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2012/05/07 | 3,043 | 13,020 | <issue_start>username_0: While it is an unethical academic practice, it is a fact that most recommendation letters for MS degrees in US and Europe from countries like India and China are written by students themselves. Students apply en masse; the faculty strength in departments in many universities is small; the few professors hardly get the time to write recommendations for all applying students. Moreover a 4-year engineering degree is dominated by coursework and professors are unlikely to get to know students outside the classroom.
Let us set aside the question of whom to blame for this practice and look at the question that comes up on most applicants' minds:
* "In the event that I have to write a recommendation letter on my own, what are the points I need to bear in mind?"
I have the following points:
* Ensuring similarity of language among all letters from a particular professor
* maturity of presentation and avoidance of blandishment
* Creating tonal differences among different recommendation letters.
Could someone elaborate on these points? The third one is oft-quoted but is found to be very tough to execute in practice.<issue_comment>username_1: The first point is impossible to carry out without a cross-sample of the professor's existing letters; obtaining such a cross-sample, however, is just as unethical as writing one's own letter of recommendation. The second is difficult for someone without experience of writing their own letters of recommendation, and the third point is challenging for anyone who isn't a good writer of his or her own accord.
In general, I have to admit that most letters of recommendation I receive from candidates in non-Western countries falls under the rubric of "not helpful to the candidate"; many actively hurt the candidate's chances by not providing any distinguishing information that can help me make a case for why this should be the one candidate in 20 we choose to admit. (Yes, we have an admit rate below 5% in my program!) On the other hand, having seen a number of candidates' applications with letters of recommendation that contain similar phrasing, I can attest that this usually raises my hackles—and usually leads me to rejecting such candidates from further consideration.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The ethics of the question is moot here; this practice is widespread, and the questioner is asking for a solution to his problem, not for an ethical reform of the international academic community.
The guidelines for such a letter would be identical to writing any other letter of recommendation. If you must write your own and have a professor sign off on it, read up on [how to write a good letter of recommendation](http://chronicle.com/article/How-to-Write-a-Good/45944) and follow any tips you may come across. You probably have little to no experience writing letters such as this one; there are many subtle nuances, both in what you say and in what you don't say. Take the time to write it correctly. If you find yourself completely stuck, ask someone else with experience to write it.
If you're having difficulty writing a letter about yourself, imagine you're writing about a colleague who has done all the things you have done. It may make the task easier.
Regarding trying to mimic the professor's style, if he asked you to write your own letter, then he likely asked all his other students to write *their* own letters. There will be no consistent style, and that will be a reality of this individual's letter. If the department/faculty member receiving the letter has received letters from this professor in the past, this likely will count against you, and you should consider that when asking this person for a recommendation.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: When I applied for graduate studies, one of my recommendation letter providers was not that comfortable in English; he asked me to write the letter completely on my own and give it to him. He would edit it if necessary and then would submit it. I knew that he would not make many edits.
The point in such cases is to make a compromise: between the authenticity/credibility of the letter (which should ideally reduce your involvement) and the helping the language shortcomings of the professor (increasing your involvement)
As far as your 3 points are concerned, I strongly am against all of them.
Here is how you can try reaching a compromise:
* In case the professor's first language is NOT English (which I believe is the case in India), go to him and talk to him in whatever language and extract bullet points of what he would like to write in a letter for you. The problem with most colleges is that the professor might have things to say but owing to language barriers, is unable to say it coherently in English. Thus, they are hesitant in writing their own letters. Go to him and explain it to him clearly what a recommendation letter is supposed to be and it's structure. Ask him for things he would like to say. It is important to let him be frank. Sometimes, they can be a bit hesitant to talk openly (if you don't make an atmosphere where you welcome negative comments about you, he will be very hesitant) make sure you are creating an open discussion.
* Convert those bullet points into a skeleton. For instance, suppose he liked your analytical abilities but found you to be lazy (& cited classroom/research experiences for the same), you can have a skeleton like :
*Only student to have solved difficult problem - Analytical skills high - usually late with assignments although they are well thought - maybe lazy*
* Go over this process (talk, skeleton, talk, skeleton) till you have clarity in your skeleton. This might happen in the first attempt if the environment is set right or it might take several. It should contain essentials without grammar. Example (fictional):
*taught 3 courses, did well in all, strong:analysis,math,communication, weak:lazy,impatient, only student to have scored 100/100 in finals,add some examples or whatever*
* Give this to the professor to write it off assisting him when required. Although he might still be hesitant, try to work up a compromise.
Although this might not answer your actual question, I felt it was necessary to think of a way to cut through the problem when professors wish to give you the letter, have good things to say, have time but can't.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: There is a larger question at hand:
**Why have you people been historically trusting a signed piece of paper?**
There is never any good proof the person who wrote the text has been honest, even if this person holds a professor position at some university.
Letters of recommendations is the historic absurd which make no sense whatsoever.
Me too I had my letters of recommendations written not by professors but by other people who knew me (I'm from Russia). Why? Because when I approached professors only one really took the time and effort to write one, while others honestly said they didn't know how to write something like that and they didn't know me well enough to be a judge to my character. They told me to get the text written any way I liked it and they would sign it. That was it. So I asked other people if they would be kind enough to write a few words about me and they were.
There hasn't been a history of writing letters of recommendations in my country, then what do you expect people to do if they wish to apply to a Western university? They do fake letters and they will continue to do so for as long as this stupid practice exists.
The best advice I can give here is to ask somebody else who knows you well and knows your subject area well to write a letter for you. If you attempt to write about yourself it may eventually suck.
One other thought: in some countries (notably Germany) there is a practice of putting watermarks in this sort of papers (sequencing of words, particular wording and other tricks) to convey hidden information about the person. Sometimes it would make sense to put a notice into the letter stating that this text has been written by e.g a Chinese professor who is not familiar with hidden language ubiquitous in e.g Germany. Should such things be discovered this should be attributed to mere coincidence and should be discarded as such, the text written should be understood as it is written with no "alternative" interpretation.
With regard to the hidden language of reference letters:
The keywords to google for are "Geheimsprache", "Geheimcodes", "Zeugnissprache". There are tons of pages. Just a few to provide an overview:
[Geheimcodes](http://www.zeugnisdeutsch.de/arbeitszeugnis/geheimcodes.php)
[Der Arbeitszeugnis-Code](http://www.arbeitszeugnis.de/arbeitszeugnis-code.php)
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: A lot has already said in previous comments. I will add the following points.
When you wrtie a letter of recommendation for others or yourself for others to endorse, make sure you write and justify :
1. In which circumstances have you know the recommendee (student) and for how long ( 4 years undergrad.) in which capacity ( I am his professor of Biology) ?
2. What is your impression of his academic achievements and skills
(you have to back up with facts your statement) ?
3. What do you think of his character and personality ?
4. How much (strongly, simply) do you recommend him/her for other institutions ?
I hope this helps.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: I realize this is a very old question, but I guess no harm in me adding my two pennies even after a year.
I agree that it's not good practice writing letters for oneself, but, a lot of bad things happen in academia and this is one of them. It happened to me, and that with a good and dedicated professor: it was just a set of circumstances.
While I asked this person for a letter a few months in advance and he agreed to write it when I apply somewhere, when I stumbled upon my (then, potential, now, current) supervisors, realized we want to work together, there was about a week left to apply for the grant. When I asked for a recommendation, the professor was on a conference / trip and could not find the time to do it himself. He asked me for **a "draft" to see what points the letter should cover** which he actually did modify later. And I have a feeling he would have preferred to write it than to just modify my writing, but, hey, *circumstances*.
So, the points I was focusing on when I was writing the letter:
* For **each letter-writer** I contacted, **I had a specific purpose in mind**. Each of those people could **attest to a different set of skills and give a different view of me**.
This particular letter was to attest how I have diverse interests (the professor had me on some small extra-curriculum classes), and how I'm good with working with students and explaining stuff (I did some T.A.-like work for him).
So, basically, I wrote about the experiences, facts and results that made me want to ask this person for a letter in the first place. Shortly: **Keep to the point and don't digress too much.**
* **Support your statements by facts.**
(I guess) nobody wants a read list of synonyms for "awesome". A good rule might be: *situation* (in which the professor was working with you), *result* (of your working in that situation), *conclusions* and *reasoning* (about your ability, based on the situation).
* **Try to put the conclusions in context with what you are applying for.**
If you are writing a letter attesting (among other things) that you have diverse interests. Maybe you're applying something that is slightly different from your current/previous works, and having diverse interests and an aptitude for learning is certainly a strong point.
* **Make sure your language is flawless.**
* **Keep to a structure.** (not like my bullet points)
A good one might be: *firstly*, introduce the professor. Shortly list all or some of the situations which make that professor a relevant and good choice for a reference. *Secondly*, for the "meat", expand on the reasoning for the recommendation. *Lastly*, summarize the good points and their relevance to the position you are applying for, and **include a sentence explicitly saying that you the professor would recommend you**. Something, maybe, like *Based on my experience with Mister X., I would wholeheartedly recommend X for the position Y.*
* **Don't write a novel.** One page should be quite enough. (again, not like my answer :) )
---
I think this advice should not only **help you to write a passable / good recommendation letter**, **but also increase the chances of the professor actually reading and reviewing what you wrote** instead of just signing it. If everything is written concise and to the point, the professor (even the one with very little free time), might be more inclined to change things, because he can identify faster what he disagrees with, what he maybe wants to expand, add, or omit.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/07 | 331 | 1,419 | <issue_start>username_0: Recently I got a cite in a research paper where the author cited my work as [first name] et al, where it should have been [last name] et al. Is there any problem for indexing purpose? should I contact the journal editor about this incident and ask for correction?<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, that's a problem, and you will absolutely want to fix it. The problem is that it's actually a two-stage problem to correct:
* First, you will need to contact the journal to fix the citation.
* Then, after the citation has been corrected in the article, you'll need to submit a correction request to the various citation trackers (such as ISI and Scopus). They will need to fix your citation in their database, if the article has already been entered.
Note: It may or may not be possible to correct the journal—the editors may or may not be willing to issue a correction to fix a reference. However, it may be possible to correct the reference with the citation indices, even if it's not correct in the journal. However, the road will be tougher; you'll need to show that the paper that should be cited is indisputably yours.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In addition to the earlier answer, you may also want to email the authors of the paper and inform them of their error, providing the correct bibliographic information, to prevent the problem in the future.
Upvotes: 4 |
2012/05/07 | 552 | 2,247 | <issue_start>username_0: Some preprints on arXiv have 1.5- or double-spaced lines, making it less pleasant to read and more wasteful to print.
Is there a reason for it, except for the laziness/sloppiness?
(If drafts were >1-spaced, one need to change only one option.)<issue_comment>username_1: I don't like it either. My understanding is that it's for historical reasons: in the dark ages, publishers asked for double-spaced manuscripts (produced on typewriters) because it would leave space for the typesetters to mark up the manuscript. Some authors got used to doing this and have continued the tradition to this day, despite the fact that publishers no longer care, and a few younger authors even imitate it. I think a lot of people find it a little annoying, but they typically don't care enough to complain to the authors, so it will take a while for this practice to die out.
P.S. It's not just the arXiv, but also journal submissions.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I think the real underlying cause is just what username_1 said, that having a double-spaced version of a paper is more convenient for going through and making notes on a printed copy. But it's not just a phenomenon of the dark ages; many people still do this today during the revision process when a paper is being prepared for submission.
In fact, at least in physics (my field), the tradition of double-spacing is perpetuated by the fact that at least [one of the major journal publishers' LaTeX class](https://authors.aps.org/revtex4/) defaults to a `preprint` mode which sets the line spacing to double. It is possible to change this to single line spacing by passing a class option for the appropriate journal (`pra`, `prb`, `prl`, etc.), but many authors forget to do this - and somewhat understandably, I think, because their job is to do research, not to be proficient with LaTeX. I would imagine that a similar situation might arise with LaTeX classes used by other publishers and in other fields.
It's worth noting that arXiv [recommends](http://arxiv.org/help/submit_tex#double) *not* submitting in double-spaced mode. But probably very few submitters have the patience to read through the instructions in their entirety.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer] |
2012/05/07 | 545 | 2,205 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm interested in answers for both the individual faculty member and for the department as a whole.
For the individual prospective faculty member - How long does the prospective faculty member's visit usually take, especially compared with the visit of a prospective PhD student applicant? And does the faculty member go through multiple interviews with individual members of the department? I know that the process varies from department to department, but specific examples would still be helpful.<issue_comment>username_1: **Edit:** This answer applies only to the US.
For me, the typical case seemed to be:
* Day 1: Fly in mid-afternoon. Meet your faculty host and 3-4 faculty members for dinner where you have informal discussions about research, the university, or anything else.
* Day 2: This is the main day. The day lasts from about 8am until about 6pm. You give your 1 hour talk, interview with about 6 different members of the faculty (sometimes more if the meetings are in groups), have lunch, meet with graduate students, meet with the dean, and meet with the chair. After 6pm, you usually get taken to dinner with 3-4 more members of the faculty.
* Day 3: Sometimes you'll have breakfast with your host, sometimes not. Then you fly out.
It also wasn't so different for research labs. Just replace "faculty member" with "research scientist."
I'd say that these visits aren't any longer than a prospective Ph.D. visit, but much more intensive. Also, Ph.D. students usually visit after being admitted, whereas faculty members visit to interview.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Once again, this depends on where you're applying for jobs. In the US, the typical interview is between one and three days, with public presentation, closed presentation to the faculty (or hiring committee), and one-on-one meetings with faculty and possibly students.
In contrast, in Germany, where I now work, the interview is just a public presentation and an interview with the hiring committee. There are no one-on-one meetings, and the idea that they should be scheduled (when I asked about them) struck the organizer of the interview as an entirely novel idea.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/08 | 689 | 2,914 | <issue_start>username_0: I'd imagine that a good fraction would actually start to tire (a bit) of the repetitiveness of describing their research hundreds of times over, and would probably want to talk about something else.. After all, does the professor usually benefit when they talk about their research to a random undergrad?
Yet, "ask the professor about his research" is generally considered to be standard social advice in academia... (after all, people love to talk about themselves - <http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-people-brain-scans.html> ). Is the pleasure of talking about your research similar to the excitement of having the liberty to be self-centered and to talk about yourself?
But maybe professors would prefer to talk about something else - it's just that it's hard to think of a topic that they would prefer talking about, so it's simply a "safe option" to ask them questions about their research?
What I am *really* interested in - is this - would professors usually prefer to talk about something other than their research, if some such common topic could conceivably be found?<issue_comment>username_1: Two points from experience (as a student):
* Don't ask/talk about something that can be googled
If you want to talk about the professor's research interest, that's great but the key point is not to talk/ask things that can be answered in a Google search. Asking a professor about his research interest might qualify as one of these cases. Checking his webpage (if updated) might answer the question. "Why did you use X instead of Y in your paper titled Z" might probably be a good question to ask (depending upon the occasion).
*Now that I reread my answer, I feel professors are like SE sites. Ask closed non-google-able questions while showing interest and initiative and you will have a good time.*
* Gauge the occasion
Needless to say, meeting a professor for the first time in an orientation party, conference or a course orientation might call for different "first conversations". Don't force what you want to talk about on the professor. (But then, this is true for all people not just professors.)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: It depends on the context I guess.
If you are alone at a coffee break, and eager to discuss with someone, you should maybe consider discussing on something else, or on someone else research (talk about the talk just before the break, talk about the nice venue, talk about the quality of the banquet, etc.).
But If you have a purpose wrt talking to a specific person, go straight to the point. You have a technical question about one of my paper, ask it! You are looking for an intership, say it! Don't try to be too smart by starting a broad discussion that you will narrow later. You have only a few minutes to go from the status of "yet another boring chitchat" to "mmm, interesting", don't spoil these minutes.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/08 | 1,293 | 5,769 | <issue_start>username_0: Many teachers at my university have produced custom course books for their students. These books contain all original content, written by the teacher, and tailored specifically for the course and students. The school does publish a trade journal, but to provide the lowest costs available, and perhaps to keep things simple, the school administrators always simply takes the teachers' course books to the school's print center, photocopies them in the necessary numbers, and staples the pages together with a cheap construction paper cover. I am currently preparing some custom textbooks for my own courses.
* If these books are prepared in this same way by the university, is it considered “published”?
* How might such a work be presented in an academic CV?<issue_comment>username_1: "Published" is a vague word, since for example you can even self-publish a book.
Ideally, a published book will have been carefully selected and edited, widely distributed, archived in many libraries, etc. How close it comes to this ideal varies, of course.
I don't know whether what you are describing would meet a formal definition of publication, but I'd be careful about how you describe it.
For example, if your book has an ISBN, is labeled with a publisher like "X University Press", and is publicly offered for sale (perhaps only through the university's website and university bookstore), then I would consider it published, even if only on a small scale. (It may be cheap, but there's no requirement that a published book must have gilded pages.) However, that sounds unlikely to be true in the case you've described.
Instead, you could describe it in other ways:
If anyone who wants a copy can buy one by getting in touch with your department, then you could describe it as a "book distributed by the Department of ... at University X".
If your book is not offered for sale to anyone except students in the course, then you might describe it as a "book prepared as course materials for ... at University X".
You might also want to specify something like the number of pages, to help distinguish between a lengthy book and shorter lecture notes.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This is more a question of definitions, and I disagree with the 2 current answers.
Publish is a more general word than print, but the 2 words are not even really related.
To publish a book means to have it printed and to make it available to the public (which could be for free, or for sale).
Printing is only related to printed press, so note that publishing an article in a scientific journal may require no printing.
You can publish a game on steam, which requires no printing.
So publishing something really means to "ship" it. Publishing means saying "this is the final (or maybe just the first) version, and it's ready for you guys to read". And to make it available to the world. Publishing something means it's no longer your private information/document/product/program etc - it is available for purchase/free.
Note that the definition require that the content be made "public". Some may interpret this to mean that because only students at your university can buy it, it is not really public, so you can't use the word "publish". This is not accurate. Even in such a case the book is considered published and is considered publicly available to the whole world because anyone in the world could become a student of your university and could then purchase the book. Note that some scientific journal articles which "publish" their journals, only sell their articles selectively to users who have a specific subscription from a research body or a university. These are still considered published, because anyone could get access to such a subscription and would then be able to purchase the articles.
Regarding the specific details of your situation: your book would be considered published. Since you would have a finished book ready for print, you could consider contacting other publishers and getting a deal for them to publish it further, nationwide or worldwide.
So yes the book would be published, just as when I hit "Post your answer" I am publishing my answer. The difference is that I am publishing an answer, while you are publishing a book to your university book shop. So congratulations and please consider contacting other publishers and expanding it further.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: The "vernacular" meanings of "publish" and "print" overlap quite a bit, but academically and legally, there are significant differences. Academically, "publish" implies a level of peer review, endorsement, and selectivity that "print" does not. Otherwise, the term "published author" would be a meaningless term. Legally, "publish" also implies a level of editorial discretion and endorsement that "print" does not. If you write a book making a bunch of assertions about someone, then not only you but also its publisher are liable in a libel suit if the claims can be shown false. But if the "publisher" is simply a print shop that allows the general public to print anything for a fee, and it does not exercise any control over the content of the material, then it will not be liable. An issue in the early days of the internet was in what category sites like Stack Exchange fall: is this answer that you are now reading "printed" by SE, or is it "published" by SE? This has been largely resolved towards "printed" by [Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230):
>
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/08 | 683 | 2,830 | <issue_start>username_0: A tenure from a good university is generally considered to be the pinnacle of academic achievements. It is packed with so many benefits that it is easy to lose direction in one's research career post tenure.
* In the event that such a thing happens, i.e., if a professor loses interest in research after obtaining a tenure (due to health, family or whatever), what steps do universities take?
* Is there any procedure built into the functioning of universities that helps them minimise productivity loss post tenure?
* Are there incentives which universities (could) offer struggling professors?<issue_comment>username_1: The cynical answer is "nothing". But in truth there are other ways to monitor progress and dole out rewards/lack of reward.
* If your productivity drops off a cliff after tenure, you're unlikely to get promoted to full professor (US-specific), and get the associated salary increases etc. You may be comfortable with this (less service is a good thing!)
* Some universities do 5-yearly post-tenure review. Doing poorly on such reviews can lead to loss of raises, reduced access to new space and facilities, increased service load (if you're not pulling in funding or teaching well for example), and so on.
but ultimately, the final incentive is your own desire to perform. It's very hard to fire faculty. But administrators can try to kill entire departments.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Universities can and do fire tenured faculty who are egregiously derelict in their duties — doing *no* research, performing *no* service to the university, and doing *no* (or only perfunctory) teaching — or how have committed a truly serious ethical or criminal offense.
But even under these circumstances, firing a tenured faculty member requires extensive documentation (in the case of "just not doing their job", covering a period of several years) and a long legal battle that is expensive for both sides. When faced with the necessary mountain of evidence, I suspect most offending faculty are convinced to resign instead.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: At good universities it is very difficult to get tenure if you aren't very much driven to be an academic, that is, self motivated. There may thus be a little slackening off, but often not much. I've known of academics who got divorced **after** tenure because their spouses hadn't realised they just really did love working that way and were never going to change. I don't recommend that; it does make sense to balance your life a bit more when your job is safe. Organisations that can't allow their employees to age gracefully and live full lives will lose a lot of valuable talent. But in general, tenured faculty are either still very active or else quite useful for administration.
Upvotes: 4 |
2012/05/08 | 510 | 2,399 | <issue_start>username_0: I've recently submitted a paper to a conference requiring anonymous submission, meaning that the name of the authors should not be included, and no obvious self-reference should be made. The problem is that I add additional information relevant to the submission, such as some proofs and some code working on an example, calculating some numerical data (that could be found on the paper, but requiring some effort).
For a non anonymous submission, I would have published a technical report with all the proofs, cited the report in the submission, hosted the code on my website, and put a link to it. However, since the technical report would not have been anonymous and since my website is obviously linking to me, it was not possible.
Concerning the proofs, I managed to put them in the appendix, explaining that they were only intended for the reviewing process, but I could not find any solution for the code. The conference submission site (easychair) did not provide any way to input additional data. What's the best way to deal with this kind of situations?<issue_comment>username_1: If you need to distribute stuff anonymously via the web, as far as code goes, you could create a pseudonymous github or Google account for a "project," and then make it accessible during the review period. Once the review period is finished, you could delete the site, if intellectual property issues are a concern.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: There are three criteria: the solution must obscure your identity, it must not allow you to learn anything about the reviewers, and the second criterion must be common knowledge.
Any attempt to distribute files yourself through the web will fail to satisfy these conditions. For example, if you use a website you own (under a pseudonym, say), then you can inspect the logs. Even if you have arranged to use a service that will not provide any logs or allow you to tag pages or link to outside services, the reviewers may not notice that you have done so, and they may not even be willing to believe that you are not doing something tricky.
So this is a problem you cannot solve yourself. You should get in touch with the program committee chair and ask whether the committee could make this data available to the reviewers. As long as it goes through them, it doesn't matter how they provide it.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2012/05/08 | 2,180 | 9,310 | <issue_start>username_0: **Background**
I am asking this question in the context of the long running plagiarism scandal in Germany.The most prominent victim of the scandal of plagiarized doctoral dissertations by politicians was former defense minister [Guttenberg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Theodor_zu_Guttenberg#Doctorate_plagiarism). His doctoral title was withdrawn, and he resigned from his position. He was followed by several other politicians, and now even the German Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan is under [suspicion of plagiarism](http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/05/german-research-minister-faces.html?ref=ra).
The interesting thing is that for all these people, the plagiarism was detected only due to plagiarism detection wikis like [VroniPlag](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VroniPlag_Wiki) and GuttenPlag, where ordinary people compared these doctoral dissertations with other published work. The only role of universities has been to respond to allegations that are especially well documented and have caused a reasonable amount of public uproar.
Don't the Universities themselves bear any responsibility for letting this plagiarism go undetected? In fact Guttenberg's dissertation was awarded a *summa cum laude*. It appears as if their is no mechanism whatsoever (at least in German universities) to detect academic fraud.
**Is there any mechanism at all to detect plagiarism or fraudulent research in PhD dissertations (doctoral theses)?**
I understand that there are probably country based differences and my experience is primarily with the German system. Still it would be good to know the seriousness with which academic fraud is taken in different countries. This appears especially pertinent to the maintenance of the credibility of academia in general and doctoral degrees in particular, and yet there seem to be no checks whatsoever!<issue_comment>username_1: Given the complexity of the modern PhD thesis, and the number of references to other works in the literature that such a work would normally contain, being able to catch plagiarism can be difficult. This is especially true when you only have a printed version of the thesis to work from. Moreover, the time to review a thesis is normally quite short—a few weeks to a month at most. Given the number of *other* responsibilities most faculty members have, it's unlikely that they're actually able to verify every fact and every citation, let alone check for evidence of plagiarism!
On a general level, it is also assumed that everybody plays by the rules, and that therefore plagiarism shouldn't be likely in a PhD thesis. Only if suspicions somehow get raised do people take a second look. It's probably an invalid assumption, but it keeps the system moving. Unless we want to move to a QA-like scheme in which every claim and source has to be verified against the original, I'm not sure what other options there are.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Plagarism in journal publications is a large concern because the professors are often running their own labs, doing their own research, with very little oversight. The only chance to catch fraud is through a careful analysis of their publications, which is done both by the publications themselves, their peers, and the public at large.
Regarding PhD theses, the student is working with an advisor, doing (hopefully) original research. Any actual publications the student submits will go through the peer-review process, which will hopefully find any plagiarized references. Regarding the dissertation itself, it's often simply cut-and-paste from their actual publications, and once submitted, never read again.
It's likely for this reason that people probably don't dedicate much effort to finding plagiarized works in their thesis. The student *is* doing original work, as verified by their advisor and their committee, and any publications by the student have been peer-reviewed. No one cares about their thesis, and if they try to continue their behavior as they progress in their career then they'll simply get caught when it actually matters (i.e., during the peer-review process) in the future.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: The problem is that the PhD system is designed for people who intend to become researchers. For these cases, plagiarism is not at all a common problem. You are expected to published your research, and you will not have a successful career unless it is widely read and cited. That gives lots of opportunities to get caught, and the penalties for plagiarism are a huge deterrent.
To the extent you find plagiarism, it's generally people who do not want a research career, but instead view the PhD simply as an obstacle on the road to a teaching (or other) career. Probably the community should scrutinize these sorts of theses more carefully, but it can be hard to work up the energy to do so when most of them are OK, and when these theses really don't matter much for the research world.
The German politicians are pretty much the worst case scenario. In the US, the stereotypical case is educational administrators. Typically, you have a distinguished person who starts to feel the need for a PhD. Perhaps it's because they associate with academics and feel looked down upon, or perhaps it's because an academic endorsement would make the public value their expertise more. This student is very smart and accomplished, and nobody suspects them of any dishonesty. However, they are also very busy, often working on a PhD while pursuing other projects as well, and academic research is not a priority. At some point, they succumb to pressure and start taking shortcuts. Probably it starts with small things, but the shortcuts gradually grow larger. They rationalize that the thesis doesn't really matter anyway, because they have no intention of following an academic career track. After all, they have the knowledge and experience, and they deserve the PhD title, so what difference does one document make anyway? Meanwhile, the advisor probably doesn't spend that much time working with the student, and has no reason to suspect anything. The advisor really ought to be extra careful in cases like this, but that would seem like an insult to the student, so it's easiest just to trust them.
So my take on this is that plagiarism is not as widespread as news stories might suggest. It's just particularly likely to happen in cases where it would attract media attention.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: This is not a proper answer to the question at hand but since <NAME> used the term "responsible" - I only see *one* responsibility\*: The responsibility of the PhD candidate to follow the main academic goal: the search for the truth with true methods and true intent.
Do we really blame mentors (or: advisors) for failing to detect plagiarism when the problem is on the other side of this mentor-mentee relationship? .
\* for a responsibility term close to what <NAME> proposes
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: It seems like no one thought of who sounds obvious to me: the PhD examination jury. It bears the responsibility to award the thesis, is made of international experts of the field, and should therefore be able to detect ideas that have been borrowed; also the advisor, who supervised the work, has a prominent responsibility among them.
I do not buy the argument according to which an advisor might have trouble detecting plagiarism of a obscure paper: she often propose the questions to the student, and should therefore know the surrounding literature.
More precisely, there may be cases where the plagiarism is difficult to catch; nevertheless, right after the author these people, to who the university asks whether the work deserves a PhD, have the main responsibility.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: All of the candidate, his/her advisors, examiners, colleagues and peers have levels of responsibility for detecting plagiarism, however it is not the primary objective of a Ph.D. system. The primary objective is to determine whether the candidate has the ability to carry out research, think logically and clearly about that research and communicate the results of the research, the implications and possible directions for further research based on the results.
When it is detected, the serious consequences (loss of reputation, loss of career, public exposure etc.) are the principal deterrent to others. Of course advisors and examiners should be actively on the lookout for plagiarism however their principle activity is to advise on the development of the work and examine the result of the work. Ph.D.s are, in some cases, supervised and examined by early career researchers, who may not have the depth and breadth of knowledge of the literature to detect some cases of plagiarism. No matter what, the candidate carries the ultimate responsibility.
No system we can devise will ever be perfect. Students are not often given much guidance about what constitutes plagiarism, other than having to sign and agree to be bound by the universities policy on it. There is far more advice available now than when I did my PH.D., and many more sources of advice on what constitutes plagiarism.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/08 | 397 | 1,870 | <issue_start>username_0: Most bibliography formats require the city of publication for books. Why? In this digital era, ISBN would be way more important. But even before the digitalization of everything, why was the city of publication important?
I can imagine some purposes:
1. to distinguish potential same names of different publishers, and
2. to help book-seekers find the publisher and the book by actually visiting the city or contacting libraries in the city.
I want to know better stories about the '*city of publication*'.<issue_comment>username_1: Mentioning the city in the bibliography is important because sometimes the same edition published in different cities would have **different pagination**, and occasionally even **redacted content**. Therefore when someone wants to look up the original source, they need to have this additional information available to them.
Another important reason to keep the bibliographic information on place of publication is for reasons of style. Many of us might have bibliographies stretching a century or more, and it would look odd to mention place for some and not for others.
But naturally changes in citation styles are continual, and another element of the citation that is of lessening importance is the page number for journal articles. For one of my publications, I was actually required to *remove* the page numbers in the in text citation, because the relevant information is easier to find using a search engine rather than by leafing to the correct page in a printed copy.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In most cases, mentioning the city in the bibliography is not important. It appears to be largely a legacy of older practices. For this reason, I usually don't include the name of the city in my references, unless there is some particular reason to include it.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/09 | 2,016 | 7,686 | <issue_start>username_0: Critical reading is a very useful skill for most PhD students (and postdocs and researchers in general).
Instead of assuming that everything you read in a scientific paper is right, it's useful to learn how to evaluate the paper critically: e.g., to question its content, to identify shortcomings and limitations and ways it could be improved.
Experience with reviewing papers is a powerful way to gain experience at critical reading of papers. Writing reviews for journals and/or conference helps a PhD student learn to get better at reading a paper with a critical perspective.
Unfortunately, review opportunities for PhD students are rare.
For instance, it is rare for PhD students to be invited to serve on program committees or asked to review papers. In addition, some may think that PhD students are not competent enough to write correct reviews of scientific papers.
How does one solve this problem? How can a PhD student get opportunities to practice reviewing papers? What would you suggest to a PhD student who wants to do some reviews?<issue_comment>username_1: I disagree with the statement that a PhD student never doubt a published article (at least in my field).
This said, it seems to me that one of the first work of a PhD student is to read and "review" papers: for example, when we start a new project, my advisors always ask me to do a whole bibliographical work, sum up the papers read to them, comment them, try to find what is good and what can be improved in the previous work. Even after, I am also asked to always follow on the new papers that could correspond to our work.
I believe it is one of the work of the advisor to help her/his PhD student to learn to do this sort of work.
Then if one really wants to review unreviewed papers, there is always [ArXiv](http://arxiv.org) (or other equivalent repository for papers) where one can subscribe to the rss feed, then work on reviewing for oneself (or for one's advisor) the papers read that are close to your work.
Since your question seemed to be how can we *do* a review, I believe it is not important whether it is an official review or not: the important part was to review a paper in the first place.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I'm going to address your question, but first, I have some issues with it generally:
>
> I think that one of the problems of most PhD students (and postDocs and researchers in general) nowadays is that they don't read scientific papers with a critical judgement. They often think that everything is right in a scientific paper; they're not used to doubting its content...
>
>
>
This is manifestly not true in my opinion. Indeed in my experience (and I've seen this shared by others), I've watched faculty members reign in students who had torn into a published paper for what were essentially minor methodological flaws that wouldn't change the substantive findings of the paper one way or the other. I think a far more common problem is "failing to see the forest from the trees".
>
> But, anyway, review opportunities for PhD students are not many.
>
>
>
They can be. I've reviewed 4 or 5 papers for journals in my time as a PhD student, and a disheartening number of conference abstracts.
>
> How does one solve this problem?
>
>
>
There are three ways I've gotten papers to review:
1. Your advisor puts in a good word for you. Essentially, a journal asks them to review a paper (or if they're an editor somewhere, a paper hits their pile) and they redirect it to you, either formally or informally.
2. Publish. All of the papers I've reviewed are in areas where I already have a well received publication, which bypasses the "Journals don't think PhD students are competent" problem.
3. Some conferences put out calls for reviewers. Keep an eye out and sign up.
>
> What would you suggest a PhD student who wants to do some review?
>
>
>
Publish. The strongest way I've ever ended up getting papers to review has been from papers I've published. Talk to your advisor. Look out for opportunities - I've seen at least three calls for reviewers in my time expressly open to students. This also gives you an experience *being* reviewed, which is important both for honing your own skills as a reviewer, and something you need to learn how to deal with.
>
> Are there any open-to-review journals where one could train oneself?
>
>
>
You don't need a journal to do this. One of the most useful things you can do to train is to get a faculty member to support a journal club where, in addition to presenting the paper, the student writes a critique in the style of a review. Not only does this force you to read the paper you're presenting more closely, but it will let you learn in a protected, mentored environment rather than "out in the wild".
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: Just to add some personal experience to the other answers. I did quite a lot of reviews as my advisor and other people in my group who were on programme committees asked me to do some of the reviews they were assigned to do.
As far as I can tell, this is quite common practice in Computer Science. You would probably have more trouble avoiding doing reviews than doing them.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I don't know what field you're in, but in my field, there exist journals with a public discussion phase. Anybody can comment. For example, [this interesting paper explaining why there is no easy way out to anthropogenic climate change](http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/2/315/2011/esdd-2-315-2011-discussion.html) had a lengthy discussion (most papers do not). Assigned peer reviewers are required to comment, and naturally the author is required to respond. But in addition, anybody else can respond. Unlike Stack Exchange, there is no voting (-;.
In geophysical sciences, the European Geophysical Union has the following two-stage journals (as of July 2012):
* [Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics & Discussions](http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net)
* [Atmospheric Measurement Techniques & Discussions](http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net)
* [Biogeosciences & Discussions](http://www.biogeosciences-discuss.net)
* [Climate of the Past & Discussions](http://www.clim-past-discuss.net)
* [Drinking water Engineering Science & Discussions](http://www.drink-water-eng-sci-discuss.net)
* [Earth System Dynamics & Discussions](http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net)
* [Earth System Science Data & Discussions](http://www.earth-syst-sci-data-discuss.net)
* [Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems & Discussions](http://www.geosci-instrum-method-data-syst-discuss.net)
* [Geoscientific Model Development & Discussions](http://www.geosci-model-dev-discuss.net)
* [Hydrology and Earth System Sciences & Discussions](http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci-discuss.net)
* [Ocean Science & Discussions](http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net)
* [Social Geography & Discussions](http://www.soc-geogr-discuss.net)
* [Solid Earth & Discussions](http://www.solid-earth-discuss.net)
* [The Cryosphere & Discussions](http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net)
Possibly, there may be other fields where such kind of journals exist. Then you can exercise your reviewing by posting an unrequited review for a paper — note, however, that unrequited reviews (short comments) are not formally anonymous — although I have seen instances of people posting under a false name...
For a discussion on the wisdom of actually posting there, see: [Pros and cons on commenting on public review papers](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2510/pros-and-cons-on-commenting-on-public-review-papers)
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/09 | 780 | 2,993 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a paper which I'm interested in submitting to arXiv.org.
However, the [submission guidelines](http://arxiv.org/help/submit#responsibility) say an institutional affiliation is required for submission. I've graduated in physics from Unicamp in Brazil, but I didn't follow a scientific career. My current employer doesn't relate to physics.
What do you suggest that I do? Is there a way to submit my paper? Or is there an alternative to arXiv.org?<issue_comment>username_1: ~~I don't see where it says that you must have a institutional affiliation,~~
Reading comprehension is not my strength.
It also says that you must represent your affiliation correctly. If your current employment is concerned with certain areas of Computer Science or Mathematics (and your paper is in a related area) this will probably count. Otherwise, I'd suggest entering "none", as that is the truth of the matter.
However, I believe that without either an affiliation or a history with arXiv they will expect you to [get endorsed before they accept your submissions](http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement).
As for finding endorser they write
>
> If you're looking for an endorsement, you can find somebody qualified to endorse by clicking on the link titled "Which of these authors are endorsers?" at the bottom of every abstract.
>
>
>
Now all that is left is for you to convince one of these people that you are serious and competent. Assuming that you were previously affiliated with a institution in the appropriate field you should probably use your contacts there to get in touch with an endorser: they are like to suspect that anyone who contacts them out of the blue is a Not-Very-Serious-Person (tm).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: If you have no luck, you can always fall back on <http://vixra.org/> [ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViXra> ]
Many papers there look distinctly dubious at the very least, or trivial, as one would expect from an unmoderated repository. But I'm sure some are sound and worthwhile.
Although perhaps not ideal, one advantage is that at least you'll have evidence of when your paper was submitted, in the event of priority disputes. Also, it is handy to give a standard(ish) URL for references.
The guy who founded ViXra and runs it, <NAME>, is a physics graduate himself, and as clever as a tree full of owls. But there's no getting away from the fact that in academia ViXra is generally treated with a fair degree of contempt.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: You can upload your paper to [Zenodo](https://zenodo.org/) and/or [ResearchGate](https://explore.researchgate.net/display/support/ResearchGate+DOIs).
Also, [unlike arXiv](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/62480/9425) or viXra, [Zenodo](https://zenodo.org/) and/or [ResearchGate](https://explore.researchgate.net/display/support/ResearchGate+DOIs) have the added benefit that assign they can assign a DOI to your paper for free.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/10 | 1,353 | 5,657 | <issue_start>username_0: What if I submit a same preprint to several open access repositories, e.g. arxiv, vixra, philica etc.?
I guess doing so would give to a paper more visibility. But would it be a bad practice? Would it be unethical? Scientific community would complain or blacklist me? Is there any copyright issues, or other notes that I should know? What do you advice?
I know it's unethical to submit a paper to more than a journal (or maybe [conferences](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/51/submitting-the-same-research-to-multiple-conferences)), but here I want to know about preprints and open repositories.<issue_comment>username_1: At first glance, I don't think it would be an ethical problem, but it could be a management one: if you need to update the pre-print, you could take the risk to have inconsistent versions available. It could also be confusing for those who are looking for your paper: if I see a paper with the same title on two different open repositories, I might wonder if there is a difference between the two versions, download the two versions, realize they are the same, and dislike the fact that I just wasted some time.
Moreover, it could also be interpreted as an attempt to artificially increase your citation count, and that could be frowned upon. For instance, in Computer Science, DBLP is often considered as a good publication indicator. If you publish a paper on arXiv, on ePrint and at a conference later, that's 3 references for a single paper. Someone realizing this might think that you're just trying to abuse the system.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: From the viewpoint of the repository (although, I am speaking primarily from the viewpoint of a university institutional repository), it would not be considered unethical or undesirable for authors to submit their work to more than one repository. Open repositories are built to increase access to the products of research and creativity, by making works publicly and freely available online. Submitting work to more than one repository is another way for an author to increase accessibility to his/her work.
The only copyright issue present would lie in the relationship between the author and the publisher that published the author's article. Most journals allow authors to deposit preprints of their work, that do not contain any edits or revisions from the publication process, in open repositories. Others allow authors to deposit preprints of their work that have been revised to show the revisions made in the publication process, and a few journals will allow authors to deposit the final publisher's version of the article. Some publishers will want their authors to wait a few months after publication before making their works accessible through open repositories.
Journals rely on the quality and originality of the articles they publish to build a reputation. As most journals charge subscription fees, the originality of their articles is important. Open repositories do not operate on this model, so the ethics of publishing in the journal do not translate to depositing your work in an open repository. Most repositories require their authors to sign a non-exclusive distribution license to deposit their work, which allows the repository to make the work accessible online. As a non-exclusive license, authors retain the right to submit their work to journals, other publications and other repositories.
Different open repositories have different functions. Institutional repositories capture the research and creative outputs of their host institutions. Subject-based repositories capture the work being done in a specific field. Because repositories exist for different reasons, I would see no problem in submitting your work to multiple repositories.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: In addition to the great answers by *username_2* and *user102* on the moral aspects of the question let me add some more **technical** points:
Duplicates in scholar search services
=====================================
If you are searching for publications with Google Schoolar or similar you will find that these systems already aggregate multiple sources for the same publication.
**Examples**
* [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.de/scholar?cluster=8438855113118236565&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5)
* [Microsoft Academic Search](https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2170488656)
* [Web of Science](https://apps.webofknowledge.com/full_record.do?product=WOS&search_mode=GeneralSearch&qid=2&SID=F3N6QF8F4CVgDxZcnc5&page=1&doc=1)
So you wont confuse your audience with multiple **identical** versions (just be sure to update all of them if you change something).
Licences
========
Preprint services let you choose the license of your work (for example [Creative Commons](https://creativecommons.org/)) and with many of these even other people could re-upload your work onto other services. As long as you hold the copyright to your work (or remain the right to publish a preprint version) you can upload your paper to as many repositories as you like.
References/Persistent Identifier
================================
Some preprint services like Zenodo allow you to set a relation to another source (via Identifier like DOI): [Zenodo Example](https://zenodo.org/record/1212228)\*
>
> Related identifiers:
>
>
> Identical to:
>
>
> 10.17605/OSF.IO/FN5ST
>
>
>
You can also add multiple references to the same work in your ORCID profile: [ORCID Example](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2709-1067)\*
* References to my own work as I didn't find other examples really quickly enough.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/10 | 604 | 2,213 | <issue_start>username_0: For computer science tenure-track faculty, the standard teaching load at a major research university in the US is 1-1 (meaning 1 course each of the two semesters). My understanding is that in math the standard teaching load is 2-1 (two courses one semester, one course the other).
What are the standard teaching loads in other fields (e.g. physics, history, etc.) at major research universities in the US?<issue_comment>username_1: In the largest national survey collecting this data is the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty. (http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/nsopf/design.asp) It was last conducted in 2003-4. The average number of classroom hours for full-time faculty ranged from 7.9 in engineering to 11.0 in fine arts (as of 2003). See:
<http://nces.ed.gov/das/library/tables_listings/showTable2005.asp?popup=true&tableID=2128&rt=p>
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: There is no standard load; it depends widely on the department, the number of students enrolled, the available number of faculty, and so on.
Moreover, in some departments, it is possible to fundraise your way out of commitments. For instance, if you bring in X dollars in overhead, you can "buy" out of teaching a class for a semester.
In addition, stating that a load is "1-and-1" can mean different things. In the department where I did my graduate work, professors now co-teach one class per semester, and sometimes offer an elective course on top of that 1-and-1 load.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: It does depend on how popular the field is among undergrad majors, and whether or not their courses are often pre-requisites for courses in other majors.
In the fields I'm in (astronomy, earth/atmospheric science), there are so few undergrad majors, and so few majors that use their courses as requirements, that the professors generally tend to have much lighter teaching loads (often one course per year) than professors in other fields with more undergrad students.
And in some departments where there isn't even an undergraduate major in them, professors often have years without needing to teach at all (e.g. Pathology or Physiology/Biophysics at the University of Washington).
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/11 | 1,414 | 5,797 | <issue_start>username_0: Is there a good practice of citing (or not) a paper or preprint that you consider flawed (or at best - totally incomprehensible)?
Once I had a problem of that sort. I wrote a paper on a topic, which was not very popular. Even if I was not using other's results directly, I wanted to cite a few papers solving very similar issues.
Then I had a dilemma if to cite a preprint tackling the same problem, using methods I don't understand (with a feeling that it is incomplete, flawed or just extremely badly written).
Ii that case it is better to:
* simply drop it,
* cite but make it explicit that you are just mentioning it, not using their results,
* or cite making it explicit that you have serious doubts on its content?
EDIT:
By a preprint I understand sth which is archived on arXiv or sth similar.<issue_comment>username_1: *in what follows, I'm assuming you're correct in your assessment of the flaw.*
The first step is to communicate with the authors. If you mutually resolve the flaw (they accept the mistake, and/or redo the proof), then you either cite the corrected version or mention when citing the paper that it has a flaw and cite your discussion with them as a personal communication.
If the conversation with the authors stall (they're nonresponsive or shift the goalposts), then you can cite the paper and briefly outline the flaw in an appendix (or if you're space constrained, post a brief link to a document available elsewhere). I'm not entirely happy with this last idea, but I can't think of anything better in a space-constrained scenario.
I don't think that incomprehensibility is a good reason for not citing, or citing negatively. You'd have to narrow down the incomprehensibility to something in particular that the authors are not clear on (a definition, a set of cases, or something like that). Again, this should be a last resort if the authors are not responsive to contact - ideally, matters of lack of understanding should be resolved between the authors without it making it into the paper.
*post-caveat: my answer deals mostly with theoretical papers. In more applied works, it might be trickier to determine whether something is "known to be incorrect" or "not known to be correct".*
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I would never cite a pre-print except possibly as "personal communication". In fact, that is how authors have asked me to cite their pre-prints. If it is not published, it is not a part of the cannon. That's what publishing is about.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: To reiterate some other points: to my mind, citation (or not) is not about approval or endorsement, but simply acknowledgement of prior art. (I am in mathematics... in the the U.S., ...)
It is unfortunately true that most "peer-reviewed journal articles" are not at all scrupulous about acknowledging competitors' work. Nevertheless, if the question is about what one *should* do, one should acknowledge competitors, even if they've failed to reciprocate, and probably never will.
(Sadly-amazingly, a very good mathematician once told me that he scrupulously avoided looking at the papers of his competitors, so that he could in good conscience never cite them. One might think that he was joking, but, based on the citations in his papers, he was not.)
The issue of "non-canon" papers, e.g., arXiv and so on (for math, in the U.S., this is still slightly non-canon) I think is really the same, at least in the future. Sure, having editors approve and a referee or two approve is something positive... but, srsly, folks, if something serious of my own depends on it, I will want to have checked it through *myself*. For that matter, in recent years the requests for refereeing I get mostly say that it is *not* the referee's responsibility to certify correctness (!!!???!!!)... Whoa. Or, even if they do, that's only one other person... who very possibly has nothing on-the-line if the paper turns out to have a problem, in contrast to oneself, needing to depend on it.
That is, even before the internet and on-line archives, it was not truly feasible (or safe) to rely upon "refereed" journal articles. The main distinction between them and "preprints", in those days, was that people at universities did have access to the "published" (both literally and figuratively), but probably not to preprints, unless one had personal connections. This was why it was important in those days to go to conferences.
In particular, the alleged distinction between refereed and unrefereed (please, let's recover from burdening "published" with a special meaning so contrary to current reality) has become tenuous. Anything that is quasi-stably publicly available is "published", literally. If at a reputable site, by reputable authors, it is ordinarily taken seriously. Even if it is deeply flawed, it should be taken seriously, and acknowledged.
The subtler question is about language in one's own document to refer to other documents... that one may perceive as flawed, as pernicious, etc.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I understand that this may depend on the field.
I would personally avoid citing that paper if I am not very confident and there are plenty of other better references in the subject. I'd rather avoid introducing noise to the review process...
I once had a similar situation and didn't have many other references available. I wasn't being able to reproduce the results of one paper, and the other was really badly written. The first thing I tried was to contact the authors to clarify my concerns. Since neither responded, I decided not to cite them.
In my opinion, it's the authors' responsibility to ensure the results are reproducible and it's clearly reported if they expect to be cited.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/11 | 1,011 | 4,207 | <issue_start>username_0: I am attempting to apply for a PhD but made rather a mess of my masters. Advice from anyone involved in the process is appreciated.
I am applying in the UK, and have a good bachelor's, which is all that is necesary for funding. I worked for 2 years before doing a master's. My field is computer science or bioinformatics.
The master's went wrong - I failed about half of my modules, although I passed them on retake. I produced a good project, but did not impress my supervisor. He doesn't dislike me, I just just ended up looking flaky. Regarding what went wrong, on the one hand, my cohort had an exceptionally high failure rate, but on the other I didn't work hard enough, and got quite depressed after failing some of the first set of exams.
There is a reasonable question over whether I would be suited for a PhD, but you could say that about anything hard that I try and do next.
I need a **bounce-back plan**. What can I do to mitigate the damage? How bad is the damage? Do you accept candidates with less than ideal transcripts and so-so references, given a good work history and supportive references from earlier supervisors?<issue_comment>username_1: Delay applying for a year and work on a new project, where you can perform much better (now that you have more experience). Get a publication out of that and work with someone new, who will write you a good recommendation letter.
I know for a fact that many labs are very interested in getting bioinformaticians, so it shouldn't be hard if you are not looking for a great salary (which you shouldn't be: this is a career investment).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Personally, I have seen some people that were very good in their Masters totally screw up their PhD. And other people are not doing very good in the Masters but doing a great PhD after and get an academic position. A PhD is long time, so be sure that you like the subject, be sure that you can publish within the subject. You have to be comfortable with the people you will working with. If you can work with the people that will offer you a PhD before starting the PhD, that is a very good point. That maybe out of the question but even after 6 months or one year, if you see that not doing it, that better to leave and try to find another PhD. You can do well on your second PhD and get an academic position, I know someone who has done this.
If you don't find a PhD that you feel is good for you it's definitely better to wait. Going back to work or doing an other Master, but in a related field. That gives you more experience and more time to find a good PhD subject.
When you start your PhD it's kind to be like in a tunnel, sometime you never really see the end. I think most of people get discouraged at one time in their PhD, even the better, you really need to believe in yourself.
The main problem by doing a PhD after a not so good Master is that you will have more difficulty to find a good PhD subject. You can definitely find one but you have to find a good one for you. If nobody wants a PhD subject, there is a reason. That's not mean that it's bad subject but you have to figure out why it's less attractive.
Some questions that may help you:
* Did you mentor have previous PhD candidates and how did those PhD candidates end up? Generally when there is not a full transparency from the mentor there is a problem.
* Are you comfortable with your mentor and the team that you will working with (if there is a team)? Can you talk freely? If it's not comfortable when starting I don't think it's will going better with the stress of the PhD.
* Is the plan of action of the PhD well defined?
* When can you expect the first publication? For example if the mentor said you that there is a publication in progress and they can add your name to it that a good point.
* Do you feel comfortable with the subject or does it look too hard? Especially if you have to write a program or build an experiment. You have to estimate the time that it will take you and if you can get publication from this. Some mentors don't hesitate to take a PhD candidate just for coding as cheap workforce.
Hope it helps, good luck!
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/12 | 599 | 2,467 | <issue_start>username_0: Universities do encourage close cooperation between students and faculty. However, how does one prevent close working or personal relationships from affecting grading, so that it can be carried out fairly and uniformly? Is there a method of avoiding "playing favorites" with students a faculty member has a "closer" relationship with than others?<issue_comment>username_1: I would suggest to design a [**rubric**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubric_%28academic%29) to assess the work of students. The design of a rubric is difficult and may require a lot of work for the teacher, but it will isolate the grading process from other factors. [Here](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1579221157) you can find a book about rubrics.
One of the advantages of using a rubric is that students can easily observe how their work is going to be evaluated. Another advantage is that teachers can easily apply the same criteria across all the work to be graded.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If at all possible, have all papers and/or exams graded by two people independently, for example, two teaching assistants / graduate students. Then the official examiner can browse through the results. Where the two agree, one can directly go along with it. Where they don't agree, the examiner can judge what is correct.
This protects not only against favouritism, but also against simple, honest mistakes in grading. Of course, it's possible that two or even three all make the same error, but that's why students have the opportunity to appeal, don't they?
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Where possible, exams and courseworks should be anonymised before grading. But otherwise, we have to depend on the professionalism of academics, a strategy I think is sometimes undervalued. Academics are professionals, and one part of many professions is striving to be objective.
Of course, psychologically it is impossible not to be influenced by knowledge, but it shouldn't be assumed that academics can't compensate for this adequately to give fair marks. Some people may actually *overcompensate* and mark students they know *harder*, not easier, but hopefully the experience of learning from working with faculty makes up for this risk.
The ultimate academic "grade", a PhD, is entirely assessed by letters written by people who know the holder both personally and professionally. Again, the same is true in other industries.
Upvotes: 0 |
2012/05/12 | 1,017 | 4,503 | <issue_start>username_0: Let me explain my situation a little bit, then I will try to make it more general for others to benefit.
I am graduating in a month and getting my bachelor degree in computer science. I did apply to graduate programs of US universities, and it did not end up as I expected. Right now, I am still looking for chances, graduate programs, to get in. I guess all the programs in US made their decisions already, and this is true for most of EU universities. But, still I want to check if I am missing anything.
More generally, consider an international student who wants to apply for graduate programs of computer science in EU/US. It is mid of May. Does this student still have chances to get in a graduate program with scholarship?<issue_comment>username_1: At my university (Bath), prestigious university scholarships are awarded through a competition that has its first rounds of evaluations in January, so we recommend submitting December of the year before. However, in the UK and Europe generally much research is funded by grants from research councils and industry which may be awarded at any time. These studentships are on particular topics and will be advertised on relevant mailing lists and sites like <http://jobs.ac.uk>. In addition, often multiple universities offer the same top students studentships, so occasionally funding gets returned and reoffered to a new applicant.
Application times for American academic positions (both faculty and postgraduate) seem to be more structured, at least in my experience. At MIT they said they had at least 120-150 fully-qualified applicants for the 30 slots they had the year I was lucky enough to get in (note: this means getting rejected does NOT necessarily mean you weren't good enough to get in!) So I don't think there is any chance they would look at someone who missed their application deadline if they applied late. But I could be wrong, and certainly it might be different at smaller universities.
In general though I'd recommend spending the time between now & the next deadline making yourself a better candidate, e.g. by publishing, working in a lab, or helping out with a conference or even just getting a job. Even if you put in another application this year, this is still good advice in case you reapply for next year.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: **Yes, it's too late**, at least in the US.
All the PhD programs I'm familiar with (mostly in North America, but a few European programs too) require admitted applicants to accept or decline admission offers by April 15. The admission offers themselves are sent out weeks or even months earlier. For example, my department tries to finalize all PhD admission offers by mid-February. We get about 750 PhD applications every year, so to keep ourselves (relatively) sane, we don't even consider applications that arrive after the December deadline.
A few PhD programs do consider applicants for admission in the spring semester. But I wouldn't recommend trying for spring admissions to the same programs that already turned you down. In my experience, spring admission is *more* competitive. Moreover, a few months is unlikely to significantly improve your application, especially since they've already formed an opinion.
I also agree with Joanna's recommendation: **Your best bet is to strengthen your record and apply again next year, for admission in Fall 2013.** If possible, get involved in a research project with the goal of publication. At a minimum, do something independent, creative, and technical to show off your potential for research. Show your complete application to your letter writers (or other faculty mentors), especially your research statement, and ask for their detailed *and brutally honest* feedback. Listen to them. Finally, confirm with your references (by asking them directly) that they are willing to write you strong letters emphasizing your research potential.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: At my university (KU Leuven, Belgium), PhD positions are available all year round, as admissions depend very strongly on faculty obtaining grants, and these are available at different times of the year. Faculty select their own PhD students individually, rather than depending on a centralised procedure. Just check the web site of the faculty you are interested in and look for open positions.
The same procedure may be used by other Flemish universities, but I cannot say for sure.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/12 | 2,424 | 9,885 | <issue_start>username_0: If a professor is teaching a student currently, is it okay if he/she friends the student on social media sites such as Facebook or Google Plus?<issue_comment>username_1: It depends a little on the circumstances, but generally not. If the student is your Ph.D. student, then it's probably OK to accept a friend request, but you shouldn't initiate it (and some people might not even approve of accepting it, depending on the sort of advising relationship you have). If it's an undergraduate in one of your classes, then I don't think you should even accept a friend request, and sending one would be very improper.
There are three basic principles:
1. You shouldn't put your students in situations where they might feel awkward or uncomfortable. For example, would turning down a friend request from one's professor come across as rude?
2. It's not healthy for class dynamics if there's a perception that you have a closer, friendlier relationship with some of the students than with others.
3. You need to be very careful not to do anything that could be misinterpreted (or, worse yet, correctly interpreted) as showing romantic interest. Some people will interpret things that way if it's even vaguely plausible, and fair or not you've got to keep this in mind.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: I would avoid it and refer them to linkedin as an alternative.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: People use Facebook in different ways\*). Some are actually spreading links, thoughts and comments related to their professional work.
However: most of the time people are using it for things related to their personal life.
I know examples of TAs, who are FB-friending their students. But most aren't.
So the main question are:
* do you want them to see your all FB stuff,
* do you want to see all their stuff,
* do you call them your friends,
* and do you want them to call you a friend?
If not, why adding them?
Most likely, it depends highly on:
* your personal approach to such social networks,
* your natural contact with your students (if it is formal or even semi-formal, perhaps FB is not the right tool).
Depending on both, it may be either natural, acceptable, improper or really creepy.
\*) And also there are different philosophies when it comes to adding friends.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: To second & enlarge upon what Md. <NAME> said in a comment: [Academia.edu](http://academia.edu/) is designed as a networking site for academics (rather than, say, originating in a site where users picked which of two students' photos was "hotter"). So referring any students who approach you on facebook, to Academia.edu instead, would be contextually appropriate, and give you a defensible position that you were linked to them via a site that exists to username_12w academics to network.
(disclaimer: I have no commercial connection to Academia.edu : I'm simply registered there)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: It clearly depends on how you use Facebook, as it says in an earlier comment friend on facebook are not real life friends. I think that is is clear for everyone, so if you have a policy of accepting anyone as facebook friend, and if you have nothing personal on your facebook account, I don't see any problem in having students as facebook friends.
For me, facebook friends are no different than linkedin connections or google+ circles members, and I have the same policy for all social networks: I accept almost everybody.
edit: and for really personal matters, I have an additional account, totally anonymous, except for the family and real friends.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: When facebook was new some PhDs at my university asked everyone to join, so my first "friends" were other academics & PhD students. Immediately that first year undergraduates tried to friend too, so I made a rule: **some people do not really want to know your internal state, so they should be put on "limited profile" and not username_12wed to see your wall. All undergraduates are in this category** until at least a year after they graduate.
Since then facebook security has gotten a lot freakier, and also I have gotten older, while grad students by and large haven't. One thing to consider: **do you really want to see your graduate students that are not writing their dissertations stories about the on line gaming they do in your facebook feed?**
I like to encourage my PhD students to think of themselves as peers, so I friend them like peers if they ask. But if some do & some don't, is that discriminating against the ones who don't? Even if it's their own choice? I don't think so, but it is weird & I am rethinking my policy. But then, I'm always rethinking facebook.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: One should also bear in mind local government rules and/or school policies. For example, recently it was clarified by the New York City Education Department that that *public school teachers* (so not quite University professors as I think the original question intends) **may not** contact students through FaceBook ([link to New York Times article](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/nyregion/social-media-rules-for-nyc-school-staff-limits-contact-with-students.html?pagewanted=all)). It is not inconceivable that similar rules may be put in place by other local governing bodies and/or university regulations.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: There are two simple important rules:
1. Never initiate a friend request with a student
2. If you accept a Facebook friend request from a student in a class that you are currently teaching then you must accept friend requests from all students in that class.
Beyond those rules things are more complicated.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_9: There is a difference between being "connected" to someone and being a "friend" on social media tools.
Facebook and the likes connect people together but uses the word "friend" to make this connection look nice and appealing to users. LinkedIn "connects" users on a professional|business level.
I do not believe that a Facebook "connection" should be interpreted as real "friendship" unless you make it happen as such. I have the impression that many of us have lost the true sense of friendship.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: I follow 4 rules
1. I never initiate contact with students or post-docs
2. I do not accept requests from undergraduates until they graduate
3. I always accept requests from post-grad students and post-docs
4. I attempt to never post anything that could cause me problems
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_11: >
> Is it okay... ?
>
>
>
Sure, but it's not without risks (to BOTH sides).
Whether you're a student or a professor, there are a couple of things to help minimize the risk:
* **Use [lists to organize your friends](https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=200538509990389#How-do-I-use-lists-to-organize-my-friends?)** and make sure you put your professors/students on the list you want to restrict information to.
**Scenario A:** a grad student is 3 weeks late on a draft, yet the professor can see he's been updating his photo albums of football games for the past three weekends. **Scenario B:** professor is late at returning grades on the midterm, yet the students can see he's been posting about how fun his weekend bicycle workouts have been. Using lists properly can prevent these awkward situations (*but so can not procrastinating!*).
However, even if you put your professors/students on the restricted list, **replies you make to posts with Public visibility will be seen by everyone**. So, you still have to take a lot of care with this approach at what you say.
* A less risky (but more distant) approach for professors is to [**create a Public Figure (Teacher) page**](https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php). Then, students need only "like" that page to be associated with it. In this case, the relationship is not really bi-directional, which is why the risk is reduced both ways. As a professor, I've tied my Google Blog to a [Facebook Teacher page](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Christopher-Fuhrman-Professeur/131998500267101?ref=hl), so that blog updates automatically feed to Facebook. Another advantage is that my "nerdy" posts don't get seen by all the people I'm friends with.
Finally, LinkedIn doesn't have the relationship of student-professor, which I find annoying when I get requests. They're not "classmates" even though a lot of students request a link to me using that relationship. In the beginning, I would refuse connections, unless the relationship involved some kind of professional contract (e.g., a TA or lab assistant, funded research student). It makes sense when a student asks you for a review on LinkedIn if that student "worked" for you in some degree.
However, part of the goal of LinkedIn is to build connections, and coop programs are important for undergrads at my school. Saying I know students (even if they're just in my undergrad courses) might help them somehow.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_12: Maybe you can suggest using a science site for this? You could be "friends" on researchgate with them instead of using a generic social network.
This would username_12w your students to follow your research and ask community questions that you are able to see and still separate your academic life from your personal life.
When you have profiles on such sites, you can put them on the first (or last) slide and students and students can follow you there. This also username_12ws you to deflect "Can I add you on facebook" questions with "I add people from my academic work on researchgate, you'll find my profile linked on the institute website".
*(I do not want to endorse researchgate in particular, it's just one example for more serious networking sites)*
Upvotes: 0 |
2012/05/12 | 923 | 4,369 | <issue_start>username_0: How should I interpret a journal rejection of "not of sufficient interest" or "does not meet journal standards"?
This is what happened to me particularly. Papers were rejected for those reasons and the journal never told me that they had found any error or that anything was wrong or inconclusive.
When a paper is rejected, do reviewers let you know if they found any error or they will never tell you even if they found one?<issue_comment>username_1: The short answer is that if a reviewer found an error, the reviewer will generally tell you. If you get a rejection without any further comments, the likely reason is that the reviewer read the outline and main results, and concluded that it wasn't necessary to go through the paper carefully to decide to reject it, probably because the results weren't significant enough for that journal. (Some journals specifically request that reviewers do a quick read of the article within a couple weeks of receipt, to see if it has any hope of being published; it often takes reviewers months to do a full read through, and if it has no chance, it's kinder to the author to give a quick rejection so the author can promptly resubmit to a journal which might publish it.)
However sometimes the reviewer has carefully read through the paper before recommending rejecting it, and in that case the reviewer usually (at least in my experience) includes a list of suggestions or comments (including pointing out any errors the reviewer found).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: When a journal rejects a paper because it is not of sufficient interest for them or it does not meet the standards of the journal, it generally means exactly what they said. They thought the paper wasn't interesting or important enough.
Journals vary enormously in how selective or prestigious they are. Some journals will accept any paper that seems to be correct, original, and at least somewhat interesting. If a journal like that rejects a paper for this reason, then either it's not a very good paper, or they are being unfair (perhaps accidentally - peer review isn't perfect, so occasionally you just have to try again), or you submitted it to the wrong sort of journal (the line between different subfields can be blurry, but if you choose the wrong side it decreases your chances of acceptance).
Other journals impose extremely high standards and only want to publish papers on exciting breakthroughs. In that case, there might be nothing wrong with the paper at all, and the only issue is that they have received other submissions they like even better.
And, of course, there's a whole range of journals in between these extremes. Depending on where the journal is in this range, it will shift from a statement about your paper to a statement about the journal's high standards, and there's no way to be more precise without knowing more about the situation.
The best source of advice is a trusted mentor in your field, but I wouldn't get too worried on the basis of one rejection. Look over the paper again with fresh eyes, make sure the introduction and conclusions are compelling, choose another journal, and resubmit. If you run into this problem repeatedly, then something's wrong (either the paper needs work or you need to choose more appropriate journals) and that would be a good time to seek more detailed advice.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Often, when a paper is rejected by the editor (without being sent out for review), the standard response is along the lines of "not of sufficient interest".
How should you interpret this? One interpretation is to be humble and select another journal that will be interest. Another interpretation is that good and interesting science has been poorly presented.
One possibility that has not yet been covered is that the paper did not present interesting science in an interesting way. I had a paper that was rejected from a number of journals although I felt strongly that these judgements were inconsistent with the work that I had done. I also recognized that such quick judgments can be based on the title and abstract, and on re-reading these, I realized that the main, important points of my paper were not given enough emphasis up front. After minor revisions to focus my readers, my next submission was very warmly received.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/13 | 606 | 2,764 | <issue_start>username_0: I live in the UK, study Computing and I'm about to start my final year. I have been told by friends that the University holds the right to my final year project. Is there a way of getting the rights and intellectual property of my final year project?<issue_comment>username_1: I expect that it differs from university to university, but in general you won't be able to do this unless you buy the rights from them. Somebody in your students' union/student support services might be able to give you a better answer.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The first question is why you want the rights. For example, if you are working on something with serious commercial applications and hope to start a company or sell the technology, then this is a very serious issue. The first step is hiring a lawyer, who can advise you on precisely which rights you and the university currently hold, and who can help you negotiate with the university regarding commercialization.
On the other hand, most student projects are of no commercial value. If you just want to display your work online (to help build a portfolio for job applications and in case this work is useful for someone else), then it's probably easier. It may depend on the university, but presumably they don't want to limit the dissemination of student projects, so if you ask them I bet they'll grant permission. You should think about exactly what you want to provide and under what sort of license (for example, if you put code on the web, nobody's allowed to use it unless you license that). I imagine the university would be happy with some sort of Creative Commons license.
I'd recommend being very clear and straightforward when asking, to avoid raising suspicions that you are trying to trick them into giving up the rights to valuable technology.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I would double-check on that statement of your friends. If you are not employed by someone to produce some intellectual property, then **you will own the copyright** to all texts and other material that you create. You are then free to transfer that right to someone else (at least in the UK), or give out licenses.
So unless either
1. you have a **work contract** with your university for this project, or
2. you signed an **agreement** that the university will own the rights to your project,
I would expect that you retain all rights in the project.
There is one caveat: Any **material that is provided to you by the advisor** of your project is of course not your intellectual property, and you would have to deal with it as with any external source. This may include even the initial project description, if it is of substantial intellectual value!
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/14 | 568 | 2,458 | <issue_start>username_0: Undergraduates have several-month long "sabbaticals" every years. While graduate students shouldn't expect to have the same thing, could it maybe be justifiable for them to take a several-month long sabbatical in the middle of graduate school? These things can be really helpful for things like evaluating whether or not you're trying too hard to reach a dead end.<issue_comment>username_1: We encourage our graduate students to take internships for 3 months during summer (at Microsoft Redmond and MSR Cambridge). This is a bit like a sabbatical. In our experience, these are extremely valuable for the students and for fostering research collaborations. Usually one publication results for the student, but the experience and the contacts they gain cannot be measure in the regular units.
We do not allow our students to go on such 'sabbaticals' if they are not already performing well. The lucky students who do get to go need to act as ambassadors for our university. We do not use internships as a way of kick-stacking the research of a student-gone-astray.
Unless by sabbatical, you mean vacation, in which case, I've answered the wrong question. Students are entitled to 6 weeks vacation per year (not including Christmas). They may take it in one chunk if they wish. Whether we allow it depends on what project deadlines need to be met and so forth. Generally, we encourage them to split up their vacation into smaller chunks (1 week here, 2 weeks there).
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: From my experience, academic sabbaticals have a direct, stated purpose; for example, performing research (and having some fun) in a different country with a different academic environment, casting your hand at doing some work in a completely different field, taking a break from work to write a few long review papers. To this end, I'm not sure what a student would *do* on a sabbatical; most graduate students have a single project, and they haven't been involved in research to be able to try something else–they're still learning their first field, for goodness sake. I'm not sure how anyone would benefit from a student taking a sabbatical. On the other hand, there are numerous downsides, the main one being that there is a definite chance that the student will not return to their research after doing something else for a few months. I can't think of any reason why this could be a good idea.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/14 | 936 | 4,206 | <issue_start>username_0: And how often does it happen? I know someone who was de facto kicked out of Harvard due to some conflict with his advisers, though he was later able to transfer to Caltech.
As an example - what if there was an irreconcilable difference between the student and adviser, and what if other advisers were reluctant to take the student on (for whatever reason)?<issue_comment>username_1: This is such a loaded question I'm hesitant to answer. While it might seem that a student was "kicked out" of a program for conflicts with an advisor, most departments (including ours!) have a procedure and policy for when students are asked to leave the program.
Usually, the reasons would be some mixture of lack of basic minimum grades and lack of satisfactory progress. if there's conflict between a student and advisor, there's usually some departmental mediator (a director of the graduate program) who should be able to step in and deal with the situation (either finding the student another advisor, or something like that).
But I'm not aware of it being generally possible for an advisor to fire a student and have that student then be removed from the graduate program: these two things are usually separate.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: The answer is "it depends". It depends on the country and it probably even varies between universities.
In some countries, Sweden or the Netherlands, for example, it is virtually impossible to force a graduate student to leave, though eventually the funding allocated to that student may expire. I am aware of one case of academic misconduct in the Netherlands where the student was more or less forced to quit or otherwise face a long and painful series of disciplinary hearings to officially make him leave.
In other places, Belgium, for example, students are often paid based on year long contracts (graduate students are employees). The contracts can be evaluated each year and terminated in the case of unsatisfactory performance. Of course, matters are handled delicately, and often by involving the student in the process. That is, discuss the student's performance and paint a bleak picture and let him/her see that quitting is the best option.
From the student's perspective, it is best that they do not waste 4+ years of their lives and achieve nothing.
From the university/department/professor's perspective, it is best that the student does not waste 4+ years of funding and achieve nothing.
It's a win-win.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Like @username_1 says, in the US, I would expect that the advisor-advisee relationship would be separate from enrollment in the department. The advisor can decline to continue funding the student, and can decline to continue advising the student. However usually the advisor cannot force the student out of the graduate program; that's up to the department or university. I would expect that most departments or universities would have an established process for asking students to leave, which would typically be if the student is not making satisfactory progress towards their degree or meeting other requirements. Normally I would expect this process to include some degree of warnings and feedback.
That said, there is some coupling between the advisor-advisee relationship and one's status as a graduate student. Many PhD programs have a requirement that the graduate student must have a faculty advisor. If the student's current advisor is no longer willing to continue advising them, and if no other faculty is willing to advise the student, then this may eventually lead to the student being asked to leave the graduate program, for failure to meet the program requirements. Normally I would expect that to happen only in egregious cases: most departments probably feel a sense of responsibility towards their graduate students, take care to look out for their students, and try to create an environment that gives students a chance to finish their degree.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: In my college a graduate student was terminated with a master degree in the middle of PhD due to his inabilities to perform well in the lab.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/15 | 1,125 | 4,707 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm a civil engineer myself and found no options for depositing engineering related **pre-print papers** in any online repositories. Is there any easy solution to this? For example, academia.edu lets one upload their papers but other people must have account to download the paper which is kinda turn off.
In short, I want a repository like ArXiv from where people can download anonymously and also with easy submission procedure.
EDIT: **This is about already published articles in journal or conferences, so that people can download the pre-print anonymously.**<issue_comment>username_1: I suspect the reason you're having difficult getting answers is because your goal is unclear from your question. The best way to have your work added to an online repository is to submit your work to a recognized engineering journal, such as one of the IEEE societies. If you don't want to support paid publishers, you could consider checking out the [PLoS](http://www.plos.org/) journals.
However, you have to recognize something fundamental about your work; from my experience, people doing serious research aren't trawling the web looking for information that happens to be placed on the internet that just happens to be related to their field of interest. Researchers overwhelmingly use journals to communicate, for the simple reason that journals provide a peer-review process, meaning that the content is vetted for accuracy, quality, and relevance. If you simply want to put your stuff online, get a blog, but if you want others to read it—particularly others recognized as leaders in the field—you will almost certainly want to submit to a journal. Most well-known researchers that I know wouldn't look to "online repositories", if they exist, simply because the signal to noise ratio is guaranteed to be far too high to be worth their time.
tl;dr - I'm not sure of your end goal. Consider submitting your results to be published (and added to the publisher's archive). Also, interesting discussion in comments; read them below.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: the best source for scientific papers is American Society of Civil Engineers witch you can visit at: <http://ascelibrary.org>
second source is ICE Virtual Library at this address
<http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com>
anyway, many publishers have journals in field of civil engineering, but as you said, most of them require subscription (personal or via university)
also, you can find some journals in Directory of Open Access Journals
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: **Update 2020**: There is *still* no widely used preprint server for engineering articles.
* There are (now?) a few engineering categories on arxiv, e.g. electrical and computer engineering. Everything that has anything to do with machine learning or data analysis is a good fit, anyway. I have uploaded a few biomedical signal processing papers on arxiv as well. See <https://arxiv.org/> for the list of categories.
* Very recently, [IEEE introduced its own preprint server](https://www.ieee.org/about/news/2020/ieee-introduces-techrxiv.html), "a preprint server for the global technology community": <https://www.techrxiv.org/>. I could imagine that with the backing of IEEE, this could become reasonably popular in some time.
* Of the three preprint servers I mentioned below in 2016, <https://engrxiv.org> appears to be the only one that's still reasonably active.
* <https://www.preprints.org/subject/browse/engineering> also appears to be reasonably active.
---
It appears that there is currently no widely used preprint server for engineering articles. Interestingly, there appears to be a bunch of platforms that have all been launched very recently, and which all target (among others) engineering preprints:
* Launched in July 2016, there is now (currently only in a preliminary version) [engrXiv](https://osf.io/view/engrxiv/), which is a dedicated preprint server for the engineering sciences. It is supported / advocated by [the center for open science](https://cos.io/).
* There is the [Self-Journal of Science](http://www.sjscience.org/) which provides an innovative, open peer review process and also allows for publication of preprints.
* Finally, there is [The Winnower](https://thewinnower.com/about) which also provides a platform for an open peer review process.
Unfortunately, in all of these, activity is currently rather low, probably due to the novelty of these platforms. Time will show whether one of these will become really popular.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I believe that you are looking exactly for this:
<http://www.preprints.org/subject/browse/engineering/civil_engineering>
Upvotes: 0 |
2012/05/16 | 1,370 | 6,113 | <issue_start>username_0: Sometimes we may ask questions on stack exchange or online forums wherein the response is helpful or even essential to a piece of work that gets published in an academic journal. If this occurs, how should credit be given to those involved in the exchange? Should they all be included as authors? Should a link to the forum be included as a reference in the paper?
Once something is in a stack exchange or forum, it's "published". Perhaps in the future, the current peer review model will transform into people writing blogs and posting in forums and databases. But for now, how might this issue be dealt with while forums, blogs, etc coexist with journals?<issue_comment>username_1: ### Issue of citing authorship
Starting from first principles, I think in most instances on StackExchange it would be **the original poster of the quoted answer** that would be the relevant author. The person asking the question is useful but it is typically the information provided in a particular answer that would be the typical candidate for citation.
That said, I imagine there could be instances where the question itself or an overall exchange represents the unit of citation. In such a case, it would make sense to cite all relevant contributors.
### Does something learnt from StackExchange need to be cited?
A lot of learning goes into a journal article. This learning comes from many sources. That which gets cited is only a small fraction of that. A scientist might (a) read a statistics book; (b) ask a friend; or (c) ask a question on Stats.StackExchange.com to learn more about how to analyse his or her data. In both cases, the person has devised an analysis plan based on having learnt something. However, generally these sources are not cited. In each case the scientist has learnt how to do something, but ultimately the knowledge is already established in the literature.
I also think that the vast majority of posts on StackExchange do not constitute a citable unit of original research. That said, where this does occur and it it influences your work, it makes sense to cite the source.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: What merits a citation or coauthorship is a subtle question, but the answer doesn't change when people interact online. The main difference is that the interaction is more visible: authors may feel awkward if they decline to cite a publicly visible (but unimportant) contribution, and the contributor may feel encouraged to complain. This adds to the pressure of the decision, but it shouldn't change the answer, and the other issues and subtleties are the same as in offline interaction.
As for online contributions being "published", I suppose that's true in the technical sense that they have been made available to the public, but that's not what academics mean when they talk about publication. For example, listing a stackexchange answer as a publication on one's CV would be considered at least eccentric, if not deceptive, regardless of how impressive the answer was. (The best one could hope for is to list it somewhere else.)
I'm not sure what the relevance of the second paragraph of the question is, but here's a guess. Suppose Alice is writing a paper and Bob makes an absolutely critical intellectual contribution via a stackexchange answer. Normally such a contribution would merit coauthorship, but Alice might declare that Bob's work is already published via stackexchange and that she will simply cite it rather than making him an author. That would be unreasonable and unfair to Bob, but if Alice was scrupulous in citing Bob's answer and giving him full credit for its contents, then it's not clear that Bob would have any recourse. I'm not convinced this is more than a theoretical problem, since the number of stackexchange answers that could merit coauthorship is tiny (maybe not zero, but that's a good first approximation) and most authors are well behaved anyway. However, I suppose it could happen.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Citing a forum post is very close to "personal communications".
The benefit of actually citing (instead of thanking the author in the acknowledgements) is that you:
* explicitly say what was **their contribution**,
* give more **details** or provide the context
(sometimes the post is longer, with more threads than those mentioned in the paper),
* implicitly **build visibility** or prestige of the forum/SE site/MO/...
When it comes to the author(s), there is no established approach. Typically (default from `cite` on the MathOverflow and `link -> cite` on the StackExchange) **you cite the exact post** (e.g. the selected answer with its author). However, if you want to point explicitly to more authors (e.g. actually you base on two answers or the question itself is non-trivial), then it may be a good idea to include them as well.
If you consider that their contribution is substantial, then you can decide to have them as **coauthors** (of course assuming they agree). But then the rules are no different from talking in person. (Except for the fact, that on fora some people may be unreachable).
Moreover, if something is simple (but not trivial, i.e. present in standard textbooks), citation is welcome. For that reason people quote tables of integrals and for the same reason I think that simple **findings you base on should be cited** as well.
I think that hiding one's sources is neither productive nor fair.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: There's a simple test for citing/acknowledging. Did you come up with the contribution yourself ? If not, then you need to cite whoever did.
Whether this amounts to authorship, and how exactly to cite the contribution (as a footnote, acknowledgement, personal contribution or whatever), depends on the conventions of your research area (especially for authorship thresholds). In general, if you're merely deciding between different kinds of citation, more information is usually better.
As for the entire second paragraph about conventions in publishing, I think that's irrelevant.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/17 | 596 | 2,433 | <issue_start>username_0: There is a general tendency of students (master's or less) to rate highly those courses that create a value for them at the industry. For example, in CS, networking or OS courses are found to be attractive by many students simply because these are (almost) indispensable for most job interviews. It is difficult to find the same kind of enthusiasm for say, an optimisation course.
Another example from ECE will be courses pertaining to electromagnetism. Students generally love VLSI-based or telecommunication courses and ignore or dislike the ones on EM. Similarly there could be subfields in many areas where research has stagnated and relevant courses do not carry industrial value, but it is impossible to exclude them from the syllabus.
How does a professor teaching such a course sustain the interests of the students? How does he/she make the best out of a bad job?<issue_comment>username_1: I hate to resort to youtube but:
<http://youtu.be/WgWNQVdhE9A>
<NAME> at Stanford teaches Intro to Chemical Engineering which is essentially a glorified way to say Mass Balance and Stoichiometry. It is literally a course on converting values from Metric units into English units. It is literally a course about realizing that what goes in a box must come out of the box. It is dry and boring material.
As described in [Why do so few universities offer OpenCourseWare videos of their lessons?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1219/319), not every class is worth making an OpenCourseWare video but they did for this one. He kills time with stories and lots of them. He goes into the history of chemical engineering. He teaches use the Socratic method. They do problem sets and then go on field trip to see what their problem set was about. It may be dry stuff but at least it would be entertaining.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: There are many ways to motivate students, including but not limited to
* showing practical relevance of the course
* explaining what makes *the teacher* passionate about the subject
* linking the course topic to their own experience
* actively engaging the students in discussions
* giving the students adequate tasks and providing them with rapid and positive feedback (adequate = not too difficult and not too easy)
Some tips and tricks can be found on <http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/motivation.html>
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer] |
2012/05/17 | 2,158 | 9,161 | <issue_start>username_0: Discussions about academic publication (for example, the recent [Elsevier boycott](http://thecostofknowledge.com/), the [actual cost of publication](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-journal/), open-access initiatives by [universities](http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup143448) and [funding](http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=419475) [agencies](http://publicaccess.nih.gov/), [citation cartels](http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/10/emergence-of-a-citation-cartel/), or [post-publication review](http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/19/post-publication-peer-review-what-value-do-usage-based-metrics-offer/)) are often muddled by the fact that publication practices and culture vary significantly from one discipline to the next. I would like to see some of these differences explicitly teased apart.
I'm particularly interested in exactly how publishers in different disciplines help move authors' ideas to formally published papers. Publishing in any discipline requires the combined effort of authors, publishers, editors, and reviewers, but the distribution of these efforts (and their associated costs) seems to vary from one discipline to the next.
**What specific services do publishers provide to authors in your discipline?** Please only one answer per discipline. (If necessary, define "discipline" as "set of researchers with the same publication practices".)
(At a deeper level, I am curious why so many people seem to associate the value, authority, and prestige of various publication venues with their *publishers* instead of their authors, editors, and readers. But that's not a good question for StackExchange; let's stick to the narrower factual question.)
I'll provide an answer for my own discipline.<issue_comment>username_1: In theoretical computer science:
* Papers are written, illustrated, and typeset (in LaTeX) by authors and refereed by unpaid volunteers. Some publishers give free journal subscriptions to editorial board members; a few pay a small stipend to the editors-in-chief of each journal; otherwise, editors are also unpaid volunteers.
* Most journal publishers provide an online system to help editors track submissions and communicate with referees. Conference publishers do not; most program committees use free systems like [EasyChair](http://www.easychair.org/) or [HotCRP](http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/hotcrp/).
* Some journal publishers employ copy editors, who produce the final camera-ready paper directly from author-provided LaTeX and image files. Specifically, copy editors correct (and invariably insert) spelling and grammar errors, and reformat the paper (especially the bibliography) to fit the publisher's standards. For other journals and most conference proceedings (Springer's LNCS series being a notable exception), copy editors simply do not exist; camera-ready papers are produced by authors using publisher-provided LaTeX packages, except possibly for page numbers.
* Most publishers provide electronic versions of their papers to subscribers. Some publishers also provide extensive indexing and cross-referencing of their publication catalog. Online-only venues are still relatively rare, so for most venues, publishers print, bind, and ship paper copies.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: In psychology and neuroscience, in addition to all the services noted by username_1 for theoretical computer science, the publisher lays out the text and the figures on the page to fit the standard journal layout.
This usually requires manual intervention because papers in psychology and neuroscience are rarely composed with LaTeX. More often they are submitted as a Microsoft Word document or a PDF. The need for intervention by a person makes this process expensive, although it is sometimes outsourced to India to make it cheaper. In many cases, layout seems to be the process that preventes academics from publishing their journals online themselves without a publisher. Doing the layout seems too time-consuming for academics to manage on their own.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: In mathematics, the publisher mainly:
* organizes the peer-review (for example by providing an electronic platform for submission, communication with authors and referees, etc.);
* provides copy-editing;
* publishes in paper (organizes printing, sends the volumes, etc.) and electronic formats (manages a website, cross-links, a database, etc.).
I would add a remark: it seems that many of the cheapest journals do all these three things a lot better than most the expensive ones. For example the professionalism of copy-editing was far better for my papers handled by the London Mathematical Society or the American Mathematical Society than for the one I got published by Elsevier, Springer or World Scientific. My only copy-editing horror story happened at Springer (seven errors in formulas introduced *after* the proofs).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I used to work at an academic publisher and so have some knowledge of what services are provided to all STEM fields. Social sciences should be similar, although I am less familiar with them.
Publishers provide:
* An editorial management system ("EMS"). [See this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101864/can-you-share-some-screenshots-of-editors-control-panels). EMSes help the editors keep track of the status of each paper, as well as things such as the performance of reviewers, author blacklists, and so on. EMSes (at least the more powerful ones) are usually not free and charge by per paper handled.
* Editorial office support (the "desk editor"). Desk editors are usually degree holders although not necessarily in a relevant discipline. They handle everything that might need to be done for the journal. Examples: answer author queries, liaise with Clarivate Analytics to get a journal indexed in Web of Science (see [selection process](https://clarivate.com/essays/journal-selection-process/) and the list of deliverables), operate the EMS for editors / reviewers who can't figure out how to use it or are not interested in learning, negotiate special issues with conference organizers, choose articles to feature on the journal's website, maintaining a publishing licence from the government.
* Acquisitions. The editorial board does a lot of this, but it's also possible a motivated desk editor or more senior editorial consultant will do some acquisition work too. Typically this involves emailing researchers and asking if they'd be interested to write on \_\_\_\_. They may discuss the topic with the editorial board before attempting to acquire for it. Usually editorial board approval is still required. The publisher may also attempt to invite people to join the editorial board.
* Peer review. Some journals are set up so that the desk editor assigns a member of the board to handle the paper. Desk rejections can also be due to the desk editor, although it requires some experience on his or her part. Actually handling the peer review process also happens relatively often in my experience. Sometimes the editorial board is either not very active or that no member of the board is interested in handling the paper, whereupon someone has to do it and that someone is the desk editor (or editorial consultant). Alternatively there could be an editor assigned who doesn't do anything for two months ([example](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/103418/with-editor-from-more-than-4-months)), and the desk editor moves the paper forward by inviting reviewers.
* Marketing. There're often publisher booths at major conference. One may also see insertions in these conferences. Other marketing activities include making flyers (visit your local library if you want to see what these are like), usage marketing, or things like "we just discovered gravitational waves, here're some of our papers on gravitational waves for free".
* Copyediting & proofreading. Self-explanatory.
* Typesetting. Most authors actually don't know LaTeX very well, if they use LaTeX at all. It is very rare that a manuscript does not require typesetting. Expressions such as "Ref (??)" or figures being placed 3 pages away from where they are referenced are quite common, as are poor quality figures or even hand-drawn ones which need to be fixed. TeX occasionally also does things like split the caption of a figure between two pages. If one has reviewed papers in one's field one should also be able to see firsthand what the typesetting does, since the paper that's sent for review has not been typeset yet.
* Website maintenance. Self-explanatory.
* Electronic distribution of published papers. This includes generating epub files, xml files, and DOIs.
* Customer service. This could e.g. be librarians asking why they haven't received an issue of the journal they subscribed to (which is a reason to publish issues whenever ready and not hold papers in reserve). If print issues are necessary, they + their distribution are also handled by the publisher.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/18 | 2,545 | 10,186 | <issue_start>username_0: What do academicians need to keep in mind when they are conversing with a fellow researcher whom they do not think highly of? I was reminded of *A Beautiful Mind*, where Nash (Crowe) says [the following](http://movie.subtitlr.com/subtitle/show/247553):
>
> I imagine you're getting quite used to miscalculation. I've read your preprints... both of them. The one on Nazi ciphers... and the other one on nonlinear equations... and I am supremely confident that there is not a single seminal or innovative idea in either one of them.
>
>
>
This is as forthright as it could possibly get! Suppose there is a situation where you have read a paper in some detail, and are sure that it is not just worth its salt. If you happen to strike a conversation with the author about the work itself, how do you go about it? How do tactful researchers react to this situation?<issue_comment>username_1: "Thank you for your useful contribution to the field" seems to be a popular opening in such cases.
And as it might be you, rather than the author, who's got it wrong, then proceeding by the Socratic method can be both tactful and constructive. Start with establishing common assumptions, focussing on those areas where you think the mistake starts: "So I think you started by assuming XXX - have I got that right?" Then continue asking questions, stepping through their methodology, giving them an opportunity to either contradict themselves, or to clear up your own misunderstanding.
Failing that, there's the altogether briefer: "Thank you for your useful contribution to the field. Oh, please excuse me, there's someone over there I've been trying to catch up with for some time, and I must catch them now, while I can".
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: * **Be polite.** There's nothing to be gained by being a jerk. It's funny in the movies, but do people really say things like that in real life?
* **Be diplomatic.** State initially that you do not fully understand the approach or the motivation, and then after some discussion state that you do not fully agree with the approach taken.
* **Be succinct.** Point out clearly what you see as being the problem with the paper.
* **Be constructive.** Indicate places where you think the paper/research could be improved, with concrete suggestions of how you would make the improvements.
Alternatively,
* **Avoid the topic**. Talk about the football scores instead. *What about those Bears?*
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: To understand that a paper is wrong can be much more difficult than that it is right. You might simply not get an idea or it could be badly written, or with rather a typo than an error.
* "Could you explain me the main idea of your paper?"
* "How can it be related to other research, ..."
or more technically
* "I don't understand how does X imply Y, could you explain it to me?" (\*)
or if it is about the general approach/philosophy
* "Personally, I prefer loop quantum gravity to string theory."
If there is a plain error, there is no reason to hide it. (Otherwise you would value tact over truth, which is IMHO a very bad approach to science.) But still it can be done politely, perhaps using (\*).
Rants are rarely successful at anything.
Moreover, judging quality or impact of a work is risky.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: For a published departure from conventional scientific professional etiquette, see the survey article “[Mathematics and the Internet: A Source of Enormous Confusion and Great Potential](http://www.ams.org/notices/200905/rtx090500586p.pdf),” in which <NAME>, <NAME>, and <NAME> criticize scale-invariant network models of the Internet. The article is unusual for its polemic, insulting tone. While it is not unusual for researchers to insult other researchers in private conversation, it is unusual to see this in print. Its authors spare no opportunity to criticize their competition, as well as mathematicians and physicists generally, whom they regard as foppish, insular ivory tower aesthetes, whose nostrils are unacquainted with the bracing scent of an expertly soldered electrical connection.
The authors deploy a literary reference to insult their competition:
>
> “What about replacing power-laws by the somewhat more plausible
> assumption of high variability in node degrees? While the answer of
> the scale-free modeling approach consists of tweaks to the PA
> mechanism to enforce an exponential cut-off of the power-law node
> degree distribution at the upper tail, the engineering-based approach
> demystifies high-variability in node degrees altogether by identifying
> its root cause in the form of high variability in end-user bandwidth
> demands (see [33] for details). In view of such a simple physical
> explanation of the origins of node degree variability in the
> Internet’s router-level topology, Strogatz’ question, paraphrasing
> Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “… power-law scaling, full of sound and fury,
> signifying nothing?” [52] has a resounding affirmative answer.”
>
>
>
The authors seem to suggest by this literary reference, which would not be lost on readers of the AMS Notices, that a model of the internet that predicts a power law node degree distribution is a “tale told by an idiot.”
The authors suggest that mathematicians and physicists must get their hands dirty, do some engineering and then contemplate the authors’ HOT models of Internet connectivity, which they assert, will be more mathematically interesting “… and certainly more relevant and hence more rewarding than that of the scale-free models of the PA type.” This sentence combines a dubious claim about what mathematicians should find interesting with a swipe at scale-free preferential attachment models of the Internet.
The authors conclude with these remarks:
>
> “In this article, the Internet has served as a clear case study, but
> the issues discussed apply more generally and are even more pertinent
> in contexts of biology and social systems, where measurement is
> inherently more difficult and more error prone. … Although the
> Internet story may seem all too obvious in retrospect, managing to
> avoid the same mistakes in the context of next generation network
> science remains an open challenge. The consequences of repeating such
> errors in the context of, say, biology are potentially much more grave
> and would reflect poorly on mathematics as a discipline.”
>
>
>
Why would mathematics be at fault? The authors do not cite the literature on the independent history of debate over the applicability of power law models in biology and the social sciences, e.g., [A Brief History of Generative Models for Power Law and Lognormal Distributions](http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/postscripts/im2004a.pdf) by Mitzenmacher.
Again I mention this as an unusual example in print of what appears to me to be a departure from conventional scientific etiquette.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: This could be tangential, but as an Associate Editor of a reasonably good journal, I once received a note from one of the authors:
>
> Reading your comments I found that there is a clear gap between your understanding and
> mine on what has already been in the literature, and what makes the contribution of the paper.
> I made multiple changes following your comments. But I did not follow those that are out of
> context.
>
>
>
with a personal email stating that
>
> I also never have experienced so much misunderstanding by either reviews or AEs in the history of my submissions.
>
>
>
on a paper that I gave my own review before sending it to other reviewers. So sometimes a rather strong language is being used. This particular author has published upwards of 50, may be close to 100, papers, which is a lot by the standards of the discipline we are in.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: To add to other good answers: I'd try to avoid "engaging" on such an issue, either directly with the author or with a third party. Anything else risks being interpreted as either being an *overt* jerk, or merely a passive-aggressive jerk. Only when you are a big-shot of some sort can you perhaps "get away with" being a jerk. But these dynamics are much more reminiscent of grad-school common-room wrangling among first-year grad students than of collective working toward a common good. If you must say something (because you think that others are being disserved by bad work being mistaken for good), I'd advise being extreeeeemely apologetic, and not sounding sarcastic when you say "I'm sorry, I don't understand how ..." and then "Ok, maybe I'm just being dense, but I still don't see..."
Perhaps the interpersonal model that would keep you out of trouble best would be the mental image of a student of *yours* who has made a large mistake, but with good intentions, and whom you hope to steer back to something more sensible ... or else discover your own error ... but in either/all cases without *alienating* anyone.
Indeed, here, again, the situation is that *you* stand to profit by the errors or failings of competitors, so, although on one hand your judgement may be expert, and, thus, trustworthy, on the other hand you have some incentive to be hypercritical, and, thus, mistrusted.
And other parties have some motivation to "stir the pot" just for recreation, so... watch out.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: I'm having trouble understanding why a conversation with someone whose work you don't think highly of should be all together different than conversations with others. Sure you may disagree with their work, but unless you are a real leader in your field remember that someone is looking down on your own work (and probably even if you are a leader!).
I've found most academic types to be cordial and get along fine. There are a few "rough" people that seem to bark a lot and act rude towards others, but they get a reputation pretty quick. You don't want to be that person, especially young in your career. Call me naive, but I guess I believe that what goes around comes around.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/18 | 1,287 | 5,273 | <issue_start>username_0: >
> "Luck favors the prepared mind"
>
>
> ( [Louis Pasteur](http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur) )
>
>
>
During the MS degree program or PhD program, it's advisable for a good student to get used to take a look on scientific activities of research groups he want to join, after graduation.
So, if the student decides somehow that he wants to try to join X, Y, Z groups, how should he **prepare himself the best** for the admission procedure?
What should he do **before actually applying** for that position in that group?
What should he do **before** the (formal centralized or informal) **admission procedure starts**?
Some of my own answers:
Task #0: he must read all the recent papers of the group he would like to join, and know very well those related to his research field.
Task #1: prepare all the admission material [(we've already discussed about this)](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/958/priority-of-application-materials-for-admission-decision)
Task #2...#N... what else?
What would you suggest to anyone to prepare himself to an admission procedure?
Thanks a lot<issue_comment>username_1: I'll start with some steps prior to yours in the interest of making the answer more generalizable:
1. **Determine which universities to apply to.** This will involve weighing factors such as ranking, faculty members, student opinions (from online discussion sources like this one or face-to-face discussions), sub-field specialties, and location, among others. You can prepare for this by looking all this stuff up:
1. [US News & World Reports rankings for graduate programs](http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools) is a good ranking system; there may be better ones I'm not familiar with.
2. Check the department's faculty page ([example](http://www.engineering.pitt.edu/Bioengineering/Research/Faculty_Research_Interests/)) for each university to see broadly-defined research interests for faculty members. Some people will explicitly list whether they're taking on new graduate students or not.
3. If you know anyone in the field, talk to them to see which universities/professors/labs would be good to check out.
2. **Determine which lab to apply to.** This will involve a lot of the above, but specifically it will involve talking to graduate students. [This question covers that topic in pretty good depth](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/353/73).
3. **Read up on the fundamentals of the topic you're interested in.** I would suggest you be familiar with the field enough to ask a basic question about it. In my field, review papers would be a great resource for this, although I will admit that it may be hard for you to find a good one. Speak with one of the subject matter librarians in your university (i.e., if engineering, talk to the librarians in the engineering library) and ask them to help you find recent review papers on your topic.
I'll concede this is a difficult task, but being able to ask even simple questions about the field shows familiarity, and will make you look better during the interview. I recall some of my graduate school interviews where I just sat there, almost completely unfamiliar with the lab's research topic, and I felt very foolish indeed.
4. [**All the stuff in the question you linked to above**](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/958/priority-of-application-materials-for-admission-decision).
At this point, most of your work is already set in stone; your undergraduate grades are set, your summer internships are complete, you finished the GRE, and it isn't likely you can do anything for your professors at this point to improve your recommendation letters. Just focus on the labs themselves and learn as much as you can before making decisions.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: The answer to your question also depends on whether you want to apply to a specific group (which I think of as the "European model" of admissions) or to an entire department ("US model").
In the US model, test scores, transcripts, and letters of recommendation tend to be the most important factor, with the statement of purpose being a less weighted criterion, as you tend not to be "locked in" to the area you outline in your statement of purpose. In that case, selecting a group follows admission, and then you need to do your homework on the different groups at the institutions you're interested in.
However, in the European model, selecting a group occurs *before* the admissions process begins. In that case, everything username_1 mentions in his answer is important. However, the key thing will be to convince me that you are directly and actively interested in applying to *my group*:
* Indicate how your skills and background are tied in to the projects available in my group.
* Show that you've done some looking into the recent work in my group.
* If you've established previous contact with me, raise a reminder of that.
* Explain why you would make a good fit in my group.
If you start doing those things, you'll make me want to request letters of reference and call you for an interview. If not, it's likely I'll send your application to the "circular file" without further consideration.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/19 | 865 | 3,936 | <issue_start>username_0: Suppose you find out that someone you know well or work with is reviewing the same journal paper you are reviewing (i.e., finding out this information on your own, and not via the journal or editor, assuming a blind process).
Can you discuss the paper? Can you discuss your reviews?<issue_comment>username_1: If it's a blind process, you're not meant to find out. As various people have pointed out in the comments already, discussing your review with them is therefore a big no.
One of the main principles of reviewing by several people is that you get independent opinions, so that if a particular (maybe well-known and well-respected) person doesn't like the research, they can't just make it disappear by convincing everybody else that it's bad.
For some conferences (and maybe journals?), you are able to discuss your review with the other reviewers after the initial submission. But in this case the facilities for doing this are provided by the submission system. There are two important differences to the situtation you've described though. First, your initial review will not be influenced by the discussion and second, there is a record of the conversations and changes made.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I think it depends upon the context and field.
For instance, on program committees in my field, once you've submitted your own review, it is normal to know who the other reviewers are and be able to see their reviews. (As a program committee member, I've always been able to see other reviewers' reviews and see their identity. If I was barred from doing so, I would probably refuse to serve on the program committee.) I always read the other reviewers' reviews, and sometimes discover that I'd missed something important. It is not uncommon for me to adjust my review in light of insightful comments found in other reviews. Therefore, I think it is helpful to be able to read other reviews.
Generally, I think the reviewing process assumes that reviewers will be independent. This is important, to give authors a fair shake and combat groupthink. For instance, in my field, we generally try to ensure that every submitted paper receives at least 2 reviews (usually at least 3 reviews). Why do we do this? Because we know that reviewers are human and can make mistakes, and it is possible for one reviewer to dislike a paper that is nonetheless great and worthy of publication. Therefore, our system relies upon reviewers to independently evaluate the paper in their initial review, without talking to other reviewers. If all reviewers got together and shared notes before forming their own evaluation or submitting their own review, it would create significant dangers of groupthink and undermine the purpose of having multiple reviewers read every paper.
On the other hand, once you and the other reviewer have submitted your initial review, it's probably fair game to exchange notes -- but this may be dependent upon the culture in your field or conference/journal. If you are not familiar with the culture, I recommend that you contact the program committee chair or journal editor to find out what process they want you to follow.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I largely agree with @username_1's answer, but I think there's another important aspect to the reviewers not discussing the paper with each other.
It encourages you not to rely on the other reviewers.
If I knew that X, who is really good at the mathematical side of things, was reviewing the paper, and talked it over with them, I might very well be tempted not to go over the math aspects of a paper with a fine-toothed comb, figuring "they've got it". Similarly, they might rely on me to pick over the data analysis or parameter choices, etc.
That's bad. Reviewers should be reviewing *papers*, not chunks of papers. It's one area where division of labor isn't desirable.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/19 | 983 | 4,445 | <issue_start>username_0: Consider a mid-level PhD student in a STEM field (maybe 2-3 years into the program), he and his advisor are working on something relatively new and interesting but they have reached a point where the research isn't moving ahead. How do you get out of this situation?
All papers have been read, colleagues have been consulted and top-of-the-head alternatives considered but the problem isn't moving ahead. No theory, computation or intuition helps. The only possibility left is to (optimistically) wait for a Hollywood moment when it all comes together.
Where do you go from here assuming that you **cannot** completely abandon that topic? At what point should you "start searching for other problems"? How do you choose what to work on next (should you start anew or pick something allied)?<issue_comment>username_1: If it's a blind process, you're not meant to find out. As various people have pointed out in the comments already, discussing your review with them is therefore a big no.
One of the main principles of reviewing by several people is that you get independent opinions, so that if a particular (maybe well-known and well-respected) person doesn't like the research, they can't just make it disappear by convincing everybody else that it's bad.
For some conferences (and maybe journals?), you are able to discuss your review with the other reviewers after the initial submission. But in this case the facilities for doing this are provided by the submission system. There are two important differences to the situtation you've described though. First, your initial review will not be influenced by the discussion and second, there is a record of the conversations and changes made.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I think it depends upon the context and field.
For instance, on program committees in my field, once you've submitted your own review, it is normal to know who the other reviewers are and be able to see their reviews. (As a program committee member, I've always been able to see other reviewers' reviews and see their identity. If I was barred from doing so, I would probably refuse to serve on the program committee.) I always read the other reviewers' reviews, and sometimes discover that I'd missed something important. It is not uncommon for me to adjust my review in light of insightful comments found in other reviews. Therefore, I think it is helpful to be able to read other reviews.
Generally, I think the reviewing process assumes that reviewers will be independent. This is important, to give authors a fair shake and combat groupthink. For instance, in my field, we generally try to ensure that every submitted paper receives at least 2 reviews (usually at least 3 reviews). Why do we do this? Because we know that reviewers are human and can make mistakes, and it is possible for one reviewer to dislike a paper that is nonetheless great and worthy of publication. Therefore, our system relies upon reviewers to independently evaluate the paper in their initial review, without talking to other reviewers. If all reviewers got together and shared notes before forming their own evaluation or submitting their own review, it would create significant dangers of groupthink and undermine the purpose of having multiple reviewers read every paper.
On the other hand, once you and the other reviewer have submitted your initial review, it's probably fair game to exchange notes -- but this may be dependent upon the culture in your field or conference/journal. If you are not familiar with the culture, I recommend that you contact the program committee chair or journal editor to find out what process they want you to follow.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I largely agree with @username_1's answer, but I think there's another important aspect to the reviewers not discussing the paper with each other.
It encourages you not to rely on the other reviewers.
If I knew that X, who is really good at the mathematical side of things, was reviewing the paper, and talked it over with them, I might very well be tempted not to go over the math aspects of a paper with a fine-toothed comb, figuring "they've got it". Similarly, they might rely on me to pick over the data analysis or parameter choices, etc.
That's bad. Reviewers should be reviewing *papers*, not chunks of papers. It's one area where division of labor isn't desirable.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/20 | 737 | 3,210 | <issue_start>username_0: The metric I see most on the internet and on journals' home pages is the 'Impact Factor'. Are there any other metrics that are considered as important as (or more important than) the Impact Factor?<issue_comment>username_1: Considered important by whom? Funding agencies will obviously prefer something "objective" like the impact factor, immediacy index or cited half-life. Researchers usually have less quantitative criteria like where do my peers publish or what is the journal's reputation.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: To expand on JeffE's comment, impact factor gets zero respect among mathematicians. It gets very little respect in any field, as far as I know, but it's a particularly bad measure for mathematics journals. For example, it only counts citation received within two years of publication, which is just about the quickest turnaround time you could get in mathematics (given math's publishing practices and timing). So numerically, the impact factor amounts to saying that if your paper doesn't inspire people to drop everything else and rush to get followup work into print quickly enough, then it has had zero impact.
Impact factors are also [manipulated](http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/04/10/emergence-of-a-citation-cartel/) by journal editors, often enough to require serious work detecting and punishing this behavior.
The only reason impact factors exist at all is that administrators want simple ways to rate research productivity, especially in dysfunctional settings where there's no infrastructure of trusted experts. Counting citations is easier to defend as "unbiased" than most other approaches.
There are many other numerical measures of journal quality, such as [eigenfactors](http://www.eigenfactor.org/), but they are not popular or widely used.
In 2010, the Australian Research Council rated 20,000 journals by quality based on expert opinion (for example, see [here](http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/math-journal-ratings/) for the math journals). This is still not great, since the ratings miss subtleties (such as journals with greater strength in some subfields than others) and it's not clear how reliable they are for lesser-known journals anyway. However, this is the closest anyone has come to giving a replacement for impact factors based on expert opinion. Unfortunately, it was so much work that they decided not to do it again.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Now the Web of knowledge issues a five-year impact factor that may be considered (slightly) more relevant in some fields, like mathematics. Mathematicians sometimes convince people rating them to use the MathSciNet MCQ instead, which is a five-year impact factor computed with a mostly mathematic database.
The AMS Notices publish yearly a survey of the processing time of many mathematical journals; this is one aspect of the editorial process quality, probably the easiest to measure.
You can find surveys on the prices of journal, which is certainly a good measure of the commercial talent of the publisher.
Overall, quality can mean a lot different things and you should explain for what purpose you intend the measures to be used.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/20 | 686 | 2,864 | <issue_start>username_0: Is there any compulsory rule for researchers to have publications in restricted access publication platforms? What if one has majority of his publications in open access journals?<issue_comment>username_1: No. The important point is whether the journals are *good* (= publish good papers) rather whether the access is open or restricted. This being said, in many fields AFAIK the better journals are access-restricted.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Some funding agencies require to publish in open-access journals, or at least strongly encourage it. For example, I am funded by a funding agency that strongly encourages to do so. Unfortunately, in many fields, there simply aren't any high-quality open-access journals around.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I see this question is old and has been answered, but I would like to add that the accepted answer by Alexander is really just an opinion, and in my opinion, there can be disadvantages for publishing in open access journals. I'm not arguing against open access, but the disadvantages should be mentioned and taken into consideration.
The biggest disadvantage, in my opinion, is that *some* people consider open access journals to be a dumping ground for mediocre or crap science. These may or may not be the same people who are reviewing your CV or tenure. This may or may not be more true at older, more prestigious institutions, and/or older, stuck-in-their-ways scientists/academics. Some people even consider publishing in open access as [career suicide](http://earlycareerecologists.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/why-i-published-in-plos-one-and-why-i-probably-wont-again-for-awhile/).
With all that being said, I am a fan of open access, and think science should be accessible to everyone. **"What if one has majority of his publications on open access journals?"** I plan to publish my next manuscript in open access, but I will limit it to just one for awhile. Having the majority of publications in open access may throw up a red flag to some people. Of course, others may appreciate more open access publications. I am PhD student, and need more 1st author publications, but I don't want too many open access journals on my CV (for now).
Other things you might want to consider when choosing a journal:
* Cost is a major concern, and is one of the biggest reasons why I will go open access with the next paper.
* Impact factor is another reason. Many open access journals have a large readership and high impact factor, which is good. However, impact factor should not be your main goal.
* Citations should be your biggest concern. It's not enough for people to read your papers, you need them to cite you. And for that to happen, you need to have quality science and writing. Although a high impact factor may help with that.
Upvotes: 4 |
2012/05/20 | 1,306 | 5,691 | <issue_start>username_0: When applying for the PhD program in mathematics, usually, one is not required to specify in what field (e.g., PDE, dynamical system, etc.) he/she intends to do. However, I don't know whether it will be *disadvantage* that one does not have a specific field in mind at all.
I ask this question because some people suggest the students who are applying to the graduate school should talk to or connect with the professor who is in the school he/she intend to apply for. But if one does not even have a specific interest in mind, how can he/she talk to a professor about his/her application? (Even if the student is interested in analysis, say, there are lots of sub-field in analysis.)
So, here is my **question**:
Does one need a very specific field in mind to apply a PhD program in mathematics? Would this be thought as advantage or disadvantage of an application?<issue_comment>username_1: At least for most graduate programs in pure mathematics in the US, there's no need to have a specialization in mind when applying. [This may be very different in other countries.]
It's valuable to demonstrate in your application that you have studied some serious mathematics, by discussing undergraduate research or advanced coursework. However, there's no implication that you intend to focus on the same fields in graduate school.
It's common to indicate an interest in a few possible specialties, usually at a level of detail ranging from "algebra" to "analytic number theory". If you are completely undecided, then that could come across negatively, by suggesting a general lack of enthusiasm. However, being too specific is also problematic. Matching a possible advisor too closely comes across as pandering, while being specific without matching anyone makes it look like you aren't a good fit for this particular department.
Overall, the general feeling is that incoming graduate students don't know enough to make well-informed decisions about specialization, and that anything they say is a little unreliable because their interests may shift as they learn more. From that perspective, it's not worth worrying about this too much.
As for talking with professors, at least at the schools I'm familiar with this will not increase the chances of admission (the decisions are made by a committee). After you've been admitted, it's important to talk with faculty and try to gauge the chances of finding a suitable advisor. However, that can and should wait until February.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: To add to what the username_1 said (so again, this has to do with United States)
If you have not already decided on a specialisation, you should *certainly not* try to shoehorn yourself into one just for the sake of applying for graduate school. If you have already decided on a specialisation, however, you should certainly specify it *and* try to talk to faculty members before and/or during the admission process. This is not so much to improve your chances at the school per se; this is mostly to find out whether that school would be a good fit for what *you* want to study.
When I was applying for graduate schools I had just one such experience. I was already quite sure about what I wanted to study, and so contacted some faculty members at places where I applied to who may be good advisors. One of them told me that (a) I have a pretty strong application and they will probably admit me (b) But he is personally busy with his existing students and won't want to take another one (c) There's no one in the same department that he sees as having similar enough interests to be a good advisor for me and (d) The department is running a bit low on money so unless I get a fellowship somehow I will have a hellish teaching load.
In the end I took an offer from another school.
For emphasis, however, what I mean by specialisation is very narrow: "partial differential equations" is still too broad. For my advice above to apply you need to be able to say which type of PDEs you are interested it (elliptic, parabolic, evolutionary, dispersive, transport, kinetic theory, fluids, and/or optimal control to list a few) and to be able to hold an informed (not necessarily expert) discussion on the subject and why you want to study it.
---
For other countries the system can vastly differ; this is especially so for degree programs which *require* a Masters or equivalent degree for admission. Many of those programs require submission of a research proposal and admission is contingent on the research being likely to be able to be conducted at said university and that a suitable advisor can be found for your research proposal. But for these kinds of degrees the opposite of the expectation described by username_1 holds: the incoming students are expected to be sufficiently educated (by the Masters degree) to make informed decisions and are also expected to have a good idea what is involved in pursuing PhD research and know what they want to work on. But you can general tell the expectations by reading up on the qualifications for admission and on what the departments/universities expect on the application form.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: In France the picture is very different from the US, since you start right away your PhD research (so you must have an adviser from the beginning, and an idea what you will be working on).
If one includes the M2 (second-year master) in graduate studies, then anyway most of them are specialized, so by picking one you do choose a specific field. You can switch for your PhD, but for some fields with many prerequisites it is usually a bad idea.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/21 | 1,730 | 6,303 | <issue_start>username_0: ### Background
I like the idea of writing an academic book.
* It currently looks better on a CV when applying for jobs, grants, promotions, etc. than a blog post, or a website.
* Libraries and people archive the work
* Most of the best academic content currently seems to end up in books and journal articles, rather than on websites.
* People have an attractive physical copy to engage with if they want.
However, I don't like the constraints imposed by a book. In particular, readership is limited to those who buy/borrow the book or have access to a library.
### Aim
In some cases, I'd prefer to write something like an "open access book".
* If readers want the physical copy, they can purchase the book. Ideally some of this revenue would go to the author, but I'm not too fussed if the publisher just uses this money to fund promotion, editorial assistance, production, etc.
* However, access to a PDF of the book is free online.
* The book gets an ISBN, archiving, availability on Amazon, etc. and all the academic recognition associated with publishing an academic book.
### Questions
* **So, are there any options for doing this, and what might be best option?**
* **Are there any case studies of others who have done this?**<issue_comment>username_1: ### OTexts
I just remembered that Professor <NAME> had spoken about his upcoming textbook [Forecasting: Principles and Practice](https://www.otexts.org/fpp)
>
> The entire book is available online and free-of-charge. Of course, we
> won’t make much money doing this, but textbooks never make much money
> anyway — the publishers make all the money. We’d rather create
> something that is widely used and useful, than have large
> publishers profit from our efforts.
>
>
> Eventually a print version of the book will be available to
> purchase on Amazon, but not until a few more chapters are written.
>
>
>
The publisher is called "OTexts".
It says on [their website](http://otexts.org/).
>
> OTexts represents a new approach to university textbooks. All our
> books will always be completely and freely available online. Why spend
> hundreds of dollars on printed books which are soon out-of-date when
> you can have continually updated online books for nothing!
>
>
>
At time of posting Rob's book appears to be the first text book to be published with this publisher.
It says at time of posting under the "For Authors" section
>
> Print royalties are shared 50-50 between the author and OTexts.
>
>
>
### Reflections
On the face of it, this sounds perfect for an author keen to maximise academic impact.
However:
* This is a very new company.
* I'm not sure what the implications would be for grants, promotions, jobs relative to publishing with an established academic publisher.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Cambridge University Press allows authors to freely distribute electronic copies of the books that it publishes, at least in mathematics and computer science. (Of course this has to be explicitly negotiated into the publishing contract.) Two good examples are [Allen Hatcher's *Algebraic Topology*](http://www.math.cornell.edu/~hatcher/AT/ATpage.html) and [<NAME>'s *Planning Algorithms*](http://planning.cs.uiuc.edu).
You could also just release the book on the web, let people create their own physical copies through a book-printing service like [Lulu](http://www.lulu.com/) or [Blurb](http://www.blurb.com/), and rely on the quality of the text to bolster your reputation instead of a traditional publisher's imprimatur. See, for example, [username_6's excellent *Open Data Structures*](http://opendatastructures.org/). However, I don't recommend this route unless (a) you write an *amazingly* good book, and (b) you already have tenure.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: For instance, you can try with [INTECH](http://www.intechopen.com/).
From the website:
>
> InTech is a pioneer and world's largest multidisciplinary open access
> publisher of books covering the fields of Science, Technology and
> Medicine. Since 2004, InTech has collaborated with more than 60 000
> authors and published 1720 books and 13 journals with the aim of
> providing free online access to high-quality research and helping
> leading academics to make their work visible and accessible to diverse
> new audiences around the world.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: One possibility is to self-publish. [<NAME>](http://www.essex.ac.uk/maths/staff/profile.aspx?ID=1309) published his extremely well-respected treatises on [*Measure Theory*](http://www.essex.ac.uk/maths/people/fremlin/mt.htm) with [Lulu.com](http://www.lulu.com/). The books (in fact, the TeX source files) are available on his website for free; all the while his books are well-enough received that many university mathematics libraries have purchased physical copies of the books.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: You may wish to investigate <http://re-press.org/> in Australia. They are an academic press that is, I believe, affiliated with an Australian University. They appear to do exactly what you describe -- make the PDF freely available and simultaneously offer a print version. We will be offering PDFs of our books through Google Play, but haven't yet found a way to subsidize this; at this stage of our development, we still have to charge, both for print versions and for PDFs.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: Another open-access friendly publisher is Athabasca University Press. They're currently in the process of publishing my textbook that @username_2 mentioned.
<http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120226>
They've been pleasant to work with and, in particular, were fine accepting a non-exclusive license to publish the work. This still allows, for example, a student society to print, bind, and sell their own copies if they can do it for less than what the publisher is charging.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: [**Spartacus-IDH**](https://spartacus-idh.com/) is a French science publisher. If I correctly understand the site, all books are freely viewable and some are freely downloadable as PDF. The catalogue is meager so far, but I see no reason why it shouldn't grow.
Upvotes: 0 |
2012/05/22 | 846 | 3,741 | <issue_start>username_0: Could multiple advisers mean that it might be easier for you to get funding? (since you're not just limited to one person?) Could it also mean that you get more overall input in your project (the input of 3 different people), and that maybe your project will be geared in a way that it's "interesting" to more people, and consequently might also get more citations that way?
They might pull your project in different directions, but how much is this really a concern?
And what about the special case where they explicitly expressed the desire to interact with each other more through the student? (this was actually the case in my situation).<issue_comment>username_1: The answer (as in case of most answers in academia.SE) is it depends, often widely from case-to-case. Unless presented with an exceptional example, I would generally view having more than two advisers as a major hindrance - the perceived benefit of having another source of ideas is negated heavily by the communications overhead between them, and the scope for misunderstandings about their role, which might cause the student to be either overloaded in multiple (possibly conflicting) areas, or languishing without any significant guidance. The rest of my answer is based on the assumption that the number of advisers is 2.
1. What is the defined role of the said advisers - are they equally responsible for guiding the student towards completion of their graduate studies (as I've been told is the case in some European schools/research schools), or is one of them the principal guide and the other a co-guide? The amount of time/effort invested by each would depend on their perception of how much they are actually responsible for the student's growth as a researcher.
2. As with most social interactions, it would help greatly if there is a good (or at least professional) working relationship between the 2 guides, as well as a healthy overlap of research areas - a new student might not be able to handle multiple research problems in completely different areas at the same time (without affecting the time to graduate, or the quality of results).
3. Assuming the student publishes with both of them independently, it would look good on her CV that she can produce publishable research with multiple established researchers. This could also have the side-effect of enhancing the student's research network - as a lot of papers (in CS at least) have more than 2 authors, and often collaborating on an paper could lead to more papers/research done with the same set of persons in future.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I think it's detrimental to research progress to have more than two advisors "in practice." (By this, I mean that there should not be more than two people directly involved in day-to-day matters. A "formal advisor" who does not play a substantial role in the thesis would not count.)
There are a number of reasons for this:
* It can be very difficult to get all of the advisors together in the physical sense, and even harder to get them to agree on anything, when they all will want to have their viewpoint considered and accepted.
* A substantial part of your time as a research student may be spent "translating" back and forth between the different advisors. On the other hand, this can also be a potential strength, in that you will have to learn how to make arguments using several different research "languages."
* Funding and bureaucracy will become more complicated the more advisors you have. (This will be true for multiple advisors, even if some of them are "hands off" or formal rather than practicing advisors.)
So, in general, it's best to have one or two advisors.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/22 | 758 | 3,332 | <issue_start>username_0: I was wondering if there is a rule of thumb for the following.
What percentage of students that are accepted for a PhD position were initially put on a waiting list, and were only admitted after high-scoring applicants did not enroll?<issue_comment>username_1: The answer (as in case of most answers in academia.SE) is it depends, often widely from case-to-case. Unless presented with an exceptional example, I would generally view having more than two advisers as a major hindrance - the perceived benefit of having another source of ideas is negated heavily by the communications overhead between them, and the scope for misunderstandings about their role, which might cause the student to be either overloaded in multiple (possibly conflicting) areas, or languishing without any significant guidance. The rest of my answer is based on the assumption that the number of advisers is 2.
1. What is the defined role of the said advisers - are they equally responsible for guiding the student towards completion of their graduate studies (as I've been told is the case in some European schools/research schools), or is one of them the principal guide and the other a co-guide? The amount of time/effort invested by each would depend on their perception of how much they are actually responsible for the student's growth as a researcher.
2. As with most social interactions, it would help greatly if there is a good (or at least professional) working relationship between the 2 guides, as well as a healthy overlap of research areas - a new student might not be able to handle multiple research problems in completely different areas at the same time (without affecting the time to graduate, or the quality of results).
3. Assuming the student publishes with both of them independently, it would look good on her CV that she can produce publishable research with multiple established researchers. This could also have the side-effect of enhancing the student's research network - as a lot of papers (in CS at least) have more than 2 authors, and often collaborating on an paper could lead to more papers/research done with the same set of persons in future.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I think it's detrimental to research progress to have more than two advisors "in practice." (By this, I mean that there should not be more than two people directly involved in day-to-day matters. A "formal advisor" who does not play a substantial role in the thesis would not count.)
There are a number of reasons for this:
* It can be very difficult to get all of the advisors together in the physical sense, and even harder to get them to agree on anything, when they all will want to have their viewpoint considered and accepted.
* A substantial part of your time as a research student may be spent "translating" back and forth between the different advisors. On the other hand, this can also be a potential strength, in that you will have to learn how to make arguments using several different research "languages."
* Funding and bureaucracy will become more complicated the more advisors you have. (This will be true for multiple advisors, even if some of them are "hands off" or formal rather than practicing advisors.)
So, in general, it's best to have one or two advisors.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/22 | 1,140 | 4,737 | <issue_start>username_0: If a master's degree candidate needs to select a thesis topic, but their advisor is unwilling to offer suggestions on the matter, how should one go about selecting a thesis?
* How might one select an area to study?
* How can one evaluate if if is a suitable topic?
* Does the thesis need to focus on an area which is relatively unexplored by prior research?<issue_comment>username_1: I would look what are the domain of interest of my advisor, see what he dose, and pick a thesis on one of that domain (In case I can run in trouble he can help). But I will take care to be a topic that I can also find interesting.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I would recommend that you read into some area of your Master which your find interesting. After you have an outline of an idea, then see on your university website which of the professors might be a suitable supervisor.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: You'll be amazed at how much the choice of Master's thesis will influence your long-term interest in the field, prospects for jobs within and outside of academia.
I'd suggest picking up some mainstream journals or magazines in your field and see what is currently trendy in the field, and what are bread and butter topics. Having a birds eye view of what's going on in the field allows you to be strategic about your topic, with the goal of planning a successful career.
Most likely, a successful career is one that will hook into an existing community of researchers in a topic, with a reliable source of funds that pay for conferences, departments, and students to populate them. A strategic topic is one that has the potential to make an impact in the field, and has the potential to cross-over into related disciplines, or even to have practical applications to real people (god forbid).
Finally, and most importantly, choose a topic that gets your blood flowing. Your master's topic could very easily become a PhD topic, which could then become a career focus. A lot of grad student burn-out is the result of students reaching their limit of interest in a topic, and thus deciding they've had enough.
As you survey mainstream and more specific literatures, be aware of what problems and topics get you excited. Choose something that you actually get excited about, that you can't stop thinking and talking about, and that you can even get other people excited about. That's the topic that will keep you going when you get stuck in the muck of research and don't know if you can keep going for another year.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: One approach is follows:
1. Find one or two good recent PhD theses in your chosen area. Read these thoroughly. As you read, write down every question that pops into your mind, write down every time the author states that something is left for future work or needs further investigation.
This will have a dual effect. Firstly, you will get a good introduction to a particular research field. Secondly, you will have a bunch of questions that need to be investigated.
2. Prune trivial questions, non-sensible ones, etc.
3. Next, organize your questions thematically and see whether you can find a common thread to these questions, something that could form the basis of your research.
4. Remove any questions that do not fit will with the others.
5. Based on the remaining questions, formulate a couple of coherent questions that your research could address.
6. Write a plan to address these questions.
7. Work through plan.
8. Write thesis.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: This is summary of what i got from a blog i read. The link will be provided below
**1.Idea generation**
Rather than look for one perfect idea, it is better to consider several. In the initial stages, you should be open to all ideas, even if they seem crazy.
The ideas don’t need to be completely unique, you could start with one idea, then consider multiple variations on a theme. However you approach it, take some time to think of as many different topics as you can.
**2.Testing**
This stage is crucial, and can save you years of pain.
Before you finalise your thesis topic, you need to test potential ideas for viability. Is the project possible? How will you go about it? What do you need?
Ask yourself, what is the simplest first step that would need to be taken, and figure out if it is possible
**3. Elimination and refinement**
It’s OK to let go of ideas if they don’t work or are impractical (and much easier to do if you start with several possibilities). But others may just need a little refinement to become viable.
Check out this blog by <NAME> (<http://jameshaytonphd.com/how-to-choose-a-thesis-topic/>).
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/22 | 1,327 | 5,264 | <issue_start>username_0: Compared to writing a research paper, I found writing a grant proposal to be much more intimidating, because there aren't any finished products that I can compare to. I am wondering if there are any good samples out there so that I can see what good proposals are like, especially for social sciences. Thanks!
Related question: maybe I am naive, why don't NSF and other funding agencies publish the full proposal of the ones that were accepted, say 5, 10 years after the funding ends? It seems to me that these older projects should have wrapped up already and there are probably minimal risk of being scooped.<issue_comment>username_1: Your best bet is probably to ask your colleagues if they would have you let a look at their (successful) grant proposals. That way you can also ask questions.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Many universities have a unit devoted to providing support with grant applications. Often they will have a database of previous grants (from members of the university), which you can examine.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: If you are writing proposals for NSF consider volunteering as a [reviewer](http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/meritreview/reviewer.jsp#2) in your discipline. This way you have both the opportunity to see a number of proposals and discuss them critically with others in your area. It is not a short term solution as it involves a significant committment of time and energy, but in addition to helping with your own proposals, you provide a valuable service and gain the opportunity to network with others in your area.
NSF also has a number of workshops on grant-writing that may help, but you likely will not see actual proposals during the workshop. In my area, NSF hosts a [conference](http://www.cmmigranteeconference.org/) every 18 months with a number of grant-writing or career development break-out sessions which may help with the proposal writing process.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: A good start would seem to be compilations of grant proposals that have been made public by their authors, e.g. [here](http://jabberwocky.weecology.org/2012/08/10/a-list-of-publicly-available-grant-proposals-in-the-biological-sciences/).
A more long-term approach would be to work on making grant proposals public more systematically, as discussed [here](https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/2014/submissions/opening-up-research-proposals).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: A proposal in response to an EU call is currently being drafted in the open [here](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Wikidata_for_research). For background, see [here](http://blog.wikimedia.de/2014/12/19/wikidata-for-research-presenting-the-team-and-a-first-sketch-of-the-workplan/).
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: There is now a dedicated site Open Grants (<https://www.ogrants.org/>)
which states
>
> An increasing number of researchers are sharing their grant proposals openly. They do this to open up science so that all stages of the process can benefit from better interaction and communication and to provide examples for early career scientists writing grants. This is a list of 132 of these proposals to help you find them.
>
>
>
Of course, that number keeps going up.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: The obvious premise, that imitating succesful proposals makes a new proposal more likely to be successful, is plausibly true, *up* *to* *a* *point*. Namely, sure, silly language or silly formatting or silly worldview or obvious ignorance of prior work will not get funding. But these things are relatively superficial. Avoiding those loud failures will not guarantee funding, rather, they are just entry barriers... sanity checks. Avoiding them will just get you to the starting line.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: A few possible sources:
1. Ask friends and colleagues. Many are happy to share their proposals in confidence.
2. Find out if your institution has a grant development office - and if they have a collection of old proposals to look at. Some of them maintain collections like this.
3. Following up on #2, find out if your institution, department, etc. has a group engaged in "proposal red teaming", wherein you review in-development proposals from your peers as if you were an external reviewer.
4. Try to become a proposal reviewer - for internal grant projects, or NIH/NSF study sections, etc.
There are also some groups that have been using FOIA requests to see grant proposals written at public institutions. Doing that is *extremely* controversial, and while legal, likely falls in the "bad academic citizenship" category.
>
> Related question: maybe I am naive, why don't NSF and other funding
> agencies publish the full proposal of the ones that were accepted, say
> 5, 10 years after the funding ends? It seems to me that these older
> projects should have wrapped up already and there are probably minimal
> risk of being scooped.
>
>
>
These proposals often contain long-term or overarching research plans that may not be complete in five years, unpublished data, etc. My guess is its easier to simply *not* than to try to parse that out and/or redact that information.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/23 | 1,461 | 6,105 | <issue_start>username_0: Academic blogs and websites are emerging as an important component of academic discourse.
However, I often lack confidence that the content will remain accessible in the short term (e.g., 5 years) let alone the longer term (10, 20, 50, 100 years).
An important function of journals is to archive the content and provide a stable citation system.
In particular, I'm worried about:
* academics who change employment where the site is hosted by the previous employer
* academics who die or lose interest in their content (e.g., domain names lapsing; site hosting fees ending)
* Internet services that close down
**Question:**
What can an academic blogger do to ensure that their blog content remains archived and accessible in the longer term?<issue_comment>username_1: I believe you have a number of options, which I'm stating in no particular oder:
1. You can use the [Wayback Machine](http://archive.org/index.php), which strives to store snapshots of web-pages across time. You can also use the more personalized [archive-it](http://www.archive-it.org/) service, which lets you manage your *own* collection, at the same time sharing it with the public - this is mostly used by institutions I think.
2. Alternatively, you can host your own blog on a licensed domain name, where you've prepaid the fees for enough years in advance.
Lastly, a very simple suggestion - if the content of the website is tending towards the academic quality/nature of a book, why not publish it as a short collection essays, which you can then disseminate freely over open web libraries etc?
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I guess that unfortunately, it's not possible to rely on any private service to ensure a long-term accessibility, since any service can shut down (in a similar way that any book editor can disappear, making impossible to print new editions of old books).
For your own blog, you basically need to have a local copy of it, and either you back-up the public version. For instance, you have a wordpress blog, and you back-up every new article you publish locally. In my case, I have a local version of my own website running on my personal computer (with a webserver and database), and I just sync my local copy with the server it's hosted on, so that there are always two versions of it. The likelihood of losing both at the same time is low enough to make it safe. If you have a decent Internet connection, you can also have your own server at home, and back it up online, so that there are always at least two versions in two different places.
For the other blogs, that's why it's important when you cite one blog not only to put a link, but also to put the text you're quoting, or some text you find interesting. Hence, if the original source disappear, there still exists a copy in many other places. That's the reason why on the SE network, it is asked not to put only links, but also the (description of the) content of the link. In other words, copyright problems aside, it's a good thing to copy!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: 1. **keep up-to-date backups** so that you've got copies in at least two geographical locations (e.g. one at home, one at work) of everything you want to keep.
2. **route everything via your own personal domain**: so that even when things are hosted elsewhere (current university website, pre-print archives, whatever), the URL people see and bookmark is the one on your own personal domain. That way, their bookmarks will still work when you change your affiliation away from your current university.
3. [pick good URIs, and then stick to them](http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Digital preservation is an evolving area, and the ability to preserve websites over the long-term is one of the most problematic areas. There are several reasons for this: the dynamic nature of contemporary websites (especially in a format like a blog, where content is update regularly and interactive components such as commenting), hyperlinking (which will eventually lead to broken links and broken images, which, if you point to content external to your site, is out of your control) and the instability of Web formats (websites might look better in one browser than another, much less how websites hold up over time) are just a few of the challenges in preserving websites.
There are, however, several things you can do to help preserve your website:
1. Backup—keep your content stored in more than one location (on your server, on your hard drive, on an external hard drive, in the cloud, etc.) and don't use an external service as your primary storage location, as they can collapse at any time (Geocities was a huge service when it was shuttered);
2. Keep up to date in changes in file formats and browser software—when browsers get updated to view HTML 5, 6, or whatever may replace HTML in the future, will they be backwards compatible to be able to view the blog you're authoring today, or will you need to migrate your website to a contemporary format?;
3. Utilize pockets of expertise on campus—archivists on many campuses have been working towards digital preservation solution and your university's archivist (especially at larger universities) may be able to provide solutions for the long-term preservation of your website; and
4. Consider normalizing your website to a preservation format—although creating a copy of your website as a PDF may mean losses in functionality (in terms of interactivity), it is a way to preserve the content and appearance of the site in a file format that is considered a safer bet for long-term preservation.
The Library of Congress also provides some tips on how to design preservable websites including following available web and accessibility standards, embedding metadata and maintaining stable URLs.
>
> <NAME>. (2012, February 6). Designing Preservable Websites, Redux.
> Retrieved May 23, 2012, from
> <http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2012/02/designing-preservable-websites-redux/>
>
>
>
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2012/05/23 | 832 | 3,615 | <issue_start>username_0: I think contributions to StackExchange constitute a valuable thing for an academic to do. In many cases such contributions are directly related to the aims of an academic department: community engagement, building new knowledge, etc.
This is particularly clear for sites that directly align with a particular academic discipline (e.g., [mathematics](https://math.stackexchange.com/), [statistics](http://stats.stackexchange.com), [psychology](http://cogsci.stackexchange.com)).
However, many people in academia have not heard of StackExchange. They often won't have heard about the reputation system. They may not be aware of the high quality content that often appears.
Thus, as an academic, **how should you share your achievements on the StackExchange network in contexts where how your performance is evaluated has material consequences?** (e.g., a CV, job interview, grant application context, promotion context)<issue_comment>username_1: I routinely mention my participation in cstheory as a moderator on grant applications (under Broader Impact). I also mention it as part of 'synergistic activities' in my NSF 2-page bio.
For departmental review, I'd view this as external service.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: The StackExchange point system is not a metric for anything other than "how much we trust you to use the site correctly". The idea exists to balance the needs of a public/open/crowdsourced/self-moderating Q&A system, with protection from internet trolls and defacement. The authors of SE even said themselves that "reputation was useless," and not a proxy for the value someone brings to the site.
For example, some people like <NAME> rack up huge amounts of points by editing posts with minor spelling corrections. This is NOT to say Brian's work is meaningless though - it absolutely is not - but you can't just look at a score and directly convert it into value to the community since there are so many different ways to gain rep.
I am myself a pretty good example of this. Recently I made a question regarding my poor working conditions which gained the most number of views for a question on the site to date. Probably because many people felt sympathetic to my circumstances, it gained a large number of upvotes too. I am under no illusion however, that my question and thus my account has anything like the value to the community that my rep score indicates. The large number of upvotes however, gave me the psychological support i needed to tell my boss that my working conditions *are* unfair, despite what he claims, and now everything on my end is much much better - so ironically, it was the upvotes themselves that had value, not the question.
There are also numerous answers that contain "hard truths" that get heavily down-voted not because they are inaccurate, but because people just don't like what they are reading - despite it having considerable value. People who play devil's advocate get hit by this the hardest.
So you see there is only a weak correlation between between rep and value to the site - and that is by design. Anyone who would know what to do with your rep score if seen on a CV would likely know this too, so if you do go on to put your academia.SE details on your CV, make sure to highlight why you like helping people, whether you like to ask good/insightful questions or answer technical/demanding questions with research, etc etc. Don't make any reference to rep, because the person reading the review won't be impressed - particularly if their rep score is lower or much higher than yours ;)
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/23 | 1,104 | 4,919 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a learning disability where I can only learn through seeing (not seeing and hearing). As a result, I need to have headphones in class to block all sound. Should I just tell the professor this?<issue_comment>username_1: It would not consider the request rude, as long as you have a reasonable justification for needing to wear headphones during class (which you do). How you might approach your professor and whether he'll accommodate your request may depend on where you're located and whether your jurisdiction provides protections for individuals with disabilities.
In the United States, for example, individuals with disabilities are protected though the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which require colleges and universities (amongst other organizations) to provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities—in your case, needing to wear headphones in class would be considered a reasonable accommodation (although this might depend on the subject of the course—in a woodworking course where headphones would pose a threat to safety, for example, it would likely not be a reasonable accommodation).
There are also proper channels a student needs to go through to request medical accommodations—initial requests should not go directly to the professor. Universities and colleges will have a centralized student disabilities office that handles requests for disability accommodations and it is this office that will require documentation of a disability and determine what accommodations a professor will be required to provide. They will then send a form to your professors indicating what accommodations they need to give you. Because of ADA and health privacy laws, the disability office will not tell your professor what your disability is and your professor is not allowed to ask you what your disability is.
Although this answer is very much local to the United States, similar protections may exist in other countries as well. Rather than approaching your professors directly, consider asking your university's student advising office, student life office or health clinic whether professors will provide accommodations for disability (you shouldn't need to tell them what your disability is). They will then be able to point you to resources that will work with you to find solutions.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: If you are in the United States, I would suggest you identify the office on your campus that services students with disabilities. That office can formally write you an accommodation for your disability, which you can share with your professors. By law, professors must follow the accommodations that have been created for you by the office on your campus that services students with disabilities. You do not have disclose your disability to your professors, but you do need to provide them with documentation.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I believe the *request* certainly isn't rude - I'd almost consider it your responsiblity to let teaching staff know the best way for you learn. How much effort the teaching staff put into servicing the request is dependent on the policies in place at your own institution.
Where I work, we'd co-ordinate with the educational support office, who would have met with you in the first instances, worked at the best process, and come to us with some recommendations (so they are looking after things like assessments and reports and the like).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Its not rude to ask and that is supported by the previous answers .If you are at a real university that has real exams that have candidate numbers on them and are moderated by lecturers at different universities then when you pass a paper you are just as good or just as bad as anybody else .I had a tutor to help me when I was repeating a course that I specialised in repeating .Over 20 years later when my tutor became a senior lecturer I let news of my learning disability slip .I passed and thought that If I had told the UNI would have things been any different .I dont think so because why should they make allowances for me .
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: To be honest, I have a student who has not reported any ADA-qualifying issue who requested (and got) permission from me to wear gun-range over-ear noise-blockers during exams (we're both very Southern, so all clichés aside, it's easy for both of us to tell that these cheap cans are not in any way specially augmented in a secretive way). I don't see that self-creating a silent zone is in any way inappropriate, it isn't disturbing others, and she made the issue far easier to deal with than she would have had she actually decided to pursue the matter as a potential ADA issue.
But *yes*, if you feel that an accommodation might help ameliorate your federally protected condition, then by all means, pursue it!
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/23 | 1,517 | 6,564 | <issue_start>username_0: I generally chase after whatever my adviser/supervisor tells me to do, although I know that it's sometimes a project that they don't want to spend their time on. I know that I can learn a lot even when I go after such "wild goose chases".
I recently talked to a PhD student though, and he advised me that I should learn when to say "no" to an adviser, to recognize that sometimes those suggestions can lead to "wild goose chases" that aren't worth the time.
What are some guidelines when an adviser wants you to chase a problem that might not be worth its time investment?<issue_comment>username_1: This is a difficult issue to deal with. You are correct in stating that (in some disciplines) this can be a significant problem, but as a graduate student, it may be hard for you to argue your case that the project will lead to a dead end.
I see two possible solutions:
1. If you have a good relationship with your advisor, speak with him about your concerns. He may admit that he's not sure where the project will lead, but he will likely be willing to give you the background as to why he's interested in the project, and where it will lead you. These types of projects are also good opportunities to ask your advisor to introduce you to collaborators with whom you can complete the project, as he's only tangentially interested.
2. If your advisor likely won't listen to you, then put in the month or three to do the necessary background research to prove your case. Look up the references, research previous findings, contact others who have worked in the field. One of two things will happen: (1) you will change your mind, or (2) you'll build a strong case to present to your advisor as to why this research is not worth yours or his time. If at that point he still wants you to work on the project, then either he has political motivations or he's just being unreasonable, both of which are indicative of larger problems which you should deal with.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: This will depend upon your relationship with your advisor. Does your advisor solicit your opinions on projects? Does he/she project openness about projects? Does he/she give you several options of projects? Does he/she ask for your suggestions?
If yes, then I think you can have a frank conversation with your advisor. Mention your concerns politely, and ask your advisor for their thoughts on those issues. Maybe your advisor has already given them thought and has some reasons to think it's a better project than you realize, and can explain to you. Maybe your advisor thinks highly of you and has handed you a long-shot high-risk high-reward problem, on the idea that you might just solve it, and if you do, you'll hit a home run. Or, maybe the concerns haven't occurred to your advisor and that might lead to a fruitful discussion about how to deal with the challenges, or might lead to a change in your project. It's also possible your advisor might have good advice about how to mitigate the risks you are most concerned about.
For instance, one piece of advice I got from *my* advisor was: be ambitious, reach high, but also design your research to "fail fast". Think proactively about what are the most likely ways that the research might fail, and then try to order your work so that if the project is going to fail, you discover that fact as quickly as possible. That's not always easy to arrange, but your advisor might have helpful suggestions for you.
If your advisor doesn't seem likely to welcome discussion about which project to work on, you can still raise these issues, but you may need to be even more deferential and careful about how you raise them.
Some things to avoid: Be very careful to avoid sounding like you are whining. Faculty put a lot of effort and thought into trying to find good projects for their students, and it can be very challenging (you want to find something that they have the skills to succeed at and that they have a chance of completing successfully; but on the other hand, you want to choose an ambitious project which if successful will lead to a good publication, which often means it is hard to know in advance whether the project will succeed or not). My experience is that many students tend to be a bit critical and "picky" about projects, so be careful not to sound ungrateful.
Also be careful not to be too arrogant. Your advisor probably has a lot of experience with research, whereas you are just learning. Therefore, your judgement may be a bit off.
Also, keep in mind that it is expected that many research projects fail. Therefore, you have to be willing to take risks and take on research projects where you're not sure whether you will succeed, and you have to give 'em a good try. You should expect that perhaps 50% of your research projects will be failures, or at least will succeed in the way you initially envisioned. If all of your research projects are a success, either you should maybe consider taking on harder problems, or else you are very lucky to have an amazing advisor.
Moreover, remember that it is important that any research project you take on relate to shared interests. You want the project to be something your advisor is excited about; if your advisor is unenthused, nothing good can come of it. So if you've noticed that your interests seem to be a different than the things your advisor is excited about, your advisor may be trying to thread the needle of finding something of mutual interest.
One last thought: if you think your project sucks, one constructive way to move forward is to try to identify a better research project and propose it to your advisor. If it is truly promising, and if it is in an area of interest to your advisor, he/she might get excited by your idea and encourage you to run with it. Just be careful: since you don't have as much experience as your advisor, you don't have as reliable a judgement about what constitutes a promising project and what doesn't.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: The answer is far simpler than these. There is exactly one rule to follow: do what will get you to graduate sooner. If the problem your adviser has asked you to tackle isn't going to become a chapter in your dissertation, say "no". A good adviser will direct you in such a way that you make progress to defending your dissertation. A poor adviser will try to get as much cheap labor out of you as he can before your funding runs out.
Don't let your doctoral adviser take advantage of you.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/24 | 1,062 | 4,136 | <issue_start>username_0: Are there expected dressing norms at faculty interviews? Will a casual tee-jeans be discouraged?
In the same vein, what is expected when a student visits the campus for an interview?<issue_comment>username_1: While its not mandatory to wear a suit for a faculty interview, it doesn't hurt, and may actually be expected in certain disciplines. Best to ask around beforehand. I've never heard of a dress code for student visit, but something semi-formal doesn't hurt.
As a general principle, it doesn't hurt to be more dressed up than necessary. The reverse can often be embarrassing. But as with most such thing, the departmental culture is the most important factor.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The only single right answer is that **it varies**.
However, there are methods that you can use to establish what the right answer might be in the particular case you have in mind.
Here's my method.
* As with pretty much all human contact, **the person you meet will have norms and expectations**, conditioned by their culture, their quirks, the organisation they work in, the physical location of the organisation, your gender, their gender, your age, their age, and so on.
* There is no general answer as to what those norms and expectations are, so **research the specific person, organisation and country**.
That's half the story. The other half is:
* **what impact do you want to have**?
* **Do you want to meet their expectations, or challenge them?** The latter is high risk, but with potentially high reward.
* **How do you want to project yourself to them**?
* **How strong is your position** - are you going from a position of strength, or one of weakness?
And **if in doubt, wear the clothes that are smart clothes within the business world (rather than the academic world) in your own culture.**
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: If you know who the person(s) you will meet with are, try to find photographs of them on their faculty pages.
The way they want to be seen by other people is usually pretty close to what they expect of you.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: The best advice for any interview dress code is, one standard of dress higher than what you would be wearing if you got the job. eg if jeans and a t-shirt is what most people wear around the office, then business trousers and a shirt is fine for the interview. If its business trousers and a shirt, then for the interview a suit and tie.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: At the SLAC where I used to teach, there was a circulating story of a job candidate who showed up in a t-shirt and jeans. They were summarily shown the door.
This is even though it was a pretty casual place -- I wore a t-shirt and jeans most days during the warmer months.
Dressing nice without looking like you are going to a funeral, the prom, or a beach party is the tricky thing -- especially for women. Men can wear a dress shirt, necktie, and casual sports coat. Women have fewer dressy options so we tend to default to pantsuits.
Final thoughts:
* Dressing more formally than is the norm means that you misread the university climate *or* that you might have been nervous and overcompensated.
* Dressing less formally than is the norm means that you misread the university climate *or* that you might not being thinking seriously about the position.
Given the dangers of the latter, it's clear that dressing too formal is safer than dressing too informal.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: First of all, I'd be unlikely to ever evaluate someone based on what they wore for an interview. But second of all, insofar as I did, more points go to the dressed down person than the dressed up one -- after all, people who dress up might expect me to do the same, and I most certainly do not want my department to become a place where there's any pressure to look "professional".
Though to be fair, I followed the above advice of "one step up from usual" when I went to interviews myself -- my daily wear is a tee-shirt and jeans, so for interviews a I wore a shirt-with-buttons and jeans.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/24 | 1,210 | 4,846 | <issue_start>username_0: I am going to release a Technical Report that will be archived and made available online by the university's library. An abridged version of the work was accepted by a peer-reviewed conference and will be published in the proceedings. For this to happen, I have to sign a [copyright form](http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecopyrightform.pdf), assigning to the publishing institution all rights under copyright.
My questions:
a) What is the best way to grant readers of the Technical Report the freedom to quote (unlimited length), distribute, and build upon the work? And point out that they have this freedom without asking for my permission?
b) Is a Creative-Commons License the way to go? If yes, in what form should include the lincense in the work?
c) Is there any conflict between the copyright form for the conference paper and releasing the Technical Report under an open license?<issue_comment>username_1: While its not mandatory to wear a suit for a faculty interview, it doesn't hurt, and may actually be expected in certain disciplines. Best to ask around beforehand. I've never heard of a dress code for student visit, but something semi-formal doesn't hurt.
As a general principle, it doesn't hurt to be more dressed up than necessary. The reverse can often be embarrassing. But as with most such thing, the departmental culture is the most important factor.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The only single right answer is that **it varies**.
However, there are methods that you can use to establish what the right answer might be in the particular case you have in mind.
Here's my method.
* As with pretty much all human contact, **the person you meet will have norms and expectations**, conditioned by their culture, their quirks, the organisation they work in, the physical location of the organisation, your gender, their gender, your age, their age, and so on.
* There is no general answer as to what those norms and expectations are, so **research the specific person, organisation and country**.
That's half the story. The other half is:
* **what impact do you want to have**?
* **Do you want to meet their expectations, or challenge them?** The latter is high risk, but with potentially high reward.
* **How do you want to project yourself to them**?
* **How strong is your position** - are you going from a position of strength, or one of weakness?
And **if in doubt, wear the clothes that are smart clothes within the business world (rather than the academic world) in your own culture.**
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: If you know who the person(s) you will meet with are, try to find photographs of them on their faculty pages.
The way they want to be seen by other people is usually pretty close to what they expect of you.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: The best advice for any interview dress code is, one standard of dress higher than what you would be wearing if you got the job. eg if jeans and a t-shirt is what most people wear around the office, then business trousers and a shirt is fine for the interview. If its business trousers and a shirt, then for the interview a suit and tie.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: At the SLAC where I used to teach, there was a circulating story of a job candidate who showed up in a t-shirt and jeans. They were summarily shown the door.
This is even though it was a pretty casual place -- I wore a t-shirt and jeans most days during the warmer months.
Dressing nice without looking like you are going to a funeral, the prom, or a beach party is the tricky thing -- especially for women. Men can wear a dress shirt, necktie, and casual sports coat. Women have fewer dressy options so we tend to default to pantsuits.
Final thoughts:
* Dressing more formally than is the norm means that you misread the university climate *or* that you might have been nervous and overcompensated.
* Dressing less formally than is the norm means that you misread the university climate *or* that you might not being thinking seriously about the position.
Given the dangers of the latter, it's clear that dressing too formal is safer than dressing too informal.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: First of all, I'd be unlikely to ever evaluate someone based on what they wore for an interview. But second of all, insofar as I did, more points go to the dressed down person than the dressed up one -- after all, people who dress up might expect me to do the same, and I most certainly do not want my department to become a place where there's any pressure to look "professional".
Though to be fair, I followed the above advice of "one step up from usual" when I went to interviews myself -- my daily wear is a tee-shirt and jeans, so for interviews a I wore a shirt-with-buttons and jeans.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/24 | 1,512 | 6,368 | <issue_start>username_0: It's always worthwhile to take some time to try to figure it out by yourself. But eventually there's a point where you're unsure how much more time it would take to figure it out by yourself (which could take far longer than you originally think), and when asking for help could be more helpful.
So for analytical or computational research, what are some guidelines for when you should ask for help (from either your adviser, other grad students, or other researchers) when you get stuck?<issue_comment>username_1: It took me six months to gather the courage to talk to my research adviser when I was stuck on a project that I knew would "never" work. I should not have waited so long. The conversation we had was very helpful, got me back on track, and, more importantly, got me off the project.
If you are in the same place for more than two or three weeks, its time to have a frank discussion with your research adviser. It's unlikely that he or she knows that you are stuck. The best case scenario is that you have a plan to get unstuck. The worst case scenario is that you are no better off. If you already have a committee, then your next step is to go to the other committee members for help.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I find that grad students always wait too long to ask for help, either out of fear of looking "stupid", or out of inexperience, or out of a misplaced sense of stubbornness. If you've spent a few weeks on something and you're thoroughly stuck, then you should absolutely ask someone (advisor, other students, anyone with knowledge). You'd be surprised at how often you were merely barking up the wrong tree, or just didn't know a very important fact or reference, or just had to reformulate the question differently. All of this takes experience, and that's what an advisor is supposed to provide.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: It really depends on your advisor's personality, your history of asking for help, the timing of the project, etc. The way in which you ask is also relevant. If you are generally a person who works autonomously and feel you can approach your advisor in a professional (non whiny, non needy) way, most advisors will be happy to help. If you're just afraid to dig in and get your hands dirty (which it sounds you are not), your advisor will probably be less interested in leading you through the process. And there is everything in the middle.
It also depends on whether it's your advisor's project and your project is part of a greater whole; if by delaying too much you are going to slow other people, you should definitely lean on the side of asking for help earlier. However, if you are working on your own idea, you should probably work longer before asking for help. You may also find that you are as much (or more) an expert on the topic than your advisor, so the advisor may not know the answer and may be hoping you'll be the one to figure it out.
There are no general rules. But if you can show that you can figure things out on your own, your advisor may see that as a positive thing and give you a better recommendation for it. On the other hand, if she/he sees you as so stubborn about asking help that you work inefficiently that could be a bad mark.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I do analytical/computational work daily, and I talk to my colleagues quite frequently. Just showing the derivations I made so far to someone often helps me spot my own mistakes, and get new ideas to attack the problem. Your colleagues will often have better understanding of certain subjects that you didn't think would matter for your problem. I guess it depends on your personality (I have highly collaborative), but I would say ask within a day from the moment you got stuck. If someone ends up helping you solve the problem, you will learn from that experience anyways.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: My answer is in two parts.
>
> When to ask other grad students or other researchers for help?
>
>
>
The answer is, anytime. There is nothing to be afraid of asking questions to your office mates, researchers across the doorway or even online. However, they may or may not be able to offer much help because they may not know exactly what you're working on.
>
> When to ask your advisor for help?
>
>
>
The answer is, when you're ready to ask meaningful questions. You don't want your advisor to say why didn't you ask for help sooner. Nor you wanted him to accuse you not working hard enough. If you have meaningful questions and you're stuck for a while - how long is that "a while" usually is a few weeks(long enough to be considered long), you should approach him/her and say you're stuck. Your advisor is there to answer your questions. That's what an advisor is. If you already spend a few weeks on a problem, he would be glad to help you.
You gain more understanding of your research when you try to figure out how to ask questions which make sense because you have to organize your thoughts before asking. Then you're closer to the bottom of it.
However, if you really want to figure it out by yourself for some reasons, you can consider giving yourself a few months. In this case, you would at least let your advisor know you're onto something so that he knows you're making progress. Don't forget he is your advisor. He is on your side !
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_6: You should ask whenever you're stuck. And, as mathematician <NAME> said, "Doing research ... most of the time one is stuck."
You should always be talking to people about what you're working on. You shouldn't be asking them to solve the problem for you, but you should be asking if they know of relevant techniques that might work on your problem.
You should certainly ask your advisor for help every time you meet with him/her. Again, don't ask them to solve the problem for you. Instead, ask whether you should pursue strategy X or technique Y. This can save you a lot of time (but they might be wrong, too).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: I constantly discuss my work with my colleges all the time,
not only may I get some helpful pointers or references, but asking/staring the question helps me in the solving process, similar to [Rubber duck debugging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging).
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/25 | 1,009 | 4,259 | <issue_start>username_0: My research interests are shifting, due to papers I read and talks or conferences I attend (and also due to change of tastes).
However, I don't know how to communicate it on my CV or my website.
One the one hand, I am eager to move into new fields, and I am eager to learn more (and they are my first preference, when it comes to the further research).
On the other, neither I offer "expertise" in them nor I have a collection of relevant publications (at best 1-2 somehow related papers).
So, should the new interests be listed in "Research interests" as:
* the first ones,
* the last ones,
* other (don't list them, or do sth else)?
Of course in longer research statements it is easier to explicitly state what one is doing and where the interest are going.
If it is relevant, I am a PhD student.<issue_comment>username_1: As suggested in the comments above, the answer will depend on whom you are targeting.
* If you are a professor targeting graduate students in a new field, I would just list the new field as an interest on your webpage, with links to your few papers. It should be enough to indicate to potential graduate students that if they have an interest in this field you would be more than happy to work with them.
* If you are a professor targeting grant agencies, then just write grants targeted at whatever field you're interested in. Note that, if you have a poor publication record in the field of interest, it may be a good idea to find a strong collaborator or co-PI (if applicable in your field) to boost the likelihood of acceptance.
* If you are a post-doc looking for new positions, I think it's pretty widely accepted that your interests will and should be changing. I would indicate it explicitly on your CV in your objective statement (assuming you have one) that you're interested in branching out, and again in the cover letter. Regarding your previous research, just list it under "experience"; the reader will understand based on your resume, cover letter, and the fact you're applying to jobs in different fields that this was intentional. As you stated, there is a not-insignificant chance that your lack of publications in the new field will negatively impact your application.
* If you're a student, then you barely *have* research interests; you just have the research you've worked on for 2+ years, which you did so you could earn a PhD. Your colleagues will recognize that you're still familiarizing yourself with the field. Unless the shift is so substantial that none of your previous expertise would be useful, I wouldn't even bother to mention shifting interests; it's healthy and expected.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: CVs usually have a line for research interests, and you can put whatever you want there. Similarly for a website. But if you're in a position to be evaluated based on your CV, be careful - you could be asked about these interests and you should have something to say.
Ultimately, if you're really interested in an area you'll start publishing in it and that will then be reflected in your publication list.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I find that **few of my research opportunities come from what I put on my CV or website**. I think much more **they come through my personal network**. If I'm invited to speak in a conference session, it's usually because the organizers know me, know my work, or (occasionally) know my PhD adviser (even though I finished more than 5 years ago). When I'm asked to referee a paper, it's often because my work is cited in the paper. One time I decided to go to a workshop in an area where I had not worked much. Not long after I committed to the workshop, one of the organizers asked me to referee a paper on that topic.
All of that is to say, that I don't think what I list on my CV among my "research interests" contributes much to my research opportunities. So, **if you want to generate more opportunities**, what should you do? **Go to conferences**. If you have work to talk about, great. If not, go to sessions on the areas you want to move into. **Ask good questions. Talk with the people you meet there** about possible research and workshops, or what's the next big thing in the area.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/25 | 3,206 | 13,906 | <issue_start>username_0: These days there is so much material on the web that it is difficult to set good exercises/assignments for students, because they often find the questions on the web simply by googling (or else ask at a site such as <http://cs.stackexchange.com>).
>
> How do people deal with this problem? How do you generate unique assignment questions?
>
>
>
For the record, the area I teach is computer science.<issue_comment>username_1: I do agree that asking creative questions in assignments and exam papers is quite a challenge. (Doffing my hat off to all profs who do that regularly.) Some of my thoughts:
* **Different wording**: The web may be a huge repository, but that should not be a limiting factor when it comes to questions. For example, consider the topic of probability. The basic stuff a student requires to know is limited enough to be taught in detail in the classroom, but the applications are innumerable and so are the questions that could be asked in probability.
* **Grouping questions**: Often the sort of questions that I find are the most difficult (and the most useful) are the ones where there is a single question with a number of interconnected sections, each of which draw from a different concept taught in class. Such questions require genuine understanding, and solution manuals and SE sites may not be of real help.
* **Research-based**: I would also appreciate questions where the faculty has included a small fragment of their own research (proving a small lemma, for example). This also gives the students a peek into the research of the professor's lab.
* **Using WWW constructively**: Yes, the web can play a dampener to assignment marks, but ultimately if the student uses it constructively to learn stuff, why should one discourage it? One solution could be to give google-able assignment questions, conduct a mini-test in class on those questions and mark the students based on the performance in this test. This is a better solution than home assignments where submission without learning is a possibility.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I don't think this is too much of a problem in courses where students have to build and demonstrate something.
* I teach first year, second semester programming. We set three weird courseworks that aggregate together to make a nethack like game. No one will have precisely this game on the web. Of course they can take advantage of code libraries from the web (in fact, I have a lecture teaching them to do just that when we get to GUIs). But that's a lot of what they'll be doing in the "real world" as well, so that's fine as long as it's acknowledged.
* I also teach a final year AI / Cognitive Systems course. Here it's even easier to set weird questions that aren't available on the web, e.g. replicating recent results or using new versions of research software (though either of these can be hazardous and therefore time consuming. Good TAs that test assignments in advance are a necessity!)
* Material that they *can* just look up but you want them to know by heart for some reason doesn't belong on assignments, it belongs in exams.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: This is certainly an important question. Here are some of my own thoughts on it:
**Having the regular homework consist of questions that the students do, in principle, have access to on the web is not necessarily problematic.**
For example, I recently finished teaching a year-long course out of <NAME>'s acclaimed *Calculus* text. At the beginning of the year I found that I was able to freely download the solutions manual. I told the students that the solutions manual was available online and that it was their job to look at it from sparingly to never. In fact they did a good job of this: the amount of time that they spent *coming to me instead*, sometimes more than once per problem, and the amount of effort and verbiage that most of them put into their homework strongly suggests that they hardly ever consulted the answer book. (I remember one instance in which a student freely admitted that she had cited the answer book for a single problem, which I found most impressive.) It also helps that the answer book is on the terse side and the grader was very picky and detail-oriented. Finally, the grades they were receiving on their homework were not such a large determining factor in their course grade so as to tempt students to cheat. This I think is an important point in undergraduate classes: make the homework be worth a not completely negligible percentage of the course grade -- say, 15% - 20% -- but grade it generously enough and/or drop enough problem sets so that the students can see that (i) they need to spend significant time and effort on the homework and (ii) the homework that they themselves can do and turn in is earning them good enough grades.
**It takes some skill to successfully use the web to answer your questions. The average young university student does not find the web the miraculous, Borges-ian answer book that those of us who have spent years studying our subject and honing our google-fu do.**
If you hang out at a subject-oriented SE site like math.SE, you will be surprised how many students ask questions for which your tempted first answer is to include a link to a wikipedia article. But these questioners often clarify that they don't understand the wikipedia article / weren't looking at the right part of it / didn't understand why it answered their questions (in cases where it is immediately clear to the trained eye that it does). It's easy to forget how fragile your knowledge and understanding is when you first start out learning a discipline.
This has several implications for undergraduate teaching. (One of them, relatively little explored, is that we should probably be *teaching* our students how to search for information on the web. This is certainly an important skill...) One implication is that two questions which the instructor will regard as "isomorphic" (for the non math people: essentially the same, but perhaps superficially different) will not necessarily be regarded so by the students. For instance, when teaching (non-honors) freshman calculus class one can use webwork/webassign to give students various problems. Often these problems are generated from a much smaller class of template problems with some parameters randomized for each individual student. This is already enough difference to prevent students from easily doing each other's homework. But if you take things one level higher, then you'll see that most of what we ask students to do in freshman / sophomore level classes is to be able to solve a type of problem given a certain template. As a calculus instructor, I no longer have to think of "new" min-max or related rates problems: the internet has plenty of them. A student who combs the internet trying to get hints on which min-max problem is going to be on the test is quickly going to find out that if she can solve all five sample problems appearing on any one webpage or problem set then she can solve most of the problems that are likely to appear on the exam.
**The best way to generate unique questions and coursework is to take a unique approach to the course.**
When I teach courses at the advanced undergraduate level and beyond, I often type up my own lecture notes, which leads me to present at least some of the material in a different / new / nonstandard way. Having done that, it is easy to ask questions which are nonstandard. And any given undergraduate course (at least in mathematics, but I'd be surprised if other subjects were much different in this regard) can be taught in many different new / nonstandard ways.
With regard to what I said above, whenever I do something in my course or course notes which I think is "new", I then go the internet to see to what extent it is actually new. More than half of the time I can find something which I recognize as being an essentially equivalent idea or approach...but again, what seems "isomorphic" to me probably will not seem that way to a student first learning the material. A lot of times I find the past precedent in some article or note published up to fifty years ago. I am pretty sure the students are not reading such things at all: if they were motivated to try to do so in order to get a jump on assignments, that would be fantastic!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: (My answer applies to fields of study that have been around for some time. So it doesn't apply to, say, computer programming classes that use a recently created computer language.)
Go to a library and look at an old textbook with problems and solutions; the older, the better. (Anything before 1980 should do.) Chances are the contents of these references will not be on the internet (unless they have been recently revised). The problem with this is that, to imply that you were not the one who created the problem, you might need to cite where you got it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Here's what I do (or at least try to do) in my algorithms classes:
* **Make homework useful.** The whole point of homework is to help the students master the course material. Students learn by *doing*, not by passively reading or listening. So I try to choose homework problems that exercise the insights and skills that I want the students to master. (Among other things, this means keeping busywork to a minimum.) If a student "writes" their homework solutions using Google and a stapler, they've robbed themselves of an opportunity to learn; all else being equal, that student will do worse on the exams.
* **Give homework relatively little weight** in the final course grade, usually 30%, with the other 70% from exams. I'd make the homework worth 0% if I thought the students would still do it. See the previous point.
* ***Tell* the students that homework is useful.** Many students think of homework primarily as a vehicle for points, not as a tool for learning. This is not entirely unreasonable—in some classes, homework *is* primarily a vehicle for points. Better warn them early!
* **Include new questions in each homework assignment and exam.** Because I want to sleep occasionally, I regularly recycle homework problems from previous semesters, but if I recycle too much or too quickly, students *don't* learn the material as well. (Whether they *should* learn the material as well is immaterial.) Coming up with new useful problems is *really* hard, even if "new" just means "I haven't used it before". I scour through a *lot* of textbooks and papers and web pages; if you teach algorithms, I have mined your web page for homework problems. Still, I don't always succeed. (On the other hand, failure sometimes suggests [interesting](https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/34/how-hard-is-unshuffling-a-string) [research](https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/6356/super-mario-galaxy-problem) [problems](https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/1962/is-it-np-hard-to-play-international-draughts-correctly).)
* **Insist on ethical scholarship:** proper citation of all sources, and no verbatim copying of anything. Within those minimal constraints, students can use whatever source they want, and can collaborate with whoever they want, with no penalty. In particular, students are welcome to use my official solutions from past semesters, if they can find them, as long as they cite them and don't just parrot them back to me. Breaking this rule has harsher consequences than not doing the homework at all.
* **Homework presentations.** I used to ask students to present their homework solutions three times a semester, instead of submitting a writeup. Here's the whiteboard, you have ten minutes per problem. A single question like "But what about the empty string?" or "Why did you split the cases that way?" usually reveals students who didn't work out the solutions themselves. Sadly, growing classes and shrinking TA budgets make this impossible now.
* **Remind the students that the course staff also uses Google.** (Remember, we're already scouring the web for new homework problems!) And we have all the old textbooks, and their solution manuals. And we read StackExchange. And we have all the official homework solutions from past semesters, because, you know, we wrote them. (I really wish I didn't have to say that last bit, but more than one student has submitted my own homework solutions, typos and all.)
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_6: For those who are multilingual, one solution to the problem (i.e. specifically, the problem that students might google the assignment and come across the same exercise online) it is to use material originally put out there in a different language, say French, Spanish, etc.
Students may speak other languages, of course, but it's less likely that they'll come across it.
I did this to get material for exams. I wanted to make sure they hadn't practiced on the exact same problem off the Web.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: It seems like we are in a continuing arms race of finding questions, assigning them before they become obsolete due to over-use. The weird thing, is that even if a question is now obsolete because it's been asked and answered too many times and the answers are all available on the web, it doesn't mean that the question is bad. We shouldn't replace material just because it was used before. That's like telling people to do their job in the most difficult way possible because other people have already done it the easy way.
Maybe we should swap the usage of time. 100% of class time will be spent solving problems, and 100% of homework time will be spent scouring the web, textbooks, etc. to read about new material. Has anyone tried this method?
Upvotes: 0 |
2012/05/25 | 1,764 | 7,438 | <issue_start>username_0: If I were a Spanish Major as an undergraduate and decide to pursue a PhD in a completely unrelated field (like Theoretical Physics), it makes sense to give a qualifying exam to check that I had the necessary skills to begin the program. But if I'm coming from a B.S in math to a PhD program also in math, it doesn't seem to make sense to give a qualifying exam, as if the knowledge I gained in my undergraduate was insufficient. I presume that one is accepted into a PhD program because he/she has already demonstrated the "qualifying" skills. Thus, I'm baffled by the notion of the qualifying / prelim exam. I'm curious about the ultimate goals of these exams, and how they relate to the professional development of a graduate student.<issue_comment>username_1: There are two main reasons:
* as a "sanity check" to make sure that the student you've admitted is really the student you thought they were; and
* as a weed-out tool, in case you've admitted more students than you have spots for in PhD projects in a given department.
Both purposes are significant. The second is the more unfortunate, and could generally be reduced through better selection processes and through better deployment of teaching and research resources and funding within a department. The former use is equally important, in that it makes sure that students don't try to "coast" their way through what the department believes is its core curriculum that students need to know.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: There are two types of qualifying/preliminary exams, those that cover graduate or undergraduate topics. I assume you are just talking about the latter (while in my experience the former is a little more common).
As I see it, the big reason for preliminary exams on undergraduate material is that many students haven't actually mastered this material to a professional standard. At less prestigious schools, many students won't have received straight A's (or the equivalent in other grading systems), so they had gaps or weaknesses in their understanding, and unless they took more advanced courses in the same area they may never have filled those gaps. Furthermore, it's possible to get excellent grades without true mastery, and students sometimes forget things they knew while taking a course.
The preliminary exam sends a message of "OK, you're in grad school now, and as a professional you're expected to know this material cold. If you have any doubts about your mastery of it, now is the time to study carefully." The few students who don't need to study suffer little harm from the exams, and the students who do need to study benefit from the studying.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: This answer serves mainly to corroborate @username_2's answer.
As she says, the most important thing to realize is that there are two different kinds of exams that go under the name "prelims / quals". The first of these generally:
(i) tests undergraduate material
(ii) is administered soon after arrival in the graduate program
(iii) used to be used for preliminary weed-out purposes but is now -- at least, in most programs I know about -- used almost entirely for diagnostic purposes.
Probably (iii) is most important: once upon a time, many graduate programs -- even excellent ones, like Berkeley (in fact, especially Berkeley) -- admitted lots of students, as in up to 50% more than were expected to finish. The idea was to give a large group of people, including those with less than sterling (or ivy) pedigrees, a fair shot. Then after a small amount of time in the program -- maybe a year or less -- they would take a "prelim" exam, and a significant portion would fail and leave.
This is no longer the way graduate programs work (at least not in North America, which is what I am primarily familiar with, but to the best of my meager knowledge they don't work that way in other parts of the world either). We pay much closer attention to each student we admit now than in the scenario above, and further our program is judged on retention and completion rates. A graduate program in 2012 who dismissed a third or more of its incoming class every year would look disastrously bad by these sorts of metrics. So this "weedout prelim" is, as far as I know, a thing of the past.
In the graduate program at UGA we still give a "prelim exam" to all entering graduate students, but as I said above we use it almost entirely for diagnostic purposes. In fact we have a certain graduate course designed entirely for students who didn't do well on the prelim, whose purpose is to shore up their undergraduate knowledge ASAP. Other than being encouraged to take this course, there are no direct consequences of failing the prelim (in fact, I'm not sure that one "passes" or "fails" the prelim in any technical sense).
In contrast, most of the "qualifying exams" that you hear graduate students talking about are something entirely different. They:
(i) test graduate level material; in particular, most students do not enter equipped with the knowledge to pass most qualifying exams.
(ii) occupy students' attention for a while: in our program, students have up to three years to pass their qualifying exams.
(iii) really must be passed in order for students to advance in the program, in most cases.
I hope this answers your question. Let me say though that the scores on the "prelim" exam -- i.e., the undergraduate level exam that I mentioned first -- are often all over the place. All of our entering students have at least an undergraduate degree in mathematics. So, unfortunately, no, an undergraduate degree in mathematics is *not* a guarantee of ability to do undergraduate level mathematics...at least not to the satisfaction of a decent mathematics graduate program. (And a student who does poorly on this entering prelim may yet succeed in doing PhD level mathematics a little later on: that is, the fault often seems to lie with the undergraduate program more than the student.)
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: I concur with @username_3 and @Anonymous Mathematiciar. These exams have names that suggest the darker purposes in their pasts, but they are mainly used as administrative tools by graduate departments.
At the graduate school I attended for chemistry, we took "placement exams". These exams happen for three reasons:
1) to provide the department with a common baseline, as we all did not likely take exactly the same GRE on exactly the same day. Particularly, this provided a means to directly compare the national students with the foreign students.
2) to identify deficiencies, as @username_3 and @Anonymous Mathematiciar have indicated. In chemistry, the smaller schools occasionally cannot offer courses in all five disciplines: organic, inorganic, analytical, physical, and biochemistry. Rather than punish those students for attending small liberal arts schools, many Ph.D. programs accept them on the premise that they may have to take an undergraduate course to fill in the gaps.
3) to select TAs. All first year graduate students in my chemistry program had to TA undergraduate labs. The placement exams determined which course you got to TA. The highest scorers on the organic chemistry exam were TAs for organic chemistry labs. The highest scorers on the analytic chemistry exam were TAs for analytical chemistry labs, and so on.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/26 | 491 | 2,085 | <issue_start>username_0: Like a halloween mask to conceal injuries of a burn?<issue_comment>username_1: Of course. If there's a medical reason for it and the student can produce an appropriate doctor's certificate or what not. You would need to check the regulations.
It probably depends on what sort of mask it is. If the mask is distracting for other students or plain silly, then I can imagine that it is reasonable to object to it. So, 'halloween mask' may not be the best description of an appropriate mask.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: You will definitely need to check regulations regarding the wearing of costumes that conceal one's appearance. For example, in France it's [forbidden by law to conceal one's face in public space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering), including in universities (and it's made explicit in universities' by-laws). While there's normally allowances made for legitimate medical reasons, there will definitely be limits. "Halloween-style" costumes and masks will probably be disallowed.
One additional comment not mentioned in Dave's answer is that in cases of laboratories and other "practical" exercises, such costumes may be disallowed for legal and protective reasons. You will need to talk with the appropriate staff about any accommodations that can be made.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: In general, I second Dave's answer. There is one point, however. During exams students have to identify themselves, and this is commonly done by showing some identification document (e.g., student id) to the person in charge. Wearing a mask would likely be interpreted as a failure to identify yourself, unless identification is possible in some other way. As a rule, failing to identify yourself at our university means that the lecturer is not allowed to grade the exam. However, if wearing a mask is required due to a medical condition, the student can notify the examination board *before the exam* that can decide to deviate from the identification rule and oblige the lecturer to grade the exam.
Upvotes: 4 |
2012/05/27 | 491 | 2,061 | <issue_start>username_0: I just submitted a paper to a conference. The reviewers gave me their responses only two days before the deadline to resubmit the paper. They seemed to indicate that my paper was on topic, and had good preliminary results, but they seemed to indicate that it was lacking more results. I understand it, and I think they're probably right, but I really don't have the time to invest much more time into this particular paper. My advisor thinks that I should invest my time in other research endeavors, but I don't really want to abandon a paper that i've already invested a lot of time in.
**What should you do when you want to salvage a paper but don't have time to correct it?**<issue_comment>username_1: One piece of **advice-I-would-not-follow** is to submit the paper to a lower quality conference. This could really be a waste of time if the conference is of very low quality, and if you are really proud of the work, do not do this. In the end, this may even look like a black spot on your CV.
What are you doing this weekend? Maybe canceling those plans and using the time to obtain the additional results. Then improve the paper based on the reviewer comments (evenings and other weekends) and resubmit to the next suitable venue.
Another alternative is to get help, either from a colleague or maybe even an undergraduate, if it is easy enough to the him/her how to run your experiments. Reward them with co-authorship, even if they haven't written a word of the paper. (This won't hurt you any.)
Ultimately, you cannot get something for nothing.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I guess we work on fairly different domains, because spending significantly more than *two days* to improve a paper seems negligible to me (writing one good paper a year is already good for me!), even if I agree it would mean submit to another venue in your case. If the referee is right in his or her demands, you should afford to spend a time at least one order below the time already invested in the paper.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/27 | 567 | 2,598 | <issue_start>username_0: Say you wrote a good thesis on some discovery you made in physics.
If it was a mediocre discovery, nothing special, are you more likely to get awarded the PhD at a 'not very good' university than at a top class university like Cambridge?<issue_comment>username_1: The quality of the university and the quality of the theses produced are not perfectly correlated. You are just as likely to end up with a "nothing special" thesis at a Cambridge as at a Random State University. The criterion for awarding a PhD is the completion of an independent and original contribution to the field of knowledge one is studying. There is no requirement that it be "groundbreaking."
That said, given that the "top" universities also tend to have superior resources available to students, the likelihood that a "nothing special" thesis will be accepted *by the advisor* as suitable for a PhD thesis is also somewhat mitigated as a result.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The quality of a thesis depends on several factors, the PhD student, the advisor and the work environment of the department where they work. th ePhD student should do the work and come up with own ideas and drive the work forward, more so towards the end than early on. the advisor, in most cases have established the basic research questions for the project in which the student works. The advisor also has a responsibility to facilitate understanding of the scientific method, ethics and plain knowledge to the student through the advisory role. The department may or may not have resources to provide a good work environment which includes size of collaborating research groups, lab space etc.
From this view it may be likely that a top tier university has more funding, has attracted "better" (however you wish to define that) scientists and lastly may attract better students (at least from the perspective of competitive application processes). It is, however, clear that these ingredients may not necessarily lead to success but it would not be a wide stretch of the imagination to say that basic conditions may be better and that this is reflected in the theses produced.
The bottom line, however, is that a good research environment is more likely to produce better work than just top tier ranking. In some cases bad luck may lead to poorer output, for example if the ice samples from Antarctica on which you completely rely for your work melt in a freezer accident. The question that remains is to what extent good research environments are determined by tier ranking.
Upvotes: 0 |
2012/05/27 | 2,336 | 10,240 | <issue_start>username_0: If a student feels that the grade he received is lower than he expected, because he has been working very hard, and truly trying to understand things, but sometimes at the cost of sacrificing details. But the instructor might think differently, as the student sometimes made careless mistakes in assignments and didn't have much time doing them.
Can he email the instructor for *possibility* of changing his grade, stating the reasons above? He knows if he never asks, the grade will stay the same, so he wants to have a try. Also as far as he knows, course grading generally has more or less flexibility.
If he does, is there some ethic issue that the student should be aware of?
Thanks!
PS: This is in a U.S. university.<issue_comment>username_1: In principle yes, although the procedure will be different from university to university. Just emailing your instructor and asking for some additional clarification/justification (and maybe mentioning that you aren't satisfied with the grade) is definitely going to be fine though.
If the instructor declines to change the grade and you are still not satisfied, your next point of call would probably the course coordinator or director of studies. If your school has a handbook or a set of policies or something like that, they should tell you what to do in this case.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: While it is possible to *try*, I suspect such efforts are unlikely to succeed.
* In an "objectively" graded class, such as in mathematics, engineering, and the sciences, where answers are either right or wrong, the only guaranteed way to get a grade changed is to show conclusive evidence that a mis-grading has occurred: an answer was marked wrong when it was correct, or at least ambiguous.
* In more "subjective" classes, which are typical in the arts and humanities, an *ex post facto* change of grade is not going to be received well. If the student was worried about performance in the class, such concerns should have first been lodged *during* the class. In this way, improved performance could be seen and taken into account at the time of the original grading. Afterwards, there's no way to do this and not come across as "grade-grubbing," which is considered to be in poor taste, and earns you a bad reputation with the faculty.
* Moreover, at many schools, once a final grade has been submitted to the registrar, it is **only** possible to change it as a result of clerical errors. "Judgment" issues cannot be taken into account.
That said, if a **legitimate** grading error has occurred, the faculty is **obligated** to correct it, as this affects your permanent record.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: A student sure can ask for re-grading, but he or she should have strong evidence that what was graded was better than perceived by the grader. It is a very bad idea to try argue how the teacher should be grading (e.g., asking her or him to grade according to what work you claimed you provided rather than the quality of your homework or exam). These questions are up to the teaching teams, not up to the students, and yes that makes the situation rather unbalanced. What you can do about this is to ask for a general change in suitable meetings if they exist.
Moreover, I would like to point out two things :
1. most of the time, grading is not for acknowledging good effort, but to measure if the student understood enough of the class to have a decent chance in the next one (at least in fields where classes depend strongly one on another, like in mathematics);
2. my experience tells me that students that consider they understand well but do poor exams in fact understand much more shallowly than they think, and their grades should be taken as an indication that the way they work is probably not good enough.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: You can surely ask for a change. And if there is a clear mis-grading this must be fixed. This happens frequently: for instance, this year I did forget to grade the last page of the exam of one of my ~100 students...
But this is the only case when grades may be subject to a change. Grading performance is the only way to apply consistently the same grading process to all the students. And, BTW, this is what will be done in real life. Let's say you are a plumber, you work hard, you truly try to understand how to connect pipes, but you make careless mistake because you don't pay attention to details and you let a lot of leaks in your customers houses. Do you think you will be paid by your customers?
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: First, ***I can support your idea a little***:
An exam or assignment is not always the best way to judge a student's understanding - although it is the easiest and most practical.
An education system might reasonably have some way for a student to demonstrate their clear knowledge and understanding of what is being taught outside the examination or assignment. If there are objective standards that can be proven by the student, this takes away the variability from the examination room or particular assignment and student's/instructor's differing interpretation of the assignment requirements.
It might be, then, that your instructor is willing to consider regrading, if you can provide suitable evidence outside the exam that you understood and can apply the material at a level higher than you did in the exam.
However, ***I think this is very unlikely to happen in practice***:
* There is a serious ethical issue here: all the students should have the same opportunity that you do. You should not receive special treatment just because you personally appeal to the instructor. (The other students may not have the opportunity to personally appeal, or may not realise that it makes a difference). The criteria for grading should be equal and obvious to all students. If an appeal process is possible, then ethically all students must be made aware of the possibility.
[Aside: In your case, if there is an available appeal process, you can follow it with no problem: if you meet the criteria]
* Exams and assignments are typically designed to test your understanding in an effective way. They may not be ideal, but usually they are the only good and practical way of testing - there is unlikely to be a good alternative proof you can offer the instructor.
* An instructor's time is precious: it is likely they have spent significant time writing an assignment that suitably tests the material, and significant time in marking, and will not be willing to spend more time to listen to this complaint.
* It's likely that avoiding "careless mistakes" is part of the test - the grade should depend partly on whether the student understands the material well enough to avoid commonly-made mistakes. So, if you feel you have made careless mistakes, it shows that - probably - you did not understand the material well enough to check and avoid these in a timely manner.
* The amount of work you did, or effort you put in, should not really be relevant to the grading. You must show understanding, not effort. (Although, effort should be necessary - it is not what's being tested)
I understand the argument that there is no harm in asking, but I do not expect that this type of request would be well received by the instructor (neither, by your fellow students).
It's plausible that asking for a regrade would harm your professional reputation with the instructor, and your personal reputation amongst fellow students.
I recommend that you consider asking for a retest instead.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: You can, but it's a dumb idea. Good students are generally above fighting for grades (unless the instructor lost an entire page of the student's exam or there was some other clear-cut error that involved a large number of points). If you argue for a better grade, you risk coming off as
1. A bad student
2. Annoying
3. Someone who cares about gaming the system more than mastering the material
I strongly suggest you find a friend who is doing well in the class and ask if you can see his old homeworks. Then you can infer what level of detail is appropriate for your future assignments.
This is especially important if your homeworks involve rigorous proofs, because if you don't prove everything in detail there's a good chance that your proof is completely wrong. If you're having trouble with proof-based questions it's important that you master that art now so you don't have the same problems in future classes.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: You can get grades changed if you have a good reason, something tangible. In addition, you need to be a skilled negotiator and diplomat. It is easy to offend the professor in such situations. You want to avoid formal procedures if at all possible.
I have gotten at least 10 grades (sometimes assignments, sometimes exams) changed upwards during my studies in spite of an official policy to do that only for clerical errors. Reasons include:
* Ambiguous wording in multiple choice exams that make my answer correct. This one is the easiest to negotiate for.
* The answer that the professor expected based on what was seen in class is incorrect or at least incomplete in light of more recent scientific discoveries that I cited in my answer. Especially during undergrad years, this is not expected of students and can be overlooked when it happens. It was usually the TA who gave the bad grade and the professors easily overrule them in such cases.
* I used an approach that makes the question easier to answer than the professor expected. It is quite tricky to negotiate that working smart is better than working hard, but it can be done.
* Once a professor accused me of plagiarism and told me to be happy with an F instead of a formal procedure for cheating because "my paper is too good to be true". I challenged him on the spot to ask me difficult questions about the topic and see for himself. He changed my F to an A+.
Most of these negotiations only work if you are an excellent student I think. The professor needs to feel that you are very knowledgeable and passionate about the subject before opening up to your request.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/27 | 1,042 | 4,239 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a student of computer science from India and specialize in Artificial Intelligence & Robotics. I have completed M.Tech (for those who do not know, it covers 18 years of education. It is actually PG in engineering, sort of an Indian equivalent of MS, consists of a one year course work + one year dissertation ). I have a conference paper to my name and I'll take up my GRE exams in a short while. I wish to pursue PhD from the US. Let us assume I make it to one of the top 50 grad schools in US in the next academic session.
What are my chances of landing in a good R&D job in industry after completing PhD? I do not wish to stay in academia throughout my career. I do not wish to teach. Post-PhD, I'd prefer a transition to industrial R&D.
I have not really figured out the details, have just started conceptualizing a career plan. So I thought it wise to start with the basic question. Given my career objective, is PhD really worth it?<issue_comment>username_1: Is it possible? Yes. Will it definitely happen? It's hard to say for any particular individual.
There are definitely people graduating with PhD's in robotics or AI that go on to jobs in industry—I even know a few. However, your ability to find a suitable job will depend on many factors both within your control—such as the quality of your PhD thesis, your letters of recommendation, and your ability to "sell" your work—as well as a number of factors you can't control—such as the economic state at the time of your graduation.
But, in general, getting a PhD shouldn't prevent you from getting an R&D job after graduation.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You need to think about two questions, essentially.
* **Why do I need a PhD?** - Do you really want to contribute something special to the field? Unlike M.tech where you are guaranteed a degree after two years, things are a lot more uncertain in a PhD, so unless you have the drive, it could be very difficult.
* **What is the nature of work of doctorates in your field?** - This is much more important than knowing if you will get a job after PhD. Do try to contact people who are in good places in the industry and form an idea about the nature of their job. If you are enthused by that and you feel an industrial research position is where you seek to be, then go ahead.
A PhD from a top institution can never be "worthless". You learn some set of skills that are difficult to pick up if you are elsewhere, so that's a huge plus.
TL,DR: If you are happy being a skilful software or embedded systems engineer, then you are better off building your experience in the industry; if you really desire to contribute to the field as a researcher, PhD is a must, so hurry up with the formalities.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: One way to answer your question is this. Identify the top few places you'd like to work at (regardless of degree). Look at the people doing the kind of work you'd enjoy doing, and then see what professional degrees they have, and what their trajectory has been. That will give you a sense of what kind of training is required for industrial R&D in robotics.
At least in CS I can say that having a Ph.D doesn't hurt in R&D labs, and it garners a modicum of authority/respect that helps in the corporate world, and might even be necessary for career advancement. Whether this is true for robotics as well depends on the research you do above.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: no of course a phd wont help you at all why would any R&D firm want a educated person on their team; i am almost certain that you knew the answer when you typed the question. if it is worth it to you then do it for yourself regardless of the degrees you hold your ability to market yourself within the community of practice you want to enter will be the test
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: get the industrial research job first.
volunteer if you have to get a break.
then do a PhD as an add on.
job or interests should drive the education then you will learn it with context and purpose.
research and knowledge creation is something you must do all the time daily. if not you are not a researcher.
gather the tools and expertise as you go.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/27 | 1,329 | 5,773 | <issue_start>username_0: I've already completed my first grueling year of the PhD program, and graduation is still a yet to be seen light at the end of the tunnel. I'm very sure that academia is for me, and I really want to obtain a tenure-track position in my field (computational science). I know that universities often look very highly upon doing a post-doc and accumulating plenty of journal publications. Of course, open faculty positions are extremely competitive and I'm sure that everyone applying for them have those qualifications already. I'm curious if there is anything else I do as a graduate student to help maximize my chances of getting a Tenure-Track Faculty position in the future?<issue_comment>username_1: I don't think there's anything "special" that's unique to applying to academia that a graduate student can do to increase the odds of becoming a professor in the long run, particularly if one is going to do a postdoc later on.
The two areas that *might* help are:
1. Gain teaching experience that goes beyond the standard "recitation section" leader—that is, into actual lecturing and other forms of direct interaction with students, as well as formulation of assignments and examinations. This might make a difference at schools which are more teaching-oriented rather than research-oriented.
2. Formulate a well-defined scope for your future research activities, and also develop the tentative outlines for the first few projects that you'd start in that field. This is an essential part of any professorial application, and the sooner you start working on it, the more polished it will be when you're ready to apply for positions when the time comes.
Beyond that, what makes someone a good candidate for a postdoc are essentially the same qualities that will help in being a good candidate for a professorship later on.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I think the single thing that most helped me get a tenure-track job was that during my postdoc I **gave lots of talks** at conferences and in seminars at other schools (something like 30 talks in 2 years, including those I gave at my postdoc institution). First, this helped a lot with networking. Second, and perhaps more important, all this experience gave me a ton of confidence in my ability to give good talks. That confidence spilled over into the rest of my interviews, which was generally a very good thing.
I didn't really start giving many talks until during my postdoc, but in retrospect, I wish I'd given many more in grad school.
All grad students know that if you want a job in academia you should publish lots of good papers. But many of them don't grasp the value of learning to communicate clearly and to publicize their work. During my postdoc, I set aside 2 or 3 weeks to learn how to draw good pictures to go into my talks, and I think that skill has really improved their subsequent quality. Personally, I do everything using beamer and tikz (presentation packages for latex). However, your specific tool is not so important. Ask around and find a tool that is widely used and supported by folks in your research area, then invest the time to learn to use it well.
The second really important thing you can do is **network**. When I was in grad school, I had no concept of how important networking is for a career in academia (in fact, almost any job). Many of my papers have grown out of conversations that started at a conference. Once people know you, they invite you to speak (at their school or at a conference session they're organizing). As you get to know more of the key researchers in your area, you find it easier to keep up with important new developments (which better inform your research, etc.).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: 1. Do awesome research.
2. Publish it.
3. Get famous people to rave about it.
Everything else is noise.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I'm in your field, and I'm a bit later in the game than you are, as I completed my PhD in 2010. Here's some advice, in increasing order of importance.
A very good way to get a feel for what it takes to land faculty positions is to take a look at the departments you would like to work at in the future and scope out the Assistant Professors. Many of them will have their CVs and Teaching and Research Statements updated to when they applied for the position.
You will need to cultivate several strong letters of reference, hopefully by working with some of the bigger names in your field.
Try to go to a few job talks, as this will also give you a sense of what a strong research agenda looks like, both in terms of accomplished work and future directions.
You will need some teaching experience, but being a great classroom teacher will not get you a job if your research portfolio is weak unless you are going to a school that focuses on undergraduate education.
Computational Science is a bit of a funny field, as we live at the intersection of several very different fields: physics, mathematics, computer science, and usually some scientific application. These fields all have their own rules for hiring and promotion, and this is important to understand, because you will almost certainly land in a department that is *not* titled Computational Science.
You need to **statistically** look good, because the members of the hiring committee will have almost no other grounds for justification besides what is written in your hiring application. This means you will absolutely need a good number of high-quality journal publications, preferably at least 5, when you apply for a faculty position. Conference papers only count for a Computer Science department, and you may need twice as many to be considered in that direction.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/27 | 1,125 | 4,846 | <issue_start>username_0: This question was raised by <NAME> [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1725/64).
When a textbook author approaches a topic in a novel way or presents a particularly interesting example, I believe that a teacher who creates lecture notes using this novel approach or interesting example would be doing the right thing to cite the originator of the approach or the example. Similarly, whenever I copy a clever (and clearly unique) problem from a textbook and give it as a question in an exam or an assignment, I try my best to indicate (in the exam or assignment paper itself) the source of the original problem.
Does anyone know of any written document indicating whether or not it is considered unethical to copy a published problem and put it in an exam or an assignment without citing it?<issue_comment>username_1: I think it's considered more of a courtesy rather than a requirement to credit someone who has developed a problem, provided that there is no new technical content introduced in the problem. On the other hand, however, if one is to use a problem in a problem set or examination completely unchanged, then some citation of the original source is certainly recommendable, as otherwise one is guilty of a copyright violation.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: This is a thorny issue. It comes down to copyright and license, and, particularly, what is and isn't copyrightable. If the problem is not copyrightable, then you can do whatever you wish. If the problem is copyrightable, you should assume it is copyrighted, which means you can't use it unless you have a licence to do so. The only way you are guarantee that you have a licence is to use that book in your course. If you require your students to purchase the book, then they are purchasing the license to use all of that content. You can then use the same content with them. Even providing a reference is not good enough if the material is copyrighted, and you don't have the licence.
If the problem is fundamental or factual, then it's probably not copyrightable unless there is something peculiar about the wording. Thrse questions can be complex. For example, the following would not be copyrightable:
What is the derivative of x3 + 4x?
What is the major product of the reaction between calcium carbonate and sulfuric acid?
Write the time-independent wavefunction for the electron in a ground state hydrogen atom. Then, provide the eigenvalues for this wavefunction with the kinetic energy operator.
Draw a simple set of supply and demand curves for a generic free market for a manufactured product. Describe or draw the effects of each of the following changes on the market: 1) discovery of a cheaper method of production, 2) closing of a plant, 3) government enforcement of a maximum price.
I'm having trouble coming up with a question that is copyrightable. Feel free to add one to my answer.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I'm a textbook author. I agree that it's hard to formulate a cut-and-dried answer to your question. One criterion to consider: If a colleague would compliment you on a copied problem or question because it was particularly clever or insightful, you should probably consider a citation. Stated differently, if you're getting academic credit (even if informal) for the contribution, cite the source.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> Does anyone know of any written document indicating whether or not it
> is considered unethical to copy a published problem and put it in an
> exam or an assignment without citing it?
>
>
>
I know of no document that addresses examinations and assignments directly but reusing someone else's words or ideas is plagiarism. It doesn't matter the source, purpose, or intent. For teaching materials I think there is a little leeway in that plagiarism may be unintentional. I am sure that some the examples I use in my teaching ,that I think are my ideas, are in fact someone else's.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I am trying to give a point of view different from what some of the answers.
**Citation** is generally associated with new, *clever* or original creations. But sometimes it is very hard to know the origin. What if the author him/herself does not cite some examples or questions taken from someone else. How do you know they had the original idea? Often questions are borrowed modified and then presented. Should we take the credit for them or not? We learn some techniques of setting good and relevant *problems* from someone else and then we create new ones. Should we cite them?
What I mean to say is that it may not be practical and possible and even clear if we need to cite and I agree this may not always be the case. I guess that is why none of us has come across any such documents and guidelines.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/27 | 1,351 | 5,808 | <issue_start>username_0: In recent months, I have found myself getting involved in varying degrees with the papers being written with members of my group. Some of the papers—by the more senior and experienced members of the group (primarily the postdoc) have needed little real effort on my part, except suggestions for improvements.
On the other hand, some of the more junior members of the group have been struggling significantly in writing papers that I believe can pass muster in getting into good peer-reviewed journals. My question is: *how involved should I be in the writing process*?
While I am ultimately equally responsible for the contents of the paper, it is not clear how strong a role I should play. Is it better for me to keep hounding the student through draft after draft until things are fixed to a satisfactory level, or do I need to step in at some point? Does the decision calculus change when an important deadline is on the horizon?<issue_comment>username_1: It seems you already know the answer -- it depends on the paper (your level of interest), the co-authors (their ability to work alone) and your time. There are no rules. I saw both advisors that spend a lot of time in technical discussions and advisors that hardly spend time to read the paper. Both were good advisors INHO.
I would say the role of the advisor is like the role of the head-chef in a fancy restaurant: *Quality Assurance*. If the cooks make great food, all you need to do is to clean the crumbs off the plate before it goes out. If the cooks messed the food up, you need to return the plate back to them and tell them that the fish is still raw; the chicken is blend; and the correct way to do Flambé is by lighting up 95% alcohol rather than 5%-alc beer. Demonstrations are always appreciated.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Writing "good" papers is an integral part of being a good academic, and therefore it is, in my opinion, something that supervisors *should* teach their students.
This means you should be **active in teaching them how to write**, and less active in the actual writing itself.
Struggling is part of any learning process, provided they are struggling with writing, and not with your reviews. The best you can do is to provide the student with clear goals of how the paper should look, how it should be structured and what it should contain. Looking back at my own first papers, I usually started writing before knowing exactly what the bottom line, e.g. the take-home message, should be. Discussing a plan of the paper, both with regards to content and the writing process, with the student before letting him/her write it is probably a good idea.
When reviewing the manuscript, I think it's important to provide clear, consistent and constructive criticism. Specifically:
* *Clear*: If you don't like a sentence, paragraph, figure or table (don't forget these latter two!), make sure you tell the student *exactly* what you don't like about it. This may require putting intuition aside and thinking through why you're not happy with it.
* *Consistent*: Avoid editing ping-pong that lead to the same paragraph being re-written 20 times back and forth. It's probably a good idea to keep copies of previous iterations with your own comments. This also helps the students if you can tell them they've done a good job fixing things from the previous iteration.
* *Constructive*: This is kind of obvious, but I can't be reminded of it often enough.
Deadlines are a bummer, but they're as much part of the academic process as the writing itself, so the best you can do is to teach your students to prepare for them adequately, i.e. plan ahead.
**Addendum**
As for authorship, in my opinion, teaching a student to write a paper in no way qualifies as co-authorship. It's part of your job as an academic. Co-authorship is something that arises out of having contributed significantly to the *contents* of the paper.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: One strategy for teaching students about the writing process is to get them involved in projects/papers being written by the professor or by more advanced researchers of the professor's group (post docs or 3rd or 4th year students in European system), and over time gradually increase the amount of responsibility that the student has. This works in groups where people are collaborating on the same thing. For a computer science example, you can imagine that people in the lab are developing the same software system.
Start by getting a first year PhD student working with a more advanced researcher. The research is not wholly done by the new student, but the student should be involved in all steps of the process. The new student can learn mostly by observation (watching the paper grow), contributing about 10% of the total effort.
Writing of the next paper could follow more or less the same pattern, except that the new student should take a more active role, say 25%.
For the third paper, give the new student the lead, and keep the more experienced researchers around helping and contributing, but make sure that they do not take over, and let the student work at his/her own pace. Whenever the student gets stuck, the more experience researcher could help move things forwards, to avoid the work stagnating. On this paper the student could do 60-70% of the work, and most of the writing.
Finally, let the student take the main responsibility on a paper and have the more experienced researchers contributing only comments and encouragement.
---
Doing things in this way requires a bit of bootstrapping, as you need to have multiple papers on the go, written by multiple people, but all around the same topic, but it could work with a single student-single professor set up.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/27 | 883 | 3,336 | <issue_start>username_0: After all, to do research with a professor, a student has to have good social skills. So why not have classes that teach social etiquette and social skills? It seems that many courses in college are "book courses." Yet, when students graduate, what really matters is how they present themselves and their social skills.<issue_comment>username_1: At our university (the Netherlands) students are actively involved in group projects and as a part of the preparation to these projects they get some training on how to give talks, how to negotiate, how to organize/chair meetings, etc.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: During one's university life as an undergraduate, there are many opportunities to improve one's social skills and confidence as an adult. These range from the various sporting and political clubs students can join, through volunteer activities students can participate in, through coaching activities (of more junior students or even high school), all the way to activities like having a few drinks in the uni bar (soda, for US students). During the summer, one can participate in *spring break*-style activities or get an internship at a law firm.
All of these activities, I dare say, help shape a student into a person. There's no assessment, no assignments, no grades, but such is the school of hard knocks.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I heard that there where some (highly wanted) trials in Potsdam (maybe somewhere else):
* [Soft Skills Colloquium, Hasso Plattner Institut, Potsdam](http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/studium/soft_skills/soft_skills_colloquium.html?L=1)
* [Computer geeks learn to flirt](http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/01/09/us-flirting-odd-idUSTRE5085DE20090109) (Reuters):
>
> Even the most quirky of computer nerds can learn to flirt with finesse thanks to a new "flirting course" being offered to budding IT engineers at Potsdam University south of Berlin.
>
>
> The 440 students enrolled in the master's degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection.
>
>
>
To name the (alleged) reasons, why university courses in social skills are so rare:
* many social skills can't be easily fitted into a course scheme,
* there is a common belief (with which I strongly disagree) that there is no such need (as its to late (not necessary) or people will learn it automatically (a wishful thinking)),
* there may be a huge difference in initial social skill levels (from one where no course is needed to one, when a course won't change things),
* teaching social skills may be difficult, as many things are very culturally- and context-dependent.
Personally, I regret that there were no social skills courses at my university (so I had to learn from books, mostly - undergraduate psychology). For me, as for many other STEM students, it was (relatively) easier to learn technical material "in the natural way", than social skills.
However, social skills (as any other skills), are the best to be honed in practice (at least after). There are many opportunities, e.g.:
* teamwork on any project (scientific or "just for fun"),
* running a students' chapter or club,
* organizing trips, excursions, movie nights, parties, ...,
* organizing a students' conference.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/28 | 1,015 | 4,317 | <issue_start>username_0: So [bobthejoe said this](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/757/77):
>
> The PhD students I remember the most are the ones who came up to me
> and made meaningful comments or suggestions regarding my work. They
> get extra bonus points if in the middle of the night the next week
> they offer more meaningful comments or suggestions.
>
>
>
Here's the question though: how many PhD students actually manage to make meaningful comments or suggestions about a professor's work? And how often does the professor follow up and inform the student that those comments are helpful (rather than pretend that the comments are helpful as a matter of politeness)? And if the comments are implemented, does the professor ever notify the student?
I'm saying this as someone who makes *a lot* of suggestions/comments to other people, but who can never be sure whether or not they find them helpful. Most suggestions seem to be discarded simply because it takes too much time/effort to implement them.<issue_comment>username_1: If a professor finds your comments insightful and valuable, he/she would take the initiative to request your opinion or collaborate with you on a project. If not, they won't make an effort and may keep silent about it to be polite or outright request that you not give your opinion. Just keep in mind though... Some professors may regard your comments as being a bit ostentation or arrogant... I know, because I've been there and done that myself :)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: From my perspective, even a good question at a department colloquium will make a student stand out. Often, a student will ask a question or make a comment that I've thought about but didn't bother to mention. That is also something that catches the eye. Ultimately I think that Bravo's point is a good one: just try to think about the problem and comment if something comes to mind.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: **Very very carefully.** One of the important aspects of being a PhD student is learning how to think critically. Turning that critical eye on a colleague, and even worse on an advisor, can be a real disaster. The key is for the student to be able to provide his/her insight into the issues without putting the colleague on guard.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: The same way any other researcher would make meaningful comments or suggestions regarding a colleague's work. By having real insight, and presenting it carefully and respectfully.
(And I agree with all the other answers.)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: The other answers make good suggestions for the asking of questions or posing ideas to professors. Most professors are open to questions and new ideas. I personally love it when my students come to me with something that I hadn't thought of before. As for getting recognition, it depends on the relationship between the Ph.D. student and the professor.
If you, as a grad student, ask a poignant question at a visiting professor's lecture, and then the professor returns and gets his or her group working on the matter, the you will very likely not receive any further communication about the matter. You will, however, be able to determine if your question had an effect when the publication came out. If nothing else, you can have that warm little feeling that something came of your question.
If you, as a senior graduate student, pitch something to your adviser that is relevant to your project, your adviser should listen. At some point you know more about your project than your adviser does. I pitched many things to my adviser over the years. Sometimes I was shot down, and then did them anyway. One of my questions, however, transformed the direction of my thesis work. I started and finished a whole new project in my last year based on an idea I pitched.
Senior graduate students weighing in on other projects going on in their group also tend to get listened to, and occasionally acknowledged in the publication for "helpful discussions." Yes, sometimes those names are graduate students. For one example I know of, see the acknowledgements in [this article](http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja102670n). "The authors would like to thank... ...Mr. <NAME> for helpful discussions."
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2012/05/28 | 1,427 | 6,022 | <issue_start>username_0: There are a lot of very smart people in academia. They are at the front of human knowledge and push it further. Obviously, the research that comes out of academia is very new. My question is who applies this research? In other words, why don't these smart professors start a company and sell their new findings by applying it to a problem and sell a service or product?
I mean if I was a very smart researcher, and discovered something that no-one has known before, then first thing for me would be to create a company and sell it. Yet what I see is that all these researchers remain relatively poor compared to business people, and they publish some papers and then someone else applies their findings and makes a lot of money, while they do not get anything.
I might be wrong though. I don't really know how it goes.<issue_comment>username_1: *I mean if I was a very smart researcher, and discovered something that no-one has known before, then first thing for me would be to create a company and sell it.*
Come on, do you even think it is so easy for someone to start a company and start making money? The skills needed to make a product (corporate world) are different from those necessary to create an idea (academia). A simple well-thought out, well-exposited algorithm may bring plaudits in academia, but in the industry you need to implement the algorithm as a small part of a large system, subject it to rigorous testing, find people to market the product and suitable customers to buy, etc. And then there is the whole HR team which has to do its thing...
**Patents** are the way to go if you have to make money from a smart idea in the academia. (**EDIT**: Generally, both the University and the inventor share equitably the royalties and other income arising out of inventions [developed under University auspices](http://www.nyu.edu/about/policies-guidelines-compliance/policies-and-guidelines/patents-policy-statement.html).)
Professors do engage themselves in collaborative work with the industry; at times, they are funded by the university for setting up small companies (see [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/792/entrepreneurial-opportunities-for-faculty-members).). The lifestyles of people in the academia and the industry are vastly different; for one, professors have much more freedom with respect to timings than in the industry and afford greater time for their family - not a bad thing in exchange for money, after all.
Successful researchers in academia are unlikely to quibble about low income compared to people in the industry. Happiness versus money is a concave function - beyond a point, more money is unlikely to make one happier.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: There is a lot of reasons leading to the fact that academics don't necessarily start a business each time they have an idea that seems to work:
1. There is a very long and difficult (technical) path from an idea that works to a product. Finding the good persons for following that path is generally painful, and an error-prone process.
2. There is a very long and difficult (marketing) path from product to money. Marketing and sales are two difficult jobs, where academics are not (most of the time) very gifted. Moreover, it may be hard to convince good marketers or salespeople to go with you in your adventure.
3. Not all academics want more money. If my purpose was to earn more money, I would have originally chosen an other job. As a friend of mine say, if you want to be rich with high probability, start a pizzeria, then another one, then another one, ...
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: From my experience, most researchers who choose to make money do so in one of two ways:
1. **Entrepreneurship.** Take whatever you've found with your research and start a business somehow marketing it. This is a common path, as you are the expert in your field, and you can bring it to market in ways that no one else can.
Many researchers do not follow this path, though, because the skills and interests required to run a successful business are oftentimes very different from the skills required to become a successful researcher. Anecdotally, the majority of researchers I've met were *not* interested in bringing their findings to market in any way; they just wanted to perform research and not have the headaches of running a business. Note also that you will have to inform the university about your business, and you will have to deal with the conflict of interest problems that arise because your research affects your business.
2. **Consulting.** This is a much easier path, and is performed by many researchers in a variety of fields. It is unlikely you will strike it rich doing consulting, but it can bring in a significant amount of extra cash.
A subcategory of this is **legal consulting.** I put this separately simply because it's consulting of a completely different nature that most business consulting. Depending on your field, you may be able to be called in as an expert witness in a legal case, which can also bring in extra cash. This is less common, simply because of fewer opportunities.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Consulting is a common way to make more money. Universities in the Us have some kind of policy saying that you can consult for x days a month (x being less than 5, or 2-3). If you find a consulting gig, you can then charge them whatever hourly rate the market can bear, and augment your income that way.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Many Academicians are working in other parts of the globe but selling their research paper by writing their affiliation of Middle east countries or Turkey. This way they get opportunity to get money each paper from affiliated (virtual) institutions and also opportunity to visit being so called visiting faculty. Please see King Saud University, Abdul Aziz University, Çankaya University, Atilim University, Ankara and many more!
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/28 | 417 | 1,812 | <issue_start>username_0: This is a follow-up to [How good are entrepreneurial opportunities for faculty members?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/792/entrepreneurial-opportunities-for-faculty-members).
Say, a few researchers, professors and their students, at a university would like to start a company to exploit and commercialize their research.
Who owns the copyright/patent of their research? Will the university claim ownership of the startup company? What is the general procedure?<issue_comment>username_1: This will heavily depend on the specific country you are talking about. We have a so-called [Innovation Lab](http://www.tue.nl/en/innovation/tue-innovation-lab/) that aims at encouraging "entrepreneurship and innovation by identifying, supporting and providing guidance for potential high-tech startups and spin-off companies originating at TU/e." Specifically, they guide researchers along the entire process: from checking whether the idea can be patented to actually establishing a startup / spin-off company.
With respect to copyright: lion's share of our research is being published so there can be no problems for companies to use the ideas presented in scientific papers. Using *unpublished* results might be more tricky but I can imagine that the university will agree to formally keep copyright and allow the company to benefit from it under some restricted conditions.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The university cannot claim ownership of the company as such, however, they can claim ownership of some intellectual property without which the company is worthless.
The only way how it could gain ownership of company shares is if you make a copyright/patent licencing deal which would include those shares as part of the compensation.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/28 | 1,011 | 4,334 | <issue_start>username_0: A stack of psychology exam essays has just landed on my desk for marking. It was a 3 hour exam with 3 essay questions. This is a final year essay so I do not have to provide written feedback. How long should I be spending marking an essay?<issue_comment>username_1: The only hard and fast advice I have been given in general is to not spend more time grading than the person did writing the essay. Note in most instances you shouldn't spend anywhere near that amount of time, but in general you should be cognisant that grading essays is an arduous task, and for a size like 60 it certainly shouldn't be done in one day (I don't know anyone who grades that many by themselves to be frank, all classes of that size I am familiar with have TA(s)).
Other elements will impact how long the grading takes. Such as are you grading all of the exams by yourself or are there other professors/teaching assistants grading exams. If there are multiple people sometimes it is necessary to have a collaborative meeting, and even co-grade several essays to make sure you are being consistent.
For essays people typically make rubrics with which to grade, and this focuses the content for your review (as well as makes expectations explicit to students). The more focused the rubric the easier your task of grading becomes. The only other advice I would give is I typically read all of the essays once, making small comments, marks and notes for myself, and then go back through a second time and grade the papers. This obviously adds more time to grading though.
Not being able to give students feedback is awful for learning, so I would suggest (if possible) you at least keep notes for yourself and/or keep copies of the essays for a short period. Thus if a student requests feedback it will be possible to give them some.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I don't work in a field with essay exams, but I do ask my students to write proofs, so maybe my advice is still useful.
TAs at my university are contractually limited to at most 20 hours of work per week. You have 60 exams to grade in one week; that suggests an absolute limit of 20 minutes per exam. Since each exam has three essays, I would aim to spend **at most 5 minutes per essay**. It'll probably take longer at first, especially if you also have to develop a rubric, but you'll get faster as you work through the pile. Aiming for 5 minutes leaves you lots of slack.
Also, I strongly recommend grading vertically—grading all of essay #1 before reading anyone's essay #2—instead of horizontally—finishing each student before starting the next.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: The answer by username_1 discusses the role of Rubrics, which I think is key to simplify grading. They provide better understanding for both expectations and evaluation from the student's perspective.
To add to that, one method that I find works in many situations to reduce grading is to gather students after the exam and discuss the answers in session. This way I can express the points I consider important for a good answer. I realize this cannot always be accommodated in the schedule of courses and exams. But, students appreciate the opportunity to ask questions etc. The grading can then be done quicker since I can refer to what was mentioned in session rather than making many detailed comments. The comments necessary will then be more of a summary connecting to the rubrics and how the answer fills (or not) these criteria.
To say how much time is needed for the grading is difficult in detail but I believe significant reductions can be made, including post-grading discussions with students.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: In the humanities 4000-5000wd an hour for commented responses on essays. Two to three times as fast for commentless grading of essays.
This is a "work norm" ala Taylorism, but it hasn't been subject to speed up as far as I've seen (unlike the head count in tutorials work norm, for example).
Source: Australian system, multiple essay based departments' work cultures amongst permanent members of staff; and multiple rounds of multiple sites of collective contract negotiations with casual employees; as a Trade Unionist and department level administrator with previous pay responsibility.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/05/28 | 824 | 3,728 | <issue_start>username_0: This is what I don't understand. Journals provide you with LaTeX class files and instructions and they also advise not to spend time typesetting the paper into the exact format of the journal. What does this mean? I don't know if this applies to all journals or to most of them.<issue_comment>username_1: I don't know, but here's a possibly useful tip: when I get sent latex style files and complicated instructions for how to format my (accepted) paper, I usually try right away to get these files to work and to format things in the way asked of me...for up to half an hour. If at the end of half an hour (or slightly less if I am feeling impatient that day) the task is not yet finished, I generally give up and say that I wasn't able to get the style files to work. In almost all cases, the editor in question asked no further questions and gladly did the formatting himself.
The exception was a note I submitted to the American Mathematical Monthly, where they were extremely picky and passive aggressive about the changes they wanted made. After at least six (not an exaggeration!) emails from a secretary of the form "For some reason you still haven't included your references in the proper format..." I lost my cool a little, gave them blanket permission to format the (three page!) paper however they wanted, and requested that they leave me out of it. Which they did, and the note appeared a few months ago.
Moral: this is one of those tasks that will expand to take up as much time as you let it. Given that most journals have professionals who will devote further time to typesetting your paper after you sign off on it anyway, why not sign off on it sooner rather than later?
Let me add as a counterpoint that there are some smaller, internet based journals where most of the nuts and bolts work is done by a single person, who is working hard to put out the product rapidly and well (example: the Journal of Integer Sequences). In fact I seem to recall that Prof. Shallit of JIS spent some time reformatting my accepted JIS manuscript, which then got electronically published within a few days of its final acceptance. He really went above and beyond, and if I have it over again I will do more on my own side.
**Added**: Looking back at your question, I worry that I may have misinterpreted it: are you asking about the initial submission of the paper? Definitely do not mess with any style files or publication instructions before your paper gets accepted. I agree that "instructions for authors" pages seem ambiguous on this point, but in all of my experience authors, editors and referees have a common understanding: **first we decide whether we want to publish the paper, then we worry about its format and type-setting**.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: The instruction not to typeset means that you should not worry about the appearance of your manuscript over and above what the style file provides. Don't worry about strange page breaks, overfull hboxes, and floats that end up in the wrong place. Fixing these would be examples of what the publisher means by "typesetting". Any fixes you make will almost certainly be removed by the publisher once the manuscript is final and being prepped for publication, so you will have wasted your time and made extra work for the publisher. You do want your manuscript to be readable using the publisher-provided style file, and you should probably be judicious about adding packages to your document. (Ideally the publisher will give guidance on this.)
I agree with username_1 that you shouldn't worry about this issue at all until your paper is accepted. Journals should provide clearer instructions about this.
Upvotes: 4 |
2012/05/29 | 2,003 | 8,337 | <issue_start>username_0: Are faculty salaries negotiable in general? Wherever they are negotiable, how could applicants gain insights about the statistics of offers or the extent of safe negotiation?<issue_comment>username_1: *This entire answer is US-centric, since I have no clue how other countries work. This is not to say that I know the US system that well - but rather that it's the only system I know at all.*
Public universities work differently from private universities. Public universities usually have pay scales and these are often public since professors are considered state employees (yes, my salary is public knowledge). So you can start digging around there. Usually there's a range within which you can hope to negotiate: moving out of that range is beyond even the power of the university to authorize.
Private universities usually have more flexibility and it might be harder to get the range of salaries. But if you get an offer you can ask around to get a sense of the ballpark.
As for what a reasonable range is, getting data is very discipline-specific. For CS, the CRA puts out stats fairly regularly and there's the Taulbee survey. For other disciplines, there might be something similar.
Salaries in academia at least at tenure-track level are less flexible in general. Probably the best way to get to the top of the permissible range is to have another offer. Other than that it's hard. Often, the things that are most easily negotiated are other parts of the startup package. Which is not to say that you shouldn't negotiate salary - but unlike in industry, it's less likely to be as beneficial.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: *This answer applies to Belgium, or perhaps just Flanders.*
Academics are public servants, so the pay scales are fixed. The only thing that is flexible is where on the scale you start. This is then based on the number of years of relevant experience, which is often counted as the number of years after your masters. They will probably apply some tricks to bump it down a notch or two, while appearing generous. No room for negotiation, though.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: In the UK/England, the scale is fixed. There is a "London allowance" which, again is fixed, that I believe is not counted as salary for tax and pension purposes. Your salary increases ~2.5% for each point on the scale you move up.
Each university sets the starting point at which they appoint lecturers (assistant prof equivalent) as well as the maximum point you can progress to without promotion. There is some variation in this range across universities, but within a university it is fixed. I think most universities/departments appoint new lecturers at a 2 points above the bottom of the scale. Sometimes you can negotiate to move up another point or two.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: This answer applies to Australia.
Base pay rates are set by a Federal "Award" which fundamentally covers all academics working in Australia. An employer and employee can privately negotiate an above award wage or condition, but this is never done (employer resistance).
Most academics are covered by a site specific Enterprise Bargaining Agreement negotiated by the union (NTEU) and the employer. This sets graded minimums based on the career phase of the academic, and covers all kinds of academic labour from casual tutor through to professor (a terminal, demonstrated high research output position with field leadership responsibilities). The persons not covered under this are management. The employer is generally unwilling to negotiate variations except for professors and management. Each pay rank has an internal series of steps (Lecturer step 1, step 2, step 3, etc.) representing increases in income based on years of service.
While academics of all disciplines are paid the same at the same grade, the Enterprise Bargaining Agreements vary from site to site, so academics at one University in Melbourne will be paid less than another in Canberra but more than another in Sydney.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: The **[Academic Careers Observatory](http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/AcademicCareersbyCountry/Index.aspx)** may be a helpful resource, especially for the European countries.
For example, their information on the **[Finnish](http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/AcademicCareersbyCountry/Finland.aspx)** salary system is fairly accurate: there is a non-negotiable fixed base salary level that depends on your job title, but on top of that there is up to 46% extra that is determined based on your personal performance (i.e., there is a lot of room for negotiation, at least if you can show that you are actually doing your job exceptionally well).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: *Here is an answer for Germany.*
In Germany there are three different types of professor salaries: [W1, W2 and W3](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besoldungsordnung_W) (unfortunately there is no English Wikipedia site...).
For W2 and W3 the salary is negotiable. In fact, the base salaries have been lowered when the W-system has been introduced (some 10 year ago or so) but there is now the opportunity to have variable bonuses. These bonuses can be obtained by various means and the precise procedure varies from state to state and even from university to university. Basically, one needs to show that one is a high performer, for example in research (having big grants, a lot of publications,...) or in teaching. Moreover, there is a raise for extensive service (e.g. for being the dean). You can expect a raise for sure if you get an external offer for a position which is at least equally good. I think that there are statistics about the average bonus a W2 or W3 professor gets but I can't find one right now. I am not aware of an upper bound for the total bonus and I think the bonus can get higher than 50% of the base salary.
For W1 professors (junior professors) the situation is different. Basically there are no bonuses but there can be exceptions. One needs to show different things and especially that the position could not be filled otherwise. Moreover, the maximum bonus is at 10%.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: First: *Yes*, salaries are negotiable.
The specifics of how much you can negotiate for will depend on a lot of things including flexibility on the institutions end and the amount of leverage you have in the negotiation (e.g., Do you have other offers? what else are you asking for? etc).
Ask around for details on other offers. I've seen folks on the [Academic Jobs Wiki](http://academicjobs.wikia.com) sharing details about offers and startup packages to give folks an idea of what is possible to negotiate for. Professional organizations will often publish these statistics as well.
One useful data point: Many public schools, at least in the US, are subject to public record laws. I know of people who downloaded the full database of salaries from public universities they had offers from, created the subset all the people with the title of the job they were offered, and used those data as a way of getting a sense of the range they could negotiate for.
One piece of advice I got early on was useful: If you are never told "no," you didn't ask for enough. So don't be afraid to ask. Of course, always be *deeply* respectful in the process and keep in mind their own limits and abilities. Your negotiating partners are your future colleagues and a good working environment is worth more than whatever you hope to gain in a rough back and forth over a few thousand bucks.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: This answer applies to Canada.
There is generally a fixed pay scale in Canada. But you can always try to negotiate and sometimes it works. Especially, if someone moves from a faculty position to another university and the salary would be lower, then that person should negotiate to keep at least the same salary (the salary should not decrease). Besides, some top level professors may negotiate to get application for a research chair or that the university also hire their husband/spouse at the same university. This has been done in some cases. You can also negotiate to try to get a permanent position, etc.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/29 | 934 | 3,736 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm at the stage in writing my dissertation where most of the substantive aspects are finished and the only tasks left are more or less administrative. However, one thing that I've been avoiding is writing the "Acknowledgements" section. Obviously I will thank my supervisor, committee members, other faculty and staff that have played a meaningful role in my education, other students who have been friends and co-workers, my close friends, and my family (in that order!), but I'm struggling with how to approach it. Does anyone have advice or hot tips about what to do or not do that they'd be willing to share? Is it possible to make it meaningful without sounding contrived or pedantic or disingenuous? Do I go with the standard disclaimer about how any errors that remain after getting all that wonderful help and support are mine alone...? Thanks!<issue_comment>username_1: The acknowledgements are the only part of the dissertation where you are writing as *yourself* instead of the Impartial Professional Narrator. Just relax and be honest. (Yes, that can be hard, especially after so many years of writing as Impartial Professional Narrator.)
Don't worry too much about writing it the right way. Just be yourself. *Of course* your acknowledgements will sound trite to the average reader, but you're not writing to the average reader; you're writing to your mentors, colleagues, friends, and family, who will value the sentiment far more than the specific words.
And don't forget to send a copy of your dissertation to each of the people you acknowledge, *especially* your family.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I'd like to add one more point to username_1's answer - though I have no idea how localized this is:
Over here, the "I-did-the-work-myself" declaration contains a phrase that noone but those named in the acknowledgements did help with the work.
So in addition to thanking all the people whom you like to thank for moral support etc. (where forgetting someone would be impolite, but usually not have any further consequences), it is *legally* important not to forget anyone who helped with the work.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: To mirror username_1's answer: Your Acknowledgements section is for *you*. And possibly the small number of people who will actually look at your dissertation cover to cover. Write it in your own voice, and write it the way you want to write it.
For reference, this is mine, with identifying information removed:
>
> I would like to gratefully acknowledge the guidance, support and
> encouragement of my doctoral advisor, Dr. Chair, and the members of
> my committee during my time at University, as well as Dr. Helpful for her
> continued mentorship and collaboration, and for logging many miles
> between City A, City B and City C while on my
> committee.
>
>
> My gratitude extends to Dr. Data and Dr. AnswersMyQuestions
> at Nearby Institution for their enthusiasm and willingness to provide both
> data and clinical expertise, to Expert for references and advice
> about Topic and to my friends at University for many hours
> of mutual support, complaining and insightful discussions in the
> student room.
>
>
> This dissertation would not have been possible without
> funding from the FUNDING AGENCIES.
>
>
> Finally, I would like to thank the makers of Dr. Pepper and the members of the
> StackOverflow and CrossValidated communities for their invaluable
> assistance in many a late-night coding session.
>
>
>
Yes, it's a little flippant, but in my opinion something in a dissertation should be, and to quote the Rifleman's Creed: There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/29 | 1,622 | 6,687 | <issue_start>username_0: In a [previous question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/980/how-much-do-soft-skills-matter-for-admission-decision) we stated that soft skills are pretty important for admission decisions in universities, so I suppose that you'll agree with me if I said that they are very important not only during the admission phase, but throughout the whole career.
**Which do you think are the most important ones?**
Thanx!<issue_comment>username_1: In my opinion, I'd suggest these (in order of importance):
1. hard-working attitude
2. public speaking
3. ability to manage personal relationships
4. ability to work in independently
5. ability to work in team
6. creative skills and ability to formulate new problems and ideas
7. ability to accept & learn from criticism
Do you agree with this list?
Would you add something?
Would you change the position of something?
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I broadly agree with Davide's answer above, but I would move the list around somewhat:
1. Tier 1:
* Self motivating
* Communication, broadly-defined
* Ability to stay focused on a single task for multiple months & years
2. Tier 2:
* Work on a team
* Creative, curious personality
* Strong writing skills
3. Tier 3:
* Learn from criticism
* Personable
**Tier 1** skills are, in my mind, absolutely required to be a researcher. The inability of any of those will preclude you from doing your work (i.e., unable to communicate means unable to publish; unable to stay focused for long periods of time means unable to complete research projects & grants.) **Tier 2** skills will turn a good researcher into a great researcher. Technically speaking, researchers don't need to be good team members, but having that skill will greatly improve your academic worth and potential. **Tier 3** will improve your worth to yourself and others as a researcher. There are probably a bunch here that I missed and should have included.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: You didn't say what kind of graduate program you are talking about. The admissions criteria for a Master's program are very different than for a PhD.
Here's what the top-three admissions criteria look like for admission to a research-oriented PhD program:
1. Evidence of research ability.
2. Evidence of research ability.
3. Evidence of research ability.
So, if evidence of research ability is so important, how is it judged? Well, there are several ways that applicants can demonstrate research ability:
1. Demonstrate prior success at research. For example, participated in one or more prior research projects that led to a publication at a peer-reviewed place. This is usually the strongest evidence.
2. Show prior experience with research, with evidence that it went well or that future research will likely be a success. For example, participated in one or more prior research projects, which did not lead to a publication, but the letters of reference state have positive things to say about the applicant's research ability, and the letter-writers are credible on this. This is next-best.
3. Show great intelligence and technical ability, as well as passion/motivation. Here we are talking about indirect measures of research ability. One of the strongest ways is to excel in technical classes. Admissions committees will also look at the motivation/drive (what does the applicant want to study? why? is the applicant driven to do research? why?), at written and other communication skills, and other factors.
Of the materials in the application packet, I could prioritize which are most important:
1. Publications. If you have publications, include them. Admissions committees will often read the publications, look to see where they are published, etc.
2. Letters of reference. Strong letters of recommendation can be very valuable. They need to come from credible people who are well-calibrated about what it takes to be successful in a Ph.D. program, and they should be as strong as possible about the applicant's research potential and other abilities.
3. Classes. Great grades in relevant courses is helpful. The courses also need to provide adequate preparation for the Ph.D. program.
4. Essays. The personal essays should be thoughtful, well-written, demonstrate the applicant's interest in research and goals for Ph.D. study. Admissions committees will read to see whether the essays seem well-informed about the field the applicant wants to join. They'll also try to figure out the applicant's most likely interests, to see if they are a good match for the faculty in the department who are looking to advise new Ph.D. students.
5. Other materials. The rest of your application packages (e.g., GRE scores) are of lesser importance. They're more likely to get you rejected, or raise a red flag that causes the committee to look more closely at the rest of your application packet, than they are get you accepted. It is semi-important to demonstrate communication skills; if you cannot communicate clearly in the language of instruction at the university, then you may not be able to serve as a teaching assistant, which means the school may not have a way to fund you, which is very bad. Also, advisors are more likely to want to work with someone who has good written English than someone who will need to learn how to write clearly.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I will add some further unmentioned skills I value highly and miss among many students **in the age of internet and information overload**:
* googling/filtering, [knowing & using search operators](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/455/213), especially for finding literature. Seems obvious, but I see so many students lacking basic search and internet skills that this is my #1
* knowledge management, meaning [future-proof](https://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/580/what-future-proof-software-for-building-managing-a-personal-big-knowledge-base) saving and [organizing](https://productivity.stackexchange.com/a/1600/560) of your knowledge and [bibliography](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/456/213)
* [keeping up with academic publications](https://productivity.stackexchange.com/a/737/560)
* critical thinking (logic, fallacies, cognitive bias, problem solving), history and philosophy of science (Popper & Kuhn),
Being a scientist means to study further and learn your whole life, more than in any other job, where most of soft skills named in other answers apply too (work hard, in team, motivation ...). Also I think curiosity and creativity are rather personal traits than trainable skills. If you don't have them, consider choosing another job.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/05/29 | 477 | 1,998 | <issue_start>username_0: After a paper is published, say in CS, who reads the paper? How are the ideas presented there applied to business and industry? How is industry collaboration done?
I'm asking this question per this [comment](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/how-do-academics-make-money-from-applying-their-research#comment2845_1763).<issue_comment>username_1: I think it depends in large part on what the research is. Some fields lend themselves more readily to real-life application, while others like, say, theoretical physics, are a long way from being used by industry.
It also depends on the researcher. I am a firm believer in the "[Last Research Mile](http://www.borders.arizona.edu/cms/last-research-mile)" principle (disclosure: the man who wrote that is my advisor). The premise of the Last Research Mile is that a big part of doing research is taking it all the way through to implementation. Doing the early research provides a good start, but lots of important lessons, including research lessons, are learned as the idea is carried through to execution. I'm studying in an Information Systems program, and so my research is in business, computers, and people. While it would be easy to do the basic research and move on to another topic, I think it is important to continue to push and test the idea even in its implementation phases.
As a result of following the Last Research Mile principle, my advisor has created at least one company that sells the product of decades of his research. Many lessons were learned, and many publications resulted because of those lessons throughout the whole process.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: We have a [lab](http://www.laquso.com) within our department that "...takes state-of-the-art methods, techniques, and tools on software product quality analysis developed during more fundamental/strategic research... and applies, validates, and deploys these in industry and government."
Upvotes: 0 |
2012/05/29 | 1,649 | 7,073 | <issue_start>username_0: Why don't more professors attempt to use the knowledge gained during the course of their research work by starting a company and commercializing their findings?
I'm asking this question per this [comment](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/how-do-academics-make-money-from-applying-their-research#comment2845_1763).<issue_comment>username_1: Because we're having too much fun doing research to waste our time making mere money.
---
Lots of professors *do* start companies based on their research. Especially in engineering, entrepreneurship is one of the signs of a healthy department. But starting and running a company is a tremendous amount of work, requiring a *very* different set of skills than being a successful academic researcher. Brilliant and novel ideas, even the tiny minority that are marketable *in principle*, are neither necessary nor sufficient to maintain a successful business. Business plans are just the beginning.
Also, the metrics for success are very different. Put baldly, academic research is successful if and only if your peers like it; a business is successful if and only if it makes money. Academics tend to be more narcissistic than greedy. As evidence: most faculty in science and engineering could easily double their annual salaries simply by leaving academia for industry. If money were our primary motivation, we wouldn't be academics in the first place.
There's also a closely related issue of openness. Academic research is (in principle) entirely public; academic researchers publish their ideas for other people to use, adapt, modify, and apply in ways that are completely out of their control. Businesses, on the other hand, keep tighter control of their best ideas, either hiding them behind non-disclosure agreements or locking their use behind patents, lest some competitor use them to gain an advantage. If you're an academic researcher, someone else using your ideas (usually) helps you; if you're a business, someone else using your ideas (usually) hurts you. For academic researchers used to the unfettered exchange of ideas, the secrecy required for a successful business can be incredibly stifling, if not offensive.
Or maybe that's just me.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: There's more to life than making money... teaching students, grading exams, obtaining funding, being away from your family to present papers at conferences, correcting appallingly written research papers, reviewing similarly appalling papers, trying to get promoted.... It's a laugh a minute and we wouldn't change it for the world.
And it puts bread on the table.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I did that in the past (now it's my brother turn ;)), and trust me, you don't start a company for the money, you do it because you think it will be fun, and that maybe you will provide something that will change the world (or at least something). Sometimes it's work, sometimes not. In fact, most of the time you will work a tremendous number of hours, for a salary (if you are lucky) that will be just the average salary of an average guy. And at the end you can end up totally broke.
Almost 10 years after this experience, I don't regret it, but this is a completely different work than research, and for me this is less fun than research. However, being in the shareholders of a company, and just be there for giving advice is both interesting and fun, because all the "boring" work is done by others.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: This question seems to be based on a misconception, namely that professors start companies substantially less frequently than they could or should.
The vast majority of professors, even in fairly applied areas like computer science (compared with literature, say), are simply not in a position to start companies based on their research. You need a viable business plan, and they don't grow on trees. Specifically, even really profound research with many practical applications usually just doesn't have obvious commercial potential as a stand-alone business, since it won't be clear how to monetize it. Of course, there are exceptions, and plenty of important businesses were started by faculty, but only a small fraction of professors could do this successfully.
Here's another way of looking at it. There's no reason why a business based on a professor's research needs to be founded by the professor. If you see someone with great ideas, you can buy the rights to the ideas and found your own company. If professors were missing a lot of wonderful opportunities to found companies, then you'd expect entrepreneurs to step in and do it, but that doesn't happen very often either.
Ultimately, this is why we have academic research. The stuff that leads to obvious business plans could easily be funded by industry. By contrast, one of the reasons why academia includes research is to make sure work that can't easily be sold doesn't get neglected.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet is intellectual property rights. As an academic, you generally share intellectual property rights with the institution you are affiliated with, at least insofar as royalties must be shared. See [How do academics make money from applying their research?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/how-do-academics-make-money-from-applying-their-research) for a related question with some more information on this and related subjects.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: For any given concept or niche, there is often a huge gap between the time when it's interesting to research that topic, and when it's mature enough to commercialize.
No matter if we're talking about new hardware, new chemical processes or new AI algorithms, there tends to be a decade or two between the point where there are major unresearched and novel parts of the problem, and where it's profitable to scale it as a business; and the problems you need to solve in order to demonstrate a proof of concept are very different from the type of problems you need to solve to make it cheap, predictable and attractive to consumers.
Most researchers are (and should be) working on areas that are far too bleeding edge to be commercialized yet. Most new product development is working on technologies that are already too mature and 'boring' to generate significant publishable research.
In essence, if you see a new 'bleeding edge technology' product in any area, there probably is a 10-20 year old academic paper describing the concept with an implementation that sort-of works if the stars are right, takes impractical effort to make, and practical use requires complementary things that aren't available yet. After some time... the prerequisites have commoditized, someone else has driven the costs down, and you can implement a lot of time in polishing the concept in order to build and sell it - but most researchers would rather research new things than polish the 'old' ones for consumption.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/05/30 | 482 | 1,944 | <issue_start>username_0: When interviewing for a new position, is it common practice to count the days spent on interviews as vacation days?
It wouldn't seem unreasonable to count these as vacation days, except that I could also see them as being work days. If I were only visiting to give a lecture and speak with faculty in another department, it would seem like work, and presenting at a conference is certainly not vacation.
A few follow up questions - does it matter that I am a post-doc (e.g. would it be different from a faculty, in which case interviewing for another position would not be in the interest of the current employer)? Would it be different if I were interviewing at a company rather than a university? Does it depend on the country? I am in the U.S.
(this is related to the question related to [Do presentations given during interviews count as invited talks?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1157/do-presentations-given-during-interviews-count-as-invited-talks))<issue_comment>username_1: In most cases you will not take all of your vacation days and work more than the required number of hours, so it shouldn't really matter. As a post-doc, you should ask your advisor.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You should ask your advisor, but it is reasonable for an advisor to allow you time (potentially several weeks or months) to essentially be away from the lab and your research in order to interview for jobs. In my opinion, this is a concession that is reasonable to give as a reward for hard work during previous phases of an advisee's research. If not, the advisor likely does not have the advisee's interests in mind. That could come back to bite him/her later when attempting to find new advisees.
On the other hand, if you're spending a lot of extra leisure time on the trips that is not part of the interview, then it should probably be considered vacation time.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2012/05/30 | 560 | 2,333 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm a U.S. sophomore (junior in the fall) studying Computer Science looking to transfer. I have three questions:
1. What schools in Europe should I look into for Computer Science? To clarify what I'm looking for out of this question, I'm not asking for schools tailored to what I'm seeking (ie, will this school be good specifically for me), but rather the shared consensus of which schools are considered respectable for Computer Science. For example, even in the states I think everyone would say Oxford and Cambridge are well respected, but beyond that most (including myself) are not aware of other schools not in the U.S.
2. What is the timeframe for applying to these schools? In the U.S. most schools allow you to transfer into the spring or fall semesters, with the application being due approximately 6 months in advance (for example, due in March for fall semester that starts in September) and the application process starting 9 months in advance.
3. Ballpark, how much does it cost for international students to study at these schools? I've heard that University tuition is much lower in Europe. I have tried transferring to schools in the U.S., but for both schools I got accepted into the financial strain of ~30k in loans per year made it impossible to transfer. I don't want to waste my time applying to schools across seas if the same will happen.<issue_comment>username_1: In most cases you will not take all of your vacation days and work more than the required number of hours, so it shouldn't really matter. As a post-doc, you should ask your advisor.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You should ask your advisor, but it is reasonable for an advisor to allow you time (potentially several weeks or months) to essentially be away from the lab and your research in order to interview for jobs. In my opinion, this is a concession that is reasonable to give as a reward for hard work during previous phases of an advisee's research. If not, the advisor likely does not have the advisee's interests in mind. That could come back to bite him/her later when attempting to find new advisees.
On the other hand, if you're spending a lot of extra leisure time on the trips that is not part of the interview, then it should probably be considered vacation time.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2012/05/31 | 461 | 1,984 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a PhD student and have a *D* in one of my exams due to some family issues. I also have a *B* in 3 subjects and *A* in one. I am worried about my future. will the *D* have an impact on my job prospects even if I maintain my GPA above 3.3?<issue_comment>username_1: Its not the grade that you get that determines gets you the job. It's your ability to apply what you have learned to new and challenging fields that ultimately determines your qualification for a job. This is best measured not by grades, but by the quality (and possibly quantity) of publications. In rare circumstances, as @aeismail suggests, employers look closely at your GPA. I do not believe this is the norm though. Most institutions that employ the highly educated look more highly upon strong letters of recommendation and publication history. As long as you have that, you should not have any problems with this grade on your record.
The ultimate impact of your "D" really depends on the policy of your school. As @BenNorris indicates, some graduate programs have a minimum performance requirement such that a low grade in a class may impact your retention in your program. It is best to speak with your advisor, the graduate chair, and possibly even your department chair to discuss the circumstances surrounding your performance, how it will impact your retention, and if there is anything you can do about it. Immediate dismissal is extremely rare. Most institutions place the student on probation (and may make you repeat the course in question).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: It depends on where you live. In the US, most tech companies weight GPA low (but still relevant). There's only a soft correlation between GPA and performance. That being said, it doesn't give you an excuse to slack off.
Furthermore, for PhDs most people assume that you have bad grades as you're focusing on research.
With both these facts, I hope you will not worry about it.
Upvotes: -1 |
2012/06/01 | 473 | 1,881 | <issue_start>username_0: I have heard of people who have gone on to pursue an MBA after their doctorates. What are the advantages/downsides of this?
Wouldn't the companies recruiting them after MBA value their doctorate experience less compared to the experience gained at an MNC? Is there a risk of them being valued as "failed" doctorates?<issue_comment>username_1: There are several cases where PhDs do an MBA. Some of them are:
1. Bored of research as a whole.
2. Irritation with academia and poor scope in Industry.
3. Want to earn money.
4. For furthering responsibilities at the university where one is a professor. If you do some looking around, a high amount of Deans to have an MBA along with a PhD.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: No degree ever goes waste. Most people with PhD and MBA acquire director positions in companies.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: A qualification regardless of level and field of study is never a waste, one needs to realize how to use it wisely and appropriately. As we navigate life we shift perspective and interests, our education choices therefore need to reflect this. Ph.D provides sound research focus, MBA provides sound business and leadership focus. The two combined is a great and electrifying combination.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: PhD = specialist in a subject, research skills, critical mind
MBA = Broad generalist, management, problem solving
The focus and scope is not the same.
Also like it was said most researchers who want to climb the ladder need to take the management track which often require an MBA. Put simply an MD is an MD but a hospital manager needs to be an MD and MBA.
Also to teach at a business school other than math or economics you normally need an MBA. Best is a Phd/MBA but while a lowly MBA can teach that is not usually the case for a PhD.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/06/01 | 761 | 3,147 | <issue_start>username_0: Is it possible for faculty members to enrol themselves for a degree while being employed? I have seen professors attending classes occasionally, but how about earning a full degree?
I guess this may not be an issue within a university, but what if the professor wants to earn the degree with another university in the same city, for example?<issue_comment>username_1: Normally someone who holds the rank of a professor already has an earned doctorate, so there really isn't any need for additional qualifications. It's not really clear to me why a faculty member would then want to go on to pursue an additional degree. To my mind, it would be one of those warning signs that they're not entirely serious about working in their given field, and might choose to move on to "greener pastures" in a few years.
So, in short, I don't think there's any real advantage in a professor obtaining an additional degree.
However, if one is a lecturer or adjunct, then returning for a further degree *in the field in which one is working* makes sense from a career perspective.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In France, it is possible, in particular in order to get the ["Habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR)"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation), which is a degree one can get after a PhD, and that demonstrates the ability to fully supervise a PhD student.
It is required in order to apply for a full professorship position.
In order to get the HDR, the lecturer must write a thesis and defend it in front of a committee, and needs to enroll in a university (and therefore is a student), usually the one where she is working (but I don't think it is required). Note that for the HDR, there is no class or lectures to attend, only the thesis to write.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I've seen a few examples of people getting other qualifications in the Australian context:
* Some universities require or encourage lecturers to get a qualification (perhaps a diploma) related to higher education teaching. These courses are often provided by the employing university.
* Some academics want to expand their skill set; doing a formal qualification is one way of doing this. It really depends on circumstances and personal goals. Often an academic has a choice between self-study or doing a formal qualification.
In general life, many people do a degree part-time while they work full-time. If you are still able to perform your duties at your job, then there typically wont be any issue with the study.
Of course, if you need some time off from your job to attend classes, then in most jobs you would typically want the support of your supervisor.
In an academic context, if the study is related to your research or teaching, then a supervisor (e.g., a Head of Department) is likely to give such support. Furthermore, most academics have a high degree of autonomy in how they spend their time, such that no one is keeping track of when they go off campus, whether that be to attend a colloquium, collaborate with other researchers, or do a little study somewhere else.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/06/01 | 1,155 | 4,586 | <issue_start>username_0: I would love to know the circumstances under which people opt for a second doctorate degree.
* Could a professor working in a university write up a thesis and submit it to his department to earn a second doctorate?
* Do only those who want to remain in the university forever as students go for a second doctorate?
* Are there any general merits/downsides to earning 2 PhDs, if you are perhaps assured of a research career after a good first one?<issue_comment>username_1: Generally you cannot get two PhDs in the same field. One could get a second PhD in a second field.
People who want to do research in multiple fields or in a multidisciplinary topic or wish to change fields may obtain multiple PhDs. Alternatively, as you suggest, people who want to remain students forever do that.
The main downside of doing multiple PhDs is that people may not see that you are moving on with your career. There is a career after getting your PhD, and obtaining a PhD is a small step along that career path. Hovering around getting multiple PhDs would be akin to getting multiple bachelor degrees. People may see you as a permanent student, not someone growing into a mature researcher.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Most universities in the US prohibit awarding of duplicate or comparable degrees. For instance; one might have earned a PhD in Management from Papua New Guinea University, and planning to earn another PhD in Management from Yale. In this particular case, Yale won't admit that student. Similarly, HBS, NYU Stern, Berkeley Haas MBA program FAQ sections clearly state that they won't accept students who already hold an MBA degree from another institution.
"University policy prohibits awarding of duplicate degrees. If you have an MBA or comparable degree from an institute of higher education, your application will be ineligible for consideration."
<http://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/admissions/faq.html>
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I think it really depends on what the person actually wants to do with the two different degrees. For example if someone has both a PhD in chemisty and biology to become a biochemist, their understanding of the subject would be much more versatile. It is absolutely not nessesary by any means, but it would just depend on the person and how many angles they want to approach a subject; some people prefer more than one way of looking at something.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Most schools don't like duplicate degrees, especially ones in the United State. Schools in Africa or the UK usually allow it.
[I know a Professor that had 5 doctorates (not honorary doctorates).](http://www.wits.ac.za/newsroom/newsitems/201312/22012/news_item_22012.html)
>
> Professor Blight (PrEng) was an A-Rated researcher who held five doctoral degrees, and who was considered as one of the world’s leading thinkers in Geotechnical Engineering. He held BSc(Eng) and MSc(Eng) qualifications from Wits. He completed his PhD in Soil Mechanics and his DSc(Eng) in Geotechnical Engineering at London University, before returning to Wits. In 1985, he obtained his DSc(Eng) in Materials Engineering from Wits and another DSc(Eng) qualification from the University of Cape Town. In 2001, he obtained a D.Eng, degree from Wits focusing on the Application of Research in Practice.
>
>
> With over 330 papers published in accredited journals, Professor Blight was internationally renowned as a researcher of the highest standing around the world. He was well published internationally and the author or co-author of several books.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: In answer to this part of the question:
"*Could a professor working in a university write up a thesis and submit it to his department to earn a second doctorate?*"
Where that is allowed he would need to have been registered as a PhD student for the required period of time, which in many British institutions is three years if the research is full-time and longer if it isn't. Universities can't just dole out PhDs at the drop of a hat. The department and probably the higher degrees committee would also want to know in what framework he had carried out the research. I think he would have to do it outside of what he gets paid to do as a professor.
I am not sure how easy it would be to get round the requirement that a PhD student should have an appointed supervisor during those three years either. Of course he may not wish to do that, but if he did there might possibly be a way at some institutions.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/06/01 | 521 | 2,192 | <issue_start>username_0: Recently, I was having a chat with a few senior PhD students (almost done with their thesis) and they pointed out that the professors would, at times, solicit their opinion regarding the admission of a particular student. This was especially true when the prospective student belongs to the same country as that of the senior PhD student.
Does this happen in all institutes?
If it does happen, is it official or discussed-over-coffee unofficial?<issue_comment>username_1: Not a particularity helpful answer, but ...
No, it does not happen at all institutes, but it does happen at many. In some cases it is official and in other cases it is unofficial.
As an applicant you should assume that the entire time you are on campus is part of the interview including any drinks/meals.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Graduate students will almost certainly not be part of the official committee. However, as Daniel stated, they will may be asked about their feelings about a given applicant to the graduate program.
When applying to join a lab, it is very common for individual lab professors to consult the postdocs/graduate students in the lab regarding candidates.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: In our department, we employ the help of grad students (through the grad student committee) to assist with rating institutions (especially in countries that have seen a proliferation of colleges in recent years). We don't usually let students read things like reference letters, since that gets into confidentiality issues.
If the applicant knows people at the department, then we often get informal feedback.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: My department's graduate admissions committee [officially includes senior graduate students](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/917/who-typically-serves-on-a-graduate-school-admissions-committee/929#929). And yes, we specifically ask student committee members for opinions about applicants from their home countries. We sometimes also solicit unofficial "over-coffee" opinions if a student knows an applicant (or letter writer!) personally but isn't on the committee.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/06/01 | 481 | 1,998 | <issue_start>username_0: My university is in Oklahoma and most companies are in east coast and west coast in the US. I am a bit worried if a PhD will be worthy from an average university with poor location. Should I apply to a college where there is a bunch of industries around?<issue_comment>username_1: Not a particularity helpful answer, but ...
No, it does not happen at all institutes, but it does happen at many. In some cases it is official and in other cases it is unofficial.
As an applicant you should assume that the entire time you are on campus is part of the interview including any drinks/meals.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Graduate students will almost certainly not be part of the official committee. However, as Daniel stated, they will may be asked about their feelings about a given applicant to the graduate program.
When applying to join a lab, it is very common for individual lab professors to consult the postdocs/graduate students in the lab regarding candidates.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: In our department, we employ the help of grad students (through the grad student committee) to assist with rating institutions (especially in countries that have seen a proliferation of colleges in recent years). We don't usually let students read things like reference letters, since that gets into confidentiality issues.
If the applicant knows people at the department, then we often get informal feedback.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: My department's graduate admissions committee [officially includes senior graduate students](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/917/who-typically-serves-on-a-graduate-school-admissions-committee/929#929). And yes, we specifically ask student committee members for opinions about applicants from their home countries. We sometimes also solicit unofficial "over-coffee" opinions if a student knows an applicant (or letter writer!) personally but isn't on the committee.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/06/04 | 1,808 | 7,683 | <issue_start>username_0: To be specific, I just graduated with a Bachelor's degree, and my final project supervisor has asked me to co-author a paper with him about the subject of the project I did with his supervision.
I'd love to join the research community, and I guess this would a be good starting point, but there are two issues I'm concerned about:
1. The first is related to the subject itself: (a) I'm not convinced of the quality of the suggested solution. (b) The project tries to solve two different problems.
2. The second issue is that I'm not interested in the field of the project. My interest is in a different field. Though, both are related to computer science.
So, would participating in this paper do any harm to my reputation or my chances of getting into a good graduate program in the field I'm interested in?
**Update:**
Thank you so much for the kind answers. Almost all of you agree that the second issue is harmless, but there are different opinions regarding the first one.
So I said that my supervisor knows better, and I decided to go on and started planning the outline of the paper with his help. When I got to the writing part, I noticed that the main body doesn't relate to or even mention the main problem that we've specified. This is when I decided to decline the offer. It just doesn't feel right.<issue_comment>username_1: Unless the paper to be published is plagiarized from a different source, I can't think of a case where a publication (in *any* field, even if its not related to your future field of research) would affect your career negatively in any way. Sure, if the quality/stature of the venue where this is published is not too high, few would take this paper seriously, but even then, it would be better than no publications at all (seeing that you are just completing a Bachelor's degree - my advice would have been completely different had you been a grad student, where the expectations are a lot higher).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In short, unless there are ethical concerns, which is unlikely to be the case in computer science, then I'd say *no*. If you get some paper published as a Bachelor student, this demonstrates your ability to do research, which is what people in charge of admissions are interested in. If the paper gets accepted at a good venue, then this is even better.
At the current stage of your career, your main concern should be getting into a good graduate program. After you write more papers, better ones on the topic you choose, no one will even worry about that first paper.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I somewhat disagree with the previous answers. I think it is largely improbable that publishing a paper would harm your career, but it could if, for example, it is really poor and someone happens to read it.
Eykanal in a comment to username_2 said that "no one would consider holding you accountable for the content of the paper"; I recall that there is a important trend to insist that *all authors of a paper should be accountable for its content*.
The fact that you do not want to pursue in the direction of the paper is completely harmless, though. There is really no problem working in different areas, the only thing to be careful about is not to spread oneself efforts too much, but this does not apply here.
So the main issue is (a); here I would say that it can be difficult to judge the quality of a result, especially for an undergraduate, and I would advise to trust your advisor. So it is really, really unlikely that co-authoring this paper could do any kind of harm to your career; in fact it could do more harm to decline this opportunity, since your advisor would probably not understand and you will probably need his or her recommendation.
At the end, I do not disagree that much with other answerers; but I would be less general in my statements.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: **Yes**, participating in a research paper **could** harm your reputation/career.
**But** it's very unlikely, as long as you take basic precautions:
* Avoid quack journals, crank journals, and the like
* Avoid ethical breaches (plagiarism, fraudulent data)
* Avoid co-authoring with known cranks
As to your specific issue: "I'm not convinced of the quality of the suggested solution." - if it does indeed solve the problem, then publishing is fine. If it may not, then you need to work things through with your co-author until you agree on whether or not it does solve the problem.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: Short answer, it is very unlikely that it will hurt you.
If you submit a paper to a conference, you get to see the reviews that will tell you what needs to be improved or not. If in the end it was accepted while being a low quality paper, it is the conference committee's problem not yours.
In researchers' profiles, you can write down: "Selected publications" instead of putting the whole list. Most of the time people will just appreciate that you've written a paper, and even more so if it is at a reputable conference. No one has the time to read the paper unless he/she is actually interested in the topic. There's no sort of "Hall of Shame" for publications.
You will learn, that's for sure. It is very unlikely that it will hurt you.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: Minimum conditions for ensuring this - or any other - paper doesn't hurt your career:
* **The research findings must be sound.** don't get tempted into writing, or being listed as a co-author for, papers presenting research when you're "not convinced about the quality" of the research findings; or 'fluffy' papers which don't really present much at all; or mere rehashes of other results etc.
* **The paper must be relatively well-written** - both in terms of language and in terms of structure and narrative flow. Now, I say 'relatively' because this is often hard to get right with the pressure of time and page limits; and with English not being the native language of most researches. So, readers will be somewhat tolerant about this point - but if you write something that is just very hard to follow, or in very poor English, that doesn't reflect well on you.
* **Unfortunately, attention must be paid to the venue of publication.** I must first qualify that... obviously some publications are more highly-regarded w.r.t. their filtering process and the typical quality of articles they carry, and some less so. The thing is, I believe one should not assume that if a paper is published in a 'weaker' journal, that necessarily means it's bad - and if someone is evaluating your qualifications as an academic they should bother to skim the paper itself and make up their own mind. That doesn't always/often happen, so people may well judge your work by looking at where you've published. Of course, this is not something binary ("good" journals and "bad" journals, or conferences) - but having mostly obscure venues in your list of publications does reflect poorly on you, and in some fields I guess there are venues you should actively avoid even at the price of no publication.
Having said all that - for your first publication, as long as it's not a disreputable venue, it doesn't matter much. Most people "start out small".
The last point, about venues, is also a sort of a safety guarantee for you: If you submit a paper to a conference or journal with a good peer-review process, and you're accepted, then it's highly likely that your paper is actually pretty good, and even more likely that it will reflect favorably on you (the converse is not necessarily true of course; lots of good papers get rejected).
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/06/05 | 2,282 | 8,940 | <issue_start>username_0: And how much time does it usually take? I'd like to create a poster without having to put too much time into formatting.<issue_comment>username_1: Powerpoint. There are *hundreds* of PowerPoint poster templates available online, many of them are good, and it is one of the standard formats people accept — and can be exported to PDF for easy post-conference distribution.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I haven't written a poster yet, but if you're a Latex savvy, there are plenty of packages that allow you to design posters.
See related questions:
* ["How to create posters using LaTeX"](https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/341/2061)
* ["What can you tell me about poster design and typography in LaTeX?"](https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/45213/2061)
* ["Conference Announcement Poster"](https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/41209/2061)
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: I would like to avoid bringing this question into the subjective situation but I'm personally a fan of Adobe Illustrator as it combines the speed and ease of ppt (but not as quick and dirty) but it provides much more control. If you save the files as \*.SVG or \*.PS files, you can get really into the details and obtain a WYSIWYG level of detail. Plus, if you're aiming to print your poster, it becomes much easier to switch between RGB and CMYK color.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: [Microsoft Publisher](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Publisher) is quite easy to use if you're used to work with MS Office already (especially Powerpoint). It helps you with some basic checks, e.g. that images you include have sufficient resolution, you're working in the correct color space, ...
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: For completeness, Apple's [Pages](http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/) has quite a few nice poster layouts.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: As always, if you are on a mac, you can use the combo omnigraffle + latexit.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: I would recommend [Inkscape](http://inkscape.org/):
* vector graphics
* powerful
* free
* intuitive
* cross platform
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_8: In general there are a number of different distinct workflows that lead to a poster. Each workflow has a number of software implementations.
* Word Processor (Word, Pages, OpenOffice Writer)
* Presentation Software (e.g., PowerPoint, Keynote, Impress)
* Vector Graphics (e.g., Illustrator, Inkscape, OpenOffice Draw)
* Desktop Publishing (e.g. Publisher, In Design)
* LaTeX
There are advatages/disadvatages to each category and to each piece of software within a category. For making a poster, the differences within a category are much smaller than the differences across categories.
Word processors are probbaly the weakest for layout, but are likely the software you are most familair with. Presentation software is a little stronger on the layout and also something you are likely familiar with. Vector graphic programs are really strong on the layout, but take a lot of fiddling. Most academic work doesn't require extensive use of a vector graphics program, so most people are not familiar. There is little added benefit of learning one. Desktop publishing software is really designed for making posters and other complicated layout (think magazines and brochures). There is almost no reason for most academics to master a desktop publishing software. LaTeX is an "oddball" you can use it for everything and it is well suited for both simple layouts and complicated layouts. The learning curve is pretty steep.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_9: I want to add an additional tool that I always use:
Adobe InDesign
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_10: For your use case, I'd go with M PowerPoint. I have spent anywhere from 4 to 16 hours on posters, depending on the level of detail.
My progression through poster design software went as follows:
M PowerPoint - easy to use, basic layout a breeze, limited in typographical tools
M Publisher - more layout tools, still easy to use coming from a M Suite background
Illustrator - fully featured vector graphics, more control of print/graphics settings, more layout options, harder to learn (but worth it for stunning posters, IMO)
Latex - tried, but didn't fit my use case very well. I needed more interactive control of design elements and the basic templates looked quite drab.
Future - perhaps InDesign, which may add some typesetting features that Illustrator lacks.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_11: I've just used Microsoft Publisher to turn an 8-slide PowerPoint presentation into an A2 poster for a medical conference.
I copied each slide into Publisher and then blew them up to 140% and distributed and aligned them. I added a blue frame, then saved it to PDF for the print shop.
This is probably the best and easiest way to turn an existing PowerPoint presentation into a large poster for professional use.
PowerPoint is very easy to use, but I would recommend using proper publishing software for actual publishing work. PowerPoint gets used too often for things it isn't good at. There's loads of great free and open source (and indeed paid-for/proprietary) software out there - don't limit yourself to trying to do everything with the basic Microsoft Office suite.
(Publisher is also part of Office but it's a proper DTP package.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_12: I've used [Microsoft Visio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visio) to create posters before.
Its original intent is the creation of flowcharts, technical drawings, simple floor plans etc. It's much better at this kind of diagramming than Powerpoint - but offers a bit less "design hand-holding". On the other hand, it's not as bare-bones Inkscape - but allows for less fine-tuned messing with the graphics, or at least makes it more complicated.
Sorry for recommending closed-source software, but - it's also an option.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_13: I use a combination of Adobe InDesign and Illustrator. You should use software designed for page layout, not something coopted for that purpose. Please don't use PowerPoint or Latex — PowerPoint is difficult to use with many many objects on a single slide, and really isn't designed for page layout. Latex shouldn't be used by anyone, unless you have so many equations in your document that nothing else will do.
I export figures into .AI or .SVG and use InDesign to lay out the poster. This doesn't take very long, and you can set up styles to ensure consistent formatting across the poster.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_14: I recommend the free and open-source desktop publishing program **[Scribus](https://www.scribus.net/)**, available for a wide variety of operating systems including Windows, Mac, and Linux. Unlike many of the programs suggested here, Scribus is specifically focused on tasks relevant to poster production: layout, typesetting, and high-quality printed output. For example, Scribus includes a "Preflight verifier" to warn you about potential problems with your exported PDF file *before* you waste €40 on a messed-up A0 colour print. I've used Scribus for several conference posters and it's always produced good results. These days I personally tend to use LaTeX with the [tikzposter](https://ctan.org/pkg/tikzposter?lang=en) package, but I know that some people prefer interactive, WYSIWYG tools for poster design -- and in those cases, Scribus would be my first choice.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_15: There are various templates to create poster using markdown\*, cf. the list at <https://gist.github.com/Pakillo/4854e5d760351206084f6be8abe476b2>:
* <https://github.com/odeleongt/flexdashboard-poster>
* <https://github.com/odeleongt/postr>
* <https://github.com/bbucior/drposter>
* <https://github.com/mathematicalcoffee/beamerposter-rmarkdown-example>
* <https://github.com/jhollist/markdownPoster>
* <https://github.com/BenBarnard/pdfposter>
That first template allows to go from a human-readable code like
```
## Row 2 {data-height=75}
### **Methods**
#### Workflow
**Dependencies**
This poster template dependes on the following R packages
- rmarkdown [@rmarkdown]
- flexdashboard [@flexdashboard]
- webshot [@webshot]
To use `scripts/generic-content.R` you will need a GNU/Linux system
and a working installation of `imagemagick`.
```
to a poster like
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MABpi.jpg)
---
\* : If you are not familiar with this tool, [Markdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown) is a lightweight markup language that starts to be used everywhere: as you may have noticed, <https://academia.stackexchange.com/>, <https://github.com/>, various forum and a large community of software developer has started using it or supporting it to some extend. It is easy to learn and intuitive.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/06/05 | 883 | 3,805 | <issue_start>username_0: I wish to categorise my large collection of electronic documents. I need a foolproof set of categories to put each document in. I want to use a classification system similar to how university schools are organized:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_disciplines>
Some of my documents are productivity tips (similar to <NAME>'s "Getting Things Done" book). I can't find an academic category under which productivity comes. The term "productivity science" doesn't seem to be a widely accepted term.
What is the most natural category to put the study of "Productivity" in? Psychological Sciences (or other Social Sciences)? Applied Sciences/Professions? I'm tempted to put it in Psychology because I have other documents based on Learning, Memory and Performance. The four of those seem best suited to Psychological Sciences.<issue_comment>username_1: My guess would be Business -> Industrial and labor relations -> Organizational
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Any of the four categories you suggest would make sense.
---
On a related note, for exactly this reason, I would recommend against a category-based classification system, as many fields of research are significantly cross-disciplinary. Depending on your field, you'll end up having to cross-reference your article a lot.
I would rather suggest a tag-based method, where you devise an intelligent tagging scheme and simply tag each paper as necessary. This way, you get the benefits of categorization, combined with the ability to cross-categorize by simply adding another tag. You can add as many tags make sense and ensure that you can find the paper again later, which, at the end of the day, is the whole point of the system. Additionally, many bibliography programs support tags references out of the box.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: There is no such thing as a
>
> a foolproof set of categories to put each document in
>
>
>
With paper documents the document had to "live" in a single locations and therefore needed a primary category/label/tag. You then had lots of different indexes that would allow you to find the document from multiple places. You often had to walk to a different library to collect the document. This system was/is inefficient and problematic.
Electronic documents can "live" in multiple places. The concept of assigning a single primary category to an electronic document is dated and silly. You should either modify the file directly to add helpful metadata or create a database that lets you externally create searchable metadata. This then allows you to easily search for the document, and related documents.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: The metaproblem here is that the OP has clearly invested a lot of intellectual energy trying to find the “right place” to store documents by some objective standard. **But the only “right place” is the one that maximizes your probability of finding stuff when you need it.**
(This could be an early warning sign of excess rigidity in problem solving more generally. Always think of the big picture.)
If you created an imaginary new academic discipline called *zigamazoo* and stored all the *GTD* and similar productivity materials there, would that be a ridiculous name? Of course. Would it be effective? I’ll bet it would.
I’d actually call it *personal productivity* and make it a peer of the other academic disciplines. I’d probably remember that when I went to look for it. If cross-references would be helpful under topics like psychology, I’d add them, but they’re probably superfluous. You’ll remember you created a (rare!) top-level heading for this.
Why on earth would you care whether it's under the right academic discipline as long as you can find it?
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/06/05 | 1,256 | 5,277 | <issue_start>username_0: Is it a bad thing in academia if a student works from home? [Missing department talks and seminars](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/39/will-people-judge-me-negatively-for-skipping-department-seminars) is obviously bad, but in case a student is pursuing a problem alone and he feels comfortable researching at home, is it viewed negatively? At times the time spent on travel and a crowded lab may disrupt one's flow of thoughts, so in those cases home provides an edge.
Is physical attendance deemed important by the department as long as they are kept in the loop regarding your progress?<issue_comment>username_1: Not necessarily. With the way that some departments are rapidly running out of physical real estate, they may even appreciate students who chose to work in their dormitories, homes, or libraries. (Of course, there is a barrier where one's work needs to be able to be performed at those locales, which of course rules out lab-based works in the experimental sciences.)
When I was a graduate student the department actually sent out an e-mail to all students asking students who intend to work mainly from somewhere apart from the department building to *declare their intention* so that they can more efficiently assign (the very limited) office spaces. But this was in a math department and eccentricity seems to be more tolerated there.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: The answer is it depends - both on the student and the culture of the department.
There are of course some situations where working from home is impossible - graduate programs that are heavily lab based come to mind. Below is a summarization of my thoughts from a more data analysis driven field, having done both.
**Positives**
* Lots of departments these days don't *have* lots of graduate student space. While some labs might have dedicated bench space, and there may be an RA/TA office or two, there's not "a place" where students can work anyway, which makes "is it bad to work from home" something of a moot point.
* Working from home benefits certain work styles. If you're the kind of person who prefers to work in a spread out, sprawling fashion, with multiple monitors, tons of stacks of paper, and a whiteboard or two, that's just not feasible in most grad student offices, even when they do exist. And when the only spaces that exist are transient ones, like shared desks or cubicles, library study areas etc. you also can't customize your work space at all - and expensive textbooks and laptops are theft bait.
* It facilitates more flexible schedules. Universities tend to be closed at 3:00 AM. I tend to do my best work at around that time. This seems to be relatively common in academia, and as academia seems to promote an "always working" lifestyle, having a single centralized space you have access to 24 hours a day is nice.
**Negatives**
* You do lose out on departmental interactions somewhat. The concern about missing seminars is I think a bit of a non-issue. Those are easy to miss when you're working *on site*, and can be attended with just a little bit of diligence on the part of someone working from home. What I've found missing more is the transient, passing in the hallways interactions. I realized, for example, one day that I had gone several weeks without talking to anyone about my field. That's not good. It also does some harm to cross-polination and ideas from unexpected places.
* It can get lonely. Seriously, this seems to be a major challenge. It's possible, and the workload sometimes promotes, just disappearing into a cave.
* It's possible to get distracted, as it always is working from home. "Real life" has infinitely many things to take care of, and its much easier to defend "work time" if you're at an office. But then unless you have an *office* its easy to get distracted in a department where your friends and colleagues are around.
Overall, I wouldn't say its bad. I know successful academics who work almost entirely in their office, and who work almost entirely from home. I'd say the best way to promote on-site work, if a university is trying to accomplish that, is not to focus on the bad parts of working from home, but on addressing what makes it appealing. I finally moved entirely to a working from home setup because I got tired of "work" involving camping out in cramped spaces, without the materials I needed, fighting for power outlets.
As for whether or not your physical presence is *important to the department* - it depends on the department. I've known some who don't care as long as you show up to what you need to, and others that absolutely want you there, and subtly penalize those who aren't around.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: As this relates to students, I feel it is extremely bad to work from home regularly. Being a grad student is not about being efficient, or even learning to be efficient. It is about learning your subject area and making contacts. Working from home means you miss interactions with your colleagues. You will be judged by your senior collegauges both in terms of your productivity and percieved work ethic. No department sets out to hire people who they know will predominately work from home.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/06/05 | 634 | 2,644 | <issue_start>username_0: As a PhD student pursuing an academic career (but optionally a career in industry), what should I do do to get the most of a 10-week internship at a research lab?
Things I've thought of: talking with people (networking); attending talk/seminar (new ideas); giving a talk (get people to know you).
What other things can/should be done?<issue_comment>username_1: First of all, good for you in getting the internship. Now that you're there, some suggestions for what to do, broadly and specifically:
* Meet people with similar backgrounds to yourself. Find out what they do, what skills they value, what skills they wish they had.
* If you're in a large company, talk to people in other parts of the business, see what they do. You may find positions in other parts of the company that interest you that you weren't even aware of.
* If you're in a large company, talk to managers, see what they desire in people like you. They'll already be slightly impressed that you thought to talk to them. Learn what they do, what skills they like. It can help you guide your career later on.
* Learn new skills & hone old ones. This is a good time to see which of your skills are marketable and which aren't. Get really good at the marketable ones.
* Use the opportunity to reach out to people in similar positions at different companies and see what they're doing. If you don't know people at other companies, ask around; your new coworkers should have friends they can put you in phone/email contact with, and you can take it from there.
Above all, try to do a really good job. Internships can often lead to full-time employment, so you want to impress.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Let me add two important items to username_1's great answer:
* **Do awesome research.** If you want an academic career, you can't ever *not* do this. A good internship is not a vacation from research; it's an opportunity to broaden your research portfolio.
* **Cultivate references for your future job search.** Find, work with, and impress people whose interests overlap yours *and* whose opinions are valued in the academic research community. These people may work at the company, or they may be visitors.
When it comes time to look for an academic job, your application will be *significantly* stronger if you have recommendation letters from and publications with people who don't work at your home institution. In fact, if your CV lists an internship, but you don't have a letter from or paper with someone at your hosting company, that gap will raise a (small) red flag with recruiting committees.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/06/05 | 662 | 2,811 | <issue_start>username_0: I am finishing writing my master's thesis (~100 pages) and I also just submitted a paper (8 pages) to a conference. Since both are on the same subject and I am an author on both, is it ok if I reuse one page from the paper and put it in my thesis without many changes? The paper will not be published until 2013 (if at all). Is it necessary to cite it in any way?<issue_comment>username_1: Yes. It is certainly okay. Indeed, general practice when writing a PhD thesis is to produce a number of publications that add up to the thesis, whether directly (using staples) or by a good deal of massage. Some published material may be omitted and some additional material may be included. There's no reason why this shouldn't apply to a Master's thesis, too.
It is a good idea to cite the paper in the thesis (if the paper has been accepted for publication) and the thesis in the paper, if possible.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: While reusing material is typically done there are three concerns.
The first is citation. If it is in press or published at the time you submit the thesis, I would cite it. I wouldn't bother citing manuscripts that are in preparation/under review/in revision.
The second issue is copyright. Many journals and some universities require you to give up copyright control. Most make concessions, especially for articles, less so for book projects. You need to check and read the rules.
The third is being scoop. Putting your stuff in the public domain is important, but it also puts you are risk. Someone might independently build on your research publish your second chapter before you or conduct follow up research which reveals a huge hole in your research.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Yes, this is very common. Indeed, theses are often verbatim copies of one or more published or submitted papers.
I would say you should cite the conference paper, listing it as "Submitted". You should also check with your university's thesis guidelines. It is very likely they will tell you how to cite work that is/will be published elsewhere.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: While many universities accept sandwitch theses, the only thing that can give you the right answer are the **examination regulations** you're subject to.
* There are cases when parts of thesis work are not allowed to be published (in an article) though that can also create difficulties with the regulations.
* Usually the university will want to get a paper out of the work in addition to the thesis. So the content being published is usually seen positive.
* However, they may still not accept verbatim copy of large parts of the text but expect you to rewrite it so that your thesis is one "unbroken" piece of text written by you yourself.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/06/06 | 566 | 2,416 | <issue_start>username_0: Given the [importance of web presence](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/616/is-web-presence-important-for-researchers) how does one manage the web presence of a research group? The simplest approach seems to be to use links to the personal webpages of the group members to supply content. Is it worth creating content specifically for the group and if so should it reflect the interests of the current group membership or the interests of the PI, which will need updating less frequently?<issue_comment>username_1: There are many things that could be useful for the web presence of a research group, namely:
* A brief presentation of the aims of this research group
* The members of this working group (past and currents) with a link to their homepage
* a list of publications by this research group
* if there are working groups organized by this research group (for instance a presentation every two weeks by one of the member of the work done)
* Other results such as software ...
* Maybe a link to the people funding this research group, a little advertisement never hurts.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: To add to username_1's answer,
* A list of lab alumni and optionally where they currently are working, it can help lend credibility to the lab ("look at how awesome we are, former postdocs from our lab are now working at MIT")
* In the publications section, I would add downloadable PDFs of your papers, as that's the most common reason people will be visiting your website
Regarding your mention of content for the lab specifically (i.e., an intranet), we had such a page in our lab, and we used it solely to distribute (and keep historical records of) papers discussed in lab meetings.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: In addition to the components listed by username_2 and username_1, my group webpage includes pages for
* Software developed by the group
* Open positions (Ph.D. studentships and post-docs) available within the group.
These things could be maintained on my personal webpage (as PI), but I consider the group to be more than just "people who happen to be working with Prof. X".
In case it is helpful to have an example, here's mine: <http://numerics.kaust.edu.sa/>. I could give other examples of group sites I think are better than mine, but I don't know if they would like me advertising them as such.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/06/06 | 1,723 | 5,230 | <issue_start>username_0: Let's say I want to cite a Russian text in my own paper which is written in English. Should I:
* reference it as is, in the original Cyrillic alphabet, although the readers won't be able even to pronounce it?
* transliterate the authors' names, while keeping the rest as is?
* transliterate the names and translate the title of the work, journal name, etc. into English?<issue_comment>username_1: In general, this would depend on the style prescribed by your publisher (journal, conference, etc.) For instance, [a blog post cites the Chicago style manual](http://reganmian.net/blog/2010/05/06/how-to-cite-chinese-sources-in-chicago-style/) explains how one should go about sources in Chinese and Japanese:
>
> **10.108: Inclusion of original characters**
>
>
> Chinese and Japanese characters, immediately following the romanized version of the item they represent, are sometimes necessary to help readers identify references cited or terms used. They are largely confined to bibliographies and glossaries. Where needed in running text, they may be enclosed in parentheses. Computer technology has made it much easier than it used to be to typeset words in non-Latin alphabets.
>
>
> <NAME> 華林甫, “Qingdai yilai Sanxia diqu shuihan zaihai de chubu yanjiu” 清代以來三峽地區水旱災害的初步硏究 [A preliminary study of floods and droughts in the Three Gorges region since the Qing dynasty], Zhongguo shehui kexue 中國社會科學 1 (1999): 168–79 . . .
>
>
> <NAME> and <NAME>, “Nihon kenkyū to bunka kenkyū” 日本研究と文化研究, Shisō 思想 7 (July 1997): 4–53.
>
>
> That year the first assembly of the national Diet was held and the Imperial Rescript on Education (kyōiku chokugo 敎育勅語) issued.
>
>
>
And:
>
> **11.89: Titles of Japanese and Chinese works Chapter Contents / Languages Usually Transliterated (or Romanized) / Chinese and Japanese**
>
>
> As in English, titles of books and periodicals are italicized, and
> titles of articles are set in roman and enclosed in quotation marks
> (see 8.156–201). The first word of a romanized title is always
> capitalized, as are many proper nouns (especially in Japanese).
>
>
> <NAME>, *Mingdai guan shougongye de yanjiu* [Studies on
> government-operated handicrafts during the Ming dynasty], . . .
>
>
> <NAME>, “*Qingdai yilai Sanxia diqu shuihan zaihai de chubu yanjiu*” [A
> preliminary study of floods and droughts in the Three Gorges region
> since the Qing dynasty], *Zhongguo shehui kexue* 1 (1999): 168–79.
>
>
> <NAME>, *Jūrokuseiki Nichi-Ō kōtsūshi no kenkyū* [Study of
> the intercourse between Japan and Europe during the sixteenth
> century], . . .
>
>
> Akiyama Kenzō, “Goresu wa Ryūkyūjin de aru” [The Gores
> are Ryūkyūans], *Shigaku-Zasshi* (or *Shigaku Zasshi*) . . .
>
>
>
In summary, in Chicago style the format for article title is: transliterated/Romanized version (in double quotes), original script version, and English translation (in square brackets). The format for Hua author names and journal titles is: transliterated/Romanized version followed by original script version, with no English translation.
[Harvard style and reference guide](http://www.library.otago.ac.nz/pdf/harvard_citing_and_referencing_guide_2007.pdf) requires a translation, followed by the original name:
>
> <NAME>. (2001) The Phantom of the Opera. [Le Fantome De L’Opera] Paris, LeRoux.
>
>
>
In [APA Style](https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/08/apples-to-%D7%AA%D7%A4%D7%97%D7%99%D7%9D.html), the order is reversed: translation goes last, transliteration goes first, and the original script is not used:
>
> <NAME>. (Producer), & <NAME>. (Director). (1954). *Shichinin no samurai* [Seven samurai; motion picture]. Japan: Toho.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I will just add to good username_1's answer. The main point of references is to provide traceable sources to information. This means the translation of the title and journal are key. The title provides insights into the content of the paper and the journal makes it traceable. All journals have different "standards" for how to do this in detail. It is also common that articles in French, German, and/or Spanish are not translated (again local "rules"). It is not common to see, for example, cyrillic in references, instead translitteration seems to be the most common. Again, there should be "rules" about this in each journal and so the best appraoch is to contact the journal editor and ask if no explicit information is available.
Here is an example of how journals may wish to see the references:
>
> Author(s), year. Title in original language (if possible) [Title translated into English]. Publication name in original language (if possible) [Publication name translated into English]. Volume/issue/page information (according to type of publication). [In ‘language’]
>
>
>
and as an example:
>
> <NAME>. and <NAME>., 1966. O svyasi povercknostnogo tayaniya lednikov s temperaturoy vozdukha [On the relationship between melt of glaciers and air temperature]. Materialy Glyatsiologicheskikh Issledovaniy [Data of Glaciological Studies], 12. 153–163. [In Russian]
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/06/06 | 858 | 3,389 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a few questions regarding admission into a PhD program in Applied Linguistics or Linguistics at US universities. I could not find any other valuable online sources regarding Linguistics for the answers I seek. Let me start with my qualification. I am an international student with a Masters in English Linguistics and Literature with a percentage of 65.9. Although it's the best language university in my country but it is not that famous anywhere else. My grade average was B with no A or C in any of the individual modules. We don't have GPA system for language studies.
This percentage is regarded with high value in my country and I was one of the top four in my class. However, there is no set grading scale used by the examiners in my country and it is very rare, in fact, almost impossible to score above 70% in any language related field. And that is the case for the most perfect performance.
My Bachelor's scores are mediocre (59.9%). I was disappointed in myself for not being able to get admission into a medical school (marginally) like the rest of my siblings and ending up doing Bachelors in law and English Literature was a major shock for my planned future career (I had been a brilliant student before). I, however, slowly developed interest in Linguistics and did well in Masters.
1. My first question is, as most good Universities require a GPA of 3 or above with successful candidates usually having more than 3.6, what are my chances of admission? How can I go about explaining my situation as the % of students pursuing Linguistics doctorate at US from my country is very low. Are my scores too horrible?
2. My only research was Masters thesis in a literature related field, titled, 'Autobiographical element in <NAME>'s "One Hundred Years of Solitude"' of almost 40,000 words. Will it hinder my chance for admission into Linguistics?
3. What else can I do to improve my application and up my chances specifically for Linguistics? How should I lay out my SOP? My ultimate preference would be Berkeley, UCLA and MIT. Should I even think about these universities with such scores?
Any help would be highly appreciated.<issue_comment>username_1: As an international candidate you need to think about what your scores mean. I think percentile rank, as opposed to GPA or raw percentage is what is important. In the US a 65.9 would be very bad and I would guess that in the US 75% of the students have a GPA of 3.0 or above and 10% have a GPA of 3.6 or above. In many European countries a 59.9 would be a borderline 2:1 and put you in the 50th percentile.
It sounds like you think your Masters work would be in the top 10%. That is very good. With a little help (both in your letter and by your recommendation writers) schools will figure this out.
One solid piece of previous research is really all that is need to get into a PhD program. 40,000 words is huge. You may want to work on shortening it so you can present it as a paper and send it as a writing sample if English is not your first language.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Your GRE scores would be very important, in this case. For a writing sample, a term paper in linguistics would be better than your MA thesis, given its length. Your writing sample should show your linguistics knowledge, if you're applying to linguistics programs.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/06/06 | 358 | 1,529 | <issue_start>username_0: After receiving a rejection (not revise and resubmit) decision from the editor/associate editor of a journal, should we write an email to thank him/her for the time, or just do nothing? I imagine one might do that out of courtesy, but then I don't really have much to say otherwise.<issue_comment>username_1: I don't recall ever having received such an e-mail as an editor, so it's not standard (let alone mandatory), but I wouldn't be unhappy to receive one. I doubt anyone would care enough to make it worth the effort, but it could be a nice gesture if you feel inclined.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I believe that if you feel the rejection was unjustified and you do not plan to submit to that journal again, you do not need to reply.
But if you feel the rejection was justified, you plan to submit to that journal again, or you were helped by the comments and suggestions of the referees, then I would recommend that you write an e-mail thanking the editor and the referees for their time and effort.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I think it is reasonable to thank editors that keep you up to date, solicit reviews in a timely manner, and provide an understandable overview of the reviews. Unfortunately, the number of good editors is small, so I would caution against thanking editors for merely acting as editor. The benefits are small while the potential cost is huge. It is so atypical that you run the risk of the editor thinking you are whining.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/06/07 | 668 | 2,293 | <issue_start>username_0: The example is when you might be reading a certain paper, and the authors refer to another paper. You can't get that other paper as it's unpublished, or it's in a language that you can't read, or maybe something else.
My guess is:
>
> Featherstone et al 1900 (in Thomas and Cullen 2002).
>
>
>
And how is it to be handled in the bibliography?<issue_comment>username_1: In APA style, you can write, (e.g., [see this APA tutorial](http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/tutorials/citing/apa.html))
>
> Featherstone et al 1900 (as cited in Thomas and Cullen 2002)
>
>
>
Of course, in general you should try your best to read the original and cite the original directly.
Someone in the comments asked:
>
> "In such case do I need to list original paper also in reference section or only the recent one I am referring to?"
>
>
>
The reference to the original article is the more important reference to include, but you should include both in your reference list.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If you cannot get that paper, you **should not** cite it.
What is a citation? The word *citation* comes from Latin verb *cio* (past participle: *citum*) that means *to call somebody*, *to invite somebody*, or preferably **to demand someone to give his own testimony**.
So, in your case, if you would like to cite that paper, that means that you invite that paper to give its own testimony. But **if it's not available**, how could it do it?
Simply, **it can't**.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: If you are using a quote from author A that author B is citing, you would go ahead and use the quote from author A and cite it like this:
>
> Blah blah, blahblahblah, blah blah blah-blah blah (qtd. in Author B 65).
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: The following is with regards to Chicago Style as of 11/25/2018
14.260: Citations taken from secondary sources
Chapter Contents / Special Types of References / Citations Taken from Secondary Sources
To cite a source from a secondary source (“quoted in . . .”) is generally to be discouraged, since authors are expected to have examined the works they cite. If an original source is unavailable, however, both the original and the secondary source must be listed.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/06/07 | 632 | 2,511 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm an STS student, so bear with me; I'm happy to provide clarification but I want to leave the specific application unspecified:
**What sources would you consult if you were trying to generate a huge "list of all academic topics"?**
I'm thinking it would include all the 'ologies', the 'isms', the 'X studies', all the historical "movements", all the 'subjects' of journals and papers, all the 'big questions' of any given "field".
What other sources, whether vague (like above) or specific (like a URL with some good list items), would you suggest in compiling this list?<issue_comment>username_1: You need to define topic first. At the macro level, all topics fall under "knowledge", or some such nonsense, and at the micro level, every published paper and book is on a different topic.
You could use the different doctoral degrees as pretty broad topics. This would give you a list like philosophy (PhD), medicine (MD), science (ScD), etc. A less coarse division would be "schools/College". This would give you a list like School/College of Arts, School/College of Humanities, School/College of Medicine, School/College of Science, etc. A finer division would be departments and institutes within a School/College. A still finer would be research groups within departments. This of course leads to individuals within groups and finally publications by individuals.
University websites would provide all the information you need, although not in a format that is easy to search and retrieve.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: A good starting place may be: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_disciplines>, with the links there, esp. restricting to specific disciplines (e.g. [List of biology disciplines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biology_disciplines)); for each field of science, usually there are a few different official classifications of sub-disciplines (e.g. [Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS)](http://www.aip.org/pacs/)).
However, bear in mind that:
* there is no universal classification,
* some are constructed for different purposes, with differently 'catching' subfields and their intersections,
* there are many synonyms, e.g. 'biological chemistry = biochemistry',
* for may there may be historical bias (i.e. divisions which were useful 10 year ago, but not are out-of-date),
* some classifications use descriptive names (one sentence or more), some - 1-3 word tags,
* many classifications are hierarchical.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/06/07 | 1,220 | 4,420 | <issue_start>username_0: My question is about using a Ph.D. title/grade from an EU University in Germany.
Germany recognizes (properly obtained) Ph.D.s from other EU countries.
People with an EU Ph.D. are allowed to use the abbreviation "Dr." in front of their names without mentioning the country of origin (which is AFAIK required for some other countries) or using the original version. However, reading [this information letter from the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences, Research and the Arts](https://web.archive.org/web/20120523204045/http://www.stmwfk.bayern.de/hochschule/pdf/grade.pdf), section 1.3.2. (German), you are not allowed to use both together.
I'm confused about this and its exact scope.
Does this mean a Ph.D. holder can't call themself "Dr. Firstname Lastname" on a business card and then list "Ph.D." together with the other titles like "M.Eng., Dipl.Ing." on a second line? Using "Firstname Lastname, Ph.D." in Germany would not have the same effect then the first form. Not mentioning the Ph.D. at all however would keep many people wondering what kind of doctor grade you have. Maybe it only means not to use "Dr. Firstname Lastname, Ph.D.", but the business card example is very close to that.
Also, can "Ph.D." be used in one occasion and then "Dr." in a different one, or do you have to stick with one? Would it be ok to use "Dr." on your German business card and "Ph.D." on your English one? Even if both are on opposite sides of the same card?<issue_comment>username_1: An American using "Dr." and "Ph. D." in the same title is double-counting, just as if a German were to use "Dr.rer.nat." and "Dr."
That said, if you're going to use multiple titles, you should probably be consistent and list the PhD as one of those degrees.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: My interpretation of "gleichzeitige Führung" is that they "decorate" the same mentioning of your name. So at least in Bavaria the Dr/PhD for German/English cards should be legal even if on the same side (assuming there is no other conditions that prohibit the use of Dr), but the option with different versions of the same title in different lines would be not.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: If I am not mistaken, you may decorate your name with "Dr. Dr." if you have two PhD degrees. Writing "Dr. Firstname Lastname, PhD" would probably also indicate two degrees, e.g. one from Germany and one from the UK.
PS: The information letter is no longer available, so I have not read that.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: well, I read it as
you can either use Dr. without anything at the end (that is "translating" it to German)
or
you use the version which is legally correct in the country of origin (where you received the PhD). This seems to be the only viable option in terms of EU law.
Which then leave the issue how the PhD should be used in the country of origin eg the UK.
This is not really easy to answer. Because you find it in different ways:
as "Dr. Xxxx" or as "Xxxx, PhD" or as "Dr Xxxx, PhD".
I couldn't find any legal document that provides any further guidance on this matter, the only thing I found is a ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority.
In this case the body ruled that the Dr Xxxx, PhD in the context of web-page with a medical content would suggest that Dr means that the person would be a medical Dr. However, as such the Advertising Standards Authority sees the usage of Dr Xxxx, PhD not as misleading. here the link: <http://asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2012/11/Dr-Alyssa-Burns_Hill/SHP_ADJ_194636.aspx#.U5R6q9qKCAU>....
And then there is the Committee of Advertising Practice which states that :"it is likely to be acceptable for advertisers who possess a relevant PhD or doctorate (of sufficient length and intensity) to call themselves “Dr” provided they use the suffix “PhD” to clarify the type of qualification they hold and that the general context does not imply they are medically qualified."
<http://www.cap.org.uk/Advice-Training-on-the-rules/Advice-Online-Database/Use-of-the-term-Dr-PhD.aspx>
So I think the question is whether there is any legal convention in the UK about how one should or should not use the title.
But to be honest, I doubt that something like that exists.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: My son is Ph.D. from Technical University of Munich (TUM). He writes "Dr. Firstname Middlename Lastname"
Upvotes: 0 |
2012/06/07 | 477 | 2,062 | <issue_start>username_0: ### Background
When preparing a final version of a figure, it appears that some changes could be more easily made in a graphics software (gimp, inkscape, scribus, adobe) as opposed to R. Such changes might be done more efficiently, and more to the publishers standards, by the publisher. Apparently, the publisher uses some such software to makes final changes to the image anyway. Presumably, these changes can do it more efficiently and to their standards. Also, some tasks would be trivial or would be done anyway by the publisher.
Some tasks that I am currently doing to prepare figures for a journal article:
* move / add text
* change font
* change line thickness
* change background color
Something that would be neat to do:
* integrate figures into text, in the style of Tufte:
### Questions:
* What formatting is commonly done by a publisher rather than an author?
* Is it reasonable to make requests?
* If so, what work will a publisher be willing to do?<issue_comment>username_1: In many particle physics journals the answer is they do *nothing*. You deliver a latex source file that uses their class and figures that meet their standards or they send it back.
And in all truth, I *like* it that way.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: For many years, the standard on the part of journals is to do *absolutely nothing* with respect to journal articles. Essentially all of the work in terms of preparation falls on the authors. Previously, figures had to be "camera-ready"; now, they "just" have to be publication quality. The journal production staff will not do anything, except potentially change the size of the graphic to better fit the column space.
You should check with the journal about the regulations on acceptable graphics; they should have them available for your review on their website. If there are questions about the use of graphics outside of those guidelines, send an email to the journal office.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer] |
2012/06/07 | 780 | 2,385 | <issue_start>username_0: For example, a presentation whose PDF is listed at <http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/exoclimes/2012/pdf/talks/Day02_Ferreira.pdf>?
And what if the presentation doesn't have a publicly available URL? How would the citation style differ from that of a poster?<issue_comment>username_1: To supplement Nate's comments, what I have usually seen is "personal communication". The poster isn't yet peer-reviewed and if it has yet to be written up as a manuscript and you can't cite it as a paper that is "in press", "personal communication" is a good substitute.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The specifics of the citation would depend on the citation style you are using. I am most familiar with Chicago style. To cite the presentation you've linked to in **Chicago** style, I would put:
<NAME>, et al., "Climate of an Earth-like Aquaplanet: the high-obliquity case and the tidally-locked case" (presentation, Exoclimes 2012, Aspen, CO, January 16–20, 2012), accessed June 8, 2012, <http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/exoclimes/2012/pdf/talks/Day02_Ferreira.pdf>.
Following these guidelines: <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/08/>
For APA style, you would only cite a presentation in a reference list if there is a tangible remnant ("recoverable data") of the presentation (e.g., slides posted on a website). The citation would look like:
<NAME>., <NAME>., <NAME>., <NAME>. & <NAME>. (January 2012). *Climate of an Earth-Like Aquaplanet: the high-obliquity case and the tidally-locked case.* Paper presented at Exoclimes 2012, Aspen, Co.
For more examples in APA citation, look here: <http://citationonline.net/CitationHelp/csg04-manuscripts-apa.htm#53>
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: It turns out that one commonly used weight update strategies for neural networks, RMSProp, was first introduced in a [slide](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=rmsprop+&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C22):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3ejl2.png)
Given the number of citations, it should give you plenty of examples on how to cite a slide.
One common citation format:
>
> <NAME> and <NAME>. Lecture 6.5-rmsprop: Divide
> the gradient by a running average of its recent magnitude.
> COURSERA: Neural Networks for Machine Learning, 4,
> 2012.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/06/08 | 1,272 | 5,286 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a PhD student right now, and I'm looking towards doing a post-doc in the future. There is a research laboratory where I want to do my post doc, primarily because there are scientists engaged in very similar topics to my dissertation work. I've never met any of them personally, and I know that the standard approach is to network with them at conferences first. Someone had suggested to me that it is possible to target an individual in that institution, and somehow invite yourself to their lab to meet them, potentially giving an unofficial (non-departmental) talk in their lab. I know that this is not a standard approach, and I think that if I'm not careful I might give a bad impression in the process. How can I invite myself to the lab if I don't have a personal connection to a researcher in that institution?<issue_comment>username_1: It seems like you are worried about it, so you might want to ask your advisor to do the intro. PIs generally appreciate getting a a heads-up on good potential postdocs.
I think it would make a better impression if you were comfortable to do it yourself. I would start off pretty light by sending the PI an electronic "reprint" of something related to a conference you attended/are attending. Something like: "I was hoping to meet you at the basket weaving conference, but I didn't see you. I have attached my poster/talk/reprint." This works for either a recent past conference or an upcoming conference. For an upcoming conference, if they have an abstract tailor the email appropriately.
Hopefully the PI responds, but if not, then go a little harder. Send them your CV and tell them you are looking for a post doc.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: One thing that sometimes works is the following:
>
> Hi, I'm so and so, working with Prof. X on topic Y (my webpage). I was
> going to be in the area during (vague period) and was wondering if I
> might stop by to chat with your group about your fascinating work in
> Y'.
>
>
>
While this is a little passive-aggressive, I've found that more often than not, they'll ask you to give a talk, and even if not, you might get a chance to meet with the lab folks, which is the real purpose in any case. Make sure that the PI is around though.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I'm also doing a PhD and have a 'target institution' for a post-doc. I visited it already, but my supervisor knew the guy there and he made first contact.
I got the impression that it's common practice to have people from other labs just visit, and that the stuff you can do while there is entirely flexible. My visit (two weeks) consisted of me sitting at a computer surrounded by local lab members, doing my own work, and talking to all of them about their work during lunch breaks. I also arranged to do a joint experiment with the PI there, which will now become part of my PhD, and we roughly agreed on a research design while I was there. I didn't mention the post-doc idea yet, as I think it's best if I prove my worth through this joint experiment first.
On the first day there, I was asked if I would give a talk (which I did). I could even choose how big an audience would be invited.
While visiting, I also discovered another lab at the same university, which does related stuff to mine. I just e-mailed them, saying I'm in town (from lab so-and-so) and asking if I could come talk to them a bit. I googled their web page and came up with a few names of people I told them I'd like to talk to, although I didn't know much about any of their work. I did not ask to talk to the big names, in that lab, just PhD students and post-docs. What did they do? They immediately asked me to give a talk (which I did).
Overall, my impression is that this is standard practice. People like to hear about related work. I would suggest that you just e-mail someone there, tell them you find their stuff interesting (it's best to mention some specific result of theirs, so that they see you're really into it), tell them you're working on something similar and ask whether you could visit their lab. I would guess that you'll end up giving a talk. You can also suggest it yourself, once you've established communication and exchanged a few e-mails.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I was just at the JMMs in Baltimore and was out to lunch with a past supervisor. We eventually had several people join us, one from a nice Middle Eastern Country (which I had also incidentally applied to and he recalled my name ... which is nice!).
Anyway, he made a specific point to indicate to me (and the others at our table) that their department had some funding to bring in some candidates for talks.
I know that this question was more for how to get invited to a talk at a specific institution, but there are many ways that this can happen!
I think you're best bet is indeed representing yourself. It shows initiative. Especially if you've met the person at the conferences / talks within your community. The other thing is that if you ask them in person, or mention something in passing, they might make an offer to have you come visit and talk. Otherwise, a nice polite email indicating you would like to talk at some point would be good.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/06/08 | 753 | 3,502 | <issue_start>username_0: I need to get some more experience with writing grant proposals, and I know that professors are often invited to review them. How can I get involved in it while still being just a graduate student?<issue_comment>username_1: Reviewing grant proposals as a student is tricky, at least in some fields. The NSF is highly unlikely to ask a grad student to review proposals (it might theoretically be possible for a brilliant student who is almost done with their Ph.D., but I've never heard of it happening). Furthermore, faculty are not allowed to show proposals they have been asked to review to their students (it may sometimes happen, but it's breaking explicit rules regarding confidentiality). Overall, in pure math grad students basically never review grant proposals. I can't speak for other fields, but I'm skeptical that grad students ever play a major role in reviewing proposals.
Instead, I'd recommend asking your advisor to see the other side of the process. They could share their own proposals, and perhaps even reviews of those proposals or drafts of upcoming proposals. They could also ask collaborators whether they had any proposals they would be willing to share. This isn't quite the same as reviewing proposals yourself, but it could still give you valuable experience with how grant applications work.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Receiving an invitation to help out at a NSF or NIH study session is highly unlikely and logistically difficult. However, I would try to get involved with study sessions for an University driven call for proposals. Alternatively, you could get involved with a course that does a mock grant proposal as part of its coursework. I just submitted a mock proposal recently and I'm sure that the TAs will be forced to look over my work and get practice in the process.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: You can't get experience serving on a grant proposal review panel as a grad student. Sorry; that's just how it works.
*However*, there *are* other ways to get experience with the grant proposal process. The number-one way: talk to your advisor/PI and ask them. In particular, ask them if you can be involved with the next grant proposal they write. Ask them how you can help. Maybe you can read a draft and offer comments. Maybe you can brainstorm with them. Maybe they can outline a piece of it and you can try writing a draft of a section.
Also, you can ask to see copies of past proposals they've submitted (both funded and unfunded). After you read the proposals, you can ask your advisor for his/her own assessment of the proposal, and even ask to see the reviews of those submissions from review panel, compare to your own assessment, and use this feedback to improve your knowledge.
Quals proposals are another great form of practice at this sort of thing; they require some similar skills. Spend time on your quals proposal and try to make it outstanding. Read other great quals proposals. Offer to give feedback to your fellow students on their quals proposals. Learn as much as you can from that process, as some of those lessons will carry over to help you write better grant proposals. Similarly, getting good at writing a research statement (for a job application or a fellowship application) is a useful skill that has some overlap at formulating and writing grant proposals. Of course, these are not the same as proposal-writing, but the experience will serve you well.
Upvotes: 2 |
2012/06/09 | 1,271 | 5,433 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a math student and never take notes in class. I feel like I am offending the professors by not taking notes. In general, do professors like students to be "active" during class? I have never learned much by taking notes.
I see other graduate students furiously taking notes...and then I am afraid that professors may write that I am lazy in recommendation letters. So maybe I should just takes notes?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> I am afraid that professors may write that I am lazy in recommendation letters.
>
>
>
I can assure you that there is no reason to be afraid of that. That is just not something that would ever get written in a letter. Not taking notes might lead to a poor first impression, but it is your knowledge of the subject (something like your grade, but not exactly) that influences letters.
When I am teaching, I don't pay attention to if people are taking notes or not. I do pay attention to if students are paying attention. As long as you can remember the things you need to remember, then you do not need to write them down.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Use whatever study habits you need to succeed. Your performance on assessments will make more of an impression than how you absorb the material. If you can perform well without notetaking and your professor recognizes it, he/she will more likely be very impressed with you.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Sometimes I wish students would stop taking notes and actually think about what I'm saying. I provide the lecture notes before/after class anyway...
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: I'm a math professor. (I have taught at Stanford and several other universities.)
I prefer that my students do not take notes during my lectures.
Before the lecture, browse through the relevant chapter of the text book.
During the lecture, focus on what your professor says. Taking notes will just distract you, and make it harder for you to follow the lecture.
After the lecture, read the textbook carefully. It is much more well written than any notes would be.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: For very standard, orthodox material based on a textbook, it is reasonable to not take notes and do as much engaged, active thinking-or-questioning during a lecture. One should be alert to insights (hopefully!) from the person in the front of the room, and from others, so a bit of note-writing about the peripheral things is to be expected.
For advanced courses, and for seminars based only loosely on publicly-available material, or actually intended to be \_explications\_of\_ otherwise-opaque material, the task is to *both* take as many notes as possible (even if/when printed material is provided), *and* think as much as remaining resources allow, because without notes the words spoken and written will mostly vanish. Here I overlook the possibility that one's memory is so excellent and so practiced that one truly can perfectly remember things one does not understand. The latter possibility is very important to cultivate, but this question wouldn't have arisen at all if that were already in reach.
And, yes, in advanced courses and seminars, although I've gotten over the surprise, I am baffled at the claim that people can't usefully take notes. The usual claim is that by not taking notes they think about the material in real time. This would be great if it were usefully true, but I find that my students do not have total recall... so that mostly they have neither notes nor recollection.
Perhaps the main practical trick to learn is to be able to write, very fast, without looking at the paper, and be able to "copy" the visual layout of the blackboard (whiteboard, whatever) without necessarily stopping listening to the audio. Yes, this does require a lot of effort, but, hopefully, it gains something.
Belated Edit: thinking about (perceptions of the idea of) "learning styles"... If the material in a class is truly available in many places, and the instructor has no insights to offer, is just rehearsing it for those too passive to do it themselves, well, sure, note-taking is a dubious ritual. But, as my biased language was entirely meant to communicate, there's no operational issue there. There is of course the risk that the students fail to appreciate that the instructor offers genuinely new insights, but nevermind. A much more serious issue arises if we're talking about more-advanced graduate-level material. Of course, once again, if the lectures are mere quotations from a standard text or extant notes, with no "added value", ... sure, scant need to write anything down. *However*, and I think this is the interesting and most dangerous case, if, heaven willing, your instructor is really an expert with hard-to-objectify understanding of significant things, one should expect to fail to understand, or seem to understand but actually fail, or ... so having a written transcript to study later and deconstruct is incredibly useful.
That is, in the interesting/serious/dangerous situations, it's not about "learning styles", but about preservation of information per se. All my experience indicates that students misjudge the cut-off for this, too, so, ...
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: One of my professors forbid to take notes during the lecture, unless it helps you learn and memorize during the lecture. The slides were available online.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/06/10 | 1,108 | 4,835 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm developing a paper right now based upon some of my preliminary results, and I'm attending several conferences to present and get some feedback on my results from other experts in my field. A thought occurred to me that because my work is yet to be published, I there is a potential for others to steal my idea and publish before I get a chance.
I'm probably over-thinking this, and there is little chance of it actually happening. But I'm curious how frequently this happens in scientific domains. Do people go to conferences to steal ideas? If it does happen, how can I best prevent it from happening? Obviously, I want to share my ideas with the world, but I don't want to lose a chance to take an idea into fruition. What should/shouldn't I share about my research before it is published? Should I simply wait until my paper is accepted before I go on the conference circuit?
**Update:**
My field is computational science (not to be confused with computer science).<issue_comment>username_1: As some comments note, answers will vary dramatically by field, but it seems better to have a bunch of answers for different fields to one question, instead of having people ask the same question a dozen times for different fields.
For math, if you're talking about a completed, submitted paper that hasn't been published yet (say, because it's still being refereed), you should feel free to talk about it; the submission date proves your claim on the result, so it can't really be stolen at this stage. (Also, you already put it on the arXiv, so it's already public, right?)
Suppose you're still writing the paper, but the results are completely solid. There are good reasons to tell people about the result: you may be want to discuss ideas for how to build on your paper, you may want to give people a head's up that the theorem is coming---say, so they can use it to prove things themselves, and you may want to establish a partial claim on the result in case someone else is doing the same thing. There are also good reasons not to tell people: even though you're really awfully sure the result is solid, there might still be mistakes; routinely announcing results well in advance of the paper can negatively affect your reputation; someone could use your ideas to write their own paper faster. (There's an interesting phenomenon where once people know a theorem is true, it becomes easier to solve; sometimes a problem is open for a long time, and then abruptly solved multiple times in a short period.)
Taking these together, I'd advise not to announce a result until the paper's finished unless there's a strong reason to do so. This is particularly true early in your career, when it's more likely that you'll mistakenly believe a proof was really-definitely-totally finished. (I was given this advice when I was in grad school, and while I haven't followed it 100% of the time, I've never regretted following it.)
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This will really, really depend on the field you're coming from - or even the sub-field. Take two examples:
* Mathematical epidemiology: If I present a paper with a nice infectious disease model, with the equations, the parameter values, and some numerical results, but I haven't tackled anything analytical yet, you could very well - if you could get all that down - beat me to publication.
* Observational epidemiology: I could tell you everything about my study but, without access to the raw data, you'd have to go find your own multi-year hospital acquired infection cohort to study. Good luck with that. And if you *still* beat me to the punch? Well, I probably deserve that.
Generally speaking, for in-progress stuff, I present enough for people to know what I'm doing, comment on it, etc., but not enough to fully replicate the experiment without coming to me for more information. For example, some folks I'm working with struggled with whether or not to present a theoretical result without its implementation done yet, because someone *could* scoop us with the implementation. We decided for the audience I was presenting to, that was...unlikely. For another audience? They'd get the theory in broad strokes, but without enough information that the theory alone is enough of a springboard to run with the paper.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I say give all the details and don't hold anything back. Most researchers do not want to enter a first to publish race from that far back. People tend to work on similar topics so getting scooped is bound to happen. This doesn't mean your ideas were "stolen". I think you are less likely to get scooped if you let people know everything you have done and where you are going. This lets people get out of your way or approach you about collaboration.
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/06/10 | 1,653 | 7,351 | <issue_start>username_0: I am working on a mathematical model to help explain some experimental results and generate new hypotheses. Unfortunately, I have neither the resources nor interest to gather experimental data, but in this particular sub-field publishing a model without showing its usefulness on some experimental data is not common.
There are several existing experimental findings that can be explained by my model. However, they are presented in other modeling papers and the raw data is not available with the paper or on the authors' websites. In the papers they only present partially-analyzed data (for instance, they show results averages over participants, but not individual participant's results; or sometimes they only give the results of statistical tests).
I want to contact the authors for their raw data and have 3 related questions:
1. What is the protocol for contacting by email to ask for authors' raw data? Is this common?
2. Will the researchers expect to be invited on-board as co-authors? Or is a citation to their papers, and an acknowledgement of the form "AK would like to thank X, Y, Z for providing their raw data" sufficient?
3. If my model (without fits to specific data) is in a pre-print state then should I send a pre-print to the authors I contact? What if the pre-print points out weaknesses in their approach to modeling similar problems?<issue_comment>username_1: Many journal formats (and the arXiv) indicate a "corresponding author". That's the person you'll want to contact.
Doing so isn't a everyday occurrence, but it does happen.
In some fields access to the data may be covered by agreements to keep it confidential for a certain period of time (or until first publication). These agreement often specify the answer to the authorship question as well.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: This will, as it seems nearly all questions on this site, vary based on field. My answer applies to Epidemiology and medical research only. Your mileage may vary.
* It is *very* common for this to happen in my field. There has been an increasing emphasis on using meta-analysis and systematic reviews to summarize bodies of work, and with those there is almost *always* a need for some more information, raw data, etc. to come from study authors. It's fairly routine now. They may not say "yes" for a number of reasons. One may be that they're working on their own projects in a similar direction. But there are others - that privacy laws prohibit releasing data to just anyone or their funding dictates similarly is a fairly common one. So be prepared for "no".
* As for the authorship question, it likely depends on the extent of your data request. Generally, if you're just asking for a few numbers that go into a reported value, then in all likelihood, an acknowledgement is more than sufficient. If, on the other hand, you're asking for access to the raw data from their 5 year, many thousands of dollars cohort study? You're likely going to have a member of their study team be an author on your paper, and there will be far more extensive approval processes than just "Sure, .csv file is attached."
* "If my model (without fits to specific data) is in a pre-print state then should I send a pre-print to the authors I contact? What if the pre-print points out weaknesses in their approach to modeling similar problems?" For the initial contact, I'd suggest it isn't necessary, because what you're really trying to find out is "Is the release possible". At later stages, I would expect to see what you were doing, either in a full explanation, or as a pre-print. As to your "What if?" question - so what if it does? Science is about improving the methods we use.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: This may or may not be helpful in this case, but you may be able to persuade them to publish the data separately, in a dedicated data journal or other data archive. Depending on the field, they may already have done so (some UK funders, for example, are starting to require this as a condition of funding).
This gives you the additional option to give credit by citing the dataset directly as well as relevant papers, and also opens up the possibility that others will use and cite the data as well, bringing more prestige to the original researchers.
Currently, some researchers are open to this type of data publication, while others are not, so your mileage may vary.
If you want to find data to reuse, or to suggest somewhere for them to deposit, there are some lists of archives available to look through, such as the [DataCite repository list](http://www.datacite.org/repolist) and [Databib](http://databib.org/).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I talk about biological sciences, but this can probably apply elsewhere. In theory, the moment a set of analysis is published, the data associated with it should also be public or available for:
1. Other researchers who want to use them
2. Other researchers who want to evaluate (i.e. repeat) the experiments and verify the initial findings.
So, in principle, if the publication does not have a link to the public data, then you could contact the journal and complain. Of course it depends on the data, but dna sequencing or protein analysis data are usually available. There might be legal or other limitations for patient, medical or other types of data.
This is the formal way.
*There are some exceptions: The data are public but no publication is out yet. Because of policy they want/have to provide the data to the public, but the publication is in preparation. In this case you cannot use the data and you have to contact the PI to see how your analysis comes in conflict (or not) with theirs. Every institution has different guidelines.*
Back to the initial issue, in reality, you might find resistance in getting access to the raw data of a published work (which, as I said it shouldn't be the case if the data are not sensitive, because anyone should be able to evaluate and validate their analysis).
You have two options: Check publicly available data (depending on your field - I can propose some in biological sciences I'm familiar to, if needed) and work your models on them. That would be easier for you, as you could avoid peculiar situations.
Contact the authors and propose a collaboration to do a different type of analysis than theirs (with your model) on those data. They would be happy to collaborate with you and they might even provide some insights on your analysis that would make it even better.
To the initial questions:
1. I would say that it's common. It's more common to look directly at the public repositories and see data that are already published. The collaboration proposal might be a safer approach (in terms of results and good relationship and future collaborations)
2. They might be expecting to be invited. It depends on the terms of the collaboration. In any case, it should be agreed upon on the beginning, so you can avoid the frustration at the time of publication (and after you have spent time on working on the data).
3. I'm not familiar, but if you go for a collaboration, then it makes sense to explain your method at the first meeting. If you just need the data, or you take the data from a public repository, you don't have to send anything.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/06/04 | 927 | 3,868 | <issue_start>username_0: I am about to take the French language exam as part of the requirements for the PhD program at my university. The exam will consist of having to translate (with the help of a dictionary) a subset of a mathematics paper written in French. As an Indian international student in the US, I speak a number of languages, but I've grown up knowing them (i.e. never went through the process of having to learn it) and none of them (except perhaps English) give me any insight into the French language, which makes me nervous!
I would appreciate any tips as to how one might prepare for this exam, and materials that might be handy. For example:
>
> 1. Did you have to take a language exam? How did you prepare for it?
> 2. Has knowing said language helped you out in your mathematical career?
> 3. Do there exist collections of mathematics papers in French that one can practice on?
>
>
>
Thanks you in advance for your answers!<issue_comment>username_1: 1. Yes. I took both German and French. I was already fairly comfortable with French from having studied it in high school and in university, so I'll write about German instead. I prepared for my German language exam by going on to the [GDZ server](http://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/en/) (a program to retroactively digitise documents, including a lot of classical mathematics papers) and downloading some papers in mathematical analysis (my field, sort of) from around the 1950s to 60s (when still a lot of the papers were published in German). I then went to the library and borrowed the copy of [Hyman's German-English Mathematics Dictionary](http://books.google.ch/books/about/German_English_mathematics_dictionary.html?id=fBYgAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y) (for the nouns) and a copy of a normal German-English dictionary (for the verbs) and sat myself down and started translating word by word. After about a month I translated about 30 pages or so of math papers (and at the same time learned about uniform spaces), and proceeded to take my exam.
2. Not much. I have absolutely no conversational German, and only very rarely do I have to look something up in German that I cannot find a write-up in another language. (So far twice only, one a slightly obscure result in algebraic lattices that the only reference I could find is to a paper in the 30s.) (French on the other hand has been useful; mostly because the abovementioned "write-up in another language" often turned out to be in French.) Given how much I've found French to be useful for me, I'm sure that if I had actually properly learned the language, German would be just about as useful. Conversely, if you don't really learn the foreign language, you will probably be able to get by through other means in this day and age.
3. The canonical place to find French papers to read is [NUMDAM](http://www.numdam.org/?lang=fr). Of course, for practice, you can also check out Bourbaki from the library; it may be slightly less intimidating to start working first on the language by reading something whose mathematics at least you are familiar with.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I think the main purpose of learning another language in the PhD program is to be able to explain your research in that language if necessary. At my former institution, the language exam covered reading and writing about mathematics in french or russian. It would be best to investigate your institution's policy about the exam and their requirements for the PhD degree. That will determine what and how you need to study for that exam.
While I've never had to write a technical paper in another language, knowing these other languages has certainly increased my ability to network with experts from around the world. That's the true value of learning languages: being able to connect with others on another level.
Upvotes: 1 |
2012/06/11 | 1,099 | 4,454 | <issue_start>username_0: Background: I have been in the Phd Program since fall 2010, I have made great academic progress (two papers published in journals). From the 4th semester (spring, 2012), I have started working in a company and still a part time student in school. Till now, I am still keeping doing research and publish another paper and one conference paper. As I have finished all coursework requirement (72 semester hours, I transfer some credits from MS), I plan to work in the company and be a part time student to finish the degree.
From last month, my adviser kept asked what's my plan. I told him I will make my decision in mid-July as I can know my H1b working visa is approved or not. He send me another email ( I post here for information). My impression is he is threatening me...
Any suggestion? Again, it's difficult to look for a job for international students in such economics. I hope I can work and study as a part time student to finish the degree.<issue_comment>username_1: First of all, I think OP's situation is not that specific. Many international students in US are facing the same. Just that his is very extreme - his advisor wants to kick him out. In that regard, I agree with username_4's comment. OP's advisor is not friendly at all, he probably needs to run.
---
Now, to answer the question. It all depends on how much you want to be an academic.
To continue what you're doing right now, I think you hurt your current and future academic career. Your industry job is demanding, particularly since you need your employer to sponsor your H1B visa. You have to work very hard. You can't devote yourself to your research unless your job is directly related to your dissertation. You are still publishing papers. I believe you can even publish more and better papers if you do research full time.
If you quit your current job, the H1B will be gone. But, you can concentrate on your research. You might become a great academic.
On the other hand, if you continue your industry job, you will get H1B visa and everything to make your American dream come true. But, how about your dream to be a great academic? Didn't you want to be a scholar when you went to US to study?
It's June now. Too late to change school. I would talk to the advisor if I were you. Explain to him your situation. Maybe it's just misunderstanding between you and him. He may not know what you really want and need. If it doesn't work, change the advisor. If you can't do that either, you'll have to make a tough choice.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: It is completely inappropriate for an advisor to send an email like that. The email makes it clear that this is an advisor that you should steer clear of. At a minimum a change in advisor is required. I would also approach the department head about the email. Faculty need to know that they need to behave better.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: This is a fairly common experience at my university given the large volumes of EE and CS PhD students who take a "leave of absence" and slack off on their PhD research to do trivial things like starting Google and Yahoo. Here is what I've learned from their experiences:
* Your University may offer you some protection while your H1B visa gets worked out. Typically, students can take a 1 year deferment, stay on status as a student, work for their company, and wait for their visa status to change.
* Take the leave of absence. The "part-time" status is a lose-lose scenario for you, your advisor, and your company. You're wasting your time by being inefficient, your advisor is probably still paying for all of you despite your "part-time" status, and your company isn't getting your full mental investment.
* For EE and CS PhD students, their goal was to get a US-based job and with it, legal status. For the majority of them, the PhD wouldn't add much since they would essentially be doing the exact same work. However, if you're in an industry where that isn't the case, maybe I would be a bit more concerned about giving up the PhD.
* That being said, you have a job and it sounds like the company wants to keep you if they are talking about the H1B process with you.
* Finally, you're a 2nd year grad student. You have a long long way to go if you want that PhD and it just so happens that you have an advisor in the way.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: **Don't walk. Run.**
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Upvotes: 3 |
2012/06/11 | 671 | 2,818 | <issue_start>username_0: I am three years into a PhD in Germany in an interdisciplinary social sciences field (Global Integration/Global Studies), but I am quite disillusioned with the faculty and the quality of guidance here. Moreover, the academic job prospects are not very good after the PhD, and any other job, given EU regulations, is hard to get (I am non EU). Going back to my country, given the corruption in academics, is also not an option. I am thinking of dropping this, and applying for PhDs in Canada or the US.
Is this a good option? I would apply for single discipline such as political science. I am thinking of international business too, because my work is a policy relevant field.<issue_comment>username_1: As a general rule, if your current degree program is not serving your needs/goals, then yes, you absolutely should look for other options. Hopefully the research experience you've gained in your current program will prove helpful in the future.
That said, you need to be careful in applying to a new program. A PhD application from a student already in a PhD program raises a red flag, especially if they are already fairly far into the program. Obviously the current program isn't working out for the student, but does that indicate a problem with the student (uh-oh), a problem with their advisor (but then why not change advisors?), a problem with the program as a whole (but then do we really want a student that was admitted to a dysfunctional program?), or something else? And even if there isn't a problem, why should we give a slot to someone who already has one elsewhere, instead of giving a new student a chance?
The best way to ameliorate these concerns, in my experience, is to get strong and supportive recommendation letters from the faculty in your current department. You also need to tell a convincing and *positive* story about why you want to move (for example: a shift in research interests that does not match the strengths of your current program). One thing you absolutely *cannot* write is "I want to move because my current program just isn't good enough."
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I think as a bio PhD there is no shame to saying that "gee this journey is not going to end well", early into the journey (or even late). I discovered after a very long (which is normal) time as a grad student, when I finally did get out with my PhD, the job prospects were pretty bad and getting worse, and this is from a top institution. So after a long period of post-docing i finally gave up on the field alltogether, after sinking 13 or 14 years into it. I am now in IT and making far more, doing far more, and I get to see my family far more. I have done much more in 5 years than I could have done in a lifetime in academia. It just wasn't for me.
Upvotes: 0 |
2012/06/12 | 787 | 3,430 | <issue_start>username_0: I thought of an interesting idea for a thesis for my Masters program and I think I would eventually be able to sell a product that is built from the algorithms/code that I develop for this thesis. I realize my thesis is my work and I have the copyright permissions, but I am wondering what rights I have and what rights my school has if I were to take my thesis and develop it into a product which I then sell to customers.
Would I have all rights for selling this product or since my professor is essentially guiding me and assisting me in my research, does he/she own a part of it as well? I can only seem to find answers on the internet that pertain to the copyright permissions of the actual developed thesis, not products that might be derived from such efforts, or code that was developed in tandem with writing the thesis.
Any links to proof or legal precedence would be very helpful as well.<issue_comment>username_1: Your institution almost certainly has a policy on this, and an office dedicated to administering it. You should consult them. If you really think this is serious, you should also consult an intellectual property attorney rather than relying on the babblings of some goofball from the Internet (e.g. me).
In the US, *employees* of a university are commonly required to sign an agreement that the university has an interest in any patent or other profitable invention that they develop in the course of their work. The agreement usually specifies that the royalties and other profits are to be split between the university and the inventor.
I have not heard of this being required of students, and if you had signed one, you would presumably know. However, if your advisor had a significant part in the project, he or she may have some rights in it as a matter of law (and the university in turn would get a share of your advisor's, per their agreement).
Note that it may be relevant where the funding for the project came from, and what if any financial support you received from the university.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: >
> Would I have all rights for selling this product or since my professor is essentially guiding me and assisting me in my research, does he/she own a part of it as well?
>
>
>
This is a very difficult and touchy question. You need to talk to your supervisor as early as possible. Many students drastically underestimate the supervisor's contribution. Starting your graduate studies with the idea is very different from developing the idea in conjunction with your supervisor.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Regardless of how the legal situation is, discuss it with you supervisor in a friendly way to figure out
* if he wants to put stones in your way, even for the things which you legally could sell. (Even if you may win a lawsuit, financing a lawsuit before you actually sell products could be a problem)
* if he is plainly supportive of the idea and helps you without own interest
* if he like to give you recommendation for a company/group working on these topics
* if he would like to create a company with you (in that case you would have continued access to the research)
* if some technology is already patented for some applications or if parts of the materials you used were obtained under an NDA.
* if there is a competitor (e.g. another student of his/people he knows in the field)
Upvotes: 0 |
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