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2014/03/14 | 349 | 1,558 | <issue_start>username_0: Some time ago I put up a question on the SE network. I ended up writing an extensive answer myself and published it in the same question and on my blog. Later, I put a lot more thought into the topic and found additional results, which I did not publish yet.
I have since considered if that question might be usable as a topic for a bachelor thesis.
Disregarding the fact that I would need to convince a professor to accept an existing topic, does the publication of the question and some results in the past prevent this?<issue_comment>username_1: This depends on what the institution's goals for a bachelor thesis are.
Some institutions may want evidence that the student is capable of such work; in this case you've already met the requirements. Some institutions want work done in the context of the thesis course; in this case you will need to do additional work, although it may be related to the existing work such as extending and documenting it. Some institutions may want evidence that the student is capable of work-for-hire (i.e. assigned by faculty and not chosen by the student). In this case you will need to do a thesis completely from scratch as chosen by the advisor.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Posting on SE or on your blog does not count as publishing in the traditional sense (the work has not yet appeared in a scientific journal or conference proceedings). This means that it is unlikely to be a problem. Just make sure you discuss it with your potential supervisor.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer] |
2014/03/14 | 1,276 | 5,378 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm writing a Bachelor's Thesis.
I found a seemingly convenient way of making my research paper successful, but I'm not sure if it counts as plagiarism.
This is mainly concerned with the methods section.
I have gathered many research papers that use the same methodology but discuss different topics (it is not about the literature review). I read the method section and take notes of how the author presented the information, the discussion raised, the sections included.
If it is relevant to my research paper, I follow the same ideas. I take the information cited by the researcher; I mean good information from experts. I do further research on good quotes that are in the research papers I read, use them in my research paper, and cite the original source of the quote, which I also read, but I do not cite the research paper where I was first introduced to the information.
Is this plagiarism?
I don't cite the research paper where I found the quote because it is irrelevant to my topic. It only uses the same methodology. Moreover, I do further research on the information and usually cite the original source or a source on research methodology.<issue_comment>username_1: Plagiarism is lack of attribution. You *always* need to cite your sources, period. If you are only paraphrasing or summarizing what someone else said, you only need to cite the relevant book/article/thesis/whatever. If you are citing someone verbatim, you also need to indicate the page numbers. If you do not do this, you are going to get in trouble.
That said, you are not obliged to cite everybody who has said something relevant, especially when working on popular topics where everybody and their mother have said something. You can always write something like "see Smith 2000 and Thompson 2001, among others", or if you prefer the original source, "see Smith 2000 *et seq*".
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: You are correctly citing the **original source** of the idea/quote (which you looked up and read in context, as you should).
You don't (usually) have to cite the paper that exposed you to that original source. The purpose of a citation is to
* give credit to the originator of an idea/quote
* tell readers where to look to verify your claims about that idea/quote
In this case, citing the original source satisfies both purposes and is sufficient.
An exception is a review paper, which doesn't add new research, but collects and comments on relevant sources on a subject. In this case, the curation of materials *is* the novel idea contributed by the review paper. If you then go on to use the collection of sources you found via that paper, it's often appropriate to cite the review paper also.
Similarly, if you use the interpretation of the original source found in the secondary source, you should also cite the secondary source.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Following @username_2 's suggestion, prompted by my answer to a question about whether Wiki should ever be cited ... :
It is my opinion, based first on a principle of honesty and open-ness, that one should acknowledge sources one has used. Thus, if you use Wiki or a survey paper or an expository paper to understand a primary source, and/or to locate a primary source, cite Wiki/survey/exposition *and* the primary source.
Note that I do not advocate citing Wiki/survey/exposition *alone*, and this is for more than one reason. First, one should mostly refer to primary sources... although in mathematics a primary source may be long ago, obscure, and inaccessible, so difficult to locate and not usable by many of your readers. Second, it is hard to gauge the authoritativeness (in reality, not in status) of Wiki/surveys/exposition, so *corroboration* is invariably necessary. In fact, the same need for corroboration applies to almost any source, refereed or not, despite various mythologies.
Nevertheless, "at this point in time", any bibliography that includes Wiki, URLs, or unrefereed material will often be stigmatized by referees and by many readers. This is not completely insane, as a hold-over from a time when a bibliography that included anything other than well-known, refereed journals was truly the sign of a crank. To my mind, the reality is much changed, and will continue to change, but, for those who find themselves in a situation demanding conformity to that old standard... well, maybe you have to do it.
This enforced dishonesty about "how one found things out" is very disturbing to me, as, in fact, Wiki and surveys and exposition are often very useful to give pointers to primary sources, to bring up keywords and people and old sources that more standard sources omit. I acknowledge Wiki *and* the other sources in bibliographies.
The "solution" to the problem of being both honest and conforming to an old standard would seem to dictate never looking at Wiki, or any unrefereed source. Crazy. But one might find oneself effectively pretending to do so?
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: You should note that it was "cited by" if you didn't go back and read the original source. You have no idea if the person citing the source did so correctly or took it out of context. "Cited by" tells the reader that you have not read the original source, and that is important information in nearly all cases.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/14 | 994 | 4,377 | <issue_start>username_0: I have some results, related to *imposing group structures on subspaces of finite fields with a metric*, and I would like to publish my work. My advisor asked me to choose a journal, but I have no idea how to decide.
I have some further results on a paper published in [Linear Algebra and its Applications](http://www.journals.elsevier.com/linear-algebra-and-its-applications/). I have resolved a few open question they pose in their paper.
Is it advisable that I publish my results in the same journal? What other options do I have? How do I know if it is a good journal?<issue_comment>username_1: One good place to start is the journals in which your most important references were published. (The authors of those references would be good candidates if the journal asks you to propose referees.)
Or: ask other people that work in the same field what journal they would suggest. (While you are at it, send them the manuscript and ask them for comments, nicely.) Have you presented your results at a conference? Do you recall anyone there working on a similar topic? Ideally someone who sat in on your presentation?
Your advisor should have at least a passing acquaintance with your field, so he should be able to suggest something. That he does not do so suggests to me that he is watching how you cope with this situation :-) How about other students of your advisor, does anyone work in this field?
It is not easy to judge whether a given journal is good. @EnergyNumbers' comment is helpful.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Helping you choose a journal is exactly the sort of aid your advisor should be giving you. Often in the relationship between an advisor and a graduate student there is a lack of clarity and/or a miscommunication about what the student should be doing on his own and what his advisor could be helping him out with. I remember that one of my students gave as part of an oral exam a talk on an important paper. He asked me about it a little bit, but not as much as I was expecting. When he gave the talk it was excellent, except that at one point he presented a sort of black box and said "unfortunately I didn't understand this". It was (to me) no big deal, but I had to wonder, "If you understood everything except this one thing, why didn't you ask me about that thing before the exam?" He must have had different ideas about the amount of independence that was being asked of him.
The point of the above story is this: given what little you've said, I am not yet persuaded that your advisor is unwilling to help you choose a journal for your paper: why wouldn't he be willing to help? In general, here is a good strategy for getting help from any faculty member: rather than saying "I'm stumped; please advise," try *something* and then get feedback on the merits of what you tried. In your case you have the idea of submitting to *Linear Algebra and its Applications* because you answer some open questions raised in a previous paper in that journal. To me that sounds like an excellent idea: I have several times submitted to journals with the same idea (unfortunately, acknowledging that you have successfully answered questions from a prior paper does not guarantee that they'll want to publish your paper; I've had it happen both ways) and most of the journals that I've submitted to have been for less logical reasons than this (the other common strategy, related to yours, is to look through your bibliography and see whether any journal comes up more than once; if it does, if your paper is similar in subject matter and scope to any of those journals, then it's at least reasonable to submit there).
Here's an idea: why don't you come up with one or two more ideas for where to submit your paper which feel different from *Linear Algebra and its Applications*: e.g. try a journal which does not specialize in a mathematical subfield; try a journal which is of significantly higher quality -- e.g. *Discrete Mathematics*; if it doesn't sound ridiculous, maybe try something like the *American Mathematical Monthly*. Then bring these specific journal suggestions back to your advisor and ask for feedback. If you don't get any feedback from this, that's strange, and it is probably worth asking (as sunnily as you can possibly muster) *why* you're not getting help on this.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/14 | 4,158 | 17,821 | <issue_start>username_0: In class, over the course of a semester, I tend to build up a mental model of individual students' communication abilities. For example, one student might seem more or less eloquent than another when they speak. One might make more cogent points than another.
Occasionally, I will receive an essay which appears exceptionally eloquent and cogent, from students who seemed distinctly average. Of course, I make the cursory checks for plagiarism (searching certain unlikely phrases, etc.), but if nothing comes up, I sometimes still remain unconvinced that the work is the student's own.
Some sites offer to sell the services of trained academics and graduate students for menial essay writing, and often the questionable assignments look more like the quick and under-edited work of a master than the polished work of a novice. Of course, if the essays are paid for, and original, it's naturally very hard to prove it.
Are there any techniques I could use to determine whether an essay that I suspect was written by someone else, but not published elsewhere, is a student's own work? Are there any steps I can take to ensure I don't receive questionable essays in the first place?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Are there any techniques I could use to determine whether an essay that I suspect was written by someone else, but not published elsewhere, is a student's own work?
>
>
>
Ask the student to come to your office hours or a private meeting.
Then, say: "I was really impressed by your recent paper, it was an excellent piece of work! Let's discuss it some more."
Student who did the work will be able to discuss said work intelligently.
Student who didn't do the work is unlikely to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation about said work.
(This still isn't proof of any kind, and you can't accuse student of cheating without some evidence - but if you're lucky, student will at least be spooked enough to never do it again.)
>
> Are there any steps I can take to ensure I don't receive questionable essays in the first place?
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Assign essays that are a few steps beyond, but still closely tied to, what's been discussed in class, such that somebody who wasn't in the class will not be able to produce the kind of essay you're expecting (the effectiveness of this depends very much on the subject matter).
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I wish these random thoughts can supplement the other good answers and comments. Mainly, I wish to address the second question: "Are there any steps I can take to ensure I don't receive questionable essays in the first place?"
**Don't start off with negative thoughts/suspicion so soon:** Some introverted people can perfectly blend into the background in class, but produce very thoughtful written work because they actually put good amount of thought into the piece. It's like you have never noticed this person's existence until you have read the student's written work. For this reason, I'd suggest taking a more trusting approach.
**Set up a code of honor:** In some professional degrees students often have to sign a code of honor. You may check with the department head if something like this can be set up for all the students. You can also create your own and have the students read, discuss, question, and sign on the first day of the class. A code of honor will help clarifying what is and is not expected in the course, and will help to i) remind students to be honest, and ii) serve as a foundation contract in case someone really does cheat.
I do believe there are students with malicious intention, trying the cheat their way through. However, I also believe there are some of them who did it because "Well, the lecturer never said I can't." It is saddening that nowadays teachers have to lay out all these criteria, but I also would see this chance as bringing the students, who may be from diverse backgrounds, onto the same page regarding ethics and professionalism.
**Downplay the grade proportion of the paper:** The incentive to hire a ghost writer is likely proportional to the percentage of the final grade attributed to that piece. Try lower it, and introduce some other forms of assessment that are less likely to be done by someone else: In-class exercise, individual/group presentation, etc. are some possibilities.
**Similarly, give smaller and/or more frequent writing assignments:** In questionnaire design, if one asks more questions on the same construct, the reliability tends to go up. Basing on this idea, you may consider giving more than one written assignment. This can let you i) detect within-student fluctuation (How did this person suddenly write so well?) and ii) perhaps allow students to express their thoughts or work on somehow different topics/from a different angle. Higher frequency may also introduce less incentive to hire a ghost writer.
**Implement a progressive assignment to foster the sense of ownership:** You may also consider modifying your assignment so that students will need to work on it and report to you step by step, from concept to review, from review to analysis, from analysis to draft, and from draft to final version. Spread them out across the course. This method will allow you to first get a sense of their thought process (which is a lot more objective than checking their in-class behaviors), and it will also enhance the student's sense of owning the piece as well as understanding of the contents. This can likely decrease the need or urgency to seek ghost writers.
**Be very clear what is and is not allowed:** I'd just put this in as a food for thought. We may often encourage people, especially those with English as second language, to either let native speakers look at their work or seek professional editors' help to improve their written piece. Is this allowed? Sometimes a run of very simple edit can make the piece quite eloquent, and some editors may either go to town in their editing or help the student to flush out their ideas more clearly during the face-to-face meeting. Is this allowed? I am not pro or against this practice of getting an editor's help; I just wish to point out that there can be much grey area when judging if no clear rules are laid out.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> First, begin any essay assignment with clear instructions on the amount of outside assistance that is allowed.
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Many universities have "drop in writing tutors" who are paid (albeit often rather modestly) to help students with their writing assignments. These tutors are well-trained on how not to help too much: e.g. they probably do not write down as much as a complete sentence that the student has not already suggested.
>
> Having students expressly acknowledge the outside help that they get, even if absolutely legitimate, helps towards fostering good academic practices.
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Thus if they go to the university's writing center or some similar entity, that's fine (assuming that above it has been clarified by the instructor to be fine; but if your university has a writing center then it seems like a bad idea not to allow your students to use it in at least some ways), but they should still acknowledge it. This goes a long way to combating the problem of "mysterious diction", i.e., the isolated turn of phrase that you just don't quite believe came from the student.
You should really enforce this practice: if it turns out that a student went to the writing center and didn't report it, lower their grade at least slightly: this helps to reiterate that this is very important to you. In fact:
>
> Communicate absolutely clearly that in academia there is no sin worse than passing off someone's ideas and/or work as your own.
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I think that most undergraduates know that this is something they are not supposed to do, but many don't seem to understand that this is a very serious crime. To me at least, the crime is so serious that -- in light of the difficulties of definitively "catching" the student -- the penalties should be clarified in advance to be quite severe. At my university, the absolute *minimum* penalty for this is a grade of 0 on the assignment. I would say though that a student who paid someone else to write a paper for them and is caught deserves to fail the entire course. Make this clear.
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> Structure a written assignment more than just asking for a full-blown paper at the end.
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This has the merit of being a good practice for other reasons. Even in mathematics courses I sometimes ask students to write papers, and I have learned from hard experience that if you don't check in with them while they are doing the work then the final quality of the product is going to be ridiculously spotty: e.g. it will turn out that some students simply didn't understand what you were asking them to do to the extent that you do not recognize what they turn in as being a specimen (however poor) of what you asked for.
For a significant paper in an undergraduate course it could be appropriate to meet with the student several times before they turn in the final version: once to determine and have you sign off on an appropriate topic, and at least once to show you their partial work, giving you a chance to adjust them back on track if need be.
If you break the assignment up into pieces like this, then it becomes at the same time harder for a student to pay someone else to do it and also *easier* for them to do it themselves. I have to imagine that a lot of this professional paper-writing is done when a student realizes that they have waited until the last 24-72 hours before the paper is due. *Someone* can write a good paper under those severe time constraints, but they can't.
>
> Consider having a classroom component accompany any significant written work.
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This works better in some courses than others, depending on both the size of the course and the subject matter. Hearing 25 different presentations on whether and in what way <NAME> was a proto-feminist sounds like a rather dreary use of class time. But let me say that in every graduate (math) course I teach, whether I assign written homework or not I always have a "problem session", usually about once a week and lasting at least an hour, in which the students present their solutions to me and to each other (with whatever written notes they want, of course). I don't do this because I'm worried that their written work will not be their own, not really, but it is definitely a different thing to cobble together a solution from two different texts and a website (this is a totally legitimate thing to do, in my courses: in fact this sounds like a reasonable description of some of my own research!) than to actually present it in front of other people. (Again, I've learned this from hard experience: in many of the courses I teach, the course text is *my own notes*, sometimes written on the fly and sometimes already written. It is remarkable to me how I can give a better or worse rendition of something that I looked up from my own lecture notes on any given day. Sometimes I don't succeed in getting the material as firmly in my head as I would like in the time allotted to prepare that day's lecture.)
If there is both an oral and a written component, then layering is again a good thing: maybe the student turns in some preliminary written thing, then they give a presentation on it, then they improve their written work based on the feedback they got from the presentation. Again, this seems more appropriate in some courses than others, but when it is appropriate the students learn a lot: perhaps they will even be too busy learning and working to think to get someone else to write their paper.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: I remember one year when I was at university an exam in anther department had two sections, the 2nd section had the same number of questions as students, and each question was related to something in the student’s project. One question had to be answered from that section.
Each year having a section like this, based on one essay would give the students a good incentive to at least understand what they handed in regardless of who wrote it.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: One tip:
Take a sample of text and do a search in google surrounded by double quotes " "
This tells google to search for that exact phrase. It can also find paraphrases.
Be careful when interpreting the search results, it should be very obvious if the work is stolen or not.
I usually do about 1 sentence worth at a time and about 1 sentence per every 3-4 paragraphs. I usually wait to bother on a search until I read something that I am suspicious of.
I catch people all the time, this way, buying other papers (the sampe paper is often sold multiple times, or resold again later!) but mostly not-quoting properly. A clear letter to the student detailing my findings and asking for an explanation usually leads to a: 'I forgot to quote it'. I like small frequent assignments, because when the whole thing is copied and pasted, there is no where to hide, the student clearly cheated. (I let them slide the first time, but I don't make it look that way)
regards
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: Many schools require papers to be submitted electronically, and then they are checked by a service like turnitin.com which will find the sources of any parts copied from on-line.
I once came across some text that seemed familiar. Picked up a very old book and found that they had copied the preface (with several typos). But the copy was a pre-written term paper for sale!
“No, sir, I would never plagiarize. If it’s plagiarized the guy I bought the paper from did it.”
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: Probably not helpful to your specific case here, but maybe schools could do what is increasingly common in other industries and aspects of law enforcement:
**Offer whistle-blower awards.**
E.g., if you provide information leading to a student being issued with a citation, you get $1,000. If you provide information leading to a student being suspended, you get $3,000. If you provide information leading to a student being expelled, you get $5,000.
Promise to keep the identity of the whistle-blower completely confidential.
And if the whistle-blower was involved in any wrongdoing, he is automatically exonerated (e.g. if two students were cheating on your test, the one who reports it first gets off the hook while the other is expelled).
Make your whistle-blowing policy well-known and public. Then many of these online guys who are paid to write these papers will be tempted to submit evidence.
The money to pay for this could be simply taken as a fine from the student. It could all be written into the Academic Honor Code that the student must sign in order to enroll at the school. E.g.,
"I agree that if I am given a citation due to a violation of the Academic Honor Code, I may be fined up to $1,000. Such funds will be used to pay any whistle-blower involved."
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_8: A piece of good work will ordinarily be part of a "trend."
It's possible that a formerly indifferent student will have a "lightbulb" moment, and suddenly start producing good work above the former trend. If that's the case, the student's *subsequent* work will reflect this.
If you want to find out "right away," you might talk to the student and ask about individual points in the paper. You might compliment him/her on the substantial improvement. If it is genuine, evidence of the "lightbulb" will be in the conversation.
Actually, this happened to me, as an undergraduate, when I once produced an uncharacteristically brilliant paper for a class. So the professor asked me why the one paper was so much better than the others. The answer was that I had done a paper using the same concept in another class, and had benefited from the corrections. I showed the professor the other paper, which was "different," but had clearly laid the foundation for the one paper.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_9: Proving that cheating has occurred in this situation is virtually impossible. Making an accusation without solid proof simply isn't worth your time and trouble.
Instead, I focus on designing the assignment in ways that make cheating more difficult. In my graduate level math courses, students do term projects that count for 25% of the course grade. I grade parts of the project separately and require the students to submit an abstract and meet with me to discuss it, submit a draft paper, submit a final paper, and give an oral presentation. At each of the earlier stages, I provide feedback to the student and require changes (fixing things that are incorrect, expanding the discussion of parts of the paper that are unclear, etc.) The oral presentation includes Q&A, and students are downgraded if they can't answer questions about their work.
It's unlikely that a student could simply purchase an existing paper from a database to satisfy all of these requirements. In order to use a contract cheater for the project, the student would have to keep in touch with their helper over a couple of months as the abstract is developed and the paper goes through a draft stage before becoming final. They would also need to prepare to give the oral presentation and answer questions.
I've had some cases where students plagiarized parts of their papers- this can be easily caught using tools like TurnItIn. I've never had a situation where a student had difficulty answering basic questions about what they had done in their project and I don't believe that any of my students have ever hired someone to write their project for them.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/14 | 955 | 4,032 | <issue_start>username_0: I have submitted a paper to Proc. Am. Math. Soc. My advisor said to submit to this journal. It's been over 3.5 months with no response. I have made several edits to my paper, but none that essentially change the structure of a proof. The original email contained the following message:
>
> Submission of unrequested revisions is discouraged. If SUBSTANTIAL
> modifications are absolutely necessary after initial submission, the
> above link can be used to resubmit your article. Please limit the use
> of this link to one resubmission.
>
>
>
Based on these words I would not resubmit, but I am wondering, since it is taking so long, should I just send in the current version to perhaps get the attention of the reviewer?<issue_comment>username_1: This is clearly answered in the comments by @<NAME> (making community wiki here just to post an answer for the question).
Absolutely do NOT resubmit the paper! If you do, you could end up having everything rejected.
Contact the editors of the journal. 3.5 months is not such a long time for journal review in many fields (unfortunately) but it is sufficient time to warrant a quick friendly email to the editor asking what the progress is.
Though you should not pester the editor, contacting them after 3.5 months seems perfectly reasonable. But keep a friendly/deferential tone. (Don't demand or complain ... just ask for info.)
(And best of luck with the reviews. The first submission is always the most nerve-wrecking. If it works out, then great. If not, try not to sweat it too much. Rejection happens to nearly everyone.)
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I entirely agree with the "do NOT resubmit" advice of username_1. I just wanted to add something which was not addressed and yet seems like the natural thing to do.
Ask your advisor. If he/she told you to submit there, he/she probably has some experience with the journal, either first-hand (as author or reviewer), or through colleagues. This will help you evaluate if 3.5 months really is unusually lenghty for this journal.
I would be surprised if it were. I have no experience with this particular journals, but for other journals in mathematics I have been told that it is unreasonable to expect an answer before 6 months and you can start worrying after one year.
One good reason to enquire about the state of the review process is if you are expecting to send applications soon and a few weeks difference means the world to you. Even in that case though, as username_1 very well says: "Don't demand or complain".
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Please note that mathematics is on the slower side when it comes to the review process. (1) In math there are often only a handful of people who are even remotely qualified to review your paper, so it is tough to find reviewers (2) It takes a very long time in some instances to check the validity of a proof. In some fields perhaps, 3.5 months may be pushing the long end, since in these fields they often only critique big ideas, writing, statistics and experimental design, these things are rather quick to check -- in comparison to a long or highly technical proof. In addition, numerical results are often unchecked in some sciences (especially in fields where you don't submit code with your paper) so even highly technical fields can have pretty quick review turnover. A reviewer in math is going to try and go through your proof in painstaking detail, will try to figure out if there are any counterexamples, even if she believes your proof. I've known several mathematicians to wait over a year before they get a decision on their submission. This is why the arXiv is so important in math; it helps date your discovery, since the review process takes so long.
Inquiring is fine, but be very friendly. Often journals allow you to check the status of the paper. When was this paper sent to the reviewers? If you don't know the answer to this you should try to find out.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/15 | 425 | 1,903 | <issue_start>username_0: I am going to extract a paper from my MSc thesis. But I am not sure how to point out that this paper is the synopsis of my thesis. What is your suggestion? In which section should I refer to the thesis, in introduction or related works? Is it allowed to insert some part of my thesis to my paper without modification?<issue_comment>username_1: If you only wish to point out that you have a thesis that may contain additional material, you could add a sentence in the acknowledgement to the effect that the work was largely "funded" by your master's project resulting in your named thesis. It is, at least in my field, not uncommon that people cite their own thesis for details that usually are not included in a regular paper. Typically theses contain much more detailed descriptions of experiments (or their equivalents), including error discussions, as well as contain more data (results) than is possible to fit in a paper. There must, of course, be a clear purpose for quoting your own thesis for information that cannot be included in a paper and I would state that you cannot cite a thesis for any critical points since those must be included in the paper.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This would be an excellent question to ask your advisor, who will be familiar with the norms of your field.
If your thesis is already finished by the time you submit your paper, treat it as you would any other reference. In particular, you may want to cite it if you wish to refer the reader there for more details on certain points.
In my opinion, it's not necessary to explicitly state that the paper is extracted from your thesis, though you could if you want. (If it's your first major paper, people will probably assume it's from a thesis anyway.) Normally the place to mention this would be either at the end of the introduction, or at the end of the paper.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/15 | 877 | 3,949 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a bachelor student at the second year of studies (Physics), but I'm an independent programmer since many more years.
Now, I have some data about an algorithm I've done and I would like to present the results on a research paper - I have a high level of understanding of the theory behind, and some background of theoretical computer science. Is it "reasonable" to write a paper with no titles at all (high school) and without the name of my university maybe?
I don't know whether include it or not, since the topic is not related to what I study there.<issue_comment>username_1: My academic advisor certainly seems to think that this would be possible! I have researched and written about several subjects that are outside my major, and though none have (Yet!) been published, none of my professors or advisors seem to think it strange that I might have knowledge and interests outside my major, nor do they doubt that I am capable of producing quality work in those areas.
However, you may wish to find a professor in CS, and ask them to read and critique your paper. You will benefit from their academic experience, and their input makes it more likely that you can succeed in publishing a paper in an area outside your major.
Edit: Seek your advisor's input on this. If you plan to sink a large number of hours into a project outside your main research focus, s/he may not be altogether happy about that. This caveat may not apply in your case, since you are still in the undergraduate phase, but may be more of an issue later.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: You should definitely write it up. There are plenty of good reasons for doing so and no downside. Writing a paper is a good exercise for future paper and report writing, and while you are doing it you are likely to think of new ideas about your research. You will also have to search for similar work that might be suitable for references and you may find something useful there too.
You should also put the paper online somewhere so that it is preserved and available to others who may find it useful. If there is data and/or code that goes with the paper you can use figshare for example. It does not matter if there is not much response to your work, that is common when authors have no background and does not mean it is not good. Someone may pick up on it later when you don't expect it.
You might also want to try to publish in a peer-review journal if you think it is sufficiently original and useful. That might require you to write it up in a specific format such at LaTeX. Again that is all good experience. You will have a much better chance of acceptance in a journal if you can use your university affiliation but you will have to make it clear that you are an undergraduate there to avoid problems and it might be best to check with your tutor. If you search around you may find a suitable journal that is specifically set up to accept work from undergraduates. If you can get it accepted it would look good on your CV whatever you plan to do in the future.
The only circumstance that would make it unwise to publish your work would be if the algorithm is original and of high commercial value and/or patentable in which case you would have to follow a different route to protect your intellectual property. However that is a rare situation.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: yes. I've had experience with grant reviewers noting things like a modest publication history all in all if the paper is good, the work is sound and you meet the editors guidelines and format the paper correctly for the journal...it should and will be published. Be extra cautious to acknowledge everyone especially those who loaned you or allowed you resources. I've seen personalities "smirk" at non-traditional success. You will be under more scrutiny most likely but I'm the end the end good science will prevail.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/15 | 3,824 | 15,689 | <issue_start>username_0: I am taking a course in a may-not-be-top-but-still-decent university located in North America. **The course lecturer forces us to pay for an online learning kit from Pearson by adopting all the graded quizzes provided in that learning kit.**
That is, if one refuses to pay for the learning kit, he or she will have no access to all the quizzes, which in total constitute 20% of the final grade of that course. Moreover, all the text completion questions are basically exactly the same sentences copied from the eBook. Therefore, if you simply pay for the learning kit (~$50), then you will have a hard time doing the quiz as compared of those who buy the combo including the eBook (~$90).
In summary, if
* you pay ~$90, during every quiz, simply do `CTRL`+`F`, you can always find the exact sentence in the eBook, and hence you can get nearly full marks.
* you pay ~$50, you can access the quizzes, but you may have to search somewhere else and spend more time on the quizzes.
* If you pay nothing, the 20% marks are gone.
I, as a victim who unwillingly paid $90, **find it irritating and unethical**, as I feel this is some sort of a coalition between the lecturer and the publisher. I understand that some lecturers do have recommended textbooks as well, but they are not mandatory! That is, if I can learn that course well by other books, I am free to do that. If I didn't buy the book and hence screwed the course up, that is my own responsibility. I cannot blame any one for that. But this lecturer's deed actually bans the students who do not pay for the learning kit from the quizzes.
**Is this ethical? Wait, is it even legal? How may I fight for our rights as students on this issue?**<issue_comment>username_1: If your university allows instructors to charge for "materials fees" for classes—such as studio art classes or laboratory classes in the sciences—then it is not, strictly speaking, unethical to insist students access a particular paid resource. However, if such fees are not permitted, then it really is not fair to ask students to pay for quizzes if it would not be required for them to do so elsewhere.
However, although it may strictly speaking be ethical, I would agree with <NAME> that such practices are not desirable. Being completely beholden to someone else's syllabus and teaching materials at the university level is not a good sign, as it shows more the desire to simply get things done rather than doing things well.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: This is a situation that is in my opinion exploitative and unethical. The majority of the blame lies with the publisher, but some lies with the professor as well. On the professor's part, it's not the kind of behavior that is universally agreed to be unethical, nor is it something that anyone would consider to be extremely unethical (like giving an A in return for a sexual favor).
Here's some background. For decades, publishers have exploited the fact that they could name a price for a college textbook, and it would very little effect on sales, because the adoption decision was being made by the professor, who wasn't the person paying for the book. Over roughly the last 30 years, they have raised the price of textbooks at a rate much too high to be explainable by the combination of inflation and any rise in the costs of production. The skyrocketing price of textbooks has caused many students to find other ways of obtaining the book, and one of these is buying used copies.
Publishers hate the used market and will do anything they can to kill it off. Within about the last 5 years, they've found the magic bullet. They sell the book along with access to a web site, as described in the question. They convince professors to use the online services by appealing to their self-interest. They offer professors an extremely easy and convenient way to obtain an evaluation of their students' work, through the publisher's web site. In many cases, the professor buys in to the system, and then over the following years the price is jacked up more and more. This happened, for example, with Pearson's product Mymathlab, which now costs math students at my school $90 a semester! Professors may not be aware that there are free solutions. E.g., for people who teach math, some good free systems are Myopenmath and Webwork. For physics, there are free systems such as Lon-capa and my own software called Spotter. But the free systems do not have marketing power behind them and may be more work to set up. Therefore professors condemn their students to exploitation through the likes of Mymathlab.
>
> Is this ethical? Wait, is it even legal? How may I fight for our rights as students on this issue?
>
>
>
As a student, you can work through student organizations. Here in California, the student group CalPirg has been working actively on this issue.
As a professor, I try to do my best to inform my colleagues about alternatives to proprietary textbooks and proprietary courseware.
Whether it's legal -- well, I guess that depends on where you live. I think it's legal throughout the US. In Greece, for example, all textbooks are free -- although from what I understand their system is a disaster. Here in California, our former governor <NAME> tried to get more free and open-source textbooks adopted in K-12, and a state senator named <NAME> has been trying to do the same at the college level. (Google on SB 1052 and 1053 and California Open Education Resources Council.) Schwarzenegger failed. The jury is out on Steinberg, and I'm not sure his approach is a good idea. If you wanted to get this outlawed in California, Steinberg would be the logical guy to approach.
The problem with trying to deal with this politically is that the current setup appeals strongly to the self-interest of two politically powerful groups: publishers and professors. It's against the self-interest of students, but students don't vote in sufficient numbers to be politically powerful, and they don't have the financial or political resources of the publishers or organizations like the California Teachers Association.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I'll start with
>
> How may I fight for our rights as students on this issue?
>
>
>
For one, **politely express your displeasure to the professor**.
Some professors aren't in tune with the cost of textbooks, and may not realize what a burden it is to shell out $90 for their course, when it's $90 that you can't recoup by selling back the text, or avoid by using the library's copy of the text.
They may even think they're doing you a favor by offering this "interactive" system, not realizing that you don't find it useful.
If the professor isn't interested in hearing what you have to say, you can further express your displeasure in the end-of-course evaluation (my university's specifically ask about the textbook) and possibly in a **respectful** letter (signed by your classmates) to the department chair.
>
> Is this ethical? Wait, is it even legal?
>
>
>
As the other answers have pointed out, it's not universally considered unethical or illegal.
As unpleasant as the result is in this case, it probably **would not be a good thing** to set *too* many bureaucratic rules on what textbook or other educational resources a professor can assign. Given that the cost of tuition is usually many times higher than the textbook price, it is generally desirable for the professor to assign the textbook that will (in his/her opinion) offer you the best educational experience and therefore, the best return on your tuition investment.
Of course, students tend to appreciate when the professor can find a low-cost option that is also educationally sound. But that's generally considered a bonus, not a requirement.
In this case it sounds like the extra content doesn't contribute anything useful to the educational experience - in which case, you should let the professor know. (Again, politely and non-combatively.)
I also want to point out that requiring "bundled" course content that goes along with the textbook is **closer to assigning a required software package** (which, unlike textbooks, you can't buy used or re-sell) than assigning a textbook. I agree with you completely that it's substantially different than being asked to pay for a textbook.
For every class I've ever taken that required specialized (non-free) software, my university installed the software on my laptop for me for free (given that I was registered for the course in question). In most cases, instructors try to use free software or software that comes with a free student license, because they realize that a software purchase is different from a textbook purchase. Or they'll provide the software on lab computers that students can use during set hours.
**Imagine if you had to buy a new non-refundable software package for almost every class you were enrolled in, including buying the same software multiple times for a sequence of intro classes on a subject.**
Yeah, it's a waste of money, but your professors might not see that unless you point it out.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: In addition to the, so far, three other fine answers, are these two important points:
(1) Was the compulsory extra course fee announced up front, at the time you signed up or paid for the course? If so, you may have little recourse. On the other hand, if this "extra fee" was sprung upon you after the fact, then this could be an example of trading/**bargaining in bad faith** and is condemned universally.
(2) Even if the $50 fee for the basic learning kit were deemed acceptable, it appears that the students now have the option of either doing some homework themselves or paying another $40 for someone else (OK, in this case it's a some*thing* else) to do it for them. That could be seen, in a small way, as **buying an educational credential**, and should also be condemned universally.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: username_3's answer is absolutely great and I wholeheartedly agree with all notions present therein. There is however one approach I would like to additionally highlight: Contacting the student council. This is **exactly** what the student council should be able to handle. It depends on the institution how much power they hold, but in most it should be enough power to at least raise the issue at a level where the institution will listen. I would not argue that this behaviour is unethical (except if the fee was secret till after the fact, which I assume it is not), however if students have an issue with it than it's the student council who is in place to voice the opinion of the student body as a whole. (If however this is only the case with a single course it's less likely for them to pick it up, but if it's the case with one course it's likely the case with more and at least they might do a survey on the issue)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: I think it is absolutely normal and very common at universities (and elsewhere in education) that you have to buy a specific textbook for your course in order to pass the exam.
Unfortunately, this lead to the bad practice that professors force students to buy their (or their friends') textbooks. I do not think you should blame your professor personally, because it is a very common problem (at least in my environment), and I am sure you will meet this issue thousands of times in your career.
Besides the ethical problems, I think this practice is very dangerous because exams are distorted in a way that you can easily pass if you have the book. This will motivate even not-very-smart students to buy the book - and so get passed to the next semester and buy the next book as well.
I have no idea how this issue could be solved, but it is present everywhere as far as I know. You have to buy a textbook for your course, that's OK. The professor asks questions from the textbook on the exam, that's OK again. I don't see how you could get your point through in this case.
We have a similar situation in a law's school, where books are actualized each year upon some minor changes in the law. On the exams, these "new laws" are always asked in order to force students to buy the new book each year, despite that it is 99% the same as last year.
It's been an issue for years, and it is a law's school where you would expect students to be able to find some legal way against this practice, but so far, they couldn't.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: So the professor is not willing to do his/her job, and instead makes the student pay money to a 3rd party for what the professor has already been paid to provide.
I expect a course to be self contained and the professor to cover everything that is needed to pass the exams. It is OK to require books to be used, only if they are provided in the university library in the way that is reasonable for all students to access.
I see this as a professor that is too lazy to set their own tests. If a student did the same, they will be expelled for copying someone else’s work.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: Something I don't see being mentioned much is the issue that while this learning kit is critical to being able to get any points on the quiz component of the grade, it doesn't at all guarantee success in taking them, or certainly the non-online major tests (other than the presumably small component described as quoting the text).
In other words, a *necessary but not sufficient* condition.
This puts it *much* more in the camp of "a class that happens to have an expensive textbook cost," of which there is no shortage among faculty who seem to be bragging that they would never use this sort of non-print resource (or at least this provider of it), and *absolutely* separates it from the numerous straw-man comparisons of a "bought and paid for" grade. To sum up, it's *not at all* unethical to require students to pay an (even if viewed as extravagant) amount in exchange for the right to work a sheet of assessment questions and receive a grade for it. That's called tuition. That's called student fees. That's called textbooks. There is, at present, no accredited university that awards grades without expectation of a student having paid something to earn that right.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_9: It's legal, and probably also ethical.
The professor might be an underpaid and overworked adjunct, who lacks the time to write their own quizzes. (Is it ethical for schools to hire so many adjuncts, and to pay them so poorly? I'm not sure.)
Forcing students to pay ~$50 or more helps provide extra money to the textbook publisher, which can then spend the money on making a better textbook. And on making resources for the instructor: quizzes, PowerPoint slides, videos, and more.
Yes, yes, you can possibly finesse your way through the quizzes with `Ctrl`+`F`. You might learn something along the way (or you might not).
Some students might do the quizzes without `Ctrl`+`F`. They'll study the chapter, then write some or all of the quiz from memory. These students might actually benefit from studying each week's chapter each week, in a timely and unhurried manner, instead of just cramming ten chapters in the few days before the exam. Plus, answering the quiz questions will help to strengthen and reinforce their memories of the textbook concepts. Their quiz marks might end up lower, but their exam marks might end up higher.
Edit
====
Is there anything I can do to improve this answer? If it's wrong, why is it wrong? Please leave a comment.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/15 | 1,530 | 6,358 | <issue_start>username_0: Recently I received an invitation for Phi Kappa Phi honor society. I do not know too much about those organizations and I was wandering what are the benefits (or possible disadvantages) of joining?
I was searching online and people keep mentioning that it is good for your resume, networking etc. However, it seems to me that I just need to pay for membership and they will put me on the list, how could it be beneficial for me?
Could you please tell me if worth considering? And is it really beneficial to have those things on my resume? Do graduate schools or employers pay attention for those?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Do graduate schools pay attention to joining Phi Kappa Phi or other honor societies?
>
>
>
As I understand it, eligibility for membership in Phi Kappa Phi is entirely determined by grades and class rank. If so, it won't help with grad school applications, since the admissions committee already has access to far more information about grades than they would learn from knowing the applicant is a member.
Some fields may have honor societies for which membership conveys more information, but I do not think there is any widely known, field-independent example in the U.S.
In my experience on graduate admissions committees in mathematics, I've never heard anyone discuss honor societies at all.
I joined an honor society as an undergraduate, not because I saw personal benefits to it but because my parents would have been disappointed if I had declined membership. The only consequence for me has been that they occasionally send me a newsletter, but I'm told some people do find membership to be useful or meaningful.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I joined an honor society as an undergrad. The largest benefit, IMHO, was having access to member-only scholarship applications. Most honor societies offer membership based on your grades--it is basically just an acknowledgement of your academic success as an undergrad, and is not likely to influence your admission to grad school. (Membership in an honor society will help if you decide to transfer as an undergrad.)
It is definitely worth considering mambership, though. There are usually opportunities for members to be active in leadership roles at local,national, and international levels. If you hold such a position, it *may* influence admissions or hiring decisions, and it certainly won't hurt your chances.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: AS a member of many honor societies, I think it is a great opportunity to join however, the benefits you enjoy mostly depend on your involvement. You can benefit from scholarship opportunities, travel discounts , leadership experiences among many others.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_4: On the other side of the coin (just to give perspective, I'm not suggesting honour societies are bad or detrimental!!) some graduate schools (depending on the country you apply for) and potential academic supervisors might look down on you joining an honour society.
Honour societies or Frats/Sororities as many non-US countries will recognise them might make the automatic assumption that you've joined a 'party house' despite that many honour societies are anything but. This is due to the consistent perception of these societies in various films/newspapers etc as being depicted as such, where academics and education are the least of student's concerns.
It really depends on where you are applying and the program you are applying for. If you decide to apply outside of the US, belonging to a general honour society could (I stress could, doesn't mean it will) be detrimental to your application. In Australia or the UK, or Europe or even Canada to a degree, an honour society does nothing for your graduate school application. It's really only relevant for the US.
Honour societies (from my understanding as a non-US person based in Australia) are great for business opportunities and networking for jobs, but I'm not sure about their potential in helping you do research (which is the point of graduate school).
I think if you'd like to join an honour society, you should join one where academics and/or research are the main priority, but also have a think about where you'd like to go to graduate school.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I am a little late to the conversation but here is my two cents for anyone who reads this in the future.
I chose to join PKP for my own personal amusement. In addition, I joined while already in graduate school and I was wanting a new MacBook. PKP boasts Apple discounts for their members. I was more than disappointed when I learned that Apple only gives PKP discounts on random items; none of which, at least at the time, included MacBooks. As I investigated other "discounts" offered to members, I found that they were equally lame, for lack of a better term.
After my initial year, I chose to not renew my active membership because I was already a lifetime member (everyone who joins is) and the only benefit I saw to paying annual dues would be for access to apply for scholarships that I may or may not have won. Even then, I was already finished with school so that didn't apply to me. Their "career" advice is basically an online form that you complete, which is pretty much a super secret LinkedIn service, through which I was never contacted by a prospective employer.
They used to have their member directory online but now, they have converted it to a actual book that one may only have for a fee. Not long ago, they emailed me asking me to call and update my information for said book. I did so out of curiosity and spoke to someone I could barely understand who, I believe, was also trying to sell me something.
It was a fun honor to wear PKP garb at graduation and I sometimes enjoy the bragging rights. I do put it on my resume, but I do not think it has ever helped or hindered my applications.
I'd join again, but I'd never pay money to keep my membership "active." It benefits me in no way.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: Some honor societies publish their own journals, offering their members an opportunity to get their research out there. As a member of Psi Chi, I have the chance to publish there if I find difficulty with other journals accepting my manuscript.
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/03/16 | 525 | 2,034 | <issue_start>username_0: Is there any information about the trend of journals' preferences regarding LaTeX and MS Word?
My main concern is computer engineering and linguistics fields of study.<issue_comment>username_1: Both ACM and IEEE accept LaTeX publication format, which represents computer engineering to a large extent.1
Based on [this list which categorizes publications in various fields by their 'friendliness' to LaTeX](http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/external/clmt/latex4ling/journals/) (primarily linguistics-related), many linguistics publications accept LaTeX (especially those related to computational linguistics / natural language processing).2
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1 Cf. <http://acm.org/publications/latex_style/> and <http://ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html>.
2 The list was last updated in January 2010.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I suppose you want to know the general acceptance of LaTeX to decide whether to invest effort in learning LaTeX. I feel LaTeX is the safe choice as, especially in Computer Engineering, LaTeX is widely used - ACM and IEEE have their own LaTeX submission templates. If, in the unlikely case that your publication venue requires Word only, there are LaTeX to Word converters available, e.g. `latex2rtf` and `pandoc`. The Tex Users Group (TUG) also maintains a [list of converters](http://tug.org/utilities/texconv/index.html). [This thread](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14565/what-to-do-when-manuscript-is-in-latex-but-journal-requires-submission-in-ms-wor) and [this one](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/50/how-can-i-convert-math-less-latex-documents-into-microsoft-word/) discuss conversion from LaTeX to Word.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: There are numerous journals and conferences that only accept manuscripts in MS Word format. On the one hand, the journals and conferences that only accept LaTeX are rare.
Indeed, I don't remember any journal or conference that require LaTeX format exclusively.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/16 | 549 | 2,204 | <issue_start>username_0: I am using a research handbook written by Creswell to guide me in writing my Bachelor's Thesis.
Specifically, I followed his research design model.
Should I justify why I structured my Methods Chapter the way I did by saying that such structure was recommended by Creswell?
For example, I may say that Creswell suggested that this section should be included in the research design.
I live in a developing country. My institution has no specific style guide.
They underestimate undergraduate research, but I cannot wait for my supervisor to tell me what to do as long as my sources are authoritative.
[Here](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3aTkUeH1MlEK4J%3awww.stfrancis.edu/content/grd/morrissette/unionphd/DSRE711-TopicsQualResearch/Creswell-ResearchDesign.doc%20&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk) is a link of a summary of the book.
I cannot consult my supervisor at the moment nor wait or state why here.
Thank you<issue_comment>username_1: If I take your question correctly, it sounds as if you don't know whether to refer to the styleguide that informed you to structure your thesis in a certain way. So, in your introduction, you have a section such as:
>
> The next chapter of this thesis describes the background literature. Chapter 3 outlines the methodology and so on. Chapter 4 presents the experimental design, whatever … Finally, chapter 7 concludes and provides further possibilities for research. **This structure is suggested by Cresswell (19xx)**
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If that's what you're thinking, then I would say no; don't reference the styleguide that you based your thesis structure on. Just like you wouldn't cite, for instance, the AP styleguide for your spelling conventions.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: A style guide isn't really an authority for this, even if you're following its advice. Structure should be designed help the reader understand your overall argument, the paths you took through the literature etc. So your explanation of why the work is structured in a particular way should be aimed at that set of decisions (constructing clarity to serve their reading) being made explicit to the reader.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/16 | 458 | 2,014 | <issue_start>username_0: I wrote a rather extensive research project for one of my courses, and would like to submit it to arXiv. But, I am not entirely sure about the copyright/other issues behind it. Is it acceptable for a student to submit their term papers online, and in doing so can I, as an undergrad, claim affiliation to my university?<issue_comment>username_1: I will leave the question of whether or not you *should* submit the paper to arXiv versus another venue for discussion elsewhere. However, I do agree with the comment that you should talk with the professor who gave you the assignment about your plans, as he or she may have constructive criticism for you.
In general, if your work represents an original contribution, and you feel comfortable with sharing it with the public, then yes, you can go ahead and submit it to arXiv. You should note, however, that in a number of fields, papers cannot be submitted until you have been *endorsed*—that is, recognized as a valid submitter by someone who has already themselves submitted a number of papers in that area. If the professor of the course is someone who can endorse you, then that should be sufficient.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: It is acceptable for an undergraduate student to publish.
However, please consult it with someone in the field (to make it a decent publication - both in terms of its content and form).
Copyright/authorship - it should be not an issue (unless it contains notes from the course or something). In case of doubt - ask your lecturer/TA.
Affiliation is a bit more tricky (especially if your program is not directly linked to a research department, or - is linked to many). Two typical choices are: one related to your program or one directly related to this course.
In many cases, the university will be happy to have one more publication with their affiliation (or won't care). In some, there are some strict rules when you can add their affiliation (e.g. you need approval of a prof.).
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/15 | 875 | 3,824 | <issue_start>username_0: [My book](http://www.mathematics21.org/algebraic-general-topology.html) was rejected by a publisher saying that my research is "unmotivated". To motivate it, should I solve some long standing open problem? Or are there other ways to motivate publishers?
This is despite I have some short sections in my book which describes my idea of motivation: "1.4 Our topic and rationale" and "1.5 Earlier works".
What motivation (except of solving long standing open problems) are?
Any text online on the topic of motivation in math research?<issue_comment>username_1: What the publisher is looking for is a book that will attract many readers. If crowds are already clamoring for a book, then the decision to publish it is easy, but that's uncommon. Instead, the publisher generally has to try to predict whether an audience for the book will materialize when nobody knows they want to read it yet.
The "motivation" the publisher refers to is anything that makes people want to read the book. You need to demonstrate to potential readers that the material is interesting and exciting, that reading the book will be useful, that it connects to a larger scholarly conversation, etc.
Right now, it's clear that you feel the book is valuable and would like many people to read it, but you aren't giving potential readers a lot of motivation. For example, in Section 1.4 of the current draft, you write
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> Somebody might ask, why to study it? My approach relates to traditional general topology like complex numbers to real numbers theory. Be sure this will find applications.
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and
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> This book has a deficiency: It does not properly relate my theory with previous research in general topology and does not consider deeper category theory properties. It is however OK for now, as I am going to do this study in later volumes (continuation of this book).
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Basically, this amounts to saying you don't yet know how it will be useful and you aren't connecting it to the literature. The lack of applications is a serious disadvantage, but not necessarily decisive by itself (some things can be published in mathematics just because they are beautiful or seem like they should be useful). However, not explaining the relationship with previous research is a major problem. It's nearly impossible to get an academic book published under these circumstances.
I don't mean to be overly discouraging, but my impression is that writing a book on your work is premature. Instead, I'd focus on connecting your work with the rest of the field, with the goal of getting a group of other researchers building on your papers. Once you start to get more citations, you can bring them to the attention of publishers as evidence for a community that values your work and would benefit from a systematic presentation in the form of a book.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Now that you have started the field of Algebraic General Topology you may want to convince other people that it is worth their while to learn about it.
Looking through the slides I see lots of words whose definitions I do not know. I have not read your paper and I am ignorant of the terminology in the fields you are generalizing. Perhaps there are theorems in two different fields that when generalized by your techniques turn out to be the same theorem. If you are lucky no one will have previously realized that they are the same theorem. If something like this is the case. I would pick such theorems, place them at the top of each of two columns on (digital) piece of paper and then use your general proof for each of the theorems but use the language of the field from which the particular theorem comes. This way people will be able to see what you have accomplished without learning lots of new language.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/17 | 622 | 2,641 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm working on a nearly completed paper in CS. It deals with a memory module design, which, apart from being a novel idea, turned out to be of potentially commercial value. Now I was thinking of patenting it, of course, I doubt I will be able to make its commercial development a priority of mine until at least I finish my PhD (relatively soon) and find some "solid ground" in academia (I have some job offers, but can't specify any amount of time). However, I am under the impression that this should not prevent me from protecting my work.
As I am quite inexperienced with it, I must also ask if I'm having the right conception and approach to patenting here?
What is the procedure of patenting an idea that is to be published in a journal? Are there any consequences?<issue_comment>username_1: I was recently speaking with a colleague of mine who had done a lot of work in the IP area. The comment I received was that it took a *lot* of time from initial idea to the awarding of a patent—typically about three years and potentially lots of money (thousands of dollars or euros, depending on the filing location).
Depending on your local laws, you may be able to use your manuscript as part of the *provisional* patent application (an initial filing to the relevant patent office saying "we're going to file a real application soon"). However, as EnergyNumbers has suggested in a comment—you **must** contact someone with knowledge of **local** patent laws, as the rules vary greatly between countries. If your university has such an office (check with their grants and funding office for suggestions about whom you should talk to), this will save you the expense of hiring a patent attorney.
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If what you have is potentially patentable **do not publish any critical element before filing the patent application** or you risk losing eligibility due to existence of prior art (even if it is yours!).
Be aware that your university may claim ownership of the IP since it concerns ideas that you got in the context of a project while they were paying you (my university would claim partial ownership). This need not be a problem, as this also means they get to pay the piper. This is not necessarily an issue since, if your name is on the patent, you are entitled to a slice of the cake.
You should really talk to patent experts. Your university probably has them. Most universities have a dedicated tech transfer office (TTO) which handles patents, spin-offs and industrial collaboration. They have the expertise to guide you in such endeavours.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/17 | 391 | 1,757 | <issue_start>username_0: I submitted a research paper and the reply has come back. The reviewers are positive overall, but one of them pointed out a flaw in one of my proofs. This happened because I made a wrong assumption regarding the proof. Now I have found a way to get around this and have a better proof. How do I present that my previous proof was wrong, the reviewer was right in saying so, and that now I have a better one?<issue_comment>username_1: If the reviewers and subsequently the editor does not consider the error enough to warrant rejection, you should simply make the changes necessary and submit the revised manuscript according to instructions. Since the reviewers spotted the errors you should acknowledge their helpful comments (unless this is not the custom in the field for some reason).
It seems to me that you may be lucky to get the chance to revise the manuscript since the type of error you describe, I would think, would likely lead to rejection. But, with a favourable verdict you just revise the manuscript and return it as per instructions.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Just fix the proof. Especially if you feel that the reviewer gave helpful suggestions about *how* to fix the proof (beyond just pointing out that the original version was wrong), you could consider adding an Acknowledgments section thanking the anonymous referee for pointing out the error in the original proof of Theorem X and/or their suggestions of how to fix it.
You don't need to apologize for your mistakes, either in the paper or your reply to the referees' comments. In your reply, you should of course acknowledge the error, thank the referee for pointing it out and say that you've fixed the problem.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/17 | 764 | 3,314 | <issue_start>username_0: For most journals, the reviewer is aware of the names and the institution that the paper is coming from. IMO, if the paper is from a top institution, the reviewer might judge it differently than the same quality of paper coming from a low tier institute (not always the case, but there is a chance). Also, a reviewer might not be fully non biased if the paper is from one of the groups that he / she thinks is a competing group.
The simple way to get around this bias is to anonymize the source of the paper before its sent for peer review.
Why don't editors do that. Why isn't this model widely used?<issue_comment>username_1: This is called double-blind review. It is common in some fields, though I seem to see it more in conferences than journals.
There are a bunch of issues with *double-blind* review, next to the obvious overhead:
* It prevents uploading preprints, since authors risk revealing their identity. This can be a problem in fields with long review times like maths since results would be kept silent longer.
* If a paper is accompanied by software, how can it be licensed?
* It doesn't always work, particularly when working in niches with few active researchers. Sometimes you can guess the author with reasonable accuracy based on the content and style of a paper. Some people even manage to guess the reviewer based on feedback.
Some take it even one step further to go for *triple-blind* review, in which:
1. The authors do not know the reviewers' identities.
2. The reviewers do not know the authors' identities.
3. The person that selects reviewers does not know the identities of the authors.
I would like to take this opportunity to suggest *quadruple-blind* review, which is triple-blind review in which the reviewers do not get to see the manuscript. To ensure anonymity, of course. You heard it here first!
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: One word: tradition. Both ways have both advantages and disadvantages. anonymity carries with it the possibility to pass social barriers for what is objective scrutiny of a paper. This has become obvious in some journals that allow open anonymous discussion of submitted papers. Being known (both as author and reviewer) adds social control. On the other hand, anonymity allows a reviewer to express criticism that he/she would not dare to do openly because of, for example, hierarchical reasons. In some (smaller) fields anonymity is easily seen through. The lists can e made much longer.
In your question, the role of the editor as a mediator and evaluator is not touched upon. An editor knows both names of authors and reviewers and should make sure that the review process is fair from both sides. Anonymity does not contribute in this sense.
As a reviewer, one also has the possibility to decline a review if one has qualms about the job. If you feel you need to withhold criticism because of the name of the author, then maybe you are not well suited for the review. In the traditional system you have the possibility of remaining anonymous although my personal opinion is that openness is better. I always feel I can take comments better if I know who they come from. I can evaluate if they are due to issues with language or a resear group with conflicting views etc.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/17 | 722 | 2,956 | <issue_start>username_0: I've received offers from two UK universities (Masters degree), first conditional and second unconditional. There's always a possibility that I won't meet conditions so I'd like to keep the second university as a back-up. Is it possible to do it like this, that I accept both offers and after I meet conditions, I will let the second university know, that I decided not to start studying?<issue_comment>username_1: No.
---
In principle, you *could* do that, but it's **not advisable,** for the simple reason that if either school finds out you've accepted another offer, then **both** schools could end up rescinding their offers, and would be within their rights to do so. (Programs want to know how many spots they have filled, so that they can accept more people if needed to meet their enrollment targets.)
Basically, you need to commit to one school only. If the offer is conditional, then you should weigh the probability of meeting those conditions before accepting the offer.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: **Yes**, for UK undergraduate admissions, you can accept two offers at once - but no more!
One will be your first choice; if you don't meet the conditions, then you have a shot at the second one. So in your case, you would put the conditional offer first, and the unconditional one as your "insurance". (The other way round doesn't make sense, as you can't possibly miss the conditions on the unconditional offer!) You could also just accept one offer.
Make your choices carefully, because the subsequent process is automatic - if you meet the conditions then that's where you're going, *unless* you manage to convince the university to release you. That is [technically possible](http://www.ucas.com/how-it-all-works/undergraduate/results/better-than-expected) but should *under no circumstances* be relied on as a strategy.
For more details, see [Replying to your offers](http://www.ucas.com/how-it-all-works/undergraduate/tracking-your-application/replying-your-offers) on the [UCAS](http://www.ucas.com) website.
I have assumed you are applying to become an undergraduate, as the language of conditional and unconditional offers is particularly associated with this system, and is very standard. If you are applying for a postgraduate position, or for a job, then please disregard this answer.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: You can accept as many offers as you wish, but all your chosen universities can find out about any places you’ve accepted through UKPASS. To be fair to other applicants, when you’ve definitely decided which place to take up, inform the university. They will then change the status of your application to *enrolled* to tell the other unis you won’t not be taking up any other places.
See [the username_3 website](https://www.ucas.com/ucas/postgraduate/apply-and-track/decisions-and-replies) for further details and official information.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/17 | 300 | 1,252 | <issue_start>username_0: I recently came across a journal article that included and referenced a figure (photograph) from a US patent. I found the patent, and I would like to use the same figure, and I'm wondering who the copyright holder is. Might it be free to use since the patent itself is public, or do I need to ask around until I find the copyright holder?<issue_comment>username_1: It depends on how the figure is being used. If it is for non-commercial purposes -- e.g., in a scientific journal to support a study -- then it will likely fall under the 'fair use' provision. If it is for commercial purposes, such as a book that you are seeking to publish, then it is likely considered commercial purposes, and you will need to work out the permissions.
<http://patentdocs.typepad.com/files/memo-on-use-of-npl.pdf>
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I have always felt that directly re-using (i.e., copying) anyone's *figures* in any work, including student papers, is dubious practice even if cited. If students re-draft figures and cite them properly, this seems just about acceptable for undergraduate work. For almost any other purpose, however, I think substantial modification of the figure is necessary.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/17 | 503 | 2,216 | <issue_start>username_0: In my country, several universities are prefixed by "Universidade Federal", which can be translated to "Federal University" (e.g., "Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro" to "Federal University of Rio de Janeiro"). When publishing a paper, should we translate this part of the name?
This is a obscure topic; I have some teachers that use "Federal University" and others that use "Universidade Federal". Once I heard that it is better to keep the original name of the university because it helps to keep its identity. However, even translated, it still is very easy to find. If you Google for both names, they will come up in the first positions of the ranking.
Should we translate or keep unstranslated?<issue_comment>username_1: The first thing to do is to check if the university has any recommendations about this. If none exist, then the second aspect is to consider if the university is well known under one or another form of the name. The purpose of providing an affiliation and proper address is for the sake of communication. Before e-mail and Internet, most correspondence went by post so a proper address was very important. Now e-mail is used, which means the affiliation is mostly to identify the author and the author's affiliation. Web sites are usually bilingual so finding the university or department is possible in both English and the native language. Most will probably use the English translation because it makes most sense if the remainder of the paper is in English. A point to make is that if one uses the native language for affiliation etc. then problems will arise for those not familiar with, for example, Cyrillic, Chinese or Japanese. So it seems the best way to communicate affiliation/address is to use English translations that are hopefully officially accepted by the university.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I think that most English speakers will recognise that `"Universidade"` means `"University"`, especially in an academic context, so there's no need to translate the term. On the other hand, if you were referring to something less obvious to English-speakers, like `고려대학교`, I'd add `"(Korea University)"`.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/03/17 | 1,168 | 4,838 | <issue_start>username_0: Out of five needed members for my doctoral thesis committee, four are fixed. For the fifth member, I approached Mr.A. He has no real connection to my research or topic but I contacted him because he was just as good a fit as anybody else in the department to be the fifth member. I have never worked with him or taken any classes but we did talk a lot in the first few years where he would just ask about my progress by the copy machine, etc. We don't even have a "rapport". The relationship is absolutely neutral, nothing positive/friendly, and nothing negative. I asked him to be on my committee and he said yes. I said I'll get back to you with dates, etc. He is a senior tenured professor.
Then about a month later, I was looking at the CV of some of the new hired (junior) faculty in the department Mr.B (this is his first year) and I see that we have a collaborator in common. Mr.B has published multiple papers with him and Mr.B is working with the same code and the code managing team that we are working with. He is definitely a good person to have on my committee. I finally see Mr.B after a few more months (because of busy schedule/travel/etc.) and he agrees to be on my committee.
The question is, how can I tell Mr.A, as tactfully as possible, after about four months of being quiet that he is basically rejected from my committee because I didn't know about Mr.B but now that I know, Mr.B is a much better match than he is? That I don't need him but I do appreciate his offer? I don't want to antagonize Mr.A or burn any bridges. Should this be in email or in person? Should I explain or just keep it terse? Should I keep it vague that I don't need him and thanks for his time? Or should I tell him about Mr.B and why he is a better match?
FYI, this was before anything official/paperwork was done so there is no problem with that.<issue_comment>username_1: I think you're making a bigger deal about this than necessary. You enlisted Professor A to serve on your committee because you needed a fifth man, not because of any close research connection. More recently, but still before signing any paperwork, you found Professor B, who does have a close research connection.
Just tell Professor A that! Problem solved. You don't have to dither about how to present this information: send it in an email or send it in person. The information of the previous paragraph is sufficient: you don't need to dwell on your connection with Professor A as much as you did in your question. (But by the way: asking about your progress at the copy machine is what I would call "friendly". At least he knows who you are and something about your progress in the program, and he cares enough to ask about it sometimes. That puts him ahead of the curve in many academic departments at many universities.)
What you do not seem to realize is that if Professor A has no close connection with your work, it is overwhelmingly likely that he was being friendly indeed by volunteering to serve on your committee anyway, and he'll be equally happy or, more probably, a little happier not to serve. Since he is a senior tenured professor he has lots of stuff to do. Serving as the fifth man on a student's committee is not nearly such a prestige job that his layoff needs to be sugarcoated. He'll understand, and he'll be especially happy that someone with more relevant expertise will be taking his place.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: You can present it as a positive development that effectively does him a favor. For example, "I'm writing to keep you up to date on my thesis committee. I've recently discovered that one of the new junior faculty, Dr. B, is an ideal fit for my research interests, and I was hoping to add him to the committee. I realize you are very busy, so I thought it could make sense to replace you with him before filing the official paperwork. Does that sound reasonable to you? Thanks again for your willingness to serve on the committee."
I can't imagine he'll object to being replaced. If for some reason he really wants to be on the committee, you could always try to set up a six-person committee.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I did this about a year ago when I changed research tracks and advisers.
I explained the situation to Mr. C, who was on my committee and a relatively good fit about Mrs. D, who was a much better fit with my changed research trajectory. It was no problem at all.
Usually, it will not be much of a problem.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: There is usually no maximum number of committee members. Rather than removing the extra committee member, I would suggest informing him that he is welcome to continue serving on your committee, but that if he wishes to quit he may do so without causing you any problems.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/18 | 476 | 1,900 | <issue_start>username_0: It's been one month since the graduate advisor (also the POI) said will get back to me regarding my grad application, should I send a follow up email or should I just wait? He said in the last email that he is checking something for me and will get back to me as soon as possible, but it's towards the end of March, I am little nervous and worried. I don't want to sound too pushy and impatient since he already said he'll get back to me asap...should I still follow up? if yes, any advice to ask him about the status very politely?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> It's been one month since the graduate advisor (also the POI) said will get back to me regarding my grad application, should I send a follow up email?
>
>
>
Yes. They have probably forgotten about the correspondence.
>
> I don't want to sound too pushy and impatient since he already said he'll get back to me asap...should I still follow up? if yes, any advice to ask him about the status very politely?
>
>
>
Reply to his last mail with the same subject line (and correspondence below) and say something simple like:
```
Hi X,
I was wondering if there were any updates since we last spoke?
Thanks,
Y
```
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: He might have forgotten that, or the task is lagging in a big queue. The trick here and similar situations is to have something under development which you share with that person and each time you announce some progress in that, so in this way you remind him indirectly about your case. This can be a proposal, a statement of purpose, a paper, .... So you send an email announcing some small improvements in that shared thing.
If you do not have any such thing then think of something like a conference, a ... and send an email asking "Does this help for my graduate studies?" this is an indirect way of asking about your grad application.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/18 | 879 | 3,551 | <issue_start>username_0: I've been considering a career change for awhile and recently discovered the Two-Slit Experiment, which, to put it frankly, blew my mind. I then started some hefty reading and investigation into all things Quantum (Bell, entanglement, QIT), which has led me here.
I have 20 years experience in IT working as a programmer, having graduated with a Bachelor in Computer Science back in the early 90s. As mentioned, I have been considering a career change for some time (having become quite burned out in this industry), and have found something that has piqued my interest more than anything else. I am not yet sure which area of "Quantum" I will be most drawn to, possibly Quantum Information Theory/Science.
I am aware that there is a significant amount of Maths and Physics pre-requisites involved. It seems likely, given that I have not done any Maths or Physics study probably since I was doing my CS undergrad, that I will need to start over with an undergrad in Science/Physics in order to get the fundamentals.
So my questions are:
1. What is the ideal path of education to get to QIT/QIS or QM?
2. Is the path to QIT/QIS also via the Physics route? Can I leverage my CS background?
3. Resources (books, online courses, etc) that would help with the transition from CS-type thinking to Physics/Maths-type thinking.
4. I'm considering Astrophysics as a minor (due to interest), but wondering whether it would be useful and complementary to Quantum Theory.
Apologies if this encompasses elements too broad or off-topic, I'm trying to get a better understanding on what is to come following this path. Thanks in advance.<issue_comment>username_1: 1. Yes you can leverage. At my university, these people work in the EECS department. You could just apply to be a graduate student.
2. Study vector calculus and linear algebra.
3. Not really. However, "big data" is quite popular in astro/astrophysics currently, so maybe you could get hired as a programmer.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I first posted this as a comment but feel it deserves to be an answer.
If you want to contribute to science, and still love coding but want to develop software for scientific purposes, check out this blog: <http://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2013-08-23-ten-reasons-be-research-software-engineer>
All I could add would be needless repeating of what you can read in the blog :)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: If you can prove you are sufficiently 'self-taught' you maybe able to go direct into a graduate program. If not you will need an undergraduate degree in Physics. The first year often follows a single text book, so could be quite easily self taught, latter years tend to diverge a bit but generally follow fairly closely to the [Feynman lectures](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/) (freely available online) - these would be great recommended reading if you wanted to start 'thinking' like a physicist, but other text books would be required for content.
**Addressing point 4:** I spent half my undergraduate degree doing Astrophysics and then went on to a PhD centred around quantum mechanics. Astrophysics wasn't of great use to me following the degree but it was really interesting! If I was to do another PhD it would be in astro-(planetary) physics.
As someone else mentioned: I left physics (as the vast majority of people do) for a job not in 'physics'. Most of the jobs which will be open to you with a physics degree you could probably walk straight into as an experienced programmer...
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/18 | 550 | 2,025 | <issue_start>username_0: Which ISBN number should I use in my literature list?
I have for example used a book about Design Patterns for my thesis. But I found that books have two ISBN numbers. Which is prefered to use?
This is an example from a book I used as reference:
```
Print ISBN:978-0-596-00712-6 | ISBN 10:0-596-00712-4
```<issue_comment>username_1: [ISBN](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number) numbers for a specific book vary between countries/regions and is thus not altogether very useful in international publications. When referencing a book, it is not customary to list ISBN-numbers, partly for the reason just stated. Instead you should be able to find a [doi (digital object identifier)](http://www.doi.org/) number, at least if the book is relatively new. There is otherwise no general rules about including such numbers in reference lists. With books the fields that must (or at least should be included are author(s)/editor(s), year of publication, title, publisher and place for the publisher (City).
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Many books have two ISBN numbers for each edition, and that's what's happening in the case you've cited. There are now two formats of ISBN, one with 13 digits and one with 10 digits. ISBN 10 is the older format. Since 2007, books have had both. The last digit in each case is the check(sum) digit, calculated from a hash of the previous digits.
The ISBN 13 is created from:
* the digits 978
* the first 9 digits of the ISBN 10 code
* the recalculated check digit
That's what's going on in your case, and you can cite either the ISBN-13 or the ISBN-10.
It's also the case that different editions of a book have different ISBNs. That's not what's going on in your case. But when that is the case, you use the ISBN of the exact edition you've been using: that way, the content and page numbers should tally up, for anyone who follows up your ISBN and page number citation to see the original in context.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/18 | 1,484 | 5,882 | <issue_start>username_0: What is the initial process to become a Mathematics's lecturer at a University in London. I want to be able to lecture in a top university in the United Kingdom such as Kings College.
What is the academic ladder that I will have to climb?
Would my undergraduate program have to be from a good university or could I graduate from a mediocre university and then enroll in a masters program at a well known university followed by a PhD?
My goal is to become a lecturer and go into research in Mathematics.<issue_comment>username_1: First, let me point out that a career as you describe it not entirely plannable: There are many more who want it than who get it, and even if you are talented and work hard, success is not guaranteed.
It probably won't matter where you did your undergrad once you've received your PhD, although going to different universities could be beneficial, as it would expose you to more different academic cultures etc.
Once you have received your PhD, you'll want to do a good postdoc. Going to some top university abroad, or becoming a Junior Research Fellow in Cambridge or Oxford could be good choices. Make sure that you develop contacts at your desired university.
After some postdoc experience you can apply for eg a Royal Society Research Fellowship or an EPSRC Early Career Fellowship, to be held at your desired university. During that time, try to convince the university to offer you a permament position after the fellowship ends.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Do you need to get a PhD to be a maths lecturer at King's College?
==================================================================
In order to answer this question,
you should take a look at the [list of faculty](http://www.kcl.ac.uk/nms/depts/mathematics/people/academicstaff.aspx)
of the King's College London Mathematics Department.
Glancing through the list of titles ("Dr X", "Professor Y")
suggests to me that all of the academic staff have a PhD.
Do you need to get a PhD from a good university to be a maths lecturer at King's College?
=========================================================================================
In order to answer this question,
I humbly suggest that you can spend some time
to look through the education history
of some of the academic staff of King's College London.
This will give you a sense of
the type of universities which you would need to obtain your PhD from
in order to be qualified to be a lecturer at King's College.
Do you really want to do a PhD in maths?
========================================
If I read your question correctly,
you have not yet enrolled in college.
It is good that you have a high-level idea
that you want to be a maths lecturer.
However, it is hard to know whether you are capable of being a maths lecturer
and whether you would enjoy this as your job
until you have taken many undergraduate and graduate classes in mathematics.
Once you have taken such classes,
if at that point you are good at maths and enjoy it,
then it may be a good idea to apply for a PhD in maths.
My father's advice
==================
My father got a PhD in mathematics from Berkeley
and has been employed as a maths professor for over 25 years.
When I was younger, I had wanted to be a maths professor just like him.
However, he advised me against this,
because the job market for academic math jobs is very competitive.
In other words, there are many more maths PhD graduates
who want an academic math job
than there are academic math jobs available.
As a result, if you aren't really really smart,
it may be hard to get an academic math job.
Some math PhDs may take a few post-doc appointments (which have low pay),
hoping to find a permanent academic math job,
but drop out and find some sort of regular job.
My father's advice was for me to study for a PhD in a related math-y field,
e.g. applied math, (non-theoretical) computer science, operations research.
In those fields it is easier to get an academic job.
I did follow his advice, and am studying for a PhD in operations research.
Most of the students who graduate from my department can get a tenure-track job,
or those who want to work in industry can get good jobs in Google, LinkedIn, banks, consulting, etc.
I would conclude therefore that most of the graduating PhD students in my department
are happy with their employment opportunities.
Do your research
================
I would encourage you to find out more about the benefits and costs
of an academic math career as you go about your undergrad studies.
For example, talk to math professors to ask them
whether they think you have the ability to be a maths lecturer.
Also, talk to some current PhD maths students
to find out how they feel about their job prospects.
As Jesus once said, "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?"
So before you apply for a PhD,
get a sense of what type of job you could get with the PhD,
whether you want to spend 3 or more years of your life with low pay as a graduate student/post-doc in order to get the job,
and what your chances are of getting this job.
Good luck!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: If you have done good research no one cares where you first degree is from. However, bear the following points in mind
1) it is hard to move up universities
2) it is hard to do a good PhD without a good supervisor and without a good research environment
3) it is very hard to get a good postdoc if you haven't done your PhD at a top university and it is hard if you have.
If you are really good at maths, one option is to try and go beyond what is taught at your current university to leave you well prepared. Then do Part III at Cambridge, if you do well there, you will be well placed to get a good phd place.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/18 | 1,540 | 6,632 | <issue_start>username_0: I have been appointed to teach one course in Artificial Intelligence in one university. The reason was that the main lecturer is involved in other duties and for that reason he could not teach one group (there are two groups actually). The thing is that this lecturer has given me all the material: slides, exercises, exams, practices, final project and so on; and he told me explicitly to follow that material.
I have been always a big fan of the freedom of teaching. I mean I believe that if two different lecturers teach course X; then it would be better if they can get two different approaches for the same topics. The Faculty academic coordinator has told me that I must follow the material exactly, because the examinations would be the same for both groups.
I wonder what to do in this situation? I am keen to take published material as a reference for a course, but not to follow all the material exactly from the other lecturer like if I were some sort of "academic monkey" (that only mimics what the other has made). I really feel frustrated about this situation and I do not know what to do.
Usually when I have gotten into this situation, in which I had to drop one group and that group has been assigned to another lecturer. I have given him/her full freedom, and only we gather around for making the practices and exams together. I really believe that is the correct way to do this things.
Any advice?
PD Some clarification points:
* The other lecturer and myself be both have the same rank, I mean we both are lecturers, only difference is that the other lecturer has taught the course before and that is why he was appointed coordinator of only that course.
* In academic ranks, I got more academic background in CS (two master's already done); in the other hand he is a die hard programmer programmer that has participated in programming contests, but that's it. He has only a bachelor in Information Systems.
* The material handed to me is simple, but it gets to my nerves that I must stick completely to it. I mean if a student is well prepared and every teacher follows the syllabic contents; then at the end it does not matter who made the final examinations. The student should be prepare for everything (except that the course is about, for example a Java certification, and I do not teach Java, but C). The point is that is a CS related course, and for that it should relies more in the algorithmic part that on some tricky-twisty programming stuff that tough programmers know.<issue_comment>username_1: Honestly, I think your role in this situation is precisely to be an "academic monkey". The other lecturer presumably wanted to teach both groups so that both would have access to his particular teaching style, including his expertise regarding what topics are most important and how to explain them. But he could not do so because he was too busy. So he does the next best thing: he brings in another lecturer, i.e. you, with the expectation that you will give the students a similar experience to what he would have given them. Make no mistake, emulating another lecturer's style is not an easy task, and the fact that he wants you to stick to his prepared materials does not reflect a lack of faith in your abilities (just in case you were thinking that).
In general, when there are different lecturers teaching different, disjoint sets of students, I think the benefit of having different lecturing styles is largely negated. After all, the main reason to have different styles of teaching is that different styles appeal to different people, and a concept that an individual student misses from one style, they may pick up from another. That only works if the students attend multiple lectures with different instructors. (Or if you manage to sort students by their learning styles and match up each one with the instructor that best suits them, but that is very difficult.) And in this case, if the main lecturer will be preparing the exam(s), it seems natural that he will do so according to his own teaching style, which means students who were not exposed to his style will be at a disadvantage. So it's really in the best interest of your students for you to emulate his style as closely as possible, which means using his materials and structure.
---
To be clear, this answer and my first paragraph in particular is intended for the situation where the other lecturer is in charge of the course and, in your capacity as a lecturer of the course, you are acting as his direct subordinate. If that's not the case, my answer doesn't apply.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: In Academia there is always a lot of egos involved. Do not take it personal and let your ego get in the way. As you admit, you are not the main lecturer. He is. He prepared the slides, exercises, exams, practices, final project and so on. Excellent. Less work / stress for you. It is not your time to shine. In any job (academia or not) you must learn how to play "second fiddle" if needed. And this is one of these times.
On the other hand, teaching is much more than the slides, exercises, final project or exams. It is the teacher's personality, how he is in sync with the classroom needs, how to make the students participate in the course and how to make the lesson an unforgettable experience. You can and must try to do all these, regardless of the slides you use. So you can still make all the students want to watch your lecture (instead of his) if that is what it takes to boost your ego. Although it clearly is not a competition. It is just a job. So, do it as best as you can with the tools you are given. It is really that simple.
**Update**.
From the comments I see, there is too much focus on "No-one should tell how to teach...". But this is not really the point. If professor B was supposed to teach both lectures and due to a newly assigned duty he cannot, would not that be impolite / inconsiderate for the new professor (Layla) not to give her (at least) the materials and slides he uses? If someone steps in for me, I would most certainly do all the necessary work for my coleague to have the most seamless transition by alleviating some of the stress /work for preparing lectures / slides, exercises. And if I was the subsitute I would appreciate this offer. Why must egos be involved in such a process and why should anyone not accept the offer given? If this situation continues for the next semester - year, Layla should have a saying on how the lecture should be done. But for this year I do not see the point in making too much fuss over it.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/19 | 1,321 | 5,461 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm interested in mathematical research, but want to know if there are good jobs besides being a professor. Are there any lucrative research-centric careers out there for someone with a PhD in pure mathematics?<issue_comment>username_1: If you're interested in the job market for mathematics Ph.D. in the United States, a good start would be to take a look at the "Data on the Profession" section on the AMS website (see [here](http://www.ams.org/profession/data/emp-survey)). The [annual survey](http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/annual-survey) features [data on the salary](http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/docsgrtd) of recent Ph.D. graduates depending on their area of expertise and the kind of work they're doing.
One potential shortcoming of the data mentioned above is that the statistics do not mention anything specific about what "kinds" of jobs the recent Ph.D. holders have in industry. To find out more about this, I suspect a good Idea would be to visit the websites of math departments, find their recent Ph.D. graduates and figure out where they work now. Of course, the majority of them will probably have research/teaching jobs in Universities, but I suspect a fair amount will be working in the Industry.
If you have a lot of time on your hands, you can always look up people on the list containing every (or probably almost every) Ph.D graduate in math in the US from 1999 to 2011 (see [here](http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/degrees)) and hope that some of them maintain a LinkedIn profile where they report where they work.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I can speak from personal experience. I have a math Ph.D. on a topic with absolutely no real world applications, I work in industry, and my job title is actually "Senior Research Expert". So yes, there are research careers in industry. And while I won't get rich off it, I can't complain about the remuneration.
*However*, (almost) nobody in industry will pay you for thinking about stuff, going to conferences and writing papers. My research is extremely applied, and I am very much constrained by a) what customers will pay for and b) what is feasible given our code base and software architecture. I simply can't go off on a tangent and argue that a particular algorithm is very elegant, if it is not implementable in a reasonable amount of time or nobody will buy it.
Depending on your Ph.D. topic, be prepared to change fields. I used to do something like discrete optimization - now I do statistics and time series analysis.
While I personally don't code (which the developers are very happy about), I work closely with the developers that actually turn what I thought up into software. Interpersonal skills and the ability to fit into a team and a software development process (Scrum) are much more important here than in academia.
Research mathematicians are rare, and few people understand what I do and why I'm paid. It took a long time and some very fortuitous circumstances for me to demonstrate that I do add value to the company, and I was lucky to keep my research job when my company was acquired - my new employer really doesn't have research positions as such, so I had to justify why I should keep my niche.
Finally, there are about five other originally pure mathematicians in the team I work with, two of them with Ph.D.s. None of them do anything that could be called "research". They develop software or do analytics.
Summarizing: yes, there are math research careers in industry. They are few and far between. Be prepared for an uphill battle, to change fields, to do what needs to be done.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I can speak from personal experience from my job market experience this year. This year I'm graduating with a PhD in math. I mainly applied in academia, but I sent out a feeler for some industry to see if I found things I liked and in case I didn't get a job (maybe 2-3 applications). I am in algebraic geometry, and nowhere near direct applications to applied math or at least the definition that the USA has for applied math.
I got an on-site interview for a really great research job in the Defense industry. There was a lot of activity in my department with people interviewing with quant jobs on or near Wall Street. One student in my class took a startup job in the Bay Area. I got a job early on in the market in academe that I fell in love with, so I took myself out of the running and withdrew all my applications from industry and academia alike at the end of January.
A month later, Google headhunted me.
If you do good work and learn how to communicate quantitative ideas, then a PhD in math can really help you achieve industry goals. I think it is important to keep in mind that not everyone will get an academic job and a lot has to do with luck. I would not do a PhD in math if earning potential is your plan. A lot of these opportunities prefer a computer science background and will pay better for it.
That being said, to answer your second question, no one really speaks to you regarding salary until you get the offer, but in my interactions, the floor for starting salary for industry seems to be somewhere around 75-80k for these moderately prestigious industry jobs, and the ceiling seems to be around 150k. Results may vary depending on location and how valuable they believe you to be.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/03/19 | 366 | 1,659 | <issue_start>username_0: I am about to submit my article in a peer reviewed journal which requires the contacts of three potential reviewers of my work. I can think of a few names whose works I have cited in the paper (who, I think will be the best judge). Is it polite to contact them via email to check their availability (of course everybody is under time constraints) before I put their names in the journal website? I am concerned that it can be regarded as a conflict of interest or an attempt to bias their opinions. What should I do?<issue_comment>username_1: My strong advice is a clear NO!
There are several reasons:
* The journal might contact other reviewers, not the ones you suggested.
* Possible conflict of interest, even if you don't send your paper with the review request
* The reviewing process is a business between the editor and the reviewer. It is specially designed to enhance the quality of the accepted papers (Blind, double blind reviews, etc). Once you contact the reviewers, any chance of a blind review goes up in smoke.
* If the potential reviewer that you contact, is not selected by the journal he/she might feel offended.
So, in a word:
**NO**
=======
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I feel contacting the potential reviewers in the way you suggest would at least seem awkward. However, something that is common practice at least in some fields is to send your preprint before submission to people that might be interested. The list of potential reviewers tend to largely intersect the list of potentially interested people, so in some sense this is a way to contact them in advance.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/19 | 380 | 1,636 | <issue_start>username_0: I am currently in the agonizing period shortly after an academic job interview at a regional research school and I'm trying to analyze the day to estimate my chances of getting an offer.
Overall the interview seemed to go well. The talk was fine and the one on one interviews and meals seemed to go smoothly. But, I wonder how much of that has to do with my interviewers just being nice people.
Are there any people here with experience - on either side of the interview process - who can provide any feedback about how the interviewers might behave before they do (or don't) ultimately extend the offer?
If it's relevant, I happen to know I was the last of four finalists invited to campus and it's been at least two weeks since another candidate was interviewed.<issue_comment>username_1: Even if a department loves you, it's unlikely they'll show any overt signs (especially in an official capacity) because they want to maintain a reasonable negotiating position.
But individual faculty are not always "with the program". For example, it's happened to me that someone said (during an interview) "I really like your profile and will be making a strong case to make you an offer". But while this might be flattering, it also depends on how much power that individual has over final decisions.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I can only speak from experience: I was first out of four candidates and I was given great informal feedback by the search committee chair (i.e. "You set the bar high"). I came in second as their "alternate choice" and did not get the job...
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/19 | 1,332 | 4,975 | <issue_start>username_0: As per the title, I would like to determine whether a paper cited by a student comes from a reputable source or not, **given that the paper's content lies outside my field**. My first thought was to check the journal's website, as well as doing a Google Scholar search to see whether papers in other reputable journals cite papers from this one.
The particular case I am concerned with is a Psychology paper, appearing in *AllPsych Journal* [sic]. All the [journal's webpage](http://allpsych.com/journal/index.html) says is that:
>
> The educational articles and papers published in AllPsych Journal are written by mental health professionals, psychology students, psychology instructors, and other authors outside the field of psychology. \* They represent problems, solutions, and suggestions about everyday life and its relation to psychology. For submission consideration, please contact us via our feedback form.
>
>
>
This seems dubious to me, but nonetheless, a Google Scholar search suggests that some reputable looking publications have cited works appearing in this journal.
I suppose I have two questions then:
1. Are there any other techniques I can use to assess the quality of journals outside my field for this purpose. Ideally these should take relatively little time.
2. Is this specific journal considered reputable in psychology?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> This question concerns assessing the quality of papers *outside* one's field.
>
>
>
The question seems to be more leaning towards the quality of *journals* outside of one's field. Here's a brief list of pointers ([some of which also appear in this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101/how-do-you-judge-the-quality-of-a-journal)):
* check if the journal has an impact factor ([some good journal's don't and vice versa, so beware of false positives and false negatives](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2034/does-impact-factor-reflect-the-quality-of-a-journal))
* find out the most prominent literature indexes in the area and see if it's in there (e.g., [DBLP](http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/) for Comp. Sci., [PubMed](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/) for life sciences, etc.)
* check the [Australian ranking tables](http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2012/era_journal_list.htm) (don't take them too seriously: there is no such thing as a total ordering of journals)
* check for journal citations in [Scholar](http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en)/[Academic Search](http://academic.research.microsoft.com/)/[Scopus](http://www.scopus.com/)
* otherwise check paper citations in [Scholar](http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en)/[Academic Search](http://academic.research.microsoft.com/)/[Scopus](http://www.scopus.com/)
* find out if the publisher is reputable (Elsevier, Springer, a good university press, etc.)
* check [Beall's list](http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/) to make sure the publisher is not "predatory"
* find out if the editors-in-chief are established academics (e.g., high h-indexes in [Scholar](http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en))
* talk to experts in the area
* apply common sense.
The last point is particularly important. Though it is easy to discover if a journal is excellent or terrible, in between those extremes, there's a lot of grey. For example, new journals may be much-needed and drawing quality work from quality people, but they won't have a high h-index or an impact factor, etc.
For those grey areas, talking to an expert who knows the field is important.
>
> AllPsych Journal
>
>
>
This doesn't seem to be a formal journal, but rather an informal way for authors to publish educational articles online. All papers are published on the web-site, there's no mention of an editorial board, a publisher, a means of submission, etc.
Of course, this says nothing of the quality/utility of the papers published there: just that it would probably not count in academic circles as a "traditional journal".
For the quality of a paper itself independent of the venue, check how many citations it has in Scholar versus it's age, check the nature of those citations, check the h-index and background of the authors, etc. (Of course these methods are only an approximation for reading it and making up your own mind as to its quality, but since it is outside your area ...)
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: @username_1 already gave a very good answer on the general question.
As to the specific question about AllPsych: this is not a journal per se, it is only a website with submissions from different people run by one person, apparently without any peer review, see [here](http://allpsych.com/about.html). I would rate this as only marginally better than Wikipedia. Whether it is admissible as a source in a student paper could be treated the way you treat Wikipedia entries.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/19 | 1,487 | 6,533 | <issue_start>username_0: I am still working towards an undergraduate degree in Mathematics, however I don't believe it's possible to think about research too early. I'm thinking about going in the direction of Pure Mathematics - possibly in the area of Number Theory and Logic.
I have edited the above title, as I think it reflects more the question I was trying to ask.
I was really wondering if anyone firstly has an answer to my above question, and also if anyone could recommend good places online where one could follow current research activity in the area of Pure Mathematics. Number Theory, Logic, and Foundations of Mathematics particularly interest me.
Thanks in advance.<issue_comment>username_1: A substantial fraction of activity is visible on arXiv, the main page for which is at <https://arxiv.org/>
For example, the "number theory" listings are at <https://arxiv.org/list/math.NT/recent>
But, also, many mathematicians keep papers on their web-pages, so you can look backward in time effectively on these pages. And there are listings of many number-theorists' URLs at <http://www.numbertheory.org/>
That is, with the internet, it is possible to keep in touch with current and past activity to a great degree. Many journal articles are behind paywalls, unfortunately, but substantial information about such material is available by other means.
...and: <https://mathoverflow.net/> is a Q-and-A for research-level mathematics and mathematicians, while <https://math.stackexchange.com/> is for undergrad and beginning graduate-level mathematics. Old questions and answers are searchable in both cases. In the case of math stack exchange, some dubious or not-ideal answers propagate, so take things "with a grain of salt".
But if you can find any way to have more direct personal contact with mathematicians, things can be communicated that you won't see in formal writing...
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I have published a little work in number theory while working full time. There is no big secret, just read about the problems that are at a level you can solve, solve the problems and publish the results.
Publishing in a journal as an unaffiliated researcher is harder than for professional academics but not impossible. Learning TeX will help because many journals want LaTex submissions. Most background information is available online if you search for it. You can join polymath projects, use mathoverflow etc
There are some advantages of working outside the system. You dont have to go around pleasing the people who might offer positions and you can work on what you want rather than what a math department or funding agency wants. So enjoy it as a hobby while earning a proper salary.
Update: I will add a little more specific advice. If you were doing a doctorate in a university you would have a wise old supervisor who would make sure you are heading in the right direction. If you want to work outside academia there is a danger of getting on a track that has no hope of success. Do not fall into the trap of thinking you can tackle a well known unsolved problem directly. This is a mistake very frequently made by outsiders.
It is better to start on simpler problems that you can handle and use them to build up expertise even if they are not of much interest to others. One way to find such problems is to start from a well-known one but then generalise it in some novel way to a bigger class of problems. Then look for special cases that can be solved and then generalise your solutions to solve a wider class of cases.
Finally, use your skills as a programmer to find solutions of interesting problems and then look for patterns. When you find patterns, make conjectures from them that you may then be able to prove. Try solving the problems at <https://projecteuler.net/> to perfect your algorithm skills
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I currently have the opportunity to spend a lot of time (meaning: not even a part-time job) thinking of a wealth of problems. This is great if I don't care about how I am going to handle my retirement (options: go homeless; die early; get adopted). I can fuss with details, spend time on the Internet researching or messing around, and still get enough sleep, time with family, etc.
You can lead your life as you choose. If you want to lead it best however, make sure that what you do is in line with your values. If you can get satisfaction from e.g. spending an hour a day thinking and writing math, schedule that in. If you absolutely want to integrate math into your current lifestyle, the major resource involved is time. Make sure that resource is spent wisely. (I've chosen to spend time away from math learning piano. We'll
see in a decade or so how good a choice that was for me.)
Under the assumption that you have approximately ten hours a week to devote to mathematics, I suggest building Internet and personal resources. Involving yourself on online fora such as math.stackexchange and MathOverflow may help, if you don't clash too much with the culture. Write up your observations in ways that might be understandable by others. Engage with other people, and establish relationships (face-to-face or long distance) with the understood purpose of mutual mathematics enhancement. If you can get a mentor, even better. Find out if you like to solve problems ("repair work"), build bodies of knowledge ("catherdral or bazaar builder"), or note interesting connections (synthesis). If you can leverage your existing skills to the process, so much the better. Get to know your research library. If potential mentors have offered up their email, use it; don't be afraid to ask, and always respect the others' time.
Above all, manage your resources, primarily time, energy, and satisfaction level. Hopefully nature will tell you which direction to follow, and a support group will tell you (what not to do) to get there.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I would like to commend your mindset! This is exactly what makes mathematics more fun is the ability to go out and do it on your own without having someone else forcing you. The only problem it can be very ambiguous where to start.
I would recommend finding a challenging book and reading through it. Good subjects are in any university catalog (Calculus, DiffEQ, Prob, Number Theory, Algebra, Topology, Real Analysis, etc). Wolfram provides great definitions. Overleaf is a great place to publish documents. Lastly do at least a problem a workday!
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/20 | 950 | 3,972 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a glaring omission in my CV because I do not have any scholarly (peer reviewed) publications to my credit. However, I have good industry-based experience (more than 10 years when I have written a number of manuals and submissions), and have recently completed a Social Science PhD from a reputable university. I am after some guidance on ways in which a person in my position would address this glaring omission in a CV so as to better highlight/present his credentials for academic purposes (e.g. to apply to join a university etc).<issue_comment>username_1: If you have submitted manuscripts to peer-reviewed outlets, you can say so. If you have anything under second-round review, be sure to say so because that's all the better.
If you haven't submitted manuscripts, you could do so. One of my peer-reviewed publications was originally a paper I wrote for a Ph.D. seminar. I blew the dust off, firmed it up and made it stronger, and I submitted it. It was a nice little paper. My point is that you have doubtless done work that you could turn into a submission with X weeks of work.
Lots of people list their current research projects under a title such as "Current Research."
Beware that search committees know all the tricks. You're not going to fool anyone. But, I'm sure your goal is not to "fool" anyone at all. You just want to put your best foot forward, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: You should definitely write up your ideas/manuscripts as publishable manuscripts if you haven't already. After reshaping the manuscripts so that they are ready for submission, I would also suggest that you post them as preprints online (if journals in your field allows this), preferably to a preprint server. Depending on your field there are e.g. arXiv, peerJ, SSRN (most relevant for you), and biorxiv. This will allow you link to the paper, so that people can evaluate by themselves if your manuscripts contain good research. This is also a way of showing that there is actually a finished well-structured manuscript, and not just a manuscript title on your CV.
In my mind, your best bet would be to fix manuscripts, submit to journal + upload to preprint server, and include on CV as *submitted manuscript* along with a preprint link. As the previous answer stated, also make sure to update the status of manuscripts when they go out for review/revision. Just be sure that you are honest in how you present the status of your manuscripts.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I am almost sure, that your university has archived your thesis. In doing this it is always a citable work. In some countries it is also a very common requirement to obtaining a Ph.D. (or any equivalent), that the thesis itself has to be published in some form. The variations tend to range from books (registered with ISBN), digital copy (pdf-A), hardcopies at differnt libraries, or also microfilm. Hence the problem is more a problem of accessibility.
As these kind of publications are not peer reviewed, and accessibility is a limiting factor, they are usually referred to as 'grey literature'.
When publishing results of your original thesis, what you should probably also do, you might want to cite your dissertation at some point in this work. The library of your university (or equivalent institution) will certainly keep track of dissertations and you can ask them about how to cite them. (Also a good starting point is trying to find this work via some search engines.)
In your CV you will also mention from which university and when you received your Ph.D. Depending on how deep you will go into this, you might mention the title, probably a short summary of the field you were working in.
There are also a lot of print-on-demand publishers that are specialized in thesis. However, this might not be the best solution, but it would be another way to make it citable.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/20 | 442 | 1,777 | <issue_start>username_0: Are there recommended or standard published papers (not books) that show great research methodology/ scientific methods? I am trying to help out a friend who is in business and they are trying to study aspects of humans (in terms of their clients). I gave him the book [*The Craft of Research*](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226065669), but it's long and I wonder if there is a paper that could do the same job. Basically I want to show him a good example of coming up with a hypothesis, accounting for variables (such as stating that something was done in order to eliminate a problem), and analyzing the results.<issue_comment>username_1: I personally find a lot of both elegance and accessibility in the descriptions of well-done infant and animal cognition studies. A nice source for examples is the [Harvard Laboratory for Developmental Studies](https://software.rc.fas.harvard.edu/lds/), and a nice short accessible piece from their library is this one: ["Chicks, like children, spontaneously reorient by three-dimensional environmental geometry, not by image matching"](http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~lds/pdfs/Lee%20et%20al_royal%20society%202012.pdf): it's only 3 pages long, presents the hypothesis, method, and results quite tersely, and the experimental apparatus can be built with common household objects.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Qulatrics has a nice concise (and free) guide to doing marketing research. Not a journal article, but I give it to my students in my research methods course because it's practical and comprehensive but not overwhelming. In fact, they have a lot of useful resources here: <http://www.qualtrics.com/university/researchsuite/research-resources/other-resources/ebook-downloads/>
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/20 | 688 | 2,662 | <issue_start>username_0: I was wondering whether it is a good practice for someone to emphasize that he obtained his degree from a prestigious university by including the name of his university always after his title, something like:
>
> Name, PhD (Caltech)
>
>
>
I have seen this in few occasions, but felt that it could be a bit offending to someone. Is this a discouraged behavior?<issue_comment>username_1: It could be taken to mean that your PhD from CalTech was a high point of your career and you want to make sure people know that. Depending on the context, that may be a bad or good thing. At a CalTech alumni meeting, it could be very good.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: 1. It would definitely look odd and like you are trying too much. It's really not appropriate to push it in correspondence. Leave that for your resume or CV.
2. While it's mildly good to have gone to CIT (or the equivalent), realize there are weak performers within that group as well. What really matters is all your Science/Nature/PRL/JAMA/etc. publications. Oh...and puleeze don't list them in your signature!
Personally, I wouldn't even do the comma Ph.D. game. There is a correlation of those who are most proud of the Ph.D. (and showing it) being the weaker performers during the Ph.D. If you're a badass, you don't have to mention it. And it's no big deal to have gotten the "union card". (What matters more is how you did there.)
In most academic/science interactions, it will just be expected that you have a Ph.D. regardless (no big deal). In most other external interactions, it's irrelevant. Perhaps there are a few places (like selling consulting) where you might want to emphasize it. Yet even here I definitely get a "too proud of it, therefore probably weak (or even sketchy)" vibe when I see people who emphasize the title.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Within your field, it's probably more important to emphasise who your supervisor(s) were during your PhD. At least in the UK, the prestige of the university is less important at that level than the prestige of the other academics you worked with (and, of course, the quality of your research). In any case, it would be odd to see it in an email signature. I'd read it as (slightly desperate) bragging.
One related point is that people who have undergraduate degrees from Oxford or Cambridge may receive an MA rather than a BA under certain circumstances. These people might list their first degree as "MA (Oxon.)" or "MA (Cantab.)", listing the university to distinguish it from a "real" Masters degree (and possibly to do a little bragging of their own).
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/20 | 1,929 | 8,837 | <issue_start>username_0: Many times I heard about papers published in conference. But still I am not able to find the major difference between papers published in a conference and those published in a journal. What is the difference?<issue_comment>username_1: Conference papers refer to articles that are written with the goal of being accepted to a conference: typically an annual (or biannual) venue with a specific scope where you can present your results to the community, usually as an oral presentation, a poster presentation, or a tabled discussion. The review process for conference papers is typically within a fixed window: everyone submits for a certain deadline, then the review committee (program committee) collaborates to review and discuss papers, then all authors are notified with accept/reject at the same time. Since the review process has a fixed schedule (to meet the schedule of the physical meeting), conference review times are quite predictable.
Conference papers are typically published in collections called "proceedings": sometimes these are printed by university presses, by professional organizations, by big-name publishers, or simply online.
Journal papers refer to an article that's published in an issue of the journal. The frequency of issues for different journals varies from one-a-month to once-a-year, or anything in between; it may not even be regular. The review process for journals often does not have a fixed deadline or schedule: though journals may promise things like "reviews in six weeks", in my experience, this rarely if ever holds true. However, instead of conferences that typically have only accept/reject decisions, journals typically have a rolling review schedule and reviewers can opt to ask the authors for revisions, meaning that there might be multiple review phases (often limited to three, at which stage the paper is rejected/accepted).
Since conference papers have a fixed schedule and provide the authors a venue for discussion and feedback, they are generally for earlier-term work or for "announcing/marking an idea", or for finding collaborators. Furthermore, conference papers tend to have fixed page-limits, which restricts the content to preliminary findings.
Journal papers tend to have generous page-limits (or none at all), but typically require the work to be more comprehensive and self-contained in return.
In general, in most fields, papers in well-recognized journals tend to have more prestige than papers in well-recognized conferences (esp. in terms of metrics). But this is a simplification.
While in some fields, conference papers are akin to talk abstracts, in areas like computer science, conference papers can be very meaty and there is a high churn of papers in conferences. Top conferences can have acceptance rates around 10%, and as such, A+ conference papers are often held in high regard within the community: these venues are far more competitive than many of the best journals. Still, even in the CS area, metric-wise (for hiring, positions, funding, etc.), journals will often still count for more than a conference following the norm in other academic fields.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: For many questions like this, you can get some kind of answer without including information on your own discipline, but it will be at best some kind of weighted average across different disciplines. If you indicate your discipline in the question then you may well get both general questions and questions focused to your discipline.
You ask about mathematics. We do not have a very strong tradition of conference papers at all compared to most other academic fields. The idea of a "prestigious conference paper" is almost an oxymoron to me. There are a small number of yearly conferences which regularly publish their proceedings, but that the papers are solid and interesting and sufficiently thematically connected to one another that you might actually want to own the book they get published in is close to a best case scenario. Actually I get annoyed even by this because conference proceedings that get published as books tend to be books which are very expensive, difficult to locate (by virtue of bibliographic information handled in a strange way) and often not carried by university libraries.
At the moment I have 22 published papers and half a dozen other submissions, and I have never submitted a paper to a conference. Curious as to whether this was my own idiosyncrasy, I just looked up the published papers of my two senior colleagues in my field (number theory). One of them has no conference papers. The other has three but the most recent is from 1989. I do get the sense that this was a more common phenomenon about a generation ago.
Why don't mathematicians like to publish conference papers? Here are some ideas:
1) I don't get the sense that many people are getting their submissions to conference proceedings turned away: rather, I think most often they simply ask everyone who spoke in the conference [or in the section, or whatever] whether they would like to contribute an article. They usually are "refereed" in some formal sense, but in my understanding it is usually nominal, and the proceedings are viewed mostly as a record of as many of the actual talks as they could persuade people to write up.
2) Because they generally do want a paper from as many people who gave a talk at the conference as possible, the shoe is really on the other foot and they often end up having to cajole busy people to get around to polishing their lecture notes. Thus unlike in other fields where I gather conference proceedings get novel work out quickly, in mathematics the proceedings can appear two years or more after the conference, which is slow even compared to journal publication.
3) There seems to be a sense that conferences (with certain obvious exceptions like the ICM) are more social occasions than serious professional events. (I mean, if I want to hear about the crackerjack theorem you proved last week, it's likely I can just download it from the arxiv or your webpage or ask you to send me a copy.) The number one reason mathematicians like to give conferences is to celebrate someone's birthday, and a popular followup is to train young people in the field: these are often called "summer schools". There is a sort of community awareness that -- again, with certain famous and not so recent exceptions like the Grothendieck Festschrift -- such conference proceedings are more likely to contain heartfelt remarks about one's revered former advisor than really cutting edge research. I have even heard some people jokingly refer to Festschrifts as dumping grounds for inferior product.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: It may be useful to expand on something which is implicit in Pete's answer. In pure mathematics, "conference papers" as described by username_1 *don't actually exist*. Some (but by no means all, or even most) math conferences have published "proceedings", but these are not collections of the talks (or posters, or whatever) given at the conference. Likewise, in math there is no review process prior to the conference to decide which presentations will be given.
Instead, it is decided to have a conference, a bunch of people are invited, and some subset of them are asked to give talks. (How all of that happens varies a lot from case to case, but that's an answer for another question.) The point is that the speakers are chosen before anyone knows what they intend to talk about. The talks themselves may be about work in progress, work that's already submitted or published, or a synthesis. Basically, speakers give the same sort of talk they'd give in a departmental seminar which happened to have an audience full of experts. In particular, a talk frequently doesn't correspond to a single paper, or to work which is still available to be submitted for publication. Thus the phrase "present a paper", which people from many other fields use to describe what they do at a conference, sounds rather odd to mathematicians. (At least, it does to me.)
Finally, when there is a proceedings volume, all of the speakers — and possibly also the other participants who didn't give talks — are invited to submit papers. Those papers don't necessarily have anything to do with the actual talks (although hopefully both have to do with the topic of the conference). So the "proceedings" don't necessarily bear any resemblance to what actually happened at the conference, making "proceedings" rather a misnomer. Basically, a proceedings volume is like a one-issue journal (sometimes it is an issue of a regular journal) on the topic of the conference. Pete already explained some of the ways they are perceived differently from regular journals.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/03/20 | 938 | 3,899 | <issue_start>username_0: In [ISI Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Report](http://admin-apps.webofknowledge.com/JCR/JCR), we can find any journal Impact Factor (IF) and 5-Years Impact Factor (IF5), which is, as far as I get it, the Impact Factor over the last 5 years (well, the name is quite self-descriptive...).
What interests me is the difference between both indexes. I was wondering how to analyse this difference. If IF > IF5, does it means the journal IF is globally increasing?
And which one is more accurate while evaluating a journal?<issue_comment>username_1: The impact factor is calculated over the two previous years (the 2013 number is based on referencing for 2011 and 2012). A high IF indicates that many papers are referenced very quickly (within 2 years of publication). This indicates high turnover rates for the journal. If the longer term value is lower, it could mean what you describe but can also mean that work published has very limited life span. In many fields where publications are slow to produce, in my case they may involve field and longer term experimental work, it is hard to gain many references very quickly and hence the longer term indicator becomes more important and higher. This is also true for small fields where the number of publications is too small for a regular IF to make sense. In field that I am familiar with the five year factor is higher than the ordinary IF bit it will likely vary depending mostly on the nature of the field; if publications have a long or short time span.
There is another factor called the Cited half-life (The median age of the articles that were cited in a year) which in my field often exceeds 10 years indicating the longevity of publications.
For further reading look at [Journal Citation Reports](http://admin-apps.webofknowledge.com/JCR/help/h_toc.htm)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: ### How to compare impact factor over time
If you want to see whether the impact factor of a journal is increasing, then you should look at how the same metric has changed over time. You could choose the 2 year or 5 year impact factor for various reasons. However, you need to focus on only one of these metrics at a time.
The scimagojr website has similar data that is publicly available based on slightly different sources to the ISI data, but it provides information on how indicators have changed from year to year. E.g., Cites per doc
Here's one example for a journal in my field: <http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=30073&tip=sid>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gVkIX.png)
### What does a difference between 5 and 2 year impact factor mean
It's mostly caused by how citations to the journal are distributed over time. The citation half-life is a useful summary of this distribution. So, for example a citation half-life of 5 years means that half of all the citations that an article will obtain will be accrued 5 years after publication. The ratio of the 5 year to two year impact factor will be larger for journals with longer citation half-lives.
Importantly, fields vary dramatically in citation half-lives. Medicine, neuroscience, and nursing have short half lives, whereas psychology, mathematics, and the social sciences have longer half lives. So, using longer time windows for impact factor calculation will reduce differences between disciplines, although there are other metrics that can used if you wish to reduce discipline-specific bias.
Of course, it may also be that the underlying impact factor of the journal is increasing or decreasing over time, and this will also contribute (typically a small amount) to the nature of any difference between 5 and 2 year impact factor. Specifically, if the impact of the journal is increasing over time, the ratio of 5 to 2 year impact factor will be reduced.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/20 | 1,811 | 6,616 | <issue_start>username_0: What are best practices (if any exist) for labeling axes in plots/graphs for academic documents, such as theses, publications, or presentations?
Possible options are to use the variable, spell out the variable, or a combination of both. For example, to label a time axis, we could write: ***t* (s)** or **Time (s)** or **Time, *t* (s)**.
Are there any objective reasons to prefer one style over another, assuming the publisher does not specify which to use? Or sources suggesting a particular format?
I have browsed many journal requirements, but haven't found any that specifically address this.<issue_comment>username_1: Good practise is to make sure the graph is understandable even when taken out of its context (the paper). Hence spelling out the label helps to avoid misunderstandings. There is, however, nothing formally wrong with the other forms you mention although the label including both variable and variable abbreviation is not common in my field. On the other hand, it serves to couple the variable name with its abbreviation so it has its merits.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I am very particular about figures in my papers, as when I skim a paper the first thing I do after reading the abstract is look at the figures to determine whether the results are interesting or not, and on that basis whether to read the paper in more detail. Hence I always make sure the data is clearly presented through an appropriate use of symbols, colours and typeface, as well as a detailed stand alone caption describing what the data is and what it shows. As part of this I always label the axes in the form "quantity (unit)". In my opinion a variable name 't' is insufficiently descriptive to make figures stand alone, and so doesn't communicate to the casual reader what the figure shows. Units are of course essential, and in the case of dimensionless quantities I usually include the variable name as the unit, eg t/t0.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: There is nothing technically incorrect about any of those forms. In journal submissions, there will be typesetters to check that your figures adhere to their style guidelines.
In general:
The name of the quantity (e.g. `time`) and its units (e.g. `s`) are needed for clarity. It is generally better to add some concise descriptor to the quantity (e.g. Is it reaction time? geological time? etc.)
Preferences for how the units are displayed are somewhat subjective as well. An alternative format is using `/` as a separator (e.g. `Time / s`), though I personally think this format lends itself to confusion with derived quantities that contain division (e.g. `Dimensionless Time, t/tc`, as another user mentioned, will also have a `/`)
Adding the variable name (e.g. t) is often redundant in formal publications, unless equations figure extensively into the written portion and/or the naming is non-obvious or unconventional (say you used τ). Italicization will often be used to improve clarity.
Above all, consistency is critical. Choose a format, and use it for *all* graphs in the same manuscript. Doing otherwise just appears sloppy.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: The recommended way, according to the International System of Units (SI), is to write *t*/s ([SI brochure, §5.3](http://www.bipm.org/en/publications/si-brochure/section5-3.html); see also [this guide, §7.1](https://www.nist.gov/pml/special-publication-811/nist-guide-si-chapter-7-rules-and-style-conventions-expressing-values)). And the SI is the only system of units that should be used to report experimental results.
The rationale behind this notation is the following: a quantity is the product of a numerical value and a unit, so that the ratio of a quantity (e.g. time) and the corresponding unit (e.g second) is a numerical value (a pure number), which can be used to label axes, tables, etc.
In any case, don't use brackets around the unit, like in "*t* [s]". The reason is that in quantity calculus brackets represent an operator which means "unit of" (not "dimension of") and should only be used around quantities, not around units. So, for instance, you can write:
[*t*] = s
but not [s]. For completeness, I also mention that braces are also used to denote the numerical value of a quantity. So, in *L* = 5 m, we have [*L*] = m and {*L*} = 5.
---
References
----------
For those interested in learning more about quantities, units, their typographical conventions, and quantity calculus, here is a list of references with a few notes:
1. <NAME>, "A treatise on electricity and magnetism", vol. I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873. [Online](https://archive.org/details/electricandmagne01maxwrich). **Note:** Here Maxwell introduces the concept of quantity and the bracket notation.
2. International Vocabulary of Metrology - Basic and general concepts and associated terms VIM, 3rd edition, JCGM 200:2008. [Online](http://www.bipm.org/en/publications/guides/vim.html). **Note:** This is the official dictionary of metrological terms where it is possible to find definition for terms like quantity, system of quantities, system of units, etc. On p. 13 there is note which explains the bracket/braces notation.
3. <NAME>, "The language of science", Metrologia 34, pp. 101-109, 1997.
4. <NAME>, The fundamental physical constants and the frontier of measurement, <NAME>, Bristol, 1988.
5. <NAME>, "Physical quantities and units" in Recent advances in metrology and fundamental constants, Proceedings of the International School of Physics E. Fermi, Varenna, 2000. [Online](http://books.google.it/books?id=WE22Fez60EcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA30#v=onepage&q&f=false).
6. <NAME>, "On the history of quantity calculus and the International System", Metrologia 31, pp. 405-429, 1995.
7. <NAME>, "Quantity calculus for chemists", Chemistry in action n. 57, 1999. [Online](http://www.cerg.ul.ie/Chemistry%20in%20Action/Issue%2057.pdf)
8. <NAME>, "Physicochemical quantities and units: The grammar and spelling of physical chemistry", Royal Institute of Chemistry, London, 1971.
9. <NAME> *et al.*, "Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry", IUPAC Green Book, 3rd Edition, 2nd Printing, IUPAC & RSC Publishing, Cambridge, 2008 [Online](http://www.iupac.org/fileadmin/user_upload/publications/e-resources/ONLINE-IUPAC-GB3-2ndPrinting-Online-Sep2012.pdf)
10. Nayuki, [Handling physical quantities in math formulas](https://www.nayuki.io/page/handling-physical-quantities-in-math-formulas). This article is a lively little gem on quantity calculus with lots of practical examples.
Upvotes: 5 |
2014/03/20 | 994 | 4,060 | <issue_start>username_0: My question is rather short one, how much information should I include when writing the introduction, and how much should be left out for the literature review
**Note:** the reason for this question, is because my advisor told me that my introduction is to light and he raised several question that eventually will be covered in literature review. When I pointed that out, he said that the introduction should inform the reader about the theme being addressed by the thesis/paper so that the reader will have an overview of the paper from reading the introduction.
>
> note: my introduction contains the following:
>
>
>
* 1.1 Background
* 1.2 Problem Formulation
* 1.3 Purposes of study and hypotheses being tested
* 1.4 Data Sampling
* 1.5 Structure of the paper<issue_comment>username_1: (In economics at least.)
Introduction (5 pages)
• start with some broader motivation or backgrund
– maybe a sentence or a paragraph at most
• quickly explain your problem/puzzle
– show not tell
– don't say your work is pathbreaking or the problem is interesting (arrogant)
• clearly, concisely explain what is novel
– crystal clear
• report key results
– no hiding the punchline!
• discuss implication
– what does it mean for public policy? for theory? etc
• Layout:
– a clear roadmap
– Section 1 does this. Section 2 does this. Section 3 etc...so they can find what they want. (This is the easiest paragraph to write)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: It seems to vary among disciplines. I suggest you choose two or three papers that have been published in the journal you're targeting -- papers that attempt to do something analogous to what you're doing -- and copy those papers intensely. Of course, I ***don't*** mean plagiarize them. I don't even necessarily mean that you would copy any particular words. Instead, I mean that you would copy these papers in terms of how much info to give and where to give it, what kinds of issues you should cover and what kinds of issues you should avoid. Doing research is different than writing it up. In some sense, these papers become your mentors to show you the tone and style of the journal. You've read a metric ton of these papers in the past, so it probably feels like you already know how they go, but when you follow a mentor paper closely there are things that will become apparent that you never noticed before.
In addition, I recommend something I've done over the last few years that has helped me. I keep a clip-file called "Nicely said!" in which I keep examples of how authors deftly handled tricky issues in their write-up. I use these examples as "mini-mentors" to guide me when I must handle a tricky issue. Here again, I might not use any of the actual words they did, but having an excellent example in front of me helps a lot. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: Of course, this varies a lot by discipline, type of manuscript, journal and so on. But speaking about a prototypical psychology single study paper, a common structure is: (1) introduction, (2) method, (3) results, and (4) discussion. The introduction is commonly composed of (1) an opening; (2) a literature review; and (3) a description of the current study.
By this breakdown, what I call the opening is what you call the introduction. The opening is commonly between 1 and 5 paragraphs. I previously wrote a post on [how to write an introduction in psychology](http://jeromyanglim.blogspot.com.au/2009/12/how-to-write-introduction-section-in.html) where to quote myself, "the opening section typically moves from showing why the research is important, to situating the research in context, and then to setting an outline of what is to follow."
In general a good strategy is to find some similar articles to that which you are writing and carefully deconstruct these. How are aims presented? How is the research motivated? How is the importance justified? How is the gap in the literature framed? Where is this content presented?
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/20 | 898 | 3,699 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm writing a research paper in English but the topic is about a different country and the data is written in a different language, Arabic.
Should I translate the data into English?
If yes, should I include a version of the excerpt in the original language?
If yes, how?
Apart from using excerpts of data, I sometimes have to mention certain words of the original language such names of participants and research fields, but I do not know whether I should use transliteration, translation or both.
Thank you<issue_comment>username_1: It would depend how much your translation of the story makes a difference to your thesis. If it doesn't particularly matter with respect to the finer details, it would be sufficient to provide the entire story in Arabic and then give a synopsis in English. If it's more critical that the audience knows what each line means, then give each sentence with its English gloss.
If you wanted to go to the extreme, you would have an interlinear gloss, which means that each word, or even morpheme, is glossed individually, and then a free translation given at the end. Here's a Hungarian example (from the Leipzig glossing rules):
```
Gila abur-u-n ferma hamišaluǧ güǧüna amuq’-da-č.
now they-OBL-GEN farm forever behind stay-FUT-NEG
‘Now their farm will not stay behind forever.’
```
In linguistics we use these literally hundreds of times in a thesis, because this is where our data really is. It's probably more depth than you'd be willing to go into, and I would advise against it unless the Arabic syntactic and morphological features are absolutely critical to your thesis. The conventions that most linguists use (and tweak to their own subject language) with respect to the names of various grammatical features (OBL and GEN, for example) can be found in the [Leipzig Glossing Rules](http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php).
I think you'd be fine to select from either giving the entire story followed by a synopsis of whatever detail you'd prefer, or a line-by-line transliteration.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You should be concerned with more than whether readers understand the data: you need to present the data in the rawest form practical, when there is a possibility of error in rendering the data in an altered form. If the data were transcriptions of interviews conducted in Arabic, and was not generally available to readers, then the data should be presented in its original form. This allows diligent readers to verify your conclusions.
For practical purposes (assuming the readership isn't a fluent Arabic-speaking population), a translation should be provided as well. Depending on the amount of material involved, you might present consecutive texts, first the Arabic and then the translation. If there is a lot of material, it may be best to put the original text in an appendix, unless issues of translation need to be discussed in the paper. For Arabic, there is also the question of *how* to present the text, i.e. in Arabic script or in (augmented) Roman letters. For Classical and Modern Standard, there are standards that lead to interchangeability so it does not matter too much, but for Colloquial dialects it would matter how the data was created (did the subject write it, or was it spoken and someone transcribed it?). In the latter case, questions of accuracy are especially bound to come up (you can't write ث as "th" in a dialect where it is pronounced "t").
There is no need to translate personal names. If you intend to use a term such as مقهى repeatedly, it should be translated the first time and transliterated all times (maqhā).
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/21 | 420 | 1,898 | <issue_start>username_0: A common way to handle grant applications seems to be to request external reviews, to which the applicant can then respond. Reviews and response together are discussed at a panel where the proposals are ranked, and the top x% then are funded.
I've found myself in a nice, but perplexing situation: I got back the reviews for my first grant proposal, and all reviewers gave top scores (and very positive comments). Now I'm wondering whether or not to use my right to respond - all information I could find about responses boil down to addressing criticism, but what do you do if there is no criticism?
Edit: The grant agency explicitly discourages using the reply to thank reviewers. The alternative option besides not replying at all could be to attempt to selectively agree with the most praising comments or something like that, but I'm not sure that is a good idea.<issue_comment>username_1: If there's no criticism to rebut, then waive the right to rebut.
If you've already received top marks with no criticisms, then you can only spoil things by saying something at this stage.
Just shut up. And enjoy the moment.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: While it sounds that there would be no need to rebut against anything (I suggest to read the reports *very* carefully once again - some criticism can be hidden and is sometimes difficult to spot between positive comments) there may be another reason to formulate a response. It may well be that the reports contain valuable suggestions or remarks on specific points of your proposal. You can take the opportunity to pick up these suggestions and present new views or deeper explanations. However, I think that this really only makes sense if you have something new to say in view of the comments of the reviewer. I would suggest to not repeat what is already written in the proposal…
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/03/21 | 676 | 2,925 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm interested in learning about how to go about writing a paper, and obviously, an integral part of this process will be to read papers written by others, and study those. I'm curious about the idea of using software mapping tools as a means of logging connections between certain papers of interest.
The following questions: [Is there a network map of subjects and how they connect with each other?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3490/is-there-a-network-map-of-subjects-and-how-they-connect-with-each-other) and [Map (tree) of citations/references](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13329/map-tree-of-citations-references) are related to my question, but I'm not sure the suggested software, **Auto Desk**
or **Cytoscape**, would be entirely appropriate for what I'm interested in doing.
Does anyone have any other suggestions?<issue_comment>username_1: [ScienceWISE](http://sciencewise.info/) is one of the attempts:
>
> The ScienceWISE project aims to develop a scientist-generated on-line knowledge base fully integrated into the physics [ArXiv.org](http://arxiv.org/)
>
>
> The ScienceWISE system allows scientists, in the course of their daily work to
>
>
> 1. dynamically generate professional-field-specific ontologies: add concepts and logical relations between them; provide expertly-written, community-ranked definition articles and links to other existing resources;
> 2. to create an interactive semantic environment, annotating scientific research papers, uploaded to ArXiv.org, and linking them to the ScienceWISE ontology, thus expanding content of their papers with supporting material in the form of encyclopedia-like articles.
>
>
>
(See also info on the arXiv: <http://arxiv.org/help/sciencewise>)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This question is a bit older, but I thought I would add a new suggestion to hopefully help anyone looking for something more current.
If you're looking for a tool to help you discover new papers based on related topics or papers you've already read to assist with scientific writing, I highly recommend using an online application/website called [Research Rabbit](https://researchrabbitapp.com/home).
They describe themselves as being like Spotify in that they learn from the papers you upload and collections (think playlists) of papers that you create and will modify their recommendations of new papers for you to look at that might be related. It also provides interactive visualizations showing how different publications connect based on their algorithm of relevance. All the papers can be connected to the reference library, Zotero, so you can save anything you find and use the Zotero tools for reference library organization and citation formatting.
I really enjoy using it to find papers and look through the literature, particularly on topics that I might be less familiar with.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/21 | 2,165 | 8,701 | <issue_start>username_0: Being a US citizen and native, my view of degree progression is
1. Bachelors, 4 years of study
2. Masters, 1-2 years of study, thesis or portfolio required
3. Doctorate, 3-4 years of study, comprehensive exams and dissertation required
How does this compare globally? My current understanding is that European schools invert the Bachelors/Masters terms. How does a global organization's human resources department track this for comparison? How do you ensure you are comparing apples to oranges? What are the names of the systems (if they have them, possibly American, European, or another nomenclature)? I recall looking for a simple presentation of this information before, and not being able to find it, so I hope to solve this once and for all here.<issue_comment>username_1: In Finland (and other Nordic countries) the situation is almost the same as what you describe. Here, the degree progression is
1. Bachelor's degree, 3 years (180 ECTS credits), includes a thesis without original research, e.g. literature review (10 cr)
2. Master's degree, 2 years (120 cr), includes a thesis with research (30 cr)
3. Doctorate, 4 years, completed by either writing a monograph or a stapler thesis consisting of a preface and four or more publications, some universities also require 6-12 months of coursework (40-60 cr)
Prerequisite for a bachelor's degree is three years of upper secondary school.
I think this applies for most other European countries as well.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Here in Serbia, the situation is similar to other Bologna countries.
Prerequisite for university education is finished elementary school (9 years, recently extended from 8) and a four-year secondary school.
Next step is the choice between the "academic" and "vocational" studies.
In the academic progression "tree" steps are as following:
* + 3-year (180 ECTS points) basic studies giving title of "something",
followed by 2-year (120 ECTS points) Master studies giving title of
"master of something"
+ 4-year (240 ECTS points) basic studies giving title of "graduated something" followed by 1-year (60 ECTS points) Master studies giving
title of "master of something".
+ 5-year (300 ECTS points) integrated studies, mostly in medical fields, giving titles of "Master of something" or "Doctor of
something" or "Magister of something", depending on field.
+ 6-year (360 ECTS points) integrated studies, in medical field, giving title "Doctor of medicine"
* 1-year (60 ECTS points) specialist studies, master studies as
prerequisite, not required for doctorate, giving title of "Specialist
of something"
* 3-year (180 ECTS points) doctorate studies, master studies as
prerequisite, giving title of "Doctor of some sciences"
In the vocational tree steps are as following:
* 3-year (180 ECTS points) basic studies giving title of "vocational
something"
* 1-year (60 ECTS points) specialist studies giving title of
"specialist vocational something"
There is no direct path for transfer between vocational and academic studies, however schools are allowed to accept equivalence and credit certain exams.
I don't have any hard data about the pre-Bologna system at the moment, but major differences were that there were no master studies. Studies in the technical fields were all 5-year, while most humanities were 4-year.
Doctorate studies were separated into two steps:
Magister studies which had course-work and a thesis starting with "technical qualification exam" and ending with a minor thesis and "research qualification exam".
Doctorate studies themselves which had no coursework and only required publishing an original thesis.
Currently, Bologna-style doctorate studies are combination of previous magister and doctorate studies and contain the technical qualification exam and the research qualification exam.
Furthermore, in technical fields, the thesis results had to be original to science in general, while in humanities, thesis results had to be original in Serbian science.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: In Europe most countries use the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) as have been stated in the other answers.
By this system it should be easier to compare a Higher education award from one country to another as the number of ECTS need to gain the award are now comparable regardless of the name of the award.
According to the EU this is what ECTS achieve. [Site link here](http://ec.europa.eu/education/tools/ects_en.htm) (This page also has a pdf ECTS users guide.)
>
> By making higher education comparable across Europe, ECTS makes teaching and learning in higher education more transparent and facilitates the recognition of all studies. It aids curriculum design and quality assurance and allows for the transfer of learning experiences between different institutions, greater student mobility and more flexible routes to gain degrees. ECTS is closely related to the modernisation of higher education in Europe. In particular, it is a central tool in the Bologna Process which aims to make national systems more compatible.
>
>
>
The EU also has this [page](http://ec.europa.eu/eqf/compare/ie/fr_en.htm) where you can set it up to compare the frameworks within Europe.
In some of the other answers you will also have seen reference to 'Bologna Process' This is the process that is overseen by the [European Higher Education Area](http://www.ehea.info/) to assist with the standardisation of Higher Education awards across Europe. Their website also contains [National Reports](http://www.ehea.info/article-details.aspx?ArticleId=86) from all countries in the process.
The UK Government have also released comparison Documents [link here](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/grade-comparison-of-overseas-qualifications) for degrees around the world as compared to UK degrees. [This Document](http://www.ehea.info/Uploads/SubmitedFiles/5_2013/113542.pdf) details the characteristics of Masters degrees as viewed by the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education.
In Ireland (my home country) the National Qualification Authority have an [Interactive Framework](http://www.nfq.ie/nfq/en/FanDiagram/nqai_nfq_08.html) page that shows the breakdown of all levels within the education system. They also produce a [document](http://www.nfq.ie/nfq/en/documents/qualificationscancrossboundaries.pdf) that compared the Irish framework with that of the countries of the UK.
In Ireland there is also a [International Qualifications Database](http://www.qualificationsrecognition.ie/qualification-recognition-service-database.html) where you can search by country to compare them to the Irish framework. This also includes undergraduate and professional degrees.
The European system, while very integrated, still has some differences from Country to Country at the moment, such as how grades are awarded on a per country basis.
Wikipedia has a [page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_degree#Degree_systems_by_regions) that, although not exhaustive, describes the degree system by region.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Global organizations *don't* compare global degrees.
----------------------------------------------------
The specifics matter mostly to academic organizations - which tend to be not global, so they are out of scope.
For global multinational companies, the HR organizations tend to be mostly local due to differences in employment legislation, labor markets, etc. As far the information matters for hiring and comparing local candidates, this is done by local HR, who don't compare global degrees.
The central corporate HR of huge multinational companies simply doesn't care about details of your degree, just as for most other historical data of any specific local employee. They care about the internal job titles, expenses and performance metrics; possibly some business area specific certification; but your degree doesn't particularly matter, it's an "untyped line of text in a CV". If *parts* of the organization deal with, say, R&D and worry about the degrees - then they do that locally. If the corporate holding company needs some rough statistics from all their local subsidiaries, then local HR's report their people by mapping it somehow to the "mothership" country standards.
That being said, European area (including not-EU) has mostly standardized to the 'Bologna' process; there are local flavors but they're moving to be standardized. For the rest of the world, you'd have to consider each case (country pair) separately to say what is equal to what, all the simple rules-of-thumb are just rough approximations.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/22 | 4,135 | 18,117 | <issue_start>username_0: So a TA came to me asking for advice. He gave wrong information in office hours leading a student to a wrong answer.
The TA showed the student how to solve the problem via the wrong statistical test - the assumptions for the statistical test he used do not hold in this case. The answer generated from this test yields a test statistic that doesn't make any sense when you think about it's meaning. Kind of like if you were asked to "find the length of the fence that encloses ..." and your method produced the answer of -50 meters. The TA provided the student with step by step instructions, but did not do any of the numerical calculations. Had he done those calculations he would almost certainly have caught his mistake.
The student complains that she should not be punished because her TA made a mistake. TAs can change HW grades, if they have good reason to do so, and this TA wants to correct his mistake by rewarding the student the points on the problem. I told the TA that I would get back to him as I don't want to give my advice in haste. I think I want to say something like this.
to the TA: "Thank you for asking for my advice in this situation; it is indeed a difficult position to be in. However, this situation concerns me, not because you gave wrong info or bad advice, as we all occasionally make mistakes, but because you seem to have told a student the method for answering the question. While it's OK for students to get help from their TAs, it should only be by reviewing concepts and asking them 'leading questions' that nudge them in the right direction. Note I am not saying that what you did is objectively wrong, as I should have been more clear in my instructions at the beginning of the course, but in the future telling students how to do a problem, in my opinion, is unfair to the students who can't make your office hours."
to the student: "Your TA contacted me recently about changing your HW grade. While I sympathize with your situation, and understand that it is very frustrating to receive bad advice/information from your TA, it is ultimately your responsibility to make sure your solution is reasonable, and therefore I can not give you full credit on this problem. Ultimately the majority of the points you lost were not for using this incorrect method (the TAs error), it was for not interpreting your answer and realizing it made no sense. As stated on the first day of class and in the syllabus I require all students to interpret their answers to make sure they make sense. Please come see me if you would like advice on how to check your answers as this is a very important skill in all scientific disciplines and in life in general. TAs, solutions manuals, and even professors make mistakes. Never trust something just because it was told to you by someone with more authority."
Is this the right thing to do?<issue_comment>username_1: I agree that in principle, the student is responsible for critically evaluating information from all sources and rejecting any that's incorrect. I wouldn't simply award the student points for the incorrect solution, but on the other hand it seems unhelpful to just mark it wrong and leave it there (and despite your explanation, the student will likely perceive this as unfair). In similar situations, I've done one of two things:
* Allow the student to revise the answer, and regrade the problem; or
* Discard the problem for that student, and recompute the score for the assignment based only on the remaining problems.
Upvotes: 8 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: At the moment I'm not sufficiently clear on what the TA did and why it was wrong: in plenty of contexts "[telling] a student the method for answering the question" is exactly what TAs are supposed to do. But again, I'm not sure exactly what happened nor what your understanding with the TA was.
So let me only address the issue of what to say to the student. The principle that they are ultimately trying to get at what is actually correct, not what any one other person tells them is correct, is certainly a key one in a STEM field. In fact, to me this is one of the distinct and pleasant features of mathematics in particular: my freshmen students are very chary to point out even the most trivial errors in my boardwork, but they will eventually learn that if I forgot to multiply by 4-x then (i) my answer is wrong, (ii) it is partially their responsibility to point out that my answer is wrong (the consequences of it being wrong are going to hurt them more than it hurts me, since they are trying to learn how to do problems that they haven't done before), and (iii) if they do point out that my answer is wrong they can be confident that I will react to it constructively rather than defensively.
Students in STEM fields need to learn how to correct the errors that they encounter from teachers and texts, and they do: story about how I mangled something in my graduate course this morning and the students got me to see that what I had done was bogus omitted (okay, drastically abridged). But lower level students have so much trouble with this: errors which to us look insignificant ("of course it should say this...") can really ruin their day. They're trying so hard to get a clue, and many of them are working in a state of cognitive dissonance that comes from having 99% of their inherent intellectual curiosity beaten out of them in their pre-university education. In other words, they have unfortunately been highly trained not to try to understand but rather to do what they're told. Most university students do clearly understand that more is expected of them and, thank goodness, many of them eventually regain the intellectual curiosity they lost, but you can't be an effective university instructor without knowing that many many students are just going to swallow anything you say which is too complicated for them to chew through in five seconds.
So when an instructor of any kind tells students something wrong, it is a big problem. (Wrong is really the nightmare limiting case; I spend so much time trying to avoid correct explanations that I have learned from experience they will interpret incorrectly.) If I say something in a lecture and realize later that it's wrong, I will come back and fix it in the next lecture. If I have something which is wrong on study materials, I will try to correct it and send out a new copy ASAP. If I tell them something that's wrong while they're studying for an exam, I won't wait until the next lecture but send along an email owning up to and fixing the mistake.
This is pretty much my point: students should -- ideally, and eventually -- take responsibility for correcting mistakes, sure, but so should we, and the two are not mutually exclusive. Giving students points back when we make a mistake does not undermine the lesson of their own responsibility, in my opinion: it just does needed damage control. When I ask a false question on a midterm or final exam (and it does happen, unfortunately) I either throw it out from the grading or give everyone full credit. I am not testing them on their ability to correct my mistakes: to do doesn't seem instructive to me but obnoxious. I remember once that a PhD student whom I was preliminarily advising took a qualifying exam which had a whopper of a false problem on it. As soon as I saw the problem my reaction was "I will be shocked if that turns out to be true." But I have more experience than the students *and* the luxury of having that reaction: my being wrong about it has no significant negative consequences for me. It turned out that the student had received less than full credit for his solution to the false problem! My reaction to that was essentially "WTF? Please grade this exam again." And they did.
I would strongly advise you to give the student the points back on the homework assignment. (**Added**: or discount the assignment, or let them redo the problem, or whatever so long as they are not getting irrevocably dinged for the TA's mistake.)
And sure, do make it a teachable moment -- talk to the student about how they can learn to better adapt to the very distressing situation of being given wrong information. Tell them that at some point they will acquire enough expertise to look at an "authoritative document" and say "I will be shocked if that turns out to be true." But don't allow the TA's mistake to lower their course grade. They'll never forgive you for that, and they won't learn how to correct their mistakes in the future.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: I think the best thing to do is let the student re-do the task, and have a talk with your TA. Making a mistake is human, but if he worked out the whole problem using the wrong method - without realising the result didn't make sense - I'd say that's an issue.
You expect your students to interpret the results of the calculation, and you expect them to choose the right method of solving it on an exam, so when a TA makes such a mistake, I'd question him.
I'm not saying that making a mistake is the problem, it's the nature of the mistake. When I lecture on programming, I sometimes make "thinko's" or get a design element wrong, but I won't make a whole algorithm in a faulty matter. It's a bit hard to compare lecturing programming to the more mathematical courses, because blackboard mistakes in a calculation are easily made and overlooked.
Yet, I have never used the wrong throughout a whole problem, I'd realise I'm using the wrong method as one point or another, surely when the result is wrong (Once again, easier to notice in programming), but you'd expect a TA to be able to interpret the result, no?
Ofcourse, I have no idea what the actual mistake was he made, but from your post it seemed like a key mistake.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I agree with your council to the TA but you should give the student the points (or not use this assignment toward the calculation of the student's grades).
Is it fair that the student is receiving credit for incorrect work? No, but the point of any learning environment is to promote learning and I think your draconian adherence to grade fairness in this case would undermine that environment.
This student appears to have made a good faith effort to learn, and the TA appears to have made a good faith effort to assist learning. Exercising some compassion will ensure that this continues.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: A student cannot be expected to trump their instructor's judgment when they know who grades the answer. What if the student said, "yeah I had my doubts as well, that's why I spoke with my TA?"
Although I think you should give the student points or a redo in any event, I think you should also consider whether it was realistic for the student to be able to point out his TA's mistakes? Would most the other students awarded points be able to do this?
Often in statistics the mathematical derivations require a much deeper understanding than simply learning to use the tools. True in many disciplines in fact. It sounds like you're holding this student to a much higher standard, which is why I think you should reconsider your position.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: From my experience, homework exercise are there to help students learn, and are graded fairly lightly. The fact that your TA showed your student how to solve a problem, might or might no be a problem depending on the circumstances. For example, if a student had showed effort and reasonable understanding of the problem, and the TA explained the problem so that the student understood. No Problem. Of course if your TA just did a problem of the student, then there is a problem.
How difficult was the problem that you TA explained wrong? The fact that your TA doesn't understand the material, at least not all of it is a problem, in my view. Does your TA come to your lectures? Your TA should understand the material well, and they should be able to explain it. It is his job to help the students, not confuse them.
I would explain the right method to the student and give them full credit for the problem, and have a talk with the TA to make sure that they understand the material.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: >
> While I sympathize with your situation, and understand that it is very frustrating to receive bad advice/information from your TA, it is ultimately your responsibility to make sure your solution is correct, and therefore I can not give you back the points.
>
>
>
How is a student supposed to make sure their solution is correct, if not by seeking help from external sources such as TAs? I don't think your logic holds up here, and for that reason, it's not reasonable to penalize the student for the TA's mistake.
On the other hand, I'm not suggesting giving points for incorrect work. Some "neutral" solution, like omitting that problem from the computation of the student's grade or allowing them to redo the work, seems appropriate.
>
> Please come see me if you would like advice on how to check your answers as this is a very important skill in all scientific disciplines and in life in general. TAs, solutions manuals, and even professors often make mistakes. Never trust something just because it was told to you by someone with more authority.
>
>
>
I don't think it's really practical to tell your students *never* to trust something just because it was told to them by someone with authority. Of course they should try not to do so more than necessary, and hopefully "necessary" means less and less over time, but some amount of trusting people with authority is necessary to jump-start the learning process.
It may be useful to make the point that even people with authority - professors, TAs, etc. - are beholden to a higher authority, namely correctness and self-consistency. If a student thinks something seems inconsistent or wrong, they should look into it further, by doing their own derivations and/or comparing multiple sources, until (hopefully) they eventually come to understand the thing that didn't make sense in the first place. If someone has made a mistake, it will be revealed in this process.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_8: If you were the one that taught the material incorrectly, would you still hold the student accountable for your mistake?
The TA is *your* assistant. *You* must take responsibility for what the TA is teaching. The TA's words are your words by proxy. However you resolve the situation, you should address it as if you personally made the error.
Perhaps the error was so obvious that you'd expect the student to catch it even if it came from you, and finalizing the grade is reasonable. The fact that your TA made the error instead of you is immaterial to that decision.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_9: I worked as a tutor the last few years of my undergraduate studies and I wanted to add that to a student seeking help, a TA (or tutor) is someone *you believe*. Your student would not think that what the TA said was wrong because they are a TA. If the TA made an honest mistake, as a teacher, you should bring both the TA and student together and explain what was wrong. You could then give the student half credit if they answered in the way that the TA erroneously showed them. You could use this experience to help the rest of the class. I do not profess to understand STEM, as I have a degree and History and am working on my MA in education, but I understand teachable moments. If you want to prevent this in the future, meet with your TA and make certain that they are helping students using the correct process.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: The notion about the "fairness" of reliance on TAs for advice being in question because not all students may be able to attend a TA's office hours is an utterly false premise. Instead of being "equal protection" it's "equal jeopardy." Bad idea.
If a student is so brilliant that they need no instruction to get correct answers, or if you're such a brilliant lecturer that you reach every single student with the exact best way to deliver the material for 100 percent comprehension...then eliminate TA/student interaction entirely. However, in my experience, such students and such teachers together are countable on one hand in a given university, usually with fingers left over for other tasks.
If the student came up with the answer that she should have, using the incorrect method, then she should receive credit...if she redoes the solution using an appropriate method, which in your grand mangnaminity you should bestow upon her. And yes, she should be chagrined to have not noticed the nonsensical answer.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_11: Invalidate the question and apply again, if possible, renormalize the grade if not, to the whole class, to be fair...
Expanding:
Sorry to be blunt, but, as others said, you made a mess. Any attempt to rationalize it would be pointless, just take the hit (remember: your TA... and everybody makes mistakes, how do you deal with them that's important).
If you just award the points, you risk other students coming out of the woodwork saying the same thing or worse, because it is not really a fair option, neither is not awarding the points. Since both options are unfair, redo the whole deal.
My point is that this part of the assignment/exam is now **tainted**. Any result from it, should be removed. For the whole class. Drastic, I agree, but, IMHO, the best way to deal with it.
If you still have time/availability, re-explain the topic to the whole class, making perfectly clear the right way, the wrong way and why the wrong way doesn't work and re-apply the assignment/exam. This way you even expand what they learn by showing one possible pitfall...
If you can't, remove that item from the grades and scale the value of the other items to fill the void.
Either way, make everything public and clear to everyone. Sometimes even the smell of "cover up" is worse than the mistake.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/22 | 296 | 1,144 | <issue_start>username_0: I have an article with in-text citations and list of references. I have not used any of reference managers, just used word.
Is there any way to automatically link in-text citation to individual references on the reference list?<issue_comment>username_1: Yes. It is quite easy to do, once you know how.
First, go to the References tab, then click on Insert Citation and Add New Source.
Next, fill out the information as appropriate.
When you want your References List produced, go to Bibliography.
This is extremely helpful when you need to change some detail (say publication date) and you have many citations to the same material. Change it in one place and Word will update all of the in-text citations as well as the references list.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Highlight the link, right click, click "Link", Make sure you select the tab on the right that says "Existing File or Web Page" then click OK.
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/03/22 | 856 | 3,682 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a research student. Though me and my advisor used to meet regularly, nowadays due to workload, I usually remain outstation and not able to meet him personally.
I do work continuously and meet him at least once a month but am not able to take as much input from my advisor as I would like. (limitations of my physical availability).He doesn't prefer video chatting and pretty hesitant in replying to emails in depth.
Putting in crux, how to track research progress myself and update my advisor simultaneously. I would have preferred a wiki like page, whose URL(private) I can share with my advisor, where he could look at my progress and comment. It could also assist organizing my own research.
What tools would be recommended in such scenario ?<issue_comment>username_1: I am in this exact situation right now since I'm on sabbatical and (some of) my students are back in my home institution. Unlike your advisor though, I'm quite comfortable with skype/G+ and use them regularly.
But to keep track of progress, I use a flavor of `github` that people in my department run (I also use `github` and `bitbucket` directly). As long as your advisor is comfortable using version control systems, and can set up their account for automatic emails when you commit something, it's easy for you to keep them updated and for them to see updates you've made.
I also make sure to have an `agenda` file in reverse chronological order to keep track of what we've been working on and what progress has been made since our last meeting.
One of the advantage of version control systems like git/svn/hg is that it's relatively easy to see what has changed since the last commit, or since 5 commits ago, which will help your advisor. Although if they don't like video chatting or replying to email, I do wonder if they're technically savvy enough to use git :)
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: For wiki documentation, documents, RSS feeds and source code I would recommend a tool like redmine, which also has version control integration. This can be a local installation in some university server, in case you do not what project publicly available. But for progress, bugs I would recommend something like trello (<https://trello.com/>) for several reasons: a) it is a web based tool b) it is free c) you can add private projects and add additional users per project d) has automatic user notifications (e-mail) in case someone adds something to its dedicated trello blog.
So, a combination of redmine (for wiki, src code, documents and version control) and trello (for user notifications, blog bugs etc..) I think it is pretty much what you need.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Please note that this was my dissertation project, and I co-founded the organization that currently maintains and develops it, but take a look at the Open Science Framework:
<http://osf.io>
It's a completely free service for documenting, sharing, collaborating, archiving, and registering materials across the scientific process. You can use the site privately or choose to make pieces of your workflow public.
It should support the scenario you mentioned, and, if not, we'd be glad to use any feedback you'd be willing to provide to make adjustments. It can also connect and integrate services like Amazon S3, Fighshare, and Github, and we have a variety of other add-ons in the works (10 or so) including Dropbox, Trello, and Evernote. Some of those might be helpful extensions in managing the collaboration with your advisor.
Please do follow-up if you try it--you can email me personally at my first name at cos.io if you'd like.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/22 | 493 | 2,178 | <issue_start>username_0: What are pros and cons of using public version control system such as github for writing my papers and reports ?
Is it good to store copies of papers/reports being submitted to conference/journals on such repos. If no, wouldn't it make sense to not use them at the first place itself.<issue_comment>username_1: One advantage of using those repositories (in public or private mode) is that you can show the changes and versions of some text. At the same time you can show variations of something through forks. Of course I have no idea why these features might be needed for publication of a paper, but if you are developing a paper collaboratively and you use some text based system, such as Latex, then it makes sense to use those repositories both for source sharing, backup and versioning, and alternative developments through forks. If you want to invite unidentified future authors (probably through fork) then it should be in public, otherwise private versions makes more sense for me.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: There are a few parts to your question, and I'm not sure which one is most important. If the question is about the value of version control, then you should see the answers to [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5277/why-use-version-control-systems-for-writing-a-paper) (which also has a link to a question about which one to use).
If you're asking about putting it on a shared repository, then here are some reasons:
* **collaboration with others**. If multiple authors are writing a paper, then it's very easy for different authors to edit different portions at the same time without too much worry about conflicts.
* **portability**: I work from different machines, and it's convenient to have a single location to check in/check out from so I don't have to worry about edits on my home machine versus my office machine versus a laptop and so on.
If you're asking about making it **public**, so anyone can read/edit the paper, then I don't see much of an advantage in that. When the paper is done, it might be handy to be able to download the source of course.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer] |
2014/03/22 | 367 | 1,608 | <issue_start>username_0: How far should we go when considering the possibility that a (non spectacular, bur relevant) result has already appeared in any other language different from English?
Is it safe to ignore non-English publications in some fields like computer science, chemistry or physics? That would be assuming that foreign researchers will publish in English, if they are serious about it.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Is it safe to ignore non-English publications in some fields like computer science, chemistry or physics?
>
>
>
I would try my best to not ignore. If you are citing a paper that has cited a non english journal, I would read the citation to see if its relevant to my paper. Translation tools, although not always accurate, would give you a sense what the paper is talking about.
Maybe this article can answer your question to an extent.
<http://www.ete-online.com/content/5/1/12>
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: If you *know* about a previous record in another language, mention it! Strictly speaking, publishing something (even in part) that is a translation of something already published in another language without reference, is considered plagiarism.
Now in practice, I don't think that honestly omitting a previous record written in something else than English would be held against you. It also depends on when this source has been written. Most modern scientific literature has at least its abstract in English.
This being said, I think it's a good idea to check the literature in German, especially for chemistry, physics or engineering...
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/23 | 1,244 | 5,857 | <issue_start>username_0: Can we send our research paper to two IEEE conference simultaneously, and then after acceptance, decide which conference proceedings to publish it in?<issue_comment>username_1: Short answer is yes, but it is unethical. Even when you read the agreement before submitting your paper it appears that the work should be original, that means that it should have not been submitted to other conference or journal.
You must put in the shoes of the reviewers, in one hand you make them waste time by reviewing one paper that is already being checked up in another conference. Also you are getting one available spot that could be filled by another research paper by another person.
One advice, take your work in academia more seriously than just submitting like if its a game.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: No.
---
It is considered unethical in the academic community to submit a paper for simultaneous review at multiple venues (unless it is explicitly permitted by the publications, *and* you disclose this on submission).
The [IEEE guidelines](http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/Section_822F.html) on multiple submission prohibit multiple simultaneous submissions:
>
> Authors should only submit original work that has neither appeared elsewhere for publication, nor which was under review for another refereed publication.
>
>
>
The [guidelines further specify](http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/Section_822F.html) that failure to disclose, on submission, that the work is under review for another publication, can result in (after multiple offenses)
>
> suspension of publication privileges in all IEEE Publications for 1 year and rejection and return of all papers by the author(s) that are currently in review or in any IEEE publication's queue (papers may be re-submitted after suspension term has expired).
>
>
>
In addition, engaging in this practice can irreparably damage your reputation in the academic community.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: IEEE allows certain authors to submit and publish work that is currently under review.
IEEE likewise allows certain authors to submit and publish work that was previously published.
IEEE likewise allows certain authors to submit and publish work that was published by other persons.
Numerous examples can be found by searching the web.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_4: I understand your motivation, because IEEE only looks into how to protect reviewers even though many of them are not competent or up to the level of the submitted manuscript. Such incompetent reviewer will normally ask for pointless revision or may reject the paper if s/he doesn't understand the paper main idea and contribution even though the other reviewers of the paper could praised it and accepted it.
Such incompetent reviewers usually will not understand the paper because they accept reviewing papers that are not within their subdomain or area of expertise to just adding service part to their CVs.
Unfortunately IEEE has a serious problem in its current procedures of selecting reviewers which is done randomly, and that means the editor will look into the reviewers pool of the journal and sends some invitations randomly for possible reviewers. The issue will be exaggerated when that reviewer accept and judge your work regardless of whether they are qualifying for that or no. Unfortunately, they can hurt you by judging wrongly your work and escape simply because their identity are protected by the Journal.
Also, IEEE has no real commitment to any time span of the reviewing process, they may announce the reviewing process takes three months for example, but actually they may let you stuck awaiting for the decision much more time. Therefore, IEEE violates what it should be a fair process for publication in many dimensions, and if your paper received three reviewers decision, for example two acceptance and one rejection, IEEE Editors normally go with the rejection and neglect the majority decision opposite to any fair judgment system . They should go with the majority of reviewers decisions but unfortunately they don't. So I can't say it is not possible solution to overcome such a pain by trying for multiple submission because you also can't put your future under such messy, uncertain and unfair circumstances. You can be a student who needs one more paper for graduation, or you can be a faculty needs one more paper for promotion, or you can be a graduate student needs one more paper to get hired or to keep your position, and if you lost that chance of publication on time because of some incompetent reviewers then the impact could be huge on your life.
Those incompetent reviewers are actually very bad people who may destroy other people life and career just to add some lines in their CVs reflect their service as reviewers for journal x or y.
I don't encourage you to violated any journal rules, but act in a smart way, and don't make mistakes can be taken against you. On the other hand protect your self from such possible unfair environment. try to search for journals or conferences that accept multiple submission.
The process of submit paper should be similar to the process of sending applications for admission to universities. So you are able to send multiple applications to many universities but in the end of the day you will accept only one offer when offers come. IEEE should also do the same to protect authors for wasting time and efforts, but unfortunately they don't.
Therefore, do what is best for you because publishers especially IEEE only care about their regulations and reviewers and their CVs update with the editorializing or reviewing service. Your career growth and future plans for sorry is not among their concerns at all.
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/03/23 | 815 | 3,420 | <issue_start>username_0: In the book *Electronic Devices and Circuit Theory* (10th edition) by Boylestad and <NAME>, I have found a [technical mistake](https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/9317/how-many-ga-atoms-are-connected-to-one-as-atom-in-solid-state-gallium-arseni).
* What can I do about this?
* To whom should I send an email, the authors or the publisher? (Also, there is no email address mentioned in the book or on the Internet to which I can send my suggestions.)
* I have never written an official email of this kind. If I should send an email, how should I write it?<issue_comment>username_1: First of all, see if the book has a newer edition, and try to look at a copy and see if it corrects the error.
If not, then try to find:
* The publisher's web page for the book
* The author's professional web page, which hopefully has some mention of the book.
* An unofficial errata list (google the book's title and "errata" or "corrections").
Check in both places for an errata list, which may already have a correction of the error.
If not, then it is worth trying to report it. Writing the email is the easy part: just politely point out that you believe there is an error on page NNN, and explain as completely as possible why you believe it is incorrect. If you think you know how it could be corrected, you could explain that as well, but it isn't strictly necessary.
The hard part is figuring out where to send it; publishers and authors should make this obvious, but often they do not.
For a major established textbook (which I assume this is), I would focus on the publisher, since the original author may well not be actively involved with the book anymore. See if there is any contact or feedback information on the book's web page.
If you are a faculty member, the publisher probably has assigned a representative for your institution. You may get a better response by contacting your rep directly and asking them to forward your report to the appropriate person. If you are a student and this is your course text, you could ask your professor to contact the publisher's rep.
If there is an unofficial errata list, it should include contact information for the person who's maintaining it; send a report to them.
For a text or monograph with a smaller audience, you will probably do better to contact the author directly; look for contact info on their professional web page.
It's a good service to the community to report errors in books so they can eventually be fixed, so thanks for doing this. However, if the publisher/author make it a huge pain to do so, that is ultimately their problem. Make a reasonable effort to report it to an appropriate person, but if you don't succeed, there's no need for heroic efforts.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I‘m not sure if this answer is allowed, based on advertising guidelines of Stack Exchange. Either way: A friend and I have started an app for iOS and Android with the intention of making reporting, discussing and looking up errors in publications as easy as possible. If you want you can check it out at <https://mistakey.com>.
The idea is to provide a network for collecting reports on all kinds of literature (currently, anything that has an ISBN, ISSN, or DOI can be reported), while we’re also pursuing contact with publishers and authors to actually get the mistakes fixed.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/23 | 1,099 | 4,700 | <issue_start>username_0: Do students with Masters Degree complete their PhDs (in US, but I am curious about other countries too) sooner than the one's who have entered the PhD program after their undergrad?
I know it depends upon the individual, project, major and the supervisor but is there a general trend?<issue_comment>username_1: From my experience in Biochemistry and Neurobiology (and I'm assuming most Biology and Chemistry fields).
Unfortunately, in the US, no it does not help in completing a PhD sooner.
Sometimes a masters is necessary for a person just to get into a PhD program, depending on the person's history and the program.
It would help if the PhD had some requirement of a certain level of understanding or even amount of research work, but instead a PhD tends to just require an amount of time as an indentured servant to your PI - and that amount of time doesn't change if you have a masters. Although, if you're clever and a good salesman maybe you can convince your PI and committee that your masters time should count toward your sentence/years of labor.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: This varies by program. In the US, in mathematics, "par" for a master's is 2 years. In some PhD programs, this will cut a year off your time-to-degree. In others, no help at all. In rare cases, it will cut two years off.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Not really, for example if you make your master's is like 2 years, and then your PhD in 4 years, roughly is going to be 6 years that you spent until you got your terminal degree.
I some universities is not required to follow a Master's first. I know the case of one undergraduate student who was always interested in research (when he was in his last year of bachelor he published two good articles in an important ACM conference); he applied directly to a PhD program and he got it. Now he has finished his PhD in only 4 years, and the background that he was missing he got it by following specific courses. So at the end all depends in your background and the passion you got for research.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: In my department, students who enter with a masters don't have to take much formal coursework, while those who enter without one have to take much more.
Students with a masters therefore (in theory) have more time and focus to spend on research in the first year or two.
But this doesn't seem to help them finish faster (maybe by a tiny imperceptible amount). Most students aren't working very much on what will become their thesis work in that first year anyways - it's hard to come in and hit the ground running. So while the students entering with a masters might have more time for research in year 1, it doesn't usually directly advance the thesis work.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: It depends on the university and the program.
In the US, most PhD granting institutions have pre-requisites for getting your PhD. This may include coursework and will also require research.
For research, one could argue that if you did research in the course of your Master's degree then you would have a time advantage in that you may be able to hit the ground running and engage in publish-able research more quickly.
In institutions that require coursework, the amount of coursework that overlaps with a Master's program can vary. Often, even if you've taken similar coursework in another university, you would still need to fulfill the course requirements in the department where you're going for your PhD. For programs that offer a combined Master's/PhD program, the courses for getting your PhD may be covered under the requirements for getting a Master's, so by already having a Master's degree you may only be shaving off a few of your requirements.
Last, at least in Computer Science, a Master's degree and a PhD are fundamentally different in what they're trying to educate you for. A Master's degree is more like an advanced bachelor's degree where you're taking additional courses and gaining extra skills. A PhD is for research. Given that fundamental difference, it's difficult to say how much would transfer over and again, it would really depend on the university and the program's expectations of what you should have when you enter and what you requirements you need to fulfill once you get there.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: It is true that it may not shave much time off of your Ph.d, however, it prepares you for the radically different type of education that is graduate school. Forget about time, an M.A will ultimately contribute to your doctoral success in so many varying ways from acclimation to research habits.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/23 | 817 | 3,425 | <issue_start>username_0: I have been offered a place for a masters program in 2 places. One which is fully funded and another one where there is no aid that has been offered at the time of admission.
I guess if the everything else was the same between the two then the answer is obvious, which is to go for the funded one. But the problem in my case is this:
In the fully funded case I have been offered a place in a research group I have no primary interest in (and no previous knowledge of) and something which I would not have definitely chosen if I was given a choice. So in sum, although it comes with a lot of money, the work is something I'm unsure if I will enjoy.
In the second case, there is no aid. The tuition fee + living is something which is not completely unaffordable for, I hope to manage those with loans and some family money. Aside that, I feel there is a lot of flexibility (or at least some flexibility), as I can choose my domain of work and my advisor once I have enrolled, and maybe been through a semester. Also the coursework here is a lot more closer to my preferred area of research.
**Additional info:** Comparing the two universities as such, the second one (the one without aid) is higher ranked than the other one (with full funding).
So given all this, how do you think I should make a decision and what is your opinion on the same?
**Edit:** Both programs are research-based and require a thesis.<issue_comment>username_1: There are four outcomes to your master's program:
1. You don't complete the program.
2. You complete the program and can't find a job dependent upon the degree.
3. You complete the program and get a job dependent upon the degree.
4. You complete the program and continue in academia.
If you take the position with support, you will be better off in case (1) and (2). Case (4) is a tie -- you can shift research groups for your Ph.D., and you will be better off financially, but you have to spend 2 years doing things you don't entirely like. Case (3) is the only case that's a clear win for the no-support degree; you'll have 2 years of chasing your joy, and a fairly small debt that you'll pay off soon in a high-paying field.
What's left is to evaluate the relative probabilities of the four cases. You need to be objective here, and use the evidence you have: the expert judgement of the graduate programs to which you've applied. Admittedly two data points is quite few; it would be helpful to know if you applied to other programs, and what those results were. However, in the opinion of the more prestigious program, you are not one of their best candidates (or else they would offer you support).
In summary, choosing the no-support program is a large gamble. You should take it if you're confident that the program made a mistake in not offering you funding -- you have tremendous talent that for some reason has not been revealed in your record. Absent such a situation you should take the support. You might change your mind and decide you like that sort of work.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I would personally choose the funded position. Most of the grad students I knew when I entered didn't graduate with the prof that initially funded them. Once you enter the program, you'll be able to find an adviser that fits your research interest more closely. Without any debt, you'll also have more choices at graduation time.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/23 | 564 | 2,558 | <issue_start>username_0: I hope this question is appropriate for the forum here. I was hoping to locate and read a thesis outside of the United States, specifically for someone who went to a reputable University in mainland China (Shanghai Jiao Tong University). However, all of my internet searches have been largely fruitless, and the library site at the university dedicated to theses appears to be down.
Does anyone know how to proceed in these circumstances? I unfortunately cannot speak Chinese, and the person in question has been non-responsive for months. Are these theses typically in English at top Chinese universities?<issue_comment>username_1: Try writing (in English) to the department chair.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You can also try to locate collaborators of the person (thesis supervisor or coauthors of published work). They may be able to get in touch with him/her or they may even have a copy of the thesis.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: I am currently in China, as a postdoc. From my experience with the inner workings of Chinese academia and culture, I must say your objective is not an easy one. Most of my Chinese colleagues will only move by either by personal interest or when receiving an order. This thus is how you should approach this situation.
The proposed strategy of contacting a dean or some other local authority is a valid attempt, but you should make sure that person would be interested in helping you (by transmitting an order) for some reason. Otherwise I'd locate the respective advisor stating that you're interested in obtaining a thesis because [enter here something which will benefit that person, citations/publication/funding/collaboration/etc]. Try calling them directly while asking their name first-thing, which should put them temporarily in a responsive position.
Finally the last resort is to show up in person, where you will be treated like an authority while visiting.
The Chinese are quick to ignore communication on topics which they have no interest, and there is little casual chitchat meaning that the fact that you've written to some people about your request is unlikely to be mentioned to others.
Finally concerning availability and language, my bet is that the mentioned thesis is in Chinese with an English abstract, sitting in a cabinet full of others' theses in an office of the department. If you manage to get someone to help you, the easiest would be that a student takes pictures on a phone of every page and sends by Wechat or QQ.
Good luck!
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/23 | 1,024 | 4,488 | <issue_start>username_0: This post concerns grad school options. I am an undergraduate math major and will soon complete my studies. I am considering finance/financial engineering. How math-heavy is the financial mathematics compared to pure mathematics? Is it equally as challenging and tough?
Basically, I am considering finance because pure mathematics is rather challenging for me. If you need more clarification, mention in comments.<issue_comment>username_1: The reason I'm writing this in the form of an answer instead of a comment is because I can't write a short enough comment to meet the character restrictions. So, don't take this as an answer, as I don't intend it to be. You've just asked a pretty broad question.
Your question is awfully familiar in content and application to the very same question that I asked myself when entering into college to study computer science. I found out that it is true that computer science is very math heavy and a good solid foundation in math greatly helps; however, it's not in the way that people normally envision mathematics being used when they hear "math heavy."
One thing I will say is that while I'm not into graduate finance work, I've seen some graduate finance work as a programmer. Sure, there's math involved -- and lots of it. It's all math, numbers, and logic; but, then again, what isn't? People have said before that construction is very math oriented, and I'd agree with that to a point. Just like I found out with computer science, yes it's math heavy, but I'm not **explicitly** solving mathematical equations every second of every day. The familiarity with mathematics and mathematical intuition developed from doing mathematics, something I call mathematical maturity, really benefits the perspective that problems are viewed from. I think that applies to everything else, too. So, I think **a familiarity with mathematics benefits all fields of study for people from all walks of life.**
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Programs vary; it would be best to look at the specific requirements and prerequisites for the programs you have in mind.
In general, mathematical finance can involve a very considerable amount of pure mathematics. A big piece is modeling assets via stochastic processes, and to understand those properly requires a firm background in graduate-level real analysis, measure theory, probability theory, and often functional analysis and PDE. A mathematical finance course may well consist primarily of theorems and proofs, just like a pure math course would. This is typically even more true at the PhD level than masters.
Of course, I would say that just because mathematics is challenging, that doesn't mean you should avoid it!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I'm a math major studied in Canada. I am planning to do Financial Mathematic. I have talked to some professors from the Fin/Math department. They recommend me to take some thing like probability, real analysis, PDE, Functional Analysis. I would say it's a very tough program.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Courant is one of the top places in the world to get a MS in Finance. This is what their website says:
<http://math.nyu.edu/financial_mathematics/content/05_prospectiveStudents/02.html>
Basically, you will need to have some grasp of Stochastic Calculus, Probability Theory, and Numerical Analysis. Some knowledge of Functional Analysis and Real Analysis/Measure Theory will help with the proofs but for the most part, from the point of view of writing Models, coding them up, simulating them, and calibrating them you will mostly be solving PDEs. You'll probably use MATLAB or C++ .
Your program may also have a strong econometrics basis, so you will need to develop data skills and learn how to use packages like SAS, STATA, LIMDEP etc. The theory will involve some linear algebra and probability theory.
The professors may not go very deep into Finance Theory but the type of math they use there involves Functional Analysis, Dynamic Programming, Martingales etc.
The program will be fast paced and challenging, especially Finance Theory since you won't have a base for it but you should be fine with the math part of it if you have an undergrad degree in math. Remember, you will understand things better with each iteration so try to get some working understand in your first pass and also try to have a bird's eye view of what's going on. It is easy to get lost in the details.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/24 | 621 | 2,691 | <issue_start>username_0: I have a PhD in physics, and my career path of choice has always been in physics. Unfortunately, I have been struck with a series of chronic health problems which have caused me to be fired and homebound much of the time. However, as physics research is mostly a mental activity, I am still able to work remotely from home, provided I am also given flexible hours. The problem is, despite my continuing ability to continue working from home despite my chronic health problems, no employer so far has been willing to hire and pay me. The resulting financial problems have forced me to leave my chosen career path for the past few years, which only makes me look worse and worse on my CV, when coupled with being fired.
Do you know of any organization or employer willing to hire researchers remotely? Thanks.<issue_comment>username_1: If you are in US, you can apply for disability. You can also get plenty of tax rebates. I am not sure, if full time employees can work remotely all the time but contractors can, for sure work. I am sure there would be companies out there hiring contractors for short projects and letting them work remotely. You can work on one short project after the other.
Also, if you know computer programming, you can work as a software freelancer. There are plenty of freelancer jobs available.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: As you are asking this on academia.SE, I am assuming that you are looking for an academic job as opposed to working in industry. In that case, I am afraid your assumption
>
> However, as physics research is mostly a mental activity, I am still able to work remotely from home
>
>
>
may not be true for higher (post-graduate) academic jobs. I would say, being a postdoc or higher in physics is to a large extend a **social** activity, as much of your job will consist of teaching, training the next generation of researchers, and networking. In general, all researchers after a certain stage find that they spend preciously little of their time on actual research (which you may be able to do from home, depending on your concrete subfield). Most of the time is actually spent on activities that require physical presence, at least some percentage of the time.
That being said, many research labs are quite flexible in terms of working hours and (partial) home office. In my lab, for instance, I would not assume that anybody would take issue with an employee working about 50% of the time from home (under the assumption that one would actually **work** at home, of course). However, the remaining 50% would probably require physical presence, simply because the tasks would require it.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/24 | 459 | 1,830 | <issue_start>username_0: I am aware of US News which publishes the rankings for US Universities every year.
But somehow I feel that they try to emphasize more on private universities than public(state) universities.
Also they have recently stopped showing the rankings according to fields of study(CS, ECE, Mechanical, etc) without paying them.
Google also could not help me find any reliable ranking organisation.
I would like to know whether there is any respectable ranking organisation other than US News.<issue_comment>username_1: Both of these organisations are International but you can search by region and study area.
[Top Universities](http://www.topuniversities.com/) is complied by the QS Quacquarelli Symonds
[This page](http://www.topuniversities.com/qs-stars/qs-stars-methodology) explains the methodology they use to rank institutions.
[The Times Higher Education](http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/) rankings are compiled by the Times Higher Education magazine in the UK with the help of Thomson Reuters. According to their site
>
> rankings employ 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons available, which are trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If your goal is a general list, @username_1's answer, as well as other general guides, will do.
If your goal is to select a graduate program to apply for, I recommend [phds.org](http://graduate-school.phds.org/). You can specify which criteria are most important to you: research productivity, support for graduate students, diversity, funding, etc. Based on your choices, you will get a personalized ranking of the graduate programs in your area.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/24 | 1,031 | 4,414 | <issue_start>username_0: I am trying to find out what the average duration of PhD studies are in the USA. Here in Spain it used to be 4 years, but it seems that Europe is moving towards a 3-year scheme since students are expected to do their MSc before they start. What is it like in the USA? Is some kind of shortening also occurring?<issue_comment>username_1: Each program is going to be different. Usually, the first couple years of a PhD program involves taking graduate level classes while the later years are dedicated to academic engagement in the discipline (for example, in Chemistry, you would do research in a lab.) If you have a Masters degree relevant to the PhD, you may cut off some or all of the classroom portion of the PhD program.
The qualifications for actually receiving the PhD also differ. You may need to get approval from an academic board (this is usually at least part of the process in any case), you may need to write a thesis, you may even be required to be published in an academic journal. (In the hard sciences, this is common.)
Because the requirements for getting the degree differ, the time may as well. For the most part, PhDs (with no Masters) should take between 4 - 6 years. Getting a Masters degree first may cut off about a year or so of that. While this is generally true, you will find many examples of people taking longer and I've known at least two people who graduated in less than 4 years with a PhD.
While this is an average, you'll want to get info specific to your desired University, the degree, and even the group (or academic adviser) that you choose to work for.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This varies so widely by discipline that asking for an average across all disciplines is unlikely to be very helpful. Most individual disciplines do keep careful records of this statistic, and it should be easy to search for them on (e.g.) google.
However, I would say with some confidence that no American PhD program requires or even expects its students to complete a PhD in less than four years. In some programs the "party line" is that it is desirable to complete the degree in four years, but in my experience this means that you start to feel the squeeze of increased teaching and/or decreased funding after four years, not that you get ejected from the program or forced to graduate.
I work in a discipline, mathematics, with a high entry cost but for which, once you acquire the necessary background and skills (with which a small minority of students do enter the program), there is no specific reason why you couldn't do all the work for a great thesis and write it up in a rather short amount of time, say on the order of a semester. Nevertheless I have met very few people who have completed a math PhD in fewer than four years. When we get to the upper echelons of talent, preparation and work ethic, this surely must mean that the culture of a PhD program strongly encourages students to stay for this amount of time.
To answer your final question: yes, many programs are trying to shorten their average time to degree as funding is being cut. In my own PhD program (mathematics at UGA) I was involved in an initiative to do just this: up until recently we guaranteed six years of funding to incoming PhD students without master's degrees and five for students with an incoming master's. We now guarantee five years to all students. Note that this does not mean that we do not have funded sixth year students: we certainly do. But it means that students will, throughout their time in the program, have to keep their eye on the five-year mark, which is something that our former arrangement was not doing: even very strong students would often stick around for six years for no especially good reason.
Finally let me also note that we changed (with my involvement) all our requirements to be independent of whether students arrive with master's degrees. We have found that the difference in the level of preparedness of such students is not significant enough to justify more stringent time-to-degree requirements.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: The Survey of Earned Doctorates (<http://www.norc.org/Research/Projects/Pages/survey-of-earned-doctorates-(sed).aspx>) has detailed statistics. A summary report is <http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06312/> with breakdown by field, year etc.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/24 | 813 | 3,618 | <issue_start>username_0: I have had a paper accepted for a conference this summer, which presents the preliminary results of my PhD research. However, I'd like to present my final results at another conference in the fall, the deadline for which is in a few weeks, and which requires a full paper submission. My question is: would it be unethical to submit the first paper (in a re-structured form) in the hope that it will get accepted for the later conference, and then subsequently update the results before the final deadline?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> "May I submit a paper to another conference that is essentially the same as a paper that is already published or accepted for publication?"
>
>
>
**NO** \*
>
> "May I substantially change the content of an accepted conference paper after peer review?"
>
>
>
**NO** \*
\* Unless it is disclosed to, and permitted by, the PC/editor.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: To add to @username_1's absolutely correct answer, you can still submit to that second conference. All you need to do is cite your first paper, state that this paper only adds results A,B,C. It is possible that the modest additions to your first paper are enough to merit publication on their own; however you must be honest and let the editors/referees decide this.
In short, you may submit your updated paper, provided you are completely honest about its differences with the previously published work. If indeed those differences are trivial (as suggested by the title of the question), then obviously this is pointless.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: username_1's answer is true for the general case. There are two exceptional cases where you will be allowed, or actually required, to make substantial changes to the content. Note that none of them will happen because you want to add a bit more.
First, your paper might be put into a gatekeeping process. In this case, the acceptance is conditional on making certain changes and the reviewers being happy about these changes at a later reviewing stage.
Gatekeeping only occurs when the program committee requests it; you can't trigger it (and don't want to). It only allows you to make the changes the reviewers requested from you (normally to provide better argumentation for your conclusions, or to describe your empirical methods in your detail), not to include any results you forgot about or didn't have at the beginning.
The second case is if you find an error in your research which renders your paper wrong. In this case, you should contact the program committee, inform them of the error, and offer to retract the paper. If you have the improved results, and they are not completely changing the main statement of the paper, the program committee may allow you to keep the paper in the running, but will require you to rewrite the parts based on the mistaken results.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: It is completely unethical to substantially change a conference paper after acceptance, just as it would be completely unethical for a used car salesman to substitute a different car after you'd agreed to buy. The programme committee accepted the first version, based on the advice of the reviewers; they did not even see the second version. If the same thing happened in a journal version, the second version would be sent back to the referees but there is no second round of reviewing for conferences.
Honestly, I'm worried that you're even asking this. It suggests that, in your mind, the primary goal has become publication, rather than doing good research.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/24 | 968 | 4,180 | <issue_start>username_0: I conceived and co-developed (including the program itself and training protocols for participants)/piloted the program locally/managed three national pilots, and assessed the effectiveness of the program including formulating the written proposal to public and private funding agencies that laid out the essential elements of the program and writing reports. Years later, one of my co-developers claims sole responsibility on line (at a University web site) and at a non-profit spinoff's web site for this and another program I conceived and co-developed and has wiped me from the record. He does not credit our co-developers, upon whose ground breaking research much of this work rests. If one (say a member of a selection committee) were to take a tour of the Internet using the usual search engines, it would appear that my CV and resume are one big lie after another. I inquired of Legal at the University where I did the work, and they said they have no control over what a department head puts on line and that it is if anything a compliance issue. What does this mean? And also, do I have a moral right and what kind of recourse might there be? Basically 15 years of my life is now invisible.<issue_comment>username_1: First off, you should decide what exactly you feel is wrong, and how you want it to be. You were involved in the early stages of this program, but others took the helm later. They continued to put work into the program, and they deserve credit. Arguably visitors to the program website want to know about who's managing it now, not its history. Do you want to be cited as a co-creator or founder or first director? Do you want a section dedicated to "early work on this project" where you play a greater role? Is this really that important, since in academia publications are the currency of value, not websites.
Second, once you've decided what your objection is, you should take this objection to the co-developer in question. Perhaps this is just an honest misunderstanding and he/she will rectify amicably.
Third, if you get no resolution, then you need to decide whether you want to pursue this further. Read your co-developer's response carefully and objectively. Do you think they have a reasonable case? If so, you are unlikely to achieve anything positive by pursuing this (in fact, going to the legal department may have been a mistake). You will (further) sour your relationship with the co-developer, and have the potential for getting a bad reputation.
Lastly, if you are absolutely certain that your co-developer's position has no merit, and you really want to pursue this further, you can try to apply pressure to your co-developer. The legal department is the wrong avenue, as their job is to protect the university, not police it. Try the dean, or otherwise the supervisor, of the co-developer. If you can prove that the situation has cost you financially (farfetched) you might consider a lawsuit.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I suggest a different strategy than that proposed by [username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7222/username_1). Don't engage with your co-developer or his institution at all.
Instead, write a blog post (or posts) or a white paper telling your version of history. If it is a white paper, post it on your web site. Better still, arrange an interview with a web publication, with links to your white paper. You are done.
In any job application and CV, you should link to your blog posts and white papers, or related articles. If any search committee spends any time on this, and also sees the web pages of your co-developers, they would probably ask you to explain the difference in stories. You will happily explain the differences, with no need to explain *why* the co-developers wrote what they wrote.
The advantage of this approach is that you don't need to persuade your co-developers or their employers of anything. No legal process at all. You only have to invest up-front time to write your story in a compelling form (hopefully, backed with substantiating evidence), and then deal with questions as they arise in the interview process.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/24 | 13,274 | 54,074 | <issue_start>username_0: I am interested in the situation where you have a very interesting result. For instance, you have solved a very important open problem. However, you are not known in the field and do not have any remarkable publications. Your supervisor thinks the work is good and you submit the work to a high profile journal, but you get rejected.
The thing is that the contribution is very strong. It breaks what most people believe or what they have already proven: e.g., you solve the P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem.
The reviewers strongly reject your work with no justification and they do not state why the result is wrong. Examples of reviewer comments include:
* "The proof must be wrong."
* "You cannot achieve such a result."
* "You do not understand well the notion of ..."
My question is what to do in this situation? Where to go? If your advisor accepts the work, but the reviewers from the top journal reject the work without even explaining the mistakes, what should you do?<issue_comment>username_1: If your interpretation of events is: "I have a heartbreaking work of staggering genius and the only obstacle to acceptance is that I am not well known and the elites are blocking my work", then you're unlikely to get good advice on what to do here or elsewhere.
The problem, as Raphael indicates, is that while it's *possible* that this interpretation is correct, it's far more likely that in fact your result does NOT solve the major open problem that you think it does.
Once you admit that this possibility exists, then many steps present themselves, all listed in the very good links provided. Reaching out to people who might comment on your work, looking at the literature to see if approaches like yours have been tried before and have failed, seeing if your solution also solves related (simpler) problems, and so on.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Regardless of whether the work is correct or not, the following statement applies:
**The burden of proof is on the author to convince the reader of the result.**
The community (e.g., editors, reviewers) has no responsibility to evaluate your work to your satisfaction. If the reviewers made a good faith effort to read your paper and were not convinced, then you must make your argument more convincing.
(This does not mean, make a few trivial edits and resubmit. This means, prove your results so thoroughly and in such excruciating detail, and with such demonstrably excellent understanding of the problem context, that they become inarguable. Then figure out a way to express the results in a convincing way.)
If in the process of doing so you find an error, well, you'd be in good company.
Upvotes: 8 <issue_comment>username_3: What does your advisor say about all this?
If she really believes you have solved this major problem, she should be moving mountains to help you publish and disseminate it. (It sounds like her name is on it too, so she has an even greater incentive.) But you've used the rather lukewarm phrasing that she "accepts" it. Better get her completely on board first, or get her to explain in more detail her reservations (which may indeed turn out to reveal fatal flaws).
The advantage you have over the average crank is that, as a student, you already have ties to the scientific community, through your advisor. **Take advantage of this.** Once you and your advisor are satisfied that your manuscript is of the best possible quality (see ff254's answer), post it on arXiv, and circulate. Your advisor surely knows experts in the field, and should have enough reputation that she can get them interested in it.
I'm not sure about your field, but in mathematics, this currently tends to be the way that the community handles solutions to major open problems. You don't just submit it to *Annals*, have the referees approve it, and then wait a few months until everyone gets their issue of *Annals* in the mail and is astonished. Instead, you get the community to study it *first*. You convince a few experts that it is plausible enough to be worth their attention, and they look at it. Either they find a critical flaw right away (the most common case), or they find a lesser flaw that you or someone else fixes, and maybe, gradually, a consensus develops that it is probably right. *That's* when you send it to *Annals*.
One thing that worries me in what you wrote is:
>
> It breaks what most people believe or what they have already proven...
>
>
>
**Which is it?** The distinction is crucial. If it contradicts people's intuition, that raises the bar a little, but scientists are used to being surprised. If it contradicts something previously proved, that raises the bar a lot. It puts on you the burden of not only showing that your work is right, but showing specifically why the previously accepted work was actually wrong. (You can't just say "Mine is right, therefore theirs must be wrong.") You didn't say anything about having done that. (And if you *can't* find a flaw in the previous work, then your claim is in fact along the lines of "Mathematics is inconsistent". The bar on *that* one is more or less on the moon.)
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: Some advice is to very carefully check that the proofs are correct, ask one's supervisor for advice, and seek third opinions. Perhaps the supervisor has colleagues in the research area who would be willing to read the draft and offer concrete feedback.
If the journal submitted to is good, yet the reviewers did not give any useful feedback at all, then there is almost certainly a problem with the abstract and introduction.
The abstract and introduction should make clear the new idea that allows this "breakthrough". Presumably many have approached this problem in the past and failed; there may be widespread beliefs about why it is difficult to prove or perhaps even known "barriers" to attempted proofs. The abstract and introduction should clearly and briefly mention why such beliefs, objections, or barriers do not apply or how they were overcome.
In short, the abstract and introduction must give the skeptical reader reason to believe the paper could be correct, given the reader's background knowledge. If this is done, I would hope that reviewers would at least mention why they do not believe the result.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: Your question has some issues. Given some of the (now-deleted) questions you have asked on other SE sites in the last few days, I have some reservations about whether your question is being asked in good faith, but taken on its own merits it is a reasonable question so I will try to answer it.
The main issue is that, even in asking this relatively simple question, your writing is far from clear. If you cannot write clearly in this situation, your chances of writing up a difficult piece of mathematics or theoretical computer science are less than good. For instance:
>
> His/Her supervisor(s) accept the work and they published it in a highly known journal and they get rejected.
>
>
>
Laying aside issues of subject/verb agreement and consistency of tense, the entire sentence doesn't make sense: you can't publish a paper and get rejected.
>
> It breaks what most people believe
>
>
>
I don't know what it means to "break what most people believe".
>
> or what they have already proven,
>
>
>
What? Are you saying that your proof contradicts other proven results? Taken literally, that would mean that you have shown mathematics to be inconsistent. In practice this could only mean that if your result is correct then some previously published work is incorrect. If that's the case then you need to be very clear about that and explain the flaws in the earlier work. It distresses me that you don't really seem to believe this but are just throwing it off as loose language.
>
> i.e., He/She solves the P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem.
>
>
>
Solving an open problem would not "break what people have already proven"....that's what it means for the problem to be open. Also saying "P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem" is a strange bit of coyness: there is no other problem in theoretical computer science (and very few to none in mathematics as a whole) which is "like" P vs. NP. So it doesn't make sense to give that as an example. It's like saying "i.e., he found the Holy Grail or some other famous cup".
In other questions you have spoken specifically about having a proof of P vs. NP and then upon questioning have retreated from this. This sort of vacillation about what you have done is a red flag of "crankiness" that will make professionals wary.
>
> The reviewers strongly reject his/her work with no justification and they said that the result must be wrong.
>
>
>
Saying that the result must be wrong is not just a justification for rejection, it's the *best* justification. No professional reviewer will say something is wrong lightly. Almost any reviewer who says this will point to at least one specific error. If they do not, then in practice it almost certainly means that the entire document did not make enough sense to them to be more specific.
>
> If your advisor accepts the work, the reviewers reject the work without even explain the mistakes (it is the "best" journal in his/her domain) then what he/she must do?
>
>
>
If you submit a paper to the top journal in your field claiming a solution to the top problem in your field, and your paper does not make sense or does not evince even a correct understanding of the problem, then the editors are likely not to want to spend much time in response. On the other hand, if you are sincerely interested in getting their expertise, it seems reasonable to write back very politely and ask for more specifics about the error. If your response is in any way argumentative then you risk the editorial staff thinking that you will keep hounding them *ad infinitum*, and at some point they *have to* stop replying. So you should write back saying that you are not considering resubmitting the paper to that journal but for your own progress it would be extremely helpful to know what is wrong with it. You could also mention that your supervisor found the paper to be correct.
In fact you could be getting more help on this from your supervisor. If you have really "solved P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem" and your supervisor believes your solution to be correct, why isn't your supervisor moving heaven and earth to be sure your work is getting the attention it deserves? That doesn't add up. The two possible explanations seem to be (i) your supervisor is being too polite with you: s/he does not actually believe that you have solved P vs. NP; and (ii) your advisor's imprimatur does not carry any weight in the community whatsoever. The latter unfortunately means his/her opinion on the correctness of your work is not worth very much.
A good way to find out whether it's (i), (ii) or -- I do admit that anything is possible! perhaps the top journal in your field is unfairly ignoring your revolutionary work -- is to seek your advisor's help in getting another faculty member to evaluate the work, preferably someone in the department that you can speak to recently.
Finally, you seem to have some real worries that if an unknown person solves a famous problem then it somehow doesn't count. This is really not the way academia works, provided the unknown person is capable of presenting the work in a way which makes sense to the experts (and if not, what a shame, but what else could one possibly expect?). Have you heard of the recent example of [<NAME>](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitang_Zhang)? Zhang was a non-tenure-track lecturer at the University of New Hampshire when he stunned the mathematical world by proving the existence of bounded prime gaps. He submitted his work to the top mathematical journal...and by all accounts they accepted it *with unusual speed*. In other words, they received a paper from someone they had probably never heard of, looked at it quickly and saw that it was a plausible attack on a huge open problem, and as a result they sprung into action much more rapidly and thoroughly than for most submissions they get. This is an amazing story, but a true one, and it shows how the community responds to a *real* situation like this.
Upvotes: 10 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_6: May I add to username_3's comprehensive answer that, if your work shakes or shatters the commonly held views in your community, then it is very important that you reconcile those views with yours, by which I mean: show exactly where the community is "wrong" or "not exactly right" and why. Offer counterexamples, predictions, all you can.
Relativity would be nowhere if it didn't reduce to good old Newtonean mechanics where the latter performed perfectly!
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_7: Despite what people will say it is true that journals will reject papers using author profiling without a proper review. It is hard to say how many papers are rejected this way but Elsevier [say that they reject](http://www.elsevier.com/connect/8-reasons-i-rejected-your-article) 30 to 50 percent of papers without a review for other "technical reasons". See also [this paper](http://econ.la.psu.edu/~kkrishna/Papers/The_inside_scoop.pdf) about how editors can save time by looking at author attributes such as affiliation to reject papers without looking at them.
I have personal experience of this because I recently [made significant progress](http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.8217) on a well known 100 year old open problem after experts in the field had said that future progress was likely to be very slow. The journal I submitted the paper to rejected it as soon as I confirmed that I had no affiliation. There was no reviewer report and they did not give any specific reason. I had complied with all their technical requirements for submission.
However, I pointed out to them that according to the [code of conduct](http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_1.pdf) of the [committee on publication ethics](http://publicationethics.org/) to which the journal claims to adhere "Editorial decisions should not be affected by the origins of the manuscript" and "Journals should have a declared mechanism for authors to appeal against editorial decisions." To my surprise they responded after a delay to tell me that they would look at it again.
It is true that there are many claimed resolutions of problems such as P vs NP that can be dismissed at a moments glance. This can be done because there are well understood reasons why these problem are hard and a solution would need to address that. Many claimed proofs of open problems by non-academics descend quickly into non-standard language that makes it hard to even address why they are wrong so they are just ignored by the community. It is up to the authors to make sure they communicate their ideas correctly.
If you do have a solution to an open problem my advice is to submit to an open repository such as arXiv. If you can't get an endorser use viXra or figshare (full disclosure: I am viXra admin) Do not pay attention to negative things said about viXra. It's purpose is just to give you an independent time-stamp and an archived copy you can point to. It does not attempt to review or give your work credibility in any way. The last thing you should do is submit to journals or send to experts without having a verified public copy because if it really is a breakthrough there is a real risk of plagiarism that can only be averted by having a prior copy archived.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: First, make sure you are not really a crank before trying to convince others.
Read [these common characteristics of cranks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_%28person%29#Common_characteristics_of_cranks).
If they apply to you then get professional help.
For the rest of the answer
I will assume that you have really solved a famous open problem.
In the following
"he" refers to a typical non-expert claiming to have a solution for a famous open problem and
"she" refers to an expert in the topic.
1. **There is no easy shortcut for you!**
If you are looking for a simple easy shortcut to get your solution verified by an expert
then this answer is not for you
and I can assure you what you want is not going to happen.
2. **Understand the magnitude of your claim!**
E.g. If you are claiming to have a proof of P is not equal to NP
then you are the guy who is claiming to have a design for a rocket
that can be built with the currently technology and resources
to take a human to Andromeda and back safely
while experts are having hard time sending a human to mars.
If you are claiming to have a proof of P is equal to NP
then you are the guy who is claiming to have a time travel machine.
3. **Understand why experts are reluctant to directly engage non-experts.**
Many experts would be interested to know about any major progress in their field.
E.g. there are complexity theorists who
do read *every* P vs. NP related paper posted on [arXiv](http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/ti:+AND+P+NP/0/1/0/all/0/1)
(arXiv has a very lenient acceptance policy regarding P vs. NP claims).
They will definitely let other experts know
if they notice something interesting.
But
* **You are not the only one with such claims.**
There are thousands of people who regularly make such claims.
* **All previous ones suffered from trivial issues no expert would have made.**
It is your job to show you are not one of them.
* **Her time is valuable.**
For most it is not really monetary.
But I think giving some numbers would be helpful.
In my university a graduate student is paid over $40/hour
to mark simple undergraduate assignments.
This is nothing compared to what an expert might charge for consulting in the industry.
* **Non-experts often lack basic skills and knowledge to understand her replies.**
E.g. he lacks mathematical maturity,
he does not know basic definitions and terminology, etc.
It is not uncommon that an expert tells a non-expert
what he has is not a proof.
She does not mean the proof is incorrect,
she means it is not even a proof in the sense that
an apple is not a proof.
He does not understand when he is told it is "[not even wrong!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong)". To make him understand her reply
she would have to teach him those required skills and knowledge,
too much work just to convince him he does not have a solution.
Often he is not patient nor interested in learning (e.g. reading a textbook),
he is only interested in a confirmation of what he believes to be a solution.
Way too much work in that case.
* **It is often impossible to satisfy him.**
Because of the points mentioned above,
he often insists on the validity of his claim
even after she tells him it is not.
At other times where he understands the reply
he considers it a simple easy-to-fix error,
not a fundamental one.
He tries to fix it and get her verify it.
This leads to back and forth.
* **He underestimates the required time and effort on her part to answer his claim.**
He thinks it is a simple easy job for her to answer his claim.
E.g. he expects her to give him a counterexample where his algorithm fails.
Finding a counterexample for an algorithm is a very difficult task
(as anyone who has marked undergraduate algorithms or complexity theory assignments would know).
Finding an explanation why an idea is fundamentally flawed and cannot work
is even more difficult.
4. **He does not understand it is not a puzzle.**
She is not interested in the question just for its own sake.
She expects the solution to the question will be accompanied with
major advances in her field.
E.g. complexity theorists do not care about P vs. NP just for its own sake.
They expect the solution for P vs. NP will come with
major progress in our understanding about the nature of efficient computation and
its limitations.
Often he does not understand this.
He thinks of the question as a game or puzzle that he thinks he has won and that is it.
This attitude is frustrating for experts.
---
Now here are some tips:
1. **Be humble.**
It is much easier to get her to have a look at your solution
if you are genuinely humble and eager to learn and accepting
if you are told that you are wrong.
2. **Make sure you understand what is required to solve the question.**
E.g. understand that a program that seems to efficiently solve an NP-complete problem is not a proof,
understand that an idea does not make a proof,
make sure you understand the definitions and terminology,
etc.
3. **Know the basics.**
I keep repeating this: ***read a good textbook*** on the topic and solve its exercises.
It is beneficial for you as you will know more and will be more convincing.
It is beneficial for her because you will not waste her time
with simple mistakes that you would have noticed yourself if you had read a good textbook.
It is annoying to deal with people who claim to have solved P vs. NP
but repeatedly make basic mistakes that
a good student who has taken an undergraduate course on the topic will not make.
4. **Use your real name.**
Not using your real name indicates that you are trying to avoid suffering any potential negative consequence of your claim being incorrect.
Using your real name indicates that you are sure enough to be ready to suffer potential negative professional consequences if you are mistaken,
so you can be taken more seriously.
If you are not completely sure about your claim do not waste her time.
5. **Don't shirk work. Do your share before expecting help from others.**
If you want her to look at your solution you should spend 10 times more time and effort than she will spend helping you.
For claims about P vs. NP you have to do way more.
6. **You will not get more than one chance.**
Make it count.
If on the first page of your paper she finds a silly mistake or a basic error
(e.g. you do not even know the definitions of P and NP)
then she will be done with your claims forever.
7. **Understand the known obstacles for solving the question and why they do not apply to your solution.**
E.g. if you are claiming P is not equal to NP then you should have a good idea
why relaltivization and natural proofs barriers do not apply to your solution.
Similarly if you are claiming P is equal to NP.
8. **Try to prove simpler more acceptable claims.**
E.g. if you have a proof of P is equal to NP then
you should also have a proof of simpler weaker major results like Factoring is in P.
If you can extract a clean proof for such claims then
you can first try publishing them.
Such results can be much easier to get verified as they are considered more likely.
9. **Make sure your solution is not too strong.**
In other words, make sure it does not contradict other known results.
E.g. if your argument for P is equal to NP would also show that P is equal to ExpTime
(which we know is false)
then you are in trouble
(<NAME> mentions a few more cases of too strong results in his blog post
[Eight Signs A Claimed P≠NP Proof Is Wrong](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=458)).
10. **Check your solution.**
Make sure there are no mistakes.
All steps should easily seen to follow from the previous ones.
Make sure you do not make extra assumptions at any point.
11. **Recheck your solution.**
Put your proof aside completely for two weeks or more.
Do not think about it.
Then go back and recheck it with a fresh mind
as if you were checking someone else's solution.
12. **Build evidence for your claims.**
E.g. if you have a *really efficient* algorithm
(i.e. its running time is a polynomial with small constants)
which you have proven to solve an NP-complete problem then
it should not be a difficult task to beat the state-of-art [SAT-solvers](http://www.satcompetition.org/) or
to break various cryptographic protocols based on hardness conjectures
(those conjectures will be false if P is equal to NP).
13. **Write easy-to-read concise clean abstract and introduction.**
Do not put any unnecessary background/history/philosophical consequences/discussion of importance/general commentary.
It is a famous open problem;
every expert knows its significance.
Save them for your final version.
Right now you should focus on convincing her that your claim is correct.
She first wants an easy-to-read short error-free convincing high-level explanation of your solution.
It should also explain why any known obstacles do not apply to your solution.
It should also contain any other evidence that can support the correctness of your claim. If you fail the reader is not likely to continue reading.
14. **Make sure the rest of your paper matches your abstract and introduction.**
If you fail the reader is not likely to continue reading.
15. **Make sure every detail in your paper is correct.**
Follow the standard structure of papers in the topic.
Check a few famous well-written papers in the area that have solved major open problems.
All definitions should be clear, easy to understand, and rigorous.
Every theorem (lemma, etc.) should be clearly and rigorously stated, and
the proof of each of them should follow their statement.
She should be able to see why each claim in the proof is correct based on the previous steps, definitions, and lemmas without too much trouble.
If you fail the reader is not likely to continue reading.
16. **Have a general expert who *personally* knows you check your solution.**
I am assuming that you do not know personally any expert in the area of the question.
The closer the general expert is to the area of the question the better it will be.
E.g. for P vs. NP, you can ask a mathematician, preferably a theoretical computer scientist.
Opinion of people who are not experts in the topic may not have much weight
but it will make sure you are not making some simple mistake.
Understand that at this point someone
who does not know you personally has no reason to check your solution.
17. **Have *another* general expert who knows you *personally* check your solution.**
Rome was not built in a day.
You have to build confidence in your solution little by little.
Those you convince can become your bridges to reach the experts.
18. **If they are convinced ask them to show your solution to an expert they know.**
E.g. for P vs. NP, ask them to show it to a complexity theorist they know.
At this point you are less likely to be making a basic mistake and
you have good evidence to support your claim.
Your solution now requires the expertise of an expert in the topic.
19. **If she is convinced she will definitely show it to other experts.**
News about any major progress in an area will spread very fast among the experts in that area. Other experts (complexity theorists in the case P vs. NP) will recheck your solution independently.
If they are convinced you will probably get an invitation to submit your paper to a famous journal (something like [JACM](http://jacm.acm.org/) in the case of P vs. NP).
20. **Do not claim to solve a famous open problem more than once.**
As I wrote above,
you will not get more than one chance!
You do not have a right to ask her to see what is wrong with your fixed solution
if you made a mistake.
(The exception is when she *explicitly* asks you to try to fix your solution and
send the fixed version back to her.)
21. **Do not expect an explanation for why your idea cannot work.**
It is unlikely that someone would be able to show formally that an informal idea cannot work.
If the idea is formal enough then the reason that it cannot work can be a new interesting result in itself;
however, proving such results can be even more difficult than solving the original question.
In the case of P vs. NP,
if you are claiming to have an efficient algorithm for an NP-hard problem
you should not expect her to find an input where your algorithm fails.
---
In summary,
**Understand that she is not required to help you.
If she is helping you she is doing so out of generosity.
She has a right to stop it whenever she pleases without any explanation.
Be mindful of her time,
do not waste it for what you could/should have done yourself,
try to make her job in helping you as easy as possible,
and do not do anything that will make her regret trying to help you.**
Upvotes: 8 <issue_comment>username_9: While most of the answers seems to have much confidence in the academic system, I would like to offer another viewpoint.
I think it is in fact much harder for an unknown (to a specific field) to
present a solution to the scientic community than normally expected.
Scientists *do* screw up and sometimes royally.
First example: The infamous Monty Hall problem.
More than 65% of all professional answers to Marilyn (with all sorts of academic
grades including statisticians) strongly rejected their answers, sometimes with
outright jeers and taunts.
This included <NAME> and <NAME>.
So even the majority of experts can fail.
Second example: The also infamous neutrino anomaly.
The interesting thing here is not the error itself, but the reaction on
Arxiv. Anyone who would have dared to offer superluminal theories before
the announcement would have been immediately declared as relativity crank.
After the announcement papers came flooding in offering all sorts of
superluminal theories explaining what we know now to be simply a
bad cable.
What are the problems an unknown may face ?
1. [Arxiv.](http://arxiv.org/help/registerhelp) You need an affiliation from an university or research institute
and/or an endorsement from a know author. Arxiv can revoke or limit your
access without explanation. This requirement also applies to fully qualified
scientists which are working in companies.
2. Journals. Too many people are trying to get their results published in too few
respectable journals. Journals also pretty scale bad, you have to wait a long
time to get published. Lesser known journals may have lower barriers, but you
have the real danger that the contribution is missed. And even the lower
journals may reject the paper.
3. Scientists. The situation is different in various countries, but normally
scientists are overworked and underpaid. They have not the time nor the
resources to review contributions with the very slim chance to get a
scientific jackpot.
If someone thinks the viewpoint is not valid, try just for fun to supply
a normal paper under a pseudonym and the home address.
The only viable option I see is to get contact to the scientists in the field
and try to work with them over the contribution which may be harder than it
sounds. The list provided by username_8 is a good resource to start with.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_10: By attacking your own proof even stronger than the others do.
Seriously, there is a reason why people in your discipline haven't been able to find the answer for centuries. The a priori probability that you are wrong is so high that even when you have created a good looking proof, the a posteriori probability that you are right is way too low. This means that, if you know enough of your own discipline, you should not be convinced that you solved it. Given a problem which has resisted solution for a long time, being convinced that you solved it just because you have a proof you believe in is a sure sign of a crackpot.
So non-crackpot behavior in such a case will be to try to take the proof apart, shoot it down, tear it to pieces from all possible angles. This is what your peers will be doing, and this is what they will expect you to be doing. To forget your pride, your subjective biases, and to be merciless to your own result.
They you only believe you after you have found more ways to disprove your result than they themselves can think of, tried them all, and failed in all of them. And your paper has to clearly show that this is what you did. Anything else will earn you the crackpot title.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_11: From my experience as a graduate student, it seems that researchers who are passionate about their work do approximately the same thing regardless of its **supposed importance**.
**Here's what to do:**
(1) Write up your work as best you can while also discussing the ideas and concepts with your friends, collaborators, co-workers, etc.
(2) Promote your work to other researches, friends, collaborators, etc. But, often people are busy so keep your expectations low and courtesy high.
(3) Pinpoint your audience and seek out the appropriate journals, workshops, and conferences to submit to.
(4) If you have any questions or concerns before submitting, contact someone affiliated with the conference. I've had a positive experience doing this, but sometimes you get ignored.
(5) Be ready for rejection because you are more likely than not to get rejected (even if your results are important, actually especially if they are important).
**Remarks:**
(a) I like to think that the quality of reviews is associated with the clarity of the paper, but I've received some questionable reviews in the past that seem like scattered words that may or may not be related to my work. Just don't hold a grudge and happily try again.
(b) If something's important to you and you're financially capable, then getting rejected once or twice is alright as long as you keep trying to improve your presentation and keep communicating with others.
(c) You don't want to go off the face of the earth and live like a hermit. That's not going to help anyone and especially not you.
(d) Finally, be open minded. People do make mistakes and sometimes the thing that caused the mistake is meaningful.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_12: First of all, "solving famous open problems" does not happen in a vacuum. There must be a good reason why the solution occurred to *you* after having eluded many others.
A possible reason is that you are an expert in some new technique or method of analysis. Then the trick is to establish yourself as an expert in this "new" field. Once you've done that, it is easier to claim that your mastery of this one area enabled you to solve the "unsolved" problem (providing you can demonstrate the relevance of your field). For instance, if you were a pioneer in subatomic physics who discovered that Newtonian physics didn't work in the subatomic area, acceptance of your "proof" would hinge on people's acceptance of you as a subatomic expert.
The other thing is if you have really discovered a new solution to a problem, the implication is that a lot of what is currently written in the field in relation to this problem is wrong, or at least needs to be re-thought. The way to prove yourself is to start identifying at a low level, and rising to progressively higher levels, applications that are now "voided" by your discovery. If you can prove that a whole "stream" of ideas needs to be re-thought, and then present your discovery as a "common" solution, people will take you much more seriously. An example was when people figured out that you could create a new system of "non-Euclidean" geometry just by changing a few assumptions.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_13: Some very important papers have been rejected first, some were not even published.
If you are sufficiently sure about your result, and want to set a date for your discovery, and are not afraid that it sometimes takes time to demonstrate and convince people of the correctness, put your paper online on some [open archive](http://arxiv.org/), while you work at an hopefully published version.
Some readers may discover a flaw, and perhaps help you publish.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_14: *Prepare for your fearlessness. You will need to use it frequently.*
---
Let's say our goal is to accomplish [username_8's list](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18570/14341). Assuming he has some experience in academic research, then each of these statements are equivalent:
* His priority is not really to have his work accepted, but actually about not being misunderstood (the actual premise of the question is about having productive feedback)
* For him she is just stating the obvious (the upper part of the list), and telling him to do things he is already doing (the lower part)
* She needs him to accomplish the list, but he cannot do that if she accuses him for doing the thing he didn't do
* The problem of convincing her that he is not a crank is reduced to the emotional and misunderstanding problems
I think that in all discussions about cranks the overwhelming assumption is that he is hubris. This is, unfortunately, one-sided, because the actual emotions should be **guilt** and **frustration** . He is guilty for worrying he is hubris, and frustrated for her misjudge that he is hubris. With all my respect, think most experts lack the necessary experience to give an efficient advice.
Because this answer doesn't attempt to answer the problems that most established experts want to address, it is basically a [frame challenge](https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2511/86) answer.
The rest of the answer is just an elaboration on how to deal with emotional reactions and misunderstandings in each specific case. Here is the table of content for this answer:
* Dealing with your emotions
* Dealing with their reactions
* Other problems
* For those who want to help
* Links
You can also read an answer for a generalized question ([what challenges one may face during the project](https://academia.stackexchange.com/revisions/126941/1), not just how to convince the experts). I will assume that your platform to get feedback on your work is Reddit, but it's not a big deal.
Dealing with your emotions
==========================
First, there are two things to begin with:
* Epistemologically, it seems that in order to solve a hard problem, you need to be aware to the solution *a priori*
Epistemology is a field in philosophy studying about the nature of knowledge and how we acquire it. I haven't read much about this though.
* Psychologically, when you are aware of yourself, these [self-conscious emotions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-conscious_emotions) will evoke: pride, shame, guilt, and embarrassment
Because doing research is to prove that you are wrong before proving you are right, a natural thing when you think you know something is have skepticism about yourself. So alongside with the specific problem you are working with you will ask these self-conscious questions:
* Am I claiming a thing that I haven't proved it yet?
* Am I claiming that I know better than the experts, when I lack formal education?
Since the answers to those questions should be yes, they will evoke self-conscious emotions, drifting you from the one and only thing you should focus on: the problem you are working at. You will enter a feedback loop of questioning yourself: the answer for those questions is the reason you questioning yourself at the first place. The real answer lies in the work you are researching, not about whether you are sane or not.
To deal with **fantasy** (a kind of pride), try to imagine how a life of a famous person would actually be. For every kind of success you are dreaming of, there are people who have already got it. So say you dream about the Nobel prize, ask yourself this question: how did Einstein live with his fame and money? When you realize that in fact all famous persons are annoyed for being famous, then your fantasy is cut. By being able to put yourself into their shoes, you can detach to your emotions, and get back to reality. At that time, if you still wonder what you will do when you become famous, then the only thing you want is a dark and quiet place to have a dreamless sleep through it.
Please be aware that you may have [messiah complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_complex). You may not have grandiose delusion, but the thinking that (1) only you can provide a solution that no one seems to see, and (2) in other to deliver that solution, you have to overcome the skepticism regardless how harsh it is, can develop this complex. People may also accuse you for performing [gaslighting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting) as well. All of these will make the guilt about yourself even stronger.
To distinguish them with true psychological problems, whose root is insecurity, I will call them as "intellectual messiah complex" and "intellectual gaslighting".
Because the fear that you are delusional only continue when in fact you see that you still have fantasy, so when you have successfully cut it, then the fear itself will disappear. You will not feel shame, guilt or embarrass about your work anymore.
In general, the emotions are only intense when your research is still at the vague phase. The more knowledge you acquire, the less frequent they show up.
Dealing with their reactions
============================
In my experience, there are these types of unproductive response: labeling and sarcasm.
Labeling
--------
When they tell that you are crank, just give them this [crackpot index](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html), list all the points that may apply to you, and explain how they are wrong. If they accuse you for being arrogant, tell them that confidently walking into a storm with a smile is different to seeking for attention. If they think that you are insane (walking into a storm with a smile is insane obviously), it would be much easier if you can have the conversation face-to-face. Only by seeing how your eyes are determinate but your mind is not closed at all, that they can assume that you are not. Don't be embarrass for telling them how you have prepared for the project.
Let's discuss more about insanity. I think it is best to "help" them reach the conclusion that you are insane, because it is no longer a label on your behavior, but a label on your rationality. When you reach that stage, they will have a strong motivation to continue the conversation, and your evidences will be listened carefully. If you can create a cognitive dissonance in their mind, then their pattern-matching will be silent, and they will not be locked in their perspective anymore.
Respond to their labelling (crank, arrogant, insane, stupid, high, bias, spam, word salad, not even wrong, woowoo, pseudoscience, time- wasting, etc.) by giving the definition of the word and show why it doesn't apply to you. Have a note listing all your prepared answers for each label, so that you don't need to rely on your poor memory. To deal with skepticism, you need to **immediately** form **perfect combination of words,** and your brain will put you down. (More details later.)
Sarcasm
-------
If they simply making some jokes, it may be true that it is actually funny. In that case, perhaps it is best to **continue the joke**. Seeing how you actually enjoy their jokes will make them see that it doesn't affect you at all. Like if you are a fat person, then joking on your fatness will make them see that you are aware of your shortcoming, and it's just that you don't have time to solve it yet. If you are a blind, then having a joke involving your disability will make the non-blinds astonishingly surprised. They will perceived you as invincible now.
If it's really hurt and you can't think of a clever thing to say, then perhaps it's best to remind them that they are in a place that mocking is not acceptable. Like a smack down show, they literally see you as the arrogant prideful guy who need to be taught. Note down links to comedic shows, where making fun of others is the goal, like WWE shows, higaniga conspiracy theory videos, or mocking subreddits, and show them how hilarious their actions are. For example, you can say:
>
> Wow, r/Buddhism becomes r/WWE now?
>
>
>
Or you can invite an authority to deal with this:
>
> I don't think this behavior is appropriate. I'll report the mods/I believe others don't find this appropriate as well.
>
>
>
In short, be clever when dealing with ad hominem. The problem is that you can't be clever when your mind is clouded with anger. So you need to prepare for clever moments. When you can do that, then their next response will likely be productive again.
But in all, don't interact with them because you feel misunderstood, but because of the knowledge they have. Try to convert questions about your identity/self (e.g. "am I crank?") to question about definition (e.g. "what is crank?"). Show how you possess a rigid body of knowledge of what they are trying to convey, with phrases like "psychologically speaking", "what you are talking about is called \_\_\_\_\_\_ in philosophy", "in the field of informal logic", etc. **They are relevant interesting academic fields that they don't know of.** If you think that they have knowledge on what you need, only focus on that, and ignore any unreasonable critique at you.
When you have solved all of the emotional problems, then 90% of the conversations now are productive. But there will still other problems.
Other problems
==============
Memorial problem
----------------
You may have wasted so much time to read about crackpotism, conspiracy theories, delusion, etc. You may have wasted so much time on conversations that at first people strongly disagree with you, but after some talks it turns out that they don't really disagree with what you actual mean, and all of this is just misunderstanding. Take note on every evidence that that make you feel you are on the right track. Don't let your research about your sanity gone.
The problem of being unable to explain yourself is because of [tacit knowledge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge) and the [tip of the tongue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_of_the_tonguehttps:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_of_the_tongue) phenomenon. When you have a very strong evidence that you are not a crank, then after a week or so what is left is just a feeling that you are not. Lacking the evidence, you will be dragged into the loop again. You need to immediately make a perfect combination of words to get out of this.
Misunderstanding
----------------
Even when miracle happens (they spend their time and energy to analyze what you say), there will be a very strange phenomenon that you just can't understand: you always feel that they implicitly agree with what you say, but you two can't settle to a consensus, and thus just going circular.
I think, all conflicts in the world come down to the problem of priority. Usually the situation is like this: person 1 can see that problem A is more important than problem B, and person 2 see that B is more important than A. The problem is that, most of the time both A and B have to be solved together, or else none of them can be achieved. But because both insist that their point is more important, both will miss and pass each other point. Both will feel the conversation is unproductive, and sooner or later one will drop it.
When this happens, it is just a blind leading a blind, or worse, a blind fight. Investigating the nature of this phenomenon and how to deal with it is my research interest. **My advice to deal with misunderstanding is to use negation, not explanation.**
Egocentricism
-------------
[Egocentrism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egocentrism) is not about being selfish or have a huge ego, but about being unable to differentiate your mind with others' minds. When you find something interesting, then you will automatically assign that others will find it interesting as well, and will be confused when in fact they don't really care. However you remind yourself about this, this tendency will still activate.
Don't assume that they will assume that their feedback is wrong. You may be open minded, and they are too, but in practice both of you can't. If you assume that they are curious to know why they are wrong (a kind of trust), then you will tend to give explanation. But in fact they just see that you are defensive. They accuse you for things you have never done, and then either passively drop the conversation or actively block you from further explanation. I term this as "intellectual [silent treatment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_treatment)".
Seeking feedback
----------------
When an idea pop up and you feel wonderful, your gut will still tell you that there are much more fields you need to read carefully. Although you don't mind spending more effort on researching, you just want to ask for feedback because it would be much more efficient. Your egocentricism assumes that people will get what you get too. If you want to finish the project as soon as possible to move on to other important things, then your urge to share it will be higher. But STOP! Posting it now will only receive harsh, unreasonable critiques. Listen to your gut, and read all the fields you need first. Good questions only come when your mind is in the ignorance stage, which is the result of understanding the field as it is.
Having said that, at some point you will see that there is no point to ask questions, and you just want them to read your work as it is. If you have the necessary requirements (literary review, inline citation, methodology, etc.), then you can now submit to an academic journal, and you don't have to be afraid for being misunderstood as a crank anymore.
Receiving feedback
------------------
In case your first and foremost audience of your work is the popular audience, making your writing style necessarily un-academic, then the situation will be complicated, because your most important audience is the academic one. (Yes, sometimes the important thing is not the one you should prioritize – see the Eisenhower method.) Because your work has to serve two different kinds of audience, who have different background, knowledge and expectation, you will have mixed feelings when receiving their feedback:
* Popular audience cannot provide useful feedback, but their excitements indicate that you have touched a big problem that they are looking for
* More knowledgeable readers or even academics from distant fields can give useful knowledge, and can play the role of initial gatekeepers. But once they say good luck to you, you know that they cannot help you anymore
* Academics from relevant fields will feel it's vague or wishy washy, because they expect your work to truly be presented in academic form. But if you explicitly say that this is just the phase to capture what you have in your mind, then their attitude will flip 180 degrees
Let's talk more about the last point. In your mind, having no literary review, methodology or dataset is not important, because you already accept that you don't have one. Therefore, you must say explicitly that the article is just a cursory research to sketch a roadmap for your study, and list all of your shortcomings as best as you can remember. Without this part their expectation will lock their minds, and any of your explanation from now on will be perceived as defensive.
For those who want to help
==========================
Here is my advice for those who want to help. Hopefully it can reduce wasted effort, and bring you maximum happiness:
* Always assume that the person you are talking at has something interesting that you can learn
* Be conscious that although they may not know what they are talking about, you may not know what they really want to convey either
* Confirm their correct observations before address your concerns
* Use [Socratic questioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_questioning)
Don't feel threaten when they show signs of crankiness. The fact that they accept to be labeled as crank indicates that they have something more important to do. Like you, they are rational creatures, and they have already run cost-benefit analysis before starting the project. When you want to give them advices, you may want to frame it like this:
* I don't think there is another option to do X / The best way to do this is Y. But since it seems that you know this too, can you explain why you don't think it suits you?
* I don't think you understand concept Z as it is. In my opinion, Z is about a, b, or c, and perhaps c is closer to what you mean. Is that correct?
You may want to learn about conceptual metaphors if you want to know why sometimes serious ideas are hilariously crazy. I recommend the book *Metaphors we live by* by Lakoff and Johnson.
Links
=====
Kletische has some good articles about this:
* [How to Handle False Accusations in Everyday Life](https://influenceadvice.com/handle-false-accusations-everyday-life/)
* [Why You Win When You Forgive](https://influenceadvice.com/win-when-you-forgive/)
* [How to Handle, and Grow From, Hateful Criticism](https://kletische.com/handle-grow-hateful-criticism%2F)
You can also read my research: [A theory of perspective](http://lyminhnhat.com/2018/12/21/a-theory-of-perspective/?utm_source=Stack%20Exchange&utm_medium=Academia&utm_campaign=Perspective&utm_medium=crank). It discusses about various things, two of which are intellectual betrayal, and cold gaze, which are relevant to this answer.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_15: Obviously, it will depend on the context of your discovery but one way to go around is to make an application based on the implications of your ideas. E.g. if you proved p = np, then go make a webpage and dare people to test your application to solve any np problem of any size in seconds. This way it will take them seconds or minutes to figure out if you're a crank or a genius. This approach won't work in all cases, e.g. if you actually proved that p != np.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/25 | 13,138 | 53,431 | <issue_start>username_0: I received the following comment from a journal reviewer:
>
> There is a need to conduct a research-based intervention program which
> compare between other solutions and your solution. Such research can
> provide evidence and support to the importance of this solution over
> others.
>
>
>
What does he mean by "research-based intervention program"?<issue_comment>username_1: If your interpretation of events is: "I have a heartbreaking work of staggering genius and the only obstacle to acceptance is that I am not well known and the elites are blocking my work", then you're unlikely to get good advice on what to do here or elsewhere.
The problem, as Raphael indicates, is that while it's *possible* that this interpretation is correct, it's far more likely that in fact your result does NOT solve the major open problem that you think it does.
Once you admit that this possibility exists, then many steps present themselves, all listed in the very good links provided. Reaching out to people who might comment on your work, looking at the literature to see if approaches like yours have been tried before and have failed, seeing if your solution also solves related (simpler) problems, and so on.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Regardless of whether the work is correct or not, the following statement applies:
**The burden of proof is on the author to convince the reader of the result.**
The community (e.g., editors, reviewers) has no responsibility to evaluate your work to your satisfaction. If the reviewers made a good faith effort to read your paper and were not convinced, then you must make your argument more convincing.
(This does not mean, make a few trivial edits and resubmit. This means, prove your results so thoroughly and in such excruciating detail, and with such demonstrably excellent understanding of the problem context, that they become inarguable. Then figure out a way to express the results in a convincing way.)
If in the process of doing so you find an error, well, you'd be in good company.
Upvotes: 8 <issue_comment>username_3: What does your advisor say about all this?
If she really believes you have solved this major problem, she should be moving mountains to help you publish and disseminate it. (It sounds like her name is on it too, so she has an even greater incentive.) But you've used the rather lukewarm phrasing that she "accepts" it. Better get her completely on board first, or get her to explain in more detail her reservations (which may indeed turn out to reveal fatal flaws).
The advantage you have over the average crank is that, as a student, you already have ties to the scientific community, through your advisor. **Take advantage of this.** Once you and your advisor are satisfied that your manuscript is of the best possible quality (see ff254's answer), post it on arXiv, and circulate. Your advisor surely knows experts in the field, and should have enough reputation that she can get them interested in it.
I'm not sure about your field, but in mathematics, this currently tends to be the way that the community handles solutions to major open problems. You don't just submit it to *Annals*, have the referees approve it, and then wait a few months until everyone gets their issue of *Annals* in the mail and is astonished. Instead, you get the community to study it *first*. You convince a few experts that it is plausible enough to be worth their attention, and they look at it. Either they find a critical flaw right away (the most common case), or they find a lesser flaw that you or someone else fixes, and maybe, gradually, a consensus develops that it is probably right. *That's* when you send it to *Annals*.
One thing that worries me in what you wrote is:
>
> It breaks what most people believe or what they have already proven...
>
>
>
**Which is it?** The distinction is crucial. If it contradicts people's intuition, that raises the bar a little, but scientists are used to being surprised. If it contradicts something previously proved, that raises the bar a lot. It puts on you the burden of not only showing that your work is right, but showing specifically why the previously accepted work was actually wrong. (You can't just say "Mine is right, therefore theirs must be wrong.") You didn't say anything about having done that. (And if you *can't* find a flaw in the previous work, then your claim is in fact along the lines of "Mathematics is inconsistent". The bar on *that* one is more or less on the moon.)
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: Some advice is to very carefully check that the proofs are correct, ask one's supervisor for advice, and seek third opinions. Perhaps the supervisor has colleagues in the research area who would be willing to read the draft and offer concrete feedback.
If the journal submitted to is good, yet the reviewers did not give any useful feedback at all, then there is almost certainly a problem with the abstract and introduction.
The abstract and introduction should make clear the new idea that allows this "breakthrough". Presumably many have approached this problem in the past and failed; there may be widespread beliefs about why it is difficult to prove or perhaps even known "barriers" to attempted proofs. The abstract and introduction should clearly and briefly mention why such beliefs, objections, or barriers do not apply or how they were overcome.
In short, the abstract and introduction must give the skeptical reader reason to believe the paper could be correct, given the reader's background knowledge. If this is done, I would hope that reviewers would at least mention why they do not believe the result.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: Your question has some issues. Given some of the (now-deleted) questions you have asked on other SE sites in the last few days, I have some reservations about whether your question is being asked in good faith, but taken on its own merits it is a reasonable question so I will try to answer it.
The main issue is that, even in asking this relatively simple question, your writing is far from clear. If you cannot write clearly in this situation, your chances of writing up a difficult piece of mathematics or theoretical computer science are less than good. For instance:
>
> His/Her supervisor(s) accept the work and they published it in a highly known journal and they get rejected.
>
>
>
Laying aside issues of subject/verb agreement and consistency of tense, the entire sentence doesn't make sense: you can't publish a paper and get rejected.
>
> It breaks what most people believe
>
>
>
I don't know what it means to "break what most people believe".
>
> or what they have already proven,
>
>
>
What? Are you saying that your proof contradicts other proven results? Taken literally, that would mean that you have shown mathematics to be inconsistent. In practice this could only mean that if your result is correct then some previously published work is incorrect. If that's the case then you need to be very clear about that and explain the flaws in the earlier work. It distresses me that you don't really seem to believe this but are just throwing it off as loose language.
>
> i.e., He/She solves the P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem.
>
>
>
Solving an open problem would not "break what people have already proven"....that's what it means for the problem to be open. Also saying "P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem" is a strange bit of coyness: there is no other problem in theoretical computer science (and very few to none in mathematics as a whole) which is "like" P vs. NP. So it doesn't make sense to give that as an example. It's like saying "i.e., he found the Holy Grail or some other famous cup".
In other questions you have spoken specifically about having a proof of P vs. NP and then upon questioning have retreated from this. This sort of vacillation about what you have done is a red flag of "crankiness" that will make professionals wary.
>
> The reviewers strongly reject his/her work with no justification and they said that the result must be wrong.
>
>
>
Saying that the result must be wrong is not just a justification for rejection, it's the *best* justification. No professional reviewer will say something is wrong lightly. Almost any reviewer who says this will point to at least one specific error. If they do not, then in practice it almost certainly means that the entire document did not make enough sense to them to be more specific.
>
> If your advisor accepts the work, the reviewers reject the work without even explain the mistakes (it is the "best" journal in his/her domain) then what he/she must do?
>
>
>
If you submit a paper to the top journal in your field claiming a solution to the top problem in your field, and your paper does not make sense or does not evince even a correct understanding of the problem, then the editors are likely not to want to spend much time in response. On the other hand, if you are sincerely interested in getting their expertise, it seems reasonable to write back very politely and ask for more specifics about the error. If your response is in any way argumentative then you risk the editorial staff thinking that you will keep hounding them *ad infinitum*, and at some point they *have to* stop replying. So you should write back saying that you are not considering resubmitting the paper to that journal but for your own progress it would be extremely helpful to know what is wrong with it. You could also mention that your supervisor found the paper to be correct.
In fact you could be getting more help on this from your supervisor. If you have really "solved P vs. NP problem or any other well known open problem" and your supervisor believes your solution to be correct, why isn't your supervisor moving heaven and earth to be sure your work is getting the attention it deserves? That doesn't add up. The two possible explanations seem to be (i) your supervisor is being too polite with you: s/he does not actually believe that you have solved P vs. NP; and (ii) your advisor's imprimatur does not carry any weight in the community whatsoever. The latter unfortunately means his/her opinion on the correctness of your work is not worth very much.
A good way to find out whether it's (i), (ii) or -- I do admit that anything is possible! perhaps the top journal in your field is unfairly ignoring your revolutionary work -- is to seek your advisor's help in getting another faculty member to evaluate the work, preferably someone in the department that you can speak to recently.
Finally, you seem to have some real worries that if an unknown person solves a famous problem then it somehow doesn't count. This is really not the way academia works, provided the unknown person is capable of presenting the work in a way which makes sense to the experts (and if not, what a shame, but what else could one possibly expect?). Have you heard of the recent example of [<NAME>](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitang_Zhang)? Zhang was a non-tenure-track lecturer at the University of New Hampshire when he stunned the mathematical world by proving the existence of bounded prime gaps. He submitted his work to the top mathematical journal...and by all accounts they accepted it *with unusual speed*. In other words, they received a paper from someone they had probably never heard of, looked at it quickly and saw that it was a plausible attack on a huge open problem, and as a result they sprung into action much more rapidly and thoroughly than for most submissions they get. This is an amazing story, but a true one, and it shows how the community responds to a *real* situation like this.
Upvotes: 10 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_6: May I add to username_3's comprehensive answer that, if your work shakes or shatters the commonly held views in your community, then it is very important that you reconcile those views with yours, by which I mean: show exactly where the community is "wrong" or "not exactly right" and why. Offer counterexamples, predictions, all you can.
Relativity would be nowhere if it didn't reduce to good old Newtonean mechanics where the latter performed perfectly!
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_7: Despite what people will say it is true that journals will reject papers using author profiling without a proper review. It is hard to say how many papers are rejected this way but Elsevier [say that they reject](http://www.elsevier.com/connect/8-reasons-i-rejected-your-article) 30 to 50 percent of papers without a review for other "technical reasons". See also [this paper](http://econ.la.psu.edu/~kkrishna/Papers/The_inside_scoop.pdf) about how editors can save time by looking at author attributes such as affiliation to reject papers without looking at them.
I have personal experience of this because I recently [made significant progress](http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.8217) on a well known 100 year old open problem after experts in the field had said that future progress was likely to be very slow. The journal I submitted the paper to rejected it as soon as I confirmed that I had no affiliation. There was no reviewer report and they did not give any specific reason. I had complied with all their technical requirements for submission.
However, I pointed out to them that according to the [code of conduct](http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_1.pdf) of the [committee on publication ethics](http://publicationethics.org/) to which the journal claims to adhere "Editorial decisions should not be affected by the origins of the manuscript" and "Journals should have a declared mechanism for authors to appeal against editorial decisions." To my surprise they responded after a delay to tell me that they would look at it again.
It is true that there are many claimed resolutions of problems such as P vs NP that can be dismissed at a moments glance. This can be done because there are well understood reasons why these problem are hard and a solution would need to address that. Many claimed proofs of open problems by non-academics descend quickly into non-standard language that makes it hard to even address why they are wrong so they are just ignored by the community. It is up to the authors to make sure they communicate their ideas correctly.
If you do have a solution to an open problem my advice is to submit to an open repository such as arXiv. If you can't get an endorser use viXra or figshare (full disclosure: I am viXra admin) Do not pay attention to negative things said about viXra. It's purpose is just to give you an independent time-stamp and an archived copy you can point to. It does not attempt to review or give your work credibility in any way. The last thing you should do is submit to journals or send to experts without having a verified public copy because if it really is a breakthrough there is a real risk of plagiarism that can only be averted by having a prior copy archived.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: First, make sure you are not really a crank before trying to convince others.
Read [these common characteristics of cranks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_%28person%29#Common_characteristics_of_cranks).
If they apply to you then get professional help.
For the rest of the answer
I will assume that you have really solved a famous open problem.
In the following
"he" refers to a typical non-expert claiming to have a solution for a famous open problem and
"she" refers to an expert in the topic.
1. **There is no easy shortcut for you!**
If you are looking for a simple easy shortcut to get your solution verified by an expert
then this answer is not for you
and I can assure you what you want is not going to happen.
2. **Understand the magnitude of your claim!**
E.g. If you are claiming to have a proof of P is not equal to NP
then you are the guy who is claiming to have a design for a rocket
that can be built with the currently technology and resources
to take a human to Andromeda and back safely
while experts are having hard time sending a human to mars.
If you are claiming to have a proof of P is equal to NP
then you are the guy who is claiming to have a time travel machine.
3. **Understand why experts are reluctant to directly engage non-experts.**
Many experts would be interested to know about any major progress in their field.
E.g. there are complexity theorists who
do read *every* P vs. NP related paper posted on [arXiv](http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/ti:+AND+P+NP/0/1/0/all/0/1)
(arXiv has a very lenient acceptance policy regarding P vs. NP claims).
They will definitely let other experts know
if they notice something interesting.
But
* **You are not the only one with such claims.**
There are thousands of people who regularly make such claims.
* **All previous ones suffered from trivial issues no expert would have made.**
It is your job to show you are not one of them.
* **Her time is valuable.**
For most it is not really monetary.
But I think giving some numbers would be helpful.
In my university a graduate student is paid over $40/hour
to mark simple undergraduate assignments.
This is nothing compared to what an expert might charge for consulting in the industry.
* **Non-experts often lack basic skills and knowledge to understand her replies.**
E.g. he lacks mathematical maturity,
he does not know basic definitions and terminology, etc.
It is not uncommon that an expert tells a non-expert
what he has is not a proof.
She does not mean the proof is incorrect,
she means it is not even a proof in the sense that
an apple is not a proof.
He does not understand when he is told it is "[not even wrong!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong)". To make him understand her reply
she would have to teach him those required skills and knowledge,
too much work just to convince him he does not have a solution.
Often he is not patient nor interested in learning (e.g. reading a textbook),
he is only interested in a confirmation of what he believes to be a solution.
Way too much work in that case.
* **It is often impossible to satisfy him.**
Because of the points mentioned above,
he often insists on the validity of his claim
even after she tells him it is not.
At other times where he understands the reply
he considers it a simple easy-to-fix error,
not a fundamental one.
He tries to fix it and get her verify it.
This leads to back and forth.
* **He underestimates the required time and effort on her part to answer his claim.**
He thinks it is a simple easy job for her to answer his claim.
E.g. he expects her to give him a counterexample where his algorithm fails.
Finding a counterexample for an algorithm is a very difficult task
(as anyone who has marked undergraduate algorithms or complexity theory assignments would know).
Finding an explanation why an idea is fundamentally flawed and cannot work
is even more difficult.
4. **He does not understand it is not a puzzle.**
She is not interested in the question just for its own sake.
She expects the solution to the question will be accompanied with
major advances in her field.
E.g. complexity theorists do not care about P vs. NP just for its own sake.
They expect the solution for P vs. NP will come with
major progress in our understanding about the nature of efficient computation and
its limitations.
Often he does not understand this.
He thinks of the question as a game or puzzle that he thinks he has won and that is it.
This attitude is frustrating for experts.
---
Now here are some tips:
1. **Be humble.**
It is much easier to get her to have a look at your solution
if you are genuinely humble and eager to learn and accepting
if you are told that you are wrong.
2. **Make sure you understand what is required to solve the question.**
E.g. understand that a program that seems to efficiently solve an NP-complete problem is not a proof,
understand that an idea does not make a proof,
make sure you understand the definitions and terminology,
etc.
3. **Know the basics.**
I keep repeating this: ***read a good textbook*** on the topic and solve its exercises.
It is beneficial for you as you will know more and will be more convincing.
It is beneficial for her because you will not waste her time
with simple mistakes that you would have noticed yourself if you had read a good textbook.
It is annoying to deal with people who claim to have solved P vs. NP
but repeatedly make basic mistakes that
a good student who has taken an undergraduate course on the topic will not make.
4. **Use your real name.**
Not using your real name indicates that you are trying to avoid suffering any potential negative consequence of your claim being incorrect.
Using your real name indicates that you are sure enough to be ready to suffer potential negative professional consequences if you are mistaken,
so you can be taken more seriously.
If you are not completely sure about your claim do not waste her time.
5. **Don't shirk work. Do your share before expecting help from others.**
If you want her to look at your solution you should spend 10 times more time and effort than she will spend helping you.
For claims about P vs. NP you have to do way more.
6. **You will not get more than one chance.**
Make it count.
If on the first page of your paper she finds a silly mistake or a basic error
(e.g. you do not even know the definitions of P and NP)
then she will be done with your claims forever.
7. **Understand the known obstacles for solving the question and why they do not apply to your solution.**
E.g. if you are claiming P is not equal to NP then you should have a good idea
why relaltivization and natural proofs barriers do not apply to your solution.
Similarly if you are claiming P is equal to NP.
8. **Try to prove simpler more acceptable claims.**
E.g. if you have a proof of P is equal to NP then
you should also have a proof of simpler weaker major results like Factoring is in P.
If you can extract a clean proof for such claims then
you can first try publishing them.
Such results can be much easier to get verified as they are considered more likely.
9. **Make sure your solution is not too strong.**
In other words, make sure it does not contradict other known results.
E.g. if your argument for P is equal to NP would also show that P is equal to ExpTime
(which we know is false)
then you are in trouble
(<NAME> mentions a few more cases of too strong results in his blog post
[Eight Signs A Claimed P≠NP Proof Is Wrong](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=458)).
10. **Check your solution.**
Make sure there are no mistakes.
All steps should easily seen to follow from the previous ones.
Make sure you do not make extra assumptions at any point.
11. **Recheck your solution.**
Put your proof aside completely for two weeks or more.
Do not think about it.
Then go back and recheck it with a fresh mind
as if you were checking someone else's solution.
12. **Build evidence for your claims.**
E.g. if you have a *really efficient* algorithm
(i.e. its running time is a polynomial with small constants)
which you have proven to solve an NP-complete problem then
it should not be a difficult task to beat the state-of-art [SAT-solvers](http://www.satcompetition.org/) or
to break various cryptographic protocols based on hardness conjectures
(those conjectures will be false if P is equal to NP).
13. **Write easy-to-read concise clean abstract and introduction.**
Do not put any unnecessary background/history/philosophical consequences/discussion of importance/general commentary.
It is a famous open problem;
every expert knows its significance.
Save them for your final version.
Right now you should focus on convincing her that your claim is correct.
She first wants an easy-to-read short error-free convincing high-level explanation of your solution.
It should also explain why any known obstacles do not apply to your solution.
It should also contain any other evidence that can support the correctness of your claim. If you fail the reader is not likely to continue reading.
14. **Make sure the rest of your paper matches your abstract and introduction.**
If you fail the reader is not likely to continue reading.
15. **Make sure every detail in your paper is correct.**
Follow the standard structure of papers in the topic.
Check a few famous well-written papers in the area that have solved major open problems.
All definitions should be clear, easy to understand, and rigorous.
Every theorem (lemma, etc.) should be clearly and rigorously stated, and
the proof of each of them should follow their statement.
She should be able to see why each claim in the proof is correct based on the previous steps, definitions, and lemmas without too much trouble.
If you fail the reader is not likely to continue reading.
16. **Have a general expert who *personally* knows you check your solution.**
I am assuming that you do not know personally any expert in the area of the question.
The closer the general expert is to the area of the question the better it will be.
E.g. for P vs. NP, you can ask a mathematician, preferably a theoretical computer scientist.
Opinion of people who are not experts in the topic may not have much weight
but it will make sure you are not making some simple mistake.
Understand that at this point someone
who does not know you personally has no reason to check your solution.
17. **Have *another* general expert who knows you *personally* check your solution.**
Rome was not built in a day.
You have to build confidence in your solution little by little.
Those you convince can become your bridges to reach the experts.
18. **If they are convinced ask them to show your solution to an expert they know.**
E.g. for P vs. NP, ask them to show it to a complexity theorist they know.
At this point you are less likely to be making a basic mistake and
you have good evidence to support your claim.
Your solution now requires the expertise of an expert in the topic.
19. **If she is convinced she will definitely show it to other experts.**
News about any major progress in an area will spread very fast among the experts in that area. Other experts (complexity theorists in the case P vs. NP) will recheck your solution independently.
If they are convinced you will probably get an invitation to submit your paper to a famous journal (something like [JACM](http://jacm.acm.org/) in the case of P vs. NP).
20. **Do not claim to solve a famous open problem more than once.**
As I wrote above,
you will not get more than one chance!
You do not have a right to ask her to see what is wrong with your fixed solution
if you made a mistake.
(The exception is when she *explicitly* asks you to try to fix your solution and
send the fixed version back to her.)
21. **Do not expect an explanation for why your idea cannot work.**
It is unlikely that someone would be able to show formally that an informal idea cannot work.
If the idea is formal enough then the reason that it cannot work can be a new interesting result in itself;
however, proving such results can be even more difficult than solving the original question.
In the case of P vs. NP,
if you are claiming to have an efficient algorithm for an NP-hard problem
you should not expect her to find an input where your algorithm fails.
---
In summary,
**Understand that she is not required to help you.
If she is helping you she is doing so out of generosity.
She has a right to stop it whenever she pleases without any explanation.
Be mindful of her time,
do not waste it for what you could/should have done yourself,
try to make her job in helping you as easy as possible,
and do not do anything that will make her regret trying to help you.**
Upvotes: 8 <issue_comment>username_9: While most of the answers seems to have much confidence in the academic system, I would like to offer another viewpoint.
I think it is in fact much harder for an unknown (to a specific field) to
present a solution to the scientic community than normally expected.
Scientists *do* screw up and sometimes royally.
First example: The infamous Monty Hall problem.
More than 65% of all professional answers to Marilyn (with all sorts of academic
grades including statisticians) strongly rejected their answers, sometimes with
outright jeers and taunts.
This included <NAME> and <NAME>.
So even the majority of experts can fail.
Second example: The also infamous neutrino anomaly.
The interesting thing here is not the error itself, but the reaction on
Arxiv. Anyone who would have dared to offer superluminal theories before
the announcement would have been immediately declared as relativity crank.
After the announcement papers came flooding in offering all sorts of
superluminal theories explaining what we know now to be simply a
bad cable.
What are the problems an unknown may face ?
1. [Arxiv.](http://arxiv.org/help/registerhelp) You need an affiliation from an university or research institute
and/or an endorsement from a know author. Arxiv can revoke or limit your
access without explanation. This requirement also applies to fully qualified
scientists which are working in companies.
2. Journals. Too many people are trying to get their results published in too few
respectable journals. Journals also pretty scale bad, you have to wait a long
time to get published. Lesser known journals may have lower barriers, but you
have the real danger that the contribution is missed. And even the lower
journals may reject the paper.
3. Scientists. The situation is different in various countries, but normally
scientists are overworked and underpaid. They have not the time nor the
resources to review contributions with the very slim chance to get a
scientific jackpot.
If someone thinks the viewpoint is not valid, try just for fun to supply
a normal paper under a pseudonym and the home address.
The only viable option I see is to get contact to the scientists in the field
and try to work with them over the contribution which may be harder than it
sounds. The list provided by username_8 is a good resource to start with.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_10: By attacking your own proof even stronger than the others do.
Seriously, there is a reason why people in your discipline haven't been able to find the answer for centuries. The a priori probability that you are wrong is so high that even when you have created a good looking proof, the a posteriori probability that you are right is way too low. This means that, if you know enough of your own discipline, you should not be convinced that you solved it. Given a problem which has resisted solution for a long time, being convinced that you solved it just because you have a proof you believe in is a sure sign of a crackpot.
So non-crackpot behavior in such a case will be to try to take the proof apart, shoot it down, tear it to pieces from all possible angles. This is what your peers will be doing, and this is what they will expect you to be doing. To forget your pride, your subjective biases, and to be merciless to your own result.
They you only believe you after you have found more ways to disprove your result than they themselves can think of, tried them all, and failed in all of them. And your paper has to clearly show that this is what you did. Anything else will earn you the crackpot title.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_11: From my experience as a graduate student, it seems that researchers who are passionate about their work do approximately the same thing regardless of its **supposed importance**.
**Here's what to do:**
(1) Write up your work as best you can while also discussing the ideas and concepts with your friends, collaborators, co-workers, etc.
(2) Promote your work to other researches, friends, collaborators, etc. But, often people are busy so keep your expectations low and courtesy high.
(3) Pinpoint your audience and seek out the appropriate journals, workshops, and conferences to submit to.
(4) If you have any questions or concerns before submitting, contact someone affiliated with the conference. I've had a positive experience doing this, but sometimes you get ignored.
(5) Be ready for rejection because you are more likely than not to get rejected (even if your results are important, actually especially if they are important).
**Remarks:**
(a) I like to think that the quality of reviews is associated with the clarity of the paper, but I've received some questionable reviews in the past that seem like scattered words that may or may not be related to my work. Just don't hold a grudge and happily try again.
(b) If something's important to you and you're financially capable, then getting rejected once or twice is alright as long as you keep trying to improve your presentation and keep communicating with others.
(c) You don't want to go off the face of the earth and live like a hermit. That's not going to help anyone and especially not you.
(d) Finally, be open minded. People do make mistakes and sometimes the thing that caused the mistake is meaningful.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_12: First of all, "solving famous open problems" does not happen in a vacuum. There must be a good reason why the solution occurred to *you* after having eluded many others.
A possible reason is that you are an expert in some new technique or method of analysis. Then the trick is to establish yourself as an expert in this "new" field. Once you've done that, it is easier to claim that your mastery of this one area enabled you to solve the "unsolved" problem (providing you can demonstrate the relevance of your field). For instance, if you were a pioneer in subatomic physics who discovered that Newtonian physics didn't work in the subatomic area, acceptance of your "proof" would hinge on people's acceptance of you as a subatomic expert.
The other thing is if you have really discovered a new solution to a problem, the implication is that a lot of what is currently written in the field in relation to this problem is wrong, or at least needs to be re-thought. The way to prove yourself is to start identifying at a low level, and rising to progressively higher levels, applications that are now "voided" by your discovery. If you can prove that a whole "stream" of ideas needs to be re-thought, and then present your discovery as a "common" solution, people will take you much more seriously. An example was when people figured out that you could create a new system of "non-Euclidean" geometry just by changing a few assumptions.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_13: Some very important papers have been rejected first, some were not even published.
If you are sufficiently sure about your result, and want to set a date for your discovery, and are not afraid that it sometimes takes time to demonstrate and convince people of the correctness, put your paper online on some [open archive](http://arxiv.org/), while you work at an hopefully published version.
Some readers may discover a flaw, and perhaps help you publish.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_14: *Prepare for your fearlessness. You will need to use it frequently.*
---
Let's say our goal is to accomplish [username_8's list](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18570/14341). Assuming he has some experience in academic research, then each of these statements are equivalent:
* His priority is not really to have his work accepted, but actually about not being misunderstood (the actual premise of the question is about having productive feedback)
* For him she is just stating the obvious (the upper part of the list), and telling him to do things he is already doing (the lower part)
* She needs him to accomplish the list, but he cannot do that if she accuses him for doing the thing he didn't do
* The problem of convincing her that he is not a crank is reduced to the emotional and misunderstanding problems
I think that in all discussions about cranks the overwhelming assumption is that he is hubris. This is, unfortunately, one-sided, because the actual emotions should be **guilt** and **frustration** . He is guilty for worrying he is hubris, and frustrated for her misjudge that he is hubris. With all my respect, think most experts lack the necessary experience to give an efficient advice.
Because this answer doesn't attempt to answer the problems that most established experts want to address, it is basically a [frame challenge](https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2511/86) answer.
The rest of the answer is just an elaboration on how to deal with emotional reactions and misunderstandings in each specific case. Here is the table of content for this answer:
* Dealing with your emotions
* Dealing with their reactions
* Other problems
* For those who want to help
* Links
You can also read an answer for a generalized question ([what challenges one may face during the project](https://academia.stackexchange.com/revisions/126941/1), not just how to convince the experts). I will assume that your platform to get feedback on your work is Reddit, but it's not a big deal.
Dealing with your emotions
==========================
First, there are two things to begin with:
* Epistemologically, it seems that in order to solve a hard problem, you need to be aware to the solution *a priori*
Epistemology is a field in philosophy studying about the nature of knowledge and how we acquire it. I haven't read much about this though.
* Psychologically, when you are aware of yourself, these [self-conscious emotions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-conscious_emotions) will evoke: pride, shame, guilt, and embarrassment
Because doing research is to prove that you are wrong before proving you are right, a natural thing when you think you know something is have skepticism about yourself. So alongside with the specific problem you are working with you will ask these self-conscious questions:
* Am I claiming a thing that I haven't proved it yet?
* Am I claiming that I know better than the experts, when I lack formal education?
Since the answers to those questions should be yes, they will evoke self-conscious emotions, drifting you from the one and only thing you should focus on: the problem you are working at. You will enter a feedback loop of questioning yourself: the answer for those questions is the reason you questioning yourself at the first place. The real answer lies in the work you are researching, not about whether you are sane or not.
To deal with **fantasy** (a kind of pride), try to imagine how a life of a famous person would actually be. For every kind of success you are dreaming of, there are people who have already got it. So say you dream about the Nobel prize, ask yourself this question: how did Einstein live with his fame and money? When you realize that in fact all famous persons are annoyed for being famous, then your fantasy is cut. By being able to put yourself into their shoes, you can detach to your emotions, and get back to reality. At that time, if you still wonder what you will do when you become famous, then the only thing you want is a dark and quiet place to have a dreamless sleep through it.
Please be aware that you may have [messiah complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_complex). You may not have grandiose delusion, but the thinking that (1) only you can provide a solution that no one seems to see, and (2) in other to deliver that solution, you have to overcome the skepticism regardless how harsh it is, can develop this complex. People may also accuse you for performing [gaslighting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting) as well. All of these will make the guilt about yourself even stronger.
To distinguish them with true psychological problems, whose root is insecurity, I will call them as "intellectual messiah complex" and "intellectual gaslighting".
Because the fear that you are delusional only continue when in fact you see that you still have fantasy, so when you have successfully cut it, then the fear itself will disappear. You will not feel shame, guilt or embarrass about your work anymore.
In general, the emotions are only intense when your research is still at the vague phase. The more knowledge you acquire, the less frequent they show up.
Dealing with their reactions
============================
In my experience, there are these types of unproductive response: labeling and sarcasm.
Labeling
--------
When they tell that you are crank, just give them this [crackpot index](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html), list all the points that may apply to you, and explain how they are wrong. If they accuse you for being arrogant, tell them that confidently walking into a storm with a smile is different to seeking for attention. If they think that you are insane (walking into a storm with a smile is insane obviously), it would be much easier if you can have the conversation face-to-face. Only by seeing how your eyes are determinate but your mind is not closed at all, that they can assume that you are not. Don't be embarrass for telling them how you have prepared for the project.
Let's discuss more about insanity. I think it is best to "help" them reach the conclusion that you are insane, because it is no longer a label on your behavior, but a label on your rationality. When you reach that stage, they will have a strong motivation to continue the conversation, and your evidences will be listened carefully. If you can create a cognitive dissonance in their mind, then their pattern-matching will be silent, and they will not be locked in their perspective anymore.
Respond to their labelling (crank, arrogant, insane, stupid, high, bias, spam, word salad, not even wrong, woowoo, pseudoscience, time- wasting, etc.) by giving the definition of the word and show why it doesn't apply to you. Have a note listing all your prepared answers for each label, so that you don't need to rely on your poor memory. To deal with skepticism, you need to **immediately** form **perfect combination of words,** and your brain will put you down. (More details later.)
Sarcasm
-------
If they simply making some jokes, it may be true that it is actually funny. In that case, perhaps it is best to **continue the joke**. Seeing how you actually enjoy their jokes will make them see that it doesn't affect you at all. Like if you are a fat person, then joking on your fatness will make them see that you are aware of your shortcoming, and it's just that you don't have time to solve it yet. If you are a blind, then having a joke involving your disability will make the non-blinds astonishingly surprised. They will perceived you as invincible now.
If it's really hurt and you can't think of a clever thing to say, then perhaps it's best to remind them that they are in a place that mocking is not acceptable. Like a smack down show, they literally see you as the arrogant prideful guy who need to be taught. Note down links to comedic shows, where making fun of others is the goal, like WWE shows, higaniga conspiracy theory videos, or mocking subreddits, and show them how hilarious their actions are. For example, you can say:
>
> Wow, r/Buddhism becomes r/WWE now?
>
>
>
Or you can invite an authority to deal with this:
>
> I don't think this behavior is appropriate. I'll report the mods/I believe others don't find this appropriate as well.
>
>
>
In short, be clever when dealing with ad hominem. The problem is that you can't be clever when your mind is clouded with anger. So you need to prepare for clever moments. When you can do that, then their next response will likely be productive again.
But in all, don't interact with them because you feel misunderstood, but because of the knowledge they have. Try to convert questions about your identity/self (e.g. "am I crank?") to question about definition (e.g. "what is crank?"). Show how you possess a rigid body of knowledge of what they are trying to convey, with phrases like "psychologically speaking", "what you are talking about is called \_\_\_\_\_\_ in philosophy", "in the field of informal logic", etc. **They are relevant interesting academic fields that they don't know of.** If you think that they have knowledge on what you need, only focus on that, and ignore any unreasonable critique at you.
When you have solved all of the emotional problems, then 90% of the conversations now are productive. But there will still other problems.
Other problems
==============
Memorial problem
----------------
You may have wasted so much time to read about crackpotism, conspiracy theories, delusion, etc. You may have wasted so much time on conversations that at first people strongly disagree with you, but after some talks it turns out that they don't really disagree with what you actual mean, and all of this is just misunderstanding. Take note on every evidence that that make you feel you are on the right track. Don't let your research about your sanity gone.
The problem of being unable to explain yourself is because of [tacit knowledge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge) and the [tip of the tongue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_of_the_tonguehttps:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_of_the_tongue) phenomenon. When you have a very strong evidence that you are not a crank, then after a week or so what is left is just a feeling that you are not. Lacking the evidence, you will be dragged into the loop again. You need to immediately make a perfect combination of words to get out of this.
Misunderstanding
----------------
Even when miracle happens (they spend their time and energy to analyze what you say), there will be a very strange phenomenon that you just can't understand: you always feel that they implicitly agree with what you say, but you two can't settle to a consensus, and thus just going circular.
I think, all conflicts in the world come down to the problem of priority. Usually the situation is like this: person 1 can see that problem A is more important than problem B, and person 2 see that B is more important than A. The problem is that, most of the time both A and B have to be solved together, or else none of them can be achieved. But because both insist that their point is more important, both will miss and pass each other point. Both will feel the conversation is unproductive, and sooner or later one will drop it.
When this happens, it is just a blind leading a blind, or worse, a blind fight. Investigating the nature of this phenomenon and how to deal with it is my research interest. **My advice to deal with misunderstanding is to use negation, not explanation.**
Egocentricism
-------------
[Egocentrism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egocentrism) is not about being selfish or have a huge ego, but about being unable to differentiate your mind with others' minds. When you find something interesting, then you will automatically assign that others will find it interesting as well, and will be confused when in fact they don't really care. However you remind yourself about this, this tendency will still activate.
Don't assume that they will assume that their feedback is wrong. You may be open minded, and they are too, but in practice both of you can't. If you assume that they are curious to know why they are wrong (a kind of trust), then you will tend to give explanation. But in fact they just see that you are defensive. They accuse you for things you have never done, and then either passively drop the conversation or actively block you from further explanation. I term this as "intellectual [silent treatment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_treatment)".
Seeking feedback
----------------
When an idea pop up and you feel wonderful, your gut will still tell you that there are much more fields you need to read carefully. Although you don't mind spending more effort on researching, you just want to ask for feedback because it would be much more efficient. Your egocentricism assumes that people will get what you get too. If you want to finish the project as soon as possible to move on to other important things, then your urge to share it will be higher. But STOP! Posting it now will only receive harsh, unreasonable critiques. Listen to your gut, and read all the fields you need first. Good questions only come when your mind is in the ignorance stage, which is the result of understanding the field as it is.
Having said that, at some point you will see that there is no point to ask questions, and you just want them to read your work as it is. If you have the necessary requirements (literary review, inline citation, methodology, etc.), then you can now submit to an academic journal, and you don't have to be afraid for being misunderstood as a crank anymore.
Receiving feedback
------------------
In case your first and foremost audience of your work is the popular audience, making your writing style necessarily un-academic, then the situation will be complicated, because your most important audience is the academic one. (Yes, sometimes the important thing is not the one you should prioritize – see the Eisenhower method.) Because your work has to serve two different kinds of audience, who have different background, knowledge and expectation, you will have mixed feelings when receiving their feedback:
* Popular audience cannot provide useful feedback, but their excitements indicate that you have touched a big problem that they are looking for
* More knowledgeable readers or even academics from distant fields can give useful knowledge, and can play the role of initial gatekeepers. But once they say good luck to you, you know that they cannot help you anymore
* Academics from relevant fields will feel it's vague or wishy washy, because they expect your work to truly be presented in academic form. But if you explicitly say that this is just the phase to capture what you have in your mind, then their attitude will flip 180 degrees
Let's talk more about the last point. In your mind, having no literary review, methodology or dataset is not important, because you already accept that you don't have one. Therefore, you must say explicitly that the article is just a cursory research to sketch a roadmap for your study, and list all of your shortcomings as best as you can remember. Without this part their expectation will lock their minds, and any of your explanation from now on will be perceived as defensive.
For those who want to help
==========================
Here is my advice for those who want to help. Hopefully it can reduce wasted effort, and bring you maximum happiness:
* Always assume that the person you are talking at has something interesting that you can learn
* Be conscious that although they may not know what they are talking about, you may not know what they really want to convey either
* Confirm their correct observations before address your concerns
* Use [Socratic questioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_questioning)
Don't feel threaten when they show signs of crankiness. The fact that they accept to be labeled as crank indicates that they have something more important to do. Like you, they are rational creatures, and they have already run cost-benefit analysis before starting the project. When you want to give them advices, you may want to frame it like this:
* I don't think there is another option to do X / The best way to do this is Y. But since it seems that you know this too, can you explain why you don't think it suits you?
* I don't think you understand concept Z as it is. In my opinion, Z is about a, b, or c, and perhaps c is closer to what you mean. Is that correct?
You may want to learn about conceptual metaphors if you want to know why sometimes serious ideas are hilariously crazy. I recommend the book *Metaphors we live by* by <NAME> Johnson.
Links
=====
Kletische has some good articles about this:
* [How to Handle False Accusations in Everyday Life](https://influenceadvice.com/handle-false-accusations-everyday-life/)
* [Why You Win When You Forgive](https://influenceadvice.com/win-when-you-forgive/)
* [How to Handle, and Grow From, Hateful Criticism](https://kletische.com/handle-grow-hateful-criticism%2F)
You can also read my research: [A theory of perspective](http://lyminhnhat.com/2018/12/21/a-theory-of-perspective/?utm_source=Stack%20Exchange&utm_medium=Academia&utm_campaign=Perspective&utm_medium=crank). It discusses about various things, two of which are intellectual betrayal, and cold gaze, which are relevant to this answer.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_15: Obviously, it will depend on the context of your discovery but one way to go around is to make an application based on the implications of your ideas. E.g. if you proved p = np, then go make a webpage and dare people to test your application to solve any np problem of any size in seconds. This way it will take them seconds or minutes to figure out if you're a crank or a genius. This approach won't work in all cases, e.g. if you actually proved that p != np.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/25 | 449 | 1,917 | <issue_start>username_0: I was reading this Harvard Business Review article, [The Making of an Expert](http://hbr.org/2007/07/the-making-of-an-expert/ar/1) and they were offering a PDF purchase.
Are there major differences between the content of the PDF and the free article?<issue_comment>username_1: Many publisher offer a teaser - an excerpt of an article - as an advert for the full article. The teaser may contain the abstract, some graphics, maybe a lay summary or press release about the article, and so on.
In the case of your Harvard Business Review article, they let you read the first eight paragraphs, which gives you an idea of the article's content and style. The full article is about five times longer than that excerpt.
If you buy the pdf, you get the full article, together with its references, and any supplementary information. (though in this particular case, there are neither references nor supplementary information).
Note that five pages of text can get turned into nine pages within a journal, thanks to graphics and other materials that appear in the PDF, but don't appear in a text-only version: for example, in the PDF of the article in question, the first page consists of a single image. The text-only version may or may not contain the side-bars that appear in the PDF ("Things to Look Out for When Judging Expertise").
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: EnergyNumbers' answer is quite complete. In this particular case of the HBR article, the link you provide leads to the first paragraphs of the article and not to the complete article. Notice that, after the first eight paragraphs (as well as at the beginning), the image of a key appears. This signifies that the rest (and likely most) of the article is "locked". Should you be interested to read the whole article, you are instructed to buy it - or, in the event that you are a HBR subscriber, to simply login.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/25 | 1,698 | 6,123 | <issue_start>username_0: I am currently trying to read an article on a particular topic. I really want to read and reference the proper original article, and attribute the work to the ones who deserve it; however, I'm finding it hard to determine just who that is.
I have found articles, all of which seem to be ripped off from the same source. It could be that one of them is the original, or none of them are. (Some of them are obviously fake.)
I'm inclined to believe a particular one is legitimate. It's the one with the earliest date, which admittedly can be faked, but it's also in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library, which I trust.
However, I'm not even sure how much I can trust any digital source now, because one of the other articles turns up in search results from my own institute's digital library! It seems they're indexing a particular journal that is not trustworthy.
So how do I determine the original authors of the work, or who can I trust to tell me?
---
As an example of what I'm talking about, here's what I'm witnessing:
* [IBC Secured Key Partition for A Peer-To-Peer
Network in Delivery of Message](https://ijltet.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/6.pdf)
* [Implementing a Secure Key Issuing Scheme for Communication in P2P Networks](https://airccse.org/journal/jwmn/0212wmn11.pdf)
* [IBC Secured Key Partition for A Peer-To-Peer Network](http://www.ajer.org/papers/v2(9)/V029154162.pdf)
* [SKIP: A Secure Key Issuing Scheme for Peer-to-Peer Networks](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4976775)
The third article is the one that is returned by my library's journal index. The last one is the one I believe to be original.<issue_comment>username_1: Unfortunately, there's no completely reliable way to determine whether a paper is plagiarized, but I think you're right in this case.
The [2012 IJWMN paper](https://airccse.org/journal/jwmn/0212wmn11.pdf) and [2014 IJLTET paper](https://ijltet.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/6.pdf) are pretty clearly plagiarized. Of course I can't prove anything, and one of them could in principle be the original, but it would take quite a story to explain how the same text was stolen and published by someone else three to five years earlier. A one-year delay might be due to refereeing or a conference rejection, but three to five years is a very long delay for CS.
The [2013 AJER paper](https://www.ajer.org/papers/v2%289%29/V029154162.pdf) is a strange case. It does copy some text without attribution, both from the 2009 paper and from the [Wikipedia article on software design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design), but it has worse problems than that: the paper seems to have virtually no content beyond mock ups of what the user interface might look like, with messages such as "Your Secret Key is: 1004". Even aside from the plagiarism, it's safe to ignore this article as having essentially no research content.
The [2009 ICNS paper](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4976775) looks to me like the original. There are several tests one can do to try to gauge this:
1. You can do web searches for sentence fragments, such as "vulnerable to a large spectrum of attacks" or "introducing IBC into P2P". If you do a reasonable job of guessing distinctive phrases, you'll find a short list of potential word-for-word plagiarized papers. (Annoyingly, search engines will sometimes miss matches due to not parsing PDF files well, so there's a random element to this.) In this case, searches show that the 2009 paper took some wording from a [2008 paper](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4627256/;jsessionid=-l96IPDiuLaq62sM5XKyv9gKetzLW6jMgHpu463i08YPLo27EKmo!-224115674) by other authors, such as the bit about vulnerability, but seems not to have copied the whole paper. The borrowed wording is objectionable, but it doesn't invalidate any originality in content.
2. You can investigate the prestige of the journal/conference. Plagiarists are less likely to get away with publishing in high-prestige venues, because their theft is more likely to be noticed. I don't think ICNS is particularly prestigious, though, so this criterion doesn't help. The papers from 2009 are archived by the IEEE, but the [IEEE archives a lot of junk on behalf of other conference organizers](https://retractionwatch.com/2014/02/24/springer-ieee-withdrawing-more-than-120-nonsense-papers/), so the IEEE archiving shouldn't be viewed as indicating high quality. It's very different from journals or conferences run by the IEEE.
3. You can see whether there are a lot of citations. That wouldn't prove anything, but it would suggest that people citing the paper weren't aware of plagiarism allegations. In this case, Google Scholar finds only four citations, so we don't learn much.
So in summary, it looks likely that the 2009 paper is the original (although I've only looked briefly, so it would be worth doing a few more searches). That's a remarkable collection of plagiarism you've uncovered, and I can see how it would be unsettling, but I think this is an unusual case.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: One approach is to filter by journal.
* The so-called 'American Journal of Engineering Research' (article 1)
* The 'Academy & Industry Research Collaboration Center' (AIRCC,
publisher of the 'International journal of wireless & mobile
networks', article 2)
* The 'Association of Computer Electronics and
Electrical Engineers' (ACEEE, publisher of the 'International Journal
of Latest Trends in Engineering and Technology', article 3)
are all fake journals and 'predatory publishers' as listed by [<NAME>'s list](http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/).
This means that no scrutiny was applied in the publishing process, in fact there was no editorial process whatsoever, and thus instances of plagiarism are to be expected. I would recommend not to cite anything found in these pseudo-journals.
The other clue is the publication date obviously. The IEEE mark does not constitute an insurance of quality in itself, as pointed out by Anonymous Math. but I would say that it is your best shot in this case.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/03/25 | 6,529 | 27,774 | <issue_start>username_0: When I wrote my syllabus for this term, I added the line "Late work will not be accepted." In the past, I just took off a large percentage of the grade per day, but I became tired of the added work of managing papers that students handed to me at random times and places.
The students, naturally, complain this policy too harsh, especially when some larger projects are worth 25% of their grade. I searched the Internet to try to establish what the norm is. I found many syllabi from famous universities, but found very few even list any policies at all.
Is "no late work" a typical rule?<issue_comment>username_1: I have never seen a no late work policy; on the contrary, most of the classes I have taken/TAed accepted late work and took off no credit when the amount of time late was reasonable (1 or 2 days if you were asking questions / professor knew you were working on it.) This is probably due to the fact that most of my classes have had 5-10 students in them; the classes that I have taken with 20+ students have all accepted late work with a similar penalty as the one you described.
The question follows: Do you want every students best work, or do you want every students best work within a very strict time frame? If an assignment is difficult, and not just time heavy, it might be worth relaxing a no late work policy in my opinion.
It is entirely possible to have a hybrid, in which weekly assignments are not accepted late but larger assignments can be late with penalty.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Disclaimer: I am a student in Central Europe (Computer Science), but an enthusiastic one ;)
"No late work" rules are common for both courses with many (>100) and with few participants. Usually, there will still be a couple of students trying to get a deadline-extension, but in my experience this number is far smaller if you make the "no late work" rule clear to everyone.
Just keep in mind that students have other work besides your course and make sure that there's enough time to do the assignment. I don't really see the point to give less than two weeks - if a student falls ill for a couple of days or is otherwise occupied, a second week will give him or her the chance to nevertheless produce a good solution.
Even for regular homework assignments, I think that giving the students two weeks time will result in far better hand-ins: they can ask questions/request clarifications one week after the assignment was published in the lecture.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I am sure this varies between lecturers/courses; some universities may have more or less stringent policies but none that I have seen. In my own surroundings, a deadline used to be a deadline. This has softened over time due to many circumstances. Lecturers/teachers are more stressed and enforcing deadlines inevitably involves more work; students seem to find more and more excuses for not being on time. It is hard to point the finger in one or the other direction.
It is, however, interesting to think about the fact that deadlines are still deadlines in society. If you do not send in your tax report in time you are fined; if yo do not pay your bills you are "fined" etc. More critically, if you cannot finish a work task on time you may lose out on salary increases promotion or even lose a job, the latter particularly if you run your own business. So learning to cope with deadlines is important yet it seems to not be prioritized.
So what can be done? Key is to be very clear on what will happen from the start. If you make assessment criteria you can state that a late task means fail/zero points or whatever the perspective is. At the same time you can say that for a larger task, points will be deducted or grade lowered a step at a time after each time period the work is late. My former advisor gave all of us the option of being late but told us that points will be deducted. It was up to us to judge if we would benefit from being late (Better answer gave more points than was deducted for being late). This fostered some form of responsibility where you as a student had the power to decide.
So I do not think that it is difficult to impose rules for lateness that allows students to assess the effects of being late. Learning is of course about learning a subject but it is also about learning to function in society (in the work place) and that involves developing work standards that are good. So when imposing rules that involve lateness, it is also important to make the rules very clear and also to provide suggestions for what you perceive as a good work ethic/schedule to pass the tasks well, i.e. provide the students with enough information to also see what will not work. If you fail to do so the lateness effects may only seem as punishment.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I specify a due date, but have a 48 hr, no questions asked, grace period. If a student gets an assignment in by the due date, I give a small amount of extra credit (typically 0.25 pts added to his or her final percentage\*). I do not accept assignments after the grace period. I never get complaints about this policy.
\* I don't round final percentages. Students are in charge of their own rounding by getting the extra credit for turning in assignments by the due date
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: One issue not covered by the many good answers is *proportionality*.
There's nothing wrong with having firm deadlines and sticking to them, or allowing a grace period with corresponding deductions, and so on. But it's your job as lecturer to make sure the 'punishment fits the crime'. If you have a zero-tolerance late policy and a short time window for a hard assignment that counts for a lot of points, then the policy is disproportionately harsh even if it's fair and clearly stated. I bring this up because you mentioned assignments/projects that carry upto 25% of the grade.
This is partly why I use a sliding scale late policy, where students can turn in things late, but lose a percentage of their score for each day they're late, upto a week for a 2-week assignment at which point they earn nothing. If you wish to have firm deadlines for a project that accounts for a large portion of the grade, then you might consider creating intermediate deadlines to break up the penalty. This way, students can learn the consequences of missing deadlines without facing huge penalties. It is also more robust to unforeseen events that no one can control.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_6: As an undergrad computer science/philosophy major at a top 10 school in the United States, I would say that 90% of the classes I have taken have had a no late work policy. Particularly after the end of freshman year, it's understood that you need to get your work in on time.
However, it's usually understood in these classes that there is still the option to ask the professor for an extension, which will almost certainly be granted in cases of illness, etc, unless the class is just too large/has an automated grading system (checkouts of code on a particular date from SVN, for example) that prevents this. The late policy covers the case where a student just doesn't hand in his or her work when it's due and says nothing to his or her professor, and there is really no excuse for that.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: I would say that in general it depends. If assignments are going to be happening regularly or are kind of a hard mathematics course (think calculus, differential equations...) then I think the no late work policy is valuable. This is particularly true if you plan to post a solution to the assigned problems shortly afterwards.
On the other hand in a class that I teach most of the assignments are more project oriented. As a result they will take longer than a normal assignment, and they are also far more open-ended (a solution from student A may look nothing like solution from student B, but they may both be completely valid). As a result the approach that some students use may lead them to take longer on an assignment than others. I use a sliding scale as discussed above; Typically I allow 1 week grace where each day costs a few percentage points, and after that the assignment is not accepted.
as for pros and cons,
pros:
* students seem to like the flexibility, sometimes many of their assignments are due in one or two days and this allows some buffering (at a cost)
* with a digital submission like blackboard the late grading is very easy to do
* assignments appear to have more work put into them, instead of students doing the bare minimum they tend to explore their solutions more
cons:
* since introducing the policy some students tend to turn in homework later (typically 1-3 days)
* some students treat the final deadline (1 week late) as the deadline, so a limited number of students will turn in their homework late consistently
Overall I am happy with the solution though, and I would suggest offering a slight grace period where it doesn't make your life too difficult. The main approaches that I've seen being either % off per day, or x number of free late days for the class.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: I think it depends a lot on the culture and the institution. In America, er, a decade or two ago, I remember there was usually some penalty for late work at the Universities I and my friends attended, but "no credit for late work" was rare. However when I was at university in England, there were no penalties for late work in any of my classes. Even very late work was not considered a problem. Personally, I found that having all the time I needed to do the work, resulted in me being far more productive (if not as timely, but no one cared about that), and doing much more interesting and better writing, as well as not abusing my sleep by staying up all night.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_9: I've always been a student that turned in HW late, and it varies widely depending on the professor. In general, I have found the humanities departments the most harsh about deadlines. The natural science classes are more lenient, with some professors clearly stating that they will accept late HW with a deduced grade. Others will accept late HW unofficially before they return graded HWs to students, and yet others will work with you more flexibly. There hasn't been a single professor of mine that hasn't accepted at least some late HW from me.
As a TA, I fully accept late HW, with no deadlines, and likewise return the HWs to students late (you can call it a "suggested deadline"). My teaching principles are fairly libertarian, and my students tend to learn a lot during the semester. That's what I care about. The only time I care about HWs and examinations is to see whether I'm doing an effective job at what the students' pay me to do, which is teach them. It's only fair to examine the students to see if I'm failing them.
It's appalling to see professors demand of their students, who, just in case anyone forgot, **pay** the professors' salaries, demand of their students to learn a certain way within a definite deadline. Nothing in my experience has been more detrimental to my learning. I've gained the most out of classes that allowed me to turn in HW late.
Just in case anyone thinks that students who fail to "respect" deadlines are intrinsically procrastinators, I declare that it was quite the contrary in my case. The reason I submitted HWs late was to ensure I read the whole relevant text before attempting the HW. I wanted to know exactly what I was doing when I solved a problem, rather than use "ad hoc" methods to get something that resembles the correct answer. Moreover, I would often find a passage in a text that interested me, so I would pursue the topic and do some research. Sometimes this "research" would take a week out of my time, but I learned more from the self-driven pursuits than all the professor-imposed, who was paid by me to teach me, HW combined.
It's time we do away with harsh grading policies and strict deadlines, because I don't know a single person who has ever learned that way.
On the other hand, I do know a lot of wage-slaves, also known as employees at major companies, who rent their bodies to their masters; and the masters certainly will demand of their subjects to have work done on time and subject themselves to meaningless evaluations by authoritarian figures. That isn't the environment in which people can learn and discover; that sounds more like mines, sweat-shops, and assembly line to me. Unless one wants to impose an assembly-line education, which is what's common in USA universities these days, I'd advise against serious deadlines.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: As an undergraduate, I have had a few classes like this, but if it's a class with lots of HW assignments, usually the professor will grant extensions if you ask; sometimes there are also a set number of "late days" that students can use, so maybe you can do that so that the volume of late submissions is reduced, or just take 50% off for one day and 100% off for more than one (that way I doubt many people would ever submit late).
I just want to make it clear that any professor should, of course, always grant extensions in the event of an emergency (family emergency / illness); to do otherwise is, well, barbaric.
Edit: I don't think you're obliged to give full credit if there was no extenuating emergency circumstance (e.g. illness) and the student didn't ask you beforehand. If they thought they might not finish in time, it's definitely their responsibility to tell you that. That said, giving 0% for such a case is also pretty harsh.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_11: I think the appropriateness of such a policy depends on the class and the students within it, and even when it exists, I'd consider flexing it for extraordinary circumstances.
For example, I once had a student who turned in late work because they were called up to respond to a national emergency. Is that really something I should have savaged their grade for, even if generally the class had a pretty strict deadline policy (because I was trying to turn grades around fast)?
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_12: Your students have the reasonable right to expect you to operate the policies decided by your department. Whilst I have every sympathy with the notion of 'a minute late = no marks' providing exceptional circumstances are accounted for, it's really not your decision but rather a decision that should be made by your department and uniformly applied across different courses.
It is unfair on students for your course to operate a different policy to the other courses they are taking because it (a) unfairly requires them to prioritise the work for your course over other courses and (b) it requires them to *notice* that you've set different regulations. So, whether or not your method has merit, you should adopt the same system as other courses they are taking.
I'm kind of surprised that your university/department does not already have a formally stated and agreed policy on this.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_13: I remember an answer I once got for a piece of work handed in a few minutes late (and rejected):
>
> *How can you have nothing ready for 30 days and then suddenly have something in the last few hours?*
>
>
>
In fact, I had been working on it the whole time, trying to constantly improve it, despite the fact that I had a working solution early on. Waiting was a mistake and helped me learn to prioritise.
So welcome be hard deadlines, they teach *planning* **and** *prioritisation*, and save examiner time.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_14: I don't know about "typical," but I have definitely seen it used. I've taught mostly in design schools where understanding the importance of hitting deadlines is a core part of the training.
Having said that, most instructors are a little more moderate. Some will say students are allowed one late assignment per semester, some will accept any assignment late for half-credit.
My own personal policy was this: As long as you made a reasonable effort to turn an assignment in on time you could always improve your grade on that assignment by resubmitting any time before the end of the semester. If you missed that first deadline, no deal. But if you turned in a project at, say, 25% completion on the day of the deadline and then before the end of the semester managed to get in the remaining 75% you could have full points. But that's just me.
One other thing I go out of my way to say on day 1 is that communication is important. I had a student who didn't show up for class all semester only to tell me two weeks before the end that he'd been caring for an ailing relative. I could have made an accommodation in week one, but what am I supposed to do in week 13?!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_15: As an undergrad engineering/computer science alum, I will say that I am biased towards having a late policy. Scale the assignment difficulty appropriately to account for "extra" time at a penalty and codify the policy to be clear and non-negotiable, ie 10% off per day. The other option is to tell students late assignments are not accepted, but extend deadlines appropriately based on student feedback. The goal remains the same: maximize participation.
The reason I support this is pedagogical. It is not to account for students being irresponsible. It is to attract more students to complete an assignment, allowing them to be methodical and calculating with their learning experience while ultimately maximizing the value they receive from a course.
The goal with college classes, from a *pedagogical* view, is to maximize turnout and participation. These are solid measures indicating that students are learning and that the college experience is economically valuable. If there is a no late assignment policy and 25% of students received a zero or extremely low mark for being unable to "complete" on time, we have an issue that could potentially be fixed with a course policy change. So I argue that it is better to have a late penalty while scaling content difficulty appropriately.
I was exceptionally busy during my senior year, taking the max amount of credits where all classes were advanced level/difficult. I recall one class where the policy was no late assignments. This was a very difficult programming class. I was on the wire for time, and pulled repeated all-nighters to complete an assignment for this course- right past the due date. I was very stubborn and I refused to just give up, although in the back of my mind I considered the high likelihood I would receive a zero. It ended up being accepted with no penalty and I received a high grade where the average grade was significantly lower.
Many would say this is not fair. But from my perspective, I learned more actually doing the assignment rather than being defeated - the alternative fate would have been to cease all work and receive a zero had the policy been uncompromising. As someone who is a perfectionist- I prefer not to stop until I know I have produced something that is robust and meets all requirements- this hits home even more for me. I believe that from a learning standpoint, accepting late assignments is far more likely to result in higher quality education. If a late penalty makes a course "easier", scale the content appropriately. Or surprise the students on a case by case basis at the instructor's discretion.
The goal is to get as many students as possible in a course to give a best effort attempt on an assignment given a variety of schedules, circumstances and uncertainty in the assignment itself. If after some date they receive a zero you will always chop off a number of students who **can do the assignment** with more time, and would with the opportunity, even with dramatic penalty.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_16: An important role for a college professor is to prepare the students for the real world. And in the real world, deadlines are firm. You think a customer or an employer cares that you have a "good excuse" for being late? That you "tried"?
Trust me, you'll be doing all your students a favor by accustoming them now to the reality that schedules are unforgiving.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_17: My problem with a "no late work" policy is that it disincentivizes learning. If a student forgets an assignment or can't quite finish it in time, they no longer have any reason to learn the material; they get no credit for learning it because they cannot turn it in late. Because of this, I favor a 10% or even 20% per day penalty as oppose to a no late work policy.
I also think the "prepare students for the real world" argument is invalid. In the real world, if you miss a deadline for something (work deadline, tax filing, etc.) you will get punished somehow, but you likely still have to complete the work; it doesn't just disappear. Also, preparing the students for the real world is a secondary goal at best. Helping students learn the material should always come before preparing them for the real world. Internships and first jobs are much more suited for preparing for the real world.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_18: When I was a student, one of the first things we were told was "No late work is accepted. Not even if it is only a matter of seconds. Not even if the printer catches fire or you're snowed in".
My university had previously just subtracted from the grade, and had been warned by the authorities that this was against the rules. So they stopped doing that, and instead enforced a zero-tolerance rule of "respect the deadlines".
And honestly, it worked well. The only requirement is that you make absolutely totally sure that all of your students are aware of these rules! Like I said, it was drilled into our heads on day 1 (and repeated regularly ever since). And it was enforced for the entire Computer Science department, not just for individual courses.
Of course, students can always ask (preferably in advance) to have an agreed-upon extension in special cases (perhaps in case of extended sickness, or whatever else it might be), but if it's just a matter of "I didn't finish in time", then tough luck. You either hand in what you have, even if it is incomplete, or you don't hand it in at all.
Honestly, I kind of think it is the only fair policy. Lowering a student's grade for handing his work in late strikes me as much weirder. Their work should be graded on its quality, and nothing else. "your ability to manage time" should not be part of the curriculum. If two students hand in equally good work, they deserve the same grade.
I think the important point is that being late doesn't mean that you can't hand in your work. It just means that instead of handing it in late, but complete, you hand it in on time, but incomplete. And you get graded on what you handed in.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_19: The university I attended had a no late work policy, however, some of the modules *did* allow a 24-hour late work window, but work submitted in this 24 hours was capped at 40% (Minimum pass grade).
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_20: I work at a middle-ranking UK university and we have a rule of 5% per day for 5 days then zero. I think it becomes counted as a cost by some students. "No late work without a doctor's cert", providing everyone knows well in advance, seems as fair as any other, what with the deadline being part of the test.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_21: I think the focus of teaching should be students' learning,
and all policies including late assignment policies should be designed with
the goal of improving student learning and experience.
A good fair policy would encourage learning and good behavior,
a bad unfair one would do the opposite.
I think students generally care too much about grades,
it is important to refocus them as much as possible on learning.
Assignments, tests, and grades are tools for teachings not goals of teaching.
The hard deadline policy is common but
I think it is also a common experience of instructors that
it doesn't work well.
It is important to think about why it is so,
if we understand why hard deadlines do not work well
then we can design better policies.
In my experience,
the followings are the main reasons for missing deadlines in most cases
(roughly based on the justifications my students gave me
when asking for extensions in my previous courses):
1. Technical difficulties:
small unexpected submission difficulties,
i.e. they have finished assignments but
they were unable to submit it before deadline,
e.g. they lost power just before deadline.
2. Procrastination:
Considerable number of students leave working on assignments to the last minute.
They are also not good with estimating the time they need to finish assignments.
So they go over deadline.
3. Special cases:
events beyond students' reasonable control prevented them from finishing assignments, e.g. serious illness.
Of course we would not want to penalized students for the 3rd reason.
But we should also try to help those in the first two groups.
One common alternative to hard deadlines is having grace days,
but it has a too high administrative overhead in my opinion,
and it doesn't really work much better.
They will use up their grace days and
then go over deadline.
If we give them a grace day for all assignments
then we are essentially shifting deadlines in their minds.
After discussions with a few more experienced instructors
I switched to something similar to username_5's policy for my last course and
it worked quite well.
There was almost no serious complaint.
Here is the policy I used:
>
> 1% penalty for every 30min after the deadline.
>
>
>
First, it is easy to implement.
I use an online submission system so it is quite easy to compute and apply these penalties
using time-stamps for latest submissions, it is a simple script.
Second, it is effective way of helping the first two groups.
This policy gives them two extra days after the deadline if they really need.
Most late submissions miss the deadline by a small amount of time.
Being essentially a continuous linear penalty function it makes sure
the penalty is proportional:
a student who goes over the deadline a few minutes doesn't loose too much points.
I give students typically 2 weeks for submitting assignments.
I don't think it makes sense to give more that 2 extra days.
Too many days and too soft penalty
will essentially shift assignment deadlines in their minds and
cause further procrastination.
The hourly lateness penalty creates a sense of urgency that daily penalty would not.
I had around 100 students and they seldom went over a few hours.
I also put deadlines on Friday evenings.
Students who don't like doing assignments
hate to spend their weekend on them.
Student who submit their assignments on time
do not have to worry and spend their weekend working on assignments,
this adds an extra incentive for them to finish it by deadline, or
if not possible with as little lateness as possible.
In addition,
it also makes sure that the following week
we can focus on our topic
without them worrying about assignments.
To deal with the 3rd group
I don't use my late assignment policy,
I use an special consideration policy.
If a student misses an assignment deadline with a good reason,
e.g. serious illness supported by medial documents,
I apply my special consideration policy to accommodate them
e.g. I may move the points for the assignment to other assignments.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/25 | 2,348 | 10,450 | <issue_start>username_0: I apologize for the length of this post but I feel it is necessary to accurately convey the severity of the situation. I greatly appreciate those who take the time to offer advice.
I am a prospective PhD student in a major research institution and am writing on behalf of numerous students frustrated with our department's qualifying exam (QE). Things have been getting progressively worse over the past few years such that my fellow students have decided to petitioned our department(dept.) head for a procedural change. Unfortunately, several students refused to sign the petition for fear of malicious treatment by the faculty. The response to our petition from the dept. head and other faculty was unfavorable to the point that we are considering filing a formal complaint with the University. I would like to gauge the objective opinions of unbiased parties as to whether our reasons for complaint are justifiable.
I will describe the QE procedure and summarize our complaints below:
The formal reasoning given by our dept. for having a qualifying exam is "To determine whether the student has the knowledge, skills, and ability to conduct independent thinking and creative research." The QE is composed of 4 consecutive one hour written examinations, a research assessment paper on a pre-selected journal article specific to our research field, and an oral examination where we present the contents of our research assessment paper and then answer questions from 3 faculty members until they are satisfied. Students may retake any sections which they fail the following year. If after the second attempt, all parts have not been passed, the student must petition for a third attempt. If the petition is not accepted, the student must defect to the master's program. If that student already has a M.S. from the department (as is my case) then the student is forced to leave the program and 3 years of tuition is wasted.
* Students are not allowed to see their graded exams or know their exam score. This privilege was removed without warning two years ago despite being present in our universities' student bill of rights. We are notified via letter of pass/fail status only. Also, no statistics are provided regarding the range of scores, number of students who passed, etc.
* The dept. never reveals what score constitutes passing or failing. We have heard via word of mouth from certain faculty who sympathize with out situation, that passing can range from 30% to 80% depending on the exam category and changes from year to year. This, however, is not administrable evidence and would most likely be denied by the faculty who told us if ever questioned.
* Exam content consistently strays outside the provided list of topics. The provided topic list appears to be lazily assembled by copy/pasting from course syllabi. The 4 exams are technically supposed to be covered by the 3 courses which the department requires all graduate students to take (they do not offer a graduate class covering the fourth topic). However, questioned are routinely posed from material covered in non-required classes, some of which are only offered every few years.
* Exams are written by professors who's field of research is entirely unrelated to the exam topic and/or professors who have never taught the class which the exam covers. This leads to major inconsistencies in the materials covered and puts students who took the class from a different professor at a disadvantage Again, the dept. refuses to reveal who writes the exams. However, we generally figure it out in hindsight from off-the-record discussions.
* The passing rate of these exams is very low. Less than 20% of students pass all exams their first attempt. Again, we cannot prove it, but it is suspected that the decision to pass a student is biased based on whether it is the students second attempt. Also, many students who get A's in the covered classes are failing these exams.
* After our meeting with the dept. head regarding our petition, it was announced that the subjective third attempt to pass all sections was no longer going to be allowed. This is unfair as many students have required this third attempt in the past. Also, students taking these exams for the second time (which were in February), did so under the impression that, based on past history, they would get a third attempt if needed. This new policy will effectively force them to leave without a degree.
This list of complaints could go on for pages but I will leave it at that. I understand that a PhD QE should not be easy; however, are our frustrations warranted? I welcome both advice and constructive criticism.<issue_comment>username_1: The basic reality of qualifying exams is that they can act as an "outlet valve" or "quality check" for various departments, allowing them to pick out the best students (if they admit more incoming students than they can accommodate in RA and TA positions) or to double-check their decisions (to make sure everyone is qualified). Of course, this only works if they are free to make the decisions however they so choose. This means that it doesn't make sense for them to post publicly exact scores, nor to publicize what a "passing grade" is. So you're probably not going to meet with a lot of support for public announcement of scores and distributions
However, most of your other points **are** valid concerns. You can't change the rules *ex post facto*—if you tell somebody before their second attempt that they have up to three attempts to pass, then you can't later change your mind and say "sorry, you only have two attempts." This is completely unfair. Similarly, asking questions on subjects that lie well outside the domain of what the exam should cover is also completely unreasonable. Passing should not be contingent on taking a class you haven't been able to take because it wasn't offered!
Most importantly, though, is that it sounds that like the bigger problem is that the faculty in your department aren't taking their duties with respect to the qualifying exam very seriously. If this is in fact the case, then they should change the exam into something they can live with. Otherwise, they're wasting their time and yours, and possibly needlessly ruining people's graduate careers and professional aspirations. This is simply **inexcusable**. Unfortunately, short of raising a ruckus with the university administration (or being willing to file a lawsuit), I don't see much hope of things changing.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: First of all, your concerns sound reasonable and valid, if the facts are as you've stated.
It sounds as if your department has decided to use a quota-based filter to limit admission to a Ph.D (only some X fraction of students will be allowed to go on). That would explain the general mystery surrounding the process and their unwillingness to post standards for passing/failing. While they're within their rights to do things this way, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. Because if they were required to state this explicitly, no one would want to come to the department to play this version of Hunger Games.
Unfortunately, it's not clear what you can do. Some things are possible:
* can you document the instances of questions deviating from prescribed material ? While this wouldn't be a smoking gun ("You should know this already" - say the professors), it would at least force them to be more specific about what's contained on the exams.
* can you document the inconsistencies between material taught and material asked on the exams ? for the same reason as above.
* changing rules midstream is a big NO NO. This is your strongest complaint if you have to take the matter up further. At the very least, students have to be grandfathered in.
Beyond that, you should remember one source of power you do have. Professors need grad students, if for nothing else than to do the work professors have promised their grant agencies they will do. Deans need professors to spend research money on students so they can say that they're using grant money effectively. None of this works without students. Obviously you can't take collective action without numbers, but a protest where you submit blank exams could make an interesting statement.
But that should be a last resort.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: You have implied two basic options: staying without fussing or trying to lobby for changes, or staying with some attempted hostile influence. But both cases are graduate students with low status dealing with tenured and like-minded-to-tenured professors. Someone who understood law could tell you legal strengths and someone who understood university policies could advise you on means of redress within the university. I can't do either, but I want to give another option.
There is also the option of entering another program. There would be losses, but what is written between the lines in your detailed "Here are the details as objectively as I can give them; how do things stack up?" original post is a question of "Can I from my present position obtain an appropriate position within my university, or not?" that does not consider seeking a more appropriate department and university. I know there are things you would lose by transferring out, and you might have to take some things again. But in terms of a hostile departmental administration, there are much better options than what you can work out within a university that does these things, even if you can improve some of them by academic grievance procedure (a point on which I do not offer informed opinion).
I did a second master's and was dropped on suspicious grounds (passing was 60 points, minimum for entering Ph.D. placement was 63 points, I had 61 points... after I decided that the one area I really wanted to impress the department was my thesis, and the department made me change my thesis topic, which I declared at the beginning of the year, so completely that I retained none of my earlier study--two thirds of the way through the year; the 61 was a 61 for half the time I spent during the academic year and no credit or recognition earlier). I'm looking for a more appropriate place, even though it pains me I was not able to complete my studies there.
I wish you the best, and a boss in or outside of academia who will be more humane in dealing with humans.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/25 | 1,592 | 6,588 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a fourth year graduate student of information science. Broadly, I work in a rather interdisciplinary area at the intersection of location based social networks, usable privacy and surveillance studies.
I am post [A exam](http://gradschool.cornell.edu/requirements/exams/exams-phds) - which in my university refers to a combination of qualifiers, orals and dissertation proposal/prospectus confirmation. I am regarded as ABD/doctoral candidate in my university. I go on the job market in another 6-12 months (depending on certain criteria such as in progress journal articles being published on time etc.)
In my specific field, folks publish in a combination of journals and conferences tending more towards the latter although my committee prefers the former.
My adviser and I have been discussing the possibility of my presenting a general overview of my doctoral dissertation work in doctoral consortiums in various conferences to get feedback and exposure to the community as a whole. Some of the sample conferences where my work is a good fit are [here](http://ils.indiana.edu/faculty/hrosenba/www/web-sci-14/doc-consortium14.html), [here](http://chi2014.acm.org/authors/doctoral-consortium) and [here](http://mobilehci.acm.org/2014/doctoral-consortium/). I am looking to go into academia primarily (looking for both calls for tenure track positions as well as post doctoral positions)
My questions to the academia.stackexchange community are as follows:
1. **How useful are doctoral consortiums for feedback and presentation of your dissertation in-progress to the broader academic community?**
2. **When is a good time to start attending doctoral consortiums?**
3. **How many doctoral consortiums are "enough"?** (assuming funding to attend multiple ones)
Thank you for reading this question.<issue_comment>username_1: Here are some answers based on subjective experience in computer science.
>
> How useful are doctoral consortiums for feedback and presentation of your dissertation in-progress to the broader academic community?
>
>
>
As you frame it, they are of little use. Most such events are collocated with better (top-tier) conferences in an area and those and their collocated workshops are actually much more useful forum for presentation of your on-going research.
Doctoral consortia are primarily a vehicle for networking in the community. The benefits of attending an event like that include 1) getting to know better your peers in your "academic generation" (if you remain in academia, this might become useful later in your career: think of them as future collaborators); and 2) getting an opportunity to have one to one interactions with senior members of the community (think of them as future supervisors/employers).
>
> When is a good time to start attending doctoral consortiums?
>
>
>
In the last third of your doctoral studies. Given the purpose of doctoral consortia I mention above, often the participants will be specifically selected to only include those in the later stages of their studies when your thesis is outlined, your main thesis-relevant contributions to the state of the art are already set and when you are supposed to start to look for a post-doc gig.
>
> How many doctoral consortiums are "enough"?
>
>
>
I don't know, but for most people I know *one* was the right amount.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Having attended one of the doctoral consortiums you linked to as well as one you haven't, here's my perspective (as a student) on what doctoral consortiums provide a venue for:
A) Networking with peers and senior researchers in your field in a very targeted way. A prolonged period of time ranging from 1-2 days is usually provided where you'll be closeted with other consortium students and senior researchers. This gives you a set amount of time where not only will you have a bunch of students with you who are also interested in networking, but where senior people in the field who may not generally be approachable during a conference will be available and open to talking to you. In addition, it also gives you a subset of people that you know will be at the conference that you can continue to network with during breaks and meals.
B) Getting an outside opinion on your research. Doctoral consortiums will usually give you time to present your research so that the senior people in your field can give you feedback. As a PhD student, sometimes it's difficult to get a perspective outside of what your advisor's agenda is. Feedback during consortiums can help to provide new insights into how your work will be received in the larger research community, what people in the community perceive to be the strengths and weaknesses in your topic area, and how they think about what you're doing.
C) It gives you a place to practice presenting your research to a wider audience than just your advisor or your lab. Even in a specific research area like human-computer interaction, which you linked to, there is a wide spread of topics that people will be doing research in. Presenting at a doctoral consortium gives you a chance to really try to explain your research to a receptive audience that may have no background in what you're doing. It's sort of like having a low stakes first shot at what you'll have to do when you eventually give job talks.
D) Depending on the conference, doctoral consortiums are arguably really nice for your CV because some of them are very selective and difficult to get into.
Not all doctoral consortiums are the same, but generally they are targeted for the point in your graduate career when you've picked your topic, done preliminary work or published a paper or two in that area, but before you're really entrenched in your planned research and can still change direction.
The idea is that by getting that outside feedback from senior researchers in the field, they'll be able to give you a nudge in the right direction if they foresee real problems with your topic/work in time for you to make corrections.
The general opinion that I've heard/witnessed has been that going to more than 2 is overkill and that at that point you won't be getting much out of them. However, it's really good to get into at least one as a student.
A last point, since you mention funding, many doctoral consortiums provide some level of funding for students that have been accepted to ensure that they can attend. In addition, they will often cover the registration fee for the conference that they're attached to.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer] |
2014/03/25 | 774 | 3,278 | <issue_start>username_0: Main Issue: What credit should be given (and how should it be given) to the alma mater in publicizing old work?
Background: I entered and left a Ph.D. program in another millenium. During this time
I produced some results, one group of which was to become my dissertation. (At one point, my advisor said the equivalent of "you have enough to graduate; write it up".) However, all that I did distribute during my time as a graduate student was a couple of preprints, one of which later got cited in work of others. I did not finish the dissertation and did not get the degree (although I did get to attend commencement and walk across the stage). If it matters, during the time I produced results I got one TA (teaching) grant, and no other funding.
I am considering self-publishing material related to the work I did in grad school.
I have already given presentations on some of the work; I now plan to submit to ArXiv some of my work done while I was in graduate school; later I may follow up with results based
on this work.
Question 1. What kind of issues might I encounter in doing so? Would the University have some recourse to discourage me?
Question 2. If there are no intellectual property issues involved, what is an acceptable format? (I was thinking: write a wrapper giving a brief history and introduction, insert my preprint verbatim, and close with acknowledgments and some follow up. The preprint I distributed does not contain my dissertation, but is a key piece of it. What would the
acknowledgment section look like?)
Question 3. If I decide I also want to go back and finish
my degree at that program, (ideally by finishing the remaining requirement of submitting
the finished and approved dissertation, however unlikely that may be), would doing this
self-publishing be contraindicated? If so, why?<issue_comment>username_1: The real question in my mind would be the timeliness of the result. "In another millenium" covers a lot of ground. PhD research is supposed to make a new contribution to the field, but if your results have been overtaken by other work, then they may no longer be the kind of thing that your old school would be willing to give a PhD for. In any case, you should be discussing this with people at that school, such as your adviser (if that person still works there) or someone else such as the faculty member who currently handles advising for graduate students.
If your work *is* timely enough to be worth a PhD today, then I don't understand why you wouldn't submit it to a journal rather than just putting it on arxiv, which makes it extremely unlikely that anyone will read it.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: This is in response to Question 1:
The university only cares if some portion of your work is monetizable, i.e. leads to a product that people pay money for. If not, they would prefer you to publish rather than not; it can only help them.
The real issue is your advisor and collaborators, if any. They may have a claim on that work. Before publication you should contact them and discuss possible coauthorship. Resolve this issue before investing any more of your time; see other posts here for what happens when authorship is not clearly agreed among all participants.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/25 | 2,204 | 7,105 | <issue_start>username_0: If I am not wrong, turbo codes was submitted to the ICC conference and rejected but accepted later on.
I want to know if there are other similar works (strong works) that were rejected at first but then accepted and considered revolutionary.<issue_comment>username_1: **Higgs**'s 1964 paper on the Higgs mechanism was rejected by *Physics Letters* (where his preliminary paper on the subject was published).
He was told that it was not suitable for rapid publication and that he should send it to another journal. However, he [reportedly](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-heart-of-the-matter-54071.html) heard that the paper had been rejected because the editors felt that "it was of no obvious relevance to physics."
Apparently, Higgs acknowledged that the paper "had been short on sales talk," and after adding a couple of paragraphs it was accepted by *Physical Review Letters*.
Here is an [early example](http://sss.sagepub.com/content/23/2/342.abstract) of manuscript rejection, from 1842: **Mayer** came up with the theory of conservation of energy, and wrote an article explaining his idea that "energy is neither created nor destroyed." It was rejected by the leading physics journal of the time, ended up in an obscure chemistry journal, and was mostly ignored by physicists. When the physicists of the time rallied around Joule, who described conservation of energy later in the 1840s, Mayer suffered a mental breakdown. Towards the end of his life, he was finally given credit as a father of thermodynamics.
*Nature* declined to accept **Krebs**'s paper on the "Krebs cycle" in 1937. The work later won a Nobel Prize. The [letter from the editor](http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/28819/title/Nature-rejects-Krebs-s-paper--1937/) regretfully informs Mr. Krebs that the editor already has "sufficient letters" for the next 7-8 weeks.
The seminal paper on quantum cryptography, **Wiesner**'s “Conjugate Coding,” was [rejected](http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0604072.pdf) by the *IEEE Transactions on Information Theory*. (A surviving copy of the original typewritten manuscript says "Submitted to IEEE, Information Theory" on it.) It was published about a decade later.
In the same subfield, the original manuscript by **Bennet, <NAME> Breidbart** that introduced quantum key-recycle scheme (QKRS) was [rejected](http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0604072.pdf) several times by major CS conferences including STOC, and was never successfully published.
**Ernst**'s work on nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was [rejected](http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1991/ernst-bio.html) not once, but twice, by the *Journal of Chemical Physics*.
**Binning** and **Rohrer**'s report on their first experiments in scanning tunneling microscopy, which earned them a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986, was initially [rejected](http://scx.sagepub.com/content/16/3/304.short) on the grounds that it was "not interesting enough."
These are just a few examples. Many more have been compiled in various publications:
* Here are some more [Nobel-prize-winning](http://www.gwern.net/docs/dnb/2008-gonzalezalvarez.pdf) papers that were rejected at first.
* Here is a [compilation of classic economics papers](http://cahnrs-cms.wsu.edu/ses/people/chouinard/Documents/GansAndShepard.pdf) rejected the first time around.
* And here are some [famous papers in the field of medicine](http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=380984) that were rejected the first time around.
* [This paper lists influential rejected papers](http://scx.sagepub.com/content/16/3/304.short), of which several earned their authors Nobel prizes and several became the most cited papers in their respective journals.
* And here are some more [reports of Nobel laureates](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-008-2141-5) who encountered resistance from reviewers and editors to their award-winning work.
* And, [yet another list](http://sss.sagepub.com/content/23/2/342.abstract).
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Originally posted on [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17873/article-that-shows-the-complete-publication-history-of-acceptances-and-rejection/25953#25953), but it may be more useful in helping to answer this one. [This article](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.20556/abstract) by <NAME> and <NAME> investigates the question of paper rejection:
>
> Rejecting highly cited papers: The views of scientists who encounter resistance to their discoveries from other scientists
>
>
>
**Abstract:**
>
> We studied the views of scientists who experience resistance to their
> new ideas by surveying a sample of 815 scientists who are authors of
> highly cited articles. The 132 responses (16.2%) received indicated
> that only 47 scientists (35.6%) had no problems with referees,
> editors, or other scientists. The most common causes of difficulty
> were rejection of the manuscript, and scepticism, ignorance, and
> incomprehension. The most common arguments given by referees against
> papers were that the findings were an insufficient advance to warrant
> publication, lacked practical impact, were based on a wrong
> hypothesis, or were based on a wrong concept. The strategies authors
> used to overcome resistance included obtaining help from someone to
> publish problematic papers, making changes in the text, and simple
> persistence. Despite difficulties, however, some respondents
> acknowledged the positive effect of peer review.
>
>
>
It is published in the *Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology*.
<NAME> writes about the subject, linking the above article, as well as this [second article](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-4571%28199604%2947:4%3C302::AID-ASI6%3E3.0.CO;2-0/abstract) also by <NAME>, at [his blog](http://www.statisticalhorizons.com/rejected-keep-at-it).
**Full citations, for posterity's sake:**
<NAME>. and <NAME>. (2007), Rejecting highly cited papers: The views of scientists who encounter resistance to their discoveries from other scientists. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci., 58: 734–743. doi: 10.1002/asi.20556
<NAME>. (1996), Have referees rejected some of the most-cited articles of all times?. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci., 47: 302–310. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199604)47:4<302::AID-ASI6>3.0.CO;2-0
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Many of the seminal papers that have proven of exceptional importance to science were rejected. Some of them over 13 times:
<https://majesticforest.wordpress.com/2014/08/15/papers-that-triumphed-over-their-rejections/>
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: <NAME>'s paper in which he announced the discovery of quasicrystals was rejected for being "not interesting". It was accepted after few years in a different journal.
He won the Nobel Prize in 2011 for this discovery.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/26 | 1,147 | 4,897 | <issue_start>username_0: I submitted a paper to an internationally reputed journal. Two months after submission I was asked to suggest possible reviewers, which I did after a couple of days reflection. Since then it has been 4 months and the paper is still "awaiting reviewer invitation." I sent an email to the editor-in-chief as this was the only contact information given for queries. It has been almost two weeks without any reply. The day before yesterday I emailed the managing editor to know if the paper is under review or still awaiting reviewer invitation, but still I have received no reply from either editor.
*How should I get in contact with the journal regarding my paper's review status?*<issue_comment>username_1: If you feel your paper is strong, then I would send one last e-mail in a week or so stating that if there is no response, you will be compelled to withdraw from that journal and resubmit at their leading competitor.
Note that sometimes the e-mail queues at journals are broken. If you can find an alternate way to contact the editor, you may want to try it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> . Since then it has been 4 months and the paper is still 'awaiting reviewer invitation'.
>
>
>
I find "awaiting reviewer invitation" to be a slightly strange phrase, but taken at face value it seems to mean that they still have not even asked anyone to referee the paper, let alone found a referee, let alone gotten the report back from a referee! **If true** that is indeed problematic: six months is waaaaaay too long to wait for this.
I have two plausible guesses as to what has happened to you.
1) They are having a lot of trouble finding a suitable referee. They tried on their own, failed, then asked you for help after two months (kind of a long time, but not *a priori* unreasonable). The people that you suggested somehow didn't pan out, and they reacted badly to that, putting your work on some sort of long-term queue.
2) Whatever electronic system is conveying to you the message "awaiting reviewer invitation" is simply malfunctioning. Possibly (as @username_1 suggests) the journal's email system is on the fritz as well. If that's the case, who knows what's actually happening: maybe your paper has gotten lost entirely. (Almost anything can happen. Once, almost ten years ago, when I inquired after a few months on the status of my paper, the answer was "We're having trouble finding any record of your submission. Are you sure you submitted to our journal?" This may be hard to believe, but...eventually we sorted it out -- in particular, they found the record of my submission! -- and the paper was published by that journal.) Or maybe the referee report is actually in and it is just the part of the system where they tell you this that is malfunctioning. (That also happened to me, much more recently, and again the paper was eventually published, although this time I am less thrilled with the journal and will probably not submit there again.)
Either way, you need to actually get in contact with an editor of the journal and find out what happened. Not responding to your emails at all within two weeks is certainly unacceptable behavior: every professional deserves to be treated better than this. In my opinion this total lack of response empowers you to take more vigorous steps to contact the editors of the journal. Such things include, in roughly increasing order of vigorousness:
**A**. Emailing the editors at their university accounts rather than the journal account.
(This is definitely the least intrusive: try this first.)
**B**. Sending multiple emails at the rate of one a day.
**C**. Calling the editors at any phone number they list on a professional webpage.
**D**. Enlisting a more famous / senior / powerful ally to try to contact the editor on your behalf.
**E**. Contacting other professionals to tell them that you must get in touch with Editor X and can't, e.g. the secretary of Editor X's home department, or the head of Editor X's home department.
I would *not*: contact an editor on a social media site like facebook, try to look up their home phone number or address, or anything like that. I think that's too much.
Once you do hear from an editor, find out how far off the rails your train actually is. After losing contact with you completely and advertising your paper as "awaiting reviewer invitation" after six months, in my view the editors should be apologizing and telling you what they're going to do to fix the situation. If you get the sense that they don't see it that way, it's definitely time to try again with a different journal.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Awaiting review invitation means "Awaiting Reviewer Invitation: Manuscripts where you have listed potential reviewers, but have not sent an invitation email." (as the associate editor)
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/26 | 1,138 | 4,542 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm writing a scientific manuscript in German and since I want to give the German readers the opportunity to understand everything of it, I will include translations of all foreign quotes.
How would I do this? Let's assume the following hypothetical English text, where I want to include the original German quote (Es geht nicht um ein Stück vom Kuchen; es geht um die ganze Bäckerei.):
>
> Most politicians will happily confirm what was already pointed by <NAME> and million others "it's not about the cake, it's about the whole bakery." [[DK 2009](http://youtu.be/PMAg4xywy4s)]
>
>
>
The question is: Where do I put the original quote in German and do I have to point out that *I* translated it?
My current solution is as follows:
>
> Most politicians will happily confirm what was already pointed by <NAME> and million others "it's not about the cake, it's about the whole bakery.¹" [[DK 2009](http://youtu.be/PMAg4xywy4s)]
>
>
> ¹Original: Es geht nicht um ein Stück vom Kuchen; es geht um die ganze Bäckerei.
>
>
><issue_comment>username_1: Some style guides (Chicago, MLA, etc.) have rules for how to do this; if you know that you are required to follow some specific one of these, then the advice there will be authoritative. That said, there are still several different options for how the original quotation and the translation are presented: the choice is yours, and then the various manuals may give you "implementation details" about such vital matters as the placement of punctuation. (For example, the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style has extensive guidance in 13.71-13.79, but stops short of presenting the One True Method of including dual-language material.) I'm afraid I do not know which style manuals might be preferred for German-language texts.
Your basic choices are:
1. Whether the original, or the translation, is the primary version.
2. Whether the secondary version appears in the body text, in a footnote, or in an endnote.
In your case, you have decided that the translated version is primary, which makes sense if most readers don't care about the specific wording of the original, but may still want it to be available. You've also chosen to place the original text in a footnote, which makes sense for a "mid-length" quotation. If you only wanted to gloss a few words, it would be more natural to do this inline. If you had a more extensive quotation, then putting it in an endnote - or even an appendix - would avoid the problem of the gigantic multi-page footnote which can be so hostile to readers. So I think your choices are perfectly defensible.
In the case where *both* the original *and* the translation are from an external source, it is clear that both should be cited. Otherwise, you would not be giving due credit to the author and translator.
Here, the translation is your own, and in principle you should note it as "my translation" in whatever way is compatible with your citation style. For example, perhaps your footnote would say:
>
> 1 My translation; original: *Es geht nicht ...*
>
>
>
or perhaps you would write in text:
>
> ... the whole bakery." [DK 2009, my translation]
>
>
>
The specifics depend on which style guide you are following, if any.
Some of these "my translation" notes could be omitted, though that really depends on the quantity and variety of sources you are translating. If you have many translated quotations, some by you and some by others, then it would be clearer to retain the notes. If there is only one source which you quote repeatedly, then you could note "my translation" the first time and then not mention it again.
Another option is an explicit note early in the document, saying that all translations are your own unless indicated otherwise.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In books where I have seen a very large number of quotations with authors supplied translations a statement was made in the introduction or preface that "except as otherwise indicated all translations are mine." These were books where there were commonly three or four translated passages per page. They were mostly books written in English about medieval literature written in Old French or Latin. Even in these cases the original or translated text would be provided in a footnote since you would expect readers to want to refer to the other.
The point being that the exact choice of style might depend on the number of translated passages you will be working with.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/26 | 647 | 2,503 | <issue_start>username_0: I am a Computational Biologist as part of an academic lab group working on the Immunogenomics of disease vectors (which may be relevant to the following).
I am designing part of a web-page that showcases the members of the group by:
* Two portrait photographs
* A personal statement (50 words)
* Summary of their work (50 words)
* Fun group photographs
**Questions**
* What are the "Do"s and "Don't"s in designing a members page of a group such as ours?
* Do you know of any exemplar members pages or group websites?
A template in wordpress so far: <http://www.vigilab.org/><issue_comment>username_1: All I know is what I want to see when I visit an academic's member page:
1. Their name and a picture (to confirm it's them)
2. Contact details
3. Their rank and position
4. How long they have been working in the group
5. A full list of publications with links to full-texts and a good .bib entry
6. A short bio / summary of work, including service and awards
7. Some teaching information (if applicable)
8. Supervision details (if applicable: whom they're supervising or they've supervised)
9. Project information (which projects are they funded from/P.I. of, etc.)
Keep it professional, clean and brief.
You may want to list details like publications on a separate linked page if they are too long/cumbersome.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Designing a group web page is easy (and fun). **Maintaining** a group web page is hard and boring. As a consequence, most web pages (and parts of mine right now sadly) are old and out of date.
The only real solution is to keep as little information on this group page as possible, and decentralize most updates to the person whose information it actually is (and presumably who cares the most)
This is why @JeffE's statement is relevant. That information is mostly fixed, and points to where the real information is.
So unless you plan to maintain this page as a full time job (in addition to your other work), put as little information on it as is necessary. Having no web page is much better than having a web page with incomplete information and stale links.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: In terms of exemplar websites, I like the style of the Ketterson Lab group, who have very basic info on their site that includes a link out to the lab members' websites--where more up-to-date info is the responsibility of the lab members.
<http://www.indiana.edu/~kettlab/people.html>
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/26 | 881 | 3,919 | <issue_start>username_0: I always want to read a high profile publication papers. It is true that they are in general hard to understand but they have very important results (in general).
It happens to me sometimes. Sometimes when I read a high profile paper, I found that the contribution is not very interesting, not worth to publish the work in this kind of high profile journal. Maybe I am the one who do not understand the paper but it is only me?
Do high profile publication contain "uninteresting" (i.e., not very important or novel) publications? If it is the case, why they accept it?<issue_comment>username_1: If a paper is published in a very good journal (one that is sufficiently good that it doesn't need to accept boring papers to fill issues), that means *somebody* (reviewer, editor) thought its contributions would be interesting, novel, and/or useful to a nontrivial subset of the journal's audience.
But, this doesn't mean that the paper is interesting to everyone. (Very few papers are!)
For example, I usually find papers that say "We applied a known technique to optimize problem X for some metric Y" very boring, but others in my field appreciate these contributions.
In some cases, you may find the paper uninteresting because you either understood *less* than the reviewer or *more* than the reviewer.
* It often takes some knowledge of the field to really appreciate the contribution a paper is making. In most journals, the authors are allowed to assume that the reader already has some field-specific knowledge. If you read the paper without understanding this context, it will probably seem boring or not useful to you.
* It works the other way as well. Sometimes, a reviewer reads a paper and thinks, "This is an important contribution," but those with more knowledge understand that it isn't. For really good journals, the editor can usually find a reviewer who understands the field well, so this (ideally) doesn't happen as often.
I am sure somebody can think of a paper that was accepted only for e.g., political reasons, and is genuinely, objectively unimportant. These are rare enough that I don't think these are the papers you are asking about.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: You can take an other measure than subjective importance and this is the citation rate.
There are statistics which indicate that even in high-ranked journals there is only a relatively small number of articles which are heavily cited - and those create the high impact factor. All others are cited once or twice (and therefore "unimportant" if you accept citation rate as an indicator for "importance").
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Each journal has his own policy as for what kind of articles it is going to select, that is it will have a set of criteria weighted by different degrees of importance.
Among those criteria you will find:
* relevance to the journal
* significance of the studied problem
* originality and novelty of the work
* achievement of the objectives
* writing quality
* technical quality
* replicability if the paper describes an experiment
Those will be drastically different for example between a subscription type of journal and an open-access one, mostly for financial reasons. The peer-reviewing is also executed in different ways, with different methods and emphases. One has to pay attention to that.
At the end of the day, you will also find certain papers more "interesting" than others. The only way to find what you are looking for is to know what you are looking for exactly. Is it a journal focusing on novel content? Or just accepting the most methodologically correct ones? Ideally, to know how much you can trust different aspects of a paper, you need to know the details of its origin, that is who reviewed and selected it for you. Journals are a great tools for science, but they sure are not absolute.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/27 | 1,540 | 6,754 | <issue_start>username_0: In my syllabus there is series of writing assignments that are worth 10% of the final grade. Over the course of the semester there were supposed to be 4 assignments, however as a result of snow days and other extrinsic issues, the students have only turned in one of these assignments and I am not likely to be able to get any more in by the end of the semester.
Additionally, when I designed the assignment, I did not fully appreciate how difficult it would be for the students and how difficult it was going to be to grade. At this point it is only going to be reasonable for me to assign grades based on whether the student put some effort into the assignment (i.e., check+, check, check-, 0).
So I am left with the situation where 10% of a student's final grade could be the result of one assignment that was graded only on completion.
As I see it, this poses 2 problems:
1. The final grade of the students that did the assignment will be artificially inflated, and
2. the final grade of a student that missed the assignment for whatever reason will be reduced to a degree disproportional to the offence.
**Is there a way to deal with this situation fairly?**
(I have considered moving the assignment to another assignment group (e.g., counting it as a classwork assignment) but then I am not sure how to redistribute the orphaned points in a fair way.)<issue_comment>username_1: Since the assignments did not go as intended, and it is obviously not the students' fault. I would just turn this part of the grade into extra credit. For example, students who did the assignment get +2.5 points added to their final grade, and those who didn't, don't get anything.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: You could just distribute the orphaned points equally among all other components of the course grade. Just take whatever percentage they would have gotten over all the other components of the grade, and divide it by 90 (which will be the maximum without this assignment included). Then their final grade will still be the percentage of the points they earned out of the total available.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Same thing happened to my prof last year. Many assignments were planned, however due to things out of our control we were not going to be able to do every assignment. The prof held an open forum during class to collect ideas from us (only about 20 in the class, so it was easily manageable). The final concencus was to have smaller assignments replace the larger ones and any spare % went to the exam. Students who had already started the assignment (started early) had the opportunity to present it to the prof and it was up to the prof to reward extra credit . All the students found this fair and so myself and one other student got extra credit because we started an assignment that was replaced/cancelled.
**TLDR**: Have an open forum with the students, present a few options and let them decide what is fair. Let them "argue" between each other in a mediated way to present the pros/cons of every option. Just remember it's not their fault, so every student needs to come out satisfied with the outcome.
In my school (University in Canada) you are not permitted to deviate from the syllabus unless every single student agrees. If even one student says no, you are not permitted to deviate. Often times profs will talk to these individuals and give them "incentive" to agree.
--EDIT--
Another thing you should do is talk to professors in your department to see what they do in situations like yours. By no means is your situation unique, and seeing what your fellow professors do and maybe even the school policy may be a good idea.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> Is there a way to deal with this situation fairly?
>
>
>
There have been several proposed solutions for redistributing points: use the single assignment as extra credit, offer an alternative assignment that *is* feasible, just redistribute orphaned points equally, etc. Any combination of these *could* be "fair."
But I think it is unfair to **unilaterally** change the syllabus (even if change is unavoidable) once students can no longer drop the class without penalty.
For example, some students may be thrilled at the option to equally redistribute the orphaned points and use the written assignment as extra credit. But a student who is great at written assignments, and was really counting on the ten points of assignment credit described in the syllabus to boost his/her grade, may think the only fair solution is to offer an optional alternative written assignment (one that is feasible to do and grade).
This doesn't mean that you have to poll every student individually, just include them in the conversation.
Even with a large class, you can present your preferred solution (or two proposed solutions) in class and solicit feedback. If there is no public disagreement, say "Anyone who has a real problem with this change should send me the details of their objection and proposed alternative by email, and I will seriously consider the objections."
(If the students are split between two proposed solutions, you can offer something like, "Your grade will be the higher of Option A and Option B.")
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I've seen plenty of courses where >= 10% of the final grade is attributed to participation, with an aim to increase student engagement. So, given that both you and the students agree that the syllabus must change part-way through, there is nothing wrong per se about awarding points for participation instead.
I would suggest replacing the three subsequent assignments with more realistic, pass-fail assignments. Preferably, they maintain the pedagogical objectives meant for the four writings assignments. You could perhaps allow people to re-submit the first assignment under the shortened format, if you believe the design of it was unfair.
For example, if the writing assignments were long research essays that were meant to demonstrate the ability to find and understand relevant literature, the students could submit 500 word summaries of self-chosen articles, in which they argue why the article was chosen, and what the main methodology and findings are.
This approach is fair, because:
* For all students, the 10% is achievable (if allowing resubmission).
* The students who already obtained 2.5% of the grade are still rewarded for their earlier performance and need only submit 3 shortened assignments.
* The students who had not obtained the earlier 2.5% of the grade, will be penalized lightly, having only to submit a fourth shortened assignment.
* For you, the original pedagogical aims of the assignments are still met
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/27 | 782 | 3,257 | <issue_start>username_0: I am on the faculty of a large American university, and I have bought a lot of equipment (laptops, tablets, batteries, etc.) for research purposes using a startup package. I will be leaving for a new university in September, and I am wondering what, *in practice*, will happen to this equipment. Obviously, it is the property of the university and I'm going to leave it all there, but is someone going to come through with a clipboard and make sure it's all there? Do these kinds of things usually just get sent off to surplus sales? How about the students of mine who will still be at the old university?<issue_comment>username_1: What happens to your stuff depends on how your university classifies it. *Inventoried* material—more expensive items that a university keeps track of—will almost certainly need to be accounted for. So that probably includes laptops and tablets, unless they're so old they've been removed from inventory (as not having any significant value anymore). Major laboratory equipment and furniture also fall into this category. Such materials will probably be held as "surplus," and made available to other groups or departments.
In contrast, small-ticket items—such as stationery and miscellaneous office supplies—are not normally tracked. You won't be asked to reimburse the university for a missing stapler.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: In my old group, what we did was that every lab member could, when (s)he is leaving the group, "buy" their own hardware for a symbolic price if it was older than 3 years (3 years, because after this time span the hardware was considered without significant worth by the university). So basically, everybody usually kept all their equipment after e.g., graduation. Our lab head considered this as sort of his "graduation gift" to the student / ex-lab member - I am not convinced that the entire process was entirely legal, but apparently (as the equipment is formally without worth to the university) nobody ever actually complained (so far). In the rare cases where this was not possible (e.g., a laptop younger than 3 years), we simply kept the equipment back for emergencies (such as when the laptop of one of the lab members breaks and he needs a replacement while it is being repaired).
In my new group, hardware is simply returned, put onto a big pile, and in most cases, forgotten. Every now and then the big pile of old hardware gets thrown away. I am sort of assuming that this is how most universities handle old hardware, as silly / wasteful as it is.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: In my alma mater, a public university in Spain, all expensive material is inventoried, and as it belongs to a public entity, cannot be sold when used up. Also, to get rid of an old computer (to get an idea: some are using floppy disks) requires a lot of bureaucracy. You need to prove that it is not useful anymore, and blah blah blah.
So, what they do is just drop the material in a given corridor, and wait for it to be stolen. If anyone -ever- comes asking for it, they will just check the corridor "ah, it got stolen". Lots of trees saved.
For other equipment not suitable for this scheme, well, we have a wide terrace with lots of space.
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/03/27 | 953 | 4,207 | <issue_start>username_0: I am currently teaching at a local college an Introduction to programming using C#. Most of these students have never had any programming experience. The only prerequisite is an ICT course that teaches basics of computing.
I am finding that the students are facing issues with comprehending the concept of program structure and execution. I tried explaining with flow charts however they still face issues linking the flow of the code to the flow of the solution of to the problem being solved.
Those who are more experienced probably know of techniques or ways to structure the lesson or even curriculum to teach programming in a much better way (I am even guessing there might have even been studies about teaching programming).
What known techniques are there for teaching students at a college level programming? Especially those who have had no prior experience before?<issue_comment>username_1: I am inexperienced in teaching people with no prior knowledge to coding, though the subjects I have taught were relatively new to most of them. (Reactive Programming/Asynchronous). I usually start off by telling them the importance of the lesson, in your case you could say.
"The concept we are handling today is the basis of Object-Oriented programming, this is widely used and so important, the windows kernel even got a complete rewrite to accommodate this.")
Furthermore, it's important to note that not every student comprehends this as quickly as others, programming is a different way of thinking about a problem than they are used to. Just like they probably had trouble understanding mathematics when they first got that in primary school. You have to keep in mind that because a part of the class understands it, that's no assurance everyone will.
Programming in general should be thought in a "New way to think" manner, you don't teach them literal code, but rather you should teach them "How can I explain to this stupid machine, what it has to do?"
I'd start off with teaching them about the primitives, then the arrays. Maybe as an assignment, let them figure out how to code 10 numbers of the fibonacci sequence? Just make sure they get enough coding done, books and lectures help, but eventually they'll need the experience in writing the code.
Only once they understand how they can explain to a computer what they want it to do, you can start teaching them about object-oriented programming and patterns, but they first have to understand algorithms.
I do look forward to answers of people whom have experience teaching the inexperienced, as I might end up doing so one day myself :)
Anyway, I hope this helped a bit :)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: We've had pretty good success through the [Software Carpentry](http://software-carpentry.org/) initiative.
There are software carpentry [bootcamps](http://software-carpentry.org/) happening around the world: I'd advise going on one yourself, before hosting them.
They offer a well-rehearsed pattern of training, with lots of hands-on exercises, using open-source training materials.
You can mix and match bits of the [syllabus](http://software-carpentry.org/v4/index.html) to suit: databases, particular languages, using the shell command line, source-code version control, OOP, and so on.
Once you've put one cohort through a Software Carpentry bootcamp, get them to be the helpers on the next software carpentry bootcamp, for the next cohort of students. That way, they get to copy the successful "see one, do one, teach one" method used in medical training: they learn at least as much again when they're teaching the material, as they did when being taught it.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I agree with much of what's already been said. What I would add is that you have to make it matter to the student. Teaching programming as an abstraction -- which is the way many of us learned -- makes it harder to learn. I will often give a good sized project to first semester students where I'll say, "Solve a problem that interests you!" Even if I don't always get the best results that will always be the project the students enjoy the most and put the most work into.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/27 | 756 | 3,009 | <issue_start>username_0: I am applying to the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, and they require a transcript. Now, I have a problem with my grades, in that I had good grades until my final year, where a combination of depression and a death in the family tanked my non-major GPA. During my final year, I went from a cumulative 3.55 to a 3.07, and also failed two courses. More specifically, my first semester of my senior year was awful, with a 1.22 GPA, and in my second semester, I managed to get a respectable 3.0, where I had to take 21 credit hours so I could graduate on time. So it's not as if I am a bad student, it's just one semester of badness which has to be explained.
How do I make this not look bad? I would like to explain myself in the personal statement that I am capable of rebounding from hardship, that I can rise to the challenge when confronted with adversity, that my performance in that one semester is not indicative of my abilities.
I am upset at the moment because after looking at my transcript, it's worse than I initially thought. As for my other materials, I believe I have good letters of recommendation, good industry experience, and I can write some kick-ass essays, despite the fact that English is not my first language.
Also, the bad grades are not in my major (CS), where I managed to keep a GPA above 3.5 during my studies.
Any tips on how to deal with this? Any other tips I could use? I really appreciate it?<issue_comment>username_1: They require a transcript, but do they allow any kind of supplemental statements as part of the package? If so, I would try to include some kind of simply explanation – something like:
>
> During the fall semester of my senior year, my grades slipped due to some personal family issues.
>
>
>
You might even try put a positive spin on it:
>
> During the fall semester of my senior year, my grades slipped due to some personal family issues. Even though my grades suffered, I learned a lot about priorities and biting off more than I can chew. Though my GPA might not reflect this, I emerged a better person because of that trying experience.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: If there are extenuating circumstances that precipitated this dramatic drop in grades, use the opportunity provided by your personal statement to address this, as suggested by username_1
A second point you can emphasize that - in my experience is quite important - is that you rebounded from this very sub-par semester by doing respectably in your final semester. This provides more evidence that it was a fluke and that you are on the upswing. From speaking with admissions committee members (which is admittedly a bit different), I've been told that bad grades earlier in a record, followed by good grades are almost a non-issue (if you get passed the initial GPA screen, of course). Between this dynamic and a well-written personal statement, you should be able to mitigate the damage of a single bad semester.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/27 | 1,024 | 3,983 | <issue_start>username_0: How much of the teaching content at universities in the US is delivered in imperial units instead of SI?
I imagine that industry (e.g. Engineering) is still stuck using imperial units, but research and physics are much better suited to SI units, so I am interested to know how this is dealt with.<issue_comment>username_1: When I was an (engineering, US) undergrad, the textbook in one engineering mechanics class included problems using SI units *and* problems using imperial units. The problem sets for homework and exams came from the book, and could be in either SI or imperial units.
(You can see these examples in a [sample chapter](http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0073529400/information_center_view0/sample_chapters.html)).
Every other class I've taken as a physics and engineering student used SI units exclusively.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: At the US community college where I teach physics, SI is used exclusively in all science courses. (Chem courses do still use calories, which are not SI.) Nearly all physics textbooks use SI exclusively, although a few may mix in examples using feet and pounds here and there.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: In civil engineering, imperial units are used exclusively. Sometimes instructors will mention SI units, but you will never use them on homework or exams.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: First, a remark which I think important (apologies, I'm donning my metrologist's hat). Nowadays, the units of the Imperial system or those of the CGS are *all* defined in terms of the SI units. For instance, 1 inch equals 2.54 centimetre *by definition*, and the centimetre in that definition is really the SI centimetre. This means that even in fields where non-SI units are traditionally employed, a basic knowledge of the SI is at least needed if one has to discuss units-related stuff.
>
> I imagine that industry (e.g. Engineering) is still stuck using imperial units
>
>
>
Yes, you can still find pressures measured in *pound-force per square inch* (psi) or *inch of mercury* (inHg), areas measured in *circular mil*, heat measured in *British thermal unit* (BTU), wrench sizes measured in fractions of inch, etc. Product data sheets sometimes list parameters both in Imperial and SI units, sometimes no.
>
> but research and physics are much better suited to SI units
>
>
>
Yes, Imperial units are definitely ill-suited for science. As for the dichotomy SI/CGS that has been brought up in the comments... uh, well, opinions might differ across disciplines, and if you skim through publications (journals, books) of different disciplines you will find different level of adherence to the SI (e.g. there are recent physics books which use the SI when discussing mechanics and the CGS when discussing electromagnetism).
>
> How much of the teaching content at universities in the US is delivered in imperial units instead of SI?
>
>
>
I cannot answer this question directly because my contacts with the US are within my discipline and mainly outside of academia. However, I can try to answer it in an indirect way from the (limited) perspective of a compulsive book-buyer (that's me), assuming that the teaching content of lectures is roughly the same of books.
If I look at the books in my library, all the engineering books on electronics and electromagnetics written by US authors, even those from the 1960s, employ the SI. I could find only one exception, a book on lens design from the 1970s which employs Imperial units. None of the physics books employ Imperial units. Instead, the few mechanical engineering books that I have employ Imperial units, but they are very old.
Therefore, my impression, as reader of technical and scientific books from the other side of the ocean, is that nowadays most of the teaching content in the US is delivered in SI units, and that Imperial units are really limited to a few fields.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/27 | 790 | 3,281 | <issue_start>username_0: So I'm in my third year of university and I'm at the point where I have to choose my modules for next year. This is a simple question, but I really wish I asked it a long time ago because I have no idea of the answer.
Should I pick modules I know I can easily pass that will get me a better final grade but probably won't teach me anything **OR** should I pick modules that will be more challenging for me, will give me a lower final grade than if I picked the easy ones but with the benefit of teaching me a great deal?
I suppose at the root of it the question is am I at university solely to strengthen my future career prospects or am I here for the purpose of learning. Regardless of my answer to that, I'd like to know what people advise regarding module picking.
Bare in mind that I don't say "easy" modules because they're easy but because I practice a lot of the required skills in my free time so I have experience. They will still have the same value as the hard modules if an employer were looking at them.<issue_comment>username_1: Short answer: Go neither for easy nor for challenging courses but for courses that **interest you the most**.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: What do you want to do afterwards? Academia or industry? What is your field? From what you say, "easy" modules would be the ones that interest you, so taking them will mean having formal training and proven experience. On the other hand, certain skills can be proven in many ways (you can show you know how to program by making contributions in open software projects). The formal training will allow you to get a much deeper understanding of the topic, provided the teaching and the course are good, of course.
The question is what is more valuable? Wide range of skills or deep knowledge of a few?
And yet another point to consider is how are your grades so far. Consider if you can afford loosing a few points, and what difference it will make. Perhaps the difference between a class 1 and 2.1 is bigger than a 2.1 and a 2.2.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: You mentioned that the "easy" courses are the ones in which you already have experience. If you take those classes, the course work will be redundant and will not boost your knowledge. On the other hand, it seems that you are also concerned about your overall GPA.
Ask yourself what you want to do. Then look for classes that come under the umbrella of 'what I want to do'. Eliminate the courses from that umbrella that fall into the "easy" bucket and the "very tough" bucket (which might dampen your GPA) and pick from among the rest.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: If you work in a country that only cares about GPA (for things that aren't internships) then no fault to you if you try to maximize GPA. However, your goal should be to be exposed to as much theory as possible, with the highest difficulty possible; while aiming to understand and be able to **use** just a small fraction of that. The more you can **use**, (i.e. practically) the better. GPA can be quite useless.
Take the hardest courses you can without failing out of your program. Study such that (while you may not do well on tests), you'll remember this stuff *after* you graduate.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/27 | 440 | 1,946 | <issue_start>username_0: I went on a trip to Oxford with my school, and I asked a lady whether or not you have to go and discover something in a PhD? She said no, and it's more research. But I read up somewhere that you do have to discover something to get a PhD.
I just want to know precisely how a PhD works.
Will some subjects- like Maths or Computer Science- require you to go out and prove something, and are others- like English- just require the student to do extensive research?
Note: by getting a PhD, I don'y just mean anyone getting it, I do mean someone who's actually studying for one.<issue_comment>username_1: Getting a PhD almost always requires one to have some original contribution to your field. That result doesn't always have to be an earth shattering proof of something completely original. Your work can build upon existing work, or draw connections between a variety of different topics that no one has noticed yet, or even just suggest that there is a problem that nobody has considered yet. The point is that there has to be something unique, and original that counts as your contribution to the body of knowledge. That isn't easy to do certainly, but it isn't impossible for normal people to accomplish through lots of time and hard work either.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I fully agree with @shane's point: you need to have shown some original contribution. But I think something else is also important, and sometimes plays a major role: you have to show that you have mastered the *trade* - which means, in practice, that you are able to perform whichever experimental/theoretical things a scientist in your field is supposed to be able to do, and write about the results in an understandable manner. In this way you show that you are worthy of being taken up in the community of scientists, which despite our feeling that science is about facts, is still rather important.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/27 | 578 | 2,497 | <issue_start>username_0: In the University in which I will start teaching the course sequence for Programming goes in this way:
* Algorithms and Data Structures
* Structured Programming Languages
* Object-Oriented Programming Languages
So as you see, the first contact of the students with Programming is the "Algorithms and Data Structures" course in which several programming fundamentals topics are covered (variables, data types, if/else, loops) and also some data structures and basic algorithms. The weird part -at least for me- is that in this first course there no actual programming: all the topics are covered with Pseudocode and Flowcharts written in the Blackboard.
This seems kind of strange for me, and as a new teacher I have little power to change this (Senior teachers said that coding is for latter courses). So, I want to know if any of you is familiar with that teaching approach and if you can suggest me some textbooks that are using that teaching methodology.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.<issue_comment>username_1: This is exactly the approach taken by the [Introduction to Algorithms course](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-006-introduction-to-algorithms-fall-2011/) at MIT—or at least it was the case back in the early 2000's. The book by Cormen et al. takes a decidedly agnostic approach to programming, and presents everything in terms of pseudocode, rather than adopting any particular programming language.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I think it is a bad idea. The paper supports everything, and if you make a mistake, it takes skill and time to realise. On the other hand, if you write and run a program, bugs appear because the output is incorrect and you know it. Just think how difficult is to debug a broken program, imagine how much it would be if you don't even know if there is a bug.
It is reasonable for a book to be language agnostic, so the reader can adapt it to their favourite one. But it doesn't mean one can just draw it.
Another lesson to be learned is that there are algorithms out there that look beautiful on paper, but they can become a hell to implement in actual code.
And finally, designing on paper is a good practice, but it is only valid if you consider all possible inputs. And again, this takes skill and experience, that firstly introduced cannot have. On the contrary, if you have the code, you can throw in anything you can imagine and see what happens.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/27 | 3,165 | 11,683 | <issue_start>username_0: My PhD advisor and lab colleagues think that Springer, IEEE and Elsevier journals non-open-access charge authors for publishing a paper. (They usually only publish in local journals.) All the info I've found points to the contrary (except for "gold" open access journals, which do charge authors), but all I've found are people commenting on particular journals saying that they do not charge.
Nonetheless, I've found very few journals that explicitly say "submission and publication is free of charge". For example, [JAIR](http://www.jair.org/submission_info.html) mentions that there aren't any *submission* fees, but does not mention *publication* fees. [Frontiers of Computer Science](http://www.springer.com/computer/journal/11704) does not mention charges at all in their instructions for authors.
I'm sorry if it's a stupid question, but I can't for the life of me find any definitive yes/no information online. (I don't have a concrete journal in mind since this all started because we are looking for one, but it'd have to be a machine learning/artificial intelligence journal.)
**Do Springer, IEEE and Elsevier journals generally charge an author fee for their non-open-access journals?** It may include submission fees or post-acceptance fees as well as page or figure charges.<issue_comment>username_1: To be certain, you'd have to check the specific journal's author instructions.
However, I've published in two Elsevier and one Springer journal (in mathematics) and never paid an author fee. The Springer journal had an open access option, which would have had a fee, but we didn't choose that option.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I have never paid for the publication of any journal paper, including papers in Springer, Elsevier, IEEE, ACM, SIAM, and AMS journals.
Some of those journals do advertise "page charges", but in my experience these are strictly voluntary. I've never paid them, and my papers were published anyway.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I agree with the other answers, but they are anecdotal, and you asked for some "definitive" answers to help you convince your colleagues and advisor. Here's what I found:
IEEE
----
None of the IEEE journals has a required charge for non-open access publications.
The [publication FAQ](http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/authors/publications_faq.html) says:
>
> For a detailed listing of paper charges by publication, download the List of Voluntary and Overlength Paper Charges (PDF, 287 KB).
>
>
>
[Here](http://www.ieee.org/advertisement/2012vpcopc.pdf) is the current version of that list. You will note that some journals have voluntary "sustaining" charges for "normal-length" manuscripts. In fact, [IEEE policy](http://www.ieee.org/documents/author_reprint_info.pdf) specifically states that those charges are not obligatory:
>
> IEEE Policy 6.9 permits some types of periodicals to levy page charges. If your publication is one of these, it is your company or institution, not you, which is being asked for support. Payment is not obligatory nor is it a prerequisite for publication.
>
>
>
In the statement above "page charges" refers only to charges for not-open, not-overlength, not-color-print articles. Many IEEE publications do have ["overlength" page charges](http://www.ieee.org/advertisement/2012vpcopc.pdf), which *are* mandatory - if your paper exceeds the "normal" length then you *must* either reduce the length of your paper or pay the overlength charges. The length of a "normal" paper depends on the journal and publication type (normal-length "letters" may be as short as 1 or 2 pages, for example.) Some also have charges for color figures appearing in print, although there is no charge for online-only color.
More definitive info is available for each journal in the IEEE Xplore site, at the "About Journal" page, section "Author Resources", link "Additional Information", which opens a PDF with detailed "Information for Authors" (see [an example](https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/societyimages/tgrs/tgrs-info-for-authors.pdf)).
(The document also does not include the recently added IEEE open access options, which do have required charges, which are listed [here](http://open.ieee.org/pubchanges.html).)
Springer
--------
The [Springer author FAQ](http://www.springer.com/authors/journal+authors/faq+for+journal+authors) asks
>
> HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO PUBLISH IN A SPRINGER JOURNAL?
>
>
>
The answer there is:
>
> For the majority of Springer journals, publishing an article is free of charge.
>
>
> * If a journal requires page charges, you will find them on the journal's springer.com homepage or in its Instructions for Authors.
> * Charges might apply e.g. for color figures or over-length articles. The information on these extra costs will also be available from the journal's homepage or its Instructions for Authors.
> * Charges for open access articles: If you choose to publish an open access article ("Springer Open Choice" article or in a "SpringerOpen" journal), there will be an Article Processing Charge (APC) to be paid by the author. As a consequence, the article can be freely read, downloaded or distributed from SpringerOpen.com and SpringerLink.com by any internet user.
>
>
>
Furthermore, even for open-access journals, [Springer advises](http://www.springeropen.com/about/faq/charges):
>
> SpringerOpen journals routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries; and individual waiver requests are considered on the grounds of hardship on a case-by-case basis.
>
>
>
Another Springer FAQ titled [Why publish with Springer?](http://www.springer.com/authors?SGWID=0-111-6-792657-0) claims:
>
> Page charges do not exist.
>
>
>
which I think is as close to "definitive" as you can get.
Elsevier
--------
Some Elsevier journals do have author charges, and by searching the Elsevier site I did find a (very) few non-open journals with required page charges. I did not find any in CS with author charges, though.
The official [policy](http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/773/c/6261/kw/charge/p/8045) I found is:
>
> I am submitting my paper to one of your journals. How do I find out if there are page charges associated with this journal?
>
>
> Page charges are journal specific. Many journals do not have page charges for submitted papers.
>
>
> To determine whether the journal to which you are submitting has page charges, you will need to find the homepage for the journal and check it's specific submission instructions.
>
>
>
So if you're looking for a definitive "No page charges," Elsevier is not the answer. In practice, however, there are literally only a handful of non-open Elsevier journals that charge author fees.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: It's not uncommon for charges to come in disguise, e.g., this is from the [IEEE](https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/societyimages/tgrs/tgrs-info-for-authors.pdf):
>
> A mandatory Excessive Paper Length charge of $200.00 per page (beginning with page 7 and beyond) is required for papers in excess of six (6) printed pages. The author will be notified of the estimated paper length upon receipt of the original manuscript. The author will be requested, conditional upon favorable technical review, to pay an optional sustaining page charge of $110 per printed page to cover the cost of publication of the first six pages and will receive 100 black/white (no color) reprints of the paper if this charge is honored. There will also be mandatory charges for color figures.
>
>
>
**Now comes the catch:** the average paper in this periodical is more than six pages long and has at least one color figure. *So in effect the majority of authors did end up being charged.*
Here is some evidence that IEEE charges authors in excess of a thousand dollars per article in some of its journals. I picked [IEEE JSTARS](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=4609443) because I have experience with it, both as an author and a reviewer. I looked at the four issues published so far in the current year. I scraped the page range of each numbered contribution; there were 151-7=144 articles, after removing 7 editorials, forewords, or tables of contents. The typical article length, 12.1 pages +/- 3.2 pages (mean and standard deviation, respectively), is more than twice the nominal normal length (6 pages). Multiplying $200 times the excess number of pages gives the sought-after figure. IEEE charged authors US$ 1,213 on average as mandatory over-length fees in this journal. That's effectively an article processing charge in disguise. (I've shared the [spreadsheet](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-I95wETyqQiZWtQUUJBYi1OSVE/view?usp=sharing) online.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Beside the above mentioned some journals (not necessarily of the above publishers) require a fee before reviewing your submission (sometimes only if you are not part of a society).
For instance the [American Sociological Review](http://www.uk.sagepub.com/journalsProdDesc.nav?prodId=Journal201969&ct_p=manuscriptSubmission&crossRegion=eur) charges a "$25.00 Non-refundable Manuscript Processing Fee."
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: Around half the titles from the major commercial publishers (Springer, Elsevier, etc) have (potential, & effectively optional) colour charges ([Kiley](http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Wellcome-survey-of-colour-and-page-charges-v-02.pdf)). [Wiley is listed as "no data available" here, but I can confirm from experience that some Wiley titles do have colour charges, and have a very tedious paper-based process for paying them].
Very few of the commercial journals have page charges - usually for historic reasons - but they are still reasonably common among journals published by US scholarly societies ([Curb & Abramson](http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/01.17.CP.1.4)). Other fees (eg submission fees, revision fees, supplementary material fees, "picture on the cover" fees...) are generally rare but not unknown.
As a result, they're a significant issue in *some* fields, where page-charge journals are still common, but in others, you can go your entire career without ever encountering them. Hence the wide variation in answers...
---
**Edit**: I finally wrote up and published my notes on this - "Considering Non-Open Access Publication Charges in the Total Cost of Publication'", *Publications*, 2015, 3(4), 248-262; doi:[10.3390/publications3040248](http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/publications3040248)
My estimate is that overall these charges (page, colour, submission, etc) are equivalent to around 2% of subscription costs, which is relatively small but (given the cost of subscriptions) substantial in cash terms. The costs appear to be very variable among disciplines (and institutions), and aren't very well recorded by our existing ways of tracking spending on scholarly publishing. Which is concerning...
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: <http://www.editorialmanager.com/homepage/DOCS/Author_Tutorial.pdf>
Starting on page 35 of this pdf, this Springer journal details how there is a fee for paper submission ($75 charge for members; $100 charge for non-members) and the paper will not be forwarded to the editorial office until the payment has cleared. Additionally, there are other charges when they go to production (e.g., $50 per page for the first 5 pages, $35 per page for pages 6-10, $20 per page for 11+ pages).
I find this very odd as I've never had a journal request payment to submit or publish a paper.
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/03/28 | 878 | 3,873 | <issue_start>username_0: Recently, some students skipped some lessons without note (within the drop policy limits). I post basic instructions to a course Web site where any student can check, but since these students missed classes, the instructions are insufficient, so they send me E-mails or call asking me "explain what to do". As the homework involves on-going projects, such requests is occupying much of my time. I can demonstrate aspects in the class that require extensive writing to explain in an E-mail.
* Is it acceptable practice to turn students away?
* Is it my responsibility to assist students who fall behind in this manner to catch up with the other students?<issue_comment>username_1: I'll look at these two points:
1) Your course is structured in a way that there is no any alternative way to acquire the materials you cover in class; attending the lecture is the only way. **AND**
2) You have never expressed, either written in syllabus or spoken to the full class, that it's the student's sole responsibility to coordinate with other students/TAs to catch up with the materials they missed when they were absent.
If either of this is yes, I'd at least help the student once, and then make sure the whole class will know of point 2 as soon as possible.
If there are a lot of them waiting for you, try:
1. Name the chapters/sections in the assigned texts that will cover a majority of what you talked about in class.
2. Have them work in group to come up with a strategy on those "what to do," and meet with them as a group to go over their questions.
3. Group them and give a blanket tutorial. You can also make this a challenging task by asking each of the absentees responsible for sorting and summarizing the texts, or have them work on a problem set together.
4. Invest in either a cheap recorder or screen/voice capturing software to archive your lecture, so that you can prevent other situations like this from happening again.
It's hard to give a "should" or "shouldn't." Analyzing the situation case by case and contrasting with our teaching philosophy along the way should be sufficient to hint what to do.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: These students want to have it both ways. They want to skip class, but they also don't want to deal with the consequences of skipping class. The way you've been handling this so far has indicated to your students that this is OK with you. If it's not OK with you, then you may want to send a broadcast email to the class laying out a policy on this, and incorporate such a policy into your syllabus in the future. You have broad authority to set such a policy.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: During my student years, I quite seldom attended lectures. It clashes with my preferred method of learning: I always want to stop and think things through before moving on. Hence, I always fall hopelessly behind during lectures and am much better off spending that time reading the course material. I don't know how responsible the students who skipped your class are: whether they do their best to keep up with the course, but please be aware that some people just aren't suited for learning via lectures.
I don't know what kinds of courses you teach, which country/university you're in or whether your university requires students to show up for lectures to get a passing grade, so let me just state my policy when teaching courses: All information on what is required of a student to pass the course should be made available online. So should hand-outs and instructions for assignments etc. I claim no responsibility to remind absent students of deadlines etc., but in my view, a student who skips lectures but who is responsible and willing to actively keep him/herself updated on what is going on in the course, should have access to everything required to take part in it.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/28 | 1,183 | 5,208 | <issue_start>username_0: I work with some students who will attend graduate school in the US. The schools they are applying for list minimum required TOEFL scores. Some have just reached the minimum scores required for admission to their schools of choice. Do admissions departments ever care about how close this number is to the minimum? In other words, will the students be at any greater advantage if they retake the test and get a higher score, or is the "score level met" simply a "met" or "not met" variable that goes into deciding whether or not the students are accepted?<issue_comment>username_1: The answer is "sometimes."
Some schools will not care what the score is, as long as you have the minimum requirement that they advertise publicly.
Some schools won't care, even if you *don't* have the minimum requirement (they may "waive" this requirement routinely).
Some schools will care: they may have one public requirement, and a higher (unpublicized) threshold that they *really* use in most cases. (Or: the school has one minimum and the department has a higher, unpublicized one.)
Some schools will care: the minimum is required to get your application looked at, but even if it is met they still consider the score in admissions decisions.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: What username_1 said, but I will add that if you are interviewed they will judge you by that. It's reasonable since if you have the TOEFL with good marks but have already forgotten half your English, you are deemed unreliable, if you failed it on the other hand, but are at ease with English, it is easy to understand that you probably failed the essay or had a bad day. What they see with their own eyes is more important than an exam taken some time ago under who knows what circumstances.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I would agree with "sometimes." Usually departments will set these criteria, not schools, based on the success of students who have a given score. But once that bottom is set you meet it or you don't.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: In addition to other useful remarks made: in my university, a minimum TOEFL score is considered a problem, to the extent that it drags down everything of the file. Partly this is based on our past experiences with such scores (statistically, over 30+ years) and the subsequent improvements-or-not. Specifically, minimal TOEFL score people seem not to usually improve much at all, even after a few years. Oof. Of course this says nothing about any individual, but we predict based on the statistical aggregate...
The minimum set by the umbrella "graduate school" body that imagines it oversees graduate education and degrees across the university has lower expectations than our math dept. I cannot speak for other depts.
And, indeed, both higher and lower TOEFL-score kids who associate almost entirely with their home-language population outside of teaching and classes simply do not improve, do not learn finer points of colloquial English, etc. On one hand, I'm somewhat sympathetic to cultural dislocation... but if the issue is job performance, then we can see the obvious issue: cultural extraterrestrials are rarely effective in teaching.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Almost 20 years ago, I was in charge of graduate admissions for my department, and TOEFL scores were among my biggest headaches. They just didn't provide the information I really needed: Can the applicant succeed not only as a student but also as a TA in first-year calculus or pre-calculus? (TA positions were essentially the only financial support we could offer foreign graduate students.) I remember two students in particular. One had the highest TOEFL score I had ever seen, but I had great difficulty understanding her, and I'm confident that I can understand "foreign English" significantly better than our calculus students. The other student had a TOEFL score barely above the university's minimum, and she was admitted only because one of our faculty vouched for the reliability of a professor who had worked with this student and vouched for her ability to speak English well. This student was, despite her TOEFL score, indeed able to speak English well, and she even served as an intermediary between some of the department staff and some of her fellow students whose English was not so good (though their TOEFL scores were better than hers).
My department also requires applicants to provide a letter from a native speaker of English, attesting to the applicant's ability to teach. (We sometimes stretch the meaning of "native" a bit, for example to include me.) These letters are often more useful than TOEFL scores, though sometimes the language of the letter sounds so foreign that I get suspicious.
Returning to the actual question, unfortunately what departments do with TOEFL scores depends not only on the particular university and the particular department, but even on the particular person or committee that happens to be handling graduate applications. I can easily imagine that my successor as associate chair for graduate studies treated TOEFL scores differently than I did and thereby avoided some headaches).
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/28 | 1,026 | 4,098 | <issue_start>username_0: A newbie here :)
I am currently a PhD student in a computer science program. My research interest is about quantum information science. Back then, I also got accepted into a Physics PhD program, but I decided to join my current department because the project is much more interesting.
Here is my problem: when people ask me, *"Hey, so what are you doing in grad school?"* , I feel quite uncomfortable to mention that I am doing a degree in "Computer Science". Don't get me wrong. I love computer science. But I prefer to be regarded as a Physics person rather than a CS person (actually, I am doing a lot of theoretical quantum physics for my thesis). My feeling is that, the name of the department/degree ALONE doesn't do me justice in telling other about my research interests and experiences.
Funny enough, my boyfriend is also suffering from the same problem. He is in the same CS department with me, but focusing on computational biology. His plan is to attend medical school after his PhD, so he usually shows a tremendous amount of angst when being asked the same question. People often joke about his decision, like *"So why an IT guy like you suddenly wants to go to med school?"*. The poor guy has spent quite a lot of time to do wet labs, and is drafting a thesis with 50% bio and 50% CS components, so I can tell that he really hates when people calling him an "IT guy". While I understand that doing a bio-related doctoral research is a very logical transition for him to med schools, the name of the department alone is causing the confusion that he has abruptly changed his interests into medicine, rather than planned for it ahead.
My question is, what is the best way in our cases to "market" our research focus and experiences to other people? Should it be:
1. Ms.Catwoman, PhD in Computer Science
2. Ms.Catwoman, PhD in Quantum Information, or
3. Ms.Catwoman, PhD in Computer Science with special focus on Quantum Information?
Thanks for the answers!<issue_comment>username_1: >
> My question is, what is the best way in our cases to "market" our research focus and experiences to other people?
>
>
>
Marketing is all about knowing your audience. And thus you may market your PhD to different audiences in different ways.
If you're talking to a person on the street, you could say "PhD in Computer Science".
If you're talking to a Computer Scientist, you could say "PhD in Quantum Information".
If you're talking to a specialist in Quantum Information, you could say "PhD in X, Y & Z" where X, Y and Z are detailed topics.
The truth of the matter is that a PhD is a PhD. Officially speaking, there's no such thing as a "PhD in ...". So for the given person in front of you, try to communicate the area of your PhD as best as you can.
And as for the "IT guy" stuff, if that's how they chose to stereotype what you are doing, then that's their problem, not yours/your boyfriends.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I am sort of in the same spot as you, even if maybe to a lesser degree. I hold a master and PhD degree in Information Systems, even though all my research is really in distributed systems and software engineering. Some people kept asking me during my PhD time whether I am not worried that my IS degree will keep me out of CS postdocs or faculty positions.
Now, after going through a few rounds of job search, I can report that **the topic has come up a grand total of 0 times during job hunting**. Realistically, people simply do not care about the name of your degree / department. If you publish in X, you are a research in X, no matter what your degree says. If at all, the entire thing is an interesting tidbit for small talk, not something that anybody should be stressing out over.
About the case of your boyfriend - maybe the reason that people keep calling him "the IT guy" is *because* he is so annoyed by it? For some people, if somebody reacts so strongly to something that seems rather trivial to others, it would be prone to make him the butt of some inappropriate jokes ...
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/28 | 1,091 | 4,588 | <issue_start>username_0: Suppose that a top-N department at a big research university (for very small N) has the choice between two candidates for a tenure-track position:
1. Candidate A: a bright young researcher just done writing her dissertation, and
2. Candidate B: a more seasoned veteran with several years of successful teaching, advising, and grant writing under her belt (though **not** already tenured).
In other words, suppose Candidate B has already demonstrated that, in addition to doing great research, she can successfully navigate other important aspects of the job. Candidate A seems like a bigger gamble: perhaps she will succeed in these other roles... and perhaps not! Assume that the department in question can essentially hire whomever it wants, with very little competition from other institutions.
**Question:** What incentive would such a department have for hiring A instead of B?
I ask this question, of course, because I am a young candidate about to interview for a job at a top department, and I know that I am competing with more seasoned candidates. How do I make a compelling case, despite my relative lack of experience? What are some potential pitfalls to look out for during an interview? (E.g., questions that might expose my relative naiveté?!)
Do top departments really hire freshly-minted PhDs for tenure-track positions? Or are they just panning for gold?
Thanks!<issue_comment>username_1: * Candidate A might have a research agenda (either based on her dissertation, or on her formulated research plan) that fits better with the research agendas of other people in the hiring department, or with strategic priorities of the department or even other departments at the university.
* Candidate A might already have collaborated with members of the hiring department, maybe in writing grant proposals.
* Candidate A might be cheaper, in terms of salary, lab space, funding or anything else the hiring department may need to cough up.
* The hiring department may be afraid that the "superstar" candidate B has so many more attractive offers that she would not accept an offer at this department at all, so they would rather not expend the time to go through the entire process with her.
* Candidate A might just have better contacts, because her Ph.D. advisor is big friends with the dean of the hiring department, or (less sinister) the dean has met candidate A at a conference and been very impressed with her presentation.
My advice: do a little research on the people and the priorities at your target department, and emphasize unobtrusively in your cover letter and [research plan](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14180/will-anybody-actually-read-your-research-and-teaching-statements) how you could collaborate and find synergies. And tap your network. Good luck!
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If anything, people are probably a bit prejudiced against Candidate B; people tend to be much more strongly influenced by any negative information than a lack of information. They can imagine whatever they want about the future career of Candidate A, but Candidate B probably isn't getting much better than what they've already seen.
This is the key point where you are going wrong is this:
*Assume that the department in question can essentially hire whomever it wants, with very little competition from other institutions.*
Every institution faces at least potentially serious competition for the candidates they want to hire (this is almost tautological; if you don't think there's a good chance a competitive institution will make a serious offer, then probably you don't think the candidate is good enough to hire). In particular, no department can afford to say "Well, we can just pass on Candidate A now. We can just hire her later if she turns out to be a star." because, well, maybe they can't. Maybe Candidate A takes a job somewhere else, and makes friends or starts a family and in 3 or 4 years doesn't want to move. (Also, there's a little voice in the back of their head saying "Maybe Candidate B doesn't really want to move now." Making an offer that's turned down is expensive in terms of time and losing other candidates.) If nothing else, you're probably going to have to make a much more attractive offer, in terms of salary, etc. in order to get them. Getting a younger person is "cheaper."
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Obviously there was a bribe involved with a dash of nepotism. The green researcher paid handsomely in cash to his 2nd cousin to get the gig.
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/03/28 | 335 | 1,361 | <issue_start>username_0: A colleague of mine would like to compare 25+ different Java implementations of the same homework. Is it OK (ethically/legally in the US) to share my students' class homework solutions with him for his research purposes?<issue_comment>username_1: You need to run this by your Institutional Review Board (IRB), as you would any time you use data from human subjects for research.
From what you describe, it has a good chance of qualifying for an [IRB exemption](http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html) under one of these categories (if identifying information is removed before giving the data to the researcher):
* It is using existing data
* the data comes from normal educational practices
but even then, **the IRB needs to be the one to make that determination**.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Franck doesn't say where he is. What username_1 says is true in the US. Any research with human subjects must be approved by an appropriate review process beforehand.
One horror story (allegedly true) goes like this. A graduate student in music history spent her summer touring through Appalachia, convincing people to let her record them singing traditional songs. But that research had to be thrown out, because of the advance approval process she hadn't known was required.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/29 | 477 | 1,954 | <issue_start>username_0: Is it a good idea to submit a paper when you are about to leave academia, say in the next year?
In my field (Mathematics), the review progress is typically very long (At the moment I'm waiting for the first review for almost a year). I do not want to receive a review while I'm in the middle of a new job (probably without access to other academic people, articles, books, etc.). On the other hand, I've done something which is worth to published somewhere.
Should I submit it? How can I improve the length of the review (e.g., by chosing the journal?)?
Edit: Some details: I'm about to finish my PhD and I have no co-authors for the latest paper who could handle big parts of revisions.<issue_comment>username_1: I would say, **yes**.
If the results are worth publishing, then the world should know about them.
That said, even if the paper is accepted, it is likely that you'll need to make minor or major revisions. If you do not expect that you will have the time to do this, then ultimately the paper will be rejected (or simply just vanish). So you need to consider whether you will, in 1, 2 or 3 years (or whatever the journal turn around time is) be in a position, mentally and otherwise, to address the review comments.
The other option is to archive the paper on arxiv.org and hope that interested people find the work – for the good of science.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If you think it's worth publishing, you should at least put it on ArXiv.
I'd also recommend submitting it to a journal. If the paper is well-written and correct, it shouldn't need a great deal of revision, so it should be possible to do that in your spare time. You could also mention when you submit the paper that you'll be leaving academia so you might need more time than usual to make revisions.
Another possibility is to bring your advisor on board as a co-author to deal with these things.
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/29 | 1,475 | 6,283 | <issue_start>username_0: All the three types of research revolve around an argument, a thesis. They of course differ in terms of student level, that is complexity.
But, what makes a bachelor's thesis different from master's and PhD theses in terms of procedures of researching given that all of them may follow the same process of research, questions or hypotheses, review of the literature, methodology, results and discussion?<issue_comment>username_1: The PhD thesis should be on a much higher level than the Honours/Masters thesis, offering a contribution to human knowledge that is of a sufficient level of "significance" to warrant publication in a respected journal.
Significance is highly subjective, and you also do not necessarily have to publish to be awarded the PhD (sometimes the peer-review delay means that they come out afterwards, or there may be some intellectual property issues that make it beneficial to refrain from publication). It is awarded based on your supervisors consent and a review of academics in your field. So the "significance" would probably be judged by them in terms of how much original work they see as a reasonable expectation at that stage of your development (first 3 years of serious/committed research). Unfortunately it also means that some people who probably do not deserve PhD's are awarded them anyway for fulfilling grunt work for their easy-going supervisors.
It is possible that some Honours/Masters thesis might even be more significant/higher quality than a PhD thesis. Unfortunately, this does not mean that the submission of the thesis will award the degree that they deserve. The university may have a policy to upgrade the student's enrolment if the supervisor senses that such progress is being made. However, it is impossible to upgrade to a PhD without completing Honours and I believe nearly every single university has a policy of a minimum period of enrolment before submission is allowed. A subsequent question that you may have is how to gain a PhD without enrolling in one, which is another level of achievement completely.
As for the difference between Honours/Bachelor and Masters it would depend on your university, but both have no requirement for publication quality research and are usually small tasks/ideas that are not worth the supervisors time to think about alone, or involve a lot of labor. In fact, in my school, many Honours thesis are of a higher level than the Masters, because the smart Honours students will either graduate into the work force or go straight into a PhD. The Masters students are usually those who cannot find a job and are not suited to research. However, I believe some other universities may require a mandatory Masters degree to start the PhD.
You may get a better idea by looking at some titles/abstracts of completed theses. The PhD level will be something like a new method/observation/application whereas the Masters/Honours will be an application specific set of measurements/simulations or even simply a literature review to gauge the needs of future work. The word limits are also typically different (although note that quality is NOT proportional to the number of words), with PhD at 100K, Masters at 50K and Honours at 30K at my university.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Roughly speaking, there are three levels of tasks:
1. Recitation
2. Application
3. Transfer
For a Bachelor's thesis, you would only expect 1 and 2, that is the student should *do* something (e.g. solve a well-defined problem) with the knowledge they have aquired during their studies.
For Master's thesis, you would want to have a non-trivial amount of 3, that is the student should transfer the competences aquired during studies to new problems. This usually includes (more) extensive literature research.
A formal difference that (imho) derives from the above is volume; Bachelor's theses typically award less credits than Master's theses and should thus take up less time and fewer pages.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Go back to basic definitions... In history of university degrees (500 years ago)
A bachelors degree is about learning existing knowledge. Historically from the book(s) written by the univ staff.
A masters degree, after you have learnt what is already known and in books in your topic area, is about learning evolving knowledge - that is near recent and current literature in academic journals and conference presentations.
A doctorate degree is about creating new knowledge by research.
So it is now easy to understand a thesis/dissertation for each degree.
A bachelors degree should be a critique of existing knowledge, often looking for inconsistencies in view points from different sources and synthesising arguments or positions in a DISSERTATION )that is you disserting !
A masters thesis (thesis is Greek for 'I believe') can be either an assembly of new knowledge from new published research or simply a critique and integration. It might have propositions (not hypotheses) that the masters student offers as a conclusion from bringing together new knowledge from different sources.
A doctoral thesis is where the author undertakes research, usually collecting primary new data which is presented as both factual findings and conceptual findings and thus new knowledge in the form of a new model or theory. Also possible, is to challenge existing knowledge and show earlier published knowledge is invalid.
Well that's what they all should be. In practice there is some overlap and different universities and faculties have their own custom and practice. It all starts to break down about 40 years ago when a masters degree become post graduate in time rather than post graduate in level. Thus engineers with a bachelor degree might take an MBA to make them more employable and did more a less a bachelor degree in business in 18 months rather than 3 years as they were already a graduate.
But still thinking in the above categories can help students today focus on the overall agenda.
I have examined over 55 PhD theses. And several hundred masters theses and I base my approach to assessment on the above.
username_3, B.Sc(hons), B.A., PhD,
Emeritus professor,
Anglian Ruskin College Cambridge, U K
Upvotes: 4 |
2014/03/29 | 628 | 2,576 | <issue_start>username_0: I am preparing the questionnaire for my Doctor of Business Administration research; for the purposes of this question (on Academia SE), I am investigating techniques used in customising cars. It is conceivable that a respondent has used several techniques, so I envisage repeating the same questions, each time for a a different car or technique.
I imagine that the same repeating structure would be needed in a medical exam, where the respondent can give data about several complaints.
Is there a name for this technique? Does it have a canonical source?
I appreciate that this question might not be within the scope of this site.<issue_comment>username_1: It is usually referred to as a "**checklist**". This term also implies that multiple answers are allowed, while "**multiple choice**" may mean either single or multiple answers.
Depends you how you structure it, the name can change as well. For instance if you line up all the customizing techniques in columns and all the cars in rows, the questionnaire then can be called a "**checklist matrix**".
Regardless what you end up calling it, people are usually not very good at identifying the names of all these questionnaire formats. So, I will suggest attaching a non-technical description (like your question's wording) and/or an actual sample question in your document to avoid misunderstanding.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: This is a form of branching (I guess "conditional branching" based on a screening question).
A good model for this is the Bureau of Justic Statistics' [National Crime Victimization Survey](http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245). In that survey, respondents are asked screening questions that identify incidents of crime victimization (e.g., respondent was attacked). Respondents are then asked to complete an "incident report", which asks an extensive number of questions about the episode of victimization. [Here's an example of such an incident report for the 2012 survey](http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs2_2012.pdf). Respondents may complete zero of these incident reports or they complete up to ten.
Another, simpler, model is the U.S. Census (or most household surveys) that ask for basic details about household members. For example, [the 2010 Census Form](http://www.census.gov/schools/pdf/2010form_info.pdf) asked for details of up to 12 household members. In a telephone or online context, of course, respondents would not see the questions relating to household members beyond the number they initially list.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/30 | 2,205 | 9,499 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm not sure if this question is okay to post here (I am only an undergrad), so please feel free to close/migrate if necessary. I won't be offended.
I am an undergraduate taking an undergraduate CS class right now. I feel the class is being taught like a graduate-level course, but we are being tested like undergraduates. I say this because I have taken graduate-level STEM classes in the past, and I think my professor is teaching the material as if we were graduate students.
The homework in this class emphasizes theoretical understanding and proof writing. When the midterm was upon us, we were given no practice problems to prepare for the test. There were no practice midterms either. Going into the midterm, I figured, well, the professor will probably test us on our understanding of the material. However, the midterm tested for speed and accuracy. There were several short answer questions that had little to do with the kind of understanding of the material we developed from the homework. In fact, there were questions for which we haven't yet had homework. I think he tried to make the test "easy," which totally threw me off.
I did very poorly on my midterm, and now I am trying to figure out whether I can judge what to expect in a graduate-level class vs. an undergraduate-level class so I may avoid such poor exam performance in the future. I have come up with the following qualities to expect from a graduate-level STEM class vs. an undergraduate-level STEM class.
**Graduate-level STEM Class**
1. Emphasis on depth of understanding.
2. Abstract material can sometimes be presented ad hoc: Less emphasis on linear presentation of material.
3. Theoretical presentation of material. Typically, we look at axioms/rules whenever we are presented new notation. We then derive everything from these axioms/rules.
4. Often the material covered has so much depth that we are expected to have minimal breadth of understanding; We are expected to take what we've learned and focus on a particular are in great depth.
5. Exams, projects, and papers test understanding of the material, not the speed in which we can solve arbitrary problems.
**Undergraduate-level STEM Class**
1. Emphasis on breadth of knowledge.
2. Material is presented in a linear fashion, often starting with some concrete examples and building from there.
3. There is often so much ground to cover that we are taught through rote memorization. We solve problems excessively.
4. Exams test for speed and accuracy of exact solutions to several problems. One often succeeds in such a class by performing many practice problems.
My questions are as follows:
* Is this accurate? If not, why, and what kinds of differences can I expect between graduate vs. undergraduate-level courses?
* Are there other/better ways to find correlations between teaching and testing styles? How can I know I am prepared for an exam given a professor's teaching style (rote memorization vs. emphasis on derivations, etc.)?<issue_comment>username_1: There is some truth in the differences you observe, but the distinctions are not very sharp. It's more of a continuum - as witnessed, for example, by the many textbooks that describe themselves as suitable for advanced undergraduate and early graduate levels.
From the point of view of the instructor, the differences in teaching style are explained by two things:
1. **Graduate students are more experienced.** It's not only a question of them knowing more about the subject, but also of their (presumed) greater ability to be responsible for their own learning. Related to that, people who've opted for graduate study are assumed to be motivated to work independently. So the instructor can be a bit more free to skip over material that's routine, or doesn't present much of a conceptual challenge. In computer science, say, beginning courses will teach you a programming language; advanced ones will assume that if you haven't used the language before, you can pick it up without much explicit guidance.
2. **The topic is less well understood.** At a more advanced level, we have less to rely on in how to teach the subject. For early undergraduate courses, there's probably a choice of textbooks and related resources, and a body of expertise about how to present the material. A course that's closer to current research may not have been taught many times before; the instructor won't have much of a pool of local experts to consult; and there may not be any existing textbooks at all. So the teaching might have some rough edges, in the choice and order of topics to present, how much time is spent on them, and so on.
I think this is what lies behind your observations, at least regarding the teaching. For assessment, I'd say there are other factors which dominate. Assessment is very sensitive to the precise nature of the course, the instructor, and the institution. I'm sure you can imagine being examined on your understanding of some algorithm by any of: answering multiple choice questions about it, proving something about it, writing an explanatory essay about it, implementing it on a computer, or doing any of these for some *variant* of the algorithm that you hadn't seen before. And any of these could happen in a course at any level.
It sounds like you're somewhat aggrieved that the questions on your midterm were in a different style from your homework, and were less conceptual than the material presented in lectures. Now, it may be that your professor was (as you suggest) skewing the teaching towards the graduate end of the scale, and assuming that you would independently put the work in to make sure you could apply the theory correctly. In that case, the issue isn't that the exam was in "undergraduate" style, but that "graduate" teaching puts more of a burden on the students.
However, there are other factors in play that govern the style of examination. For example:
* I want to know if you understand the theory, and I decide that asking you to apply it is a good way to find out.
* I would be ashamed if somebody got an A in my course, but couldn't actually solve these applied problems.
* I decide that routine problems will be quicker or easier to grade.
* The homework already tested the students' broad understanding, and I decide the midterm should test something different.
I'm not saying that any of these are what happened, or that they are necessarily "good" ideas. But there *are* reasons why the midterm could focus on less conceptual material, that don't relate to an undergraduate-vs-graduate distinction.
Your final question is about how to know what to expect from a particular examination before you've taken it. Having thought about it at some length, I can't come up with any better suggestion than **ask your professor**. There are so many possibilities, even for the same course taught by the same person, for what the exam might be like.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I have had courses like this (undergrad courses taught like grad classes but with undergrad-style exams). The best advice I can really give you is - talk to the professor! If no practice exams are posted, you can still ask the professor "What will be the focus of the exam?" / "What will be the style of the exam?" / "How best to prepare for the exam?" Sometimes they will have a skewed view of their own exam, but generally this will still be helpful.
If you know people who have taken the course, you can also ask them the type of exam the professor tends to write.
Finally, in this situation, it's a good idea to just study more, since you have no clue what will be on the exam. Study the "easy" stuff as well as the "hard" stuff - since clearly it was not really "easy."
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: Addressing this question:
>
> Are there other/better ways to find correlations between teaching and
> testing styles? How can I know I am prepared for an exam given a
> professor's teaching style (rote memorization vs. emphasis on
> derivations, etc.)?
>
>
>
If you have additional exams to come in this course, then I would recommend you meet with the professor and ask *specific* questions, not "how should I study?" or "what will the test be like?"
Bring in your notes, homework sets and your first midterm, and demonstrate that you are thinking about how to organize your learning by asking questions like these:
1. "This question (point to specific question) surprised me because it asks me to quickly solve X, but my homework here (pointing to specific question) asked me about the theory of X. Should I track down some sample problems for the topic covered in this *new* homework (point to new example) so I can both discuss theory AND quickly answer simple questions on the next test?"
2. "This question (point to specific question) surprised me because I didn't recognize the material. Can you show me how to better apply what we've learned to new situations so I can answer these questions better?"
I've often thought students got a question wrong because they didn't understand a concept, but when someone comes and talks to me I realize that they did understand it well but my question confused them, or I didn't make it clear enough that this kind of question would be asked. Instructors can improve their exams if they get helpful feedback. Brave instructors ask for feedback. Wise students try to offer it in the guise of going over the old exam.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/30 | 1,081 | 4,551 | <issue_start>username_0: I want to go to graduate school to study computational molecular biology and biochemistry.
During my first three semesters as an undergraduate I finished my distribution requirements and started doing research with one professor. During my fourth semester I started doing research with two more professors (working in computational biophysics and computational linear algebra). My work with two of these three professors has already led to work that will be published soon. I am considering starting research with yet another professor (in statistical genomics).
**Is it wise to begin research with yet another professor?** I fear that having engaged with too many professors makes my resume read like that of a dilettante rather than a promising computational biologist.<issue_comment>username_1: There comes a point where a person will be spread too thin – that's inevitable. Only you can really say how much you can take on before your workload starts to interfere with your academic goals and achievements.
If you're already doing the work of two students, I'd be cautious about expanding that to three.
>
> I'm spending around 9 hours a day on research right now with ~3 hours in class, 1 hour eating, and 4 hours free time, on week days, and even more free time on weekends
>
>
>
You make it sound like those four hours of free time are being wasted, when they might not be. Perhaps your brain is appreciating that rest more than you know. And I don't see any time allotted for physical fitness; besides being good for your health, fitness can be [good for your mind](https://www.google.com/search?q=fitness+helps+you+think+clearer&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t).
If you decide you want to try a third project, you should be honest with yourself, and up front with the sponsoring faculty member from the outset. "I'm already working on two other projects, so, to be honest, this might turn out to be too much for me. But I'd still like to give it a try." Such a disclosure might make it a little harder for you to find someone willing to take you on, but it might help save your reputation if you find yourself in a position where you've bitten off more than you can chew.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: First of all: congratulations and good luck. It seems you are quite enthusiastic about research. That said: be careful not to take too much on your plate, especially initially. Your time schedule seems very stringent which may lead to a burn-out.
I have the feeling that you are too erratic in your current research: there is no overall story to connect the different pieces you are (or plan to be) working on with different professors (computational biophysics, linear algebra, statistical genomics, mathematics, ...). It's true that there is likely some overlap but to do effective research you need to have a single point of focus, which you can tackle from different angles. **What is your main focus?**
I would say less is more. Having so many different professors in such diverse fields will inevitably hinder you from digging deep in each one. An important part in research is choosing your battles: deciding what to focus on and planning your work/collaborations in a meaningful way. It seems to me that you just want to do everything, which (while commendable!) rarely works out in the long run. You can't do everything, even if you want to.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: **Just because you can doesn't mean you should.**
Your schedule reminds me of my marathon days of thesis writing and of my 24-hour calls on surgery. In both cases I accomplished a lot in the moment, but retained little. College is your first formal exposure to academia. Racing through it could shortchange your longterm foundation. Just as with muscles, you need to alternate periods of stress and relaxation otherwise the adaptation to that stress never occurs.
**Publishing one paper doesn't indicate mastery of a field.**
Few outstanding scientific issues are definitively solved in one paper. A string of publications on the same topic is more common and, for a CV, more impressive. Someone who can attack the same problem from different angles with different approaches is a promising candidate.
**Form an informal committee; don't add to your collection**
Instead of being a human ping-pong between PIs, why not ask a few of the professors to guide you in writing papers at the intersection of their interests. Those sound like interesting discussions even if no paper comes from them.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/30 | 373 | 1,467 | <issue_start>username_0: I am currently working on my thesis and facing the problem of choosing between "I", "We" or "the author" when I want to talk about things I defined, decided etc. I am the only author of my thesis, but using "I" is not very common, is it? I saw quite a lot of work of single-authors that used "We" when referencing to themselves.
"The author" seems nicer to me, but it is not common?
Any recommendations or remarks?<issue_comment>username_1: **Short answer** It varies. Ask your advisor!
According to my advisor (Social Sciences, using APA style manual), 'the author' is always correct, and the use of 'I' hurts the eyes and the sensibilities!
Although many style guides now permit the use of 'I', especially for a single-author paper, you will find that many academics have been taught to avoid 'I'. They may express strong dislike for the use of 'I', and your work may subtly and unconsciously be considered 'less good' because of your pronoun use. 'The author' is always considered correct. The bigger problem is probably learning how to write fluidly and concisely with this construction. Vary your sentence structure, and absolutely do NOT begin every other sentence with 'the author found/did/decided'!
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: "`We`" is correct, even if you are the only author, by "`we`" you express "`me and you, my dear reader`". Therefore it's completely fine to use it in your thesis.
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/31 | 603 | 2,503 | <issue_start>username_0: Most colleges and universities in the US base their admissions on high school grades plus a standardized test (SAT or ACT). To decide whether a particular piece of data X is a good admissions criterion, people seem to focus on how well X correlates with college grades. (This may be freshman grades or total college GPA. Some people think success in getting a degree would be more appropriate. For the purposes of this question, I don't think these distinctions are relevant.)
Isn't this correlation a completely incorrect way of evaluating X as a tool for admissions?
It seems like an apples-to-oranges comparison. A student who has low X is admitted to a nonselective school, where standards are low and they compete with other low-X students. Grades at this school measure how well they did based on the low standards prevailing there. Students who have high X are admitted to a selective school. A "B" grade at Berkeley is not the same as a "B" grade at Cal State Dominguez Hills. A high-X student goes to Berkeley and gets a "B" in calculus. A low-X student goes to CSDH and gets a "B" in calculus. This shows up in the statistics as a lack of correlation between X and grades, since the students differed in X but got the same grade. But isn't that misleading, since the grades mean different things at the two schools?
Is there some more logically justifiable statistic to use in evaluating whether X is a good admissions criterion?<issue_comment>username_1: A more meaningful study might ignore college grades, which as you point out depend on the type of institution, and focus on downstream accomplishments. It isn't just local and community colleges that distort the picture; several highly ranked Universities have A-no credit policies, so that everyone graduate with a 4.0. Many education schools are effectively A-no credit, with overall GPA's of ~3.9.
I'd like to know how many university professors had low grades or SAT scores, how many NAS members had low grades or SAT scores, and what the profile of CEOs, successful writers, lawyers, engineers etc. was. The purpose of college is not the production of am impressive transcript.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: Define "effectiveness of criteria for admission". Collect data on the potentially relevant independent variables. Do statistical analysis on the resulting data set.
Be careful, you'll probably be considering just the people who were admitted, so the results will be skewed.
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/31 | 1,391 | 5,957 | <issue_start>username_0: I believe that the majority of Elsevier journals use a standard dual column document class.
However, some journals that are owned by Elsevier use an alternative single column format (e.g. [J. Comput. Phys.](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00219991); [J. Sound and Vib.](http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-sound-and-vibration/)).
What is the reason for using a different format for these journals? My first guess would be that since historically those journals were single column format they may keep this format, but why then did Elsivier move them to their own single column format (narrow margins and smaller font) instead of moving to dual column (easier to read) or just keeping the same words-per-line that the journals had beforehand?
Personally I find it more difficult to read the current single column format (post 2002)<issue_comment>username_1: One column is just as standard as two column. Tradition, in conjunction with type-setting standards, likely determine the state of affairs. Many journals have traditionally been printed in a smaller size than letter/A4. For the large format, two column is more efficient. That is, you can squeeze more words into a page than for a single column. With smaller formats this is no longer true because the two-column format requires smaller font size to maintain readable lines; lines with to few letters are detrimental to the readability since it fragments the text. Hence it becomes more a matter of choice which way to go, one or two column. In addition, one column is easier to type set and one column figures in a small format also becomes small.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Mathematics journals (including many published by Elsevier) are usually single column. I assume this is because of the frequent need for long equations. The longer lines are somewhat more difficult for the eye, but one gets used to it.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Of the Economics' journals that Elsevier publishes (and there are lots of them!) I think all (if not almost all) are single column. Which journals use double column? Why would they use double column? I referee a lot for Elsevier's economics journals, it would be a nightmare to read double column economics papers.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: One reason for one-column format has already been mentioned: especially for math papers, it's useful to display long computations and formulae (even with one column, it can be a nightmare to make them fit the page!).
I don't know if anyone shares this, but I see another reason to prefer this format: when reading an article on my computer (which cannot display the entire page on the screen), I find it very annoying to get back to the top of the page when I finished the first column instead of just keeping scrolling down.
I suspect however that habit plays a large role in the appreciation of such and such presentation and that helps explain why the practices seem to be so homogeneous in a given field.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: One possible explanation for the variety of formats is the fact that Elsevier acquired a lot of other publishers; they tend not to change the format of an newly acquired journal, probably for brand issues (the cover and style are well-known to the audience, changing them could be disturbing).
This does not explain why the journals where single columned by their original publishers in the first place, but other answers have tackled this issue.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: *(Copy Editor speaking `;-)` )*
When designing a journal's typesetting style, there are several things to consider:
* What are the **paper size restrictions**? Can you choose any paper size or choose from a short list, or is it fixed? For instance, Springer uses it's own paper size for many publications, The journal I typeset is stuck to A4 because it's the cheapest to print here, etc.
* What **font size and family** is going to be used? The smaller the size, the more characters per line you get, as well, sans-serif fonts make it harder to follow a line of text in a long paragraph.
* What are the **typical contents of the papers**? For papers with many *long paragraphs*, it's almost necessary to have narrow columns (I'll explain that later). For papers with lots of *colour photos and graphics*, you want to allow graphical appendices since colour printing is then cheaper and printer handling easier. For lots of *math formulas*, you prefer wide columns so that they fit better. For lots of *very small graphics and tables*, you might prefer two columns so that you can put more easily two of them next to each other.
* **Who** is going to use the final template and how? Do you have a professional typesetter to carefully typeset all the papers? Do your audience use Word or LaTeX more? If they use Word, you think twice to make the journal two-column since you can be close to sure that people will mess the template up.
**What is "narrow" and "wide":**
* *Narrow* is basically anything with less than 66 characters per line on average. It's been proved over centuries that this is the limit width on which the eyes are able to follow the line correctly and switch to the next line correctly. With sans-serif fonts, the width should be a bit less since the serifs significantly help to follow the line.
* *Wide* is anything that allows you to conveniently typeset long formulas. The rule-of-thumb I know is: At least 50 characters per line on average. Remember that being too wide makes it difficult to follow the lines correctly. However, this is not much an issue if the only long text in the typical articles is the introduction and most of the other paragraphs are less than 4-5 lines.
The decision of Elsevier to make some journals one-column and another ones two-column on the same paper size might be, seeing the arguments above, quite justified.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer] |
2014/03/31 | 449 | 2,003 | <issue_start>username_0: I completed my master's dissertation with an adviser and was interested in the PhD program. Unfortunately I was told that my master's adviser didn't have funding and the other professor in department was doing an interesting research about an emerging field and he agreed to fund my PhD for next 4 years. He is aware that my previous lab let me go because of funding issues. Research in my previous lab and present lab are completely different, they are in no way related.
Now I still have strong interest in my adviser's work partly because some of the projects were my ideas and I don't want others to end up implementing them and also research is significant enough to have a journal published on it (an important addition to my resume). They have time till August to finish them off and I estimate they require at least 2-3 hours of work a day. I was considering volunteering for my Master's adviser and finishing off those projects. Will it be OK if I volunteer in my personal time to try and finish them? Do students ever do this?<issue_comment>username_1: Your personal time is yours by definition. A good idea though might be to talk to your
Ph.D. advisor. If your former and current research projects do not overlap to much and you do not use results obtained in one lab and not yet published in the other lab I don't see any problem. Of course there may also be some personal animosity or rivalry between the former and current advisor so its a very good idea that your Ph.D. advisor is aware of this other activity and does not find out about it from a third party.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Since your PhD is funded there will naturally be expectations from your supervisor and funding body to deliver results in the future. While you are free to work on other projects I would advise you not to divert too much time from your PhD project. Provided you can balance your time then yes why not enjoy yourself and finish your masters projects?
Upvotes: 1 |
2014/03/31 | 935 | 4,272 | <issue_start>username_0: It is not unusual for institutes to advertise positions (faculty or not) for which there is an internal candidate. In such situations, for external candidates, it may be difficult if not impossible to get in. When a position is advertised, is it appropriate and useful to inquire if a position has an internal candidate already? It might save a lot of time for the external candidate and possibly others (such as recommendation-letter-writers).<issue_comment>username_1: I assume that there are often-if-not-always internal candidates for open positions, in academia and outside. There are always students looking for Ph.D. slots, Ph.D. students looking for postdoc positions, assistant and associate professors looking to move up to the next level. (Same for non-faculty positions, but that seems OT.) Sometimes the people responsible for the position may not even know yet about such internal candidates, because they may not yet have sent in their application.
So the question probably rather is whether these internal candidates are already frontrunners. The professor may want his extremely productive Ph.D. student to continue in the postdoc slot but may need to advertise externally for some procedural reason. The department may want to continue a certain research specialization and plan on promoting the retiring professor's assistant prof. In such a situation, external candidates will need to be very convincing to win.
But: how often will the external candidate be told this? If the external advertisement is legally required, the hiring people may even open themselves up to litigation if they openly tell an applicant that they are only soliciting outside applications as a fig leaf.
On the other hand, the department may explicitly be searching for "new blood", so internal candidates may actually have worse chances than external ones. Which, again, nobody will tell you (or the internal candidate).
Of course, it makes sense to tap your network and see whether the grapevine can tell you more than official channels. However, this kind of information can be unreliable. So if you hear from multiple sources that a given position will be filled internally, it *may* make sense to not make the effort.
Thus: there will likely be internal candidates, but you will probably not know how good their chances are. If you are a good match for the position, go and apply. Don't worry about internal candidates. This is one part of the hiring situation you can't control, just like the mood of your interviewers. Giving up on an application because there is an internal candidate will be counterproductive in the long run.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I think it is only really useful if you know somebody at your target institution personally and are able to inquire "off the records". Formally asking a stranger whether an application procedure is just for show seems pointless - as Stephen says, the only realistic answer will be **No, of course not**.
However, note that your connection does not necessarily need to be somebody on the hiring committee. Oftentimes, it is enough to know another PhD student, who can then open his ears a bit for you. If there already is an internal "favorite" for a given position, this is often not really a secret internally. For instance, I have seen a case where, when the contract of a highly distinguished postdoc ended, a call for a assistant professor appeared out of thin air with a scope that looked as if it was copied and pasted (which it might actually have been) from the postdocs research website. From the outside, this might not have been insanely obvious, but internally, everybody knew who will be hired for this position.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: It's usually a good idea to make some informal contact with the person offering the job before you submit an application. Send an email to briefly introduce yourself and maybe ask some questions (are there teaching opportunities for example). I've heard of cases where there will be a delayed or curt reply which may indicate that they're not interested in you. On the other hand if someone is genuinely looking for someone they are more likely to reply promptly and positively.
Upvotes: -1 |
2014/03/31 | 752 | 2,730 | <issue_start>username_0: I realise this is a bit of a silly question, but I'm writing up a conference paper on a model that's named after a Hollywood movie. What is the appropriate way to cite the movie in the paper? Should it have its own entry in the references (and if so, in what format?), or should I simply say something like "...after the 1986 movie of the same name"?<issue_comment>username_1: I'm coming from a humanities background so there may be some differences in actual citation styles but I think the following would be used by most styles.
* Name of movie
* Director
* Distributor
* Year of release
* Medium consulted (DVD, VHS etc)
* Sometimes the main performers(depending on citation format)
In text styles of course depend on whatever citation style you are using.
I know for example MLA is (Director, *Movie Name*) and APA is (Director, Year).
For your example of Highlander in the APA style it would be (Mulcahy, 1986) for a inline citation and your reference entry (assumed DVD) would be - <NAME>. (Director). (1986). Highlander [Motion picture on DVD]. Thorn EMI.
[This Link](http://www.american.edu/library/documents/upload/Film-Video-Citation-Guide.pdf) has a pdf showing examples in MLA, APA and Chicago style.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In my research area (databases/distributed systems) projects often have a name taken from something out of pop (or not-so-pop) culture. It seems that if any reference for the allusion is given, it comes in a simple footnote. Your suggestion of "after the 1986 movie of the same name" would likely be perfectly adequate.
On the other hand, if some aspect of the movie actually influenced your work and you discuss it a bit, a full-on citation might be more appropriate.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: If it is just the name, I would not cite it. (Unless you really want to or the title may be otherwise strange, ambiguous or misleading (never assume that everyone gets any cultural reference, no matter how popular among your friends).)
I always though that it is up to reader's wit to catch the reference. The same as for project, grant or technique names being [contrived acronyms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronymization#Contrived_acronyms). For example, for [FROG](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-resolved_optical_gating) (i.e. Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating) I would be surprised by someone citing an article on amphibians.
And from my personal experience: I published an article with title [**Qubism**: self-similar visualization of many-body wavefunctions](http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/14/5/053028), but there is no citation of [**Cubism**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism).
Upvotes: 3 |
2014/03/31 | 744 | 3,208 | <issue_start>username_0: I'm about to write up my PhD thesis at the moment and for the theoretical part I have drawn some graphics that are of rather generic type -- crystal structures, crystal lattices and the like, similar to the image below (taken from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_crystal_system), just as an example):
This type of image is very well-known in my field and can be found in every type of book about crystallography looking more or less the same. Also I am 100% sure that I have seen any of the features, that I have included in my own graphics, already in other publications, albeit maybe not all in one single graphic. Most of the graphics' properties, such as the atom positions and all the properties derived thereof, are commonly known facts, so only the style of the graphics may be something unique to a special graphic.
As I have seen them so often and worked with them for some years now, I can draw them out of memory without looking them up. Also I draw them with the features that I need to show my point. Therefore it might happen that I am reproducing someone else's graphics without being aware of it. As the question arose in the comments, in conclusion I draw graphics whose base structure is given by commonly known data using widely employed ways to draw such graphics, which contains the danger that someone could have drawn the same or a very similar graphic before.
Would this be OK or should I dig into literature to find if there are sources that could have been the inspiration for my own graphics?<issue_comment>username_1: No, it's not ok to use someone else's graphics without checking whether you have the rights to those graphics. That could easily be a breach of copyright. Nor can you reproduce someone else's representation without crediting them: that's plagiarism.
You can either create a novel graphic yourself, or you can find someone else's graphic where you can establish that you, and your publisher, will have the appropriate rights to reproduce it.
If you've reproduced someone else's graphic (that is, both their style and their content), you will need to attribute it. Just having absorbed it and then unknowingly recreated it doesn't stop it being plagiarism.
If it really is a common enough type of image, you shouldn't have any difficulty in finding a citable version of it. You then add a caption, following the publisher's style guide, along the lines of "image source: author's own, after Metebelis (1973, p10)"
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: If you create an image yourself that is not modeled after/derived from someone else's, you don't have to go out of your way to learn if someone has created a similar image.
For example, if I create a flow diagram of a common process for my paper, it's likely that many other papers have a similar diagram (because the technique of using flow diagrams to illustrate a process is pretty standard). That's perfectly OK as long as I didn't intentionally copy them.
(As always: if the *technique* of visualization or the *data content* of the image is not general knowledge, cite it.)
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer] |
2014/03/31 | 4,440 | 15,283 | <issue_start>username_0: I have three years of experience teaching as part of a team (many teachers, some with more experience, agreeing on a syllabus and preparing the tests together), but this year is the first time I am fully in charge of some courses.
After grading the mid-term exam for one of my class, I noticed I had a weird grade distribution:
(If this is useful, there are 24 grades, the set of grades is { 1.2, 1.4, 1.4, 1.9, 2.0, 2.3, 2.6, 2.6, 3.4, 4.2, 4.2, 4.3, 4.6, 4.6, 4.8, 4.8, 4.9, 5.3, 6.0, 6.2, 6.4, 7.1, 7.8, 7.8 }, the average is 4.25 and the standard deviation is 2.01.)
I have looked carefully at all my previous tests, and I can confirm I have never seen a curve like this before.
In my short experience, I have heard, read of reflected that a distribution with two curves would probably either mean that *a*) a large subgroup of students cheated or *b*) as a teacher I am mostly addressing the best students and letting the others down.
But this looks like there are actually three curves, and I am wondering which characteristic of my teaching or my students could explain that.
Besides, if someone is aware of any scholarly work on this subject, that would be lovely. I couldn't find anything myself.<issue_comment>username_1: There are several possible factors here: given the relatively small number of points available, lumping can skew how grades are distributed, particularly if they're also awarded in whole number increments. (That is, there's not enough refinement in the model to separate things out.)
Another issue is that the sample size is relatively small; twenty-four students is not a particularly large sample size—your standard deviation here is two points out of 10! Also, you should try plotting the data according to half-integer bins (0.5 to 1.5, 1.5 to 2.5, etc.); you'll end up with a *very* different distribution.
So, basically, I wouldn't try to draw any definitive conclusions from such a plot or distribution.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I did a Kernel density estimate plot of your data, shown below. You have a central lump of candidates with 4-5ish and a second lower lump of students who've done pretty badly.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Remember that the central limit theorem assumes independent samples. This is often a bad assumption for students. Cheating is of course a possibility, but it could also just be that they study in groups (most people find this very helpful). The spikes in your data could just correspond to groups who study together and have similar strengths and weaknesses.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I agree with the other answers that this may be an artifact of the histogram. May I humbly offer a few alternative ways to plot these grades?
All of these essentially show that your effects are likely due to small *n* and possibly an essentially discrete underlying data generating process.
R code:
```
require(hdrcde)
require(Hmisc)
require(denstrip)
require(beanplot)
require(beeswarm)
grades <- c(1.2, 1.4, 1.4, 1.9, 2.0, 2.3, 2.6, 2.6, 3.4, 4.2, 4.2, 4.3, 4.6, 4.6, 4.8, 4.8, 4.9, 5.3, 6.0, 6.2, 6.4, 7.1, 7.8, 7.8)
opar <- par(mfrow=c(1,6), mar=c(3,2,4,1))
boxplot(grades, col="gray90", main="Standard\nboxplot",yaxt="n")
hdr.boxplot(grades, main="HDR\nboxplot",yaxt="n")
bpplot(grades,xlab="",name=FALSE,main="Box-Percentile\nPlot")
beanplot(grades,col="grey",yaxt="n",main="Bean plot/\nViolin plot",border="black")
plot(c(0,2),range(grades),type="n",xaxt="n",yaxt="n",xlab="",ylab="",
main="Density\nplot")
denstrip(grades, horiz=FALSE, at=1, width=1)
beeswarm(grades,pch=19,main="Beeswarm\nplot")
par(opar)
```
EDIT: (sorry, I'm a statistician, I can't help it...) I went and took [Jack's kernel density](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18752/4140) estimate and resampled 24 "students" from it a couple of times. In each case, I plotted a histogram. The result is below. We see that *even an innocuous unimodal curve can lead to pretty bumpy histograms*, because of the discretization and the small sample size.
R code:
```
dens <- density(grades)
opar <- par(mfrow=c(2,4))
for ( ii in 1:8 ) {
samp <- rnorm(length(grades), sample(grades, size = length(grades), replace = TRUE), dens$bw)
hist(pmin(10,pmax(0,samp)),breaks=0:10,xlab="",ylab="",main="",col="gray")
}
par(opar)
```
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_5: Difficult class scenario with pretty standard student groups:
1. Champions - **ambitious** and hardworking / clever / interested
2. Mere students - *every hour on this subject hurts but I* **must** *pass it*
3. Underachievers - no time, no effort or no idea how to handle the topic
If the test wasn't important enough or was too difficult, breakdown above explains it all.
Champions didn't manage to max it out but they collected pretty nice scores of around 6-7 points. Mere students managed to learn enough to halve the test. Underachievers found out that without grasping the topic they aren't going to shine here.
Groups 2 and 3 blend together, which is visible in plot from username_2, hope I can borrow it :)
Is the level high? Was the test well-constructed and offering questions of different difficulty?
If so, then I think that's the case and you just managed to see who your students are. You might want to find out whether the problem is lack of motivation or being unable to jump into the subject.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: Just adding to the other statistical analyses here...you can't really be sure that this sample doesn't come from a normally distributed population of grades from similar students in similar classes. Here's some more R code for analyses and their output: `x=c(1.2,1.4,1.4,1.9,2.0,2.3,2.6,2.6,3.4,4.2, 4.2,4.3,4.6,4.6,4.8,4.8,4.9,5.3,6.0,6.2,6.4,7.1,7.8,7.8);qqnorm(x);qqline(x)`
 Compare your grades to: [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Normal_normal_qq.svg) by [Skbkekas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Skbkekas)
Your grades on the left don't fit the [QQ line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q%E2%80%93Q_plot) wonderfully, but they're not deviating very systematically. The numbers on the right are from a normal distribution; other than being more numerous, they seem similar.
Your grades are basically not [skewed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skewness) (`skew(x)` = .12). They are [platykurtic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurtosis), but you don't have enough of them to disregard the possibility that this difference from a normal distribution is due to [sampling error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_error) with much confidence. Here are results of an [Anscombe–Glynn kurtosis test](http://biomet.oxfordjournals.org/content/70/1/227.short) (`require(moments);anscombe.test(x)`): kurtosis = 2.03, *z* = -1.23, *p* = .22. FWIW, you can also test the null hypothesis that your data came from a normally distributed population using a [Shapiro–Wilk test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro_Wilk_test) (`shapiro.test(x)`: *W* = .95, *p* = .27), but [normality testing may be 'essentially useless'](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/2492/32036) (this may apply to dedicated significance tests of kurtosis or skewness too).
You seem to refer to the [modes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_%28statistics%29) or [local maxima](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_maximum) as curves. @StephanKolassa, @username_1, and @JackAidley have already demonstrated how misleading histograms can be in this regard. @RedSirius' comment is on-point as well, and you've acknowledged the effect of bin size in your comment, but haven't edited your question to clarify what this doesn't answer for you (hint hint ;) ;). It's unclear what more needs to be said here. You haven't got much evidence of anything unusual, much less have you given a serious external basis for your proposed interpretations regarding cheating or uneven service to students of different aptitudes, so it seems further speculation could only grasp at proverbial straws.
However, it may still be worthwhile to recite some (maybe insufficiently examined) academic truisms:
1. It's very hard to make one size fit all when students greatly outnumber instructors.
2. In the case of students who exert near-zero effort, you really can't help enough.
3. Cheating probably won't matter enough either if that's the main form of effort exerted.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: I have a theory that can explain situational anomalies such as this in classroom that's as situationally accurate as I have time to puzzle out.
To simplify the mathematics of the problem, I'm omitting some scale factors from my math which serve as little more than visual clutter.
Let an ideal bell curve be defined by `C(x)`.
Your set of students is `S`, and you have a magical function `Q(s)` for `s ∈ S` which yields the "quality" of a student's work.
Now consider a test. The test consists of a set of problems (call this set `T`). Each problem `p ∈ T` has a difficulty, given by `D(p)`. The probability of a student `s` correctly answering a problem is defined:
*Pcorrect(s, p) =* 
It then follows that a student of higher `Q` than the `D` of the problem will be more than likely to solve it, and one with a lower `Q` will be less than likely.
Let's define the ideal score of a student taking a test to be `Si(s, T) = Σ Pcorrect(s, p), p ∈ T`
If you were to take the ideal score on a particular test for each student in your classroom, you would get an ideal distribution, and chances are that if your students actually took the test, you'd get a distribution that at least roughly approximated the ideal one.
The important thing to take away from what we have so far is that, for an population of students taking a test, the difficulty of the problems on the test mathematically affects the grade distribution you're likely to have.
For example, assuming your student population is roughly bell-curved, you might see a grade distribution like your observations if your test questions have roughly these difficulty levels:
```
[2, 2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10+, 10+]
```
A large number of students would get the 2 easy questions right, but since there are few questions of low-intermediate difficulty, some of the students on the lower end of the curve wouldn't be able to get any harder ones right. On the very high end, there are some questions that might be extraordinarily difficult for the skill level of the students (this can happen for a number of reasons) that most of the class got wrong (assuming the grade is out of 10 points total).
Assuming your class distribution is something like this,
```
0-2|
3 | 1
4 | =2
5 | ===4
6 | ====5
7 | ====5
8 | ===4
9 | =2
10 | 1
```
Their ideal distribution (as defined previously, rounded a bit to reduce clumping) would look something like this:
```
0 |
1 |
2 | ===4
3 | ===4
4 | ===4
5 | ===4
6 | ==3
7 | =2
8 | 1
9 |
10 |
```
Which resembles, in a muted way, the observed curve you experimentally observed.
Also, realistic situations won't have such elegant mathematical solutions (like a student's probability of getting a question correct), so this model should only be viewed as a reasonable, educated approximation.
TL;DR It's possible the questions on this one test were more difficult and less comprehensive than you thought when you handed it out.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: If every student were able to solve every question with an independent probability p, then you would expect a normal distribution. But that is actually not a very good model.
Let's say you have a good number of problems in your test that any decent student would be expected to solve. Solving all of them gives you grade 5. Therefore you get lots of students on grade 5; everyone who is doing reasonably well in this course; some are a bit lower because of stupid mistakes which just happen, plus a few who are just badly prepared and have no chance to pass.
Then you have a few really hard problems. The average student solves none of them. Excellent students solve one or two or three, until they run out of time.
That kind of test could produce your distribution even with a very large number of students.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: I think you have over-tailored the difficulty of the questions to the range of abilities in the class. This is a similar theory to @username_8's.
Obviously this is all guesswork based on the data, and you will have to decide yourself if it makes sense or not. But it would be consistent with the data if you had two extremely easy questions (which absolutely everyone could solve), three slightly harder, three harder still and two impossible ones which no-one could solve. Everyone fell into one of three levels, with some of the students also making one or two errors on questions which they knew how to solve.
If one point doesn't correspond to one question, than the same thing could still be the case, but with a different amount of questions.
So you tried to spread out the difficulty of the questions (as is normal) but a) you clumped to many questions of the same difficulty together and b) you spread the clumps out too much, with 4 of 10 questions not giving any indication at all as to the relative ability of the students (because everyone got 2 of them, and no-one got the other 2). My guess is that the time-limit of the exam was not a big factor, since people work at different speeds and time limits probably therefore smooth out grades.
There is any easy way to test this theory. Did the students who got 2, 5 and 8 all get the same or very similar sets of questions right? My theory predicts that they did.
Edit
----
Looking closer at the numbers (this is still guesswork), I would now say that the 3 different ability groups correspond to something like 7.8 questions (with quite a few making one or two points worth of mistakes), 4.8 questions (with most not making many mistakes) and 2.6 (with most making 0.5-1.5 points worth of mistakes).
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_10: I believe that part of your issue is how you're doing the rounding for the graph. Instead of rounding up, let's just round to the nearest integer.
This looks far more like a normal distribution, if perhaps a little heavy in the back end. Honestly, rounding like this makes a lot more sense when dealing with a distribution of a class, because without this kind of rounding, something similar to what your graph looks like can crop up. This also explains why many of the non-integer graphs look rather normal as well.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/31 | 4,083 | 14,238 | <issue_start>username_0: If I have a paper accepted in a *known* conference of my field but am not able to present it at the the conference due to certain factors, should this be mentioned on my Master's application?
Also, where/how should this be mentioned?<issue_comment>username_1: There are several possible factors here: given the relatively small number of points available, lumping can skew how grades are distributed, particularly if they're also awarded in whole number increments. (That is, there's not enough refinement in the model to separate things out.)
Another issue is that the sample size is relatively small; twenty-four students is not a particularly large sample size—your standard deviation here is two points out of 10! Also, you should try plotting the data according to half-integer bins (0.5 to 1.5, 1.5 to 2.5, etc.); you'll end up with a *very* different distribution.
So, basically, I wouldn't try to draw any definitive conclusions from such a plot or distribution.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I did a Kernel density estimate plot of your data, shown below. You have a central lump of candidates with 4-5ish and a second lower lump of students who've done pretty badly.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Remember that the central limit theorem assumes independent samples. This is often a bad assumption for students. Cheating is of course a possibility, but it could also just be that they study in groups (most people find this very helpful). The spikes in your data could just correspond to groups who study together and have similar strengths and weaknesses.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I agree with the other answers that this may be an artifact of the histogram. May I humbly offer a few alternative ways to plot these grades?
All of these essentially show that your effects are likely due to small *n* and possibly an essentially discrete underlying data generating process.
R code:
```
require(hdrcde)
require(Hmisc)
require(denstrip)
require(beanplot)
require(beeswarm)
grades <- c(1.2, 1.4, 1.4, 1.9, 2.0, 2.3, 2.6, 2.6, 3.4, 4.2, 4.2, 4.3, 4.6, 4.6, 4.8, 4.8, 4.9, 5.3, 6.0, 6.2, 6.4, 7.1, 7.8, 7.8)
opar <- par(mfrow=c(1,6), mar=c(3,2,4,1))
boxplot(grades, col="gray90", main="Standard\nboxplot",yaxt="n")
hdr.boxplot(grades, main="HDR\nboxplot",yaxt="n")
bpplot(grades,xlab="",name=FALSE,main="Box-Percentile\nPlot")
beanplot(grades,col="grey",yaxt="n",main="Bean plot/\nViolin plot",border="black")
plot(c(0,2),range(grades),type="n",xaxt="n",yaxt="n",xlab="",ylab="",
main="Density\nplot")
denstrip(grades, horiz=FALSE, at=1, width=1)
beeswarm(grades,pch=19,main="Beeswarm\nplot")
par(opar)
```
EDIT: (sorry, I'm a statistician, I can't help it...) I went and took [Jack's kernel density](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18752/4140) estimate and resampled 24 "students" from it a couple of times. In each case, I plotted a histogram. The result is below. We see that *even an innocuous unimodal curve can lead to pretty bumpy histograms*, because of the discretization and the small sample size.
R code:
```
dens <- density(grades)
opar <- par(mfrow=c(2,4))
for ( ii in 1:8 ) {
samp <- rnorm(length(grades), sample(grades, size = length(grades), replace = TRUE), dens$bw)
hist(pmin(10,pmax(0,samp)),breaks=0:10,xlab="",ylab="",main="",col="gray")
}
par(opar)
```
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_5: Difficult class scenario with pretty standard student groups:
1. Champions - **ambitious** and hardworking / clever / interested
2. Mere students - *every hour on this subject hurts but I* **must** *pass it*
3. Underachievers - no time, no effort or no idea how to handle the topic
If the test wasn't important enough or was too difficult, breakdown above explains it all.
Champions didn't manage to max it out but they collected pretty nice scores of around 6-7 points. Mere students managed to learn enough to halve the test. Underachievers found out that without grasping the topic they aren't going to shine here.
Groups 2 and 3 blend together, which is visible in plot from username_2, hope I can borrow it :)
Is the level high? Was the test well-constructed and offering questions of different difficulty?
If so, then I think that's the case and you just managed to see who your students are. You might want to find out whether the problem is lack of motivation or being unable to jump into the subject.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: Just adding to the other statistical analyses here...you can't really be sure that this sample doesn't come from a normally distributed population of grades from similar students in similar classes. Here's some more R code for analyses and their output: `x=c(1.2,1.4,1.4,1.9,2.0,2.3,2.6,2.6,3.4,4.2, 4.2,4.3,4.6,4.6,4.8,4.8,4.9,5.3,6.0,6.2,6.4,7.1,7.8,7.8);qqnorm(x);qqline(x)`
 Compare your grades to: [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Normal_normal_qq.svg) by [Skbkekas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Skbkekas)
Your grades on the left don't fit the [QQ line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q%E2%80%93Q_plot) wonderfully, but they're not deviating very systematically. The numbers on the right are from a normal distribution; other than being more numerous, they seem similar.
Your grades are basically not [skewed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skewness) (`skew(x)` = .12). They are [platykurtic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurtosis), but you don't have enough of them to disregard the possibility that this difference from a normal distribution is due to [sampling error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_error) with much confidence. Here are results of an [Anscombe–Glynn kurtosis test](http://biomet.oxfordjournals.org/content/70/1/227.short) (`require(moments);anscombe.test(x)`): kurtosis = 2.03, *z* = -1.23, *p* = .22. FWIW, you can also test the null hypothesis that your data came from a normally distributed population using a [Shapiro–Wilk test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro_Wilk_test) (`shapiro.test(x)`: *W* = .95, *p* = .27), but [normality testing may be 'essentially useless'](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/2492/32036) (this may apply to dedicated significance tests of kurtosis or skewness too).
You seem to refer to the [modes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_%28statistics%29) or [local maxima](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_maximum) as curves. @StephanKolassa, @username_1, and @JackAidley have already demonstrated how misleading histograms can be in this regard. @RedSirius' comment is on-point as well, and you've acknowledged the effect of bin size in your comment, but haven't edited your question to clarify what this doesn't answer for you (hint hint ;) ;). It's unclear what more needs to be said here. You haven't got much evidence of anything unusual, much less have you given a serious external basis for your proposed interpretations regarding cheating or uneven service to students of different aptitudes, so it seems further speculation could only grasp at proverbial straws.
However, it may still be worthwhile to recite some (maybe insufficiently examined) academic truisms:
1. It's very hard to make one size fit all when students greatly outnumber instructors.
2. In the case of students who exert near-zero effort, you really can't help enough.
3. Cheating probably won't matter enough either if that's the main form of effort exerted.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: I have a theory that can explain situational anomalies such as this in classroom that's as situationally accurate as I have time to puzzle out.
To simplify the mathematics of the problem, I'm omitting some scale factors from my math which serve as little more than visual clutter.
Let an ideal bell curve be defined by `C(x)`.
Your set of students is `S`, and you have a magical function `Q(s)` for `s ∈ S` which yields the "quality" of a student's work.
Now consider a test. The test consists of a set of problems (call this set `T`). Each problem `p ∈ T` has a difficulty, given by `D(p)`. The probability of a student `s` correctly answering a problem is defined:
*Pcorrect(s, p) =* 
It then follows that a student of higher `Q` than the `D` of the problem will be more than likely to solve it, and one with a lower `Q` will be less than likely.
Let's define the ideal score of a student taking a test to be `Si(s, T) = Σ Pcorrect(s, p), p ∈ T`
If you were to take the ideal score on a particular test for each student in your classroom, you would get an ideal distribution, and chances are that if your students actually took the test, you'd get a distribution that at least roughly approximated the ideal one.
The important thing to take away from what we have so far is that, for an population of students taking a test, the difficulty of the problems on the test mathematically affects the grade distribution you're likely to have.
For example, assuming your student population is roughly bell-curved, you might see a grade distribution like your observations if your test questions have roughly these difficulty levels:
```
[2, 2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10+, 10+]
```
A large number of students would get the 2 easy questions right, but since there are few questions of low-intermediate difficulty, some of the students on the lower end of the curve wouldn't be able to get any harder ones right. On the very high end, there are some questions that might be extraordinarily difficult for the skill level of the students (this can happen for a number of reasons) that most of the class got wrong (assuming the grade is out of 10 points total).
Assuming your class distribution is something like this,
```
0-2|
3 | 1
4 | =2
5 | ===4
6 | ====5
7 | ====5
8 | ===4
9 | =2
10 | 1
```
Their ideal distribution (as defined previously, rounded a bit to reduce clumping) would look something like this:
```
0 |
1 |
2 | ===4
3 | ===4
4 | ===4
5 | ===4
6 | ==3
7 | =2
8 | 1
9 |
10 |
```
Which resembles, in a muted way, the observed curve you experimentally observed.
Also, realistic situations won't have such elegant mathematical solutions (like a student's probability of getting a question correct), so this model should only be viewed as a reasonable, educated approximation.
TL;DR It's possible the questions on this one test were more difficult and less comprehensive than you thought when you handed it out.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: If every student were able to solve every question with an independent probability p, then you would expect a normal distribution. But that is actually not a very good model.
Let's say you have a good number of problems in your test that any decent student would be expected to solve. Solving all of them gives you grade 5. Therefore you get lots of students on grade 5; everyone who is doing reasonably well in this course; some are a bit lower because of stupid mistakes which just happen, plus a few who are just badly prepared and have no chance to pass.
Then you have a few really hard problems. The average student solves none of them. Excellent students solve one or two or three, until they run out of time.
That kind of test could produce your distribution even with a very large number of students.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: I think you have over-tailored the difficulty of the questions to the range of abilities in the class. This is a similar theory to @username_8's.
Obviously this is all guesswork based on the data, and you will have to decide yourself if it makes sense or not. But it would be consistent with the data if you had two extremely easy questions (which absolutely everyone could solve), three slightly harder, three harder still and two impossible ones which no-one could solve. Everyone fell into one of three levels, with some of the students also making one or two errors on questions which they knew how to solve.
If one point doesn't correspond to one question, than the same thing could still be the case, but with a different amount of questions.
So you tried to spread out the difficulty of the questions (as is normal) but a) you clumped to many questions of the same difficulty together and b) you spread the clumps out too much, with 4 of 10 questions not giving any indication at all as to the relative ability of the students (because everyone got 2 of them, and no-one got the other 2). My guess is that the time-limit of the exam was not a big factor, since people work at different speeds and time limits probably therefore smooth out grades.
There is any easy way to test this theory. Did the students who got 2, 5 and 8 all get the same or very similar sets of questions right? My theory predicts that they did.
Edit
----
Looking closer at the numbers (this is still guesswork), I would now say that the 3 different ability groups correspond to something like 7.8 questions (with quite a few making one or two points worth of mistakes), 4.8 questions (with most not making many mistakes) and 2.6 (with most making 0.5-1.5 points worth of mistakes).
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_10: I believe that part of your issue is how you're doing the rounding for the graph. Instead of rounding up, let's just round to the nearest integer.
This looks far more like a normal distribution, if perhaps a little heavy in the back end. Honestly, rounding like this makes a lot more sense when dealing with a distribution of a class, because without this kind of rounding, something similar to what your graph looks like can crop up. This also explains why many of the non-integer graphs look rather normal as well.
Upvotes: 0 |
2014/03/31 | 1,490 | 5,880 | <issue_start>username_0: I was accepted into Ohio State University CS PhD without funding.
I have heard that people who can show their capability may get funding after getting into the program. Is this understanding correct?
Is being accepted without funding a dangerous sign? Does this means that the faculty doesn't care about you?<issue_comment>username_1: It means you may want to look around for jobs on campus, like TA positions to pay for living expenses and tuition. Not having funding upon acceptance is not a mark against you, it just means exactly that. In biology funding is more common because the scientist will need to pay for materials and reagents. I'm assuming there aren't many inherent costs in CS research aside from a computer.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: My answer applies exclusively to CS in the United States, or other scenarios in which the **standard PhD offer comes with guaranteed funding**.
### Implication #1: How the department feels about you
First, I will quote from an [answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7711/role-of-funding-in-grad-admissionsus-in-theoretical-computer-science/7727#7727) by JeffE (who is a member of the admissions committee at a top CS department in the US) to another question (also about CS PhD offers in the US):
>
> A typical PhD offer from a strong department includes guaranteed funding in some form.
>
>
>
That may come in the form of guaranteed RA/TA work, or something else, but whatever it is will be promised at acceptance. Therefore, the main implication of a PhD offer without funding is that (as you have intuited), the department does not consider you a top candidate for their program. As JeffE remarks in the same [answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7711/role-of-funding-in-grad-admissionsus-in-theoretical-computer-science/7727#7727):
>
> Do not accept a PhD admission offer without funding. If they really want you, they'll pay for you.
>
>
>
You asked: "I have heard that people who can show their capability may get funding after getting into the program. Is this understanding correct?"
It's not impossible to get funding after beginning the program (e.g., if you really hit it off with a potential PhD advisor who has grant money to spare).
But this depends very much on **luck** and **circumstance**, not just on **merit**; so unless you like living dangerously, it's not an advisable strategy.
### Implication #2: How it will affect your future prospects
Having said that, if you somehow manage to support yourself while doing a PhD, it probably won't matter to anyone that you were self-funded. Per Suresh's [answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8034/will-self-funding-a-phd-hurt-employment-chances/8036#8036) to another question:
>
> There's nothing on your CV that needs to indicate exactly how you were supported during your Ph.D.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I was part of Student Association in my university and I used to get this question many times from newly admitted students for CS PhD programs. I have told those students also that PhDs in CS without funding is not a common scenario in US universities. Usually projects come along with the funds and part of these funds get redirected to you in order to conduct the research. You may want to try out other options. I am sure you will find something better. All the best.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> Is being accepted without funding a dangerous sign? Does this means that the faculty doesn't care about you?
>
>
>
Yes and Yes. I've never known a PhD student to be accepted without funding of some sort. Generally, the number of PhDs a department admits is also the number of students the department can cover with RAs/TAs. I have no insider information, but my guess would be the school had a dearth of qualified applicants to the CS Masters program, and gave you one of their slots.
Self funding a PhD puts you at a tremendous dis-advantage, as all the other students are funded to do their research, but you will have to find outside work, and do research "on the side."
Also, consider what incentive your advisor (if you are lucky enough to find one) has to work with you. The prof invested in other PhD students by funding them, he's got skin in the game (so to speak), and incentive to make them succeed. As an unfunded PhD, your priority will be near the bottom of any prof.
I would recommend following one of the two options below
**1) Don't accept the unfunded PhD slot and re-apply.** Since you were accepted, you may be able to ask why you weren't funded. They may provide suggestions to help you re-apply.
**2) Switch to the masters program.** Masters students aren't usually funded, so you will be competing with others like you. You will work with the same profs, and will still have a chance to impress them. One of them may fund you.
I've know several Masters student who were employed by a prof after proving themselves in class. Generally, the prof fast-tracked them to the PhD program.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: It might be worth checking if you have been:
1. Admitted and told that you will not get funding,
or
2. Admitted with no funding decision made as of yet.
My university has a central admissions process for graduate students that is entirely decoupled from the process by which I make funding offers to my students. The university sends out an letter of admission that has language about "without funding," which has led to students expressing concerns similar to yours.
(This year, the faculty in my area are heading this off by sending informal "recommended for admission" letters to the admitted students, with a note that funding decisions are made at a later date and that they should interpret the University letter as being of the second type.)
Upvotes: 2 |
2014/03/31 | 4,965 | 12,450 | <issue_start>username_0: I came across yet another infogram, originating from [this Nature article](http://www.nature.com/news/365-days-2011-in-review-1.9684), showing the top-40 countries in terms of scientific publications produced for 2011.
The data are based on publications from <NAME>/Web of Science. Similar data are available [from Scimago (spanning 1996–2012)](http://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php).
Presented this way, there's some "bias" towards countries with a larger population. I was thus wondering if statistics on the number of scientific publications **per capita** was available for countries?
... just out of curiosity.<issue_comment>username_1: 1. Taking the data from [Scimago](http://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php) for number of publications in Scopus for each country including the years 1996–2012 (`Pubs`), and
2. taking the 2012 populations for countries from [Worldbank](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL) (`Pop`), and
3. writing a small script to join on country name and curating the subsequent results,
... we get the following (**edit**: *note that the list scrolls down!*):
```
No...Country.......................Pubs/Pop
1....Switzerland...................0.04948049
2....Sweden........................0.03949838
3....Denmark.......................0.03724673
4....Finland.......................0.03512776
5....Iceland.......................0.03384176
6....Netherlands...................0.03266005
7....Norway........................0.03235590
8....Monaco........................0.03153357
9....United Kingdom................0.03034517
10...Australia.....................0.03013565
11...New Zealand...................0.02928470
12...Canada........................0.02848185
13...Israel........................0.02841134
14...Singapore.....................0.02814340
15...Belgium.......................0.02684193
16...Austria.......................0.02538793
17...Slovenia......................0.02456816
18...Liechtenstein.................0.02302488
19...Ireland.......................0.02280205
20...United States.................0.02250084
21...Germany.......................0.02177218
22...France........................0.01953477
23...Spain.........................0.01643973
24...Greece........................0.01601820
25...Italy.........................0.01575377
26...Czech Republic................0.01557232
27...Estonia.......................0.01429077
28...Japan.........................0.01392641
29...Croatia.......................0.01346473
30...Portugal......................0.01319425
31...Luxembourg....................0.01267497
32...Korea.........................0.01157157
33...Hungary.......................0.01128115
34...Greenland.....................0.01071429
35...Cyprus........................0.00913291
36...Poland........................0.00899290
37...Lithuania.....................0.00829172
38...Bermuda.......................0.00745301
39...Faeroe Islands................0.00668606
40...Bulgaria......................0.00620812
41...New Caledonia.................0.00605143
42...Malta.........................0.00601626
43...Grenada.......................0.00528995
44...Palau.........................0.00510745
45...Latvia........................0.00497760
46...Romania.......................0.00432618
47...Kuwait........................0.00423781
48...Barbados......................0.00421932
49...Turkey........................0.00414781
50...Russian Federation............0.00408719
51...Serbia........................0.00399812
52...Chile.........................0.00394931
53...San Marino....................0.00374436
54...Seychelles....................0.00373640
55...Guam..........................0.00360543
56...Tunisia.......................0.00355685
57...French Polynesia..............0.00341107
58...Malaysia......................0.00339218
59...Brunei Darussalam.............0.00326268
60...Armenia.......................0.00315417
61...Jordan........................0.00314134
62...Lebanon.......................0.00309093
63...Puerto Rico...................0.00305665
64...Cayman Islands................0.00297030
65...Argentina.....................0.00288041
66...Qatar.........................0.00282271
67...Uruguay.......................0.00281334
68...Trinidad and Tobago...........0.00279863
69...Macedonia.....................0.00273227
70...Iran..........................0.00265369
71...Belarus.......................0.00262056
72...Oman..........................0.00247495
73...Bahrain.......................0.00247073
74...South Africa..................0.00244784
75...Ukraine.......................0.00241902
76...Brazil........................0.00232119
77...Cuba..........................0.00218313
78...Dominica......................0.00216227
79...Saudi Arabia..................0.00208004
80...United Arab Emirates..........0.00206949
81...American Samoa................0.00204978
82...China.........................0.00198446
83...Montenegro....................0.00175661
84...Fiji..........................0.00174223
85...Botswana......................0.00172363
86...Georgia.......................0.00166009
87...Virgin Islands (U.S.).........0.00164332
88...Tuvalu........................0.00152130
89...Mexico........................0.00137863
90...Costa Rica....................0.00135080
91...Andorra.......................0.00132721
92...Jamaica.......................0.00128646
93...Moldova.......................0.00127910
94...Thailand......................0.00123095
95...Marshall Islands..............0.00119874
96...Bosnia and Herzegovina........0.00116017
97...Egypt.........................0.00110861
98...Mauritius.....................0.00110573
99...Samoa.........................0.00093706
100..Panama........................0.00093654
101..Northern Mariana Islands......0.00091924
102..Gabon.........................0.00091696
103..Venezuela.....................0.00090597
104..Turks and Caicos Islands......0.00089432
105..Vanuatu.......................0.00086952
106..Antigua and Barbuda...........0.00084204
107..Gambia........................0.00084188
108..Morocco.......................0.00083801
109..Azerbaijan....................0.00080366
110..Tonga.........................0.00077186
111..Mongolia......................0.00076525
112..Colombia......................0.00075234
113..Belize........................0.00069432
114..Bahamas.......................0.00069362
115..Algeria.......................0.00066821
116..Namibia.......................0.00064132
117..India.........................0.00060709
118..Swaziland.....................0.00056459
119..Guyana........................0.00053183
120..Albania.......................0.00048797
121..Congo.........................0.00047290
122..Sri Lanka.....................0.00040530
123..Solomon Islands...............0.00040393
124..Maldives......................0.00039889
125..Bhutan........................0.00039767
126..Aruba.........................0.00039069
127..Kenya.........................0.00038740
128..Zimbabwe......................0.00038282
129..Senegal.......................0.00036806
130..Suriname......................0.00035732
131..Cameroon......................0.00034761
132..Kazakhstan....................0.00033660
133..Pakistan......................0.00032448
134..Peru..........................0.00029889
135..Ecuador.......................0.00029486
136..Ghana.........................0.00026906
137..Uzbekistan....................0.00025359
138..Benin.........................0.00025232
139..Bolivia.......................0.00024428
140..Nigeria.......................0.00024256
141..Papua New Guinea..............0.00023985
142..Nepal.........................0.00022093
143..Malawi........................0.00021098
144..Burkina Faso..................0.00020486
145..Uganda........................0.00020330
146..Sao Tome and Principe.........0.00020202
147..Guinea-Bissau.................0.00019536
148..Vietnam.......................0.00018557
149..Zambia........................0.00018529
150..Iraq..........................0.00017914
151..Syrian Arab Republic..........0.00017648
152..Tanzania......................0.00016707
153..Nicaragua.....................0.00016106
154..Lesotho.......................0.00015549
155..Djibouti......................0.00015471
156..Togo..........................0.00015159
157..Equatorial Guinea.............0.00014804
158..Paraguay......................0.00014026
159..Philippines...................0.00013611
160..El Salvador...................0.00012751
161..Bangladesh....................0.00012593
162..Mali..........................0.00011910
163..Kiribati......................0.00011906
164..Tajikistan....................0.00010988
165..Sudan.........................0.00010700
166..Cambodia......................0.00010468
167..Guatemala.....................0.00010131
168..Madagascar....................0.00010097
169..Mauritania....................0.00009194
170..Central African Republic......0.00008817
171..Ethiopia......................0.00008738
172..Honduras......................0.00008720
173..Comoros.......................0.00008223
174..Indonesia.....................0.00008169
175..Rwanda........................0.00007864
176..Yemen.........................0.00007203
177..Niger.........................0.00006895
178..Dominican Republic............0.00006860
179..Eritrea.......................0.00006035
180..Mozambique....................0.00005971
181..Sierra Leone..................0.00005720
182..Haiti.........................0.00004305
183..Turkmenistan..................0.00004156
184..Timor-Leste...................0.00004131
185..Guinea........................0.00003336
186..Burundi.......................0.00002853
187..Liberia.......................0.00002792
188..Chad..........................0.00002249
189..Angola........................0.00002123
190..Myanmar.......................0.00002040
191..Afghanistan...................0.00001626
192..Somalia.......................0.00000589
Countries missed by the join ...
Population not found for following countries mentioned w/publications:
Anguilla
Bouvet Island
British Indian Ocean Territory
Cape Verde
Christmas Island
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Cook Islands
Côte d'Ivoire
Democratic Republic Congo
Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
Federated States of Micronesia
French Guiana
French Southern Territories
Gibraltar
Guadeloupe
Heard Island and McDonald Islands
Hong Kong
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Macao
Martinique
Mayotte
Montserrat
Nauru
Netherlands Antilles
Niue
Norfolk Island
North Korea
Palestine
Reunion
Saint Helena
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Saint Vincent and The Grenadines
Slovakia
South Georgia and The South Sandwich Islands
Svalbard and Jan Mayen
Taiwan
Tokelau
United States Minor Outlying Islands
Vatican City State
Virgin Islands (British)
Wallis and Futuna
Western Sahara
Publications not found for following countries mentioned w/populations:
Cabo Verde
Cote d'Ivoire
Curacao
Hong Kong SAR
Isle of Man
Kosovo
Kyrgyz Republic
Lao PDR
Libya
Macao SAR
Micronesia
Sint Maarten (Dutch part)
Slovak Republic
South Sudan
St. Kitts and Nevis
St. Lucia
St. Martin (French part)
St. Vincent and the Grenadines
West Bank and Gaza
```
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Supplementing [username_1's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18768/49) (my point is not to use different source, but to show at the same time total and per capita data).
Taking data [World Bank Open Data](http://data.worldbank.org/) for [Population](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL) and [Scientific and technical journal articles](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IP.JRN.ARTC.SC), for year 2009 (for newer there is no up-to-data publication data), and using a short Python script, we get:
Only top 50 countries are shown.
* Height: publications per capita per year (in 2009),
* Width: country population,
* Area: total publication count per year (in 2009).
Source code: [on IPython Notebook Viewer](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/gist/stared/9922461), [on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/stared/9922461). (Quick and dirty, be warned.)
Upvotes: 4 |
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