the hint.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20582,
"author": "keshlam",
"author_id": 10225,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10225",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>May not apply, but: There are regional variations in how complaining is used socially. New Yorkers, for example, tend to see it as an opportunity for bonding (sharing complaints about something else implies you don't have complaints about the person you're sharing them with), whereas midwesterners tend to hear that kind of complaint as general annoyance which could be directed against them in the next breath.</p>\n\n<p>Understanding the subtext may help with finding ways to either deal with the complainers or explain to them why they're making you uncomfortable.</p>\n\n<p>(Recommended reading: Deborah Tannen's books analyzing variations in conversational styles, specifically <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That%27s_Not_What_I_Meant!\" rel=\"nofollow\">That's Not What I Meant!</a>)</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/08
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20476",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7934/"
] |
20,486 |
<p>The <a href="http://www.abet.org/cac-criteria-2014-2015/" rel="nofollow">ABET accreditation criteria document for Computer Science</a> lists some course requirements as</p>
<ul>
<li>One year of Science and Mathematics</li>
<li>At least one half year of Mathematics</li>
<li>One and one-third years of Computer Science </li>
<li>At least one year of up-to-date coverage of fundamental and advanced topics</li>
</ul>
<p>How many courses is one year equivalent to? It may mean 10, going by 5 courses per semester. "One year of X" may mean a year where there is at least one course on X every semester. In either case, "one and one-third years" of courses does not make sense.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20537,
"author": "Henry",
"author_id": 8,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>A \"year\" of a subject almost certainly means one course per term for a year's worth of terms. That is, \"one year of science\" at a semester school would mean two courses in science. (At least, this is how I've seen similar terminology used in discussing mathematics requirements---when people say something requires \"2 years of math\" they mean taking in total at least four semester long courses, not necessarily consecutively.)</p>\n\n<p>The \"one and one-third\" years is presumably for schools which use trimesters, where that means 4 courses. (I assume that at a semester school that means three courses---a year and a half---since these are minimal requirements, though I wonder if they really expect schools which use trimesters to include two courses on discrete math.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20539,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>ABET formally defines a \"year\" as</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The lesser of 32 semester-hours (or equivalent) or one-fourth of the credits required for graduation [1].</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The wiggle room in the definition is almost certainly because of the wide variety of credit systems used by various schools. \"One and a third years\" would then equate either to 42 semester hours, or four full trimesters or quarters of study for those on alternate study schedules.</p>\n\n<p>[1] <a href=\"http://www.abet.org/eac-criteria-2014-2015/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.abet.org/eac-criteria-2014-2015/</a></p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/08
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20486",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14572/"
] |
20,487 |
<p>During my undergraduate, I have a publication, however I am listed as the second author. I know it is not as ideal as being listed as first author, but for graduate admission, will it still play a role?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20489,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>No-one would expect an undergraduate to publish papers so the fact that you have been involved in publishable research is a merit. One of the goals of a Phd education is to learn to write good research papers so, again, no-one would expect that from your from the start. I would suggest that you try to describe your contribution to the paper so that your authorship can be valued from the perspective of that contribution. Being able to understand the skills and experience of a student, provided it is good, is of value in a selection process.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20492,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It will absolutely still play a role. What graduate schools are looking for in terms of publications, undergraduate research conferences, etc. is not that you already have an established body of first author publications (that's the point of grad school) but that you have some experience and aptitude for research.</p>\n\n<p>A second-author publication establishes that.</p>\n\n<p>This is especially true in some fields like medicine, public health, etc. where the results of a large study might have many authors, and no matter how much you contributed as an undergrad, the odds of you meriting first or last authorship is slim. However, regardless of your field, there are some things you should also consider doing:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>As @PeterJansson suggested, make sure you can describe what it is you contributed to the paper. You might not have room for this on your CV, but in application essays and in interviews, this will be important. If it's the only paper on your CV (which is likely), you're <em>going</em> to have to talk about it. It won't be held against you if you're the 2nd author, but it likely won't look good if you can't communicate what the paper was about or how you helped.</li>\n<li>Consider seeing if there are ancillary questions in the research (how sensitive our our results to X? What about Y?) that might make good projects you could take the lead on and get a conference presentation or short paper out of.</li>\n<li>Similarly, look out for opportunities to present undergraduate work at your institution, and apply to those. Even if you're not the first author on the publication, it's often possible to present on your part of the work in the context of the larger whole.</li>\n</ul>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/08
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20487",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14682/"
] |
20,495 |
<p>Is it possible to apply for a PhD through a government or a military research laboratory?</p>
<p>If so what would be the process? Is the qualifying exam required? How is that scheduled? How about course work? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20515,
"author": "nivag",
"author_id": 14115,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14115",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am in the UK so in other countries things may be different.</p>\n\n<p>Some government research institutes fund PhDs, where you are based at the institute for your research. However the PhD itself must be awarded by an academic institution (i.e. a university). You will generally have a supervisor at this university and its name will be on the certificate.</p>\n\n<p>The specifics are going to vary for place to place including: what, if any, taught courses you must do, how often you must visit your university etc. In my experience these factors are often a compromise between the two institutions, particularly the university often has various requirements for the PhD while the research institute just wants you to do research for them.</p>\n\n<p>As for applying, you should expect the same/similar requirements to a standard PhD. when looking for positions the host university or the industrial lab are the best places to start. Although it is not always clear whether the position is just funded by the lab, but based at the university, or actually based at the lab.</p>\n\n<p>A related option, not sure how location dependent it is, is doing an EngD. These tend to be more industry focused, often in a company.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20540,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In the US, you cannot have your PhD degree <em>awarded by</em> a government or military laboratory, and similarly industrial labs generally cannot award degrees, either.</p>\n\n<p>However, having worked at several government labs, I can confirm that it is possible to be a grad student and do your thesis research at a government lab. Usually this is done under a co-advising arrangement within an existing collaboration (Prof. X at university A works with Dr. Y at lab B), or under a cross-affiliation (Prof. X has a joint appointment at both university A and lab B).</p>\n\n<p>More specific details differ too much depending on the university and department's regulations, as well as those of the lab in which you're interested in working, so you'd need to ask them specifically. However, it is also worth noting that many graduate departments still have a \"residency requirement\" on the books—which states that you must spend some number of semesters actually registered as a student at the university before receiving a PhD. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 55425,
"author": "Thomas",
"author_id": 6984,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6984",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are very few exceptions to this, and those exceptions that exist are usually simply collaborations between an institution and a PhD-granting academic institution. For example, <a href=\"http://ufm.dk/en/research-and-innovation/councils-and-commissions/the-danish-council-for-independent-research/for-applicants/what-can-you-apply-for/overview-of-instruments/research-educations-outside-the-universities-phd\" rel=\"nofollow\">the Danish Council for Independent Research</a> funds PhDs that are hosted at research institutions that do not normally grant PhDs. However, you have to maintain and actually earn the degree from a university, even if you spend the entire time working at the non-academic institution.</p>\n\n<p>Similarly, some institutions that are not universities grant PhDs. For example, <a href=\"http://www.prgs.edu/\" rel=\"nofollow\">the RAND Corporation</a> runs a graduate program in public policy analysis, even though it is not a university and grants no degrees other than that single PhD.</p>\n\n<p>In general, however, you need to be at a research university to earn a PhD.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/08
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20495",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15041/"
] |
20,531 |
<p>The graduate students at my university (a relatively large state school in the US) are considering joining a union. To help decide whether to sign a union card in support of joining the union, I'm interested in more information about how unions have helped graduate students at other universities. What are some improvements to graduate life gained by graduate students at other universities upon joining a union?</p>
<p>I'm also interested in information about how unions have hurt graduate students at other universities. What are some detriments to graduate life caused by graduate students joining a union?</p>
<p>I'm primarily interested in student-body-wide benefits/detriments, instead of student-specific or faculty/administrator-specific claims (e.g. "my advisor treated me better with the union behind me" or "my students have stopped working since they joined a union" is not what I'm looking for).</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20534,
"author": "grrrck",
"author_id": 7444,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7444",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't have first-hand knowledge of specific details, but I am aware that at my university the graduate student union has successfully negotiated items like:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Basic health care coverage for GAs, RAs and TAs, with full coverage provided to 0.5 FTE assistants.</li>\n<li>Tuition payment deferment so that earned stipends can pay tuition fees not covered by tuition waivers.</li>\n<li>Paycheck deductions in installments for parking permits for graduate assistants.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I have also been told that they negotiate assistantship salaries and minimum and maximum working loads for assistants, and that the union will represent assistants should a grievance arise.</p>\n\n<p>I've never discussed the graduate student union with anyone in my department – professors and other students alike – and am aware of no negative impacts of my membership.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20535,
"author": "Anonymous",
"author_id": 11565,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11565",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I went to graduate school in mathematics at a university with a TA union. I think the main effect was to level off graduate student compensation across disciplines -- so, the union was apparently a great boon to those in the humanities, but I heard that compensation for math TA's would likely be higher if not for the union.</p>\n\n<p>Another benefit to the union was that it instilled (for many) a sense of camaraderie and common cause. Union events were fun, and they served beer. It was a good way to get to know your fellow graduate students.</p>\n\n<p>The main disadvantage was that dues had to be paid, around $200 a year (most of which went straight to the AFT). This is not a lot, but on our salary it did mean something. Dues were mandatory, even if you opted out of the union -- although state politicians have since seen to it that this is no longer true. </p>\n\n<p>Another potential disadvantage is that union dues went (in part) to political contributions to union-friendly politicians. I didn't mind, but this tended to alienate graduate students who were more politically conservative than me.</p>\n\n<p>There was occasional heated rhetoric when I was there, and even more after I left, but overall the union didn't seem to do much good or harm. Mostly, I remember the beer.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20536,
"author": "Henry",
"author_id": 8,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I was a postdoc at an institution with unionized graduate students. One specific consequence was that graduate students weren't allowed to ever lecture in place of a professor.</p>\n\n<p>This is an annoyance to the professor, but more relevantly, it's a mixed deal for graduate students. When I was a graduate student, getting the chance to lecture was an opportunity---at some schools it's one of the few chances to get that experience while still in grad school. On the other hand I have heard stories (in other fields) of professors abusing this and passing a large part of their teaching load off to their grad students. (This, I assume, is why the rule was negotiated in the first place.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20538,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is a huge over simplification, but it is worth noting that Universities, unlike companies, are closed systems that generally do not make a profit. Giving additional benefits from someone means taking them from someone else. For a company it is usually the share holder that loses out. For academic departments added benefits to graduate students hurts professors.</p>\n\n<p>There is no question in my mind that while graduate student unions may provide a short term benefit to graduate students, those students who wish to continue on in academia are effectively shooting themselves in the foot. Those increased benefits come directly from departmental budgets. This means heavier teaching loads and less discretionary money for academic staff. To offset this you need either high grant overheads which will make getting a grant even more competitive or higher tuition. Basically if you support graduate student unions, you lose your right as a faculty member to complain about high teaching loads, not having a grant, and high tuition.</p>\n\n<p>As a graduate student in response to \"threats\" about unionization my university increased the PhD student stipend. The stipend was above the NIH recommendation. This means that any student funded by an NIH grant needed to find an additional source of non governmental funding. This essentially boils down to PIs using their overhead accounts to supplement the stipend, but PIs did not get a bigger slice of the overhead pie to cover this new cost. At the same time the University got a site license for Matlab. To cover the cost the PI slice of the overhead pie was reduced. Universities take, but rarely give.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20546,
"author": "Frank",
"author_id": 15064,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15064",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You ask about student-body-wide benefits, I think you need to ask this question across schools.</p>\n\n<p>Unions at some schools have more bargaining power than others, and at some schools the field is already more level than others. But when you look at things like tuition waivers and health benefits, I don't see how they would be as common as they are now without TA unions pushing the fight for the last 40 years.</p>\n\n<p>Non-union schools are under pressure to match the compensation at union schools. Now other battles loom at many schools regarding international student issues and mandatory fees.</p>\n\n<p>I was involved in my TA union as an elected leader for three years, and I heard lots of complaints about how the department wants to give us this, but the union won't let us, the school wants to pay us more, but the union won't let us, etc. I personally investigated every case and the most common explanation is that the school administrators -- starting these rumors -- did not understand labor law or the union contract. In no case did the union prevent a TA from being paid better, etc.</p>\n\n<p>Also, I heard complaints about union dues going to liberal politicians, this is also not true, and is against the law. Unions do help some politicians, this is true -- but it isn't with dues money. The reason unions do help is because unions have painfully found out that what is gained at the bargaining table can be taken away at the state capitals very easily.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20548,
"author": "user19404",
"author_id": 15065,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15065",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A good thing in unions is that you get to interact with others, specially your seniors, who can guide you in your academic life because they are one step ahead of you.</p>\n\n<p>A drawback is that you will have to be a part of parties, meetings, and gatherings etc. which could be disturbing for some people who are not into much socializing. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/08
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20531",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7346/"
] |
20,532 |
<p>I'm not famous enough of a scientist to be frequently solicited by the media* (plus my field has little political/social controversy around it), but I had a few encounters with local newspapers and one with a public national television. The results were not entirely bad, but the general sentiment given was significantly different than what I would have wanted it to be.</p>
<p>It seems like I'm not alone, I just got back from a conference in my field where more senior scientists discussed their relationship with the general media. It came out that more often than they would like, the relationship was bad.</p>
<p>Problems stated, among others†:</p>
<ol>
<li>Misquotation, or words taken out of their context significantly changing their meaning (this is the most frequent). </li>
<li>A general difficulty for the media to understand, and convey, uncertainty ('we think, it might be so..' or 'we are rather confident that ...' becomes 'it is so')</li>
<li>Difficulty to apprehend results, applications, consequences that may or may not appear 10-20 years down the line.</li>
<li>Exaggeration of the conclusions</li>
</ol>
<p>etc.</p>
<p>These are not without consequences, at the personal level, as it can give the impression that you don't know what you are talking about.</p>
<p>My first thought was to ignore the media attention and advocate that scientists should do the communication themselves to bypass the regular media (having a blog, entertaining a profile on social media, etc.), but it is extremely time consuming and would distract from the actual research work. I think there must be something to do, on our side, to help with that.</p>
<p>I understand that it is due to how media works, and I don't believe it will change by a lot. But the question is then: <strong>are there any strategies that would help reducing this effect</strong>, at least to protect oneself against the consequences?</p>
<p>*newspapers, television, magazines, etc. i.e. not scientific journals.</p>
<p>†anyone who has items to add to this list is welcome to do so.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20533,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I've had one paper I wrote garner significant media attention, so while I'm not a practiced hand at it, some things I learned along the way:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Be able to convey the idea behind your paper simply. A brief, non-technically \"What happened\", and why this matters. Don't oversell, but if you provide good information, you have some more control over how it gets conveyed, instead of forcing a non-expert journalist to translate your work into words.</li>\n<li>Keep it short. It's harder to misquote or provide out-of-context soundbites if you keep things short and to the point. Don't pontificate.</li>\n<li>Make the caveats of your work clear, but don't over-hedge.</li>\n<li>If it's clear they're trying to get you to say something in particular, decide if you're okay with saying it. If you are, just do it. If you aren't <em>don't go anywhere near it</em>. Don't dance around, or try to add qualifiers - just don't approach.</li>\n<li>Be prepared for rage-inducing discussion of your work online after it hits the air. Learn to have a thick skin, or purposefully ignore it.</li>\n<li>Remember that, in the grand scheme of things, even a fair amount of media attention is a flash in the pan, and the odd story that makes you wince is just that - a single story.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>While I think you can <em>help</em> mitigate some of the problems around media coverage of your work with an active social media presence and a blog, it's only by engaging the audience. It's not going to let you \"stand aside\" from the media - no website or news paper is going to go \"Oh, Dr. X has a blog. On second thought, lets not bother with the story...\" If anything, an active social media presence will probably raise your profile among science communication types, and increase the odds of getting a bit of media attention.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20767,
"author": "Christian Clason",
"author_id": 13852,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13852",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>(At the request of the OP, I'm expanding my brief comment into an answer.)</em></p>\n\n<p>The advice I've heard most often is </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p><strong>Prepare your own sound bites</strong> (i.e., minimal media-style statements). If you don't boil it down, they will, and they are certain to get it wrong. If they already made cuts you don't agree with, don't hesitate to send them a counter-proposal: something similarly short but more correct. (Reputable journalists usually are more concerned with meeting word-count restrictions than with increasing sensationalism.)</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Be rigorous in demanding the last word on any change and in exercising that right.</strong> If they don't grant you that, do not agree to speak to them (it's a sign they are not up to professional standards). This especially applies to the uncertainties or caveats you mention; make it clear that they get either a quote with qualifications or no quote at all. Getting wrong exposure is worse than getting no exposure. </p></li>\n<li><p>Repeating Fomite's excellent point: If you are worried they will distort something, <strong>do not mention it at all</strong> -- <em>especially</em> if they seem to insist on it.</p></li>\n<li><p>For appearance on radio or television, <strong>rehearse</strong> (a lot). (Even for interviews in connection with a written piece, it pays off to spend some time beforehand to formulate and polish the key statements you want to make.)</p></li>\n<li><p>If live appearances happen often enough, <strong>get professional coaching</strong> (universities usually offer such things, since it's in their own interest that you look good). They are probably also happy to look at any written communication you want to send to the media and to point out possible pitfalls or help boiling it down to make it media-ready.</p></li>\n</ol>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/08
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20532",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643/"
] |
20,542 |
<p>It just came to my mind, currently if one wants to obtain an
academic degree one must to do a thesis. This is a widely accepted
method to prove the knowledge of certain academic level, sort to say.
But my questions are, where this method was originated? Which historical
or social circumstances originated it? Is there any philosophical background?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20553,
"author": "dbmag9",
"author_id": 6899,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6899",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>(note: I have no references for the below, nor am I qualified in the topic)</p>\n\n<p>First of all, the premise of your question isn't quite accurate: certainly in the UK it's very common for undergraduate degrees to have no thesis requirement. But putting that aside:</p>\n\n<p>I think there are parallels with other mediaeval professions, which required proof of skill in order to become a member of a guild (the professional organisation). To be a 'master' of the guild one had to produce a 'masterpiece' (the origin of that word); this has obvious parallels with the idea of a thesis proving that an individual should be admitted to a degree (remember that historically a degree is more like a rank than an award, honour or qualification).</p>\n\n<p>The MA at Oxford and Cambridge is still awarded automatically to those with a BA seven years after the start of the degree, which I believe matches the time someone in a professional guild would take to become a master.</p>\n\n<p>Note also that the modern doctorate is a much more recent invention than the MA.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20559,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A bit if history. The history of thesis is intertwined with the history of universities in the 12th and 13th century.. The early history of universities is not clear but with time systems develop on how information/knowledge is taught and discussed. The end (so far) result is what we have today. The written thesis is based on the fact that ideas need to be made more permanent than oral traditions. the advent of printing made wider distribution of copies possible. The first degrees were the baccaulerate and magister artium which corresponded to doctor in certain disciplines. </p>\n\n<p>The thesis was originally what the word describes a thought or thinking that needed defending, which goes backs to Aristotle and Plato. As soon as writing was possible, the idea was to put the ideas down in writing and hence a written thesis was born. One has to remember that teaching early on did not necessarily occur as lectures, it could be mentioning and learned discussions. At the same time knowledge was not as structured and defined as now.</p>\n\n<p>early on the teacher actually wrote the thesis and t was the students job to defend it. So the focus was less on developing knowledge but to defend a thesis with arguments and logic. During the renaissance the thesis in a form we can recognise was developed. These texts were called dissertatio (lat. development, presentation) where as the defence was named disputatio (lat. c. learned argument). From these relatively common beginnings different \"cultures\" developed which now are reflected in differences between countries in how a thesis is defined and defended.</p>\n\n<p>Much more details can probably be added to this but the core is covered. There is no necessary connection between a degree and a thesis. Certainly not at a bachelor's leverl and it is also possible at a master's level. Differences also exist between disciplines.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20542",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15061/"
] |
20,552 |
<p>I've worked for an university for one year after my master's degree. Now I'm searching another job. For the moment I've tried to ask to several professors via email if there is any internship opportunities but only a couple of them answered me. I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong or this is not the praxis or the formal manner for this type of requests. This is a general template I use:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear Professor <code>Surname</code>,</p>
<p>I'm a young chemist for the conservation of Cultural Heritage. In my career I've studied mainly non-invasive techniques for art diagnostics and authentication, such as reflectography and Raman spectroscopy. I've also learned, on my own, to use GIS software for organizing data for Cultural Heritage management. I've seen that one of <code>name of a Project I'm interested</code> tasks is the maintenance of cultural heritage. Therefore, I would like to ask you if there are any internship opportunities in which my expertise could be useful to your current research? Thank you for your time.</p>
<p>Best regards,</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How can I propose myself for an internship? Which is the most accepted praxis?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20556,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I don't think this practice is rude, but if these are not people with whom you have any connection, and who have not advertised a position, then I don't think you should be especially surprised that you aren't getting many responses. In all likelihood, the answer is \"no\" and they don't feel like anything will be achieved by telling you that. </p>\n\n<p>A few things which might be hurting you:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The email above really reads like a mass form email. You aren't making any argument about how your expertise is relevant to their specific work, and you're putting the burden on them to think about how your skills might fit with what they're doing rather than thinking about it yourself.</li>\n<li>Maybe this is different in other fields, but it's not clear to me what \"internship\" is supposed to mean here. A paid position? Unpaid? You may be being deliberately vague, but if you're not responding to an ad for a specific position, you have have some clarity about what you're looking for.</li>\n<li>I think that the slightly awkward English doesn't really help. \"Chemist for the conservation of Cultural Heritage\" sounds very strange to me. I think \"Chemist specializing in/interested in/working on the conservation of Cultural Heritage\" is much better. </li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20557,
"author": "wsaleem",
"author_id": 14572,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14572",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To add to Ben's answer, professors usually get these emails by the dozens and for various reasons, most of them are auto-tuned to ignore them. The maximum notice such emails may get is a mention in a lunchtime comment to colleagues. Like Ben said, if you are not getting a reply, the answer is probably \"no\". If there are open positions, they would already be advertised on the prof's or the department's page. Some departments do not take interns as a policy and say so on their webpage.</p>\n\n<p>Your best bet is to contact professors whom you personally know, or have your own professor recommend you to colleagues. Go to places where you can meet more professors, e.g. conferences. Look for professors who have published in your area and start a discussion on some paper of theirs you find interesting. Those emails do get noticed! Bring up your need for an internship in said discussion.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20552",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10333/"
] |
20,555 |
<p>I want to prepare some exercise sheets for a course. I am wondering whether or not it is OK to take some exercises directly from the textbook. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20560,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The big concern is copyright. How important it is depends on how complicated the problem statements are. For instance, if the question is something like:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Using Rolle's Theorem and the Intermediate Value Theorem, prove the Mean Value Theorem.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>then there's no worries about \"reusing\" a question like this, because the formulation of the question is not really \"original.\" </p>\n\n<p>However, if the problem involves a half-page of explanations and formulations, you can't simply copy it in your problem sheet verbatim without reference. You may or may not be able to make a photocopy of the relevant page and distribute it under fair use guidelines; you should probably consult your university librarians about this.</p>\n\n<p>The simplest solution, though, would be to list the source of the problem, and identify the problem from the source:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Deen, <em>Analysis of Transport Phenomena</em>, 1st ed., Problem 1.6.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>and then allow the students to look it up. (Of course, you should make sure that a copy of the text is available to them in the library via \"reserve\" policies, if at all possible.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20565,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>From a practical point of view, taking a few exercises for internal classroom use will probably not cause copyright problems, depending on the local laws. Teaching is one of the fair use possibilities in the US, but I am no expert in law, and I don't know how far it goes.</p>\n\n<p>Assuming US law applies, <a href=\"http://www.teachingcopyright.org/handout/fair-use-faq\">here are</a> a few rules for fair use, and I believe you fulfil them all: non profit, for educational purposes, on content more factual than artistic, extracting small parts, and no net effect on the market. <a href=\"http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/files/2009/10/fairusechecklist.pdf\">Some other sources</a> also add restricted access to the student as a point in favour. It is always safer and more ethical to add a reference to the original book.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20571,
"author": "Adrienne",
"author_id": 13729,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13729",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Textbook publishers and instructors have an agreement (in my experience, an unwritten one): if the instructor tells students the textbook is \"required,\" then the instructor is allowed to use all the images, test bank questions, and animations as desired in the course. If you or the main instructor has therefore indicated that the book is \"required,\" then I would say you can use examples from the text (with proper attribution) all you want.</p>\n\n<p>If you are using a text that <em>isn't</em> required, I would say you are venturing into fair use territory, nicely summarized by Davidmh and commenters. An email to the publishers asking to use X number of questions with attribution over the length of the course would be the most legal way to use the resources.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, saying a text is required does not mean students will purchase it. But that's a separate discussion, and publishers do not expect the instructor to enforce the requirement.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20576,
"author": "Raphael",
"author_id": 1419,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1419",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Beyond the issue of legality, you have to put in some effort in order to make it appropriate <em>for students</em> and TAs (if you have some) -- plain copying can be dangerous.</p>\n<ol>\n<li><p>Cross-check definitions and results necessary to solve the exercise. Even small differences between the book and your lecture can render an exercise completely infeasible.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Skim the related chapter and prior exercises in the book. Sometimes problem 8 builds on the thought process or solution developed in problem 5, or uses a theorem you don't have in your lecture. If you skip 5 but copy 8, or don't give the theorem as hint, you are posing a harder (infeasible?) problem to your students.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Make <em>sure</em> the exercise works as you expect, i.e. solve it in detail (!) yourself. Not only are there many flawed exercise problems in books, but the level may also off.</p>\n<p>Make your solution accessible to the TAs.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>If you don't want your students to have an easy out, make sure to take the exercise from a textbook not on the syllabus and/or without solutions and reformulate a bit so they can't google solutions (easily).</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<p>These are lessons I've learned from painful experiences which were unanimously caused by me being short on motivation, time or both and just copy-pasting exercises onto sheets.</p>\n<p>Regarding work ethics, provided what you do is legal (in your country) I'd say copying exercises is <em>completely</em> acceptable. Developing good exercise problems is hard <em>and</em> time-consuming. It helps nobody if you do half a job, or overextend yourself on this. It's somewhat similar to using an existing texbook vs writing your own.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20584,
"author": "user24033",
"author_id": 15091,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15091",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Most of these answers seem to be focused on the legality of using textbook but I would like to argue from a student's viewpoint that it is not acceptable.(And don't have enough reputation to simply leave a comment.)</p>\n\n<p>These questions are from a textbook they should already have. Normally the questions are extremely similar to examples in the text and are most useful in the context of understanding the concepts. It is my opinion those questions should be reserved for students to reference while going through the book, as well as references while working on your slightly different or harder exercises.</p>\n\n<p>What is the point of taking a class when you could have just got the book instead?</p>\n\n<p>Edit: It is your responsibility as the instructor to add value to the course, giving students new (possibly tailored to skill level) problems is a great way to do that in addition to your in class explanation of concepts. Taking exercises from the textbook adds no value since they already have those questions.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20587,
"author": "JeffE",
"author_id": 65,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I want to prepare some exercise sheets for a course. I am wondering whether or not it is OK to take some exercises directly from the textbook.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<h2>Yes.</h2>\n\n<p>Regardless of the <em>legality</em> or <em>scholastic integrity</em> of copying exercises from required textbooks, recommended textbooks, non-required textbooks, other books in your personal or institutional library, course web pages, random pieces of paper found in classrooms, and the like, it is common and accepted practice to do so, typically <em>without</em> attribution of any kind.</p>\n\n<p>Unless you're teaching a popular MOOC (which attract lawyers like certain substances attract flies) or writing a popular textbook (likewise), nobody is going to come after you for copyright violation. But if it'll keep you awake at night otherwise, rewrite the problem in your own words before you distribute it to your students.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, you should <em>also</em> include your own original problems. (Just don't be surprised to see another instructor use them later.)</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20555",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15032/"
] |
20,567 |
<p>I have a paper that I want to cite in my own work, in the form
"J. Wayne" (for John Wayne) in the bibliography part of the paper and <code>Wayne</code> in the body of the paper.</p>
<p>The full name of the author appears on the paper as <code>Aaaa Bbbb Cccc</code>, and is typically a non-western name.
Say, consider something like <code>John Fitzgerald Kennedy</code>, but let's assume you never heard of them, and they obviously are from a different culture, and you don't know if their last-name is <code>Kennedy</code> or <code>Fitzgerald Kennedy</code>.</p>
<p>Should I note it in my Bibtex file as <code>Kennedy, John Fitzgerald</code> or
<code>Fitzgerald Kennedy, John</code> ? This will change things when printed with last-name only, it will appear either as <code>Kennedy</code> or <code>Fitzgerald Kennedy</code>.</p>
<p>So, more generally, is there an academic naming convention for this kind of situation ?
<strong>Edit:</strong> To be more precise, what I want to know is if there is a standardized way for an author with such a name to sign his paper, for example <code>Aaaa Bbbb-Cccc</code>, so no ambiguity is left for the reader. Or for the reader, if one has a guaranteed way to know this (seems not).</p>
<p>I must add that I have seen the considered author cited as <code>Bbbb</code> or as <code>Cccc</code>, one of these being obviously incorrect (even both could be).</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20569,
"author": "Sam",
"author_id": 13778,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13778",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You could google the person and see how they refer to themself in their publications on their group's page. This would probably be the easiest general way to solve this problem.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20570,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The convention, inasmuch as one exists, is:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>Write the name the way the individual wants it to be written.</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>For example, one of my co-authors has four names: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>(First Name) (Middle Name) (Adopted Married Name) (Given Last Name) </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>but chooses to use </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>(First Initial). (Middle Name) (Adopted Initial). (Last Name)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>as his \"formal\" academic name. </p>\n\n<p>As a more concrete example of this phenomenon, this is a significant issue with a lot of British folks, who eschew the hyphen in a \"double-barreled\" last name. For instance, you'd cite:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Vaughan Williams, Ralph. <em>The Lark Ascending</em>. London: Oxford University Press (2005). </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>and not </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Williams, Ralph V. <em>The Lark Ascending</em>. London: Oxford University Press (2005). </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In such cases, you just need to look up exactly how the author writes his or her name, and follow that trend. <a href=\"http://scholar.google.com\">Google Scholar</a> can be a good source of such information; <a href=\"http://isiknowledge.com\">Web of Science</a> and other citation-tracking sites are often better.</p>\n\n<p>The most useful method of all would be to find \"self-citations\": works where the author cites his or her own work. How the name is written under those circumstances should be the most unambiguous statement.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20575,
"author": "Christian Clason",
"author_id": 13852,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13852",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<h2>No.</h2>\n\n<p>(aeismail has already addressed nicely how to deal with this, but what follows is too long for a comment.)</p>\n\n<p>As far as I know, there's no standard way (i.e., the same for every name no matter the culture) of indicating which components of a name are considered to be the last name. In fact, even the concept of last name is different from culture to culture and may even be absent -- see <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category%3aNames_by_culture\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Names_by_culture</a>. Even in Europe, you can get <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_naming_customs\" rel=\"nofollow\">quite complicated naming systems</a>. So you are really trying to identify the \"main professional name\", whatever that may map to in a given culture. To identify it from the list of names <em>as written within that culture</em>, you have be familiar with the specific naming conventions (maybe the Wikipedia page helps, or if you know someone from that culture, you can ask them).</p>\n\n<p>It's worth keeping in mind that getting it right serves two purposes:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Making sure everybody knows the person you refer to, even if they don't know the full name.</p></li>\n<li><p>Showing courtesy towards that person.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>While the second point is the only one of importance when addressing the person directly (\"Dear Professor/Dr. X\"), in your case the first point is actually more important: If (say) a referee wants to check the bibliography whether you cited a relevant author's works, they would expect to find them in a certain form. If everybody uses the same (wrong) way of parsing the name, it would arguably be the right thing to do to follow that choice.</p>\n\n<p>(Finally, you could also chicken out and just list <em>all</em> authors in full, native name order; in Bibtex, you can do this by wrapping the full name in curly braces.)</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20567",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15079/"
] |
20,572 |
<p>I am trying to look for a PhD position by contacting potential supervisors through email. I have made a list of professors who I found interesting through searching some papers and their department websites. Now I decide to write to them for asking opportunity and in order to show my sincerity, I would like to attach a research proposal.</p>
<p>I know it seems not necessary to do this if my credentials are good enough, but in order to stay out of the crowd, I don't know if this is actually a good idea to attach a research proposal. Anyway, I want to have some advice on writing a research proposal in this situation.</p>
<ol>
<li>What should the appropriate length be? 2 pages, 20 pages? with cited reference?</li>
<li>How much deviation is allowed with the professor's research interest? Because if everything are the same with the current papers, it seems I am just copying its content into the proposal.</li>
<li>Should I include all necessary experimental steps? (I am from engineering)</li>
<li>Any other suggestion on writing research proposal in this situation.</li>
</ol>
<p>I don't know if it is worth the time to do this, I would like to know if you have also some suggestions in impressing potential supervisors solely through email. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20573,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p><em>In most branches of engineering</em>, sending a research proposal to a prospective PhD advisor is not particularly helpful, <strong>unless you are providing your own funding.</strong></p>\n\n<p>The reason for this is that most PhD students are funded through grants obtained by the professor, either from traditional research funding agencies (NSF/DOE/DOD/NIH and their counterparts in other countries), or through industrial contracts. In such cases, the projects that are to be worked on are well-defined, so the possibility of deviating from those projects and using the money to fund other projects—such as the one you propose—are remote.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, if you can provide your own funding, things change significantly. Under such circumstances, you could propose a project of your own design, so long as it fits within the general scheme of the professor's existing research (or moves slightly outside of it). However, proposing a project that lies too far outside of the mainstream typically is unlikely to be well-received, since the professor won't be able to provide much useful support.</p>\n\n<p>However, even under such circumstances, the initial proposal should be more like a \"white paper\"—a faculty member, if he or she reads such a document at all, is not going to spend more than a few minutes reading it. So the initial idea will need to be compellingly presented in a short amount of space—two or three paragraphs at most.</p>\n\n<p>The best way to show your interest in a professor's group is to explain how you could contribute to ongoing research in the group—that is, do you homework before writing to the faculty member. Your email should make it clear that you are writing the <em>specific</em> faculty member, and addressing the concerns and interests of their group. Anything that has the whiff of being a form letter will likely be ignored, unless your CV looks like a perfect fit for the research group!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20577,
"author": "nic",
"author_id": 15085,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15085",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would strongly suggest not using email for your pitch until you know the professor. Use email to setup a short (make the 'short' clear in the email) meeting with the professor. Attach your CV to the email.</p>\n\n<p>Think of this from the professor's viewpoint. If they give you funding and a place in their research group, they are committing to you for 3-7 years. That is a long time. Meeting in person will give them a chance to see that you can work together well.</p>\n\n<p>Some professors are strict about the topic of their projects and some will go for anything. You need to ask around to see how this is for each professor. For professors with narrow topic spectrum, you'd need to show them how you could benefit what is already going on in that field and in his/her group. For professors with wide topic spectrum, come up with some topics that you'd like to work on and that are relative to that professor's area of expertise.</p>\n\n<p>In the end, show the professor that you can do good research. That is really what they care about. Professors are generally good topic generators, they just need some expert researchers to do their dirty work.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 60160,
"author": "Captain Emacs",
"author_id": 45857,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45857",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The proposal should not be long (1/2-2 pages), or at least should have a summary that can be read in one glance.</p>\n\n<p>It should show your interest, but not be so narrow that it creates the impression that you are fixed on what you want to do. Often supervisors may have ideas which are related to what you want to do, but are better informed. If they think you have locked in on an idea, however, they may not be interested in supervising you. </p>\n\n<p>Finally, if the proposal implicitly demonstrates particular skills that you have, that also may interest a potential supervisor, even if their topic is per se different.</p>\n\n<p>Generally, it is a good idea, if you have a very specific supervisor in mind, to talk to them in person, or try to ask for a conversation per Skype. Don't try to do that for a generic application, academics are very busy. But, if you have a very specific topic and supervisor in mind, they may agree to that, in their own interest.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20572",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14682/"
] |
20,578 |
<p><em>(This is a reworking of <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/20226/13852">Software for submitting and testing programming assignments</a>.)</em></p>
<p>First, a bit of background. Many courses in applied mathematics have a programming component, where students are asked to implement algorithms (say, in Matlab) and possibly test them using a given set of interesting data. Although they are a valuable part of the education, these usually receive little love from the students (who, moreover, have rarely received a rigorous training in programming). The result is -- with rare exceptions -- lazy hacks at best and "at least it looks like code" (often followed by my favorite, "it worked on my machine") at worst. </p>
<p>So I am thinking about having students submit their programming assignments via an automated assessment software. The idea is to give them instant feedback on their (repeated) submission with the goal of </p>
<ol>
<li><p>saving the TAs from having to check every submission and (if they are generous) inserting all the missing semicola to make the code run, and </p></li>
<li><p>trying to increase the student's motivation to do more than the bare minimum by introducing some gamification elements (giving points for the fastest/most accurate code, for example, or a current ranking to encourage resubmitting improved solutions).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Hence my question (which is hopefully relevant to other disciplines as well): Has anybody tried such a thing? Did it actually lead to less work and/or more student involvement? Any hints on what to do, and what to avoid?</p>
<p>(I know there is the <a href="http://vpl.dis.ulpgc.es/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">VPL</a> module for Moodle, and we have an <a href="http://www.s3.uni-duisburg-essen.de/research/jack.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">in-house system</a> that can provide the necessary functionality, so I'm not asking for software recommendations here. That said, if some software provides a specific feature you've used successfully, by all means mention it -- bonus points if it's open source.)</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20583,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p><strong>TL;DR</strong></p>\n\n<p>We did something along this lines for Java-based programming assignments. Students and TAs generally like it. It was <strong>a lot</strong> of work for us.</p>\n\n<p><strong>(Very) Long Version</strong></p>\n\n<p>I used to teach software engineering at a large public university in Austria. We implemented a similar approach for two courses back there, for a <strong>400+ students bachelor-level</strong> distributed systems course, and <strong>for a 150 students master-level</strong> course on middleware and enterprise application engineering. Both courses included large, time-consuming Java-based programming assignments, which students needed to solve individually three times per semester.</p>\n\n<p>Traditionally, students would submit their solutions for both courses as <a href=\"http://maven.apache.org\">Maven</a> projects via our university-wide Moodle system. After the deadline, TAs would download and execute the submissions, and grade manually based on extensive check lists that we provided. There was usually a bit of huffing and puffing among students about this grading. Sometimes, TAs would not understand correct solutions (after looking at dozens of similar programs, your mind tends to get sloppy). Sometimes, different TAs would grade similar programs differently (the sheer size required some parallelization of grading and the tasks were complex, hence it was impossible to do check lists that covered all possible cases). Sometimes, the assignments were actually under-specified or unclear, and students lost points for simple misunderstandings. Sometimes, applications that actually worked on the student's machine failed on the TA's machine. Generally, it was hard for students to estimate in advance how many points their submissions would be worth. Given that those two courses are amongst the most difficult / most time-consuming courses in the entire SE curriculum, this was all but optimal.</p>\n\n<p>Hence, we decided to move to a <strong>more automated solution</strong>. Basically, we codified our various check lists into a set of hundreds of <a href=\"http://junit.org\">JUnit</a> test cases, which we gave to our students in source code. Additionally, we kept back a smaller set of tests, which were similar but used different test data. The tests would also serve as reference implementation - if the assignment text did not specify how e.g., a given component should behave in a given borderline case, what the tests expected was the expected behavior. Our promise to the students was that, if all the tests for a given task pass, and the student did not <em>game</em> our test system (more on this below), not much can go wrong anymore with the grading (it was possible to get minor point losses anyway for things impossible to test automatically, but those things could not amount for more than a small percentage of all points).</p>\n\n<p><strong>EDIT after comments</strong>\nNote that I was saying <em>more automated</em>, not <em>fully automated</em>. Human TAs still look at the code. There is no <em>grading Web service</em> or something like that (this usually does not work, as keshlam correctly notes). On a high level, what we did is that we provided the requirements for students not only in written text anymore, but also in form of formal executable unit tests. The new process is roughly like that:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>TA downloads submission from Moodle and starts tests (takes about 10 minutes).</li>\n<li>While tests are running, TA browses over the code, does some spot checking of code, and checks a few things not covered by the tests.</li>\n<li>When the tests are done, the TA notes down the results of the tests and his own observations.</li>\n<li>If something severe happens (e.g., compile error), the TA sighs, takes a deep breath, and falls back to manually grading (and, likely, complaining a bit in our mailing list).</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p><strong>Advantages:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Students now have a good feeling about <strong>how many points</strong> they will get in the end. No nasty surprises anymore.</li>\n<li>The TA <strong>effort for grading</strong> is now much, much lower, maybe 1/3 of the previous time. Hence, they have more time to look at problematic solutions and help students actually produce assignments.</li>\n<li>The tests, good or bad (more on this later), are <strong>the same for everybody</strong>. Lenient and strict TAs are much less of a problem.</li>\n<li>Working solutions now <strong>work</strong> no matter if the grading TA understands the solution or not.</li>\n<li>Students get <strong>rapid feedback</strong> on the quality of their solution, but not <em>so</em> rapid that it makes sense to just program against the tests without thinking. One good side effect of the way we built our tests is that simply executing the tests for many tasks takes 10+ minutes (starting an application server, deploying code, ...). Students need to think before starting tests, just like they would if they would test against, e.g., a real staging server.</li>\n<li>Students do not need to waste time writing test applications / test data. Before, one problem that made the student effort in these courses skyrocket was that students did not only have to program the assignments themselves, but also needed to write various demo programs / test data sets to test and showcase their solutions. This has become entirely obsolete with the automated test framework, significantly reducing the amount of <strong>boilerplate code</strong> that students need to write. In the end, we can now focus more on the actual content of the labs, and not on writing stupid test code.</li>\n<li>All in all, our personal impression as well as student evaluations have shown that the majority of students <strong>appreciates</strong> the automated test system.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Problems:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The <strong>initial effort</strong> for us was certainly non-trivial. Coming up with the first version of the tests required a concerted effort of 6 or more TAs and 2 junior faculty over multiple months during the summer (not full-time of course, but still). Note that this was even though we utilize a widely used, standard testing framework - the effort was just in codifying our grading rules, finding and defining all corner cases, and writing everything down in useful tests. Further, as the assignments are complex distributed systems, so were the tests - we had to start application servers in-memory, hot-deploy and undeploy code, and make sure that all of this works out of the box on all major OS versions. All in all, writing the tests was an actual project, that required a lot of leadership and time commitment.</li>\n<li>While, overall, our total time spent arguing about grading has decreased, it is not zero. Most importantly, as students can now see the grading guidelines clearly written down in source code, they seem to feel more compelled to question requirements and grading decisions than before. Hence, we now get a lot of <em>But why should I do it like that? Doing it in X-Y-Other-Way would be much better!</em> questions and complaints (incidentally, in practically all cases, the \"much better\" way is also much less work / much easier for the student). </li>\n<li>While we were able to cover most of our original assignments, some things are <strong>impossible to cover</strong> in tests. In these cases, TAs still need to grade manually. In addition, in order to make our test framework technically work, students are now a bit more restricted in how they can solve the assignments than before.</li>\n<li>Some students feel compelled to try to <strong>game</strong> our grading system. They spend significant efforts into finding solutions that do not actually solve the assignments but still get full points. In general, these efforts fail (as we actually have pretty sophisticated backend tests that do not only check whether the behavior is correct on interface level, but also look \"under the hood\"). Occasionally, they succeed, leading us to improve our tests.</li>\n<li>Initially, we received some flack from a few students for a small number of <strong>bugs in our tests</strong>. The bugs were easy to fix and mostly not particularly severe, and most students understand that if you roll out a couple thousand lines of Java code for the first time, bugs will happen. However, some will take the opportunity to complain. A lot.</li>\n<li>We had the impression that the number of copied solutions <strong>(plagiarism) was up</strong> the first time we rolled out the automated tests. Note that we had automated plagiarism checks long before, and nothing had changed in this regard, but apparently students assumed that cheating would go unnoticed with the automated testing.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20782,
"author": "greenfingers",
"author_id": 15184,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15184",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>We used CourseMarker in combination with BlueJ for teaching first year students Java. There are three main criteria for marking: typographic correctness (layout, indentation, comments, etc.), semantic correctness (does the program run and do what it is supposed to do), and programming language features (whether specified programming constructs are present in the code). It is possible to supply a supporting code (a skeleton of the program, where students fill the gaps) or let the students start from scratch.</p>\n\n<p>The CourseMarker administrator (in our case the module leader) can set up a marking scheme as a combination of the three main criteria and their sub-criteria. It is possible to configure CourseMarker to accept multiple submissions. Students can submit initial version of their program, receive immediate feedback, make necessary corrections and submit again. The feedback for the students can pinpoint the exact problem and its location, and provide suggestions for improvement. The feedback for the lecturers is statistical data about students’ performance.</p>\n\n<p>We set optional training tasks for the student to self-study (no limit over the number of submissions) and a coursework, which was assessed (3 to 5 submissions for each part depending on its complexity). </p>\n\n<p>There are also embedded methods for plagiarism detection, which compare student’s work for similarity. The comparison is not just semantic, it accounts for changes in the code that actually do not change the logic of the program. The suspect students’ work is reported to the lecturers.</p>\n\n<p>The exam (also on CourseMarker) combined multiple choice questions, fill-in-the-blanks questions, and constructing flow charts and programming code. All the students answer the same set of questions but they are ordered in random manner for each student. The order of the answers for multiple choice questions and the layout of elements for constructing flow charts or programming code are randomised, too.</p>\n\n<p>Benefits - instant feedback to the students, especially useful for unsupervised work (remember the students are beginners in programming). Actually most of the students installed the client package on their computers at home and correspond with the university server via Internet. From lecturers’ point of view, it saves vast amount of time - we didn’t have to check and mark students’ work.</p>\n\n<p>The main drawback of CourseMarker is its rigidity. Normally a programmer can write a piece of code in various ways. CourseMarker can be set to understand and assess only a pre-determined pattern, which should be specified in the task description. Any deviations from the pattern would trigger reducing the marks. So I made a point to explain that there are certain limitations working in this particular programming environment but in other circumstances, there are other options to be considered.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20823,
"author": "Mangara",
"author_id": 8185,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8185",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>TLDR</strong></p>\n\n<p>We used fully automated testing for programming assignments in a second-year course. We directly showed students their grade and allowed them to re-submit as often as they liked. Students loved it, and it freed up time for the TAs to hold far more office hours.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Long version</strong></p>\n\n<p>We developed our own in-house solution for a second-year Data Structures course. The exercises came with compiling skeleton code and interfaces for the test software to hook into. Students would submit to a web server running a Perl script, which would then compile the code alongside the testing framework, run a number of tests and display the grade. We did not provide the students with the tests, but did display the outcome of each test, usually in a way that made clear where the problem was, without revealing the exact test data. In addition, students were allowed to submit as many times as they liked. We explicitly encouraged them to submit early and often.</p>\n\n<p>Advantages:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>It allowed us to <strong>harshly punish code that doesn't work</strong>, or gives compile errors (we gave 0 marks for both).</li>\n<li><strong>Complete uniformity in grading</strong>. Fully automating the grading meant that solutions that implemented the same functionality would always get the same mark.</li>\n<li>By being very clear about the requirements, and at the same time being fair by allowing them to re-submit, we significantly <strong>reduced complaints about grading</strong>.</li>\n<li>We had one TA (myself) who was mainly responsible for developing tests, and one who maintained the submission server. This freed up the other TAs to <strong>hold many more office hours</strong>. We had TAs available 4 hours per day, every day of the week.</li>\n<li><strong>Students can correct (and learn from!) their mistakes</strong> before the grade is final. The good students in particular did not rest before they had a perfect grade.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Disadvantages:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Can promote plagiarism</strong>. We did not bother with any plagiarism checks, but this could become a significant problem, especially if assignments are reused from previous years.</li>\n<li><strong>Non-functional requirements are hard to test</strong>. While it is possible to test certain coding style requirements automatically, this is much harder than having a TA look it over. It is also much easier to game these automatic tests.</li>\n<li><strong>Can promote 'coding against the tests'</strong>. Some students did not bother to implement even the most basic correctness tests themself, instead relying purely on the server. For the next iteration of the course, we are considering basing part of the mark on whether student-written tests can succesfully detect our incorrect solutions. This will hopefully force them to think about testing their code as well.</li>\n<li><strong>Can shift focus from high-level understanding of the material to implementation details</strong>. Automated testing relies on the students being able to produce valid code. If the students are struggling with syntax, it can get in the way of higher-level objectives like the algorithms and data structures involved.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Conclusions:</p>\n\n<p>Overall, both the students and the professor and TAs really appreciated this form of grading. The students received instant, unambiguous feedback about their work and the chance to learn from their mistakes while it still counted. At the same time, it allowed the majority of TAs to focus on helping the students understand the material, instead of tedious evaluation.</p>\n\n<p>The Java testing framework is available on <a href=\"https://bitbucket.org/Mangara/checker\">Bitbucket</a>. Unfortunately, it lacks documentation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34891,
"author": "fedja",
"author_id": 6118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6118",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is not exactly an answer to the question as posed but a few remarks I think you should consider before choosing an automatic mode of submission/grading. </p>\n\n<p>I often give my students some assignments where programming is needed too (in the linear algebra course I taught I asked them to break Hill's cypher with the clue that certain words were somewhere in the medium length text and to create a drive (flight for extra points) simulation view in the classical perspective) though I assign such things for extra credit more often than as a part of regular homework.</p>\n\n<p>My approach is that I restrict neither the choice of programming language, nor the operating system (I can program in 3 languages myself, but if you ask me to do it in some other one with substantially different syntax (like, say, Haskell), I will probably manage finally but I will just hate it). Also my solution to the \"worked on my computer\" problem is \"bring your laptop and show me\". If it, indeed, works, I have no objection. </p>\n\n<p>I never ask anyone to do programming quickly (we all know that no program works as intended on the first run and that even if you know perfectly what you are doing, the debugging time exceeds the typing time) so I have no \"do it in class\" programming assignments. The way I make sure that the students get a quick feedback is just by assigning the tasks where, once you run your program, you see yourself whether it works or not. In some cases, like code breaking, it is apparent that if you get a meaningful text, then your approach and code make sense (I never ask for more than that because otherwise we should leave the students alone and start with shutting down all major software companies for their \"sloppy code\"). If it is crunching data, I supply a test sample, an answer to the test sample, and a real sample, so you, again can see everything once your code runs. </p>\n\n<p>The thing I do when the assignment is submitted (full protocol, with most students whose abilities I know, I cut it down quite a lot) is to ask the student to run the code, to check the results, and to ask a few questions about the code itself afterwards. I always do an \"oral examination\" in this case because it is quicker and way more efficient in the sense that it allows me to correct minor stupid errors on the fly if the student knows what he's doing and just kill the students who do not with a couple of appropriately posed questions. The idea to try to read somebody else's code submitted in writing or to run and debug it myself has never even crossed my mind.</p>\n\n<p>All submissions should be done during my office hours, not during the class time. I dislike the American way of assigning 20 problems of the same type each day and usually do 2-10 (depending on the course) each of which can be solved only if you combine several ideas in one program (of course, I explain which ones and how before the assignment). Such assignments are easy to check (either the code works, or it doesn't + either the student knows why that loop is there, or he doesn't) but not so easy to carry out. As to copying, as someone noted long time ago, \"one's code is more individual than his fingerprints\", and if you can copy a code changing its structure substantially, I just take it on faith that you can do it yourself as well if needed and don't really care.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20578",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13852/"
] |
20,580 |
<p>Is it ethical to use WolframAlpha on a take-home exam for a math class? A couple qualifiers: this is a make-up exam where the original exam allowed for a scientific calculator but not a graphing/symbol-solving calculator.</p>
<p>The professor has made no other stipulations about the exam yet (no word on if it's the same rules as for regular exams or otherwise). He has simply just announced one will be given out.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20581,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Generally speaking, if a particular set of tools was permitted - in your case a scientific calculator but not a graphing calculator, I would assume those would be the <em>only</em> tools permitted.</p>\n\n<p>This is especially true for tools, like Wolfram Alpha, that duplicate functionality of things that have been disallowed, like graphing calculators and calculators that can deal with symbolic notation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20590,
"author": "Trevor Wilson",
"author_id": 8937,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8937",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>No, it is not ethical to do so.</p>\n\n<p>In addition to the \"spirit of the law\" argument made by Fomite, you should consider that the computer running the WolframAlpha software <em>is</em> a \"graphing/symbol-solving\" calculator, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary's <a href=\"http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/calculator\">definition of calculator</a> as \"a usually electronic device for performing mathematical calculations,\" so not even the exam rules as written (the \"letter of the law\") would permit you to use it.</p>\n\n<p>(I'm assuming that the make-up exam has the same rules regarding calculators as the regular exam did, which seems like a reasonable assumption until we see the make-up exam.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38129,
"author": "einpoklum",
"author_id": 7319,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7319",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would say it depends on what kind of exam you're going to get. It's quite possible that the take-home exam will actually account for the possibility of students using online tools.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38193,
"author": "Inquisitive",
"author_id": 27985,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27985",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Is it ethical for the professor to give a take-home exam with a set of instructions that probably can't be enforced by anyone? Is the professor going to police every student's taking of the exam by patrolling each and every domicile? The point is that <strong>in real life</strong> you have to consider and worry about what the <strong>other</strong> students are going to do. Trust me...it's generally not the \"ethical\" thing.</p>\n\n<p>In all likelihood, the professor is going to create a very difficult take-home exam and then allow the students to have at it, no holds barred. This will eliminate the effects of the unavoidable tendency among students to be unethical.</p>\n\n<p>Here's the crux of it. If you are going to break one of the professor's rules, don't get caught and never <strong>ever</strong> admit to it if you get accused. That goes for the rest of life as well because there will always be someone \"holier than thou\" who will try to hang you.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 97728,
"author": "Thomas Lancaster",
"author_id": 81788,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81788",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is unlikely to be ethical on the student's part, as it would mean them bypassing the learning expected to form part of this assessment and so they may be gaining a qualification under false pretences.</p>\n\n<p>If this qualification is then used to gain a job, for example, in many locales the end result could be considered a fraudulent activity.</p>\n\n<p>It is likely that the university will also have wider guidance about plagiarism. Copying from an Internet source, without acknowledgement, which the use of WolframAlpha would represent, would be considered plagiarism.</p>\n\n<p>Now, it may be that the take home assessment allows the use of the Internet. In that case, using, acknowledging and citing WolframAlpha may be acceptable. At that point, whether this was a good idea would depend on how the marking scheme was constructed. If the scheme only requires the answers (and possibly working) the student may be able to get full marks. If the exam (and marking scheme) is constructed to require the student to go beyond the information available online, then the raw WolframAlpha answers would not be enough.</p>\n\n<p>In practice, if the assessment was set up to be so easily solvable in this way, it is unlikely to represent best practice. A wide body of literature exists for professors on how to set assessments that also positively promote academic integrity. It may be worth the professor actively engaging with these as part of their continual staff development.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20580",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15089/"
] |
20,585 |
<p>I am often in charge of researching new sub-topics in my discipline for short papers. I find my default technique is:</p>
<ol>
<li>Search Google Scholar for best-guess keywords</li>
<li>Open relevant-looking resulting paper, skim</li>
<li>Find new references in that paper, open new tabs for those papers while reading first paper</li>
<li>Look at new papers, find new references and key words. Open new tab for new Scholar searches</li>
<li>Decide those key words aren't useful after all</li>
<li>Make valiant attempt to figure out which of the 20 open tabs are still worth keeping open, which papers are worth adding to Zotero, which papers are worth downloading.</li>
</ol>
<p>Clearly, I am not of a methodical mindset. I'm beginning to wonder if I took 5 sec to add each paper author-year-keyword to a small notepad app on the side of the screen before I opened the article, that might help me keep track of the mess. Or something. Does anyone have a simple workflow for this "brainstorming" phase that would work well for the non-methodically minded? I'm a Chrome/Google type rather than an Apple type, if that matters.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20621,
"author": "adam.smith",
"author_id": 15113,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15113",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My workflow/suggestion would be to keep this all in Zotero. I'm a big believer in keeping the number of tools one uses relatively small and becoming very proficient at using ones favorite tools.\nI use a collection (\"Inbox\") dedicated to items I may or may not keep and don't have time to read right away. I will then go through those items periodically and either throw them out (remember you need to \"Move to trash\" or <code>shift+delete</code> - just pressing delete will just delete them from the collection.) or file them in the right collection and delete them from \"Inbox\". \nTo quickly remind you of why you saved the items, you could either attach Zotero notes or you could use tags, including <a href=\"http://zotero-manual.github.io/zotero-manual/tags#colored_tags\" rel=\"nofollow\">colored tags</a> if you can make do with only a couple of short keywords. \nFinally, since you will always save items into Zotero right away, you can sort the collection by \"date added,\" which should give you a good idea of the context in which you saved an item.\nSince you're using Zotero Standalone, you'll want to use <code>alt+tab</code> to quickly move back and forth between Zotero and your browser.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20622,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I use <a href=\"http://www.papersapp.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">Papers</a> for this, because not only does it let you organize your citations, but it lets you search and import documents directly from the program, rather than having to bring them into a manager.</p>\n\n<p>Basically, I create a new folder for this particular brainstorming session, everything I find that's worth skimming gets imported, and then the ones that don't pan out get deleted.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20585",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13729/"
] |
20,586 |
<p>I'm writing an application for a dissertation fellowship, which according to the application is "to a truly outstanding doctoral degree candidate in the last semester of residence".</p>
<p>I need to write a 'personal statement' which is only described as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a statement of how the fellowship will facilitate the completion of
the doctoral degree by May 2015</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That's it. No other guidelines are given to describe how to write this personal statement.</p>
<p>My research is theoretical, and does not require the purchase of any special equipment other than pencil and eraser. Thus, my naïve, simplistic answer this question is:</p>
<p>"I need the money so I can pay for tuition long enough and buy enough food to keep my brain cells alive long enough to graduate". </p>
<p>Obviously, I know this is the worst possible way to answer this question. In all honesty, the way this fellowship describes how to write the personal statement is rather limited. Other than writing a more eloquent phrasing of "give me money so I can eat", I can't think of anything else to write in it.</p>
<p>What do personal statements generally contain for fellowships like this? Are they usually as limited as this? What other points can I bring out in this statement other than "I need to buy food and pay for school"?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20588,
"author": "Lagerbaer",
"author_id": 15094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15094",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>What about those students who don't receive that fellowship? Do they drop out or do they work as Teaching Assistants in the department? If it's the latter, then just point out how you would like to spend your time doing research instead of preparing courses.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20589,
"author": "Not Quite An Outsider",
"author_id": 10390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10390",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Your answer is over-simplistic. In reality, having money allows you to devote time to research as opposed to getting a job to earn the money so that you can eat and do (less) research. If you already have such support, then I do not see the point of applying. If it turns out that finishing this dissertation quickly and with fewer distractions advances science as well as your personal and professional goals, then applying seems reasonable.</p>\n\n<p>I would write something along the lines of how the time to prepare and establish the results is precious, and that having such a fellowship will grant you that time. Also, while your expenses may be minimal, you may find that using some of the money to attend a conference or to facilitate discussions with colleagues will allow you to add more to your dissertation than you could otherwise.</p>\n\n<p>This is just off the top of my head, and I've been outside the ivory tower for more than a decade. Certainly some of your colleagues off the Internet can also suggest some themes to use for this aspect of your application.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20586",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/931/"
] |
20,595 |
<p>My school has a recommendation, but not a requirement, not to let students eat during class. I am wondering if I should make this a rule or not for the classes I teach. I am concerned about my undergraduate students.</p>
<p>On one hand, the noise from rustling bags and crunching chips and bottles falling on the floor can be distracting. On the other hand, hungry students are distracted by hunger. This is a particular problem for my classes which start before 8 AM as students often skip breakfast and want to eat it during class (because they do not want to wake up early enough to eat before coming to school).</p>
<p>Since my main concern is on the learning, I would like to know how the issue of allowing eating during class actually impacts student learning.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20604,
"author": "Rex Kerr",
"author_id": 669,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/669",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't have any data on this, just an idea.</p>\n\n<p>You could mention the rule (and justification), ask students to please come fed, and say that if you're really hungry you would still prefer that they attend class and be discreet: sit near the back, don't make undue noise, etc.. That would hopefully minimize the disruption to student learning without making you seem unreasonable.</p>\n\n<p>(If I were the university administration, I would probably do away with 8 am classes; younger people (especially teenagers) have circadian rhythms that run a bit later than older or younger folk. I do not think it speaks that ill of students that they don't want to wake up early enough; it's probably quite difficult for quite a lot of them. High schools are beginning to adjust.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20606,
"author": "Christian Clason",
"author_id": 13852,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13852",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>EDITED:</strong> As you mention, there are two competing issues here: Running low on carbohydrates and especially hydration leads to decreased cognitive ability; but eating is a distraction from attending the lectures. I have found mostly opinions and little hard data on this, for example</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.ludlowcub.com/opinion/2012/05/01/allowing-students-to-eat-in-class-helps-with-learning-ability/\">http://www.ludlowcub.com/opinion/2012/05/01/allowing-students-to-eat-in-class-helps-with-learning-ability/</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.breakfastintheclassroom.org/pdf/BIC-Fact%20Sheet_FINAL_1-07-11.pdf\">http://www.breakfastintheclassroom.org/pdf/BIC-Fact%20Sheet_FINAL_1-07-11.pdf</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://policy.federation.edu.au/learning_and_teaching/ub_tec/classrooms/ch01.php\">http://policy.federation.edu.au/learning_and_teaching/ub_tec/classrooms/ch01.php</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The consensus seems to be that water (in sealable bottles) should definitely be allowed, and that students should not go longer than three hours without a chance to snack. This would suggest treating the classroom like a study place in a library: Water (or anything that doesn't leave a mess when spilled) yes, snacks only during breaks.</p>\n\n<p>One thing to keep in mind that diabetic students will have more strict requirements on when (and what) to snack, which should be accommodated, see\n<a href=\"http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/6/2/180.full.pdf\">http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/6/2/180.full.pdf</a>.\nNot allowing other students the same opportunity to refuel might be seen as unfair.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20608,
"author": "posdef",
"author_id": 5674,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5674",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am not sure if there is any hard data on this but reflecting back on the undergrad years I think we can all provide some perspective on the effects of food consumption in class. </p>\n\n<p>If there is a clear cut school policy (not your case, as you indicated) then there is little you can, and should, do. Otherwise as the teacher you should make the rules of the game clear for the students from the first day. If you intend to allow eating, then ask first for any allergies that might be relevant. At our university, we had some students who had severe allergies to peanuts. Thus there was a campus-wide ban on peanuts. </p>\n\n<p>If the classes are longer than 45 mins it might be tricky with the morning lectures. As the OP mentions, many students skip breakfast on occasion, willingly or otherwise. I believe you can get away with banning eating, would probably be better off actually... Food that speaks to one or more of the senses besides visual (smell, sounds etc..) might be distracting to others. </p>\n\n<p>But be vary of drinking; both coffee (in the morning) and water (all day) might be vital for students to be able to keep focus, and extend their attention span. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20613,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Most of the answers here suggest limiting or prohibiting eating in the classroom, but I have to disagree. </p>\n\n<p>First, students generally do not control their own schedules. Personally, I often had five or six hours of class back-to-back as an undergrad, and I was not unusual in that regard. Yes, there are breaks between classes, but students need that time to get to the next classroom. In addition, many professors let their class go overtime, reducing the length of the break. If you prohibit eating, hungry students will simply choose to arrive late after getting a snack, which defeats the idea of minimizing disruptions by prohibiting eating.</p>\n\n<p>Second, you don't know what medical issues a particular student has: they may be diabetic or need to eat at regular intervals for other reasons. While a student can tell you about this at the start of the term, I don't like the idea of forcing students to discuss their medical issues with every professor, every term. After all, students who get special classroon accommodations due to a disability are not obliged to tell their professors what the specific disability is.</p>\n\n<p>For these reasons, if the university does not have a specific policy, I would tend to be lenient at first. Most students are reasonable people who won't show up to class with a five course dinner. If a specific concern arises during the term, such as very noisy food or garbage being left behind, you can address it either with the individual student or the class as a whole, as appropriate.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20595",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692/"
] |
20,609 |
<p>I have gotten a job in a sort of university of Applied Sciences; this work place wants to start a small research group, but one issue that I started to notice is the orientation they want to give it. I mean, they want that all research to give a profit. For that reason, I was wondering how to convince the persons in charge of the Faculty, that not all research will give immediate profitable results.</p>
<p>The faculty is information technology oriented, which has a big influence on Computer Science topics. For what I saw in other institutions, not all research is profit-oriented, but oriented to expand the knowledge about some fields.</p>
<p>Any advice?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20610,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I have gotten a job in a sort of university of Applied Sciences; this work place wants to start a small research group, but one issue that I started to notice is the orientation they want to give it. I mean, they want that all research to give a profit.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Well, that's a direction that <em>many</em> research centres around the world go. Fundamentally, IBM does not maintain IBM Research to contribute to human knowledge, but so that IBM Proper can get an innovation advantage (and patents - lots and lots of patents).</p>\n\n<p>A University of Applied Sciences is usually not a research university in the traditional sense. They are not funded to do research, and, by and large, it is not their job. It seems perfectly reasonable that they expect their upcoming research group to fund itself or even be a cash cow. There is no obligation that a research centre needs to also do unprofitable things.</p>\n\n<p>To make this perfectly clear: building up a for-profit research centre is a perfectly valid strategy. Clearly, it is not the kind of research you want to be doing (which is perfectly fine, even very understandable for me), but you cannot expect them to change their global strategy to fit your idea of research, especially if you just joined them.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>should all research be profit oriented?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No, of course not.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20611,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The statement \"If I knew what I was doing, it wouldn't be Science\" provides some insights. New knowledge builds on earlier knowledge but the groundbreaking new insights come from unplanned events, even mistakes. It is of course possible to research new products in a planned way, where a focus is to arrive at a sellable product. Where the difference between research and engineering goes in this case is not clear. But, it is not so likely a goal oriented approach will lead to revolutionary developments, particularly if experiments are deemed from a commercial point of view. This is because risk is involved and if commercial products is a goal it will be the organization's willingness to \"waste\" money on risky but potentially lucrative ideas, or, just stay within the safer zone of incremental development. </p>\n\n<p>So trying to figure out what strategies they see driving the research will also allow you to assess the picture. It may also allow you to influence the direction of the institute depending on how the process is working in forming the organisation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20624,
"author": "Floris",
"author_id": 15062,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15062",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is a difference between</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Doing things that will immediately generate a profit (product development; low risk, mostly applying known technologies, possibly combining them for the first time)</li>\n<li>Doing things that you <em>expect</em> may lead to profit (sometimes called \"line of sight\" - you have some unknowns, but if the risks pan out you expect to move into category 1 and will be able to make a profit). </li>\n<li>Doing things that are <em>interesting</em> but you're not quite sure how they will be used (there was a time when nanotechnology fell into that category. \"I bet something interesting will happen - I just don't know what\"; and now it is everywhere)</li>\n<li>Doing things that you can confidently predict will not affect \"profitability\" for your employer over your career (think - searching for exoplanets in solar systems that are 30 light years away).</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>In principle there is nothing wrong with any of these approaches - and a healthy research department will have a blend of the first three, with maybe a smattering of 4 thrown in for the odd chance at a Nobel prize etc. The mix (proportion of each type) that an institution can afford depends on their source of funding - not only for the current year, but going forward. A department that keeps says \"just fund me one more year - NEXT year will be the breakthrough\" eventually loses credibility. By spinning off a few short term hits you earn the right to work on longer scope / higher risk higher reward stuff.</p>\n\n<p>There are other things than money that can and should motivate research - but unfortunately, unless you make sure that there is bread on the table, your high ideals will only carry you so far. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Final thought</strong> Having a diverse, motivated, and highly skilled workforce should be at the top of the list for any research organization. This is an excellent argument for keeping a mix of projects with different time scales going in parallel.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20609",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6144/"
] |
20,618 |
<p>What are some common methods for assessing how well a exam works, once you have the results back? This is something of a generalization of <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15335/how-to-measure-entropy-of-exam-results">How to measure entropy of exam results</a>. </p>
<p>I've seen professors regress scores against some potentially interesting covariates (majors vs. non-majors, gender, etc.) and look at which questions were predictive of your overall grade, but I'd be interested to see if there's a particular battery of tests one should look at to see if an exam is "well written".</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20658,
"author": "kmm",
"author_id": 75,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/75",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>For multiple-choice exams, <a href=\"http://web.sau.edu/WaterStreetMaryA/NEW%20intro%20to%20tests%20&%20measures%20website_files/reliability.htm\" rel=\"nofollow\">split-halves reliability</a> is (for better or worse) a common measure of internal consistency. The basic idea is to divide the questions into halves (e.g., odd vs. even) and look correlate students' scores on the two halves.</p>\n\n<p>Another common measure is the <a href=\"https://www.msu.edu/dept/soweb/indexdis.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">discrimination index</a>. These indices giveyou information about how well an exam item \"discriminates\" between high performing and low performing students. This I find most useful when I've mis-coded the key. Students who otherwise do well, do particularly poorly on a question.</p>\n\n<p>Both of these methods are most easily applied to exams with lots of questions (e.g., multiple choice), but they could probably be adapted for essay or short answer exams as well.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20816,
"author": "Adrienne",
"author_id": 13729,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13729",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>The most common analyses I've seen are generated automatically by scantron grading software, and are thus only used for multiple choice questions. But a motivated person could perform the analyses themselves. </p>\n\n<p>I've read a few articles on test analysis over the years, and this <a href=\"http://www.washington.edu/oea/services/scanning_scoring/scoring/item_analysis.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">summary of a particular scantron software</a>'s results seems like a good overview of test analysis in general. A quick summary to improve searchability:</p>\n\n<p>Item statistics:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Item difficulty</strong> - percentage of students answering correctly. Desirable = above chance.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Item discrimination</strong> - how much item correlates with test as a whole (students who did well on the exam get this right more than low-level students). Uses stat like Pearson Product Moment correlation. A \"good\" question has a score over 0.2.</p>\n\n<p>Test statistics:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Reliability coefficient</strong> - A general measure of test length, breadth and its intercorrelations. Scores above 0.8 are considered excellent for a classroom test.</p>\n\n<p>Some other interesting measurements are used more in standardized testing, rather than classroom testing. These definitions are taken from <a href=\"http://www.uni.edu/chfasoa/reliabilityandvalidity.htm\" rel=\"nofollow\">this overview</a>.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Construct validity</strong> - does the exam actually measure the subject, or some other variable like reading skill. Generally uses a panel of \"experts\" or feedback by students.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Split-half reliability</strong> - measures whether different test items that purport to test the same concept produce similar results within a single exam. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Criterion-related validity</strong> - measures how well the new test correlates with a known exam, like an ETS field test or GRE subject test.</p>\n\n<p>If you don't get a basic output from scantron software, is there a department on your campus that will analyze your exam for you?</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20618",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118/"
] |
20,626 |
<p>Do departments look at MOOC's certificates favorably during the graduate admissions process? Will it give me any advantage over students who don't have them if I am trying to enter a PhD program?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20628,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>You're free to mention the certificate in your application. How much weight to give to it is presumably up to individual committee members. I think unless the certificate pertains to a specific skill that's in demand for the program, you shouldn't expect to get much of a boost from having one. At the moment, people don't have much experience with such certificates, and will be more inclined to look at indicators they know better, like grades and GREs. It's possible this will change a bit in the future, but it will likely move pretty slowly.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20630,
"author": "derelict",
"author_id": 14547,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14547",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If the MOOC certificate is in a closely related field, it will help. If it is in something like \"Underwater Basket Weaving\", it may not give you an advantage over anyone else, unless of course you are entering a program in Underwater Basket Weaving. Or something similar, such as Underwater Knitting. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20636,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>What sort of advantage do you have in mind? MOOCs could help a little in addressing weaknesses in your application: if there's a standard course you were unable to take, then it could be helpful to be able to say you learned the material by other means, and a MOOC certificate might carry a little more weight than completely independent reading. However, on a scale from saying you read a book to getting a strong letter of recommendation, a MOOC certificate is much closer to saying you read a book.</p>\n\n<p>Beyond that, it can't hurt to list MOOC certificates on your CV, but I doubt they'll make any difference. If you're going to graduate school, you should have spent time on many different sorts of learning: lots of formal classes, extensive discussions with peers, independent reading, and ideally working with a faculty member on something (a senior thesis, undergraduate research, etc.). Adding a few online classes is just not a big deal, especially if people are unsure of what the standards are. Compared with things like letters of recommendation or research experience, MOOCs disappear in the noise.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20626",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15117/"
] |
20,631 |
<p>I was working on a problem in the field engineering. I have used one approach and it turned out that it does not work well. After that I got into conflict with my supervisor, and realized that it will be hard to publish the original paper with him. So, I have redone everything with another approach, wrote a paper, submitted it and at as soon as my paper have been almost accepted, my supervisor wrote to the editor claiming that he also should be an author of the paper. He haven't even seen the new paper nor haven't analysed or interpreted the new results. What should I do in this situation?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20633,
"author": "Layla",
"author_id": 6144,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6144",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Maybe you should review the supervisor agreement that you signed at the beginning of your studies. In some institutions it is stated that you MUST put your supervisor as a coauthor of any research paper; which is the result of your working at that research group. In this cases it does not matter even if your supervisor has only told you to adjust the font size (being sarcastic by the way).</p>\n\n<p>Bottomline, all depends on the supervisor-supervised agreement signed.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck! and try to settle differences with your supervisor.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20637,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This entire situation is an ethical quagmire that <strong>both you and your advisor are responsible for.</strong></p>\n\n<p>The reason why I say that you share in the creation of this situation is the following. Let's replace your advisor with an external collaborator. The sequence of events, as you have outlined here, runs as follows:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The two of you collaborated on an initial version of the paper.</li>\n<li>You had a conflict on some issue (seemingly related to this paper)</li>\n<li>You then proceeded to go behind the collaborator's back, redo the analysis, rewrite the paper, and submit it without informing her.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Under such circumstances, it is clear that you would bear a large percentage of the blame for the situation. The fact that it's your advisor instead of an external collaborator doesn't change the ethical considerations here.</p>\n\n<p>Your advisor probably feels that because you were previously working on the problem together, you have cut him out of the loop without his consent. You should have showed him the preliminary results of your new analysis and let him decide if he wanted to collaborate further. If he was to be an author on the original paper, he was entitled to at least that much.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, at this stage, it's hard to say what to do—your advisor has also complicated the situation by asserting his author rights on a paper he allegedly has never seen, which is also wrong. I would follow JeffE's advice here and take the path of least resistance. Getting out of this mess of a relationship is the critical step right now. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 25823,
"author": "Ari Trachtenberg",
"author_id": 15885,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15885",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<ol>\n<li>The advisor is being reckless in asking to put his name on a paper he hasn't read. The paper could be wrong, of poor quality, or even have academic misconduct issues (I'm talking in general ... I'm sure this is not the case for your work, but <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thereza_Imanishi-Kari\" rel=\"nofollow\">serious problems</a> have occured in the past).</li>\n<li>Do <em>not</em> publish with your advisor if he has not contributed <em>anything</em> to the work. Of course, the fact that you've collaborated on this problem before makes it very hard to think that this is the case.</li>\n<li>This is a real mess ... I can think of two reasonable solutions:\n<em>a.</em> Tell the editor the current situation and rely on his/her opinion to sort out the issue. <em>b.</em> Add an acknowledgment to your advisor saying that this work is a rework of a previous unpublished work written with him.</li>\n</ol>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20631",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15122/"
] |
20,632 |
<p>I've majored in computer science (BSc: close to MIS, MSc: advanced software engineering), I've worked on dissertations on totally different topics in every stage at college, now I'm planning to do a PhD and I've been looking at different topics from various sub-fields but I frankly can't pin one to use as a starting point. I would say that I like X topic or Y and when I look closer at the papers being published in the field they seem too obscure to me and I can barely comprehend their abstracts. For example, I was searching for starting point in solving concurrency problems in software or even advance such technique since I felt it's what I want to do and what I know that would keep me motivated but I frankly couldn't find anything, I've looked at publications that reference famous papers/book (things I've researched very briefly) like <a href="http://www.cs.ucf.edu/courses/cop4020/sum2009/CSP-hoare.pdf" rel="nofollow"><strong>communicating sequential processes</strong></a> and <strong><a href="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd01xx/EWD123.PDF" rel="nofollow">cooperating sequential processes</a></strong> but there was nothing that could give me a good start.</p>
<p>My questions here, am I looking in the wrong sub-field? I know I'm highly motivated by the previously mentioned area but do I understand enough to enter such area? I've seen people jump from psychology to computer science at PhD level and I wonder how someone could do such thing. Also am I even a PhD material if I can't pass this stage?</p>
<p><strong>Note:</strong> the topics of my past dissertations were on AI and online social communities</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20635,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Any time you have difficulty understanding something written, you must consider that it is you or that it is the writer who cannot communicate clearly. </p>\n\n<p>I skimmed the second paper you listed and it is certainly understandable (and I teach business but have a background in software development). However, I'm a native English speaker so my vocabulary is quite large. </p>\n\n<p>The writer seems to be Dutch and from my experience, the Dutch have an excellent command of English. The English this author is using is a bit advanced so if your English is not as strong, you might not understand simply due to less vocabulary. Those who write with simpler English will be much easier for you to understand.</p>\n\n<p>The first article you listed is written in simpler English.</p>\n\n<p>I would say if you feel you cannot clearly understand the first article then you might want to consider another field of study or you should spend more time to develop your English reading skills (from your question, your English writing skills seem fine).</p>\n\n<p>If you are considering a PhD, you might want to see if you could meet with an adviser for a few minutes and discuss this issue with them. They could more easily evaluate what would be reasonable for you.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20743,
"author": "David M W Powers",
"author_id": 6390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6390",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Your supervisor or potential supervisors should be able to help - and I don't necessarily mean by talking to them. First of all identify potential supervisors whose (recent) work you like and (mostly) understand. In the first instance look at their recent papers, and particularly concentrate on any points they raise in discussion or future work. In particular do a SWOT analysis and note what are the best and worst features of the approaches, and whether you can see opportunities for different, even interdisciplinary, work to be brought to bear.</p>\n\n<p>To the extent you don't understand anything, don't keep reading and rereading and struggling with it, go back to the earlier work and the citations. Try go be back to the originators of the concepts you are lacking or find difficult, and the commentators who clarify the insights behind the formalisms. Look for conference and workshop papers for these early developmental versions of work, rather than the erudite and impenetrable journal versions.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20753,
"author": "bordart",
"author_id": 15166,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15166",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": true,
"text": "<ol>\n<li>You have to ask yourself, what do you want? This is the question you should answer by yourself and which is crucial in all the following steps. So you want to do a Ph.D. Where do you want to do your Ph.D? What country? You want applied research or theoretical? After a few questions I assume the filed of research would become narrower and narrower. </li>\n<li>If you have a vague imagination about what you want, just do a simple search about the areas. If you don't know what is this sub-field about, don't start reading scientific articles but rather start from the scratch, basic information. Don't get depressed if you don't understand the article stuff. It is a very narrow research and you have to work diligently in that narrow filed to start understanding it. Read the recent scientific news. For instance, I always read MIT news. Quite interesting researches.</li>\n<li>If you already know the country and the subject (not exact), you start searching the university groups which are engages in a similar research. You check the articles and pay attention to the impact factors and number of articles. You check that your future supervisor has good recent articles. It means that he is working actively now. </li>\n<li>You may contact the group supervisors to arrange a meeting or just to have a correspondence. It is always better to go and meet the team members and then they will provide some rudimentary information about all the studies they carry out. </li>\n<li>When you narrowed down the number of choices to let's say to 5 groups, then start reading their articles. Always try to stay in touch with the groups. Ask questions, show your interest, because although you have funding, you still have to be accepted.</li>\n<li>Of course, if you have some background in the field, it is always a bonus, but, if you don't, it is not detrimental. Everything depends on your diligence and intentions. If you are motivated, if you don't give up, after a few months of your Ph.D you would feel much progress. </li>\n</ol>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20632",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11307/"
] |
20,640 |
<p>I found a useful advice if I cannot reproduce computational published results in (<a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7900/what-should-you-do-if-you-cannot-reproduce-published-results">What should you do if you cannot reproduce published results?</a>). However I would like to ask the same situation with experimental results.</p>
<p>I am from chemistry, and it often involves synthesis of compounds. I know every lab in the world cannot be identical even if all equipment are the same, because many external factors such as climate, humidity, lab temperature, etc. may possibly interfere with the experiment. </p>
<p>If I have followed all the steps described in the literature, from the source and purity of chemicals to every single step described, but still I cannot reproduce the results (evidence from some characterization techniques), what can I do? Should I contact the author to give me all 'hidden' steps like the size of beaker, etc.? Or the journal reviewers think that the authors have already disclosed enough information for others to reproduce it, so the remaining job to investigate how to reproduce the results is on me? However sometimes the description is really vague, like 'drying in a vacuum oven at 50oC for 10 minutes', but what is the degree of vacuum?</p>
<p>(Sometimes the size of beaker may play a role, as evaporation way affects its crystal size, also the position of drying compounds in oven, etc.) </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20652,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>@posdef's comment is already very good.</p>\n\n<p>I would definitely suggest contacting the authors and trying to get <em>exact</em> agreement also on the details that they didn't describe in the original paper. The original authors should be quite interested in an independent replication, so they should have an incentive to collaborate. Depending on how much they contribute, they could also hope for co-authorship on your paper.</p>\n\n<p>Conversely, if they are <em>not</em> cooperative, that is another piece of information that should be included tactfully (!) in the paper you are putting together.</p>\n\n<p>If you are lucky in your analyses, you may be able to identify the exact circumstance or unreported detail that makes the difference between reproducibility and non-reproducibility, and there you have the nucleus of an original paper all by itself.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, if you cannot reproduce the results even with help from the original authors, this should be worth at least a correspondence. <a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/\">Reproductions are <em>important</em></a>, and <a href=\"http://blog.scienceexchange.com/2012/04/the-need-for-reproducibility-in-academic-research/\">there are far too few of them</a>!</p>\n\n<p>I part ways with @posdef's comment in that I would definitely not send a letter to the editor voicing concerns about reports and reproductions not matching. This already points towards a suspicion of scientific wrongdoing on the part of the original authors. And unless you have a lot more to go by, a simple inability to reproduce a finding should not be taken as the result of foul play. There are so many potential reasons for non-reproducibility, from the ones you mention to simple random error (aka, uncontrolled conditions), that there is really no need to even imply dishonesty. Such an implication can mess up either the original authors' or your own reputation in the field for decades, so it should not be made lightly.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20653,
"author": "dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten",
"author_id": 440,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/440",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is nothing wrong or rude about contacting the author and asking for some help in this matter.</p>\n\n<p>You should identify not only who you are, but what your institutional affiliation is (and as I guess you are a student or postdoc who you are working with/for).</p>\n\n<p>You should explain what you are up to (simple replication, or are you trying to use this work as a step in a larger process), an outline of what you have tried, what choices you made on any steps that were not completely specified, and how your outcome has been unsatisfactory (it is possible that the author needed multiple tries to get this to work and has seen the same failure mode before).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20656,
"author": "asmi",
"author_id": 15145,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15145",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Easiest solution is to invite them over and let them do the experiment. You will find what they are doing different and then you can decide together how to proceed with publishing the results.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20640",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14682/"
] |
20,648 |
<p>I am in my final year of undergraduate. Another student, call him John, sent me a message on Facebook saying basically:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Can you send me the solutions to the assignment from unit X, that you
took last year. In exchange, I will tell you what the future minitest
questions are for unit Y that we are both doing this year.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Attempted Collusion is not explicitly mentioned in the Universities Academic misconduct guide. But, the mini-tests say at the top of each page:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>IT IS NOT PERMITTED TO TAKE THIS PAPER AWAY FROM THE TUTORIAL SESSION OR TO DIVULGE ITS CONTENT</p>
</blockquote>
<p>since students in the later tutorials could learn the questions from the students in the earlier tutorials (exactly as John proposed).</p>
<p>A complicating factor is that I really dislike John. He doesn't seem to have realised this.
I find him personally annoying, and consider him a poor student.
I don't understand how he has managed to pass enough units to have not been suspended for poor performance.
It may be he is very good at exams, or it may be that he has been cheating all along.</p>
<p>I have a number of options, and could do one or more of them:</p>
<ul>
<li>Ignore it, and block him on Facebook. I'm worried this could reflect poorly on me if the message ever became public.</li>
<li>Tell him no, and refer him to the universities plagiarism/cheating policy</li>
<li>Speak to the Professor of Unit Y about it (that we are both studying).</li>
<li>Speak to the Professor of Unit X about it.</li>
<li>Speak to the Head of School (sub-department), who is above both units</li>
<li>Speak to the University Dean. Who is in charge of enforcing the Academic Misconduct policy. (Will probably mean going though channels)</li>
</ul>
<p>If I speak to a professor about this, he may be suspended.
I worry that I am a bit too willing for that possibility as I don't like him.
On the other hand it isn't my job to decide the consequences of his actions. Which is the best option?</p>
<hr />
<p><strong>Update:</strong> I spoke to the coordinators of units X and Y. Both said they would look into it and get back to me. I also responded to John, saying no, and referring him to the Academic Misconduct policy.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20649,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Putting such a request in a written, verifiable manner as this student has done is incredibly <em>dumb</em>, and frankly merits whatever punishment is associated with this. </p>\n\n<p>Although in principle you could simply ignore the request, I think this is one of those cases where you're better off reporting it. Otherwise, there's still the possibility that \"John\" could bring you down with him (he wrote you a note, after all!). So I would write to him declining the offer, and then report it. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20651,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I generally agree with aeismail - the profound stupidity of putting a request like this in a way that provides evidence is <em>staggering</em>.</p>\n\n<p>Whether or not you <em>should</em> report them for cheating may not be a decision you have to make - I would strongly suggest you check your institution's student handbook or honor code. I've been in more than one university where if you suspect or have evidence of someone cheating, you're obligated to report it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20662,
"author": "Trevor Wilson",
"author_id": 8937,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8937",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here is my evaluation of the options that you mentioned.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Ignore it, and block him on facebook.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This option is fine, but in my opinion is a bit lazy.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Tell him no, and refer him to the universities plagiarism/cheating policy</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This couldn't hurt, but probably he will just ignore it.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Speak to the Professor of Unit Y about it (that we are both studying).</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>A good option. Another related option that I don't think anyone has mentioned yet is telling the professor about the request but not mentioning John's name. Most professors would (or should) appreciate hearing in general terms about ways that students are cheating in their classes.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Speak to the Professor of Unit X about it.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It is probably better to speak to the professor in charge of you and John at the moment.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Speak to the Head of School (sub-department), who is above both units</p>\n<p>Speak to the University Dean who is in charge of enforcing the Academic Misconduct policy. (Will probably mean going though channels)</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I don't think it is a good idea to go over the professor's head unless you think that he or she is not taking the matter seriously.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20678,
"author": "zipzit",
"author_id": 15165,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15165",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Sorry, I'm old school. You don't lie, cheat or steal. Additionally you don't tolerate anyone who lies, cheats or steals, particularly in an academic environment. I believe all students have a duty, an obligation, to report someone breaking those rules, period. That's part of being a responsible adult. Accepting that poor behavior among your peers erodes the quality of your education. Yes, when the peer group doesn't always support it, it does take a lot of character, strength and personal courage to do the right thing. Oh.. and just imagine for a moment.. what if this person was your best friend? That decision takes lots of courage and is very difficult. Good luck with your dilemma. </p>\n\n<p>Oh, and whom to speak to first? I would start with either of the two teachers involved. I'd hope you'd get the same response from either of them. They have been trained for this situation, and will direct you as to possible next steps. Note: is there a university policy on this with a specific process to follow? If so follow it. If not talk to either teacher.. probably the one who knows your integrity and credibility better.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20709,
"author": "John Parcker",
"author_id": 15172,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15172",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I finished a good university which helped me find a wonderful job. Cheating in the university is not the best thing to be done, but sometimes people have to do it in order to win - if you don't understand me I doubt you understand life - watch Arnold Schwarzenegger six rules of success. And I would like to tell you that reporting your colleague is very stupid in my opinion - why you need to do such a bad thing to him? Did he do something bad to you - no... Maybe it's best that you ignore it, but for sure you don't need to report him - you will make him unhappy, and if you ignore it nobody'll be unhappy, right? If you obey all the rules (I'm talking about the rules, not the law) you won't go far in your life... If you don't believe me check the most successful guys in the planet - what do you think, they obeyed all the rules and never cheated on anything??? Think out of the box. I know intelligent guys with great academic experience and at the same time guys who only graduated school and are 100 more successful than the first. Be cool, don't take things so seriously - it's not a robbery or a rape, as I said - take action when somebody's been made unhappy, this is not the case. And now you're about to make someone unhappy, why?</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20756,
"author": "Kogesho",
"author_id": 7773,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7773",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As a student, I would like to answer this, apparently everyone has a different perspective here, but mainly 2 sides. Students vs Professors :)</p>\n\n<p>He asked you for last year's answers. What is wrong with this? I sometimes ask my friends for previous years' answers as well. This does not mean I am going to copy them. I can go through their work, understand the concepts better and do my homework. The reason is, not every question type is covered in classes or books and guidance might be required to solve them. First you learn how to solve something, then you apply your knowledge to questions. And questions with solutions are the perfect way to master the knowledge. When I use my friends' past homeworks, it really helps me learn the material and all the time I spot their mistakes and prepare my own homework with no mistakes.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, his intentions might be directly copying your homework. In such a case, a proper department should keep old homework solutions and it is the TA's responsiblity to detect them. </p>\n\n<p>So, if someone who you think has intentions to learn from your homework is asking for it, it is very normal to give. But if you think his intention is to directly copy, then you can simply decline his request. You can say you don't have them anymore or you do not wish to share them. No person is guilty unless they commit the wrong and again, you shouldn't worry about them. The university pays graduate students for these matters, it is their job.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20974,
"author": "user15206",
"author_id": 15206,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15206",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Let me defend the middle ground here.</p>\n\n<p>First of all, we're hearing only one side of the story here. Although, the case may seem straightforward, I do find the proposition of John strange. If he had simply asked for the solutions from last year's course without offering anything in return, this wouldn't have been an issue at all. It's like asking a girl out but also offering her money to improve your chances.</p>\n\n<p>Also, everyone seems to be taking for granted that his suggestion of cheating necessarily means that he has cheated before or even that he will cheat again. In fact, this person, who is a student, and whose case is relayed to us by someone who admits to disliking him, has already been labeled a serial cheater and is even considered to be very likely to use cheating as his primary means in obtaining a job!</p>\n\n<p>Anyone who has given a little thought to the problem would realize that there is a limit to cheating. Cheaters do not pass all exams with 100%. You can't cheat your way through answering interview questions unless you actually understand what you're being asked.</p>\n\n<p>One of the suggestions given here, which I think is the most appropriate, was to ask the instructors in general terms about the exact form of cheating and its consequences. Then you will be better positioned to decide whether or not to report someone directly. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20648",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8513/"
] |
20,659 |
<p>Some people try to complete their PhD asap, others try to make major breakthroughs. I think these aims are mutually incompatible, one is going against the other.</p>
<p>What are pros/cons of each for somebody whose intended career is research in academia?</p>
<p>The answers should be general, but I myself am interested in pure mathematics.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20661,
"author": "seteropere",
"author_id": 532,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/532",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>somebody whose intended career is research in academia?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I believe any PhD student who can</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Identify interesting research problems</li>\n<li>develop solutions to them</li>\n<li>publish in good conferences/journals</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><em>should</em> graduate and enjoy the freedom of research. PhD is not a lifetime career. It is just the beginning. Longer or shorter PhD does not matter; what does matter is that you are an independent researcher when you defend. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20663,
"author": "I Like to Code",
"author_id": 8802,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8802",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are several considerations regarding whether to graduate now.\nI'll go through them from most to least important (in my opinion).</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Thesis readiness:</strong>\nYou can't graduate unless\nyour advisor and your committee feel your thesis is good-enough.\nFor some departments, you need to have 2 or 3 separate projects\nwhich are in advanced enough state or even published.</li>\n<li><strong>Research readiness:</strong> As @seteropere noted,\nif you feel that you are able to do research independently,\nand your advisor agrees, then you are ready to graduate.</li>\n<li><p><strong>Future job situation:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If you can get a tenure-track job or post-doc in September 2015,\nthen go ahead and graduate in June 2015.</li>\n<li>If you can't get any academic jobs in September 2015,\nthen maybe you should stay one more year.</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li><p><strong>Job prospects this year vs next year:</strong>\nFor some fields, getting a good job requires a student\nto have papers in advanced stages of the publishing pipeline,\ni.e. submitted is good, under second or third round of review is better,\nand accepted is best.\nIf you have a great paper but it is not yet ready,\nwaiting until the next year before you apply for jobs\nmay allow you to have that great paper\nin a more advanced stage of the publishing pipeline\nwhich can't hurt your job prospects.</p></li>\n<li><strong>Funding from advisor:</strong>\nIs your advisor willing/able to support you for an additional year?\nSome advisors limit their support to 4 or 5 years,\nand students who wish or need to stay longer may have to carry heavy teaching loads.</li>\n<li><strong>Research environment:</strong> Are you learning from your advisor,\nand doing good work with the other students/professors in your current institution?\nIf so, leaving for another position becomes more risky\nbecause the situation may be worse than your current situation.</li>\n<li><strong>Financial situation:</strong>\nUsually, a PhD salary is less than a post-doc salary,\nwhich is less than a tenure-track job salary.\nFor some students who may be supporting a family,\nearning more money as soon as possible is an important consideration.</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20664,
"author": "Mikhail",
"author_id": 4240,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4240",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>others try to make major breakthroughs</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This can be a trap because not everybody is able to make major breakthroughs. Besides not being smart enough, a major factor is the group of people you are surrounded by. It could easily take years for your cohort to catch up with the leaders in the field. If your project involves a major leap, consider the alternatives.</p>\n\n<p>Evaluating what is do-able and the time involved is understanding your field, and an important part of a PhD. In fact, big companies have 'domain specialist' positions where your job is to review the value and effort involved in a project.</p>\n\n<p>There is a category of people with a fast PhD who are successful because they understand what is relevant to pursue.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20666,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If you are aiming for a career in mathematics at a research university, then trying to complete your Ph.D. as quickly as possible is a bad idea. In the U.S., you should plan on spending four or five years in graduate school. You should not graduate in three or fewer years unless you write an absolutely extraordinary thesis (or personal concerns force you to leave graduate school). Graduating in four years is reasonable, but most people are better off taking five. Even if you've reached a natural break point in your work, it can be valuable to stick around and work on something else for a year.</p>\n\n<p>This may seem counterintuitive, but it's based on three principles that describe how junior candidates are evaluated in mathematics:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>The job market is brutally competitive, and you need the strongest application you can put together. </p></li>\n<li><p>No extra credit is given for graduating quickly. People who graduate in three or four years compete on the same footing as those who spend five. [However, there can be a penalty for taking six or more.]</p></li>\n<li><p>Once you graduate, the clock starts ticking. If you take longer than average to find a tenure-track job, it will be held against you.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>The net result is irrational: the job market judges it better to spend five years in grad school and then do a three-year postdoc than to spend three years in grad school and then five years as a postdoc. The former looks normal, while the latter looks like you graduated too quickly and then were unable to find a tenure-track job after your first postdoc (so what might be considered a compensating plus/minus pair turns into two negatives).</p>\n\n<p>Five years in graduate school is something of a cut-off, for two reasons. Most grad schools discourage staying longer, because of limitations on space and funding, and spending six or more years starts to look like you were unable to complete your dissertation. However, up to five years, longer is usually better.</p>\n\n<p>One way of thinking about this is to consider the question title:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Longer PhD with a deeper result vs a shorter PhD with a sufficient result</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>What constitutes a \"sufficient result\"? Sufficient to graduate is a weak condition, since getting a good postdoc is much more difficult than merely completing a dissertation. However, a good postdoc won't get your career off to nearly as strong a start as a great postdoc would. If another year in graduate school could make the difference between a good and a great postdoc, it may well be worth it. But what if your work is so wonderful that you're obviously going to get a great postdoc? At that point you should raise your ambitions and aim to get a Clay research fellowship. </p>\n\n<p>There's an enormously high ceiling, and you never reach the point of being able to say \"OK, I've done enough.\" Graduate school is not a matter of doing enough and seeing how long it takes you. Instead, it's a matter of taking the standard amount of time and seeing how much you can do.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20727,
"author": "David M W Powers",
"author_id": 6390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6390",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My supervisor used to tell me regularly that there is no such thing as a \"PhD with bar\" (that is some extra merit/credit/marker to say it was really good - it is just yes/no).</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand several of my students have one university or professional association prizes for their theses, and there are opportunities for publishing a good thesis. A good thesis is something you will want to cite for the rest of your life. You don't want something that you will be ashamed of in a decade - whether or not you \"pass\".</p>\n\n<p>I get students to decide on three innovations that if they succeed with any one of them would be sufficient for the PhD. Some may be dead ends, but most students do manage to hit two or three bulls eyes. But one is enough. </p>\n\n<p>The questions really are: will your thesis get up? are you employable? could you get a research job? The way to be confident of this is to have multiple publications (my students tend to have 5 from their PhD, mostly conference, with a couple of journals - those who did a Masters will have some from them as well).</p>\n\n<p>The other thing is that if you have a scholarship or a TA contract or other support, make the most of it, use all of it - don't submit early. It is far easier to publish during your PhD than once you are in a full time academic position preparing teaching notes for half a dozen different courses. So aim for publications first, building up your thesis as you go (either a resource from which you pull out publications, or a compilation made by putting together your papers). The papers related to a chapter should be identified in the opening and/or closing pages (e.g. with footnotes), and in some universities you can do a thesis by publication or include verbatim papers with a bit of glue text. But examiners don't really like this (they tend to read the same intro material over and over again), and I encourage a coherent readable monograph approach (which is then publishable which a collection of already published papers isn't). But one way or another if referees from a stack of reputable conference and journals think your work is publishable, how can they turn down the thesis that spawned them.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20659",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8784/"
] |
20,665 |
<p>In the following situation: I made research about some topic X in the field of Computer Engineering, submitted a paper and it got accepted. Actually it was an independent research that I have done while working as an information technology lecturer. Now the institution in which I am working does not want to give any financial support for the publishing of this research, what it would be the most ethical thing to do?</p>
<ul>
<li>Put into my academic affiliation the place that I am working as a lecturer? that will count as a publication for their Faculty, but I believe that is not fair that they do not even try to pay for any expenses.</li>
<li>Put in my academic affiliation that I am an independent researcher, would that be advisable? maybe some academics would believe that I am not serious enough.</li>
</ul>
<p>I believe that once I read some cases of people submitting papers as independent researchers, there were not so many, but those cases were real. For me I believe there is not so much difference, because what it matters is what is inside the article.</p>
<p>Any advice?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20668,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I'm not sure that I see an <em>ethical</em> issue here. Ethically, I think you are free to omit your affiliation if you so choose.</p>\n\n<p>But I don't see any benefit to you by doing so. It may be a symbolic jab at your institution for not funding you, but it's not going to directly hurt them in any way: nobody is going to notice except you and them. On the other hand, it certainly can directly hurt <em>you</em> and your relationship with your institution. As just one example, they might decline to consider that publication as part of your research record when they evaluate you (e.g. for tenure). Or, more seriously, they might decide that if you don't want to be associated with them, they don't want to be associated with you; and therefore stop employing you (if your contract permits it).</p>\n\n<p>Clearly you have some issues with your employer, and I hope you are able to improve matters somehow. But what you suggest seems at best ineffective and at worst self-destructive.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20702,
"author": "David M W Powers",
"author_id": 6390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6390",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Ethically you should put ALL the affiliations that contributed to the work. This included contributing to ANY of your expenses, living costs, research costs, travel costs, laboratory infrastructure, computer equipment, etc. used for the research.</p>\n\n<p>If you are not paid by ANYONE to do (teaching and) research in the area of your paper, did not make use of ANY facilities or equipment not owned by you, did not do ANY work or thinking on an employer's time (think intellectual property) then you can say it is independent research, otherwise the affiliation of the supporter must be acknowledged. The primary source of support should be the primary affiliation. Depending on the publication venue you can provide additional affiliations or acknowledge other support in footnotes or acknowledgements. Funding for publication (from you or an organisation) can be mentioned in the acknowledgements like any other funding, and all funding really should be acknowledge unless the funder wishes otherwise. If you are affiliated with the funder (e.g. for self-funding through your consultancy) then this can go as an additional affiliation. This sharing of affiliation also makes clear that your university did not pay for everything needed.</p>\n\n<p>I have never put \"independent researcher\" but have always put a relevant business/company name in some cases where support was officially declined for the project and/or I was between jobs or consulting. Putting \"independent researcher\" conveys the impression that this work is so unimportant that nobody would pay for it. As a consultant or employee, anything not actually covered by your contract and payment can be regarded as your intellectual property and independent research.</p>\n\n<p>If you are an \"independent researcher\" then you have obtain your funding yourself, you support yourself, and are not receiving a salary to undertake research in the area of the paper, and you should thus regard yourself as a business and set things up as a business. You can register a business name or a partnership (e.g. with your wife) or incorporate a company, and use this name. Depending on where you are (legal residence/place of business) partnerships relating to your actual names may not need to be formally registered.</p>\n\n<p>I am frequently in a position where I am a visiting professor somewhere and put both my substantive position and my visiting affiliation in an order that relates to where the bulk of the research and/or writing was done. But you really need to be able to justify this. </p>\n\n<p>To make a closely related point based on the same ethical principals (often enshrined in a code of ethics by university, funding bodies, professional associations and/or journals): If you did any work on the paper or the underlying research at a university, you need to list the affiliation. If anyone else contributed in any way to the intellectual content or written form, this needs to be acknowledged, and if they contributed to both then they need to be an author, unless they specifically request otherwise.</p>\n\n<p>Incidentally just providing funding (cash) or services (reviewing, technical assistance) doesn't require an affiliation or authorship byline, but should be included in the acknowledgements. On the other hand, provision of technical services or reviewing assistance that went beyond the call of duty and actually changed the direction of the project or lead to new conclusions (i.e. provided intellectual input and created intellectual property) does require the authorship and affiliation byline rather than just acknowledgement.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20665",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6144/"
] |
20,667 |
<p>I am an undergraduate student starting my second year. Last semester, I took part in a research project and earned co-authorship of their paper, which got recently published.</p>
<p>However, when adding names from our anonymous submission to the camera-ready version, the primary author misspelled my first name(Garret instead of Garrett). Because this was a fairly minor edit, I didn't notice it until a few weeks after it had been fully published. </p>
<p>I've already asked the advising professor about it and he said that it wasn't anything to worry about, and that I should create an account on Google scholar and manually add the paper to my account. I've done this, but is there anything else I should do? How bad is this, or is it actually fairly minor?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20683,
"author": "bordart",
"author_id": 15166,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15166",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I guess you can contact the journal publication and ask them change your name in the online version. Printed book is probably already published. But the online is very easy to change. I never tried this, but I guess this would not be a problem. Just give it a try.</p>\n\n<p>I see one problem here. In case you want to use that publication in future, lets say in your thesis, your misspelled name may induce some problems, because you present the verified list of articles you published.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20738,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It's pretty hard to change a name after publication. Many journals with print editions treat that as a permanent record of sorts. I'm not sure if that information can be changed in the DOI record though. It would be best to do as was suggested, and link that pub to your name in citation managers. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20788,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is probably not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. The journal can fix your name on the \"linking page\" for the article—which is the one most search engines will point to. </p>\n\n<p>Secondly, in terms of the search engines themselves, the misspelling is not as catastrophic as if it were the last name that were affected. This is because most search engines only use initials for first and middle names, instead of the complete name. For instance, \"John Q. Public\" would be searched for in <a href=\"http://isiknowledge.com\">Web of Science</a> as </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Public JQ</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>not </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>\"Public, John Q\"</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>which makes finding your papers not so difficult, in spite of the spelling error. (Of course, if there's a problem with the citation databases, you can alert them to the error.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 29978,
"author": "Stefano",
"author_id": 22533,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22533",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The name error is a factual error and it should be possible to request a corrigendum to the journal. See for instance here:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n12/full/nn1213-1906a.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n12/full/nn1213-1906a.html</a></p>\n\n<p>All of the other answers hinting to the fact that you cannot change your name on a published article assume that the name was correct at the time of publication. This is not true in your case. Journals base their reputation on their being factually correct and I can't see any reputable journal refusing to change an incorrect name.</p>\n\n<p>This said, I agree with others that it probably will not make much of a difference, but it would also be annoying to have to point this out every time it comes up (oh, yes, that is really me).</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20667",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15157/"
] |
20,669 |
<p>I noticed that my university has a glass blowing service in the same building as the chemistry precinct, supposedly to make the glassware for the chemistry labs. At first I thought this was kind of quirky and I chortled to myself, "man, the chemistry students must break a lot of beakers."</p>
<p>Later I toured a campus overseas and noticed that they too had a glass blower. A quick <a href="https://www.google.com.au/search?q=university+glass+blowing">Google search</a> showed that <em>many</em> institutions have similar facilities. Most of them sell their services too. It seems to be more academically-focused than I first thought; it would be incorrect to equate it with the janitorial service or the on-campus bakery, presumably.</p>
<p>Why glass blowing and not another craft? I'm curious as to what separates glass blowing from other crafts and manual arts that warrants it a dedicated department in an academic facility.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20672,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If you make enough use of them, it's cheaper and more efficient to use in-house services. That's why most universities will also have a mechanical workshop, to make one-off items mostly for the physics and engineering departments.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Everything is streamlined: the glassblower is an employee, not a business owner. He can spend more of his time on his products, thus his services are cheaper. The University will also make some profit from selling their services.</li>\n<li>It makes things easier for the academic staff, and there's less bother with accounts or purchase orders. For routine jobs (if these things aren't outsourced), just visit the workshop and ask for another 1L boiling flask.</li>\n<li>The academic staff know that he will always do a good job: a low turn-over rate means the glassblower(s) develop a strong rapport with their frequent customers, and have a good understanding of their needs. If more jobs are outsourced, this personal touch can be easily lost.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Of course, it <a href=\"http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/01/local/la-me-glassblower-20131202\">seems these days</a> that ordinary items are usually outsourced -- a big factory is more cost effective. It's for the one-off custom items that it still makes a lot of sense to keep things in-house.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20673,
"author": "F'x",
"author_id": 2700,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As a chemist, I'll expand on Moriarty's answer, and confirm that he's in the right. Buying beakers is definitely cheaper through a commercial supplier, but for research in synthetic chemistry, every now and then you'll need glassware that doesn't fit standard specifications. For these one-off pieces, if the university is large enough it's better to have an in-house scientific glassblower. In particular, what my colleagues appreciate most with having access to in-house glassblowing services, is that it makes communication very easy and helps improve the products (<em>“you sure you want the top part to be so thin? I looks to me as it won't help condensation and might be a failure point later”</em>).</p>\n\n<p>PS: the design and production of the most complex glass instruments is an art as much as a craft. In France, there even is a yearly competition of scientific glassblowers: <a href=\"https://www.polytechnique.edu/home/current-events/jean-michel-wierniezky-2011-best-craftsman-of-france-89810.kjsp?RH=1250265754206\">1</a>, <a href=\"http://www.souffleur-de-verre-de-la-recherche-scientifique.org/les-m-o-f.html\">2</a>.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20669",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13420/"
] |
20,674 |
<p>I have been receiving mails from (most probably amateurs), who claims to have proved famous mathematical problems, like the ABC Conjecture or Goldbach Conjecture. But invariably, they all contained mistakes. I decided not to waste my time on such unsolicited documents. But recently something interesting happened.</p>
<p>About 14 days earlier, I have received a mail from an Indian undergraduate student who claimed to have proved the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester%E2%80%93Gallai_theorem" rel="noreferrer">Sylvester-Gallai Theorem</a> in an elementary way. What is more amusing is that he claimed to have proved it using Mathematical Induction and a basic Euclidean Axiom. I decided to ignore it as usual. But yesterday I got his mail, telling me that-</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I suppose you haven't considered my document worthy of your time and so you haven't gone through it at all, or it may be that you are so busy that you haven't found time to check your email account. If that's the case then just ignore this mail. But if it's the first case then I would like to tell you something.</p>
<p>Perhaps you have heard about the Indian Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. He also sent his mathematical works to renowned mathematicians like Baker and Hobson but they didn't reply. Later he sent his manuscript to Hardy and his genius was recognized. But just suppose that Hardy also considered his work to be the work of a crank, without even going through it. Consider this be the case even if he would sent it to other mathematicians. How long could he continue sending his unsolicited formulas and theorems (which were without proof!) to other mathematicians and be rejected? Of course, finitely many times. After that, he perhaps wouldn't write to any mathematician even if he had, suppose for example proved the Riemann Hypothesis. Why would he? He was likely to be rejected.</p>
<p>So I suggest you at least to go through my document thoroughly and tell me precisely about it.</p>
<p>Please don't behave like Baker or Hobson.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What should I do now? Should I remain silent or go through the document? Any suggestion will be welcomed.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20676,
"author": "410 gone",
"author_id": 96,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Continue to treat it as spam, and ignore it.</p>\n\n<p>For every Ramanujan, there are many many thousands of time-wasters.</p>\n\n<p>The reward:cost ratio, weighted by the ratio of misunderstood geniuses to time-wasters, is very very low.</p>\n\n<p>If someone has any ability, they should be able to demonstrate it quickly. And if they've got any sense, they'll realise they need to demonstrate it up front to get taken seriously.</p>\n\n<p>So if someone hasn't put a pre-print up somewhere (much easier to do now than in Ramanujan's day), and has no pre-published material, ignoring them is now an even safer bet than it ever was before.</p>\n\n<p>In this particular case, your <a href=\"https://mathoverflow.net/users/48849/william-hilbert\">correspondant</a> may have already tried posting on Math Overflow, although it may be someone else with the same name. Either way, if you're feeling generous with your time, you could prepare a canned response which went to all such neglected geniuses / timewasters that pointed them to Math Overflow, as a good place to engage with the Maths Research community and demonstrate that they are actually able.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20680,
"author": "Tobias Kildetoft",
"author_id": 12592,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12592",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The fact that he compares himself to Ramanujan just gives you all the more reason to ignore his mails.</p>\n\n<p>If his work had any merit, his follow-up email would have been focused on that merit and how it might have been hard to see at first glance.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20681,
"author": "Wiliam",
"author_id": 481,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/481",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The reasoning developed in the second e-mail (\"please do not ignore the hidden genius\") was true when you first started receiving this type of e-mail, which is why you read these first theorems. </p>\n\n<p>However, after a few try, you figured that the genius/spam ratio (as @EnergyNumbers pointed out) was not worth considering all these e-mail (maybe unconsciously...). In short, I think nothing changed with this e-mail.</p>\n\n<p>If you really want to consider all these emails without spending toot much time, as @bingung said, and if you are giving lectures, you can assign them to students. It would be indeed a great exercice to try to demonstrate the theorems are not valid.</p>\n\n<p>A third option, to give you a good conscience, and since the genius/spam ratio is probably really low, you can review 1/10th of the theorems you receive. It will not dramatically decrease the change to discover a math genius...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20746,
"author": "Evgeni Sergeev",
"author_id": 14516,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14516",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In a reply, suggest a journal to send it to. Then if it gets accepted for review, the reviewer may have an easy task in front of them. (Either that or genius will be recognised.) Everyone will be happy either way.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20766,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Unfortunately, I think there's little or nothing you can realistically do for most amateurs sending unsolicited manuscripts. What they don't seem to realize is how common this is and what a bad state most of the manuscripts are in:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>I average several amateur e-mails per week (and I shudder to think of how many Andrew Wiles or Terry Tao must get). If I carefully read each paper and sent comments, that alone would occupy a substantial fraction of my professional activities, so I have to prioritize.</p></li>\n<li><p>I at least flip through the papers, and most of them are obviously crackpot work. Occasionally I see one that doesn't look ridiculous, and I try to be encouraging when appropriate, but I have yet to receive a publishable paper from an amateur. The best I can do is generally to offer encouraging advice, and even that's uncommon.</p></li>\n<li><p>Some people seem beyond hope (for example, the ones who send word salad), but some could presumably become solid researchers given the right education and mentoring. However, this is not something I have a lot of time to provide. I've got plenty of in-person students, some of whom would probably like more interaction, and I wouldn't feel comfortable telling them \"Sorry, I'm busy trying to explain to some guy on the internet why his fuzzy understanding of quantum mechanics doesn't actually yield a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.\" Even if the amateur seems promising, they aren't likely to be dramatically more promising than my students, and mentoring over the internet is less effective, so it's still an awkward trade-off.</p></li>\n<li><p>Some amateurs react very poorly to feedback. If you suggest their results are known (while complimenting them on their rediscovery), they angrily suggest that you must not have understood what they meant or are trying to deny them credit for their work. If you don't believe their results, they accuse you of incompetence or laziness. If you encourage them to apply to graduate school, they scoff at what academia would have to teach them. This is of course only a minority of amateurs, but it's just common enough to discourage giving honest feedback: there's too much of a risk of feeling like you wasted time offering feedback to someone who only wanted validation and responded with insults.</p></li>\n<li><p>Part of the problem is grandiose visions. When people spend too much time daydreaming about being the next Ramanujan or finding the proof that didn't fit in Fermat's margin, it's really unsatisfying to learn that their story isn't actually as remarkable as they hoped. It's much easier psychologically to move to the parallel story of the genius oppressed by academia, rather than starting an academic career from scratch. (And even people who show no sign of grandiosity in their original e-mail sometimes have it hiding below the surface: I imagine that anyone who sends unsolicited accounts of their discoveries to experts is hoping for some degree of acclaim.)</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>So what to do about this? In an ideal world, I'd give lots of time and attention to everyone who wrote, but these are scarce resources. In practice, I handle it this way:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>If the paper genuinely engages with my work and shows no signs of craziness (e.g., drawing religious conclusions from mathematics), I give at least a brief reply. Same thing if I have some other good reason to believe it was sent specifically to me, and not just as one of many recipients.</p></li>\n<li><p>If the paper looks relatively promising but has nothing specific to do with me, I'll reply if I have time and feel that the reply would be well received.</p></li>\n<li><p>If the paper is on a topic I particularly know and care about but doesn't involve my work and doesn't seem especially promising, I might reply.</p></li>\n<li><p>Otherwise, I probably won't reply, and almost certainly not if the paper deals with famous unsolved problems.</p></li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20791,
"author": "gnasher729",
"author_id": 11873,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11873",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Many years ago, my university used to send letters that explained they received so many proof they didn't have the time to check them all, so each sender received a copy of the previous proof the university had received and asked them to check that one to help the university with their workload. That worked very well. </p>\n\n<p>I think it was my professor in analysis, who received one letter where someone had worked out an excellent approximation of pi as a fraction of rational numbers (I think it was the next approximation better than 355/113). And he found that the result this man found was actually absolutely correct, not quite as mind-blowing as the sender probably hoped, but nevertheless correct, and he replied with a long letter acknowledging the correct results and a list of sources that would help an interested amateur. </p>\n\n<p>That man was a single and outstanding exception. And the OP starter complaining about mistakes: Most of the time things are so bad, there are not even things that could be called \"mistakes\". </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20832,
"author": "Chad",
"author_id": 436,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/436",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Have you considered offering your professional services for a nominal fee? I would think $250-500 that a starting price for detailed analysis, and potential support of a mathematical proof would be a fair price. Of course for one that will require considerably more effort, that fee could be increased.</p>\n\n<p>If you are loathe to take the money you could always either donate the fees, or return them to the author. The primary purpose of the fee is to filter out the random amatuer submissions that have not been well thought or checked out. I assume that you would not mind doing a few serious reviews a year, if you could avoid the spam.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20870,
"author": "Pieter Swart",
"author_id": 15221,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15221",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This question has been asked more in the mathematical sciences than anywhere else. An interesting text on the topic (with advice) is <strong>A Budget of Trisections</strong> by Underwood Dudley. It is probably available somewhere cheaper than on amazon <a href=\"http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0387965688\" rel=\"nofollow\">dudley</a> <em>(I found some related work on scribd.com.)</em> If you are dealing with an intelligent and younger person, it might be useful to point out that your time is limited and that they might benefit from reading that text. The lesson I learned there is that practically no older amateur will take your advice when it is pointed out that they tried to prove something extremely hard or know-to-be-unprovable. Today this all happens online, and you should also look at John Baez's crackpot index at <a href=\"http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html</a> , I assume there must be a mathematical version. (translate Einstein to Ramanujan, etc.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20937,
"author": "Quora Feans",
"author_id": 8970,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8970",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>After getting rid of spam in your email box by the spam filter, pass every unrequested mail through the crackpot index:</p>\n\n<p>It will give points for, for example:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>mentioning Einstein, Feynman or Hawkins. (I suppose mentioning Ramanujan would be the same but in the mathematical field instead of physical field).</p></li>\n<li><p>complaining about the establishment</p></li>\n<li><p>vacuous statements</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Read everything about it in: <a href=\"http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html</a></p>\n\n<p>I don't believe you'll need more then 2-3 minutes for that. </p>\n\n<p>However, also don't forget to take a look at <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amateur_mathematicians\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amateur_mathematicians</a>, since there is mathematics outside academical mathematics too. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20939,
"author": "Kostas",
"author_id": 15270,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15270",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Ramanujan is actually a difficult case because he was in fact an amateur crackpot, and his contribution to real math is not clear to me. But yes, he was a genius. He did not reveal the methods by which he derived his magic formula, even though I am convinced he could explain it if he wanted to. He did not want to reveal his secret craft, he only wanted the fame. I say dunk it in the wastebasket in this case, and if you ever come across work which sounds scientific tell the author to submit it to <a href=\"http://arxiv.org/\" rel=\"nofollow\">arxiv.</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20949,
"author": "Christian",
"author_id": 10073,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10073",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think a good policy would be to redirect those people to <a href=\"https://mathoverflow.net/\">Math Overflow</a>. Let them open a new topic to ask what's wrong with their proof. </p>\n\n<p>If it's trivial to find errors then someone one Math Overflow will point out those errors. If their proof actually works I would expect someone at Math Overflow to recognise working proof.</p>\n\n<p>You only need to write a email to redirect people to MathOverflow once and afterwards you can send everyone who sends you unsolicited proofs the same canned email.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 25800,
"author": "Gremlin Brenneman",
"author_id": 9176,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9176",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I guess I don't see the big moral quandary. You're a talented person who has worked a long time to develop his skills, and you are under absolutely no obligation to give those skills and your time away for free to every Tom, Dick, and Harriet. If you <em>want to</em> that's fine, but the fact that you feel pressured to do this is not good. </p>\n\n<p>This person's case is really not that compelling to me: he has proved a result which has already been proved and by elementary methods also (according to a previous poster). Maybe it could be published but for this person to suggest his ability is comparable to Ramanujan's in some way based on <em>this</em> result seems absolutely ludicrous. To me, his appeal to Ramanujan, which is based solely on their circumstances and nationality, seems manipulative, and his comparison of himself to Ramanujan, shows a sort of hubris I find appalling. If Ramanujan had sent a proof of a result which had already been proved by elementary means to Hardy, do you <em>really</em> think Hardy would have given it a second thought? I seriously doubt it. Based on the information given, maybe he has some talent, but I don't see evidence of a world-class genius being lost here. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20674",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14733/"
] |
20,675 |
<p>Are there journals that may consider articles of the type "new proof of old results" but the paper is exceedingly short(1-3 pages)? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20682,
"author": "alarge",
"author_id": 15151,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15151",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Depends on the field and the nature of your derivation. If it gives new insights and uses completely new techniques that might in themselves be of interest, then you might pursue a regular journal. If the derivation is a clever application of an established concept, then you might consider something like the <a href=\"http://scitation.aip.org/content/aapt/journal/ajp\" rel=\"nofollow\">American Journal of Physics</a>, or others with a similar, pedagogic, agenda.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20779,
"author": "Michael Zieve",
"author_id": 14724,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14724",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The answer is certainly \"yes\", but to identify the best fit for your paper you'll have to decide how different your proof is from previous proofs. It often happens that two proofs look completely different when viewed line-by-line, but still the main intermediate steps in the proofs are essentially the same -- in other words, proofs can use the same strategy but different tactics. If your main contribution is in finding an efficient or elegant way to present some of the same ideas that were used in previous proofs, then you might consider <a href=\"http://www.journals.elsevier.com/expositiones-mathematicae/\"><em>Expositiones Mathematicae</em></a> or the <a href=\"http://www.maa.org/publications/periodicals/american-mathematical-monthly\"><em>American Mathematical Monthly</em></a>. On the other hand, if your proofs use entirely new ideas, then you have done original research and you should submit your paper to a standard journal. In between these two extremes is <a href=\"http://www.unige.ch/math/EnsMath/\"><em>L'Enseignement Mathématique</em></a>, which often publishes papers which combine new research with improved exposition of known results.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20830,
"author": "Benoît Kloeckner",
"author_id": 946,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/946",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Most of the time, I would go to any journal that fits the subject (i.e., with an editor that should be interested, and know who to sent the paper to). For example I have had recent success with a 2 to 4 pages (depending on formatting) paper in Israel Journal of Math, which is not especially inclined toward short papers.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20675",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11123/"
] |
20,760 |
<p>In a Program Committee (PC), can PC members non assigned to a paper still have a look at it and make comments influencing the decision, assuming that the reviewing system allow them to access the papers and the reviews? </p>
<p>If they only make a comment, should this comment be sent to the authors (EasyChair, for instance, does not forward the comments to authors)? For instance, consider the case where a PC member thinks that an important reference is missing, regardless of the overall quality of the paper, what should she/he do? Add a comment? Ask to be assigned as a reviewer? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20769,
"author": "jwenting",
"author_id": 11647,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11647",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Reviewer A asks colleague B who's not a reviewer to give his opinion on a paragraph because B has more knowledge about the specifics of that paragraph, then incorporates that feedback in his review.<br/>\nJust one example of how it could happen.<br/>\nOr Reviewer A knowing full well that his boss, manager B, won't like a review being critical of the work of prominent person C, so he decides to recommend strongly such criticism be deleted in order to keep his boss happy and his job secure.<br/>\nCould happen too.<br/>\n<br/>\nAre both going to show up on a review of the review process? Highly unlikely. Are both plausible scenarios based on human nature, even if not part of the review process? Highly likely.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20776,
"author": "Jukka Suomela",
"author_id": 351,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/351",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>In theoretical computer science conferences (which often use EasyChair), I have seen the following practices:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Once all reviews are in, PC chairs often <em>encourage</em> all PC members to comment on all papers on which they have something useful to say.</p></li>\n<li><p>Sometimes the comments are just discussion that may influence the final decision in borderline cases.</p></li>\n<li><p>Sometimes the assigned reviewers modify their reviews based on the comments (e.g., they realised that they overlooked some important point).</p></li>\n<li><p>Sometimes the PC chairs ask some of the assigned reviewers to incorporate the comments in their reviews.</p></li>\n<li><p>Sometimes the PC chairs ask non-reviewers to convert their comments to (short) reviews.</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20760",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] |
20,833 |
<p>As part of my PhD, I have already published a paper and am working to expand it further. Recently, a PhD student (who I didn't know) from another university contacted me regarding my paper. He showed interest in the paper and the direction that I'm working on, wanted me to explain it further and, if possible, share the framework that I developed and used for experiment so that he could use it for his own research.</p>
<p>Although I like to help him as it will be nice if we can come up with some collaboration, I'm afraid that it might turn into an competition instead if he decides to pursue the same direction as mine alone. Since I'm still working on it without any concrete result, it is possible for him to solve it first and publish papers. I'm not saying that he might steal my ideas/tools since he can put my name in an acknowledgement.</p>
<p>So, my question is to what extent I should share or disclose my current research which is in progress.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20835,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You certainly have no <em>obligation</em> to share your work before you've published it. So you can feel completely free to say \"Sorry, this work is still in 'stealth' mode, I'll let you know when I can share more.\"</p>\n\n<p>It's helpful to collaborate with someone you know and trust, if you know the collaborative direction will not conflict with your independent work. (For example, I sometimes collaborate with members of my same research group, and share with them ongoing findings on related work that I wouldn't share with outsiders.) </p>\n\n<p>But otherwise, you can keep your findings to yourself until you are ready to publish, or until you feel confident that you have enough of a head start that you won't risk getting scooped.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20836,
"author": "badroit",
"author_id": 7746,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7746",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Great question! I found myself in similar situations as a student and likewise as a mentor for other students when talking with people working on similar topics.</p>\n\n<p>A favourite quote of mine is from George Bernard Shaw:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I believe this is an ideal philosophy for research in a sense that ideally, everyone should gain from the free exchange of ideas. </p>\n\n<p>However, as you gain experience, you realize that it can be just an ideal.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>My first experience concerning the cost of openly sharing results was when I was a PhD student. Early on, I had the basics of what seemed like an important result for the community and had some initial results. My supervisor urged me to try and publish but the paper was borderline rejected from the conference with comments like \"nice idea but still too early\". I thus published it as a poster in the informal proceedings. In the meanwhile, my supervisor and I had been in conversation about how to progress further, get more results and mature the work. He presented the poster, spoke with various people and told me that he had had lots of interesting conversations: lengthy conversations with two senior researchers in particular.</p>\n\n<p>I continued working on the problem. My supervisor and I had some difference of opinion on the direction the work should go in (theoretical vs. applied CS basically). We got bogged down in some theoretical questions where I felt the impact could be on simplifying the problem and working on the applied side. I missed the next deadline for the conference in our area but lo and behold, two papers were published that pretty much had developed the applied side of the idea. I read the two papers and realized that both had, in parallel, at the same venue, developed the ideas I had been working on ... with one or two interesting side observations. Both works were from groups of the two senior researchers my supervisor had talked to. One cited my informal/preliminary results as an inspiration, the other didn't cite it at all.</p>\n\n<p>Four years later, the first paper now has 175 citations in Google Scholar, the second paper has 100, my paper has 41. I published a later paper on the topic that's doing a little better, but for sure, the early birds had taken the worm.</p>\n\n<p>In part I'm happy that the idea was developed and they did add new ideas, and I've worked on various things since, but I honestly still regret not having formally marked the idea further before my supervisor exposed it. I also regret not being more urgent in getting the full work published.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>This is not to suggest that you should stay tight-lipped at conferences or turn down all collaborations, but if you're worried about someone entering into competition with you, you might want to listen to that concern. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to not share every idea you have when you attend a conference. There are plenty of anecdotes of tight-lipped researchers: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiles%27_proof_of_Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem\">for example, nobody knew what Andrew Wiles was working on for several years while he was working towards a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem</a>.</p>\n\n<p>If you think the person is someone you can trust and someone who could help in a collaboration, listen to your gut. Test the water and see how knowledgeable they are or how they could contribute. Be careful if you have co-authors, not to talk about their ideas. If you want to collaborate, perhaps publish a technical report or a pre-print to mark your ideas first.</p>\n\n<p>If in doubt, you don't have to tell them about your ideas straight away. Maybe stay quiet for the conference and email them later if you think you want to work together or to tell them about your ideas.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20912,
"author": "adipro",
"author_id": 10936,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10936",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Let me offer another perspective. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>... to what extent I should share or disclose my current research which is in progress.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>To the extent you would like our society to improve, or the body of human knowledge to grow. </p>\n\n<p>Having other people interested in our ideas means that our ideas are confirmed by others to be promising. Among these people, there could be those who are more capable, more intellectually gifted, more persistent, more enthusiastic than we are. </p>\n\n<p>I would expect that the more people are involved in attacking a particular problem or working on a solution, the higher the chance or the faster it would take to solve that problem. </p>\n\n<p>So if we think of the big picture, I believe we should share as much as possible our ideas. True, other people would probably get greater recognition than we do, but that is all right. Others' gain might be our loss, but in the end, the society benefits. And that is exactly why academic community exists---to serve our society.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20948,
"author": "user15275",
"author_id": 15275,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15275",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Did he offer you something interesting about his research? Just wait until you have finished and published. Then you can send him a copy.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21027,
"author": "J. Zimmerman",
"author_id": 7921,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7921",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As others have noted, the free sharing of ideas is the epitome of what the academic community is all about. However, as was also noted, we soon learn that this is only an ideal; reality often isn't quite like that, for many reasons. </p>\n\n<p>Without getting into the many reasons--mostly involving fear of getting scooped-- for not sharing much (if at all) about your ongoing research, there are several ways to manage this situation. </p>\n\n<p>First, if you truly don't want to share your ideas and/or pursue possible collaboration, figure out how to (preferably nicely!) turn someone down. Try something along these lines:</p>\n\n<p>\"Sorry, that's still classified information. Would you like me to let you know when I can tell you more?\"</p>\n\n<p>However, in those cases in which you do want to exchange ideas, perhaps with the goal of assessing the potential for future collaboration, you obviously need a slightly different approach. One approach is to share one interesting 'nugget' of what you have found/are working on, and then turn the conversation to their work.</p>\n\n<p>\"How do you think that might fit in with what you are doing? Do you see any other ways in which x might apply to y?\" </p>\n\n<p>Ask for their input on a small piece of the current puzzle;</p>\n\n<p>\"What could you tell me about z, in the light of what I've told you about x?\" </p>\n\n<p>Your milage may vary, of course, but this approach can get you many fruitful ideas (Be sure to attribute them to the proper source!), interesting responses, and even valuable collaborations. You can often get a gut feeling for whether or not you are or should be comfortable with responding frankly or whether you want to be more circumspect. In general, the value of sharing with others outweighs the potential risk, though again, YMMV!</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20833",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12635/"
] |
20,834 |
<p>I know that after submitting a paper through Elsevier Editorial System, the corresponding author can check the status of the submitted paper online. But how about co-authors? Can the corresponding author give a permission to the co-authors to enable them to check the status of the paper as well? If yes, how that can be done?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20875,
"author": "Stat",
"author_id": 15201,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15201",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>The answer is No, he/she cannot cannot give any permission to the co-authors after submission to EES and before acceptance, as mentioned <a href=\"http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/279/p/7923/related/1\">here</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I am a co-author on the paper, I would like to be able to see the\n status of the manuscript. I have the manuscript number and I am\n registered on the journal website. </p>\n \n <p><em>After submission, you can only see the status of a submitted paper via\n the corresponding author's EES homepage. You will not be able to\n search for this submission via your own author's EES homepage.</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>So just the corresponding author can check the status before acceptance. But after acceptance, co-author can track the status as well:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><em>After acceptance, the article is recorded in our tracking system, you\n can use the production reference number along with the Corresponding\n Author's name to track your paper status and add your paper to your\n personal homepage on <a href=\"http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle\">http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle</a>.</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 131533,
"author": "Behnam",
"author_id": 109570,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/109570",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You have received an email just after submission which gives you a link to check the current status of your manuscript. the text of the email is something like this:</p>\n\n<p>\"The link below takes you to a webpage where you can sign in to our submission system using your existing Elsevier profile credentials or register to create a new profile. You will then have the opportunity to tailor these updates and view reviewer and editor comments once they become available.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.evise.com/profile/api/navigate/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://www.evise.com/profile/api/navigate/</a>.....\"</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20834",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15201/"
] |
20,837 |
<p>I had a situation where for a particular algorithm, it first shows up in a paper [1].
This makes [1] a primary source.
I found [1] a bit hard reading when it came to describing the implementation and fine details of the algorithm. But it was good at describing why the algorithm was needed.</p>
<p>I found another work, which was a masters thesis [2].
It included a step by step mathematical working from what was in [1] (and [2] cited [1] appropriately).
It helped me a lot. I could have done the mathematical working myself, but didn't.</p>
<p>So I am writing a brief summery of the Algorithm:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The <em>{{Foo}}</em> algorithm allows the <em>{{Bar}}</em> problem to be solved [1]. It
is based on the fact that <em>{{Equation}}</em> holds under <em>{{Conditions}}</em> [2].
<em>{{My own explanation of {{Foo}} here}}</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is this correct?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20838,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>This is correct only if the source of the first sentence is exclusively [1] and the source of your second sentence is exclusively [2].</p>\n\n<p>That is, if you learn \"The {{Foo}} algorithm allows the {{Bar}} problem to be solved\" from [1] without having read [2], and \"It is based on the fact that {{Equation}} holds under {{Conditions}}\" is an original contribution of [2] that is not in [1], then your citation is correct. </p>\n\n<p>Otherwise, you may have to cite [1,2] for the first and/or second sentence as appropriate.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20845,
"author": "Dan Petersen",
"author_id": 9305,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9305",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Something like this should be OK:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The <em>Bar</em> problem can be solved using the <em>Foo</em> algorithm [1], which is based on\n the fact that <em>Equation</em> holds under <em>Conditions</em>. A useful and detailed exposition of the <em>Foo</em> algorithm and how to implement it in practice can be found in [2]. </p>\n</blockquote>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20837",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8513/"
] |
20,841 |
<p>I am at the moment dealing with an academic dishonesty incident in a class I'm teaching (a few groups of students submitting identical code, when the class policy forbids getting help from another person on a graded assignment).</p>
<p>When I noticed indications of plagiarism, I emailed each affected student something along the lines of:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The code you submitted is nearly identical to another student's work. Can you comment on this?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Their reactions mainly fall into three categories:</p>
<ol>
<li><em>"I made a mistake and I take full responsibility for it, I hope you will let me make it up but I understand if you can't."</em></li>
<li><em>"I talked about the assignment with another student, but I didn't copy anyone's code."</em> But then when I inform them they're getting a zero grade for the assignment, they don't argue.</li>
<li><em>"I didn't do it! You can't give me a zero grade for the assignment when I didn't cheat, I refuse to accept a zero grade."</em></li>
</ol>
<p>Assuming I have evidence that all of these students cheated, is there a good reason to adjust the penalty based on whether students own up to their misconduct, or continue to lie about it?</p>
<p>On the one hand, I appreciate honesty, and doubling down on a lie seems like something that should be punished. On the other hand, I've never heard of anyone adjusting penalties like this, so I'm wondering if there's some reason I shouldn't. </p>
<p>It's also not clear to me what the relative difference in penalties should be, if there is one. I thought about it and it's hard for me to come up with one penalty that's appropriate for Group 1, another penalty that's appropriate for Group 2, and a third penalty that's appropriate for Group 3.</p>
<p>I would very much appreciate answers based on research and/or experience with policies like this, rather than just opinion.</p>
<p>(My school has no official policy on the matter.)</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20844,
"author": "badroit",
"author_id": 7746,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7746",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This seems tricky to answer but I'll try put some thoughts out there ...</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Assuming I have evidence that all of these students cheated, is there a good reason to adjust the penalty based on whether students own up to their misconduct, or continue to lie about it?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The objective part of the equation boils down to you incentivising honesty and deincentivising dishonesty. You will set a precedent that \"owning up\" lightens the punishment so folks are more likely to \"own up\". If students owning up increases the effectiveness of your teaching/course administration, then that's a win.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It's also not clear to me what the relative different in penalties should be, if there is one. I thought about it and it's hard for me to come up with one penalty that's appropriate for Group 1, another penalty that's appropriate for Group 2, and a third penalty that's appropriate for Group 3.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>On the other hand, you have to balance leniency with punishment: if a student just needs to \"own up\" after a crime to mitigate any punishment, then you are not deincentivising the original cheating enough any more. The punishment should fit the crime: thus you need to decide the severity of the original crime versus the claims of the different groups.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I would very much appreciate answers based on research and/or experience with policies like this, rather than just opinion.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The principle is identical to why people plead \"Guilty\" in court. They get some leniency in return for simplifying the courtroom process. So maybe there's something in the legal literature that could give you an idea (<a href=\"http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1340292?uid=3737784&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104011697567\">random search result</a>).</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Anyways that was the abstract answer. To give a more concrete suggestion ...</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Assuming I have evidence that all of these students cheated</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>... you could tell the students that you have proof that they cheated and tell them that they will get 0 marks for every assignment until they own up. This seems like a nice way of matching the crime for the punishment: the longer they continue to lie and cheat, the more they are punished.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20848,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>That's a really good question, that I generally often wonder about myself when dealing with plagiarism. As such, I don't have a fully fledged answer, just some thoughts.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Assuming I have evidence that all of these students cheated, is there a good reason to adjust the penalty based on whether students own up to their misconduct, or continue to lie about it?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>AFAIK, most courts are supposed to lower the punishment if you plead guilty of a crime, so there is certainly precedence for this. That being said, looking at court practice also gives a feeling of the downside of this. In general, people accused of a crime tend to plead Not Guilty as long as they see a reasonable chance of getting away, and plead Guilty if it is clear that they will be sentenced anyway. Pretty much the same thing also tends to happen for plagiarising students - they will deny until presented with sufficient evidence, at which point they own up.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>On the one hand, I appreciate honesty, and doubling down on a lie seems like something that should be punished. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I don't know. The honesty thing basically flew out the window when they were trying to cheat the first time, right? I don't see a huge difference in <em>honesty levels</em> between either of the three cases. As discussed above, I don't consider somebody smart enough to recognise a lost case as significantly <em>more honest</em> than somebody who has a strategy of denial.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It's also not clear to me what the relative different in penalties should be, if there is one. I thought about it and it's hard for me to come up with one penalty that's appropriate for Group 1, another penalty that's appropriate for Group 2, and a third penalty that's appropriate for Group 3.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I see the same groups of students in my cases of plagiarism, and for now I generally treat them the same. I am open to good counter-arguments, though.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20851,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 8,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p><strong>TL; DR:</strong> We adjust the penalty.</p>\n\n<p>I sit on my department's Academic Misconduct Committee so unfortunately I see a lot of these cases. The University policy has created two similarly sounding, but different terms: academic misconduct and poor academic practice, with academic misconduct being much more severe than poor academic practice. Every student suspected of having engaged in poor academic practice is called into a meeting with the Academic Misconduct Committee. This committee looks at the evidence supporting academic misconduct/poor practice and hears the student's case which generally includes what training they have had about good academic practice, how the incident happened, and any evidence of extenuating circumstances (e.g., death in the family). </p>\n\n<p>Based on this process we can come to one of 3 decisions: </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>not poor academic practice, </li>\n<li>poor academic practice, </li>\n<li>academic misconduct. </li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>If we decide that they did not engage in poor academic practice, the incident is essentially purged from the system. If the student is called in again in the future, we do not nominally know that they had been called in before. If we decide that it was poor academic practice, the students are warned and it is documented. We are not allowed to apply formal penalties in the case of poor academic practice. If they are called in again we know from the documentation and are unlikely to give them the benefit of the doubt a second time.</p>\n\n<p>If we decide that academic misconduct has occurred we can apply one of a number of different penalties to the work: no reduction of the mark, remark the work with the offending material removed or reduce the mark commensurate with the misconduct (anywhere from a 5% penalty to a 0 for the piece of work). A second incident of academic misconduct results in the penalty being decided on by a university panel and starts with a zero for the class and can go as high as a zero for the year. In this way there is a big difference between poor academic practice and academic misconduct with no reduction in the mark since poor academic practice does not count as a first offense.</p>\n\n<p>Within this framework the committee is faced with how to handle the students who admit the issue and the ones who deny the issue. Those who argue they didn't cheat and have no explanation as to how their assignment matches another's work are almost always found guilty of academic misconduct since they are not willing to help us create a case for poor academic practice. More often than not they receive a 0 since we have no evidence that mitigates the penalty. For students who admit what they did, we often consider poor academic practice as an outcome since they describe what they did and realize it was wrong. Sometimes the offense is too blatant to let off without a reduction, but generally saying what you did wrong and how you will not let it happen again reduces the penalty.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20856,
"author": "Sam",
"author_id": 13778,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13778",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Is it naive to propose a solution along these lines?</p>\n\n<p>If everyone denies cheating i.e. situations 2/3 you outlined (which may all be lies, or one guy/gal having their work copied by the others, with/without their permission) 0% for everyone. They get the opportunity to submit a new assignment but with a cap on the maximum mark say 70%, or a mark rescaling e.g. they get 60% but their mark is rescaled from out of 100 to out of 70, so their grade reads 42%.</p>\n\n<p>If an involved party owns up i.e, situation 1 you outlined, the involved parties get 0% but the opportunity to submit another similar assignment with no mark cap/rescaling.</p>\n\n<p>I am not sure of the relative workload for you the assessor of having a few 'extra' possible assignments available for this kind of circumstance, but as I see it, a solution along these lines accomplishes several things:</p>\n\n<p>1) Cheating/collusion when inappropriate is punished heavily, either resulting in 0% or a lot of extra work to try and make the marks back. This will act as a strong dissuasive influence for cheating both on individual and group levels.</p>\n\n<p>2) The genuinely penitent (perhaps those who had something else on their plate and are otherwise diligent, one-time offender types) will have an opportunity to 'right their wrongs' and achieve a maximum mark (in theory, in practice they won't have as much time to do the assignment as it will overlap with other work, so their mark will likely be lower, again acting to dissuade a repeat offence as they struggle with the time cost).</p>\n\n<p>An alternative, harsher implementation of such a solution would be to allow no resubmission if no one owns up, and submission for a lower cap/down scaled grade for honesty. This results in lower workload for you as the assessor, while still clearly rewarding honesty, strongly punishing cheating and being more balanced than just awarding 0%.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20871,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Depending on the response, you could punish subsequent lies. If someone cheats, gets a punishment. When confronted about that, if they recognize it, you don't take further action. But, if they give you a blatantly false explanation, they may get punished for it.</p>\n\n<p>A (sadly) real case example: one student submitted exactly the same report than a previous one. When confronted about it, he claimed that he had done it, but when generating the PDF, it was somehow transformed in the other student's report, with only the name changed. This is being caught in a lie and try to avoid it treating the instructor as stupid.</p>\n\n<p>Adding some research: Wikipedia links <a href=\"http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol103/iss1/1/\">a paper</a> where some subjects were falsely accused of academic cheating and offer a lenient punishment if they recognised the fact. 56% of them plead guilty to avoid the risk of bigger punishment.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20885,
"author": "posdef",
"author_id": 5674,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5674",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am not a law major, but from an ethical standpoint I say <em>same crime same penalty</em>, anything else would be unethical. The motivations for the offense, likewise the reactions after being caught is irrelevant in the eye of the fact that the student in question <em>did</em> cheat and s/he <em>did</em> know that it was unethical. </p>\n\n<p>What you <em>can</em>, and IMHO <em>should</em>, adjust is how to handle these students afterwards. The students who were sorry for having cheated or had some understandable reason for <em>having to cheat</em> might be given a chance to prove themselves. You can, for instance, have an extra session where the material at hand is reviewed lightly, focusing on the questions which baffled the students the most. In that way, they still get a chance to learn the material (that is the main motivation in giving assignment in the first place, right?).</p>\n\n<p>In the end we are dealing with adults who should have a sense of reasoning, and consequences of their actions. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20887,
"author": "user3209815",
"author_id": 14133,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14133",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>At my uni, almost every assignment has to be orally defended in front of the T.A. after it was submitted. This defense proves that the student understood the assignment and has acquired the necessary knowledge from it.\nWhen students cheat, this can be found out before the defense (by reviewing the assignment) or at the defense, due to insufficient knowledge demonstrated. In one case or the other, the T.A. decides on the actions taken. In most cases, the offer is standard \"If we continue/begin with the examination, and I arrive to the conclusion that there was \"cheating\" involved, I'll take it up with the Academic Committee. However, if you admit and explain now, I'll fail you the assignment this term and you can redo it yourself for the next.\" Of course, the exact circumstance wary based upon the conduct, manners and attitude of the student. </p>\n\n<p>Keeping this in mind, my friends roommate, took the homework from some student which took it from some other, ... etc the result being that for that term ca. 5 identical versions of the same assignment were handed. When the defense came, he had additionally the bad luck that the professor himself was examining. The course of the initial conversation went something like this:\n\"Did you do this by yourself?\"\n\"Yes, of course.\"\n\"Did you borrow your code or granted insight to other students.\"\n\"No.\"\n<em>the professor takes 3 identical copies under different names from under his desk and lays them on the table</em>\n\"Would you care to explain this?\"\n\"I have no explanation, my assignment is my own and has nothing to do with these\"\n\"So it's just a coincidence then?\"\n\"I guess so\"</p>\n\n<p>Then the professor proceeded to examine him, which lasted for more than 40 minutes (instead of the usual 5-10), but did not fail the guy in the end, because he took effort to learn what was going on in the assignment and what was required.</p>\n\n<p>In the end, the professor seemingly valued more his knowledge and confidence than the fact that he took someone's assignment and blatantly and shamelessly lied his way through the examination.</p>\n\n<p>This story also points to the obvious pitfall in the above approach, i.e. to prove from which of the students the assignment originated, as he requires special treatment in any case and can't be punished ad hoc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20893,
"author": "Andy W",
"author_id": 3,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here is a criminal justice perspective (I have not had to deal with such egregious situations in the classroom.)</p>\n\n<p>The motivation for <em>punishment</em> generally falls under the philosophies of retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation & restoration. The US's penal law system is based on retribution; that is you've committed a wrong against society, and it is societies duty to exact a punishment somehow equivalent to that wrong. My experience is people tend to frame the motivation for punishment <em>de facto</em> in retributive terms, even if it is not really appropriate for the situation.</p>\n\n<p>All institutions I have been associated with have official committees that evaluate student misconduct - and cheating is their main calling. Assuming such a committee exists in your school, you should report the students behavior <em>and</em> it should be clear in your syllabus that is the consequence of cheating.</p>\n\n<p>It is likely the said committee will cover any retributive actions necessary to fulfill any harms to society, so the question then becomes <em>what do you do to the students</em> in response to the behavior? This depends on your goals of the punishment to begin with. I strongly feel your role should not be to exact further retribution beyond what the schools official academic policy calls for - so that leaves deterrence, rehabilitation & restoration. (If you even have discretion at this point beyond your schools official policy for cheating.)</p>\n\n<p>Studies in criminal justice tend to find that the severity of punishment is only weakly linked to deterrence - the probability of being caught is a much stronger influence on whether the student will commit the behavior. Pretty much <em>any</em> sort of note to the individual student that you caught them cheating will likely <em>prevent</em> future cheating. Even absent of punishment, this is a strong signal that their probability of being caught is high. My limited experience just letting students know \"Your homework looks an awfully lot like the student who sits next to you.\" - effectively ended that behavior (although your situation is clearly beyond that point.) So you need not be worried about \"letting them off the hook\" (especially if they have been referred to the student misconduct panel).</p>\n\n<p>Assuming letting the student know they have been caught is common-place, that then just leaves rehabilitation and/or restoration. Punishments oriented towards these perspectives often go hand in hand. One immediate example that comes to mind is to have the offending students lead a classroom discussion on the material they cheated on (this would be better for only one or two students though). Others may be extra-curricular activities, especially those that give back to the rest of the class (e.g. make them host a study session). Public shaming is an incredibly strong deterrent, e.g. just making them stand up in front of the class and admit their wrong-doing, but I am not sure if this violates other privacy mandates about grades and such things. (Restorative justice on its face may seem awkward since it is a victimless crime, but that doesn't make the potential punishments I suggest here any less reasonable.)</p>\n\n<p>Anyway it is preferable that in the future to be <em>very specific</em> in your syllabus about what will happen. Otherwise it appears ad-hoc and can be construed as prejudiced toward any particular student. </p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>In terms of relation to \"admitting a wrong\" - this philosophically should not have any bearing on the punishment that the offender receives. It is unfortunate a few conflations are being presented here in terms of <em>plea bargaining</em> - which is really a negative externality of the criminal justice system and the need to triage. When you plea bargain you concede to receiving a punishment for a lesser crime - you don't even have to admit you did anything wrong (e.g. you can plead \"no contest\"). </p>\n\n<p>The significance of admitting a wrong though is often placed on the other end of the system. It is often a requirement of parole that the offender admit their wrongdoing in front of the board before they are granted parole. In terms of restorative justice a key event is often just placing the offender in front of the victim and having the offender admit their wrong-doing. (Cooperation tends to be higher for offenders than you might expect - typically victims have a lower rate of cooperation.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20895,
"author": "NotMe",
"author_id": 11585,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11585",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You need to be absolutely sure who the parties are and exactly what their involvement is. Having two (or more) identical papers is often not enough to know who cheated. Further, sometimes the shame involved is not enough for someone to confess in order to try again. Finally, as we've learned from other areas, sometimes people will confess to things they never did just to try and get past the problem.</p>\n\n<p>My approach in the situation where I suspect cheating is to do the following:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Call each student in for a review. This should be back to back, but behind closed doors. Preferably where each student didn't know the others were also there; although that may be difficult. I'd recommend having two people present during the review in order to try and be unbiased in the analysis. Take notes and discuss after you have heard everyone.</p></li>\n<li><p>Have them discuss the work with a focus on how they arrived at their paper.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>For anyone that was successful in defending the work, I'd give them normal marks. For anyone that was unsuccessful I'd give them a zero and a warning. </p>\n\n<p>I wouldn't ask any of them if they cheated. However, if during the course of the review someone confessed then I'd ask for the full details. </p>\n\n<p>If they attempted to blame others, it would still be a zero. If they took full responsibility for their actions then I'd give them 24 hours to complete the assignment themselves with an 80% being the max possible grade. If it ever occurred again then I'd escalate it per university guidelines.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20951,
"author": "David E Speyer",
"author_id": 1244,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1244",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't like this practice for two reasons. These concerns are based on my experience serving on an academic honesty committee; for reasons of confidentiality, I will not go into further detail about this experience.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>You are creating an incentive for an innocent student to falsely confess, if they believe that they will be found guilty in any event. <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_confession\">False confessions</a> are much more common than most people believe, and a student in an academic investigation is under pressures similar to a suspect being interrogated by police.</p></li>\n<li><p>You raise the question of whether you are taking the confession into account in a fair way. If students contest your actions, the issue of whether all cheaters were treated equally will arise; each factor you consider in making your decision will make this more complicated.</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21028,
"author": "barlop",
"author_id": 13803,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13803",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>That is horribly unnecessary.</p>\n\n<p>There is no need to play some kind of morality police that to commit an offence and admit to it is better than committing an offense and no. Like some kind of parent. Stressing them out with an interrogation. </p>\n\n<p>A wonderful response is a professor at my uni did. He said \"You have the same program as this guy, you just changed XYZ to bluff me. I will give you each half so you share the mark between you!\".</p>\n\n<p>That's enough of a disincentive to copy if you only get half the marks.</p>\n\n<p>What had happened really was the whole class had copied off each other.. There were only about 2 proper ones going round. But two copying students posted theres in a little bit late together, one copied off the other, not making many changes, and after he had already collected the bulk of them and not picked out any plagiarism, it was easy to spot the copying in those two. He was very good natured about it and didn't stress the two students out.</p>\n\n<p>Also in those days, the grades in the first year didn't count. (eventually one guy intentionally failed all the exams in the first year, because he said there's no point. And they changed the rules the next year and made the first year count!)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 102638,
"author": "einpoklum",
"author_id": 7319,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7319",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>An answer for the specific case of multiple students / student groups submitting the same plagiarized solution:</p>\n\n<p>I would do the following (assuming 2 submissions by 1 student each):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol>\n <li>Withhold the assignment grade.</li>\n <li>Summon each of the people involved to my office.</li>\n <li>If one of them comes in, I tell them \"Look, you and student X submitted the same assignment. I've checked it, and graded it, once -\n and those are the points the two of you get for it. you can decide how\n you want to distribute them between the two of you, and let me know.\n Also, remember that if you don't do the homework yourself you won't\n get a good grip of the material, and you'll probably fail the exam and\n have trouble with subsequent courses, so it's purely your loss\n anyway.\" <br> \n If both of them have come in - use the same spiel; it only makes\n things faster. </li>\n <li>If they reach an agreement - I file the grades accordingly. <br>\n If they don't reach an agreement - well, actually, this never\n happened to me, so I haven't decided what to do in this case.</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The most important benefit, in my experience, of this method is that it allows people to \"confess without confessing\". If one person says \"give him the credit\", s/he's essentially confessed, without saying the words. And indeed, this is almost always the result I get. If the student who actually wrote the code is the first to walk in (very rare, they usually come together with the plagiarizer), they'll go consult before giving me the answer, and when it's the other way around, the plagiarizer has never turned out to be that much of an asshole to try to stick it to his/her benefactor.</p>\n\n<p>This scheme has a few additional benefits:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Delinquent students get an increased sense of fairness by participating in the decision of what to do.</li>\n<li>Instils a sense of \"cheating is useless, it can't change anything\" - that is, you can try whatever you want, the results, points-wise, will be the same as in the non-cheating case.</li>\n<li>Completely non-retributional, reducing resentment of the delinquents.</li>\n<li>Supports fractional punishment - reflecting partial work and partial delinquency among multiple students</li>\n<li>If students insist, you can always pass them on up to the default university-wide disciplinary mechanism</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p><sub><strong>Note:</strong> Following a discussion in comments, it seems that in at least one university in the world you may be forced to handle each potentially-offending student separately. I think that's kind of nuts, but I have to add the caveat that you need to check the binding rules on handling student violations of ethics, before deciding what to do.</sub></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 102641,
"author": "Patricia Shanahan",
"author_id": 10220,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10220",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To ethically impose an additional penalty for denying cheating you need to be 100% certain that the students' work environment is such that copying could only have be done with the help of the person whose work was copied.</p>\n\n<p>Without that, you risk imposing the greatest penalty on a completely honest victim of copying who refuses to lie. A less principled copying victim still gets the penalty for cheating, but not the added penalty for refusing to admit cheating.</p>\n\n<p>There is also a temptation on the \"prosecutor\" to depend on coerced admissions to avoid the burden of proving that each individual broke the rules by either copying or permitting copying.</p>\n\n<p>The original question does not explain how the OP can be completely sure copying was only possible with the aid of the person whose work was copied. If that proof is lacking, the OP can know that at least N-1 of a particular set of N students cheated, but not that any specific individual cheated and should be penalized. That would be a very frustrating situation, but I do not think coercing possibly false admissions through higher penalties is an ethical solution.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20841",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365/"
] |
20,846 |
<p>I am 29 years old and am about to finish my PhD thesis in the field of remote sensing (i.e. somewhere between computer sciences and geosciences in a broad sense or applied signal and image processing in a more narrow sense) at a university in central Europe. </p>
<p>Due to the fact that there are only few tenure positions available in science and I would rather stay in my (economically strong) home region, I want to find a position in industry in the long term. However, I have received an interesting offer for a post-doc / scientist position in a new-to-be-founded research group with great funding and cutting edge research in the applied signal processing field. </p>
<p>My question now is: Will some additional years in academia harm my chances concerning a job in industry? </p>
<p>Some additional points to consider:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>in the post-doc position, I would be the deputy of the group leader (who is soon to receive a full professor/tenure position)</p></li>
<li><p>I'd be responsible for staff management and some budget issues (about 20% of time)</p></li>
<li><p>I'd have the chance to travel to international conferences</p></li>
<li><p>the application the signal processing research is carried out for is not directly industry-relevant</p></li>
<li><p>I have received an invitation to an interview for an R&D job at an automotive company, but it is scheduled only in 3 weeks, while I have to decide for the post-doc offer sooner rather than later</p></li>
</ul>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20847,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can not talk directly about remote sensing, but in computer science, a postdoc does not <em>harm</em> your chances to go into industry directly ...</p>\n\n<p>... but unfortunately it will also likely not <em>help</em> you much when applying for an industry job. That is, I would expect that your CV for an industrial job is about as strong after the postdoc than before. Given that there are opportunity costs for working in a postdoc for (presumably) multiple years (lower salary, lost opportunity to build up experience that is more directly helpful in industry jobs, etc.), you <em>will</em> certainly pay for doing this postdoc if you look at the grander picture (lifetime earnings, etc.).</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I would be the deputy of the group leader (who is soon to receive a full professor / tenure position) - I'd be responsible for staff management and some budget issues (about 20% of time)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This sounds like you will have actual management experience after your postdoc. If you find the right company, these are certainly points that will help your case afterwards. However, some of my colleagues have made the experience that there are a surprisingly large number of companies in central europe that summarily dismiss everything you do at a university as \"not really management\" (mostly due to a lack of understanding that university labs also have to deal with budgets, hiring, people issues, etc.). Not sure how representative these word-of-mouth tales are, but it is something to keep in mind.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20896,
"author": "Chris Farmer",
"author_id": 15240,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15240",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>At least in the life sciences areas related to medicinal chemistry and drug discovery, it's possible to gain a benefit from doing a postdoc with a PI who him/herself has great industry contacts. Off the top of my head, I think some factors to consider are:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>If you are looking to get into a subspeciality within your field where the PI has a strong reputation in the industry, and you are looking to strengthen your credentials within that subspecialty with your publication record and networking, I think a postdoc is a good idea.</p></li>\n<li><p>You want to focus on a more basic research area in your future career, then a strong postdoc where you guide much of your own research is a good idea. If you're not interested in self-directed basic research, maybe not.</p></li>\n<li><p>If your postdoc efforts will be diluted substantially by administrative tasks as you imply, I'd be a little concerned and try to get this clarified. You would be taking this job to improve your academic and research credentials, and few people will give you much credit for doing even a superior job in the administrative role of your job. If this will restrict your ability to effectively do your \"real\" work, I'd be inclined to reject this offer.</p></li>\n<li><p>You say that this is a new group, implying that it's with a new young PI. This could go either way, but you should definitely be selfish and trying to honestly estimate the productivity that you would achieve in a new group with a new PI in this field. If you don't see yourself with a good likelihood of excelling in the field, I would consider declining. An \"average\" postdoc will not distinguish you in any way in your future job search, but an excellent postdoc might.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Some postdoc positions are created basically as a way to pay less while also not really offering the upside of outstanding research and publication opportunities that you'd really seek out in a good postdoc fit. Your administrative requirements sound like a red flag to me that this position really isn't suited for a postdoc, but that of course is for you to decide. If you're considering a postdoc, you should consider how you could distinguish yourself to future employers who might be interested in your outstanding research ideas and implementation, and they'll see that through high profile publications and conference presentations that you make. If you're unlikely able to do this, then I'd argue that you're not likely to benefit from a postdoc.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20846",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15216/"
] |
20,879 |
<p>According to <a href="http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html">this article</a>, a student was arrested for downloading ~4 million articles from an on-line database.</p>
<p>I want to review all existing articles in my interest area before writing my paper, so I need to download and skim through several thousand articles. I read the terms of service of my school's database, but it just says I should avoid trying to make a "collection".</p>
<p>At what point does the downloading become enough that the databases start to complain? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? Do they send out warnings?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20884,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>According to this article, a student was arrested for downloading ~4\n million articles from an on-line database.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That was an extreme case. He had history of downloading and releasing large amount of information. In this JSTOR case, I don't think he had actually released the articles, although the indication was strong. He was charged with \"unlawfully breaking in a protected computer,\" which I guess he probably downloaded the paper with unusual means, perhaps using codes or hacks. Overall, the whole case was very politically charged and I will not use that as a benchmark in your case.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I want to review all existing articles in my interest area before\n writing my paper, so I need to download and skim through several\n thousand articles. I read the terms of service of my school's\n database, but it just says I should avoid trying to make a\n \"collection\".</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>When there are several thousands of articles that are pertinent to your research interest in ONE paper, I would suggest you to refine your research interest. And no, you don't need to review <em>all existing articles</em>, just pick the important seminal works, and then trace the major works along a very well define research interest. You can also use a few prominent modern works as seeds and use their reference list to snow ball your library.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>At what point does the downloading become enough that the databases\n start to complain? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? Do they send out\n warnings?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You should be able to download as much as you want as long as you follow the instructions and rules. For large download volume, I'd check with the librarian to clarify:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>What the institutional limit is. There may be a download limit and if you'd get a warning letter it's likely from your school because your thousands of download could have cost them a lot more than usual. Some school libraries may ban accounts associated with a large download volume as well; it's better to give the librarian a heads up.</p></li>\n<li><p>Your student account payment scheme. Some schools may have limit and beyond which the students may have to pay. I know that this is certainly possible for inter-library loan (which you may have to do if a few thousands paper is your goal.) A peer of mine got billed for more than US$500 because she ordered about a hundred papers through inter-library loan.</p></li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20903,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would suggest to contact the database team, tell them about the project, explain that are you doing, so they would have chance to say is it ok for them or not. You are much less likely to face restrictions if the project is known and approved by your scientific supervisor.</p>\n\n<p>The database website should contain the terms of use page where these acceptable limits should be listed. If nothing is listed, usually a good rule is to wait three times the duration it took a server to serve the previous query but no less than one second, and stop immediately if the server returned the unexpected error message. </p>\n\n<p>It may be much more important not to violate other terms of use.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20879",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/600/"
] |
20,880 |
<p>I am finishing writing a manuscript in collaboration with a dozen of colleagues. The paper is mainly theoretical, does not involved experimentation of any kind and is born from numerous discussions between all the collaborators (it is actually hard to tell when the project started). No one really took the lead in the project, at least not during the whole time (for meeting setup and so someone had to take the lead, but only temporary). In addition, the ten collaborators are coming from 6-7 different research groups and universities.</p>
<p>In such case, when everyone as more or less the exact same contribution, what is the best way to determine the author order on the paper, without making any diplomacy misstep? </p>
<p>PS: in my field , alphabetical order is really not common.</p>
<p>PS2: we do not have time for a <a href="http://scieastereggs.tumblr.com/post/59024356366/croquet-yeah-thats-the-way-we-all-do-it" rel="nofollow">25 games croquet tournament</a>...</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20883,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Since your field does not normally do standard alphabetical ordering, then its use here might signify that something unusual is going on. So you could in principle list everybody in alphabetical order, identify the corresponding author, and then insert a note in the acknowledgments that everyone contributed more or less equally to the paper.</p>\n\n<p>Alternatively, in some fields, papers can be authored by \"teams\" instead of individuals—although all the individuals participating in the team are cited somewhere. This is more typical when the collaborations run to the hundreds of authors rather than a few to a dozen. If the journal you submit to allows this, it would probably be the fairest option of all.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20980,
"author": "Benedikt Bauer",
"author_id": 10039,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10039",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Recently I have seen a paper draft that had a footnote at the author list (which contained more than the two persons named below) stating that</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A. Uthor and C. Ollaborator contributed to the present work in equal parts and share first authorship.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Maybe this would be an option in your case as well? By this you have made clear which persons did the main part of the work and give the first position in the name list to the one who managed all the submission process.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20880",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/481/"
] |
20,888 |
<p><em>I previously asked this question in the physics forum (tag soft-question), but was convinced that it better suits in the academia forum. So I deleted it and posted it here.</em></p>
<p>I was recently asked to review a paper for a well-established physical journal, but as I have a lot to do in the moment, I'm tempted to refuse it. This is even more the case since I quit my scientific carreer roughly a year ago.</p>
<p>Thus my question: <strong>particularly outside physics, what are the benefits of being a referee?</strong> [beside the idealistic attitude of "bringing on physics" -- this is a valuable point in principle, but in reality, I've been long enough in the business to know that this is hardly the case for most papers. In contrast, most papers originate due to the need to continuously publish, a thing which I consider to be wrong].</p>
<p>For people in science, I see a clear opportunity in being a referee.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>First, it gives you a connection to the journal editors and contributes to your authority.</p></li>
<li><p>Second, by concentrating on the paper, you are forced to learn something on your topic which might help you later. Further, you might be able to add citations to your own work and thus increase your influence.</p></li>
<li><p>Third, from a global point of view, you have to do it since you also expect your own papers to be reviewed (although this point is somewhat of a social dilemma, since [neglecting the previous points] it would be better to review as few as possible and concentrate on your own research).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>However, do you see any personal advantages once you have quit physics? Are there maybe some if one plans to return some day?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20889,
"author": "Alecos Papadopoulos",
"author_id": 8575,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8575",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't know how universal is this but in my country there is a proverbial saying \"learn a craft and leave it, and when you're hungry squeeze it\". Since here the \"craft\" is personal networks, and personal networks do not let you \"squeeze\" them easily once you have \"left\" them, then reviewing papers every now and then should not be too heavy an investment in an <em>uncertain</em> prospect -which could be returning back in science, but also it could be something else you cannot imagine right now. Ask any freelancer. </p>\n\n<p>Do the editors <em>know</em> that you have left your scientific career? If yes, their invitation may say something about their opinion of you. But if they don't know it, I would suggest to make it clear right now: if they are happy to keep their invitation standing, then everybody knows you are doing them a favor. If they want to recall their invitation in light of this information, you will avoid possible later embarrassments. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20890,
"author": "badroit",
"author_id": 7746,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7746",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>However, do you see any personal advantages once you have quit physics? Are there maybe some if one plans to return some day?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If you have quit the scientific community altogether and are working as say, a fisherman, then there will obviously be no professional gain from continuing to review papers.</p>\n\n<p>If you plan to (maybe) return to the scientific community at some stage, having reviewed some papers might help you make the case in an interview that you've been keeping up to date with the literature, but it's still not a strong advantage.</p>\n\n<p>So there's not much to be had in terms of professional benefit in this scenario. The question then is whether or not you feel there's a personal benefit for you: maybe you find the paper(s) interesting to read and learn about, maybe the editor is a friend of yours and you'd like to keep their favour, maybe you like that warm feeling you get when you help progress science a little ... answering these questions are entirely up to you. </p>\n\n<p>(All I know is that if I wasn't in an academic career, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I would be reviewing the papers in my area for the \"fun of it\".)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20891,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>To me, refereeing papers in subject X is a non-negligible part of being a professional academic in subject X. So the premise that you want to referee a physics paper having \"quit science\" seems moderately self-contradictory: using your expert level qualifications to evaluate a scientific work is being a scientist, isn't it? I'm almost sure it is. :)</p>\n\n<p>So I guess you haven't \"quit science\" completely, or -- and this may come to the same thing -- the physics community is not fully aware of this fact. One thing I might do if I were you is to make sure that the editor who asked you to review the paper knows that you are no longer employed as a physicist. If I were an editor, that would be useful information, and unless I knew you rather well and knew that you retained a special expertise in this particular area, I would probably select someone else. </p>\n\n<p>I think it's clear that you no longer have any kind of ethical obligation or professional expectation of reviewing papers. I also suspect that once the community understands that you really are doing something else now your referee requests will come rarely or cease altogether. So this is probably a decision that you need to make more for any particular paper than as a general life decision. I would say: if you feel just as qualified to referee the paper as before and if you want to referee the paper, then do it. For instance, if you see something valuable in the paper that you think that some other qualified person might miss, then it might be a nice parting gift \"to science\" to speak out for the worth of this research. On the other hand, if it's just business as usual (or worse, motivated by \"the need to continuously publish\"): well, you don't have to clean the bathrooms in the apartment that you're not renting anymore, do you?</p>\n\n<p>If you have thoughts of breaking back into science later on, then I think you need to think seriously about how to keep your connections and your intellectual life, um, alive. There are many aspects to this, and making sure that you continue to referee papers is not, so far as I can see, especially close to the top of the list. If I'm looking at the CV of someone who left academia for a while and is trying to come back (and it does happen), I will look to the work they have done recently and their plans for work in the near future. I don't really care whether they've refereed some papers in the meantime.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20888",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15231/"
] |
20,897 |
<p>If I were a PhD student, should I be concerned if my supervisor always requires their permission before I can publish a paper?</p>
<p>Under what conditions should I find it acceptable or unacceptable?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20898,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The basic freedom of speech would dictate that anyone can publish whatever they want. So as a base line, I would go with that. The question then becomes what could be argued against that? Well, if the advisor has funding for a project and the information the student wants to publish draws on that funding it would be appropriate to discuss the publication before sending it off. The publication might damage the project and hurt everyone involved in the long run. This is not realy an infringement on the basic freedom but limitations under which we live and should abide. Hence, conflicts about publications are often originating in poor or absent communication or total lack of openness or trust or all the above and more. </p>\n\n<p>It is important in any collaboration (which how I see a PhD project) to be clear of expectations in both directions. Under most circumstances problems can be sorted out quite easily but as with anything human, odd personality treats will throw spanners in the works. This is why it is usually difficult to resolve issues that lead to conflicts and the \"Run don't walk\" away can be suggested. More sensibly, anyone in a conflict should try to understand where the problems lie and act to resolve the problem but typically one party is usually oblivious to personal shortcomings in which case there is usually not much that can be done.</p>\n\n<p>I do not see a simple answer to this but having an understanding of conflicts and conflict solutions or perhaps seeking such advice is necessary if the reasons for supervisory control is not based on reasonable scientific or administrative grounds.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20913,
"author": "derelict",
"author_id": 14547,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14547",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>If you are including your supervisors name, or anyone else's name, you should notify them first and allow them to review the paper before sending it to the publisher because the PI and CO-PIs are generally considered to have ownership and responsibility for the data and any resulting publications.</p>\n<p>If you are just wanting to publish under your name alone, it depends. Are you publishing findings from data that belongs to your advisor (or anyone else's data)? Typically any data collected by you that was paid for by your funding agency belongs to the principal investigator, which is usually your advisor. You should ask for their permission before you publish findings from his or her data.</p>\n<p>This applies to abstract submissions as well.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20924,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Of course it's unethical to submit a jointly authored paper without the consent of every coauthor, or to use unpublished data or ideas without permission from their source. However, these principles apply equally to everyone, regardless of rank or status, and they have nothing to do with the student/advisor relationship.</p>\n\n<p>To avoid these issues, let's posit a paper that's entirely the student's work, with no ideas or data generated or owned by anyone else, and let's assume that no funding is required for conference travel or publication fees. Then could the advisor forbid the student to publish? I would consider this unethical: if the student is determined to submit this paper for publication, then it would be wrong for the advisor to try to block the submission or to threaten or impose punishment.</p>\n\n<p>This doesn't mean the advisor can't put some pressure on the student. It's reasonable to try to slow down an inexperienced, headstrong student for their own good. For example, to discuss ethics (avoiding plagiarism, making sure all contributors are credited appropriately, etc.) or to check for major mistakes. I think it would be reasonable for an advisor to have a policy that students should discuss all submissions in advance. (This policy might well be waived for senior students.)</p>\n\n<p>However, if a student refuses to discuss a submission or disagrees with the advisor's recommendation regarding publication, then I see no ethical grounds for intervening.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20927,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The current answers are good, but for my field they seem to miss the single most important factor that makes prior permission <em>de facto</em> necessary before submitting a paper: <strong>funding for conference trips or page charges</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>Basically, most papers in my field are conference papers. Conferences require physical presence of the student, and are <em>expensive</em>. A single conference trip (to the US or Asia for us europeans) can cost 2000 EUR, in rare cases even more. Often, these costs can be covered from the project a PhD student is also paid from, but some funding agencies do not pay for travel. In such cases, the professor needs to find other funds to finance the trip.</p>\n\n<p><strong>It is obvious and in no way unethical that one needs to consult the manager of these funds before deciding whether to spend the money.</strong></p>\n\n<p>So, essentially, an advisor may not be ethically allowed to forbid a student to submit a paper, but he sure can reject paying for it from his funds (which ends up as the same thing for practical purposes).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20958,
"author": "badroit",
"author_id": 7746,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7746",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Just to summarise some of the points (and add some more) as to why a supervisor might make it a requirement for students to seek permission before publishing:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Check assignment of funds for travel (e.g., for conferences) or for publishing (per xLeitix's answer)</li>\n<li>Check use of data or resources belonging to the project (per SoilSciGuy's answer)</li>\n<li>Check proper attribution of people involved in the work</li>\n<li>Check that the proper affiliation and funding acknowledgements are in place</li>\n<li>Check that there are no IP issues (particularly in the context of industry collaborations or industry-funded projects, but also with respect to university IP guidelines)</li>\n<li>Check that the venue is not of low quality or, e.g., a predatory journal ... check that the results are not undersold</li>\n<li>Check that the paper is not of low quality, besmirching the good name of the affiliation</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>These are the reasons I can see why a supervisor may require permission before publishing. Once you understand some of these motives, I guess it's up to you to decide if that's a problem or not.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Of course, in some fields, supervisors (almost) <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/644/when-should-a-supervisor-be-an-author\">require <em>co-authorship</em> by default of anything you publish</a>; in this case, requiring their permission is a corollary. Likewise, relative to that, requiring only permission (maybe) doesn't seem all so bad.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20897",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7746/"
] |
20,901 |
<p>One of the hot-button issues on this site is standards for coauthorship, especially variants of the question "Must I <em>automatically</em> include my thesis advisor as a coauthor on all my papers?" </p>
<p>Since these questions (sensibly) come up again and again, I thought it would be useful to have a collection of links to various ethical standards for coauthorship. To the best of my knowledge, these standards will apply only to one particular academic field and/or to one geographic region. For instance, most of my colleagues would point to <a href="http://www.ams.org/about-us/governance/policy-statements/sec-ethics">this statement by the American Mathematical Society</a>. It applies (explicitly) to mathematics and (implicitly, I think) to mathematics done in the US and by Americans. </p>
<p>I was thinking of a community-wiki question where each answer posts a link to ethical standards in some academic field(s) and geographic region(s). To make the answers better, I would ask that respondents:</p>
<ul>
<li>Quote in their answer the passages most relevant to coauthorship. </li>
<li>Please avoid "alphabet soup". Above I wrote "American Mathematical Society" rather than "AMS": mathematicians will know what AMS means, but most other academics presumably won't. Some other answers here refer to things like "BMJ": I certainly didn't know what that was. </li>
<li>(Ideally) Give commentary as to whether/how the standards in their answer differ from those posted in other answers. </li>
</ul>
<p>The more comprehensive the list we can compile, the more authoritatively we can point future questioners to this list and tell them what is or is not an ethical practice. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20905,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is excerpted from the <a href=\"http://www.ams.org/about-us/governance/policy-statements/sec-ethics\" rel=\"nofollow\">Ethical Guidelines of the American Mathematical Society</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I. MATHEMATICAL RESEARCH AND ITS PRESENTATION</p>\n \n <p>The public reputation for honesty and integrity of the mathematical\n community and of the Society is its collective treasure and its\n publication record is its legacy.</p>\n \n <p>The knowing presentation of another person's mathematical discovery as\n one's own constitutes plagiarism and is a serious violation of\n professional ethics. Plagiarism may occur for any type of work,\n whether written or oral and whether published or not.</p>\n \n <p>The correct attribution of mathematical results is essential, both\n because it encourages creativity, by benefiting the creator whose\n career may depend on the recognition of the work and because it\n informs the community of when, where, and sometimes how original ideas\n entered into the chain of mathematical thought. To that end,\n mathematicians have certain responsibilities, which include the\n following:</p>\n \n <p>To endeavor to be knowledgeable in their field, especially about work\n related to their research;</p>\n \n <p>To give appropriate credit, even to unpublished materials and\n announced results (because the knowledge that something is true or\n false is valuable, however it is obtained);\n To publish full details of results that are announced without unreasonable delay, because claiming a result in advance of its having\n been achieved with reasonable certainty injures the community by\n restraining those working toward the same goal;</p>\n \n <p>To use no language that suppresses or improperly detracts from the\n work of others;</p>\n \n <p>To correct in a timely way or to withdraw work that is erroneous.</p>\n \n <p>A claim of independence may not be based on ignorance of widely\n disseminated results. On appropriate occasions, it may be desirable to\n offer or accept joint authorship when independent researchers find\n that they have produced identical results. <strong>All the authors listed\n for a paper, however, must have made a significant contribution to its\n content, and all who have made such a contribution must be offered the\n opportunity to be listed as an author.</strong> Because the free exchange of\n ideas necessary to promote research is possible only when every\n individual's contribution is properly recognized, the Society will not\n knowingly publish anything that violates this principle, and it will\n seek to expose egregious violations anywhere in the mathematical\n community.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>[Emphasis added.]</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20906,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Excerpt from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which governs most medical journal submissions, as well as those in most allied health fields, like public health. The full text is here: <a href=\"http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html</a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4\ncriteria:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or\nthe acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND\n<br></li>\n<li>Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual\ncontent; AND\n<br></li>\n<li>Final approval of the version to be published; AND\n<br></li>\n<li>Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring\nthat questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the\nwork are appropriately investigated and resolved.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>In addition to being\naccountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author\nshould be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for\nspecific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have\nconfidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.</p>\n<p>All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for\nauthorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as\nauthors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be\nacknowledged—see Section II.A.3 below. These authorship criteria are\nintended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve\ncredit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not\nintended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship\nwho otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity\nto meet criterion #s 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the\nfirst criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the\nreview, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20911,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A big publisher has a brief (and somewhat vague) rule for all its journals, although to the best of my knowledge it doesn't do anything to enforce it. Note the 'or' as opposed to the 'and' given in <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20906/10643\">another answer</a>.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Authorship of the paper</p>\n \n <p>Authorship should be limited to those who have made <strong>a significant\n contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation\n of the reported study</strong>. All those who have made significant\n contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others\n who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research\n project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Source <a href=\"http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/ethics#authorship\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">here</a>.</p>\n\n<p>which is very similar to the guidelines of the American Physical Society:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Authorship should be limited to those who have made <strong>a significant\n contribution to the concept, design, execution or interpretation of\n the research study</strong>. All those who have made significant contributions\n should be offered the opportunity to be listed as authors. Other\n individuals who have contributed to the study should be acknowledged,\n but not identified as authors.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Source <a href=\"http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/02_2.cfm\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">here</a></p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20901",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938/"
] |
20,902 |
<p>Sometimes there are cases in a e-mail correspondence with academia staff (professors and bureaucrats) in which I don't know which is the best practice. I wonder if there is any best practice for the following cases:</p>
<p><strong>Reply to a reply:</strong> when I ask for information via e-mail, and the reply gives me all the information I want, should I send an email just to thank them, or is this considered a bad, time-consuming practice? </p>
<p>How does a professor react to this kind of reply? And what about a bureaucrat (who maybe receives more e-mail)?</p>
<p>If I asked for an internship and he gave me a negative response, is not replying to him considered rude or normal?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20904,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 8,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>To send a short mail saying thanks for a service provided is never wrong; in fact, it is good etiquette. Sending such a mail also serves as a receipt acknowledging you received the information. I recommend a very short mail; do not overdo it, the show of gratitude is enough.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20914,
"author": "neil_mccauley",
"author_id": 14741,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14741",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I always write a short thank email as an act of acknowledgement. If I spend my time answering someone's questions and don't get any response I would be very unhappy (luckily, it never happened). Don't worry about spamming the professors. They all know how to deal with mass amount of emails. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20902",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10333/"
] |
20,909 |
<p>I am thinking about starting a research to publish in a peer reviewed journal. However, I wonder if a literature review is a research paper. For instance, if I wrote a paper about EU-Russia affairs in a form of literature review, would it have a chance to be published?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20910,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Literature reviews, often referred to by journals as just \"Reviews\" can and are their own form of research paper. My very first publication was a review like this, so it's clearly possible.</p>\n\n<p>How viable a paper like that is will probably depend on the conventions of your field. For example, mine generally requires that these \"expert reviews\" (in contrast to a meta-analysis or systematic review) be solicited by the editor, not cold submitted. That involves shopping your manuscript around a little to see if anyone is willing to \"invite\" it, having a senior person backing you who can prompt a colleague to invite it, or finding a journal who accepts cold submitted reviews.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 101668,
"author": "cw'",
"author_id": 37643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/37643",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It definitely can. I also think it's a good first move in a PhD, although I had a hard time mapping out a field that I was new to (compared to a person working in the area for years). </p>\n\n<p>I summarized some of the insights I gained from that process in a blog article: <a href=\"http://carl-witt.de/writing-a-literature-review/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://carl-witt.de/writing-a-literature-review/</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 101706,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Yes.</strong> However, make sure that your area is <em>both</em> interesting and manageable within the time you planned for publishing on it. Some interesting areas in my field need a year simply for reading.</p>\n\n<p>(Sorry, folks, that's all I have to say, since your URL is dead as of now...)</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20909",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15244/"
] |
20,926 |
<p>I know in most of the cases, PhD seekers do not have many options and we must stick to what is offered. However, it happened that I initiated connection with two advisors from different institutes which almost have the same reputation. However, one of them is a lecturer (equivalent to assistant professor in north America) and the other is full professor. Nothing is guaranteed yet, so I won't give up on any of them. Yet, before I delve deeper, I would like to know is it better to work with advisor who is still at the beginning of his academic career but with less experience and maybe more demanding. Or it is better to work with full professor who has long experience but might be too busy for you or not really pushing you to work. </p>
<p>The answer that I am looking for is from two parts, during PhD study and the future career:</p>
<p><strong>PhD period:</strong> I know PhD student is independent researcher and should not rely much on his advisor in many aspects. However, I have this fear due to what I faced during my Master, whereby my supervisor was just looking for the quantity of papers not the quality. I assumed from my conversations with him that the number of publications was main criterion to become full professor in that institute. One the other hand, other colleagues complained about their advisors (full professors) that they really do not allocate enough time for them and even do not encourage them to publish saying that you are master student and this number of publications is enough.</p>
<p><strong>Future career:</strong> I assume recommendation letter from full professor outweigh the one from assistant professor. Do you agree? why?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20935,
"author": "user3209815",
"author_id": 14133,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14133",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think you stated it pretty well, the young one having less influence, but more eager to collaborate vs. the more experienced one, with more influence, but who doesn't really need to prove himself any longer and probably regards you as just another daily task.</p>\n\n<p>I would consider how cooperative and ambitious the younger one is. If you can see that you can benefit from (i.e. be interested in that particular area of research) and collaborate on something that would further both your careers, in my opinion, you should opt for him. In addition, you could gain a long-term collaborator, even after your PhD, being one of his first PhD students. Also, more demanding + relatively common goals, would drill you to become a better scientist, than you would become if you were in a more \"lecture-like\" and comfortable environment.</p>\n\n<p>In fact, I would choose the more experienced professor only if is influence and respect in the academic community is extremely high or in the case I would want to \"just get over\" my PhD.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20953,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is sometimes assumed that less experienced / competent supervisor will try harder instead, spending more working time and will be somewhat a friend to you, not just a teacher. However this depends. A younger supervisor may also choose to give you only the minimum required amount of time.</p>\n\n<p>For a good PhD student, it may be most important to get a good project and ideas that, as a rule, work. This does not require lots of time but does require a lot of competence. I would normally select the more experienced supervisor even if one may have less time for me. Only if the studies require some complex, difficult to learn methods, a younger supervisor who still uses these methods directly and personally at work may teach them more efficiently. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20926",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6416/"
] |
20,929 |
<p>I m in the fourth year of my PhD in veterinary sciences in North America. My Research project involves a lot of farm/team work. I have to work with technicians, farm staff, research associates and other students in the team as well as my advisory committee. I attended in many leadership workshops but still find it hard to deal with negativity, anger and control issues from one of my superiors. She in managing students as a research associate and has quite an influence on my advisor. She told me herself that she has chosen to be mean to people and has been humiliating others and me in various occasions. What should I do? How can I keep myself safe from anger, control issues and related stress? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20933,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You seem to be close to completing your PhD so the usual answer here of \"Run don't walk\" don't seem to be the way out. Instead you need to find a way to go through the final time. I would strongly suggest seeking professional help. Hopefully your school has access to psychologists or the equivalent who can not only help out with personal problems but in your case, more importantly, how to manage difficult personalities. I have no doubts that it is and will be a burden at times but for you the question is finishing or not, what the effects on yourself will be and in the short of it, is it worth it if you add all factors together. Only you can answer that question. It does not seem as if you have come far down that path so trying to find the support and guidance from professionals on how to deal with difficult personalities is the best way forward. You will bump into these later in life as well so gaining understanding and acquiring strategies is never a waste of time.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20936,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Being mean and humiliating anyone, let alone subordinates, in the workplace (academia or otherwise) is inappropriate and should not be tolerated. I would suggest you informally talk to whomever is in charge of harassment claims at your university to let them know what is up. Depending on how bad the situation is, you could either file a formal complaint or go talk to the person directly. By having the informal talk with HR you will be protected if your one-on-one discussion blows up.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>She told me herself that she has chosen to be mean to people and has been humiliating others and me in various occasions.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It seems you have talked to her, but did you tell her that her attitude and behavior is making it difficult to do your job? Maybe you can work something out where she is less abusive to you or that your work environment is more structured to prevent the harassment. Hopefully that will resolve the issues, if not, file the complaint.</p>\n\n<p>University's do not kid around with complaints about harassment. These types of formal complaints make promotion much more difficult and will often be reported in any reference written by the department head. They often will require the individual to receive training and monitoring. Once the possibility of a formal complain is on the table it is in the best interested for the colleague to do everything possible to prevent the complaint. Once a formal complaint is raised any escalation by the colleague will likely be dealt with swiftly and harshly by the University.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20965,
"author": "L Platts",
"author_id": 9117,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9117",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I’m sorry to hear this; such situations can be unbelievably stressful and upsetting. As you’re in your fourth year, you’re nearly there and have your own network, which are very helpful.</p>\n\n<p>Such situations are tricky because they can degenerate suddenly and unexpectedly. The ideal (not always possible) is to avoid conflict at almost all costs. Conflictual people tend to be better at managing disputes that break out...they often have had a lot of experience of this and you might discover that they are uncomfortably well acquainted with university harassment procedures etc. </p>\n\n<p>I would hesitate to make a formal complaint unless if the situation becomes unbearable, as things may escalate and affect your relationships with others in your department, which might cause delays to your PhD. Hopefully, you are known in your department and group as a positive team member who isn’t associated with conflict. Maintain that reputation as long as you can.</p>\n\n<p>I would also hesitate about approaching this supervisor one-on-one in order to directly address the behaviour. Any such discussion would need to be handled with <em>extreme</em> care so that your supervisor doesn't feel threatened. I would venture to suggest that avoiding any suggestion of threat could easily be impossible to achieve during such a discussion. It may be better to remain in the background as much as possible and minimize unnecessary interaction with your supervisor instead. Try to keep things very cool and professional.</p>\n\n<p>Have you somebody more senior in the department you can confide in? A mentor would be perfect for this role, as long as they are discreet. Now would be a good time to request a mentor if you don’t have one. </p>\n\n<p>Although it’s not nice to do, keep a diary of every incident, even if reasonably minor. Any unpleasant emails etc, keep them safe. This is because if things become more difficult, you might need every scrap of evidence. </p>\n\n<p>I’d recommend pre-emptively reading the book by Bill Eddy “<a href=\"http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0981509037\" rel=\"nofollow\">It’s all your fault: 12 tips for managing people who blame others for everything</a>” as he gives a lot of good advice for avoiding being dragged into disputes and minimizing their fallout when they do occur.</p>\n\n<p>If things become absolutely impossible (hopefully not), it may be possible to remove this supervisor from your committee. This is where having an impeccable interpersonal record, the diary and an established relationship with a senior member of your department comes in. </p>\n\n<p>To end on a positive note, I think a lot of academics at all levels have had experience of these sorts of situations and we’ve all survived! But I wish you and others who come to this page good luck.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 59723,
"author": "Monika Warzecha",
"author_id": 45788,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45788",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>topic is never outdated. I was dealing with bullying supervisor as well. fortunately I have managed to change my supervisor in the middle of second year. As 'my therapy' I wrote couple of blog posts about 'dealing with difficult supervisor'. Part one is about 'easy cases', part two is about more difficult and part 3 is about bullying monsters!!</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://aroundacademia.wordpress.com/2015/12/01/dealing-with-a-difficult-supervisor/\" rel=\"nofollow\">enter link description here</a></p>\n\n<p>Hope everyone who is dealing with a supervisor like mine is able to get out of this situation ASAP!</p>\n\n<p>Thanks,\nMonika</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20929",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15258/"
] |
20,930 |
<p>Being a young researcher myself I received a comment from my colleague that some of the journals are paying reviewers for the reviewing process.</p>
<p>When I gave it a thought, it started to make more sense.
In case of high quality, respected journal, an institution may consider itself privileged to have a reviewer of such journal and allow the reviewer to dedicate small proportion of his/her daily activities just on the reviewing process.</p>
<p>The reviewer being paid, has more obligations to provide thorough in depth review.</p>
<p>Does that hold true for some journals or is it just a myth?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20932,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It's not a myth. There are/have been some journals that pay peer reviewers. For example:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"http://a-c-elitzur.co.il/uploads/articlesdocs/PeerReview1.pdf\">New England Journal of Medicine</a> used to pay $5 per review, until some reviewers complained that \"if that was the price that this eminent journal placed on their opinion, the New England Journal of Medicine should seek referees elsewhere\"</li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http://journalology.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-reviewers-decline-and-paying-for.html\">Lancet</a> reportedly pays for peer review \"sometimes\"</li>\n<li>Reviewers for journals published by the <a href=\"http://www.aeaweb.org/aea_journals.php\">American Economic Association</a> earn <a href=\"http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/reviewers.php\">$100</a> for each \"timely\" review.</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://zbmath.org/reviewer-service/en/benefits/\">Zentralblatt MATH</a> (zbMATH) pays 2.56 EUR per review, although this is for post-publication reviews that are then published.</li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http://www.jmir.org/cms/view/Instructions_for_Authors%3aInstructions_for_Authors_of_JMIR#Fast-track\">Journal of Medical Internet Research</a> offers \"a review model in which selected peer reviewers may be paid to deliver high-quality and speedy peer-review reports\" (if authors pay an extra fee for the fast-track option)</li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http://web.firat.edu.tr/dhanbay/h3.htm\">Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering</a> has offered an honorarium of $100 for each \"timely\" review</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://drugsincontext.com/authors\">Drugs in Context</a> pays its peer reviewers an honorarium of unspecified amount, supposedly \"to motivate rigorous peer review\"</li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http://www.iiste.org/career.html\">International Institute for Science, Technology and Education</a> (which is on <a href=\"http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/\">Beall's list</a> of allegedly predatory open-access journals and publishers) pays reviewers for its journals $60-$100 per review</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Whether <em>the reviewer being paid, has more obligations to provide thorough in depth review</em> is true or not is entirely uncertain, though.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20946,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is not quite what you asked, but book publishers often pay reviewers to evaluate a manuscript and give their opinion on whether to publish it. I recently received $125 US for just such a review. It was less work than reviewing a typical journal article (since I wasn't asked to check technical details) but had a short deadline of just a couple of weeks.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 119835,
"author": "Marc",
"author_id": 100523,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/100523",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>With the advent of a huge number of online journals, requests for reviewing papers is increasing. Most eminent scientists are too busy with other more important things than reviewing someone else's papers. The end result of all this is that journals seek opinions of people who may not be really competent to provide a fair and accurate review. The other problem is that reviewing manuscripts is not considered an added merit/honor/qualification. Thus reviewing a paper for a journal has absolutely no advantage for the reviewer. The simplest solution would be that journals start paying at least a 100 dollars and up to a reviewer. I am declining to review several papers every month but if I would get extra 500 dollars for reviewing 5 papers a month, it will be an added incentive to review a MS. In other words, journals should really consider the option of paying the reviewers. They are already being paid a hefty some as publication charges and open access publishing. They can share a small part of that profit with the reviewers. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20930",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15259/"
] |
20,938 |
<p>It is well known that in mathematics the process of reviewing submitted papers is quite long. There are good reasons for that; intrinsically, reviewing a math paper involves checking and understanding thouroughly the proposed proof, which typically requires a significant time investment. Also, a lot of academics are always very busy and reviewing may not be the most urgent thing they have to do, so it tends to be pushed back.</p>
<p>But it seems that there are other, maybe not so commendable reasons. Apparently, the common wisdom around me is that you should be careful not to turn in your reviews too soon, or you will be flooded with requests by editors (who are all too happy to find someone gullible enough to hurry doing their reviews) and reviews will take up all your time. This is an advice I've often heard given to young researchers, including by people who can honestly not be accused of neglecting the community service aspects of their work. A lot of people I have talked to have a policy of <em>never</em> doing the review before the deadline or the k-th reminder from the editor. I even heard of a person who would do the review almost immediately after accepting it (when time allowed), but only send it after the deadline or later.</p>
<p>In an imperfect world where doing your task sooner than anyone else will mark you as candidate for exploitation, I understand the need for such strategies. But I wanted to check: </p>
<ul>
<li>Is the risk so big? </li>
<li>Is this practice really generalized (also in other fields than mathematics)? </li>
<li>Do you have alternative strategies to avoid having too many review <em>requests</em> (of course, one can always refuse reviews, but since it can be delicate to do so too often, one may try and avoid requests themselves)?</li>
</ul>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20945,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can imagine someone purposefully delaying reviews, but in my experience it's not a widespread or standard part of mathematical practice, and I haven't heard it offered as common advice. I don't think referees have an obligation to inconvenience themselves to finish a review as quickly as they can, but it seems bizarre to deliberately delay when it would have been convenient to complete the review earlier (or, worse yet, when it was already done but not yet sent).</p>\n\n<p>I don't see a real risk here, or a need to avoid review requests. There's nothing wrong with turning them down, and you can use a vague excuse like that you are already busy with other refereeing and don't want to cause unnecessary delays for this submission. In fact, a prompt reply will be appreciated; it already puts you ahead of the people who require reminders to reply to referee requests. (When a referee declines quickly, there's almost no cost, while it's annoying if I send several e-mails over a period of weeks but never hear back.) From my perspective as an editor, I'm not looking for people who will complete a review as quickly as possible. Instead, my ideal referee is someone who is responsive and reliable, who promptly lets me know what they can reasonably do and then does it within the timeframe they estimated. If they do that, they can turn down as many requests as they like.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21004,
"author": "Sverre",
"author_id": 11053,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11053",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm honestly puzzled by this tactics. No one will make you write more reviews than you want to. I write my reviews very promptly (at least the editors of the journals I have reviewed for tend to point that out to me when I submit my reviews), but I have a self-imposed threshold for how many reviews I will do within a given amount of time. If I get requests that exceed that threshold, I politely decline and explain why. I don't understand what's so \"delicate\" about that. It's surely better to be a diligent reviewer who occasionally declines invitations than to be a notoriously late reviewer (on purpose!).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21101,
"author": "Michael Zieve",
"author_id": 14724,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14724",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is a response to the answer by Anonymous Mathematician and the comment to that answer by Nate Eldredge. I just want to point out that there are ways in which the community benefits from there being some lag built into the refereeing process. If there were no such lag then an author would have every incentive to submit every paper to the very best journal in the field, expecting a quick rejection, after which the author can submit to the second-best journal, and so on. In this way, an author could expect his/her papers to wind up in better journals than they otherwise would, since once there are enough low-probability events then there's a good chance that one of them will occur. So it is to the author's benefit to do this, but on the flip side this would cause lots of extra work by the editors and referees of various journals. The main thing I see which discourages authors from doing this is that they don't expect an immediate response from the referees. So that is one reason why it isn't necessarily a bad thing for a reviewer to wait a couple months (say) before sending in his/her review.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20938",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12609/"
] |
20,940 |
<p>I have been building a search tool for colleges and universities in US. I could find most of the data from the IPEDS database. Now I am trying to relate the colleges with US News ranking. I'm trying to find any source of data which could give me ranking of colleges with their UNITID/college name .
Any clues on how to get the rankings data along with UNITID ?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 29390,
"author": "DragonMoon",
"author_id": 21926,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21926",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I uploaded a file to wikisend (free and no sign-up file hosting service) with the correlation. </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://wikisend.com/download/470842/usnwr_unitid.txt\" rel=\"nofollow\">US News and IPEDS ID</a></p>\n\n<p>Actually pastebin never expires so here's a link to it on pastebin:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://pastebin.com/FNEaJ1vC\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://pastebin.com/FNEaJ1vC</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 191954,
"author": "RegressForward",
"author_id": 128924,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/128924",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The above source appears to be limited in years.</p>\n<p>I've found this current source:</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://andyreiter.com/datasets/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://andyreiter.com/datasets/</a></p>\n<p>Contains IPEDS ids and USNews & Report rankings up through 2022.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20940",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10075/"
] |
20,941 |
<p>I submitted a paper and it is currently under review (submitted on 10th March and conference is on 15th October, I'll be notified on 15th July). However, now, in May, I see a paper has just published dealing with the same problem as mine. They indicate that their solution is better than mine. If my paper is accepted, do I have to withdraw it, as it seems to be out of date?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20944,
"author": "badroit",
"author_id": 7746,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7746",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It's a slightly grey area but assuming the journal paper in question was not publicly available before the submission date of your conference, I think you are fully entitled to publish the paper if accepted. It's a parallel result, which means there was (verifiably) no wrong-doing on your part. If accepted, in the \"camera-ready\" submission, you can add reference to the journal paper with a note that their results were developed in parallel (with mentions of the dates involved in a footnote, for example). You get your publication, the authors of the work get their citation, and the conference themselves know that there was no wrong-doing involved.</p>\n\n<p>So again, you don't <em>have to</em> withdraw, but you can if you want (e.g., if you don't want to be associated with a weaker form of the result, or if you are a really nice person and feel that the slot at the conference might be better used elsewhere).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20952,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you did not know about the other paper and it was not available at the time you were doing the research for your paper, your paper is considered as an independent research. Moreover, if your approach to the problem is different, it will partially justify the importance of your work.</p>\n\n<p>However, it is important to send an email to the editor and explain the situation to him/her. It may cause the rejection of your paper, but it is your obligation to let the editor and the referee of the paper know about the parallel recent works.</p>\n\n<p>A similar situation has happened for one of my papers recently. After explaining the situation to the editor, he considered the paper to be an original research work.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20941",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15271/"
] |
20,942 |
<p>I am a junior member on a research project. We have written a paper. I feel the work is not ready for publication and have issues. We have discussed the issues, and other members of the group including the lead author agree with me that there are issues. But the lead author who is more senior is too eager to get the results published to the extent that he is ready to mislead the reviewers/readers by exaggerating and misrepresenting the partial inconclusive results to get the paper accepted. I don't think I can convince him to allow more time for the project to reach a more satisfactory stage before publication. I am rather junior and have limited say on the project. I am new to the field of the project, and the senior author is established in the field and publishes several papers in top venues each year. Other members of the project are his students.</p>
<p>We don't have conclusive evidence for one of the central claims in the paper. It might turn out to be false under more experiments. The lead author, however, believes it is correct even though he agrees the evidence we have is not sufficient. He wants to publish the results and the idea as soon as possible, but accurately stating what we have and what we don't have will make the acceptance unlikely at this point. He is fine with getting the flawed results published and then continuing to work to fix the issues for the later publications.
I am not comfortable with my name appearing on the paper. </p>
<p>One option is to ask for the removal of my name as an author and to be mentioned in the acknowledgments. However, I have worked on the project for a considerable time and would like to get credit for my contributions, and I don't feel just being mentioned in the acknowledgments is good enough. </p>
<p>What would you do if you were in this situation?<br>
How do you deal with major disagreements in writing a joint paper?<br>
Would it be helpful if I post a different edited draft copy of the paper online where the claims are more accurate in my view?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20943,
"author": "bordart",
"author_id": 15166,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15166",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I see a few possible options for this.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>You are talking with other co-authors of the paper then you all together talk to this lead author that what he does is going to affect not only his, but also your future in a very bad way.</li>\n<li>You are making a rough estimation how quick you (and other authors) can fill all those gaps in this project. If it is let's say 15 days, you meet and make your exact suggestion. This concreteness will make the main author think twice. </li>\n<li>Although you have done a lot of research, you should remove your name from this suspicious study (if you strongly believe that this study has serious drawbacks), because sooner or later it will become worthless. </li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20947,
"author": "badroit",
"author_id": 7746,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7746",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I wanted to add a fourth possibility to @artalexan's nice answer that might be more diplomatic:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Make the paper technically correct with the results you have (even if preliminary) and submit to the current venue. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><em>The major problem with submitting the paper is that it is dishonest, not that it is preliminary.</em></p>\n\n<p>If the paper can be made technically correct and honest -- even if the results are preliminary -- it would be fine to at least submit it and let the reviewers judge if it is mature enough.</p>\n\n<p>If you are a co-author, you should have the power to edit the misleading text. If the main author is stopping your efforts to do that, then ask to be removed from the paper.</p>\n\n<p>Of course if the results themselves are incorrect (rather than preliminary) there may be no saving the paper.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>On a side note, the attitude of the senior researcher in question towards publishing may be productive in the short term (getting some initial papers published quickly by misleading reviewers), but it is <strong>utterly counter-productive</strong> in the long run. Having a reputation for sloppy results/writing will seriously harm the trust that reviews/readers have in your paper ... and reputation is <em>so</em> important in research! I don't know your situation, but if the researcher shows no inclination to change their attitude, try to put distance between yourself and them.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20954,
"author": "ahmet",
"author_id": 14874,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14874",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I've seen some misleading papers written by popular names during my MSc studies. Yet, their popularity did not vanish in an observable amount of time. In research, we have many issues like this; and I believe it is not necessarily a bad thing. Sound articles would be cited by many, and they would definitely be helpful for new researchers and young students alike.</p>\n\n<p>However, I have the following questions for you. Please consider them objectively. </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Did you witness cherry-picking? Or any alteration/manipulation to the research results?</li>\n<li>How inconclusive do you find the results? Please forget\n about the lead author, and give a number from 1 to 10 on your best\n knowledge.</li>\n<li>Can you convince the lead to add a future studies section or\n a paragraph/sentence to your paper, to mention the issues you come up with\n about the experiment?</li>\n<li>Can't you ask the leads approval to do more experiment? So that you\nwill have a fighting chance to make things right. If you are proven right, you may give the accurate results in the earliest revision.</li>\n</ol>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20942",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15272/"
] |
20,950 |
<p>I recently completed my MBA and have worked in the IT field for the last 7 years. I have an undergraduate degree in mathematics, and have completed 3 physics graduate courses (mechanics, E&M, QM) as an open university student. Is it realistic for me to self study for the physics GRE, get a great score, and then have a chance to be admitted to a physics PhD program?</p>
<p>The physics graduate courses I took were from a master’s school, but I had to pay for these out of my pocket. I though about continuing in that masters program but it is just too expensive given my situation (I have a family and a mortgage).</p>
<p>I want to know if I have a shot at a PhD program without going for the masters and only with a great physics GRE score and a mathematics undergraduate degree.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 25726,
"author": "John salerno",
"author_id": 19458,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19458",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Typically the only reason that PhD granting institutions in the US give out a master's degree en route to the doctorate is the existence of capitation money in some states that reward them for each advanced degree they grant. You don't need a master's degree. I never got one, and I could have for $50 and two weeks spent converting a couple of journal articles to thesis format. Nobody worth talking to expects you to have an MS when you apply.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 25764,
"author": "user1798812",
"author_id": 19476,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19476",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To get admitted into a PhD program directly without MS, requires some research experience in the field(if you want admission to a good, competitive program). A really good GRE score might help substitute this factor but not always.\nAn alternative to that may be, take admission in the MS program and then switch it to PhD after a semester or two. But you should join some research lab right in the beginning of your MS, in order to be successful in changing the program.\nHope this helps.</p>\n\n<p>Courtesy:</p>\n\n<p>--MS candidate planning to switch to PhD</p>\n\n<p>--Even after a good GRE profile and 3.96 gpa in pharmacy school, got rejected for PhD at UCSD(not enough research experience)</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20950",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15277/"
] |
20,955 |
<p>As the second author of a paper published by IEEE am I allowed to provide a download link to a copy of that paper on my own website? The <em>official</em> paper can only be found at the IEEE CS Digital Library behind a paywall. I'd like to provide free access to it.</p>
<p>Does it make a difference if free download links of the paper can already be found with Google Scholar? Should I prefer to link to the download on the university's publication directory instead of providing my own?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20957,
"author": "Austin Henley",
"author_id": 746,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/746",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Yes, you can.</p>\n\n<p>From <a href=\"https://www.ieee.org/documents/top10faq.pdf\">https://www.ieee.org/documents/top10faq.pdf</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>Can an author post his IEEE copyrighted paper on his personal or\n institutions’ servers?</strong> Yes. An author is permitted to post his IEEE\n copyrighted paper on his personal site and his institution’s server,\n but only the accepted version of his paper, not the published version\n as might be downloaded from IEEE Xplore.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Directly from their more recently updated paper policy (<a href=\"http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/paperversionpolicy.html\">http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/paperversionpolicy.html</a>):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The policy reaffirms the principle that authors are free to post the\n accepted version of their article on their personal Web sites or those\n of their employers. Posting of the final, published PDF continues to\n be prohibited, except for open access articles, whose authors may\n freely post the final version.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 160980,
"author": "Cimbali",
"author_id": 24456,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24456",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Additionally to Austin Henley’s answer, you might want to check the copyright notices you signed for your papers. All the IEEE Copyright forms I’ve had so far (latest July 2020) are identical, and say the following (emphases mine):</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>AUTHOR ONLINE USE</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Personal Servers. Authors and/or their employers shall <strong>have the right to post the <em>accepted</em> version</strong> of IEEE-copyrighted\narticles on their own personal servers or the servers of their institutions or employers without permission from IEEE, <strong>provided\nthat the posted version includes a prominently displayed IEEE copyright notice and, when published, a full citation to the\noriginal IEEE publication, including a link to the article abstract in IEEE Xplore.</strong> Authors shall not post the final, published\nversions of their papers.</li>\n<li>Classroom or Internal Training Use. […]</li>\n<li>Electronic Preprints. […]</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It’s probably a good idea to point to the publication you want people to cite anyways.\nAnd this could help distinguish what the IEEE means by « accepted version of his paper » as opposed to « final published PDF ».</p>\n<p>While this difference is rather evident for a journal, where editors typeset the document, the distinction is less easy for conferences where you directly submit a PDF that is then published.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20955",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15284/"
] |
20,963 |
<p>I was suspended for 1 year from my university for copying an assignment from an online source. There were several extenuating circumstances but I won't go into them as they are irrelevant, I did cheat and I do deserve the punishment I was given - that is not the question. </p>
<p>After I found out my sentence, I found it very hard to attend classes relating to that department, or to look professors or my deans and advisors in the face and carry out conversations with them. The professor who's class I cheated in is one I was hoping to talk to as she is in the same area that I hope to go into one day and I really enjoyed her class, teaching methods, and enthusiasm for the subject. I also am extremely saddened by the fact that since I'm a fourth year, this means all my peers will be graduating and will have left by the time I come back and I'm finding it hard to cope with the thought of being without them for the rest of my undergraduate career. </p>
<p>My question is how do I cope with the stress and shame I am feeling and how do I get over that so that I can return to the academic environment in 1 year? Can I ever approach that professor again, or should I avoid her? I'm asking this here because I'd like the opinions of those who are on the other side of this. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20964,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Unless the professor is aware of and condones whatever extenuating circumstances led you to cheat in her course, I think that your misconduct has \"cut off\" that bridge for you. Someone whose class you've cheated in is likely not going to be willing to help you out in any meaningful way—at least not without a sincere attempt at contrition. (Even then, it may be a case of \"forgive, but never forget.\")</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20968,
"author": "bordart",
"author_id": 15166,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15166",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To err is human. There is no need to condemn yourself. I am glad you understood your mistake and I am sure that you learnt the lesson. \nI think that you can just directly talk to the professor(and the advisor) explaining that you regret and you understood your mistake (of course this method strongly depends on your professor's personality). Just make the situation clear and leave it behind because what hapened, happened. Act. Concentrate on the future and direct all your energy to prove that you are strong and wise. I am sure the professor will understand and encourage you (they are all wise and mature people and they understand that bad things happen and people might need another chance).\nConcerning the peers, if you have some friends in your class, this is a good test for them because friends should support you in hardships. If they are just classmates, then don't warry, you will have good classmates again. \np.s. Just look at this as a life test you have to overcome. Don't cheat, deal with it. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20969,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The university <em>suspended</em> you, which is a signal that it is still willing to have you as a student after serving your suspension. (If it wasn't, you'd have been expelled.) Therefore, upon your return, this professor (and every other professor) has the same professional obligations towards you that she would to any other student: to accept you in her classes, to treat you with courtesy and respect, to help you learn the material, to grade you fairly based on your work and the standards of the course. It is possible that your assignments may face extra scrutiny for plagiarism, but hopefully that is irrelevant as you're not going to do it again.</p>\n\n<p>It's possible that relations may be strained between you, but I think this may be more on your side than hers. Speaking for myself, I certainly find it disappointing when a student cheats, but it's not as if I'm going to declare a personal vendetta against them and seethe with fury every time I pass them in the hall. That would be unprofessional, and not worth the emotional energy anyway. We go through the disciplinary process, I hope that they learn their lesson, and it's back to business as usual. If they are able to turn things around and show genuine interest in and dedication to their studies, for me that's ultimately uplifting.</p>\n\n<p>So if you want to take her class at a later date, by all means do so. You might find it helpful to talk with her first: express your regret over the incident, as well as your continued interest in your subject and in completing your degree. I think it's very likely this will help clear the air for both of you. It would be wise for you to be extra diligent about quotations, citing sources, etc, and to consult your professor if you have the slightest question about any such issues.</p>\n\n<p>Maybe she won't invite you to dinner, and she probably won't be the best person to write you a letter of recommendation. (Even if you get to be on better terms, which I hope you will, she might still feel it's her duty to mention the cheating incident in any letter she writes, which is probably not good for you.) But I don't see any reason you can't have the same basic educational experience as any other student.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20970,
"author": "mkennedy",
"author_id": 5711,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5711",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am assuming that you've been sent down this year.</p>\n\n<p>To expand a bit on Paul Garrett's comment to aeismail's answer, you should write a letter to the professor. This letter should be contrite, apologetic, and demonstrate that you've learned your lesson. You might discuss how you plan to remedy what caused the problem and how you would handle it differently during your year off. </p>\n\n<p>This contradicts the previous sentence but: Do NOT even refer to the 'extenuating' circumstances. Whatever it was, you should have raised that with the professor or the department before the cheating took place. But you've learned that now, right?</p>\n\n<p>You should write similar letters to the chairman/head of the department (don't send the same letter) and your advisor with the same information. Discuss how you want to start fresh next year and have a stellar year. </p>\n\n<p>Think about how they've been affected as well. They had to deal with a distasteful situation, punish a (hopefully!) promising student, and so on.</p>\n\n<p>For a non-Academia example that might be enlightening, if you read science fiction at all, check out Miles Vorkosigan's apology (via a letter) in Lois McMaster Bujold's <em>A Civil Campaign</em>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20973,
"author": "Michael Martinez",
"author_id": 14023,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14023",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Years ago I took a final exam for a student who I was tutoring (we became friends during our tutoring sessions.). I hid in the bathroom; he snuck the exam out to me; I completed it and he turned it in. It was a Calculus test. </p>\n\n<p>He was caught and suspended for a semester. I personally went in to the university to explain our actions, explain why I did it and to lend my support for him and to ask them for lenient punishment on him. The school administrators were appreciative of this and I think it was reflected.</p>\n\n<p>In any case, he was out for the semester. Then, he went back again, finished school, and went on to grad school and his career. All said and done, very little if any harm done.</p>\n\n<p>Life goes on. Sometimes people cheat, sometimes they plagiarize, we all do it to some extent in our lives, not a huge deal as far as I'm concerned if you don't do it often and you learn something about yourself in the process.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21030,
"author": "Floris",
"author_id": 15062,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15062",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I apologize for sounding a bit non-academic.</p>\n\n<p>You need to forgive yourself, and realize you have become a different person because of this incident. Until you do this for yourself, you cannot expect anyone else to do it for you. People make mistakes. Learn, and move on. You can still make a difference tomorrow - unless you dwell on yesterday. </p>\n\n<p>The Catholic church recognizes that people can turn away from past mistakes and start afresh in what they call \"the sacrament of reconciliation\". This requires that you a) be sorry (contrition), b) say you are sorry (confession), and c) make up for it (satisfaction). There is simplicity and wisdom in that. Even if you are not religious, it's worth contemplating.</p>\n\n<p>Make peace with yourself. Until you do, you cannot return, even if the University lets you. </p>\n\n<p>As an aside - a year away from your friends is a really big punishment; it can also provide an opportunity. Do make the most of it. If you can't find a job, do some volunteering; maybe join an international aid organization, and go abroad to help people less fortunate than you. Turn this episode into something constructive - so that when you look back on the year, you realize you turned something bad into something good. That will help with the healing.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21042,
"author": "Viktor Mellgren",
"author_id": 5592,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5592",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It would probably help to reduce your shame if you made a simple apology to those who you feel you owe one. Just say that you are sorry for what happened that year and that you are eager to continue your studies and finish for real this time.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21043,
"author": "David Brown",
"author_id": 15353,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15353",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Adjunct faculty/instructor point of view here. My recommendation to you: <strong>replace your \"shame\" with work and achievement you can be proud of!</strong> </p>\n\n<p>Put that time you aren't spending with your already-graduated friends to academic use. Attend all your classes (unless you're contagious). Be on time with your attendance and assignments. Pay attention and ask questions. Go to your professors'/instructors' office hours even if you are sure you know what's going on in class -- especially those professors aware of the suspension. Maybe bring along an assignment you're working on to confirm you're on the right track -- and conveniently prove that it's really you who is doing it. </p>\n\n<p>As you're a fourth-year student, you should occasionally (or often) be able to exceed the requirements for an assignment. Just don't make it harder to grade your work... an extra citation or three (that you actually understand and use) in a research paper; really good comments in your computer code should be fine. Even just emailed questions can go a long way to demonstrate your engagement and effort. (There are bad questions: \"What is the answer to #7\" is probably an example of a bad question.)</p>\n\n<p>I agree with other posters (especially Nate) who say that the professors/instructors will mostly forgive your mistake. Expect that your work will be looked at more carefully, at least for a while. </p>\n\n<p>There are few things I find more annoying than students \"sharing\" work. I can't let it slide morally and it wastes a lot of my time making sure my suspicion is correct before I more forward with it. So, I don't want to read your letter about the past; that's just more wasted time. Until I see different behavior, it's just more B.S. (<em>not</em> meaning Bachelor's of Science) that was quite possibly written by a helicopter parent and shows more effort that was put into the assignment that caused the problem anyway. Actions speak louder than words.</p>\n\n<p>In the end, I don't remember who cheated; I do remember students who excelled in their work. (Edit: Or at least, I try to; I'm actually pretty bad with names and faces :-( )</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21051,
"author": "Andy",
"author_id": 15359,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15359",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Show genuine remorse over your mistake, sure, but rather than feeling ashamed of being suspended for a year, be <em>proud of yourself</em> for going back after said year and not giving up. A lot of people would use this situation as an excuse (not a reason, it's an excuse) to not return. The fact that you're asking how to deal with the future shame means that you're not even considering the alternative; you're going back. That takes strength, and you should be proud.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20963",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15289/"
] |
20,982 |
<p>Unfortunately I do not have any prior research experience, therefore I had a few questions while I was studying papers on cluster analysis.</p>
<p>Can a researcher legally and with permission use the benchmark values of the pre-existing algorithm to compare with theirs? This question came to me after I noticed identical results reported in multiple papers for some population based cluster analysis algorithms. The different papers propose a new algorithm and then compare the performance of it with some other algorithms over some common dataset. I have noticed that, for some algorithms the values reported are an exact match. The nature of these algorithm is stochastic, and also the different authors claim to have run the algorithms different number of iterations and then use the mean. Therefore no two sets of run will result with the same mean, min, max and standard deviation.</p>
<p>My suspicion is either it is permissible to reuse the benchmark results with permission. Or a common benchmarking framework exists (still, how can two papers reporting using different number of iterations land into the same identical result?)</p>
<p>I have reproduced the work of the papers using Octave and benchmark is similar to what is reported in the papers, but is definitely not identical.</p>
<p>Also, how generally these are done? If a researcher has to implement 5 algorithms to compare, then do they implement their own and then verify and compare or request the version the author has used and then benchmark with respect to that specific piece of code to maintain unbiased experimentation?</p>
<p>[EDIT]</p>
<p>Quoting the results from another paper (with citation) is all right, but using it in the benchmark comparison table is something which is practiced in research?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20983,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You are definitely allowed to quote the results from another paper, with citation. You can also email the author and ask for the code (or grab it from their webpage). In this case, citation is also the right thing.</p>\n\n<p>Depending on the benchmarks in question, the results may yield the same results to the accuracy presented on the paper (if I get a value of 0.98547856842, I will probably round it to 0.985). If you repeat the same benchmark on the same dataset enough times, you can converge to the same numbers to the accuracy printed. It is even easier if the dataset is small.</p>\n\n<p>Another way to enforce replicability is to use the same random seed.</p>\n\n<p>This said, I would be suspicious if they both report the exact same results. If you have the mean, standard deviation, and population size, you can do a statistical test to check the probability of them being reported equal.</p>\n\n<p>If they just copied the results from the other paper without citing it, it would be a bad practice, but it does not invalidate the research.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20988,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Quoting the results from another paper (with citation) is all right, but using it in the benchmark comparison table is something which is practiced in research?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I would wager it is <em>not done enough</em>. It is certainly ok, even required, to compare your results to earlier work, and the more fair and unbiased you can do this, the better. It is perfectly acceptable to say \"on the right-hand side of Table XY, we report the results for this problem previously achieved in [1]\" (and then list them exactly as reported).</p>\n\n<p>The one thing to make sure, though, is that when you want to say that you are better than a previous work, the comparison is actually fair. For instance, one sometimes sees papers where the authors use a long-running deterministic algorithm (which you need a map/reduce cluster to execute on) and claim that their work is better than an earlier heuristic approach, which was built for speed and on-line execution. Don't do that.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/15
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20982",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/922/"
] |
20,984 |
<p>I'm pondering on how much time I should plan to finalize a paper that has received a 'revise and resubmit' letter from the journal editor.</p>
<p>I know that I should return it as soon as possible. However, given that I have other work to do I would like to know if there's an unwritten rule on how long should I take to resubmit.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20986,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Many editors report the deadline in their decision letter. However, I have seen some decision letters without a deadline.</p>\n\n<p>Please note that most submission systems provide a Due On date. See this screenshot from Manuscript Central:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/4ctvT.jpg\" alt=\"Manuscript Central\"></p>\n\n<p>If there is no indication regarding a deadline either in the letter, or in the submission system (or the journal website), the best for you would be to <em>contact the handling editor</em>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 20987,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Times vary. In my field three weeks for minor and six weeks for major revisions seems common. If the journal does not provide any general guidelines on this one would hope that the editor would do so. From your question, I take it neither has occurred. You can then approach the problem by trying to assess how much time you need (given other chores etc.) and then contact the editor asking if your estimated time plus a week or some smaller buffer would be acceptable. That way you gain a deadline against which to work and remove possibly annoying reminders.</p>\n\n<p>So I will not attempt to provide a fixed time for your specific case since what is customary varies both between disciplines and between journals but trying to get a reasonable time frame to which you can commit should be a good step to take.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/15
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20984",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15312/"
] |
20,985 |
<p>Today there has been significant news coverage (at least in the UK) that the <a href="http://www.bmj.com/" rel="noreferrer">BMJ</a> are withdrawing statements from two papers on the possible harmful side effects of statins. Here are the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/15/statins-bmj-statement-professor-collins-side-effects" rel="noreferrer">Guardian</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-27420100" rel="noreferrer">BBC</a> articles on it.</p>
<p>This led me to wonder how common such issues are in academia in general. In this case it appears the authors made an incorrect conclusion from a study which was not picked up in peer review. I can think of lots of similar possible situations where proofs may turn out to be incorrect or other data may be wrong/not properly dealt with.</p>
<p>In particular I'm thinking about less popular/controversial subjects where such things are unlikely to make the general news. Is it standard practice to issue a retraction if things are incorrect? If anyone has any numerical data on this that would be ideal.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 20990,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><a href=\"http://publicationethics.org/\">COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics)</a> have recommendations for what circumstances should lead to retraction of papers. Retraction is considered a very severe action and is not generally done lightly. In a document from COPE on <a href=\"http://publicationethics.org/files/retraction%20guidelines.pdf\">retraction guidelines</a> you can see what they recommend. </p>\n\n<p>Clearly that does not answer your question but the problem about being general in academia is that the effects of problems in written articles differ between fields. What is wrong is obviously wrong, but if the effects are risking lives or is harmful in some other direct way will be more likely in some fields than in others. Hence retraction is probably far more likely in life sciences than in, say history or philosophy (feel free to disagree or add other better examples).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 43321,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Not numerical data, but the <a href=\"http://retractionwatch.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Retraction Watch blog</a> reports on retracted papers in the academic literature, including many papers retracted because they are wrong.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/15
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20985",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14115/"
] |
20,996 |
<p>I'm an industrial PhD student (Europe) and recently I'm finding myself reflecting over some events.</p>
<p>As industrial student I'm working for a Company. It is important to note that the Company (superiors/supervisors) have decided what subject (and its scope) I'll be working on. Basically, it was their idea for a new product. </p>
<p>It is worth noting that my boss is also my main supervisor (she is doing 20% at university and 80% at the Company). </p>
<p>Having this in mind, I'm finding some things odd:</p>
<ol>
<li>I had to write PhD project description (milestones, etc. ) on my own.</li>
<li>A year after PhD commenced, my supervisor commented that "she still does not have vision about the project".</li>
</ol>
<p>I just want to make sanity check and establish how often this happens and is it normal thing or not.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21000,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I had to write PhD project description (milestones, etc. ) on my own.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This doesn't sound unusual to me. Writing project plans and drafting milestones is a part of graduate studies, but your supervisor should definitely be involved. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A year after PhD commenced, my supervisor commented that \"she still\n does not have vision about the project\".</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is clearly unsettling for you, but sadly not that uncommon*. The unusual part is the supervisor actually saying it. Nevertheless, I think it's a serious issue and your supervisor is apparently not taking his/her responsibilities seriously. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Having a too loose mentoring/supervision during a PhD is a very good way of finding oneself in hell after 3-4 years of wandering.</strong> Your concerns are by all means valid and you shouldn't let this slip. I would suggest to politely tell your advisor that you need a more precise direction to follow, otherwise you risk loosing precious time (and money) for you, him/her and, off course, the company. </p>\n\n<p>I've heard frequent bad reports of peoples pursuing a PhD with a commercial company. But as stated by @nivag in the comments, people in industry tend not to have much experience supervising students. Try to be proactive: if you feel you need more support say so, very clearly.</p>\n\n<p>*I'm assuming that, being in Europe, you have a Master's degree and the PhD project is intended to last 3-4 years.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21047,
"author": "nivag",
"author_id": 14115,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14115",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Having thought about this a bit more I feel I should probably expand my comments on Jigg's answer into a full answer.</p>\n\n<p>On point 1. I agree with Jigg that this is fairly normal. In fact these requirements normally come from the university. My university requires me to write a project description and plan of work to be updated each year. You should definitely discuss what goes in this with your supervisor.</p>\n\n<p>My personal opinion is that these documents tend to be bureaucratic pieces of rubbish that no one reads and only vaguely stick to. However, I suspect that is beside the point. The process of thinking about it is what is important as this should help you get an idea of 'the vision of the project' as you put it.</p>\n\n<p>On 2. while the statement itself is obviously concerning I would be slightly reassured that your supervisor has told you this. I suspect there are some supervisors who wouldn't.</p>\n\n<p>How you respond partly depends on whether you agree with the statement or not. If you agree that you don't have vision that should be your priority, it is hard to do research if you don't know what you're doing. Discuss with your supervisor what your plans for the project are and how you should go forward.</p>\n\n<p>If you disagree with your supervisor there are several possible explanations. They may not know what you are thinking, especially if you do not talk to them that frequently. They may have a different idea of where the project should go than you. They may think your plan for the project is insufficient either to achieve what they want from the project or to get you a PhD. In any case you should meet your supervisor and discuss what your vision is for the project and what issues they have with it.</p>\n\n<p>As a good starting point to understand the vision of your project I would look to answer these questions:</p>\n\n<p>What is your project going to do/show/make?</p>\n\n<p>How are you going to do/show/make it?</p>\n\n<p>Why is it important to do/show/make it? (Why does anyone give a f***?)</p>\n\n<p>A final point is to not get too downhearted. One of the biggest drawbacks of doing a PhD in industry is that you have much less contact with other students. I think many PhD students go through a stage where they have serious issues with their research or supervisors or things. But as you probably don't deal with many other students on a daily basis you end up feeling that it is just you that has problems.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/15
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20996",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15181/"
] |
21,006 |
<p>I have been co-supervised by my primary supervisor's wife. Suffice to say that this has been problematic where both have different research interests. Each asks me to do different jobs and they often bring their home fights to work. My primary supervisor is always submissive to her will whenever she is around. Though he supports me in every decision I do and my research behind her back. It is been a nightmare and was wondering if there are some written rules that such scenario is a conflict of interest.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21007,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1429",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am not aware of any written rules regarding this situation.</p>\n\n<p>In our department (and other affiliated departments), there are quite a few professors who are married to each other. In most cases, I have seen that such situations tend to turn out exceedingly well. However, there are, as your situation goes, many times when this can go wrong.</p>\n\n<p>The best advice under these circumstances is to treat their home fights as none of your business. Stay out of it, develop your own research agenda and pursue it independent of such pettiness. </p>\n\n<p>If all else fails, <strong>Don't walk ! Run !</strong></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21008,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Your supervisors are problematic in several ways, from what you describe:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Pushing their own research interests over what's most beneficial to you</li>\n<li>Exposing you to unpleasant interpersonal issues between themselves that affect your working environment</li>\n<li>Not coordinating and communicating effectively with each other to co-supervise you</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>However, none of these things are necessarily the result of them being married. The same issues can arise (and I have seen them) with unrelated co-supervisors who do not get along.</p>\n\n<p>In general, co-supervision by a married couple is not universally disallowed. (In my university it is allowed, and there is a husband-wife pair in my department that successfully co-supervises PhD students on occasion.)</p>\n\n<p><em>Some</em> universities do recognize this as a conflict of interest. This from the <a href=\"http://www.postgraduate.uwa.edu.au/supervisors/policies/supervisor-appointment\">University of Western Australia</a> (emphasis mine):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Supervision must be free of actual or perceived conflicts of interest. Supervision by, or <strong>co-supervision with, close relatives or those in close personal relationships</strong> is generally not appropriate. All such cases must be declared at the time that supervisors are nominated. In cases where approval is given on academic grounds for supervision by, or co-supervision with, close relatives or those in close personal relationships, additional supervisors who are free of an actual or perceived conflict of interest must be appointed.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21053,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Your situation is certainly very bad, but a <em>conflict of interest</em> in the context of academic research is when personal interests are at stake when reporting research results (e.g. wife owns the company that manufactures the products that husband's paper say are superior to the competition). </p>\n\n<p>I found this definition of a CoI on various universities websites:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A conflict of interest is a situation in which financial or other\n personal considerations have the potential to compromise or bias\n professional judgment and objectivity</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The situation you describe is better described as lousy management, little respect from both supervisors towards you, and a blatant lack of professionalism from their part. However, it affects you, it certainly affects their productivity, but it's not <em>per se</em> a CoI. It's not like if one was reviewing the papers of the other, or was in the board that attributes funding to the wife/husband's project, etc.</p>\n\n<p>My advice would be, whatever action you intend to take to get yourself out of this nightmare, <strong>not</strong> to refer to the problem as a conflict of interest. CoIs are a lot more serious than poor management and you will risk triggering the wrong type of investigation, ultimately deserving your cause. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21885,
"author": "amanda",
"author_id": 16039,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16039",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If any conflict between a student and one of the supervisors comes up, married supervisors have a strong incentive to support each other, rather than looking out for the best interests of the students. For example, they may pressure the student to include both supervisors as authors on all publications. It's even tougher for a student to stand up to two people in positions of authority than one.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/15
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21006",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15328/"
] |
21,025 |
<p>I have been shortlisted for a lectureship position. The committee has asked me to present a 10 minutes (!) lecture on teaching game development topics to undergrads. My teaching experience amounts to TA roles during my post-doc and PhD. I am familiar with the topic however at this career stage I have not yet had the opportunity to manage a university course on my onw.</p>
<p>Given the time constraints, what would you (search committee) want to see in one such presentation? The overall course structure? Assessment/project ideas?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21007,
"author": "Shion",
"author_id": 1429,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1429",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am not aware of any written rules regarding this situation.</p>\n\n<p>In our department (and other affiliated departments), there are quite a few professors who are married to each other. In most cases, I have seen that such situations tend to turn out exceedingly well. However, there are, as your situation goes, many times when this can go wrong.</p>\n\n<p>The best advice under these circumstances is to treat their home fights as none of your business. Stay out of it, develop your own research agenda and pursue it independent of such pettiness. </p>\n\n<p>If all else fails, <strong>Don't walk ! Run !</strong></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21008,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Your supervisors are problematic in several ways, from what you describe:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Pushing their own research interests over what's most beneficial to you</li>\n<li>Exposing you to unpleasant interpersonal issues between themselves that affect your working environment</li>\n<li>Not coordinating and communicating effectively with each other to co-supervise you</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>However, none of these things are necessarily the result of them being married. The same issues can arise (and I have seen them) with unrelated co-supervisors who do not get along.</p>\n\n<p>In general, co-supervision by a married couple is not universally disallowed. (In my university it is allowed, and there is a husband-wife pair in my department that successfully co-supervises PhD students on occasion.)</p>\n\n<p><em>Some</em> universities do recognize this as a conflict of interest. This from the <a href=\"http://www.postgraduate.uwa.edu.au/supervisors/policies/supervisor-appointment\">University of Western Australia</a> (emphasis mine):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Supervision must be free of actual or perceived conflicts of interest. Supervision by, or <strong>co-supervision with, close relatives or those in close personal relationships</strong> is generally not appropriate. All such cases must be declared at the time that supervisors are nominated. In cases where approval is given on academic grounds for supervision by, or co-supervision with, close relatives or those in close personal relationships, additional supervisors who are free of an actual or perceived conflict of interest must be appointed.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21053,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Your situation is certainly very bad, but a <em>conflict of interest</em> in the context of academic research is when personal interests are at stake when reporting research results (e.g. wife owns the company that manufactures the products that husband's paper say are superior to the competition). </p>\n\n<p>I found this definition of a CoI on various universities websites:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A conflict of interest is a situation in which financial or other\n personal considerations have the potential to compromise or bias\n professional judgment and objectivity</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The situation you describe is better described as lousy management, little respect from both supervisors towards you, and a blatant lack of professionalism from their part. However, it affects you, it certainly affects their productivity, but it's not <em>per se</em> a CoI. It's not like if one was reviewing the papers of the other, or was in the board that attributes funding to the wife/husband's project, etc.</p>\n\n<p>My advice would be, whatever action you intend to take to get yourself out of this nightmare, <strong>not</strong> to refer to the problem as a conflict of interest. CoIs are a lot more serious than poor management and you will risk triggering the wrong type of investigation, ultimately deserving your cause. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21885,
"author": "amanda",
"author_id": 16039,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16039",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If any conflict between a student and one of the supervisors comes up, married supervisors have a strong incentive to support each other, rather than looking out for the best interests of the students. For example, they may pressure the student to include both supervisors as authors on all publications. It's even tougher for a student to stand up to two people in positions of authority than one.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/15
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21025",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11338/"
] |
21,033 |
<p>Currently, my fiancee are both currently pursuing our PhD's in bioengineering and materials science and engineering, respectively, at the same university. She wants to eventually have an industrial research position and I want to do a post-doc with the intention becoming a professor. We are ~3 years away from needing to have the serious version of this conversation, but which route of the two would be the bottleneck in our eventual decision? Are there more industrial jobs available than post-doc positions? Are there any other dual-academic-career couples out there with advice for us? I hope the content of this question is appropriate for this stackexchange. Thanks so much.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21036,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I don't know much about bioengineering and materials sciences. In my area (CS) there are many more industrial positions available than academic positions. </p>\n\n<p>However, industrial positions often tend be clustered in regions, and there might not be too many academic jobs in those regions (or they might be very highly competitive). </p>\n\n<p>Sadly though, I suspect that basing your decisions on where you might do a postdoc is a problem, because a postdoc itself is a temporary position, and so you're really only deferring the real problem. One argument would be that if postdocs in your area take a while (say 3-4 years vs 1-2), then you might as well operate as if that were the permanent job, and then reevaluate after your time is done and you're on the academic job market. </p>\n\n<p>Good luck: two-body problems are tricky, and when one partner is on the academic track it gets even trickier.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21049,
"author": "adam.r",
"author_id": 9669,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9669",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The main advice that I have on this topic is that it can be difficult to return to academia after a stint in commercial enterprise (i.e. \"industry\"). There are exceptions -- some people do publish from commercial positions, or otherwise develop some exceptional expertise that gives them opportunities as academic researchers. My impression is that returning to academia is easier for engineers than for basic science researchers (such as biologists, like myself).</p>\n\n<p>The flip side is that if you want to go into industry, you might as well get started ASAP, unless you think your post-doc project will make you an attractive candidate for companies.</p>\n\n<p>So at least for biology, my understanding is that if you shouldn't leave academia until you are sure that you want to. This is especially important for biologists, since there aren't very many \"biology\" jobs outside of academia, so leaving academia often means leaving biology.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21292,
"author": "Dr_Umut",
"author_id": 15592,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15592",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all I would like to mention that I am a PhD student in a Bio-Engineering department and this answer contains information about the issue from that perspective. </p>\n\n<p>When I have started to my PhD I was thinking of pursuing an academic career in my field and would like to conduct research on tissue engineering. Then I saw that there is no straight way to this career. The first thing that disappointed me was that the field that I would like to improve myself was a the field of expertise of anyone in my institution. Due to lack of experts on that field in the institution I couldn't study on that field. If you ask why I didn't try to find an another institution, I can only tell that there are not many institutions in the country that have that sub-field of Bio-Engineering. I then choose to studied a very different field than my original intent and now I am close to the graduation. </p>\n\n<p>I am looking to industrial jobs and also to the post-doc positions and I can tell that there are more post-doc positions for our field than industrial jobs. The problem is that those post-doc positions almost always require publications in Nature, Science etc. so it is very competitive. I wish you and your fiancee could find the place that you can fit. Me and my fiancee are not successful at finding it yet, but I have not lost hope. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 31911,
"author": "Travis May",
"author_id": 24375,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24375",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am in a similar situation @tquarton. I'm a BME phd and my fiancee is a medical student. 2 comments that i don't think have been made about the academic route. </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>I've been told, and seen a few times already, that post-docs in our field are actually less likely to make the jump to assistant professor at their current school. The reasoning I've heard is that your colleagues making the decisions are often unconvinced of how important your research is to the field since they cannot possibly stay up to date on your niche, so they expect that you should be able to find jobs at other universities to \"prove it\"... If you do get external position offers, I think you are more likely to bargain for a 'raise' at your current location. I say this because I am in a similar situation and I tell my fiancee that I expect my post-doc will not be my final landing spot, which is important for our future planning. </p></li>\n<li><p>also, it is common, if one of you is especially talented or lucky for that matter, that universities will accept you as a couple. This is a nice situation when it happens, and I've seen it once at both locations i've been so far in my career.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I'm very interested in this question, and this is my perception so far (4th year phd). If one or both of you are willing to take an industrial job, this will certainly increase your chances. Good luck! :)</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21033",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15345/"
] |
21,034 |
<p>I do research in an engineering subject and my journal reviewer has asked me to push every mathematical proof to the appendix to improve the readability. While I feel this is true, I also think that some of the proofs can be retained, as they are short and not so much mathematical. What is your opinion regarding this?</p>
<p>Right now, I have written this</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We thank you for your helpful comment. We have moved all the proofs
and the lemmas, which even if removed do not directly affect the
continuity of reading and is long, to the appendices. Proofs which
are not much mathematical in nature and are short are still kept.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Somehow I feel my language is a bit rude. Do you have a better way of putting it? Or should I just move every proof to the appendix? (The journal is almost accepted with only few minor revisions like this)</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21035,
"author": "Dirk",
"author_id": 529,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/529",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My take on this is this: The content should be organized in a way to make it most accessible for the readers. While readers are all different, you have chosen an engineering journal and I would presume that the \"journal style\" of having proofs in the appendix is a good choice for this audience. So my general answer is: Just follow the suggestion in this case.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21037,
"author": "posdef",
"author_id": 5674,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5674",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In all cases I have been involved, together with the revised manuscript a response letter to the editor is submitted, re-iterating the specific comments/issues of the reviewers and explaining the changes made in the manuscript to address these issues. </p>\n\n<p>What you are describing is typically one of those things that can be explained in the response letter. You can formulate a nice response where you can explain to the editor (who essentially has the last word on whether or not the manuscript will be accepted) that ... </p>\n\n<p><em>\"while we believe that moving some of the mathematical formulas and derivations to the supplementary will improve the readability and flow article, some are indeed essential in order to give the reader a fair chance to understand the assumptions/model/results/...\"</em> </p>\n\n<p>There are two major benefits of addressing the situation in this way: </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>You show that you <strong>do not disagree with the reviewer(s)</strong>. People tend not to complain much when you agree with them. </li>\n<li>You show the editor that you <strong>take the matter seriously</strong>, have put effort into amending the manuscript in order to <strong>improve the situation</strong> and also put thought into making the paper easier for the reader, while not losing the important bits.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I would <strong>discourage</strong> you to use formulations where <em>you</em> decide what does and does not count as long, or what does and does not impair readability. I say this mainly because you are not in an <em>objective position</em> to judge these things. You have written the manuscript and to you, at the time of submission, the manuscript (hopefully) is informative and has a good flow. You have been working on the project for months, maybe even years. At the time you pick it up, you have all the necessary background to understand the paper. The reader is <strong>far away</strong> from that position. </p>\n\n<p>Instead consider picking out things that you feel are absolutely critical, in order to understand the essential bits of the work; that is the motivation, the goals, and the conclusions. Everything else could go into the supplementary...</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Lastly, does the journal not have any information on how to handle mathematical calculations/proofs etc, on their guidelines for authors? </p>\n\n<p>Likewise, if you have co-authors what do they think? Your supervisor has some opinions on the matter surely?</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21041,
"author": "Faheem Mitha",
"author_id": 285,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/285",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Would it not suffice to have just the statements of the results in the paper? The question is whether the audience will be interested in the proofs of the results. For a less mathematical audience, I think moving proofs and calculations into an appendix is Ok, because most of the time they are not so interested in the details. That is what I generally try to do.</p>\n\n<p>If one is not so mathematically inclined, then it can be intimidating to be confronted with lots of mathematical details, and they can interrupt the flow. I suppose that if the proofs are short they don't matter so much, but even then, the question you should ask yourself is how interested your audience would be in reading them.</p>\n\n<p>For a mathematics and statistics paper, I think retaining important calculations and proofs in the body of the paper is standard practice, but even there there is room for moving less important stuff into an appendix.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21060,
"author": "ahmet",
"author_id": 14874,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14874",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Following the reviewer's suggestions, unless it's caused by his/her misunderstanding, is the way I would go. The reviewer would most probably know better than you regarding to the culture (style) of that particular journal. But if you are definitely certain about things you can not push; then explain kindly as a response. I would write, \"we definitely agree with the reviewer, and per the reviewer comments, we have moved most of the proofs to the appendices.\"</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21034",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13193/"
] |
21,045 |
<p>I'm writing up my 3rd year engineering project (The equivalent of a dissertation in other subjects), and I'm struggling to write the chapter in which my method failed I couldn't get any results.</p>
<p>My project is on Neural Networks, and when I started my project I tried to program my own Neural Network from scratch, however this did not work properly (The feed forward part worked, but because of the convoluted way I had programmed it I couldn't implement the back propagation part). After I realized this I used an off-the-shelf program to create my neural network, which worked much better.</p>
<p>The problem is that I must have spent about a quarter of the year programming my own Neural Network from scratch, so I want to include it as a chapter in my report to show the marker that I have put over the recommended 300 hours work into my project, and that I understand the inner working of Neural Networks.</p>
<p>How should I write this chapter? So far I have started the chapter as if it is going to work, then I wrote about exactly what I have done and how it works, and then at the end where the results should be I want to explain that the custom implementation of the neural network meant that I couldn't implement back propagation, and therefore couldn't get results. But I can't do this without it looking like I have lazily given up on that chapter, and abruptly given an excuse to move on to the next chapter (The working version of the neural network).</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21048,
"author": "410 gone",
"author_id": 96,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You wrote:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I want to include it as a chapter in my report to show the marker that I have put over the recommended 300 hours work into my project</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Nooooooooo.</p>\n\n<p>Don't do that. This is a postgraduate degree, and you're expected to take the research seriously. It's not a 9-5 grunt job or prison sentence where you turn up, serve your time, and get the reward at the end of your allotted time.</p>\n\n<p>Show what you've learnt. That's what the markers are interested in. You say that you've learnt the inner workings of neural networks. That's great. So demonstrate and document what you've learnt.</p>\n\n<p>And don't document the tortuous process you used. Don't describe how you went from A to B via C,D,E,...X,Y.</p>\n\n<p>Just report that you started at A, ended at B, you've found that the shortest route between those points is {whatever it is}, and briefly document the dead ends and traps that future researchers should avoid.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21064,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>to show the marker that I have put over the recommended 300 hours work into my project</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>So what? It's a thesis, not prison time. Your task in your thesis (or project) is to solve a given problem, not serve a given amount of time. To be brutally honest, the time that you spent on what was presumably a rather bad idea in the first place (re-implementing something for which apparently suitable standard software exists) does not make your thesis better in any way. Detailing your failed labouring will not make your project seem better. Rather the contrary.</p>\n\n<p>To answer your title question:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How do I talk about methodology mistakes In a scientific project report?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You don't, unless:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The methodology mistakes are somehow common in your field, i.e., you would assume if another researcher would start the same project, he would likely make the same mistake (in that case there is a lesson learned to take away from the failed attempt, i.e., that the standard approach does not work in this case).</li>\n<li>The methodology mistakes have, inadvertently, led to a different interesting result / observation that you did not expect.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Arguably, both is not true in your case. As such, I would consider this quarter of a year as sunk costs in terms of thesis time.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21074,
"author": "Mark Peletier",
"author_id": 13689,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13689",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm afraid I disagree with the comments above. </p>\n\n<p>The purpose of a 3rd-year project is not simply to solve a problem - it is to train the student. Learning from doing and learning from making mistakes is an integral element of this. For exactly this reason, the report is not just a scientific report of results, but also a report on the process, and I would say that there is no problem in reflecting some of the 'tortuous path' in the report. </p>\n\n<p>Of course, it would be wise not to dwell <em>too</em> long on the mistakes. I would briefly describe how the 'wrong' path started, how you found out that it was wrong, and - especially - describe how you now understand <em>why</em> it is wrong, and why the later method is better. If this is done briefly and honestly, I would very much appreciate reading it, and it would score points with me as a reviewer. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21045",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15352/"
] |
21,056 |
<p>I am a graduate student and as the title says, I have an autism spectrum disorder. My advisor is a very nice person, at least, that is the impression I have gotten. The last few months however, I worry that I have made myself misunderstood many times because of my failure of communicating or not following certain social codes. I have not done anything that is inappropriate at all, I just might have come off at times a tiny, tiny bit rude, which I did not mean to be! In social situations I often get nervous and I think it might have shown in some situations. I am considering whether I should tell him about my autism spectrum disorder or not - I don't want to have it as an excuse for any behaviour, just more of an explanation and maybe better understanding in the future.</p>
<p>Are there any general guidelines on what to do in cases like these?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21057,
"author": "derelict",
"author_id": 14547,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14547",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I see no reason not to tell him, or anyone else you work closely with. telling your co-workers about this condition will eliminate these concerns about coming off as rude. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21059,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As you propose, this has an obvious helpful component.</p>\n\n<p>What's a possible down-side? Well, medical/personal issues are protected information (thinking about the U.S., at least), and in most situations anyone else in whom you've confided is not allowed to disclose anything about it to anyone else. We can see the sense in this. However, it does sometimes create a burden and/or awkwardness, insofar as the people in whom you've confided are prohibited from using what they know to explain any questionable actions on your part to anyone <em>else</em>...</p>\n\n<p>The operational point, then, is to pay attention to any close interactions with people outside your immediate group, in whom you've confided, that might generate a need for explanation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21069,
"author": "candied_orange",
"author_id": 15375,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15375",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A disability is something you can take pride in overcoming. The Deaf people in my office certainly do. Others, such as amputees and the learning disabled, can choose to conceal their disability or they can freely admit to it. You get different benefits either way. </p>\n\n<p>I've chosen to trust that people will regard my dyslexia and ADD the way I do: as just two of thousands of challenges I deal with every day. You should watch me try to finger spell. It's pathetic. :) Still I try. If you worked with me I'd rather know what your deal is then wonder.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21056",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15366/"
] |
21,063 |
<p>I am an Accountancy senior level student. My issue is due to lots of information in the books I tend to forget about every specific topic and heading even if I compile notes and memory aids. Reason being that in these professional studies anything can be asked in exams from anywhere. So how do I remember small details at this stage? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21068,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Your question reminds me of the old joke \"How do I get to Carnegie Hall?\" To which the response is the same, \"Practice, man, practice.\"</p>\n\n<p>You will be expected to know this stuff when you graduate. When studying any subject, there will be a wide variety of rules and formulae you must learn. Normally, when a teacher is trying to get the students to learn them, the students are given exercises to practice them, or scenarios to apply them.</p>\n\n<p>Learning best works in groups, so if you can find someone with whom to study that should help. You can practice with each other reading your answers to see if you understood correctly. </p>\n\n<p>If you do not have an exercises or scenarios to use, ask your teacher. But in the end, <strong>it is all about practice</strong>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 66206,
"author": "User001",
"author_id": 51735,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/51735",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Read and take notes -- but don't overdo this.</p>\n\n<p>You must solve many problems that force you to apply the theorems and principles of Accountancy that you have read. Also, solving many problems quickly exposes you to what you weren't actually able to commit to memory, so this is a very efficient way of building good memory -- considerably better than reading \"lots of information in the books\" over and over again. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 66207,
"author": "Chris Rackauckas",
"author_id": 47971,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/47971",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Best advice I have ever gotten from my adviser: don't consider reading as work. You can convince yourself that you've learned a lot from reading. However, if you can't close the book and re-write what you just read from memory, you didn't learn it. So only count what you do, not what you read.</p>\n\n<p>So go do it. I don't know how you'd just go practice accounting, maybe get an internship? Yes, it will be hard at first, but after banging your head against a wall and re-reading your books, you'll find out how to do it. And once you do it for real, you'll never forget how to do it.</p>\n\n<p>A really similar case is learning to program. People ask me which books I read to learn all the programming languages I use and all sorts of questions like that, then they \"study up\" on the language to remember all of its features, and months later are trying to tackle the problem. I did this at first, but I never really learned how to code until I started freelance web development. When I had a markup due the next day, I was like \"how do I do _______ in Javascript?\". Google and Stack Exchange helped a lot. I found ways to do things. Now my own code is my source of knowledge on how to do things. All (okay, most) of the time I sat there reading the Javascript book was a waste of time.</p>\n\n<p>In total, I think the biggest thing to get over is the anxiety that you don't know how to do it. You learned enough of it to figure it out / remember it as you need it. That's all you need. Start doing it.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21063",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] |
21,066 |
<p>Do math journals consider a paper in which most of the content referred to another accepted but not yet published paper? In a case in which this is allowed, do one need to give a copy of the accepted paper to the editor of the target journal? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21067,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You can cite anything you want, regardless of whether it has been accepted for publication or even submitted. Of course citing preprints can make life more difficult for the referee, but there's no issue with accepted papers. They are considered just as reliable as published papers, since they've already gone through the refereeing process.</p>\n\n<p>If you rely on a paper that is not yet publicly available, then you should provide a copy for the referee. However, if it's your own paper, then it's much better to post it online, for example through the arXiv. (If you supply a copy for the referee without posting it online, then it gives the impression that you are deliberately restricting access to the paper.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21093,
"author": "wsaleem",
"author_id": 14572,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14572",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is definitely allowed in Computer Science. One way to cite the soon-to-be-published paper is, \"To appear in \".</p>\n\n<p>Here is an <a href=\"http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~amenta/pubs/crust.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">example</a>. The authors develop a technique, write two papers, one on its theory and the other on the application, and submit the papers to suitable venues. The linked paper is the application paper. It often cites the theory paper which is the first entry in the bibliography at the end.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/17
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21066",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11123/"
] |
21,070 |
<p>My advisor suggested that I should sign up for a conference, which I did - I now have to give a 15 minute talk. </p>
<p>However, the conference is taking place very far from me (+20 hour flight), and I am having second thoughts on whether I should go or not. Here are my thoughts:</p>
<p><strong>Pro</strong> </p>
<ul>
<li>Meet new people/socialize</li>
<li>Present my work at a talk, instead of merely a poster session</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Con</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Conference is only 4 days, two ~20 hours flights are <strong>very exhausting</strong></li>
<li>The audience are not completely aligned with my field, so I have to make my presentation simpler than what the work actually is</li>
<li>Will not learn things that I directly need for my research because of the audience (they are in geology and engineering, I'm in math)</li>
</ul>
<p>Honestly, I don't feel like going because of the above list. But I am worried that</p>
<ul>
<li>My advisor will think I'm being annoying by "backing" out</li>
<li>I can't say no now, since I have been given a talk</li>
</ul>
<p>I would be very happy to hear your opinions on this matter. Maybe I am putting too much thought into this.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21071,
"author": "Federico Poloni",
"author_id": 958,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/958",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'd like to add several items to your list of pros:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>Dissemination.</strong> You will make your work known to a whole new field of possibly interested people. If you're going there, I presume there is an interesting application in sight. Possible follow-ups. Lots of opportunities. Interdisciplinary collaboration. To be avid and down-to-earth, lots of <em>citations</em> might await. :)</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Presenting experience.</strong> The best way to improve your presentation skills is giving talks. This is a good opportunity.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Connections</strong> It's always good to get to know people in academia. You might need to send them a quick e-mail with a question on their area of expertise. You might one day be looking for a post-doc job and they might be offering one (even if it's a position for an applied mathematician in a geology department). You might find a good idea for an interdisciplinary research project and apply for a grant.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Learning new things</strong> Yes, you will learn new things listening to the other talks, even if it's a different field. You might find a new related problem that you can solve. You might learn more about the applicative background of the problem that you are studying. You might find an example that looks great in the introduction of your next paper.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Tourism.</strong> When will you be able to visit again that far-away country? True, you won't see much if you are stuck in a university or a conference center, but that's still a great life experience in my view. One of the parts I enjoy the most of the academic career is being able to travel and see the world.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Money availability</strong>. Your advisor says that there is money for the trip, this time. My advice is <strong>go for it</strong>. More troubled times might come in future.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Trust your advisor</strong>. (S)he suggested you to sign up, so he thinks it's a good idea for you to go. You should trust him, it's the person who best knows the conference, your work and your situation.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I've been doing some interdisciplinary research lately. It's hard at first, but fascinating and productive once you enter it. There is a big entry barrier in getting to know each other's field and learning to use the same language, but there are lots of interesting results to gather just by putting together the ideas and methods of two different fields.</p>\n\n<p>EDIT: added \"trust your advisor\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21072,
"author": "Alexandros",
"author_id": 10042,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10042",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <ul>\n <li>My advisor will think I'm being annoying by \"backing\" out</li>\n <li>I can't say no now, since I have been given a talk</li>\n </ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This. You should have stated your objections before. Now, it is probably too late. Perhaps your airline tickets, conference registration, hotel reservation are already paid and usually these costs are not refundable. It is not right for your institution to lose money, because you simply changed your mind. If you back out now, it will be very hard for your advisor to provide money for another trip later, when you will WANT or need to go. It also makes you look bad if you back out from a conference and (possibly) your supervisor as well. </p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, look at the bright side. Although I understand your thoughts about the 20-hour flights and possibly jet-lag, understand that similar trips are some times necessary for conferences. Minimize the ugly effects by taking yourself with you (on the trip) your favourite headache medication (Tylenol, paracetamol), some pillow for the shoulder during flight etc.. Also, keep in mind that AFTER the trip you will not have to go your work directly (this is normal after such long trips), so the effects of the flight back home will be easier to handle.</p>\n\n<p>Also, think that it is hard to pay those airline tickets yourself. So, you will get to see a new place (you would not see otherwise) for only 15 minutes of work (and 40 hours of flight). It is a wonderful experience and you should probably not miss it. For additional benefits see Federico's answer</p>\n\n<p>Bottom Line: You should probably do the trip now. You might actually enjoy it. And next time, be extra careful on what you sign up for.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21078,
"author": "J.R.",
"author_id": 780,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/780",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Two things haven't been addressed in your question, and I think both of them would influence how I might advise you to proceed. </p>\n\n<p>1) <strong>Why this conference?</strong> Surely there are other venues closer to home. If your advisor selected this conference because it is a prestigious international conference well-attended by the top names in your field, then I would urge you to go. However, if it's a relatively unrecognized conference that your advisor selected mostly because of its exotic location, then you might want to listen to your second thoughts, and pick somewhere more practical to share your research.</p>\n\n<p>2) <strong>How far along into this are you?</strong> If the conference is next month, and the conference organizers are already under the impression that you are attending and presenting, then you should probably bite the bullet and go. It's not fair to them if you drop out simply because of a last-minute change of heart, and you won't come out of it looking good. 11th-hour cancellations should be reserved for true emergencies, not cold feet. </p>\n\n<p>In short, if it's not a prestigious conference, and you just got an acceptance notification, then I'd recommend a heart-to-heart with your advisor, asking if there isn't a conference in your hemisphere that might accomplish the same research objectives. If either of those conditions aren't the case, though, then remember to pack a good book for the long flight.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21084,
"author": "Kate Gregory",
"author_id": 12693,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12693",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I speak at conferences a lot and sometimes, after I say yes, I have a little \"buyers remorse\" and I feel nervous about it and I just want to back out of the whole thing. I never have backed out though, and I have rarely regretted going.</p>\n\n<p>In addition to the pros listed in other answers, being able to list a conference where you gave a talk has value on your CV even if you gained nothing from the conference itself. And your con (my supervisor will be upset if I cancel) is also a pro: I will please my supervisor by going. That said, you can and will get a LOT from a conference, any conference, if you decide to.</p>\n\n<p>Grasp firmly onto a positive attitude. You have three weeks. In that time, don't just prepare your 15 minute talk, prepare your plan for the conference. This includes your plan for the travel and minimizing your jetlag. (You might be interested in <a href=\"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/jetlag\">a sister site</a> for tips on sleeping on the plane and avoiding jetlag.) This also includes a list of goals. Say I was going to a conference of geologists in Paris and speaking on how the name of your cat affects your income. I might make a list like:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>go up the Eiffel Tower</li>\n<li>meet a geologist who lives and works near me</li>\n<li>visit the Louvre</li>\n<li>find 3 other cat-related or income-related sessions at the conference, attend them, and introduce myself to the speaker</li>\n<li>achieve an attendance of at least 50 people at my session</li>\n<li>record my \"speaker rating\" and ranking and report it back to my sponsors</li>\n<li>buy two bottles of wine to bring home</li>\n<li>discover at least one aspect of geology that is relevant to my cat-naming research and learn enough about it to summarize it to my colleagues when I return</li>\n<li>eat warm croissants in a park</li>\n<li>write up a one page summary of who I met, what I learned, who now knows about us and our research, and some opportunities I will pursue when I get back, and give this summary to my sponsors within a week of my return</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Then I would keep this list of goals handy and push myself to make the necessary plans in advance and take the necessary actions during the week to meet the goals. This includes looking over the session lists as soon as they're available, planning what talks to attend (and when you are likely to have a free morning or afternoon for sightseeing and croissant eating), emailing other people who are attending to arrange to meet them there, and so on.</p>\n\n<p>Making the best of a conference trip is a lot of work, but the rewards can be substantial. So many people have to beg and plead to even attend, and here you're being flown 20 hours away in exchange for only 15 minutes of talking! You must be doing something darn interesting. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21087,
"author": "adipro",
"author_id": 10936,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10936",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I tend to agree with your concerns. Conferences take time. Not only the journey, as you have noted, but also the preparation for the talk itself. It is nice to visit new places, but this should only be a bonus. If you intend to pursue an academic career, there will surely be plenty of opportunities to visit these places in the future. Visiting new places should not be the primary motivation to attend conferences. </p>\n\n<p>So the question is whether the conference suits you. From my personal experience, conferences that benefit me most are those that are within my subject area and are small in scope and attendance, especially those attended by well-known experts in the field. Then the chances are higher that the audience is interested in what you present, as they are familiar with it. They also tend to ask relevant and useful questions, whereas in the bigger conferences or those that are not closely related to your subject area, people tend to ask questions which are not helpful to your study because they are not familiar with what you are presenting.</p>\n\n<p>Unless the tickets have been booked, the conference registration fee has been paid, and the conference program has been finalized, it should be safe to withdraw. In speaking to your adviser, you could suggest alternative venues to present your research, or you could instead publish your work in a journal.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21091,
"author": "david jordan",
"author_id": 15406,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15406",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To weary researcher/student,\nI think you have to look at the plus side and try to calm your fear of a 20 hour trip. The up side is that you don't have to feel intimidated by the audience because, after all, they probably have no prior knowledge of what you are talking about. Anything you say will be interesting to them. Once your 15 minute presentation is over you will be grateful that you chose to go. Even if your presentation isn't great you will probably never see these people in your life again. Everyone has butterflies before a presentation. Just be well prepared and try to tie your specialty in with the current events of the day. Good Luck. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/17
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21070",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6049/"
] |
21,073 |
<p>The Main problem is university registration as the process is vital to enroll as a PhD student, so that I can submit my thesis and defend it. Administrative issues here in Germany have prevented me from completing the registration process because I am an overseas student and some issues to do with deadlines. </p>
<p>Some good news are have published three papers as first author in leading journals and written the thesis work as well. </p>
<p>Is it a good idea to dump this registration process and take another PhD or should I apply for industry jobs? Note that I am not committed to staying in academia. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21077,
"author": "qoobit",
"author_id": 15181,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15181",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If possible try to stick with finishing the PhD. You are almost there. </p>\n\n<p>Try to find some legal advisor to help you with the issues. Some universities may even offer free legal help and have persons acting as ombudsman.</p>\n\n<p>Finding good job opportunities will not be an issue in any case.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21081,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>For the benefit of the wider audience, a little background into the German PhD system is in order.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Researchers after the master's level are hired as <em>Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter</em> (researchers, literally \"academic personnel\"), and work for the individual research groups as half- or full-time employees, with the commensurate salary and benefits.</p></li>\n<li><p>In parallel, students are expected to register as doctoral students (<em>Zulassung</em>). Such a process will typically involve some classwork for international students, particularly those studying in engineering fields (and those with degrees other than the area they're now studying). One of the forms to be filled out in this process is the <em>Betreuungsbestätigung</em>, which is a commitment by the signer to be the candidate's advisor. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Normally, deadlines are deadlines; however, if there are mitigating circumstances, many departments will allow the advisor to petition for exceptions to be made. Given that you've made good research progress, it would seem reasonable that your advisor would want to ensure that you get your PhD. So, before doing anything else, <strong>talk to your advisor.</strong></p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/17
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21073",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15380/"
] |
21,095 |
<p>My AP Computer Science teacher has somewhat of a creative way to deal with students submitting apparently identical code. Instead of handing out lots of zeros, he divides the points by the number of cheaters, phrasing his system as "if you have the same answer, you deserve to split the credit." For example, a 5-person cheating ring on a 10-point project would yield 2 points per person (it rounds down to the best precision on odd splits).</p>
<p>Do you think this is ethical? Is this a wise way to deal with cheating?</p>
<p>On one hand, it is a lot softer than most policies. On the other, it is somewhat logical, and seems maybe fairer than the standard penalty system.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21099,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't think it is fair. Say you work very hard on your program, to get a 9. While you go to the toilet, I steal your code and submit it. I get a 4 for doing nothing, you get a 4 after a lot of successful work. If this happens the day before the deadline and I had nothing, I would have handed in nothing, and thus get a 0. So there is a clear benefit in cheating: I get more marks than even if I pull an all nighter and put together a crappy code that barely holds together.</p>\n\n<p>I guess the reason to punish everybody equally is multiple:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Discourage from people lending code to classmates. </li>\n<li>It is much easier than to try to figure out what happened and who is the original author.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>But, the way I see it, there are a few objections</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>There are still situations where a cheater may benefit from this scheme (half good is better than nothing); a cheater is being awarded points for doing exactly nothing.</li>\n<li>The original author may be innocent. The code could have been stolen. It is unfair to blindly punish without, at least, inquiring in the matter.</li>\n<li>Serial cheaters may get away with it and still get enough points to pass.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>Edit:</strong></p>\n\n<p>What if the homework is given voluntarely? Consider the case where there are weekly assignments, with a high work load. Part of the point is for students to work and get efficient in problem solving. But, if instead of solving all of them, we share the work, change it here and there, perhaps they will not notice, I still work half of it, and maybe I get full recognition; maybe only half.</p>\n\n<p>Now, say a given week you only had time to do half of them. Gambling is beneficial: if you go the ethical way, you get half the marks. If you cheat, you can either get half the marks, or get away with it if you are skilled or the grader is low on coffee.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21100,
"author": "Benoît Kloeckner",
"author_id": 946,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/946",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'll only give a legal point of view on this issue for French higher education.</p>\n\n<p>In French universities, even if the kind of rule you describe is enforced by some teachers, it is in theory forbidden to alter notation for cheating: one should only grade according to content, without any penalty. If cheating is suspected by the teacher, she should fill a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proc%C3%A8s-verbal\" rel=\"nofollow\"><em>procès-verbal</em></a> form describing what she suspects happened, and giving all relevant info. This is then passed to a commission that will interview her and the suspected students, and will decide what happens next. This commission has a scale of possible action, going from nothing to five years' suspension from <strong>all</strong> French higher education institutions.</p>\n\n<p>This process is seldom used for projects and evaluations among small groups (<em>contrôle continu</em>). However it should be strictly enforced for terminal exams, as otherwise student can easily go to court.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21102,
"author": "Wrzlprmft",
"author_id": 7734,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7734",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To add to the existing arguments:</p>\n\n<p>The punishment for cheating should always be higher than the direct advantage gained from it. For example, if somebody cheats at one task in an exam, the penalty should not only be failing that task but at least the whole exam, if not much higher. The reason for this is simply that you cannot possibly detect all attempts at cheating and thus the punishment should aim at being sufficciently high to make the average outcome of cheating negative if the detection rate is taken into account.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, it is quite difficult to even estimate the detection rates for cheating and thus to adjust the punishment accordingly, but the punishment you are describing is certainly too low.</p>\n\n<p>This aspect is not only important for discouraging cheating, but also from an ethical point of view, as cheating should not yield an advantage over the honest student.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21103,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This seems like a bad policy. With this type of policy it leaves the teacher having to figure out who copied from whom and how many people were in each \"group\". Usually if Alice's work is copied by Bob, and Bob's \"work\" is copied by Carol, then Bob and Carol are penalised the same. In your policy, you would have to figure out how much to penalise Bob and Carol. It seems like it would be better to allow group work with the stipulation that the points get divided in a manner either specified by the students or the teacher.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21138,
"author": "Christian",
"author_id": 10073,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10073",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The goal of a policy on cheating isn't being \"fair\", it's to discourage cheating. </p>\n\n<p>In academia we don't want to have academic papers who bend the truth a little bit, but we want to have academics who tell the whole truth and for whom cheating is not an option. As a result you don't want to do anything that encourages cheating.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 26611,
"author": "Marxos",
"author_id": 19703,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19703",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It's actually a fairly nice solution to a more relevant problem: the right pedagogy for different kinds of students.</p>\n\n<p>The formula is a good, but should be stated thusly: \"Students are allowed to collaborate on homework, but your scores will be divided by the number of collaborators, so pick your team well.\" This is in tune with the environment that students will likely encounter after their degree, but neither enforces any policy nor penalizes any others.</p>\n\n<p>Then the teacher should grade on the bell curve. This gives a passing score to those who worked together, and a great score for those who were truly above average. In some way this is superior to students who try to get an A by a hyper-competitive attitude towards the rest of the class.</p>\n\n<p>During the test, they will still have to show that their personal level of mastery, without the help of their peers.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/18
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21095",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14910/"
] |
21,104 |
<p>When skimming through a long mathematical paper (in pdf format), I often find a mathematical symbol (often in greek and with subscripts/superscripts) that was defined previously somewhere else within the paper. Of course, it's not always easy to find where the parameter was defined, so I resort to using the FIND tool. However, simply copy and pasting the symbol to the FIND tool doesn't seem to work well, since the symbol cannot be copied exactly.</p>
<p>Is there a better way to perform an automated search a PDF document for a particular mathematical symbol if I don't have the original latex file? Especially ones with subscripts and superscripts?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21109,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This can be a tricky one, and you can sometimes have similar issues with accented and greek letters. If you cannot find words that have been hyphenated to break a line, in my experience this is reader-dependent and Adobe Reader has never given me problems.</p>\n\n<p>Some PDFs just were not generated with the proper character mappings, so they will never be searchable with the affected characters. With regards to the format of superscripts and subscripts, the PDF will be searchable with them in the same format that they appear when you copy-paste out of the document. With other special characters, if you cannot copy-paste them, you cannot search for them.</p>\n\n<p>If you urge everyone using LaTeX to do <code>\\usepackage{cmap}\\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}</code>, those packages should solve most problems. Notably, <code>cmap</code> makes math characters (such as the integral sign) searchable.</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, as far as I know there is no way to \"repair\" a PDF that is not properly searchable, unless you re-create a fixed version from the source.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21148,
"author": "David E Speyer",
"author_id": 1244,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1244",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If your paper has been posted to the <a href=\"http://arXiv.org\" rel=\"noreferrer\">arXiv</a>, go to the paper's page (here's <a href=\"http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.5409\" rel=\"noreferrer\">one of mine</a>), click on \"Other formats\" and \"download source\". Assuming the authors submitted the LaTeX Source to the arXiv, you'll get a tarball with the LaTeX source, which should be a lot more searchable. (Yes, I do this for large enough papers where I expect to do a lot of searching.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 80231,
"author": "Kim",
"author_id": 65180,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65180",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I found a trick tonight trying to search for all instances of L_ij^* in a PDF. The regular search function didn't recognize the superscript asterisk, only regular asterisks. I am using Acrobat Reader DC version 2015.20.20042...hopefully it works for other versions. Here are the instructions:</p>\n\n<p>Choose a string of words immediately next to an instance of the sought-after symbol in your PDF document. Do ctrl-F. In the Find window that opens, click the arrow next to the text box and select the <em>full reader search</em> from the list. Enter the string of words in the search window of the full reader search. The character you will need to use for a search shows up in the results window. You can click on the bolded/underlined instance in the results and your curser will be placed on the symbol in your PDF document. </p>\n\n<p>In my case, it was the Å character that represented the superscript asterisk (*). Next, I opened a blank Word document and then chose Insert – Symbol - Advanced Symbol …. I then looked for Å (regular shortcuts, keyboard strokes, etc. for this symbol didn't work for me), inserted it into my Word document then copy and pasted the Å from the Word document into the Acrobat advanced search window and hit Search. </p>\n\n<p>It found all instances of superscript *! Again, you can click on the result and your curser will be taken to that symbol in your PDF document.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/18
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21104",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/931/"
] |
21,106 |
<p>I have about 400 ~ 500 lines of what I would call average open source code contribution. Does open source code contribution matter for graduate admissions? I am interested in applying to a MS in computer science and am interested in machine learning. I have a great plan for an awesome feature for <a href="http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~cjlin/libsvm/" rel="nofollow">Libsvm</a> (and open-source implementation of the popular support vector machine technique for machine learning). Will implementing it help my application ?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21112,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are a bunch of questions in one here. I'll answer the one that seems central:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I have a great plan for an awesome feature for Libsvm, will implementing it help my application ?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, I would consider that contributing to a well-known machine learning (ML) toolkit will significantly strengthen your case for an application in ML. It shows that you know the fundamentals of support vector machines already, and that you are genuinely interested in the field. Plus, it is presumably something that distinguishes you from all other candidates.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21123,
"author": "JeffE",
"author_id": 65,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Does open source code contribution matter for graduate admissions?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<h2>Yes.</h2>\n\n<p>Admission to graduate school is based primarily on your potential for research. Independent, creative, intellectual work of any kind strongly correlates with potential for research, <em>especially</em> if that work is directly related to the interests described in your research statement. Contributing to open-source software projects is independent, creative, intellectual work.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, your contribution would matter more if it were merged into the main branch of the project, but something is better than nothing.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/18
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21106",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15418/"
] |
21,110 |
<p>This question is perhaps a particular case of <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9924/is-it-ethical-for-an-author-to-cite-their-own-work-with-themselves-as-first-auth">this one</a>. I still feel it deserves to live standalone.</p>
<p>I am sure that a published paper with 4 authors--A, B, C, and X--was almost entirely produced by X. X designed the study, gathered the data, analyzed the data, and wrote the paper. A helped X a little bit (sort of supervised X). B and C are listed there because of typical dishonest authorship mafia. At that time, X was a student. X could do very little to oppose adding those authors in her/his very first paper.</p>
<p>Now, I am writing a paper that references this one. While A et al. paper is correctly displayed in the References, I was thinking to purposely cite the paper as <em>X et al. (year)</em> in the text.</p>
<p>That would be a subtle way to entail that I know what was going on there. I would cite the paper in the way that was supposed to be. Maybe B and C will also get it. That's a sort of nerdish academic subversive behavior, I guess.</p>
<p>Would that be meaningless? In particular, would that damage X citation counts? I do not think so, because the paper is correctly listed in the References. However, <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1459/what-to-do-if-my-paper-is-incorrectly-cited-in-a-journal">I am not sure because of this question</a>.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21111,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>References have one major purpose: to be able to trace the information provided in that source. This is why the first (named) author is always given in "et al." references. The problem you encounter is that references are also used to cast merit in the academic system but that is actually a secondary task. So if you decide to use another authors name, you make it more difficult for others to locate the paper in question. So I would strongly advise against the action you propose since it violates the purpose of the referencing system. So even though one can trace papers with for example doi-numbers, breaking the systematic representation of cited sources is not good.</p>\n<p>There are other ways to state the source of the work in the text by stating that "the work by X (A et al. yyyy)..." or something similar. But, I would not recommend doing this for reasons that are beyond anyone's means to control because the risk is that you will not be perceived positively or at least a bit odd. I am sure that the circumstances, if based on unethical behaviour or the like, will become common knowledge in the field.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 185907,
"author": "Deipatrous",
"author_id": 119911,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/119911",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes, people will have difficulty locating the source when you cite the source as X et al. with X not actually being the first author.</p>\n<p>If the X you wish to name is the most prominent or senior in the field, then you can say X c.s. (which means <em>cum suis</em>.)</p>\n<p>Obviously folks these days hardly know their Latin anymore, so the c.s. will probably not be understood either.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/18
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21110",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] |
21,117 |
<p>My institute is creating an annual list of invited speakers and solicited suggestions from staff. It was at pains to point out that although only "n" 18% of suggestions received were female, they made up "n+1" 31% of the speakers selected to talk. As a female student, this makes me feel uncomfortable that women seem to be getting preferential treatment - is this normal practice in academia, in the UK or elsewhere?</p>
<p>Edit: I didn't mean my question to sound insulting, I'm sorry if it sounded that way. Everyone invited is perfectly qualified and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. It just seemed a little strange all the women on the shortlist made it through whilst quite a few men didn't. And that the email took on an apologetic tone and emphasized this so heavily. I was just interested in whether this is common as it makes me feel a little uneasy that gender plays such a prominent role in the organizers' thinking. Thanks.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21118,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Even though suggestions were solicited, that by no means binds the department to selecting only women who were suggested—the organizers who choose the speakers are free to augment that list however they choose, or completely ignore it, if they feel the choices are inappropriate or inadequate. </p>\n\n<p>The real question to ask is:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>Are the speakers who were chosen qualified?</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>So long as the speakers merit inclusion in the seminar series, it shouldn't really matter what the gender balance is (particularly in the small sample size of a single year!).</p>\n\n<p>The <em>only</em> way you could argue that women were getting a \"free pass\" to speak is if <em>unqualified</em> women were being given an opportunity to speak.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21119,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>First of all: if the women who were invited to speak are in fact highly qualified for this invitation, they are not getting a \"free pass\". A \"free pass\" implies that they are invited only because they are women, and are not otherwise qualified. Qualified women are at best getting a \"priority pass\" to make up for <a href=\"http://scientopia.org/blogs/proflikesubstance/2013/06/28/research-blogging-fewer-invited-talks-by-women-in-evolutionary-biology-symposia/\">being often overlooked</a> (especially <a href=\"http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/1/e00846-13.full\">when the organizing committee is all male</a>), and possibly not getting any kind of special pass.</p>\n\n<p>It is <a href=\"http://femalecomputerscientist.blogspot.com/2010/12/you-only-got-in-because-you-are-woman.html\">a bit insulting</a> (although I am sure this is not your intent) to suggest that these women were invited to speak because they are women, and not because they are doing quality, competitive work. I can see why you were uneasy when the organizers sent an email emphasizing the gender of the speakers, instead of their contributions to research; I would also be. </p>\n\n<p>Second: depending on the sample size, it may not be entirely significant that 31% of invited speakers were women when they made up 18% of the list of suggestions.</p>\n\n<p>In answer to</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is this normal practice in academia:</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, sometimes a conference or workshop organizer will look at the list of invited speakers, see that women are heavily underrepresented, and think carefully about whether there is a qualified female researcher doing excellent work who could be added to the roster. </p>\n\n<p>This is done as a deliberate response to counter a known bias. We know that we (as humans) <a href=\"http://ilaba.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/gender-bias-102-for-mathematicians-merit/\">are very bad at evaluating people based on merit alone</a>; we tend to let our cognitive biases get in the way. (See, for example: <a href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109\">Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students</a>.) Deliberate attempts to increase the representation of women in underrepresented fields exist to counter this known bias. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21121,
"author": "nivag",
"author_id": 14115,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14115",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This sort of positive discrimination is fairly common, in a number of areas, not just academia. For example <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-women_shortlists\">All-women shortlists</a> and for a less severe but more academic example <a href=\"http://www.scholarshipsforwomen.net/science/\">women only scholarships</a>. </p>\n\n<p>The ethics of positive discrimination is a <a href=\"http://riaus.org.au/articles/positive-discrimination-is-it-an-oxymoron/\">complex issue</a>. Personally I agree with you that I find it a bit distasteful, mainly as it encourages the incorrect stereotype of women being less valuable researchers. Although, in this particular case I suspect if it hadn't been explicitly pointed out no one would have noticed or cared.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21144,
"author": "Jackson",
"author_id": 15445,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15445",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The only thing that matters is qualification based off of merit. Unfortunately, in school and infesting its way into corporate culture, it's more about filling quotas than worrying about who is most qualified or who deserves it the most.</p>\n\n<p>\"Free pass\" may not be the correct term for all 31% of those women, but it's more than likely the case for at least some of them. The organizer is sexist, plain and simple. People can bat words around and pretend that any particular group of people \"have it harder,\" but in the end, it's just sexism and discrimination. Who's to say whose upbringing was worse and why that entire group of people should have more rights than another group? You don't see any of those same groups of people complaining about the lack of males in nursing or the lack of females in hard manual labor jobs.</p>\n\n<p>If you feel uneasy about it, that's good. It means you have a fair mind and don't like one group having preferential treatment over another.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21204,
"author": "bubba",
"author_id": 11940,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11940",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>About 10 years ago, I was on the organizing committee of a fairly large conference in the US. At one point, a society that was providing us with some funding told us that we didn't have enough women among the keynote speakers, and that we ought to go get some more. The society is a well-known one with a good reputation -- it's not ACM or IEEE, but some group like that. We told them to go pound sand. Several prominent members said they would resign from the organising committee if we had to follow this decree. The society eventually backed down, but not without a bit of a fight.</p>\n\n<p>So, in this case we did not give preferential treatment to women, but we were certainly encouraged to do so.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/18
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21117",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15422/"
] |
21,122 |
<p>I have never seen a thing, until recently, like someone not marking a cross on a multiple choice test just because he didn't know the answer. </p>
<p>I wonder whether this is a East Asian right-thing-to-do mentality, or just a quirk of some student. </p>
<p>Should maybe we ask all students to do this? Indeed, on a multiple choice with 5 choices per question, the expectancy of a student employing pure guessing would be a 20% score. But is it cheating to mark something when you don't know the answer? At least, you are getting sometimes some point for nothing. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21124,
"author": "Salomao Rodrigues",
"author_id": 15424,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15424",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In the university I've studied, the expected value of choosing randomly is almost ever 0, by decreasing your result if you make a wrong choice. If for some reason there's no penalty for missing, I'd assume it is intended to give you value for \"guesses\" or the test itself is not that important. I don't know what should be the emotional approach, but I'm pretty sure the logical approach is that you should mark every question if the expected value is above 0, unless you know you already have enough points and don't want to risk overall failure.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21125,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Should maybe we ask all students to do this [<em>refrain from guessing on multiple choice exams</em>]?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Some multiple-choice exams use negative scoring, where points are deducted for wrong answers. This discourages guessing, but introduces other problems. </p>\n\n<p>One problem is that students who know the material <a href=\"http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/159581.article\">vary a great deal</a> in their <em>confidence</em> in that knowledge. If students are actively discouraged from answering questions unless they are sure they know the answer, students who lack confidence in their knowledge will be at a disadvantage. (I'm assuming you want the exam to measure student's knowledge, and not their confidence in that knowledge.)</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>But is it cheating to mark something when you don't know the answer?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Not unless you're told \"Don't mark something if you don't know the answer.\" Cheating implies deceit - there is nothing dishonest about guessing, unless it's forbidden and you do it anyways.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21127,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In some sense, I do not understand the context. Many kids, myself included, have the dubious capacity to infer from the wording of the question and the answers what a reasonable answer would be, thus quite successfully gaming the system.</p>\n\n<p>Indeed, a rational person would exclude implausible answers, and look at the plausible, and if those can easily be distinguished, we're done.</p>\n\n<p>That is, a multiple-choice test cannot possibly compel the examinees to really \"work the problems out\".</p>\n\n<p>(I've done some experiments in which by-me-designed multiple-choice quizzes on sophisticated material were better done by smart English major friends of the (smart-enough, for sure) math grad students, due to reading nuances of questions and answers.</p>\n\n<p>That convinced me ... not so much to not do multiple-choice, but that the constraints of the multiple-choice \"pipe\" are too narrow, and do not address what we want. The same is surely true at more elementary levels.</p>\n\n<p>(The pseudo-economy of machine-grading and so on is somewhat of a false economy if one wants to avoid rewarding clever-gaming-of-system... duh.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21129,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My (european) students would probably be either very perplexed or laughing at me when I told them that they are not allowed to \"guess\" if they do not know the answer. This is not only impossible to enforce, but also much less well-defined than you seem to think (as ff524 already indicates). If I have a good idea what the answer is but I am not sure, am I <em>allowed</em> to answer? If I have in principle no clue, but from the way the question is phrased I can guess that the answer will be (c), am I <em>allowed</em> to answer?</p>\n\n<p>More importantly, if there is such an obvious flaw in your testing system (guessing being generally +EV, positive expected value, in multiple choice tests with no point subtractions for wrong answers), it seems lazy to shift the burden of not exploiting this hole to the student versus designing your test in a smarter way (or living with the fact that even a random selector will get X% of all points on your test, which may be ok for you).</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>But is it cheating to mark something when you don't know the answer? At least, you are getting sometimes some point for nothing.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In any exam a student can get points for getting lucky. Assume a student has learned only 30% of a given chapter, and the question deals with the part that he learned. Is it cheating to answer in this case?</p>\n\n<p>Moreover, and maybe more controversially, I think you'll need a rather wide definition of cheating so that guessing a random answer falls into it, <em>even if you told them before not to do it</em>. Sure, if the rules are that you cannot do it, and you do it anyway, you are breaking the rules. However, if you know there is a pretty big hole in your system and you do not take even easy steps to fix it, I feel you can hardly fault a student for exploiting the hole. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21130,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Is it dishonest to guess on multiple choice exams?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><strong>No.</strong> The next step of logic might be to not write an answer to <em>anything</em> unless it is not falsifiable, for fear of being proven wrong. Which defeats the purpose of science. In most every multiple choice question, there are some answers that are clearly more probable than others - most guesses will still be educated.</p>\n\n<p>It's not dishonest to be wrong. It's only dishonest to <em>know</em> you're wrong but tell people that you're right.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21133,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Indeed, on a multiple choice with 5 choices per question, it is a\n given that any student, no matter whether he is as thick as brick,\n would at least get a 20% grade</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Not, he will get not, except when very lucky.</p>\n\n<p>You can get 20% points on 5-choices per question test by guessing (on average) on <strong>single-choice test</strong> (one answer correct). </p>\n\n<p>Assuming the correct answer on multiple choice is only then, when you have selected <strong>all</strong> and <strong>only</strong> correct answers, guessing is an extremally ineffective strategy on such tests. Multiple choice tests <strong>are already designed</strong> to prevent guessing!</p>\n\n<p>And even 20% is <strong>much below</strong> typical exam passing range. In my country it's typical to set the threshold to 50%. Everything below that means a failed exam.</p>\n\n<p>If your exam criteria allow passing on 20% of correct answers, you have a problem in completely other place. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21136,
"author": "fuzzomorphism",
"author_id": 15434,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15434",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>On my university on some exams it is solved by giving negative points for the wrong answer, but only after giving some number of wrong answers.</p>\n\n<p>For example, every wrong answer is -0.5 points, but you won't get negative points before you give 3 wrong answers, after third wrong answer, you will get -1.5 points, and for every next wrong answer additional -0.5.</p>\n\n<p>This way, students are discouraged from total random answers, but also students who aren't too confident in their knowledge have some \"space\" for wrong answers, so they don't have to fear negative points so much.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21152,
"author": "GordoFabulous",
"author_id": 15453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15453",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I suppose on some level if you were purely guessing at an answer, then it would be a form of cheating in that you would get credit for something you did not legitimately know. However, if you are able to work out an educated guess, then you certainly deserve credit because it demonstrates an ability to deduce an answer that you did not know upon reading the question. That demonstrates critical thinking and logic skills above simply knowing the right formula off hand.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21153,
"author": "penelope",
"author_id": 4249,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4249",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I had a bit of a different situation during my Uni education than any mentioned here... I'm not sure if it is the best solution to evaluating the students, but it is definitely <em>implemented</em> and has been used for several generations (in Croatia, Computer Science).</p>\n\n<p>The utterly strange this is, we had multiple choice exams for <em>mathematical</em> problems and in general, other types of subjects that require you to solve <em>exercises</em>, <em>tasks</em> or <em>problems</em> and get a <em>number</em> as an answer.</p>\n\n<p>The main points of how it worked:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>for each question, you had N different answers (where N would be the same for the whole exam). (N ~ 4 or 5, typically)</li>\n<li><p>the answers offered were usually:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>1 correct answer</li>\n<li>1 correct answer * 10^x (e.g. if the right answer was 23.5 you might have 2.35 offered)</li>\n<li><p>2 answers you could get by making a low-level calculus mistake in the typical solution-process (1 direct and 1 with a *10^x shift, as with the correct answer)</p>\n\n<p>(e.g. if there's a standardized procedure for solving the problem, it is the answer you would get if you flip a sign somewhere by accident)</p></li>\n<li>1 completely wrong answer</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>the marks were distributed as:\n<ul>\n<li>+1 for the correct answer</li>\n<li>0 for unanswered</li>\n<li>a bit more than -1/N for wrong answer (e.g. if N = 5, then the wrong answer might be -0.25 instead of -0.20)</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li><p>additionally, for the <strong>correct answer to be accepted</strong>, you had to enclose a paper with your full solution to that question (where you did your calculations).</p>\n\n<p>They weren't checking this very diligently for every answer, but you were always aware that they <em>could</em>.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>This tried to encourage the <em>educated</em> guesses (as you have your calculations, and maybe you're unsure between two answers because you're unsure if you used the right procedure). On the other hand, the penalty also discouraged complete guesses, as the potential negative marks were higher than the potential gain.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, such a system still has plenty shortcomings. A typical problem situation was the student would having the right solution in his calculation, but <em>transferred the wrong answer</em> to the multiple choice answer sheet. The policies varied with different courses, although commonly, such an answer was not accepted, to prevent students for <em>purposefully</em> offering two answers and having a better chance of scoring.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>I just realized I haven't actually offered my direct answer to the question. Here it goes:</p>\n\n<p>In the system I describe, I would say <strong>it is unethical to try and guess</strong> in multiple choice exams. But, unlike all the other multiple choice setups, the one described here has a <strong>way to verify weather you guessed or not</strong> (if you have not submitted the full procedure for your answer, you must have guessed) and because of that, it stops depending solely on the students \"honor\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21159,
"author": "gnasher729",
"author_id": 11873,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11873",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here's a tough one: German driving license theory test <a href=\"http://fahrschule.freenet.de\">http://fahrschule.freenet.de</a> </p>\n\n<p>The rules: It's multiple choice. You are not given the number of correct answers (there can be multiple correct ones, or no correct ones, or one correct answer). You get points for each incorrect choice. Checking one wrong answer instead of the correct one is two incorrect answers. Checking only one of two correct answers is one incorrect choice. So there is no guessing \"what's the best answer\". And you are allowed two or three incorrect answers out of forty questions. They don't bother counting correct answers because you must have almost all correct. </p>\n\n<p>Basically, if you haven't learned your questions and know at least 95% of the answers, there's no chance. On the positive side, you can <em>officially</em> buy all the possible questions and answers and practice as much as you like. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21222,
"author": "Kyle Hale",
"author_id": 9299,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9299",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My innovative solution: allow students to \"bet\" on their answers.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Add two options to each question. \"I am very sure this is the right answer.\" and \"I am very unsure this is the right answer.\"</li>\n<li>Students can mark either value or none at all for any question.</li>\n<li>Double the value of all questions marked extremely sure.</li>\n<li>Halve the value of all questions marked unsure.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>And then curve accordingly.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Pros</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Provides a lot of great feedback about what your students are learning and not learning.</li>\n<li>Allows students to self-assess for follow up work.</li>\n<li>Reduces the value of guessing.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Since the ultimate goal of all this testing is to see what your students are learning, and guessing muddies the water, so to speak, you might as well let the students tell you when they're guessing.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/18
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21122",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8970/"
] |
21,132 |
<p>In my research, my adviser only gives minimal advice that is limited to the direction of the research and defining the problems. </p>
<p>I can say I do most of the thinking, the actual solutions of the problems.
Even at one time I needed to explain to my adviser how my algorithms work.</p>
<p>The only "effort" my adviser does is writing the actual paper, since I'm still a master's student and lack experience of writing. Moreover, I'm not a native speaker so I'm still trying to improve my English writing.</p>
<p>Well, that's the intro of my background. FYI, I'm a CS student and I'm aiming to publish a paper in a conference in ACM.</p>
<p><strong>The actual problem is my adviser demands to be joint first author.</strong></p>
<p>I asked the reason and the reply was it was needed to progress to associate professor, with my help, and eventually gain tenure.</p>
<p>I suspect that the supervisor feels under risk to be kicked from the university. With 3-4 years as an Assistant Professor but doesn't really have good research output (only 1-2 small papers every year).</p>
<p>I reluctantly agreed to assist under these considerations:</p>
<p><strong>1. We can be joint first author but my name should be written first.</strong> Initially wanted their name to be written first because alphabetically the last name comes first compared to my last name.
Then I did a "bargaining" by saying that I want to be researcher in the future and I need my name to be put first.
The discussion ended and I was allowed my name to be written first.</p>
<p><strong>2. I need to graduate</strong>
In my university, advisers have total control to let students graduate. </p>
<p>With this post I want to ask you for more suggestions.</p>
<p><strong>Edit 1:</strong>
Right now I want to play "safely" rather than being kicked out, but I feel I'm being treated a bit toady. Usually the adviser likes to scold other students.</p>
<p><strong>Edit 2:</strong>
The advisor does indeed write the most part of the paper, but it doesn't mean that I didn't take any part in the writing. I tried to write an initial paper, from the introduction to technical part, writing equations, making figures, producing results, etc.
The advisor helped me to polish the grammar and made the sentences neater.</p>
<p>I forget to say one thing, I have another adviser. Let's say A2. The one I'm having dispute with is A1. A1's most significant contribution is writing the paper. A2 helps me with the "big picture". Because A2 is more junior than A1, A2 only becomes co-author. </p>
<p>Also thanks for everyone who wrote answers and comments. All of you gave me a lot of new perspectives.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21134,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Remote doctoring issues between students and advisors is always difficult, but I'll have a stab at it anyway.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In my research, My adviser only gives minimal advice that limited to the direction of the research and defining the problems. I can say I do most of the thinking, the actual solutions of the problems. Even at one time I needed to explain to my adviser how my algorithms work. The only \"effort\" my adviser does is writing the actual paper, since I'm still a master student with lack experience of writing. Moreover, I'm not a native speaker so I'm still trying to improve my English writing.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>While your advisor may not be the most contributing person to this research, calling this \"no significant contribution\" may be too much. It sounds like he is doing standard advising plus helping you write the paper, which is certainly in line with what you expect from an <em>advisor</em>.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The actual problem is my adviser demands him as joint first author.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, that is a problem. It's good that you push back here.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>He told me that He wants tenure position and He needs my help so he can be an associate professor.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I don't quite understand that. For all universities I know, advising students is what is expected from assistant professors. So from a tenure point of view, advising a student to write an excellent paper is not much different than writing one yourself. Maybe he is overestimating the additional value he would get from being first author.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>(Oh man, did he beg to me or what?)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Try to stay focused on the facts, and don't let it get personal. Nothing to gain from this.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>He can be the joint first author but my name should be written first. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I am still confused about the notion of joint first authors (I always assumed there can really be only one, but apparently <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17239/should-co-first-authors-be-listed-in-alphabetical-order/17356#17356\">I was wrong)</a>. Anyway, I would say it sounds like an ok compromise.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I need to graduate In my uni, professors have total control to let students graduate. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That is indeed a practical problem in many universities.</p>\n\n<p>A few concluding statements:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Authorship really isn't something that should be <em>negotiated</em> after the project is almost done. As many members here never get tired of saying, details of authorship are best discussed at the beginning of the project, so that everybody knows where everybody else stands.</li>\n<li>From your short description, it seems to me like you are somewhat underselling the contributions of your advisor, even delivering some underhand blows in a few places. You are likely a rational individual - try to not be emotional about it, and then re-check what your advisor actually does for your project. Further, keep in mind that students tend to over-value the technical \"doing\" of the project and undervalue the \"big picture\" (deciding on a research project, defining research issues so that the outcome is both achievable and novel, etc.).</li>\n<li>Somewhat related: your advisor is not supposed to be an all-knowning, all-understanding supreme being. It is completely ok that you occasionally need to explain the details of an algorithm to him. That does not make him incompetent. You will for sure have to do the same thing with your new advisor.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21135,
"author": "410 gone",
"author_id": 96,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>You write:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The only \"effort\" my adviser does is writing the actual paper</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Well, in many fields, that would make them sole author. It certainly gives them a very strong claim to be first author, in fields where authorship is determined by contribution to the paper.</p>\n\n<p>If you want to be first author, then write the paper yourself.</p>\n\n<p>And if you can't, then don't expect first authorship, and be grateful for co-authorship (rather than an acknowledgement).</p>\n\n<p>You've now added that you have done a bit of the writing, but your adviser has done most of it. So yes, they would, in many fields, still get first authorship, and you would get a co-authorship on that basis, assuming what you've written is a non-trivial proportion of the whole.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21141,
"author": "WoJ",
"author_id": 15446,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15446",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Emotions aside, I believe that the intent of a paper is to present <strong>results</strong>. There are people who are better than others in English but a technical writer is not the one who does the research. Should he/she be the first author because he did the logistics work (writing the paper)? I do not think so. </p>\n\n<p>The CEO of a company will not have drawn her/himself the fantastic ad you see on the street. But (s)he is still the one who is the face of the company. Not the graphics professional who did the work.</p>\n\n<p>So writing the paper, even if this requires experience, is logistics. Which grants you, at best, co-authoring.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21154,
"author": "Iceberg Slim",
"author_id": 15456,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15456",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Azer89,\nSorry this is stressful for you, most of us have had some sort of grad drama. I suggest you relax a bit about it. If your adviser demands \"co-first authorship\" I'd let him have it, for a number of reasons:</p>\n\n<p>1) He is your primary job reference and entree into the academic world, keeping him happy is important. Your career will be better served with a good reference than any one paper.</p>\n\n<p>2) It sounds like he has in fact met the standard for co-authorship, I wish my MS adviser would have anything to do with the manuscript!</p>\n\n<p>3) Finally, and most important, is what kind of collaborator you want to be. Academia (and industry) is full of territorial, jealous types who are concerned only with their own academic \"reputation\". Don't be one of them. In the long run nobody cares if you are sole or joint first author on some paper. They care if you are a good collaborator they can work with. Take the moral high ground and get the paper out. If he's a real jerk you'll never work with him again, but you'll be the guy people can get along with. </p>\n\n<p>Good luck!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21207,
"author": "sean",
"author_id": 15501,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15501",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Azer89, I don't know what advice to give you in this situation. But I'm very surprised by the number of people thinking your adviser can be the first author or even the sole author. </p>\n\n<p>Check this site <a href=\"http://www.stanford.edu/~engler/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.stanford.edu/~engler/</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>According to ACM this is their most downloaded paper ever. I wrote it, but everyone else did all (I mean: ALL) of the technical\n work.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>He wrote the paper alone, and he put himself as the last author since other people did all the technical work. This is what great professors do.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 53817,
"author": "Patrick",
"author_id": 40637,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/40637",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>No, sounds like you've been stiffed. It is not unusual for an academic to write-up the results of research for a masters or UG student, but they should be using the opportunity as a chance for you to develop your writing skills (to complement your research skills) not hog the credit (as in this case). What you supervisor is doing verges on academic misconduct in Computer Science. Ignore the many ill-informed comments on this site, your supervisor has failed in his duty to help you develop as a researcher and is exploiting you for his own selfish ends.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/19
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21132",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15432/"
] |
21,149 |
<p>In the United States, it is typical for each state to have one or more flagship state universities. All of them are reasonably good institutions, but some are absolutely top-notch, such as in Michigan, California, Virginia, and Wisconsin.</p>
<p>Typically, tuition at these universities is extremely expensive for out-of-state students and much cheaper for in-state students. So, at least in principle, these universities principally serve the best students from their respective states who choose to study at public schools.</p>
<p>How is it then that some schools became absolutely top-notch and others less so? To my mind there is no obvious factor explaining which of the state schools became top-notch; for example, Wisconsin is not, and never has been, an unusually populous or wealthy state.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21150,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Different states have very different political attitudes towards their flagship schools as well. This makes a difference with funding levels of course. It also makes a difference in terms of how money is to be used. A governor/executive, combined with a university president, that wants to grow a flagship institution can help earmark funds to attract top-notch researchers, link business activity and academic areas to grow in, and so on. It takes planning and vision as well as money, and that varies a lot from state to state. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21151,
"author": "NotMe",
"author_id": 11585,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11585",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The one thing that has to be remembered is that classes at Universities are run by humans... and they aren't all of the same caliber.</p>\n\n<p>If a University has decided to focus on a particular school, Civil Engineering for example, then they will expend the funds necessary to attract highly competent and well known professors <em>in that area</em>. This might mean that funds aren't available to attract similar talent in another college at that University, such as English Literature. However it also means that the university will get a reputation for turning out better candidates in those areas.</p>\n\n<p>Next, Universities are funded through a variety of ways. Only one is the actual cost of tuition. Private funding, such as provided by various businesses or alumni, is a big part of this. If a particular college within the University graduates a large number of high dollar workers then those private donations are likely to be largely earmarked for that same college.</p>\n\n<p>Point is: Quality is determined by your professors and tools available and these are generally determined by the Money a University has or is willing to spend. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21164,
"author": "sevensevens",
"author_id": 14754,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14754",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>State population, and proximity to a large city likely also plays a role. Its not a perfect correlation, but UCB, UCLA, Georgia Tech, UT-Austin, and several other \"big name\" state schools are either in or near major citys in high population states.</p>\n\n<p>I'm guessing states like the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dakota#Population\" rel=\"nofollow\">Dakotas</a> don't have enough students to build larger campuses, and hire as many profs. Looks like neither Dakota has even 1 million people. I'm guessing there just isn't very much real demand for education in these states, since fewer students are getting degrees the universities have less money for big ticket items like stadiums, rec facilities and \"star\" faculty.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21184,
"author": "adam.r",
"author_id": 9669,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9669",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are a variety of factors, and the sample is too diverse to come up with a simple answer. For starters, here's a list of all the <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_state_universities_in_the_United_States\" rel=\"nofollow\">State-run universities in the USA</a>. This answer is basically an outline, based on my impressions, and I invite others to elaborate on these points with historical documents (this answer is a wiki) or maybe even a statistical analysis if we're lucky.</p>\n\n<p>1) The need for a state school. Some regions already had several private universities that could serve their population. Others (California?) did not, so the state set one up.</p>\n\n<p>2) The political commitment to the University system. Some state schools (CA) are written into the state's constitution. Other's are not (PA). Some were established with <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_land-grant_universities\" rel=\"nofollow\">land-grants</a>.</p>\n\n<p>3) In a less formal sense, some states have a strong public commitment to public education, while others value it less. The <a href=\"http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/articles/2014/04/21/how-states-compare-in-the-2014-best-high-schools-rankings\" rel=\"nofollow\">rankings of high schools</a> has some correlation to my perception of flagship university quality.</p>\n\n<p>4) As implied in the question, the total resources available to the state is an issue, though not the only one. Still, overall, larger and wealthier (and more urban) states tend to have more prestigious flagship universities.</p>\n\n<p>5) And then there's randomness (as described by Chris Lively) -- all the stuff that is not a characteristic of the state per se. AKA, historical contingencies, personnel decisions, strategic decisions, and the general legacy of the University's infrastructure..</p>\n\n<p>It would be interesting to see how all these factors contribute to predicting the prestige of the flagship university (a PCA or logistic regression, perhaps)-- but that analysis is outside of my expertise.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21266,
"author": "Henry",
"author_id": 8,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The other answers have pointed out a number of important factors, but an additional one is lack of competition. Most of the best state universities are in states and even regions with few large private universities of similar caliber (and especially, where there weren't many when the universities developed). It's notable that the northeast, which is wealthy, populous, and tends to have politics that support higher education still doesn't have any public schools in that caliber---in large part because it has the highest concentration of private schools which fill that niche.</p>\n\n<p>There's a belief that having research institutions brings benefits to a state by creating jobs indirectly. That benefit is a lot of the reason a state would want to put the extra resources into a school to make it a top tier research institution rather that a good school primarily for educating its own students. Private institutions can provide the same benefit, and so reduce the motivation.</p>\n\n<p>(Compare Texas, which has openly discussed that it has too few top research universities relative to its population and wealth and is running a competition among its lower tier research universities to become the states third public R1.)</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/19
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21149",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11565/"
] |
21,161 |
<p>I have some papers from google which I don't know to what type they belong: a working paper or a discussion paper or something else? I need this for my bibliography</p>
<p>Below are some examples of such cases.</p>
<p>The first one has an abbreviation JEL Classifications, but is this enough to refer this to Journal of Economic Literature?</p>
<p>The second one has nothing at all.</p>
<p>Can someone give me a hint? Any help would be appreciated!</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/4e82s.png" alt="This one has an abbreviation JEL Classifications, but is this enough to refer this to Journal of Economic Literature?"></p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/lRkTo.png" alt="This one has nothing at all"></p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21162,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>JEL classifications are just that: classifications. Anyone can put such a classification on his paper, and it doesn't have anything to do with publishing in the JEL - it's more like a keyword.</p>\n\n<p>To your question: I don't think there really is such a big difference between a working paper (which is work in progress, typically distributed to be discussed) and a discussion paper (which is work in progress, typically distributed to be discussed). All of these are essentially manuscripts under preparation for submission to a refereed journal (in CS, a conference). So I would file all of these under \"non-reviewed papers\".</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21163,
"author": "mmrx",
"author_id": 15468,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15468",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Very rarely you will find the full reference in the paper. To retrieve complete references use google scholar (which provides even different versions of the same paper) and double check in doubt. You can also try indexer services provided by your university such as worldcat or summon. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/19
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21161",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15295/"
] |
21,168 |
<p>I'm a 2nd year PhD student in a computational field. I'm about to submit my first paper on a new optimization algorithm. I've been working intensively on the problem for the last 2 years and finally managed to get the result. Besides the professor, I'm supervised by another postdoc whom I respect a lot. Although the two didn't contribute to the ideas I present in the paper, they helped me understand the field and prepare the paper. So, they deserve to be coauthors.</p>
<p>However, there is one man in my lab who is really ruining my mood. He is a postdoc, 15 years my senior, and has been with the lab for ages (he has a permanent position). Just for the record, he hasn't published any first or last author paper since 7 years. We are assigned by the professor to the same subgroup meeting. We use the subgroup meeting to report our individual scientific progress.</p>
<p>About a year ago, he came to my desk I said that I should include his name in the work I was working on because the professor said so. I was quite surprised to hear that because he had nothing to do with my project besides sitting in the same meeting. Nevertheless, I agreed because I just simply care about who was on the coauthor list.</p>
<p>Since then, the postdoc constantly asked me to do many things for the project, which I thought didn't make any sense. I told him that he should brought up his request during the meeting when the professor is there. And every single time the response of my professor was something like "Why would you want to do that?" and his answer was "because I'm interested in it." I wish my professor would have said "then do it yourself."</p>
<p>About 6 months ago I came up with an idea which I thought very promising and I presented it in the subgroup meeting. The professor was away on travel, which was not unusual. The postdoc basically told me that I need to stop wasting time on my ideas and listen to his suggestions instead if I want to finish my PhD. I felt very offended and spent days and nights coding my idea. 2 months later, I got the best results that I could ever ask for. I presented the results in front of my professor and others. Everyone was happy except one man.</p>
<p>Today, I was trying to finish the paper and he came in. He asked me to do yet another ridiculous analysis. I told him that I cannot see why this analysis could make the paper better. Besides, this is already the final stage and everything has been discussed thoroughly with the "real" coauthors. He answered me "This might not go into the paper but I'm interested in knowing it. I'm the author and I'm allowed to make request". My reaction was something like a silent WTF and he immediately corrected the word "author" to coauthor. I tried my best to not ask him the question "What did you contribute to the paper?"</p>
<p>I want to submit the paper as soon as possible but this man made me crazy. He would talk to me all day long until I do want he wants. I don't want to write to my professor (who is again traveling) to complain about him. But I'm afraid that he will use his coauthorship to keep bothering me.</p>
<p>What should I do?</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> Thank you for the comments and answers. Today this man came to me again! I told him that the professor had read my draft paper, made comments, and did not tell me to do any of the work the postdoc was suggesting. I also told him that his experiments were unnecessary, since the algorithm's motivation and performance against benchmarks are already well established, and we are up against the page limit as-is. He agreed with all this, but said he still wants to do the experiments he suggested. He agreed to do it himself so as "not to bother me," but I had to spend the entire day explaining how to do it, so it actually took longer this way. I think he was just desperate to make a contribution. Lesson learned for the next project!</p>
<p><strong>Update (22.August 2022):</strong> 8 years have passed since I posted the question, and it seems to still draw some attention. Thus, I want to post some updates. Good news first, the paper has been cited more than 11K times as of now. We showed that our new method performed best for the problem. We basically took the crown from the reigning champion of 10 years. For that reason, people started using our software a lot. That explains the high number of citations. Shortly after the publication, a known group in the field published a paper to independently compare our method with the former champion using their data. Their first revision was so bias towards the other method (they ran our method once and the other multiple times, taking the best result). Luckily, this did not pass the review, and they were forced to do a fair comparison. We were not the reviewer, but they sent us a draft. To our surprise, our method now looked even much better in their comparison. All doubts are silenced.</p>
<p>Not so good news, I left science shortly after my PhD. I finished my "mission" and never planned to stay longer. Although the road was bumpy, and I had to experience to some extent the dark side of academia, I have never regretted doing the PhD. To this day, I still don't think that I would have been able to "get rid of" the unwanted coauthor because he was "assigned" to it at the very beginning. It is just how the system works. The method that finally appeared in the paper was against the will of the remaining coauthors, including my supervisor. They only accepted it when the data were presented. My task was to extend the old method by my supervisor and not inventing a new one. Nevertheless, he was fair and supportive.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21173,
"author": "derelict",
"author_id": 14547,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14547",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If he has not contributed to the paper or the ideas, I would tell him very bluntly that you have decided not to include him as a co-author and explain your reasoning. You don't need to yell or be rude, just deliberate. As far as him constantly bothering you, just tell him he is interfering with your work and you can make time for him during your \"office hours\". </p>\n\n<p>It's common for postdocs to abuse their \"power\". You don't owe him anything just because he is a postdoc in your lab. Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself, it's very unlikely your advisor will. He is, after-all, both of your bosses, and you are both adults. </p>\n\n<p>Edit: \nI was under the impression the advisor was indifferent. It would be best to sit down with your advisor first and explain your case. Be adamant. <a href=\"http://www.r-bloggers.com/author-inflation-in-academic-literature/\">Co-author inflation</a> is real. Your advisor is likely trying to look out for the interest of everyone, but if the postdoc has not made any contribution, it would be \"unethical\" for him to be listed as a co-author. I wonder if the postdoc helped write the grant that you are funded by?</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21174,
"author": "Mad Jack",
"author_id": 11192,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11192",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>How to get rid of unwanted and annoying co-author?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Talking to your advisor about your problem will probably help. </p>\n\n<p>Depending on how that goes, you may still feel like you need to keep this \"annoying\" postdoc on as a co-author. Even so, you don't need to do any more grunt work for this person. Just finish up your paper. If this postdoc keeps bothering you and impeding your progress, you may need to go into stealth mode for a week or so (work from home while your advisor is out of town, etc.). Finishing your paper quickly (but correctly) will at least (hopefully!) prevent this annoying person from delaying your progress further.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21188,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Another way to handle the situation is to brief your advisor, and then, whenever you get such a request, parry with something like, \"I'm really trying to prioritize getting the paper ready for submission. Since this won't go into the paper, maybe you can start working on it, and we can see what kind of results you come up with\". </p>\n\n<p>If he still tries to push back, then (and only if you've already briefed your advisor) tell him \"Our advisor has asked me to prioritize certain tasks: if you want me to change the priority you'll have to talk to him\". </p>\n\n<p>I think it's definitely the advisor's job to play umpire/referee in these situations. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 178156,
"author": "Niels Holst",
"author_id": 51056,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/51056",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Ask for a co-author declaration from all co-authors, in which they detail their input. You can find standard formats for this (many journals demand it). You can tell that it is important to substantiate your CV. If a co-author has nil to show, s/he will obviously have to leave the party.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/19
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21168",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14741/"
] |
21,189 |
<p>One of the major differences between Europe (here I am mainly referring to Scandinavia) and Northern America, from an academic viewpoint, is the perspective towards higher education. In Scandinavia there it is generally accepted that anyone despite their financial status should be able to pursue higher education. Elsewhere in Europe I know of systems were the state subsidises a majority of the cost and only a minor portion of education costs are reflected on to the students. </p>
<p>The quality of education and research, and all the top <em>X</em> ratings aside, I personally never really understood the "American" way of looking at education, namely that it is a practically a business. I have noticed this other question on <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1329/factors-leading-to-rising-tuition-costs">reasons for increasing tuition fees</a> but little to no information behind why they exist. </p>
<p>I came across <a href="http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img849/8858/slihouettemanwonderswtf.jpg" rel="noreferrer">this comic</a> recently, which seems to be gaining some popularity on the web, where the artist takes up some of the aspects and consequences of the north american perspective towards higher education; subjects that are mentioned are student loan debt, tuition fees and federal spending on education vs military or prisons. </p>
<p>Please note that I the language s/he chooses might be offensive to some and it is <strong>not at all</strong> my intention to insult anyone or incite a subjective discussion. Based on the culture and traditions in Scandinavia, many find it really hard to understand <em>why</em> it would be useful to have tuition fees, and thus put practically everyone who studies in serious debt by the time they are done with education. Thus, I would like to know:</p>
<p><strong>Is there any reasonable ground (thorough studies on cost to society, overall well-being of people etc) or any indisputable historical origins behind why tuition fees were introduced for higher education?</strong></p>
<hr>
<p>PS: I realise that the question is on the gray zone on being on-topic or not here on Ac.SE but given good, constructive and factual answers, it would be a good resource to people outside North American system. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 21191,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One aspect that is not touched upon in the comic you link to is that the student is the one who captures most of the benefit of higher education, starting at better job prospects and a higher expected salary, but also covering exposure to new ideas, the possibility of a better life in the ancient philosophical sense, and four years of partying for the less philosophically inclined.</p>\n\n<p>People who, for lack of interest, lack of ability or anything else, do not partake of higher education will only profit from higher ed by having better-educated neighbors (and the rather nebulous promise of \"a strong, stable state, ready for the future\"), which seems like a lot less than what those neighbors themselves get.</p>\n\n<p>That said, it seems like the burden of proof for why the community at large should pay for the benefit of those that actually do go to college through higher taxes should be on those that argue for a socialization of these costs.</p>\n\n<p>Frankly, this seems like a rather obvious point, whether you agree with it or not. That the comic you link to does not even make a token effort to address it is... disappointing.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21192,
"author": "Peteris",
"author_id": 10730,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10730",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<h2>What do you mean, \"introduced\"?</h2>\n\n<p>Someone has to pay for the teaching in any case. Students paying for their education has been the default option since at least Bologna in 1088, when the studies happened because enough people wanted to pay for such an education. It has continued to be the case throughout history, except for some prestigious universities that got sponsored by wealthy rulers or religious studies that got sponsored by the church estates. It must be noted that this sponsorship shouldn't be considered \"public education\" but is rather analogous to various current stipends/grants/etc, since these were meant for a very small number of individuals, not as education for masses.</p>\n\n<p>It's not that USA has \"introduced tuition fees\" - instead, some countries, like the Scandinavian countries mentioned, have comparably recently (historically speaking) introduced free higher education for everyone, but USA hasn't (yet?) introduced that.</p>\n\n<h2>Who are the actors here?</h2>\n\n<p>As for most questions about society, you can't really talk about \"<em>THE</em> motivation for X\" without being explicit about <em>WHO</em> has that motivation.</p>\n\n<p>The core actor here is the people who actually decide on exact amounts of tuition, i.e., the people who <strong>manage</strong> the (often private) universities, not their students, faculty, parents or politicians. <strong>For them,</strong> there are at least four valid reasons for having tuition fees:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>That's income that they can use for whatever needs, so tuition is better than no tuition in that sense; even if they have other funding as well, most education institutions would prefer a larger budget; </li>\n<li>It filters out people based on their motivation - in any university setting, you don't want students who are \"just visiting\", as they disrupt the motivation and learning of others. Recent data from MOOCs with no barriers of entry show that this creates a large class of people who join just to try it out, since no real commitment of resources is required; that's okay for a MOOC, but disruptive in the 'classic' university environment, where you need to limit the number of students to whatever number you can afford do service properly.</li>\n<li>It filters out people based on their ability to pay - that's generally considered an inappropriate/illegal/evil goal nowadays, but back when the system was implemented, maintaining the separation of classes was an intentional goal (e.g. <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus_in_the_United_States\">Numerus Clausus policies</a> even in 20th century), not just a random byproduct of policies; your school and degree would have a better reputation if low-class \"undesirables\" would be kept out of the classrooms. A currently relevant argument is that diplomas are in some sense a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good\">Veblen good</a>, where being affordable means less demand as you're believed to be cheap, thus automagically worse.</li>\n<li>They can't handle any sudden drops in income. Much of university expenses are fixed - building maintenance and tenured faculty won't become cheaper if you suddenly lose 20% of your income; so any cost reductions must be accompanied by a large influx of money (from whom?) or be a slow process of reducing volume - either teaching much less students, or doing much less to teach them.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>[edit]</p>\n\n<h2>There's no market pressure to reduce tuition</h2>\n\n<p>In a reasonable market there are downward pressures on price and demand - customer ability to pay and customer price sensitivity.\nRecent changes in USA and some other education markets have greatly reduced those pressures. </p>\n\n<p>The wide availability of student loans has resulted in a situation where people are buying education that they can't really afford - paying large amount of money (that they're borrowing) for even those education programs that won't actually have a \"return on investment\", while not having the spare resources to pay for it as a \"hobby expense\" for improving themselves. The impact of this is yet into the future, as student loans are maturing and the related bankruptcy cases are (and will be) rising.</p>\n\n<p>And, more relevant to this question, student loans remove the visible difference between cheap and expensive university programs. <strong>Universities don't compete on price, since people don't choose them based on price.</strong> Some people do, but the majority of students don't think in a manner \"oh, I can't afford a $40k tuition in a better university, so I'll apply only to $20k ones\" in the same way as they would when purchasing, say, cars for the same amount; since the loans mask the direct impact on their daily budget. This means that universities have little motivation to lower their prices, as being cheaper won't gain them much, and being expensive doesn't restrict them from getting the good students they want, since the good students will get loans/stipends anyway.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21197,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It should be noted that in the US, universities evolved in a very different manner than in Europe. The first universities were not sponsored by the state—inasmuch as there was no formal government (Harvard was established in 1636. well before much of the formal mechanisms of government were imported from Great Britain). As a result of this, most of the early colleges in the US were <strong>private</strong> schools, which needed to support themselves based primarily on external financing, as no government funding was readily available (or, in some cases, even possible). </p>\n\n<p>Of course, given that private schools were charging tuition fees, it was of course reasonable for public schools to also charge some sort of tuition fee when <em>they</em> opened. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21198,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The history of tuition fees in the UK is well documented. Up until 1998 there were no tuition fees. The Teaching and Higher Education Act in 1998 instituted a £1000 tuition fee based on the <a href=\"http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ncihe/\">Dearing Report</a>. The Higher Education Act in 2004 introduced a variable tuition fees up to £3000. This was largely panned as politically motivated and I don't know if the decision was based on any type of formal review. In 2010, in response to the <a href=\"http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/docs/s/10-1208-securing-sustainable-higher-education-browne-report.pdf\">Browne REport</a> the government allowed universities to increased tuition fees up to a maximum of £9000 in exceptional circumstances. Most universities chose to set their tuition fees at £9000. In all cases there has been both substantial criticism and support for the changes to the tuition fees.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21201,
"author": "nivag",
"author_id": 14115,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14115",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Hopefully we can all agree that higher education must be funded somehow. There are two main ways of doing this. Government spending (taxes) or tuition fees (students pay). There are many possible reasons to prefer one system over the other and I suspect the decision is largely political/ideological.</p>\n\n<p>I think the main reason the US system has high tuition fees is a social/political one. The US is generally more politically conservative than Europe and favours small government and low taxes. If you accept this approach it necessarily prevents spending large amounts on higher education. In this respect you could equally ask why the US does not have free healthcare and lower levels of social security than many places in Europe.</p>\n\n<p>The main criticism of tuition fees is that they are unfair as they disadvantage poorer students and place people under a heavy burden of debt. However systems can be setup where this is not necessary the case, at least to a significant extent. For example in the UK student loans are only repaid after earning £XXXX (~£20,000) per year and are written off if not paid after 30 years. In this case the debt could be view more like a tax. This system is not perfect as it puts lots of the burden (for written off debt) back onto government and the current UK system is possibly unsustainable.</p>\n\n<p>The argument for tuition fees is that the state paying is not really fair either. Many people do not go to higher education, either due to academic grades or more vocational interests. Is it really fair that their taxes pay for higher education they will never use. I realise this is the case for many things taxes pay for but in most other cases such as healthcare or unemployment benefits the main beneficiaries are the less well off. For higher education the beneficiaries are likely to have higher than average earnings over their lifetime and so should pay for that out of their pockets.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21210,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I agree with some of the other people answering this question that there isn't a single, definitive reason for this approach, but here are some factors that play a role. Note that I'm not defending or endorsing these factors, just describing them.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>People in the U.S. are very attached to private universities, in a way that is not true in many countries, and these universities differ from each other dramatically. For example, you can attend universities with all sorts of non-mainstream religious affiliations, as well other philosophical or practical approaches. (You can decide you'd like to study alongside hippies, or that you'd like to attend a 24-student college in which all-male students run a farm in addition to studying.) There's a widespread belief in the U.S. that this diversity provides benefits that would be difficult to achieve through public universities. If you want lots of universities not run by the government or even primarily dependent on government funding, then that biases things towards a tuition-based model.</p></li>\n<li><p>It's sometimes felt that heavily subsidized higher education is not in fact egalitarian, since the students being subsidized are already relatively well off on average. Instead, the model used by some wealthy universities like Harvard is to charge the rich a fortune, charge the middle class a moderate amount, and let the poor attend for free. That model has some serious drawbacks (for example, there's a lot of haggling over personal circumstances and what people can really be expected to pay), but it's not crazy. Of course public universities can follow a similar policy, or the government could handle it more abstractly via progressive taxes. However, this often doesn't fly in a U.S. context, since there's widespread opposition to taxes or redistribution, while private institutions are allowed to do whatever they like (nobody is required to attend Harvard).</p></li>\n<li><p>Public universities in the U.S. are organized at the state level, rather than by the federal government (with just a handful of exceptions, such as the military academies). This works pretty well in terms of local control over educational policy and spending: if Michigan wants an amazing public university and New Hampshire is only willing to pay for an average one, then New Hampshire can't vote against the University of Michigan's budget. However, there's a major problem, namely that it is very easy to move between U.S. states (since there are no language barriers and few cultural barriers). This leads to two fears: that people will live in low-tax states but move to states with cheap but excellent universities for college, and that students will move to other states after college (taking the economic benefits of their subsidized education with them). These fears can be addressed in various ways, such as residency requirements, but there's no absolute solution that's not draconian. The fear of being taken advantage of plays a depressingly large role in some discussions of funding public education.</p></li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 21270,
"author": "Tom Au",
"author_id": 755,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/755",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>European and American university fee structures arose out of two different sets of historical circumstances.</p>\n\n<p>In <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university\" rel=\"nofollow\">medieval Europe</a>, university graduates generally went into the service of either the \"State,\" (government) or Church, both of which were major sponsors of universities. In essence, the State and Church subsidized the education of people who would end up working for one or the other (plus a few that wouldn't). Because of this \"tradition,\" university education in Europe is largely state-subsidized even though people often don't go to work for the state nowadays.</p>\n\n<p>In America, university education was more of a private transaction, and people would either put themselves, or more likely, their children through college, without obligations to potential employers such as the state of church mentioned above. In time, the Federal government saw the value of an educated populace and made available loan programs for students. A few branches of the government (e.g. the armed forces) will pay for the education of students who would serve several years with them.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 23310,
"author": "RoboKaren",
"author_id": 14885,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14885",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One aspect that is not covered in the responses here is that there's a considerable difference between the \"sticker price\" of private universities and what actual students pay. For example, at Harvard, families making less than $60,000 will actually pay <em>no</em> tuition. Yale and Stanford offer similar programs.</p>\n\n<p>Most private colleges offer some form of tuition reduction based on financial need so it ends up that only a select few (international students and the very rich, mostly) pay full price.</p>\n\n<p>Much of this is possible by the tremendous growth in private college endowments. At last reckoning, Harvard's endowment was $32 billion dollars.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/05/20
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21189",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5674/"
] |
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